Destiny Need Not Destroy Us

I’m currently watching an engaging series called “The Crown” on Neflix – about Queen Elizabeth II and the royal family.

Lots of intrigue as you might imagine – one source of intrigue is the relationship between Elizabeth and her sister Margaret.  As children, Elizabeth and Margaret knew that one day Elizabeth would become the Queen.  She was educated toward the task, groomed for it in many ways.

They have very different personalities – Elizabeth is reserved, circumspect; Margaret is dramatic, flashy, engaging.

One episode in particular underscores the tension in their adult relationship, with Elizabeth already having served several years as queen, Elizabeth resenting the freedom that Margaret has, Margaret resenting the position and prestige that Elizabeth has.

The element that I want to talk about is DESTINY - expectation writ large - how powerful that is especially in a family, how painful it can be and how it might be managed in the most healthy and productive way.

Gratitude Takes Practice

Gratitude doesn’t always come naturally.   If we tally up the ratio of gratitude to complaint that we feel and articulate in the course of a day, we may not be proud of the results. 

And yet every religious tradition I’m aware of encourages gratitude – for reasons that are psychological as well as theological.

On this Shabbat following the American holiday of Thanksgiving I want to offer three insights about gratitude from three different portions in the Torah, insights that can help us cultivate gratitude against the natural grain.

Vulnerable Enough To Know the Difference, Strong Enough To Make a Difference

What does it mean to be Jewish in America?  What is our essential story and what are our responsibilities based on our story?

Are we strong?  Are we fragile?  Are we safe?  Are we vulnerable?

Is America essentially different for Jews than any other place where we have lived – are we significantly freer, significantly safer?

Or at the end of the day is it not so different?  Not so different from Spain, Germany, Iran – countries where we had really good runs for centuries before things changed.

I don’t have the tools to analyze how safe we are and even for those who do have the tools, it’s only speculation.

But I do have some tools, and much responsibility, for speaking about how our view of ourselves ought to impose a vision and a responsibility for how we respond to our nation and our world. 

So fasten your seatbelts and join me on a journey that will include, not in chronological order, father Abraham, two rabbis who lived around the time of Jesus, and, well – us.

 Abraham Arguing with God

Who are we American Jews and – in this complex, multi-cultural, seismically shifting country we live in - what exactly should we be doing based on who we are? 

A Post-Election Message to My Congregation

Here is what I sent to the Temple Israel of Great Neck community two days after Election Day.

To the Entire Temple Israel of Great Neck Family:

We have completed a tense, divisive election season and a new president, Donald Trump, has been chosen.  The reactions in our congregational family run the gamut, our own ideological and political diversity in many ways reflecting that of our nation.

As American Jews, we strive to bring the noblest values of two traditions to bear on how we influence and shape society – the American commitment to democracy and freedom and the bedrock Jewish principal that all human beings are equally precious by virtue of having been created in the image of God. 

We must continue to affirm our commitment to honor the equal, inalienable rights of all of our nation’s inhabitants of all political perspectives, religions, races, ethnicities, abilities and disabilities, gender identities and sexual orientations.  We have made much progress in these areas and must continue to move forward.

We must work harder to talk and especially to listen well to one another, particularly when we disagree. 

And we must continue to affirm our commitment as a synagogue to be a place where everyone feels welcome to discover the power of Judaism to bring blessing to our lives and to our world.

Abraham and Sarah, whose geographic and spiritual journey we will be reading about this Shabbat, were charged by God to be a source of blessing to all the families of the earth.

Let all of us in our beloved, passionate, diverse Temple Israel community continue to channel the legacy of Abraham and Sarah, bringing blessing to our community, our nation and our world.

Please join us at 8 pm this evening, Thursday, November 10, for our daily evening service, which will include a prayer for our great nation and its potential.  Of course we will also offer this prayer on Shabbat. 

May God forever inspire us to honor God’s image in all human beings and may God bless the United States of America.

November 10, 2016

Is Our Self-Esteem Blowin' in the Wind?

When Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature, some people were excited, applauding what they believed was a well-deserved, “outside the box” choice, and some were upset.

Here it is, weeks later, and he hasn’t returned the Academy’s phone call informing him that he won the prize. 

(Shortly after I wrote this Bob Dylan did respond affirmatively to the committee, but I don’t think it changes the substance of my message.  So if you’d like, please read on…)

Some think that’s a real chutzpa – I mean, who doesn’t pick up the phone when the Nobel Prize committee is calling?

Others think that this is a tribute to his artistry.  He doesn’t want to be categorized by anyone – he wants the freedom to be himself, to define himself.  He doesn't require the validation of others.

Today is Shabbat Bereishit – the Shabbat associated with the creation of the world on which we read the story of creation.

In the first account of creation, human beings are the climax – created on the last day before Shabbat.  Given the scriptural context, I’d like to explore the question, where does our value come from?  To what extent does it come from the e-valuations of others, to what extent does it come from our own sense of who we are?  How does all this impact our self-esteem?

Are We Trying Hard Enough? The Essential Yom Kippur Question

The morning back in high school that I took the SAT’s, I packed my number 2 pencils and was about to leave the house when my mother said to me, “Remember.  All you can do is the best you can do.”

She said that to me numerous times as I was growing up.  Before tests.  Before I went onstage to act in a show.  On my wedding day…

All you can do is the best you can do.

Sometimes the comment made me more nervous.  Though overall it was a helpful thing to hear and I think my mother said it because she wanted me to understand that the most important measure of my success was the knowledge that I’d done my best.

However, with enormous respect for my mother, may she rest in peace, I’m going to begin my comments by modifying hers a bit and encouraging us to evaluate ourselves using what I believe is a more effective measure.

Truth is, not every situation calls for “the best we can do.” 

When our kids were growing up and we would get dinner ready, we realized it didn’t have to be our best.  It just had to be reasonably nutritious and something they would eat. We knew we could do “better,” but with all of the other competing priorities we chose not to.  We didn’t aspire to be Wolfgang Puck while we were making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for their school lunches. 

When we cleaned up at the end of the day we realized we didn’t have to do our best.  We just had to make sure it was neat enough and we determined what neat enough was.

On arguably the holiest day of the year, when we’re supposed to take a look at ourselves, and a look at the world, and ask appropriate self-reflective questions about how we relate to the world, I propose the following question that we can ask today, and all year long, about different situations.

Are we trying hard enough? 

In each realm of our lives, the mundane and the unusual, the individual and the societal, are we trying hard enough?

Open Our Hearts - A Plea for the New Year

At the end of the Amidah, which is part of our daily prayer, we each say the words:

פתח לבי P’tah libi.

Dear God – Open my heart.

Why do we have to pray for this?

Why don’t we just do it?  

A 6 year old boy named Alex who lives in Westchester sent a letter to the president of the United States.  He had seen the picture of a 5-year old boy sitting in an ambulance in Aleppo, wiping blood off of his face, a picture many of us have seen.  Alex wrote to the president that he wants the boy to come live with his family.  Alex wrote that he is prepared to share his toys with the boy.  He ended the letter by saying, “We will give him a family and he will be our brother.”

It’s very inspiring to hear about the pure open-heartedness of a 6-year old boy.  A boy who is ready to open his home, his toy box, and his heart to someone roughly his age.

But our view of things gets more complicated as we grow into adolescence and adulthood.   We experience fear again and again.  We experience disappointment again and again. 

We understand how complicated situations are socially and politically.

Our expectations lie unfulfilled.   Our hearts get broken.

And little by little, in different situations, over time, our hearts harden – they close up. 

So maybe that’s why we each pray to God ptah libi – open my heart – because we wish our hearts could remain open despite all of the internal and external forces that can keep our hearts rigid and closed.  And because it’s not so easy to keep our hearts open.

It is truly understandable for us to harden our hearts in so many situations.  We are often perfectly justified in being suspicious, or wary, or fed up. 

At the beginning of this New Year, I want to explore some of the political and personal reasons why we harden our hearts.  And I also want to explore why and how and in what situations we should strive to keep our hearts open.  Long past the relative innocence of childhood, can we face the world as it is, can we face life as it is, with hearts that remain appropriately open?  I hope so.