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.