Jews and the Sacred Balancing Act

(I shared these words with the Temple Israel community the morning after I returned from a synagogue trip to Israel.  Click here to see photos and reflections from the families who participated in the trip.)

I returned yesterday morning on the red-eye from Israel, having spent 10 days with a group of Temple Israel families. 

It was an amazing trip. I’m suffering a little bit from jetlag and my brain is currently somewhere over Greenland, but I’m going to do my best to share a few interesting stories about our adventures and, hopefully, to make a worthwhile point.

Monday morning, 2:30 am.  Three adults, including me, and three teens, all of whom celebrated becoming bar mitzvah on our bimah, left the lobby of our hotel in Jerusalem to drive to Masada so we could climb it and then watch the sun rise.

While we were planning it the night before, it seemed like a great idea (and in the end it was, as you can see!)

Ten Days in Israel with Family

On the concrete level, Temple Israel’s trip to Israel concluded for each participant with the thwack of the US Customs stamp on our passports at JFK.  But the impact of the trip is hardly over for any of us, certainly not for me.

I’ve been to Israel many times and each trip resonated in its own way, a function of itinerary, company and life circumstance.  But this trip was unique for me in at least one respect.  Never before have I led a group of families – young children, teens and adults – as a rabbi.

For starters, I enjoyed watching people of all ages as they took in the kaleidoscopic reality of Eretz Yisra’el, some for the first time.  What’s it like to watch the mostly Jewish throngs (some in thongs) on the Tel Aviv promenade?  What’s it like to shmooze with Israeli teens (some who idolize America) at a natural watering hole in Beit Shean?  What’s it like on Shabbat to walk to and from shul on the streets of Jerusalem? 

What’s it like to dance with wide-eyed kindergartners in Ashkelon and then see the shelter that they have 20 seconds to run to when rockets strike? What’s it like to celebrate with a Bat Mitzvah a few hundred feet from where the ancient Levites used to ascend the steps to the Holy Temple?

From Russia, With Love

Last week, I joined with over a dozen rabbis from the New York area on a UJA-Federation sponsored mission to St. Petersburg, Russia.  The previous week, our president, Alan Klinger, and his wife, Susan, joined a group of lay leaders on a similar trip that also included Moscow.

I’d like to share several highlights of the trip and then try to put it into a larger context.

Naturally, Russia is very different now than it was just 25 years ago in many respects.  A colleague of mine on the trip pointed out that when he was there in the late 80’s, food was scarce for virtually everyone.

Today, food is more widely available.  We ate well at two kosher restaurants, which points to a second major change.

Today, religion can be practiced far more openly than in pre-perestroika times.  We prayed daily in our hotel wearing tallit and tefilin.  We wore kippot in the streets of St. Petersburg.

And we observed a Jewish summer camp, sponsored by the local Jewish community with enormous support from Jewish communities abroad, chief among them the New York community, through the efforts of UJA-Federation of New York.

Time to Grow Up

If you’re looking for interesting summer reading, why not pick up an old classic?  Though it's not quite a page-turner, I recommend Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents. 

It reads in part as a sophisticated critique of religion, but it’s also an attempt to understand how the human mind works. 

Freud draws an analogy between the human mind and a city.  A city is established when its first buildings are built; while these buildings are sometimes destroyed as the city grows, often they are preserved as new layers emerge.  In Paris, the ile de la cite remains central; in New York, it’s Lindy’s near Time Square. . .

But far more than these foundational buildings shape a city, Freud argues, foundational experiences shape our cognitive and emotional development.

The yearnings and fears we experience in infancy carry on profoundly as part of the human psyche.  Our hungers, for example, or our fear of abandonment, remain core elements of who we are.

What do we do with these intense and foundational parts of our identity?

Some people don’t ever quite get beyond their own selves. 

Hopefully, most of us build on our core hungers and fears.  We come to recognize that, just as we have needs and fears, others do, as well.  We come to appreciate that for us to have opportunity and liberty, others must, as well – or else the whole house begins to collapse.

I highly recommend a series on HBO about John Adams, based on the biography by David McCullough.

On and around July 4, it’s especially pertinent.

Where Does Self-Esteem Come From?

My mother wanted us all to have positive self-esteem.  So she separately told me and my sisters that we were each her smartest child. 

That worked reasonably well, I suppose, until one evening when we were all together and we compared notes. 

We confronted her with it, and she said, “alright, you got me.  But it’s good to know that at least you’re talking to each other.”

Generally speaking, positive self-esteem is something we want our children to possess, something we want to possess ourselves; but self-esteem is elusive.

I believe that appropriate positive self-esteem – not arrogance, but self-esteem – is a cornerstone of family, community and society.

And I want to speak about three pillars of self-esteem which, I believe, emerge from the Biblical tradition.

Complex Religion for a Complex World

De and I saw the Book of Mormon this week.  For those who may not know, it’s a highly irreverent musical comedy that takes a wickedly funny look at the role religion plays, and might play, in society.

We ran into De’s cousin before the show and afterward, her husband asked, “So how are you going to use this in a sermon?”

He was kidding, but the truth is that while I laughed and even shed a few tears at what I thought was a great show and a raucous meditation on what religion might be, I spent Act II working out the sermon in my mind.   I know it’s a professional hazard to think about work during a show, but here goes. . .

Marching Toward Freedom

At the recent Celebrate Israel Parade, Dr. Ruth Westheimer was interviewed for Channel 9.  She graciously thanked the anchors for their time and reminisced about her role as a sniper in the Hagana around the time of Israel’s independence.  She observed how the parade demonstrates support for Israel within and beyond the Jewish community.  She also spoke about how parades like this one reveal the pervasive blessing of freedom in America.  How fortunate we are, she remarked, that Jews, Latinos, Indians and others can march proudly up “fancy Fifth Avenue,” fully integrated into American society while able to embrace the unique aspects of their respective cultures.

Bravo, Dr. Ruth.  You always seem to find the right words for the occasion.  Indeed the Celebrate Israel Parade is not only about Jewish support for Israel, it’s about world recognition. Moreover, it is one of many ethnic parades that convey an important message about our country, namely the freedom and equality that every group deserves.

Unfortunately, in the State of Israel, religious freedom still eludes many Jews as the Conservative and Reform denominations of Judaism do not receive equal treatment under Israeli law.  Recently, an important development took place that will hopefully begin to change that reality.