Facing Antisemitism Forthrightly

My generation of rabbis - ordained in the 90’s - used to observe that our rabbinate would be different from those of previous generations.  Instead of focusing on the dangers of antisemitism, we would focus on the positive aspects of Judaism.  More joy, less oy.  I’m not sure who invented that phrase, but it expresses the sentiment that guided us.

On a recent Wednesday night, I asked a group of people attending a Temple Israel Men’s Club event - do you feel more afraid or less afraid to be a Jew now than you did when you were growing up?  Some said they feel less afraid now and spoke about being bullied as Jews when they grew up.  But most said they feel more afraid now.

With antisemitic incidents on the rise, as empirically charted by the ADL and other organizations, and with the genuine fear that many of us continue to have, of course I, and other Jewish leaders, need to continue to respond, to analyze, to offer insight and hopefully some direction when it comes to antisemitism.  

In one week alone, 4 people were murdered in Jersey City by to people who were targeting Jews, 3 students were assaulted at Indiana University, and Netzach Synagogue was vandalized in Beverly Hills. 

Here are some points I’ve made before, but I believe they bear repeating and expanding:

Difficult Conversations Start With Us

I recently finished a book that I would recommend.  It’s called “Difficult Conversations,” written by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen.  It’s about how to have difficult conversations in a way that is effective, that leads to understanding, rather than more frustration.

Delacroix, "Jacob Wrestling with the Angel"

Before I go on, I’d like to ask everyone here, children and adults - to think of a conversation that you are in the middle of, or one that you realize you need to have but haven’t started yet, that’s a difficult conversation.

Perhaps you have been, or need to be, talking to your child about a difficulty he or she is having socially in school.

Perhaps you have been, or need to be, talking to your parent about feeling anxious or depressed or, if your parent is older, about issues around independence.  

Perhaps you have been, or need to be, talking with a partner about something the other person does that bothers you, or about emotional or physical intimacy in your relationship.

Perhaps you have been, or need to be, talking with someone you supervise at work about how their performance has been problematic, or perhaps you need to talk to your supervisor about receiving greater responsibility and compensation.  

Take a minute to think about a difficult conversation in your own life.

Sensitivity Leads to Strength

Last Tuesday night I attended the IAJF (Iranian American Jewish Federation) annual gala where former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley spoke.  It is a source of pride to TIGN that so many of our members are involved, including IAJF president Robert Kahen, president of IAJF.

Last Thursday, I attended the ADL’s Never Is Now conference where, among other things, Sascha Baron Cohen was given the International Leadership Award and British Parliament Member Joan Ryan spoke about her response to antisemitism in England.  It is a source of pride to TIGN that so many of our members are involved, including, of course, CEO Jonathan Greenblatt.  

On Wednesday night, I went to see an outstanding new production of Macbeth with my son Zach.  The production was terrific and watching Macbeth again solidified for me how I would, in this little sermon, frame the week and, more broadly, the way that I believe we must respond to the enormous challenges that face us these days as Jews and as human beings.

We know it’s important to be strong in the face of antisemitism and bigotry.  No one could convincingly argue, post-Shoah, and recently in the aftermath of the shootings in Pittsburgh and Poway and continued attacks of Jews on Brooklyn and just recently a stabbing of a Jew in Rockland County, that Jews should sit back passively.  We need to be strong and we need allies to be strong on our behalf and we need to be strong on behalf of our allies.

We also need to remain sensitive.  So that we can continue to feel what is natural to feel when we and those we know and those we don’t know are targeted with discrimination and violence.  So that we have the resolve to fight to protect those who are vulnerable, including but not limited to ourselves.  So that we can sense the difference between protective measures that are called for and protective measures that unfairly target the most vulnerable.  

Strength and sensitivity are not mutually exclusive.  In Jewish tradition they never were.  They always went hand in hand.  The Kabbalists speak of chesed/love/sensitivity on one side of a cosmic and human scheme and gevurah/resolve/strength on the other side and the idea is that in the world, and through us, they work together.

Starting with Macbeth.

Becoming More Assertive

Starting this Monday night, I’m going to be teaching a class at Temple Israel about Musar.  Musar loosely translated means ethical behavior.  We will be looking at texts that answer the basic question, how should we behave?

A depiction of Abraham conversing with God

Broadly speaking, texts about “how to behave” go way back in our tradition.  The Torah explores human behavior in numerous stories about our forbears and concretizes expectations of behavior through laws. 

The book of Proverbs and the book of Ecclesiastes provide advice.

Medieval Jewish philosophers wrote about how to define proper behavior. 

During the 19th century, the so-called Musar Movement developed and musar instructors wrote and taught about how one might change one’s behavior for the better.

They established frameworks for self-reflection and behavior modification.  A recent framework, established by the Mussar Institute, offers the following guidelines:

In the morning, you identify a type of behavior that you want to embrace. 

You say it, think about it, meditate on it.

In the afternoon, you do activities that strengthen the behavior.

In the evening, you write about your efforts. What went well?What didn’t go well?

When it comes to improving our own behavior, lots of things get in the way.

Often we aren’t aware of how we’re behaving.  We say and do things that are angry or timid or selfish and we aren’t even aware.

When we look at other people who behave in positive ways, we might be intimidated by them.  If we get as far as saying, “Gee, I’d like to do that,” we don’t necessarily know how to go about it.

In this morning’s Torah reading alone, we see examples of behaviors we might want to follow (and perhaps some that we don’t want to follow).

I’d like to focus on one behavior of Abraham that I would say is a positive behavior, one that we might want to emulate.

Engaging With a Scary, Unjust World

We tell a lot of stories to children that are terrifying.  The Brothers Grimm - two German scholars - are best known for their fairy tales and they are quite scary.  But we don’t even need them as examples.  The Bible has plenty of scary stories.  

To be sure, when we tell the story of Noah, we focus on the cute little animals and there are even cute songs about them walking onto the ark which I’ll spare you.  But the overall story is terrifying.  Destruction by flood is terrifying and if children use their imaginations to consider what that would be like, it might keep them up at night.

There’s another scary aspect of the story, and that is, that God decides to give up on humanity.  And at least as scary as that is the fact that the human that God picks to be saved along with his immediate relatives says nothing and starts to build a big boat just like God commands in order to save himself, his family, and certain animals.

Giving up is one answer to the fact that human beings are various shades of imperfect/dismissive/downright cruel.  There are lots of ways to give up that don’t involve wholesale destruction, though we’ve certainly done that to one another as a species.  We give up by allowing injustice and violence to continue without saying or doing much.  Ignoring and denying are very common ways that human beings give up on one another.

The first thing Noah does when he leaves the ark after the flood is plant a vineyard and get drunk.  Usually we don’t teach children that part.  I imagine he gets drunk in part because it is too painful to face sober the reality of the destruction that occurred and the reality of his own complicity, his tacit agreement to “give up.”

There is an alternative to giving up. It occupies the rest of the Torah, such that the Noah story becomes the exception rather than the rule.  The alternative to giving up is engagement.

One Year After the Tree of Life Synagogue Shootings

I grew up in a town that had, and still has, a large Jewish community.  My public high school had a sizable Jewish population but was mostly Christian.  I imagine there were students of other faiths as well, though I wasn’t aware of it.  

Great Neck community prayer gathering following the shootings

I experienced so little antisemitism as a student that I distinctly remember the very few times it occurred. 

Now these were the 1970's and early 80's in Fair Lawn, NJ, a suburb half an hour west of the George Washington Bridge. Towns with fewer Jews, towns in different parts of the country, generally experienced more antisemitism. 

The 70’s and 80’s, when a significant number of us came of age in this country or were raising our own children, were what I’ll call a little gan eden, a little Garden of Eden.  Great Neck in the 70’s and 80’s must have felt like my childhood town, even more-so.  A more sizable Jewish majority, more Jewish influence, more of a feeling of stability.

As this morning’s Torah reading makes clear, the Garden of Eden didn’t last so long.  Was it meant to last longer?  From a literary perspective, I would point out that the story, in keeping with other origin stories, was likely was meant to be etiological, to explain to its readers why life was the way it was - why life was hard, why people had to struggle with constant disappointments, with human beings not only loving and creating, but also hating and destroying.  

And so a story was told about how the creator put us in a beautiful secure garden לעבדה ולשומרה l’ovdah ul’shomrah - to tend and to care for - and we messed up, resulting in our living in a world that is beautiful but also dangerous.  

No one who came to this country from Poland or Germany or Iraq or Iran or many other places believed this was a Garden of Eden for Jews because they understood, based on their experience, that there is no such thing.

But even for these individuals, and certainly for those who came of age here in the 70’s and 80’s, and for our children, it felt in general, and for Jews as well, that life was safe and secure.

One year ago, as we heard the news of the shootings at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, whatever feeling of safety and security we might have had was shattered.  A sense of American Jewish life as being somehow protected was in a profound way threatened.

Fear is Real - A Message for Yom Kippur

This past Sukkot, shortly after last Yom Kippur, a member of our family had a health-related issue that, thankfully, reached a positive resolution.  The experience, as you might imagine, caused a considerable amount of anxiety at the time.

There’s a well-known Jewish song which begins כל העולם כולו גשר צר מאד kol ha’olam kulo gesher tzar me’od.  The world is a very narrow bridge.  והעקר לא לפחד כלל Ve’ha'ikar lo l’fahed klal.  And the essential thing is not to be afraid at all.

The song is sung at Jewish summer camps and youth group gatherings and we often sing it here at Temple Israel

I’ve always liked the song, but at the same time, it always bothered me.  The essential thing is not to be afraid at all. 

Does that mean that if we or a loved one are facing a danger and we are afraid, we are somehow missing the mark?  Somehow not strong enough or brave enough?

The words of the song are attributed to a certain rabbi, Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav.  I was intrigued by him years ago and decided to read a biography about him called Tormented Master, by Professor Art Green.  The title alone might tell you something, and I dove right in.

Rabbi Nachman, or Rav Nachman, was descended from the Baal Shem Tov, considered the founder of Hasidism, and Rav Nachman is credited with having revived Hasidism in a variety of important ways.  

He was known for being incredibly intense emotionally and apparently he was an extremely anxious person.  He thought things through to the point that he worried about them incessantly.  He had profound personal conflicts that lasted his entire life.

I imagine that when he wrote these words - the essential thing is not to be afraid - he was writing them as much for himself as for anyone else, kind of like when Dori, the fish in Finding Nemo, kept reminding herself to “just keep swimming.”

When you are worried about something, you know that the fear is real and cannot be denied or ignored.

If you have ever worried about the well-being of someone you love, or about your own well-being, you know that the fear is real.

We Need Each Other - a Message for 5780

We need each other.  That’s my message for the New Year.

A few years ago I was sitting with a group of parents in our religious school and I asked, what qualities do you want to instill in your children?  I made a list.  The qualities included hard work, honesty, compassion.  One quality that rose to the top of the list is independence.  Parents unanimously said they want their children to become independent.

Independence is an important quality, obviously. 

However.  We also understand, when we reflect honestly, that none of us is fully independent.  We rely on others all the time, for all kinds of reasons.

Looking back at our tradition, I had trouble finding references to independence.  In fact, I’m not sure I could identify a Biblical or rabbinic word that quite conveys the concept.  עצמאות atzma’ut, the modern Hebrew word for independence, does not seem to go too far back.

What you do have going way back in our tradition is ערבות areivut, which is interdependence.  Areivut is the notion that we are responsible for each other, we need each other.  We give and we get.

As a New Year begins, following a year in which we often have felt polarized and pulled apart from one another, I want us to consider several of the ways in which we are interdependent.  

Let’s start with the exciting world of romantic dating.  I want you to imagine that you’re coming up with a profile for yourself for a dating app.   

Present in the Present

I’ve told this story before but I was thinking about it again recently.  Our oldest son was born when we were living in Riverdale, along with many other rabbinical students.  The day after they came home from the hospital, Deanna asked if I could go down to the nearby pharmacy and get some diapers.  

I said sure, and then I started to get emotional and I said, you may think this is crazy, but I started to imagine standing with our son under the chupah and wondering what I would say.

And she said, that’s beautiful. And then she said, please go down to the story and get diapers.  The smallest size they have.

It’s fun to dream about the future and it can be illuminating to reflect on the past.

However, I believe that many of us, from time to time, find that we prevent ourselves from appreciating the blessings and the opportunities of whatever moment we are in.  

If you have ever catapulted yourself out of the present by rushing toward the future, or getting stuck in the past, these next few words are for you.

I’ll use myself as an example in the hope that you can relate.

Effective Thoughts and Prayers

Hurricane Dorian battered the Bahamas, skirted Florida, and continued northward near the Atlantic coast.

Marianne Williamson, presidential candidate and self-help author, wrote the following tweet once the storm turned course away from the Florida coast.

"The Bahamas, Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas...may all be in our prayers now. Millions of us seeing Dorian turn away from land is not a wacky idea; it is a creative use of the power of the mind. Two minutes of prayer, visualization, meditation for those in the way of the storm.”

Hours later she deleted that tweet and replaced it with the following:

"Prayers for the people of the Bahamas, Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. May the peace of God be upon him and their hearts be comforted as they endure the storm.”

I don’t know if she realized herself the deeply problematic nature of her original tweet.  She was implying, it seems, that it was powerful, collective thinking that resulted in the hurricane turning away from making landfall in Florida. It might have hit Florida, but powerful prayer, visualization, meditation, shifted it away.

Someone responded to her first tweet with the following, I’m paraphrasing:  I guess the prayers, visualization and meditation of the people in the Bahamas just weren’t good enough.

The original tweet presents a spiritual approach, a theology, that, to me ear, frankly, is self-congratulatory and deeply offensive.

If you escape natural disaster, it’s because you said or thought the right thing.  By implication, if you escape medical catastrophe, it’s because you said or thought the right thing.

And if you don’t escape those things, it means you didn’t think or pray right by God?

So much guilt and spiritual suffering has been inflicted on people by adding theological insult to physical, medical and emotional injury.

Confronting Our Own Prejudices

On Tuesday, August 27, Rabbi Avraham Gopin was exercising in a park in Brooklyn and was assaulted by someone with a brick, knocking his teeth out and injuring his face.  This is the latest in a string of violence against Orthodox Jews in New York. 

Rabbi Avraham Gopin, attacked on August 27, 2019

A day after the assault, Avital Chizkik Goldschmidt, a self-identifying Orthodox Jew who writes for the Forward, wrote an article entitled, “Why Does No One Care About Violence Against Orthodox Jews?”

She observes in her article that the response to these antisemitic hate crimes so far has been insufficient both by the city administration and by the organized Jewish community, with the exception of the ADL who are offering a significant reward for any information about the perpetrator.  

She goes on to write that in the liberal circles where she often finds herself professionally, where all kinds of discrimination is appropriately opposed, she routinely hears slurs about Orthodox Jews.

We Get to Tell Our Loyalty Story

I want to talk this morning about loyalty and the Jewish people. Starting in the past, commenting on the present, and looking toward the future.  

You may recall that Moses had a very instructive conversation with the two and a half of the tribes of Israel. They tell Moses they do not want to cross over the Jordan to the west with everyone else כי באה נחלתנו אלינו מעבר לירדן מזרחה kee ba’ah nahalateinu eleinu me’ever layarden va’hal’ah - because our portion is on the eastern part of the Jordan.

And Moses says to them:  האחיכם יבואו למלחמה ואתם תשבו פה Ha’ahikhem yavo’u lamilhamah v’atem teshvu po?  Will your brothers go off to fight while you stay here?  Moreover, you will discourage the rest of the Israelites from passing over the Jordan.

How dare you act in such a way that denies your responsibilities to the rest of the people and actively discourages them?

Moses is angry.  You could say that he is accusing these leaders of not being sufficiently loyal to the rest of the people. However, it doesn’t end there.  The leaders say to him, we will settle our wives, children and livestock east of the Jordan.  Then we will cross over and fight alongside the rest of the tribes as they conquer the land.  Only after that effort has been successful will we return and fully settle down.

Moses is pleased with the response.  Following his ardent critique, the two and a half tribes come up with a compromise solution which Moses accepts.

Here are three reasons why the Biblical exchange differs from recent events, reasons that I hope will be instructive for us as we navigate the current climate:

Being Who We Are Called To Be

I was recently sitting on a train heading into the city, wearing the kippah I always wear.  A woman who seemed to be in her 20’s was sitting in front of me, turned around, and said, "Excuse me. Are you Jewish?" And I asked, "Why do you want to know?" She said, "I see you’re wearing one of those coverings.  I wondered if you could tell me about them and why Jewish people wear them."  

TIGN 2019 Teen Trip Meeting with Muslim Students at Givat Haviva

So I told her about my kippah, about humility, recognizing a higher power.  She told me that her godparents in Ireland are Jewish (she is originally from England and moved to Ireland), how much she loves celebrating Passover with them.  We spoke about kippot and hijabs, about various religious and how they bring good and bad into the world.


I realized during that train ride that like it or not, I was serving as an ambassador for Jews in general, although she already knew Jews, and observant Jews specifically.  Many of us find ourselves “representing Jewish people” at one time or another. And when that happens, we probably want to make a good impression.

It is normal and understandable - in encounters small and large - for us as people in general and as Jews specifically to want to make a good impression.

This Land is Also Your Land

Deanna and I recently spent a week up in Vermont with our son and his girlfriend.  Our son, who works in a vineyard, spent the week supervising a group of workers who came to the US from Bhutan.  

In speaking with some of them and doing some of his own research, he discovered that this group left Bhutan due to persecution.  They were persecuted because they came to Bhutan from Nepal a few generations ago and were never fully accepted as Bhutanese.  

So they left Bhutan and came to the US, settling primarily in Vermont and Ohio.

"You’re not one of us, you don’t belong, get out of here, go back to where you came from."  

These are familiar thoughts, familiar comments.  This makes them no no less pernicious, but they are familiar.

They surely are familiar to Jews. You come from somewhere else.  You have dual loyalty.  You are not one of us.  

Using our experience, I want to urge us to consider what it means when one person decides to tell another person, or a group, this is not your home.  You don’t belong.  Go back to where you came from.  And how we as Jews should respond and position ourselves when such things are said.

We Tell Our Stories to Make the World Better

NY Congressional Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez caused an uproar recently by referring to the situation at the southern border of the United States as follows:

Elie Wiesel speaking at Yad Vashem in 2008

” The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border and that is exactly what they are – they are concentration camps – and if that doesn’t bother you...I want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity to say that we should not — that ‘Never Again’ means something.”

As we know, this sparked a heated response, and then a heated response to the response.

Curiosity Can Save Us - a Message for Shavuot

There are many things I miss about when our children were younger, but one thing I don’t miss so much are parent teacher conferences.  Sometimes they were illuminating and sometimes they were frustrating.

Curiosity undimmed in the British TV series, "Call the Midwife"

I remember once Deanna and I went to speak with our son's English teacher.  I walked into the room and the teacher had his grade book out, and started telling us about how he averaged all the scores and came up with the final grade.

I listened and said thank you and then asked, Is our son interested in what’s going on in class?

I realized that what I said could be interpreted as a critique of the teacher which was not my intention at all, so I said, I’m really just trying to ask if he’s curious about what’s going on.  Does he seem to like the books you are reading?  Is he excited to write about them, to be be part of the discussions you’re having?

I want to take a few minutes this morning to talk about curiosity. It’s at the heart of this holiday of Shavuot and it’s at the heart of whether we succeed or fail as individuals, as a people, as a species.  Curiosity.

Restoring What Should Have Been Prevented

A few days ago I had a conversation with my sister, who is a physician, and worked as a genetic counselor for years before starting medical school.  I was asking her for some advice.  Without getting into the details, because of our family history I was advised to seek genetic testing and I was asking her about the pros and cons of knowing certain things.  She said, basically, if the knowledge will be able to lead to prevention, then it’s worthwhile; if it will just lead to you walking around anxious about possibilities that you can’t do much about, then it’s not so worthwhile.

Migrant children rest on cots inside the house of Refugee in El Paso, TX

I said, me walking around anxious over things I can’t do much about?  Who do you think you’re talking to?  And then we had a good laugh.  She’s known me all my life.  I do have a tendency on occasion to walk around anxious over things I can’t control which, ironically, might be genetic.  

Of course we want to do whatever we can to prevent bad things from happening.  Medically, for sure.  But also societally.  If we can take actions to ensure that discrimination and persecution not take place, that people live with decency and receive just treatment, we are morally obligated to do so.

Trying to Right What Is Wrong

I shared these thoughts with my congregation, Temple Israel of Great Neck, one week after the shootings at Chabad of Poway:

A week ago, on the last day of Passover, I spoke about how important it is for us to claim religion as a source of affirmation and love, rather than discrimination and violence.  Roughly at the time I was speaking, a hateful murderer was preparing to kill as many innocent worshipers as he could at Chabad of Poway in San Diego.

As we learned more details, we discovered that the murderer is 19 years old, had been influenced by white supremacist teachings, and had also been accused of setting fire to a nearby mosque.  We discovered that the woman killed, Lori Gilbert Kaye, was fatally shot as she tried to protect Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein who was wounded, along with 8-year old Noya Dayan and IDF veteran Almog Peretz.

How awful that the topic of my sermon last week ended up being tragically relevant once again in this way.  Religion as a source of affirmation and love, rather than discrimination and violence.

A woman is dead, leaving behind a husband and a daughter whose lives are shattered.  Those in the synagogue who witnessed the shootings and survived, including children, are traumatized.  

I am angry, frustrated, despondent.  

This happened 6 months after the shootings in Pittsburgh, there have been shootings of Jews in Europe and shootings in churches and mosques the world over.

Which Side Are We On?

Last year I was in Washington with a group of rabbis under the auspices of AJWS (American Jewish World Service), urging our elected officials to advocate for human rights in a variety of areas.  One of our meetings included a conversation with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.  

We discussed a variety of things with her and asked her if she would be prepared to support them.  When we were done with that part of the conversation, one of us asked if there’s anything she wanted us to do that would help her.  And she said, "reclaim scripture."  That was a bit terse so we asked what she meant, and she said, so many religious leaders quote the Bible in order to judge and constrain; as I get to know you and what you stand for, I am asking you to invoke the Bible in order to embrace and empower.  

If, like many people, you sometimes wonder if religion is making the world better or worse, this past month provided grim reminders of religion’s negative potential.  In mid-March we learned of the murder of 50 Muslims in New Zealand by a Christian white supremacist terrorist who, among other things, yearns for the Christian reconquest of the Istanbul.  Just this past week we saw the murder of 100s of Christians in Sri Lanka by Muslim ISIS operatives avenging the murders of Muslims on, as they put it, “the infidel holiday.”

Also quite damaging are the numerous statements and policies that discriminate based on gender and sexuality and ethnicity and race in the name of religion.  

Not just because Senator Gillibrand mentioned it, but because I think it’s one of the most essential issues we can wrestle with as Jews in this point in time, I turn to us and ask, pointedly, Which side are we on?

Preparing a Generation for the Road

When I told Moji Pourmoradi that I would be happy to come along with 44 teenagers on a 10 day trip to Israel, what I meant to say was, I’ll give it a shot and see what happens.  What happened is that it exceeded my expectations.  More exciting, more crazy, more wonderful than I expected.

Conversation at Givat Haviva, February 2019

With the expert leadership of Avi Siegel, Moji, Tziona Kamel and our Israeli staff, we had quite a trip.  We climbed a few mountains in the Negev, slept in a kibbutz down south that I will describe as rustic, stayed at a less rustic kibbutz north of Tel Aviv, created our own graffiti in Tel Aviv, spent several uplifting days in Jerusalem.  We had fun, made noise, ate all kinds of food, made some new friends and had many more experiences that would take days to talk about.  I’ll get back to the trip in a few minutes.

The ancient rabbis encouraged us to tell story of Passover as fully and deeply as we can.  וכל המרבה לספר ביציאת מצרים הרי זה משובח  The more one tells of the Exodus from Egypt, the better. Moreover, between the recognition of diversity implicit in the drama of the four children and the acknowledgement of the morally problematic aspects of the Ten Plagues, the rabbis provided a template for confronting the complexity inherent in our story and our tradition.

Given our tradition's propensity for acknowledging complexity here and elsewhere, why is it that in many respects we overprotect the next generation, treating them like they are fragile, like they might break or short-circuit if we make things too hard or expose them to too much controversy or risk?

Precious As We Are: a Pre-Passover Reflection

Chances are you heard about the recent college scandal involving 50 people, orchestrated by a college prep company that involved getting students into elite college through cheating on standardized tests and presenting false athletic credentials.

Passover Haggadah Graphic Novel, Gorfinkel and Zadok, 2019

What messages does all this send to the students?  First of all, that honesty is optional.  If it works, be honest; if not, don’t.  But another problematic message that is sent to these students is, you’re not ok as you are.  "As you are" isn’t good enough.  In order to satisfy other people’s expectations, you have to pretend to be what you’re not.

Two weeks before Passover, I want to challenge us to think about the following. To what degree are we sending the message to people we love that they are not really welcome as they are. That “as they are” isn’t enough or isn’t ok.  “As they are” can be, their actual abilities; their actual appearance; their actual sexuality; their actual personality; their actual degree of conformity or noncomfority.

What To Do With Advice

I’m wondering if what I’m about to describe ever happened to you.  You make a decision, let's say regarding a job to apply for or perhaps a person to go out with on a date.  You get the job and you work at it for awhile; or you go out on a date, maybe even more than one date.

And things don’t go so well.  I won’t get specific, each situation is different.

Has it ever happened to you that after you make the decision, after you get yourself into professional or personal situation, after it doesn’t go so well, that someone close to you says:

You know - I had a feeling that wouldn’t work out.   

Perhaps at this point you may be wondering why the person didn’t say anything before but you may ask, why did you have such a feeling that it wouldn’t work out?

And the person may say some version of, I think by now, I know you better than you know yourself.

Is it actually true that someone else can know us better than we know ourselves?  And whether or not this is true, how do we feel about advice altogether?

I’d like to reflect on how we deal with advice.  Do we want other people to give us advice?  Are we more upset when people offer their opinions or when they don’t, especially if our decisions end up not being good ones?

Responding to Antisemitism

As many of you know I had the fun and privilege of traveling to Israel with outstanding educators Avi Siegel, Moji Pourmoradi, Tziona Kamel and 44 teenagers.  Some of the teens will be speaking about their experience on the 7th day of Passover and we will all continue to reflect on that trip.  Right now I want to focus on our tour of Yad Vashem for reasons that will become clear.

Temple Israel of Great Neck Teen Trip 2019

Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Museum, traces the complex history leading up to the Shoah, during the Shoah, and beyond.  

Several exhibits are devoted to the various phenomena that led to the Shoah and in particular, a great deal of emphasis is placed on the role of anti-Semitism

As you might expect, several exhibits in the museum are devoted to pre-existing antisemitism in Europe and how the Nazis capitalized upon it to create nothing less than a murderous propaganda machine.

Anti-Semitism is on the rise in the Europe and the US.  Anti-Semitic tropes are being used by national leaders, Democrat and Republican.

I have two points to make about this and I’ll devote a few minutes to each.

1. Jews deserve to have antisemitism specifically named and denounced.
2. Jews must not allow antisemitism to define who we are. 

Navigating with Wisdom and Strength

GPS is very convenient for sure but I joke with our kids that they need GPS to drive from our house to the train station.  Because they emerged as drivers with GPS as part of their reality, they have a poorer sense of direction than they otherwise would. Their internal navigation system is diminished because they don’t have to rely on it so much.

Norbert Friedman (1923-2019)

In general navigation is becoming a lost art.  I’m not thinking now about driving to the train station.  I’m thinking about navigating complex situations.  And while I could give all kinds of examples, specifically I want us to think about how the Jewish community is navigating the realities that we face which include, sadly and ominously, a rise in Antisemitism in Europe and the United States along with systemic infringements on the rights of others.

How do we navigate?  Do we protect ourselves?  Do we protect others?

Do we build walls?  Do we build bridges?  How do we determine who are our friends and who are our enemies?

The same way that GPS for all of its value may be causing our capacity to navigate on the road to atrophy, I am concerned that social media for all of its value may be causing our capacity to navigate complex social and political realties to be less sharp than it once was. 

Just a few days ago, I found out about the death of someone I care about, someone who had a strong impact on me, someone who knew how to navigate life’s complexities.  I want to say a few words about him because he deserves it but also because reflecting on his life, I believe, will be illuminating for all of us.

Norbert Friedman died a few days ago at the age of 96.  He survived the Holocaust and was imprisoned in 11 concentration camps.  He lived for many years in West Hempstead and I got to know him well as his rabbi for 7 years.  

Being Religious

This past Yom Kippur I mentioned a friend whom I envied when I was elementary school.  I envied him because he would get more expensive presents from his parents on Hanukkah than I did.  When I went over to his house once during Hanukkah, he showed me the amazing train set that his parents got him.  He asked me what I got the night before, I mentioned something that I’d gotten - I think it was a book.  And he said, only a book?  And then, to drive the point home, he said to me, “I guess your family isn’t as religious as mine.”

A question that we ask ourselves from time to time is, what makes a person religious?  I’m often intrigued when people tell me, as a rabbi, that they’re not religious.

As in - Rabbi, I don’t like to pray.  I’m not religious.   Or - I don’t keep all the rules.  I’m not religious.

I'm not sure exactly what people intend to convey when they say that.  Maybe they feel bad and are apologizing.  Maybe they are feeling superior, and saying something like, “I’m sophisticated enough not to worry too much about all this stuff.” 

This morning’s Torah portion ends with a description that is often associated with “being religious.”

A group of male leaders up on a mountaintop see a vision of God, complete with sapphire and light.  The Torah says ויחזו את האלהים Vayehezu et ha’elohim.  They saw God.

But I would argue that the rest of this morning’s parasha, most of the parasha, presents a different approach to "being religious" that is at least as significant.  Not up on a mountain trying to envision God, but in the world, trying to do what’s right by God's creatures.  So here are a few examples, as well as a word about the Lubavitcher Rebbe and Ben Franklin who had some worthwhile things to say about the religious enterprise.

What Happens Next?

I suspect that many of us followed various media coverages of the recent exchange on the National Mall involving Native Americans, Black Hebrew Israelites and a group of students from a Catholic high school in Kentucky.

A video initially released was interpreted by conventional news outlets and many on social media as showing the students acting disrespectfully toward a Native American man.  The video prompted strong criticism of the students, especially one who stood next to the Native American man and smiled at him for an extended period of time while he was drumming and chanting.

A longer video showed a controversy between the Black Hebrew Israelites and some members of the native American group that expanded to include the students.

Certain things were evident in the longer video.  The members of the Black Hebrew Israelites group criticized the way the Native Americans worship and gestured toward the students, saying to the Native Americans that there won’t be any food stamps coming to the reservations or the projects shutdowns because of the people wearing the "Make America Great" caps.

Some of the students made tomahawk chopping gestures in the presence of the Native American.  For awhile the students listened to one of the Black Hebrew Israelite preachers and booed when the preacher made a homophobic comment.

There’s been a great deal of analysis around the way people on social media use these kinds of videos to justify their own narratives before necessarily trying to understand the situation more precisely.

I am interested in what actually happened in front of the Lincoln Memorial that day.  Who said what?  Who did what?

However, I am more interested in what happens next.  How will all of the people present view the events and respond in similar situations moving forward? Focusing on the students who, by virtue of their age, will likely be part of the longterm future of our country, I am especially interested in what they will do next and what the people in their community - their peers, parents and teachers - will do next.