The Torah Belongs to Every Jew

Shabbat Parshat Bemidbar

May 11, 2013

This year, I think I finally figured it out. And when I say “it” I mean why Shavuot has been relegated to a second or even third class holiday among the other Jewish holidays of the year.

Shavuot is actually one of the most sacred days on the Jewish calendar, in the same category as Passover and Sukkot. In the Torah, we read: “Three times a year-on Passover, on Shavuot and on Sukkot-all your males shall appear before the Lord your God in the place that He will choose.”  When the Temple still stood, God’s chosen place was Jerusalem. People would flock from all over to rejoice together, these three times each year.  On Shavuot, farmers specifically offered their bikkurim—their first ripened fruits—as gifts to God.

Unfortunately, when the Second Temple fell in 70 CE and our ancestors were forced into exile, these thrice annual pilgrimages came to a halt. On Pesach, our ancestors still gathered to tell the story of the exodus from Egypt. On Sukkot our ancestors still built huts and took the lulav and etrog. But once the first fruits in the Promised Land could not be offered to God in God’s home, there was little ritual left.

Over the years Shavuot transformed into Zman Matan Torateinu.  What started out as a pilgrimage and a harvest festival morphed into the day we remember God giving us the Torah.

As Maimonides teaches in the Guide of the Perplexed 3:43 [Shavuot] is the day of the giving of the Torah. In order to glorify and exalt that day, the days are counted from the first of the festivals (Passover) up to it, as is done by one who waits for the coming of the human being he loves best and counts the days and the hours. This is the reason for the counting of the Omer from the day when they left Egypt till the day of the giving of the Torah, which was the purpose and the end of their leaving.

Agricultural pilgrimage was dropped and Shavuot became the holiday of God giving His people the Torah.  When I explained this to a faith leader of another religion I told him that this holiday is like a graduation. We do all the work and then someone gives us our diploma.  Each year we count the Omer, and then God gives us Torah again.  It was the kabbalists who introduced the idea of the tikkun layl Shavuot, the all nighter, so we can stay up all night and then read the section in Torah when God gave us the mitzvot. It can be rather emotional. We are tired after a night of no sleep, just like our ancestors were tired from a life of slavery and then new found freedom in a new place. And then we, like them, are given Torah.

The challenge is that so many Jews reject Torah or they see it as something that is not relevant to them. They see the gift of Torah as being an all or nothing gift, or a take it or leave it gift, which in my understanding it is not.  And they choose to leave it.

There are other people who live their lives building fences and fences around the Torah and trying to recreate the understanding of each and every mitzvah as stringently as possible. For those people, that is the only way to study Torah and embody Torah. And for the most part, their message is that they “own” Torah since they do so many mitzvot.

I am not one of those people and I don’t think many of you sitting in here are either.

Torah does not stop with the walls of a Beit Midrash, of the study hall. We read in Proverbs “Train the child according to his way” (Mishlei 22:6). From that verse I learn that we can all learn Torah in our own ways, and we can also receive Torah in our own way. That is pluralism.

A few days ago I read the following in my dayomi studies. Why is the Torah compared to a fig tree? The fruit of most trees – the olive tree, the vine, and the palm tree – is collected all at once, while that of the fig tree is collected a bit at a time. So, too, regarding the Torah. Today a person learns a little, and tomorrow she shall learn much, for the Torah cannot be learned in a single year or two. (Babylonian Talmud Eiruvin 53b)

And that is why this holiday lost its stature among others in the non observant world. Too many of us (especially those not in the room) were never informed or had anyone model for them that learning Torah and understanding and growing in mitzvot is a lifelong exercise. We have not all been informed that the Torah is part of our inheritance. And, we were not all informed that God gave us the Torah, to all of us, and that our jobs was to understand it according to the times we
live in.

It is just a misconception that if we want a relationship with Torah, then it must be and all or nothing relationship.  The Torah belongs to each and every Jewish person.  So if, Shavuot celebrates the Revelation at Mount Sinai when God gave the Torah to the Jewish people, and there are people who don’t think the Torah
speaks to them, or thinks that the Torah has been usurped by a specific part of the population, then it is no wonder it is an under observed holiday

The Torah is so much more than a book of narratives and “do this” and “don’t do this. According to  Shir Hashirim Rabbah.

The words of Torah are likened to water, as it is written, O all who thirst, come for water, (Is. 55:1)  Just as water goes from one end of the earth to the other, so does Torah go from one end of the earth to the other. Just as water is a life source, so is Torah a source of life. Just
as water is free to all, so is Torah a free commodity. Just as water makes many sounds, so is the Torah heard in many voices. Just as water originates in tiny drops and accumulates into mighty streams and rivers, so the Torah is acquired word by word today, verse by verse tomorrow.  Just as water is not kept in silver or gold vessels, but the simplest [clay], so Torah is retained by those who are simple.

Every single one of us can merit stand at Sinai again this Shavuot. It is up to you.  You don’t need an invitation.

Shabbat shalom.

Stop Blaming the Victims

Shabbat Parshat Emor

April 27, 2013

by: Rabbi Robyn Fryer Bodzin

an abbreviated version of this sermon can be found on the Huffington Post.

Some of you might have read or skimmed the article Extent Of Modern Slavery Shocked Even Experts, in the Jewish Week last week.  Modern Slavery? You might have thought. I live in New York. Slavery was the south. Slavery was Egypt. Let’s move on to the next article.

Admittedly an odd choice for a day off, I attended a conference on Monday. It was eye opening. The conference was held at the UJA-Federation of New York’s offices, and it was called “We Were Slaves: The Jewish Community Unites Against Sex Trafficking. ” Those in attendance heard from a wide range of anti-slavery activists, including Rabbi Levi Lauer of Israel-based ATZUM Social Justice Works, Rabbi Ari Hart of Uri L’Tzedek and Rachel Durchslag of the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation.

And we heard from a girl who used the pseudonym Sarah. She is a young, twenty-something, herself a Jewish victim of sex trafficking. She could have been your daughter or granddaughter.
A nice Jewish girl from Manhattan.

She shared a lot that is not appropriate to share on a Shabbat morning from the pulpit, but we left with a face, and a voice of an urban girl who was used in the sex industry. Sarah said that at times she would play mind games with herself and pretend that she liked it, or that it was a game—but then her pimp would beat her and she would remember that in fact, her life was not a game.

What stayed with me from her testimony-to a room full of, rabbis, educators, therapists, government workers and students- was that she said that she did not ask to be raped and beaten. She did not know she was a victim of sex trafficking or that she could get out.

Susan Stern, who chaired the President’s Advisory on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships reminded us in her opening remarks on Monday, that being trafficked happens to you- it is not who you are. She also said that behind every victim there is a person with hopes and dreams.

The survivor we met concluded her remarks with “now that I am out of prostitution I set the boundaries for my body” and “no one is born a prostitute.”

Becoming a prostitute is rarely a choice. When a prostitute is “working” someone else owns or rents her for the hour that she is “working.” Listen to the language. That is human trafficking and human slavery.

And a sex worker’s pimp does own her, taking away all of her liberties and power. Unless they are born into it, being raised in a shanty town, most girls are lured or seduced into the life because of a serious vulnerability, or because they were raised with abuse and have negligible self worth or self esteem.

With that in mind, I have so much trouble with the text of this week’s Parsha, especially looking at it with 2013 eyes. Emor’s target audience is the priestly cast and their families, but I still am left troubled by the ramification and the thought behind it.

We read, about who the Kohen may not marry (21:9)

וּבַת אִישׁ
כֹּהֵן, כִּי תֵחֵל לִזְנוֹת

JPS  When the daughter of  a priest defiles herself through harlotry, it is her father whom she defiles; she shall be put to the fire.

Artscroll If the daughter of a Kohen desecrates herself through adultery

Robert Alter Should a priest’s daughter degrade herself through whoring

All of the translations that I checked seem to imply that if a woman makes herself a whore or a harlot, then she cannot marry a Kohen. And she defiles her father in the process.

From everything I learned on Monday, it is very rare that a woman makes herself a whore or a harlot. Something happens or someone lures her into it.

Last week we read “Do not degrade your daughter and make her a harlot, lest the land fall into harlotry.” In the holiness code of Kedoshim, fathers are prohibited from using their daughters as prostitutes. Yet Rashi writes that the daughters shame the father.  What about the daughters themselves? What about the PTSD if they are lucky to get out? What about the shame and fear they face every day when they get up due to powerlessness and abuse?

In next week’s parsha we will read in Leviticus 25:55, that God says “The children of Israel are My servants. ” Human beings are not ever to be chattel or slaves, or even the unwilling servants, of other human beings. As Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote:  “man’s sin is in his failure to live what he is. Being the master of the earth, man forgets that he is the servant of God.” All of humanity is created in the image of God. There are no exceptions to that rule.

Yet, today approximately 27 million people around the globe are forced into slavery-two thirds into sex slavery.  That just goes against everything we know to be true, how to live. And as I learned from Sarah, Jews are not exempt from this. There are 1 million rapes of sex slaves in Israel each month. There is a brothel in Tel Aviv where men get a punch card and their eleventh visit is free. I am not making this up. Rabbi Levi Lauer the founding Executive Director of ATZUM-Justice Works shared that with us. One of ATZUM’s projects is the Task Force against Human Trafficking which campaigns aggressively against Israel’s
flourishing trafficking in women sex slaves. This inflated sex trafficking industry flourished alongside immigration from the FSU. And yes, the two are intertwined.

According to the  State Department,  When an adult is coerced, forced, or deceived into prostitution – or maintained in prostitution through one of these means after initially consenting – that person is a victim of trafficking. Under such circumstances, perpetrators involved in recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing, or obtaining a person for that purpose are responsible for trafficking crimes.

Sex trafficking also may occur within debt bondage, as women and girls are forced to continue in prostitution through the use of unlawful “debt” purportedly incurred through their transportation, recruitment, or even their crude “sale” – which exploiters insist they must pay off before they can be free.

A person’s initial consent to participate in prostitution is not legally determinative: if one is thereafter held in service through psychological manipulation or physical force, he or she is a trafficking victim.

I want to share with you the introduction of the SLAVERY REPORT OF RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE PRESIDENT from the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships April 2013, which was shared with us on Monday-

There are more slaves in the world today than at any other point in human history… Every 30 seconds another person becomes a victim of human trafficking. Trafficking in persons, or modern-day slavery, mars every corner of the globe and manifests itself in a debasement of our common humanity
that is completely at odds with religious and ethical teachings alike. This heinous crime robs tens of millions of people of their basic freedom and dignity. Victims of modern-day slavery include U.S. citizens and foreign nationals, children and adults, who are trapped in forced labor and commercial
sexual exploitation, with little hope of escape.

Trafficking in persons is estimated to be one of the top-grossing criminal industries in the world, with traffickers profiting an estimated $32 billion every year. The extraordinary reach of this crime is shocking—with cases reported in virtually every country in the world, including in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia and U.S. territories and insular areas.

As President Obama said in his landmark speech to the Clinton Global Initiative in September 2012:  “It ought to concern every community, because it tears at our social fabric. It ought to concern every business, because it distorts markets. It ought to concern every nation, because it endangers public health and fuels violence and organized crime. I’m talking about the injustice, the outrage, of human trafficking, which must be called by its true name —modern slavery.”

Monday’s conference had a purpose. It was to raise awareness of this $32 billion annual problem. One of the ways of raising awareness is by sharing the findings with you this morning. The ultimate goal is to of course get rid of sex trafficking completely, but that is some ways off, for reasons we probably can think of.

Sex slavery is nothing new.  In Genesis 12, right after the Lech Lecha charge, we read about Abraham acknowledging Sarah’s beauty. He tried to give her over to Pharaoh, saying she was his sister and not his wife, so that he would live. The Ramban writes that this deed led to the exile in the land of Egypt. Rambam quotes from Kohelet at the end of his commentary, acknowledging that there was wickedness and sin.

I was sickened by a lot of what I learned on Monday. The day was so intense that I actually ducked out early because it was too much. The material was
overwhelming and very new to me. I knew human trafficking existed, but not to the extent that I do now.

But, I was left with a glimmer of hope. Remember Hagar? Hagar was used and abused by Sarah. Our Thursday Lunch and Learn group spent some discussing this at some point this year.  She was a tool, a vessel, cheap labour that led to an impact.

While Abraham and Sarah might not have seen her as a full person with rights and dignity and hopes and dreams, God did. God calls out to her and tells her that He saw her suffering. God saw past Hagar’s job of a slave and acknowledged her humanity. And then Hagar mustered up any strength that she had left and
confirmed God’s of her and named the placed “Beer-lahai-roi” which means the place of the God of seeing.

My hope is that we can act in the image of God and see to it that despite the myriad of hurdles, we can do something about this horrible epidemic.

On Jews and Alcohol

delivered on Parshat Shemini

April 6, 2013

During Pesach, my office was used as the alternate kiddush site. I thank all of you who noticed that I never got around to changing my clock when we sprung forward. I thank everyone who brought in the K of the BYOK, and I thank the special people who helped clean up each day.

It warmed my heart knowing that the women who work in the Sisterhood kitchen only had one Pesadik kitchen to deal with, and it was their home kitchens. The team headed by Evelyn, Irma and Marilyn do so much for the shul.

While I was glad to open the door of my office as a site for people to come together to sanctify the day, have a nosh and recite brachot, the lingering smell of alcohol I was not so grateful for. Dayenu, I did not need that.

The stench of beverages I don’t drink was a little difficult for me on Chol Hamoed. But I persevered.

The lingering smell led me to think about alcohol this week.

The image of men and women squished into my office like sardines, delighting in a lechaim is the complete opposite of the myth that so many of us grew up believing. Perhaps you heard the myth too, at one point.

Jews don’t drink or do drugs.

The reality is that alcohol and chemical dependency do  not discriminate; they affect Jews as frequently as they do any other group.

Would I be correct in assuming that most everybody has, at one time or other, enjoyed an alcoholic beverage? I, myself, enjoy a nice mojito now and then, and a good glass or two of wine on Friday nights and holidays, when the bottle is opened following kiddush.

It is not forbidden to enjoy a drink according to Jewish law. Wine specifically, in moderation, has a nice reputation in our texts.

We sanctify days with wine.  And, out of all of the fruit in the whole world, grapes in liquid form have their own special bracha—probably the most well known bracha too-borei pri hagafen.

“And wine gladdens the hearts of man”
(Psalms 104:15)

“Wine gladdens life” (Kohelet 10:19).

“There is no true happiness without wine” (Pesachim 109a).

And last Shabbat we read in Shir Hashirim

Little boys first drink wine at the age of 8 days old at their bris!

As much as wine is praised, our sages were well aware of the effects of excessive drinking.

Keep in mind that he was also a physician, Maimonides teaches the following in Hilchot Deot,

“When the wise man drinks wine, he drinks only enough to accompany (lit., ‘soak’) the food in his innards. Anyone who becomes drunk is a sinner, is disgraced, and loses his wisdom.

And if he becomes inebriated before the unlearned, he has desecrated the Divine Name.

It is forbidden to drink in the afternoon, even a  small amount, except as part of a meal, as drink which accompanies a meal does not intoxicate. [Thus, scholars] are only careful [to refrain] from wine after the meal.” (uh oh…)

Our sages spoke very strongly against, as we say in modern parlance getting drunk.

What happens when you get drunk? If you have been there, then you know that you lose some self-control. The capacity for judgment and proper decision-making decreased. When alcohol is abused, it is seen as a curse-this is not a new concept. Our sages saw the abuse of alcohol as a curse. Our sages knew about the negative implication of excessive drinking long before drunken pictures ended up on the Internet.

Let’s use Noah as an example. Yes he saved the two by twos and his family, but what happened once he left the ark? And Noah planted a vineyard… and he drank wine, became drunk and was uncovered.  (Genesis 9:20)

There are many ways to understand those words. This is how the rabbis in the Tanchuma understood them. When Noah planted a vineyard, Satan came and stood before Noah, saying, “What are you planting?”

Said Noah, “A vineyard whose sweet fruits will produce wine that causes the heart to rejoice.”

Said Satan, “Let us be partners in this vineyard.”

“Yes,” said Noah.

 Satan then brought a lamb and slaughtered it under the vine. Then he did the same—one after another—with a lion, a pig, and a monkey, sprinkling their blood throughout the vineyard, thus causing Noah to drink their blood in his wine. In so doing, Satan hinted to man that when a person begins drinking alcohol he is timid and innocent like a lamb, then when he drinks just enough he is strong like a lion, thinking that none are as strong as he. But when a person drinks too much, he acts first like a pig polluting himself in his urine, then like a monkey who dances around uttering vile words, completely out of control.

All of this happened to Noah.

This does not describe the same Noah who shows up in children’s books.

Alcohol briefly appears in this week’s parsha. The suggested limitations of consumption are clear.

“God spoke to Aaron, saying: ‘Do not drink intoxicating wine, you and your sons with you, when you come to the Tent of Meeting [to perform the service]…this is an eternal decree for your generations. In order to distinguish between the sacred and the profane…and to teach the Children of Israel all the decrees that God had  spoken to them through Moshe.” (10, 8-11)

God warns Aaron that the Kohanim must refrain from excessively drinking before doing their work. And this warning was not only for then, but it was an eternal decree. It was meant for us and the generations that follow after us.   To perform the service in the Temple properly, or to adjudicate Torah law, (and let’s face it, to do a lot of other things too), we need an unclouded head, a clear mind, and a pure heart.

Maimonides has more to say about alcohol consumption. He writes in Hilchot Yom Tov 6:20 When a person eats, drinks and rejoices on the festival, he should not be drawn after wine, frivolity and levity and think that the more he engages in this the more he fulfills the mitzvah to rejoice.  For drunkenness, excessive frivolity and levity is not rejoicing, but rather
foolishness and silliness, and we were not commanded with regard to foolishness and silliness, but rather rejoicing with involves the service of the Creator of everything.

From reviewing these brief texts that approach the wine consumption from many different perspectives, it seems that according to our tradition, people need to be able to discern on their own what is considered an appropriate amount of alcohol they can drink. We don’t have it completely spelled out for us.

And that is a problem, because not everyone is able to do that.

From the Mayo Clinic’s website: Alcoholism is a chronic and often progressive disease that includes problems controlling your drinking, being preoccupied with alcohol, continuing to use alcohol even when it causes problems, having to drink more to get the same effect (physical dependence), or having withdrawal symptoms when you rapidly decrease or stop drinking. If you have alcoholism, you can’t consistently predict how much you’ll drink, how long you’ll drink, or what consequences will occur from your drinking.

Alcoholism is contrary to Jewish law, but I believe it is a disease.

Remember, Alcohol and chemical dependency does not discriminate; they affect Jews as frequently as they do any other group. But for so long there was, and to some extent still is, a huge stigma regarding alcoholism and chemical dependency in the Jewish community.

In 1978, Jewish members of AA were invited to join the recently established UJA-Federation of New York Task Force on Alcoholism.  For the first time, the
word Jew and alcoholic were not whispered.

For nearly three decades, JACS (Jewish Alcoholics, Chemically Dependent Persons and Significant Others) has been the central voice for alcoholic and chemically addicted Jews and their
families.  JACS has, in a significant way, helped to put addiction on the agenda of the Jewish community, advocated for the needs of Jews in treatment, and facilitated the involvement of clergy in meeting spiritual needs of Jews in recovery. I have reached out to them.  JACS has directly assisted thousands of alcoholic and chemically addicted Jews to find Jewish resources to assist them in recovery, and reached tens of thousands more through publications, community presentations and the media

If you know someone, or you yourself are dependent on drugs or alcohol, you are not alone. Call me and I can connect you

Yes, wine sanctifies time and gladdens the heart, but only in moderation.

The JACS website is: http://www.jbfcs.org/programs-services/jewish-community-services-2/jacs/

What is the Passover Narrative?

Rabbi Robyn Fryer Bodzin

Parshat Tzav/Shabbat Hagadol 5773

Aaron and I both have brothers in the tri State area and all of us are observant Jews. It is a challenge for us to celebrate Shabbat and holidays together since none of us drive on those days. My job as rabbi of a shul does not allow me the freedom to say to my husband on Tuesday, hey, let’s see if one of our brothers will have us for Shabbbat? We end up observing Shabbat and holidays alone, without family. We are also well aware of the mitzvah of hachnasat orchim, so we try to host non family members often

Next week rivals Sukkot as the time to host guests. We even read in the hagaddah, “let all who are hungry come and eat.” On a pshat level that could mean keeping our doors open for anyone who wants a matzo and brisket sandwich on Seder night. Even though we are just two people, Aaron and I really wanted to host a seder this year.   So we are “making Pesach” but it will be a small seder.

Two of my guests will be people of other faiths. And a third is just on her route to joining the Jewish people. And so, in addition to figuring out what I am going to serve, since vegan Seders don’t have brisket and chicken soup or any kugels that require egg, I had a minor panic attack that went like this-how do I host a Seder, a beloved Jewish ritual for me, that is wrapped in years and years of family memory and nostalgia, when we celebrate that our God killed all
of the Egyptians? How can I throw rubber frogs on the table or use a plague kit this year? What if these guests have Egyptian ancestry

What if I, the RABBI, get asked questions like what if some Egyptians were innocent? Should they die with those who were truly evil?” What if there were “righteous gentiles” among the Egyptians who treated the Israelites with compassion? And if there were, shouldn’t we tell their story?

Midrash creates all sorts of backstories and side stories for our biblical heroes, but what about for this situation?

My first thought was the obvious one. When we recall the ten plagues, what do we do? We take our pinkie fingers and dip them slightly in the cup of wine in front of us and remove a token amount of wine from the cup. We don’t engage in full joy at this point. In fact, we do express some sadness at the demise of the Egyptians. We even do it for the final plague, makat Bechorot, the slaying of the first borns. But are miniscule drops of wine enough of a memorial for the death of thousands?

As each Bar or Bat Mitzvah candidate that I work with knows, a good question is one that has been asked already, and I wondered if our sages were also concerned with this issue. Fortunately they were.

The following midrash is from the Tanchuma,  When God sent the plague of the firstborn … all the firstborn Egyptians went to speak to their fathers and said “Everything which Moses has said has come true, don’t you want us to live? Let us get the Hebrew slaves out of our homes now. Otherwise we are dead.” The fathers answered “even if all of Egypt dies they are not leaving.”

All the firstborns gathered in front of Pharaoh and screamed “Please remove the Hebrews, because of them evil will befall us and you.” Pharaoh said to his
servants, “Remove the protesters and break their knees.” What did the young Egyptians do? Each took a sword and killed his father.

According to this interpretation, the young, the next generation wanted change, they wanted to leave Pharoah’s policies behind. They begged their fathers to stop, but their fathers were part of the “that is the way it has always been done” generation and would not even entertain their children’s idea.  It was the Egyptian first-borns who killed their fathers, perhaps in self defense. The firstborns of Egypt were killed because of the stubborn patriarchs and authoritarian leadership. In this midrash, the responsibility for the death of the firstborn is shifted away from God. This midrash is a far cry from the actual verse, which reads, “in the middle of the night, the Lord struck down all the first-born in the land of Egypt.” (12:29)

This next option is from the Zohar: On the night of the Exodus … Pharaoh, on seeing the havoc wrought upon his own household, himself arose and with bitterness and fury smote those princes and nobles who had advised him to persecute Israel.

This helps explain the next verse in the Torah, “And Pharoah arose in the night” after all the first borns were killed in the previous verse. Pharaoh himself turns on his own people. It is not unheard of for world dominators to turn on their own people. It happens.

While these midrashim may not be plausible for some, they offer us a window into the Egyptian society at the time.

I am not an Egyptologist. It would take a whole PhD to fully understand that segment of the world. But the ideas behind these midrashim must have come from
somewhere. They offer us tools or suggestions so we can attempt to understand the violence and chaos within Egyptian society

However, the Zohar and Tanchuma don’t answer the question about Oskar Schindler type “righteous gentiles” who might have existed at the time. Even in Sdom
and Gemorah, there were at least 10 people who were not evil. And though we don’t know their names, we remember them.

If we look backward in the book of Exodus, we can find at least one Egyptian, a woman, who had compassion for the ancient Israelites.

According to Exodus Rabbah (18:3) “Even girls who were firstborn died; with the exception of the daughter of Pharaoh who had a good intercessor, -Moses, of whom it says: And when she saw him that he was a goodly child.”  

Pharoah’s unnamed daughter, (like many women who are named by the sages) Bat Pharoah, was  spared the horrors of the plagues because she did not drown the little boy she saw  floating down the Nile.

I don’t think Pesach celebrates or champions pure vengeance or revenge. It commemorates the defeat of a murderous despot and his army.  Perhaps
it also commemorates a tale when fathers refused to listen to their children. Mostly it marks our ancestor’s journey to  freedom. And in their journey, they were rushed and did not have time to bake bread.

God definitely does not mark the death of ordinary Egyptians with joy. God keeps it real for us and asks in the Talmud (Megillah 10b) when the Israelites began to celebrate the drowning of Pharaoh’s army: “How can you sing as the works of my hand are drowning in the sea?”

The Passover story is one of terror and suffering for both Egyptians and our ancestors. We don’t always remember that.

If there are people from other faiths sitting around your seder table, which is likely to happen for many of us, you might try expanding the narrative at times. A
perfect time to do so is when we open the door for Elijah. Yes, it is a time when we demand that our oppressors be brought to the bench of Divine justice, but it also should be when we should pray for redemption from our contemporary persecutors.

The following reading is from A Different Night: The Family Participation Haggadah, the Haggadah we use in our home. The authors of this hagaddah remind us that the traditional hagaddah does not include a script for Maggid, the telling of the story. We can use our own voices, our own language mixed in with song. This reading could be said in place of the paragraph when we ask God to pour out your wrath. Instead we could say:

Pour out your love on the nations who have known you and on the kingdoms who call upon your name.  For they show loving-kindness to the seed of Jacob and they defend your people Israel from those who would devour them alive. May they live to see the sukkah of peace spread over your chosen ones and to participate in the joy of your nations.

Shfoch chamatcha, pour out your wrath, the paragraph that many recite when the door is opened was not added to the Haggadah until the time of the Crusades, as pogroms usually happened around Easter and Pesach time.The alternate reading I just read is not as modern as adding an orange to the seder plate or including a Miriam’s cup.  Rather, that text can be found in a manuscript from Worms, from 1521, and is attributed to the children of Rashi.

When you sit around the table this year, remember that you are commanded to look at yourself as you just left Egypt. In addition to the physical, try to remember the spiritual and the mental as well.

Do You Eat in Your Chandelier?

Rabbi Robyn Fryer Bodzin 

Parshat Vayikra

Up until a month ago, I had never had a piece published in a book before. I had been mentioned in a book though.

Norene Gilletz is a Toronto based cookbook maven. She mentions me in the introduction to one of her recipes in this particular cookbook: http://http://www.amazon.com/Norenes-Healthy-Kitchen-Fabulous-Recipes/dp/1552858022/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1364498656&sr=8-1&keywords=norene%27s+healthy+kitchen

While mention in a kosher cookbook is cool, this month I had pieces published in two other Jewish themed books, which is overwhelming in a positive way. One is about gun violence, called Peace in Our Cities: Rabbis against Gun Violence. The other is called Slavery, Freedom and Everything in Between; the Why, How and What of Passover. That second book was published just this week.

I thank my colleagues who contributed to the Passover volume and for igniting so many sparks for sermons to last me a through the end of Pesach. This morning’s spark comes from my colleague Rabbi Elyse Winick, who was the first woman rabbi that I ever met.  I had the pleasure of working with Rabbi
Winick in my first job after I completed my undergraduate university degree.

Today’s spark is about Pesach cleaning.

If you come from a tradition of deep and intense housecleaning that your parents or grandparents or great grandparents did, and that is Pesach for you, gzinterheit.

But you won’t hear me discussing how we need to take out toothbrushes and scrub between each bathroom tile, because even though I am an observant Jew, I work a whole lot more than 9 to 5, and I just don’t have the time for that.

But Pesach is closer to us now that Purim was. And if you haven’t started getting ready, I would recommend doing so tonight after you extinguish the Havdallah candle.

Back in the good old days, rabbis only gave sermons twice a year, one of them being on the last Shabbat before Passover. The Shabbat Hagadol sermon (the one before Passover) was among the most highly attended events in the Jewish community. But I supposed it was just men and children who went, as women were tired from cleaning and if their kids were at shul, it meant there was less chance they would bring crumbs into the living room.

People wanted to know if they really needed kosher lePesach toothpaste, or if a new tube of Colgate would do the trick (yes to option B). People wanted to know if buying matzo from Israel was better than buying local manufactured (no).  Glass dishes? Just kasher them in boiling water. But if you can afford and inexpensive set for Pesach, it is preferable.

Quinoa was not a question for the sages, as it is a relatively new phenomenon. The following is a Facebook status update from Rabbi Gruenwald from Colorado “As a rabbi and as the son of Peruvian parents (I grew up eating quinoa before it was fashionable), this is ridiculous. Quinoa is a sprout, not a grain and not a legume. Buy your quinoa before Pesach and enjoy. I’m thinking of putting it on my seder plate this year as a symbol of liberation from OU tyranny”

While quinoa won’t be on my seder plate, it will be my main source of protein for the week. As a lifelong card carrying Conservative Jews, and a vegan, you can be sure I will be eating plenty of it.

In those good old days, the Shabbat Hagadol drash was often a refresher course in how do to Pesach, the most significant of ritual observances for many. Back then there was no Rabbinical Assembly guide, or books or internet.  It was up to the Rabbi to impart the information to the beloved members of his (it was the good old days) community.

Often the rabbi would go to the Shulchan Aruch, the Code of Jewish Law compiled by Rabbi Yosef Caro in the 16th century.

There we read:
One needs to check all the places in which there is concern lest he has brought into them hametz. And therefore, all the rooms of the house and the lofts need checking; because sometimes a person enters them with his bread in his hand. But, wine cellars from which one would not go get wine in the middle of a meal, and likewise a shed or similar places, they do not need checking. (Shulchan Aruch, Orah Hayyim 433:3)

This implies that the removal of chametz, or leavening, from our homes, is a much directed task.  We need only take care to clean those places which may have been “contaminated,” by chametz.

Think about it. Where do you EAT in your house? Do you eat in the attic that you never go into? No? Then don’t clean it for Pesach the same way you would your dining room. Do you eat in your chandelier?  Do you ever eat in the shower? No, then don’t focus hours of your Pesach cleaning attention on them.

Do you eat in your car? If yes, then splurge this one time and don’t get the basic car wash next week and don’t eat anything else except water until the holiday begins. Do you keep your cookbooks with your dishes? Yes? Then that area needs special attention, because if you are anything like me, then your cookbooks get dirty. The bookshelf were you keep your dishes too should be carefully cleaned or closed, locked and ignored for the week of Pesach. An idea could be to keep Pesach cookbooks apart from regular cookbooks. I learned that trick from my mother.

If we enter Pesach exhausted and resentful, the transformative power of the holiday is diminished. And I am not talking about the fatigue that the first borns and I will have because of a 6:15 AM minyan on the morning of the first seder.

In the words of the great Aaron Bodzin, “our religion is not meant to drive us crazy.” Pesach is supposed to be the festival of freedom, not the festival of washing and fine tooth cleaning. The Shulchan Aruch said all the places in which there is concern lest he has brought into them hametz. It did not say every single nook and cranny.

If the Shulchan Aruch does not speak to you, perhaps the Zohar does. This classic text of ancient kabalistic study states:
“’AND THE PEOPLE TOOK THEIR DOUGH BEFORE IT WAS LEAVENED.’ (Exodus 12:34)…Leaven and unleaven symbolize the evil and the
good inclinations in man.” (Zohar, Raya Mehemna 40b)

Here, Rabbi Winick explains, leaven is redefined to describe the puffed-up nature of our souls, the ways in which we become too big for our britches or take ourselves far more seriously than God ever intended. In this model, cleaning for Pesach takes on new meaning, as we probe our souls for the hidden fragments which prevent us from feeling – and being – pure, whole and complete.

According to the Zohar, cleaning for Pesach and getting rid of Chametz is actually tougher than originally thought. When we clean out the chametz, we are cleansing our neshamas, our spirits. If we show up at a Seder table without any spiritual training, then we might as well stay home and watch the Ten Commandments for the umpteenth time.

Let’s add another piece to the paradigm. At the second Seder we start counting Omer. When we count the Omer we recite a phrase which basically is translated as the following: I am ready to do the positive mitzvah of counting Omer, like it says in the Torah we are supposed to do. On one level the counting is about the sheaves of barley and the Harvest Festival, Chag Habikkurim which takes place seven weeks later. But on another level, counting Omer is about getting ready to receive Torah, what we stay up all night doing on Shavuot. Our souls should be cleaned for that. Right?

My friends, it seems that preparation for Pesach is a far cry from ensuring the duster or the shmatte reaches the shelf where we keep knickknacks that we cannot actually reach without getting on a ladder.

I am still going to clean a lot. Once Aaron and I get back from the JTS trip to the Rare Book Room on Sunday, it is going to be Pesach prep for the rest of the day. We will super clean and then self clean the oven. We will start moving condiments out of the main fridge down into our auxiliary fridge.

But I am also going to just shut some cabinets tight and start to review the Hagaddah. I am going to look at the multitude of emails I received to make the seder more relevant for today.  And I am going to email my guests some thinking tasks to do before they arrive at my home, so they too can be mentally ready for the Seder.

This, for me, is getting rid of Chametz and making Pesach.

If you lose yourself in the small stuff, you will lose the big picture. And that big picture is that God saved us from a mighty enemy. We got out of dodge so quick that oh no, our bread did not rise. If you can’t see the Redemption and the Exodus from within the matzo crumbs, then you are not really celebrating Pesach.

Shabbat Zachor:

Remembering Amalek, Haman and Babi Yar

Rabbi Robyn Fryer Bodzin

delivered February 23, 2013 @ ICCJ

This morning we took out a second Torah to read the maftir aliyah from chapter 25 of Deuteronomy.

There we read:  Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt-how undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all of your stragglers in your rear. Therefore, when the Lord your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as inheritance to possess it, then you shall wipe out the remembrance of Amalek  from beneath the heavens. Do not forget.

We read this because Haman, who we will meet once again tonight and tomorrow morning is, according to tradition a direct descendant of Amalek. Like his forefathers before him and his ancestors who followed him, Haman was an archenemy of the Jews. He wanted to entirely wipe out our people.

Amalek was first introduced in Genesis 36: 12 as an actual person who later became a nation by the same name. Amalek was a grandson of Jacob’s brother Esav. According to the rabbis, Amalek absorbed Esav’s hatred of Jacob’s children and it became the mission of the nation of Amalek to hate the Jews.

The most famous controversy between the children of Israel and Amalek occurred in Exodus 17:8-16 .Three days after the crossing of the Sea of Reeds, the Amaleks attacked the Israelites from behind, specifically attacking the weak and the stragglers. Baruch Hashem, the Israelites miraculously defeated the Amaleks.

For centuries, brilliant sages and scholars have written that Haman’s attempt to destroy the Jewish people is a direct result of the historical and philosophical battles Amalek and Israel. In megillat Esther, the conflict between Mordecai and Haman is that era’s incarnation of the conflict between Israel and Amalek.  Haman is described as being a physical descendent of Amalek. Amalek, however, has many spiritual decedents as well. Over the years Amalek has served as the prototype for all anti-Semites.

There are modern day Hamans; even in Persia, known to us as Ahmadinejad.  The nuclear Iran threat on Israel is a real threat. It literally scares me. As does the threat of Hamas and Hizbollah. We should be grateful for the Iron Dome, as it has saved lives.

There are modern days Hamans that pose threats to the rights of millions of people in our world and the developing world. But today I want to focus on one from the last century. Hitler, of course, is a descendant of Haman. He might not come from his line, but they shared the same values, which was the elimination of the Jewish people.

But let’s first look into the megillah and closely look at Haman’s plot. By chapter three of the megillah, King Achashverous had promoted Haman and commanded that all who sat at his gate must bow down to Haman every time he passed by. Our hero Mordecai, being a frum guy, refused to bow to anyone but God. This infuriated Haman, who knew that Mordecai was a Jew.

Haman was so enraged by Mordecai’s lack of respect that he decided to destroy all of the Jews. Haman tells KingAchashverous “There is a certain people scattered and dispersed among the other peoples in all of the provinces of your realm. Their laws are different from those of any other peoples and they do not obey the king’s laws; therefore it is not in your majesty’s interest to tolerate them.”

Haman does not actually mention that these people are Jews, nor did the king ask who the people were. Achashverous just took his ring off his finger and gave it to Haman with the permission to do with the people as he pleased.

We read in verse 13:

I could not help but remember that verse at one of our stops in Kiev two weeks ago. After seeing how the Jewish community of Kiev was flourishing, we got on a bus and went to a forest. It was surrounded by buildings and a TV tower.

It was a freezing morning. We were all wearing hats, and scarves and gloves. One of my colleagues took out a large piece of paper and read the following:

All [Jews] living in the city of Kiev and its vicinity are to report by 8 o’clock on the morning of Monday, September 29th, 1941, at the corner of Melnikovsky and Dokhturov Streets (near the cemetery).  They are to take with them documents, money, valuables, as well as warm clothes, underwear, etc. Any [Jew] not carrying out this instruction and who is found elsewhere will be shot. Any civilian entering flats evacuated by [Jews] and stealing property will be shot.¹

We had reached Babi Yar. Of all the places in Kiev that we read about going to, we knew from Babi Yar.  But hearing that proclamation which was posted all over town in 1941 made the experience all the more real. Here we were, a bunch of Jews walking toward the ravine at Babi Yar.

Babi Yar is a mass gravesite, where hundreds of thousands of people (most of them Jews) were murdered by the Nazis during the War. Nearly 30 000 Jews were killed during just two days in September.

We lit candles and spontaneously sang somber Hebrew songs including Am Israel Chai, the 23th Psalm and Ani Maamin. We were encouraged by our Ukrainian guides to toss red carnations (a Russian custom) into the snowy ravine below. The scenery was snow, white with brown trees. Those red carnations were a stark contrast. When I stared at them, all I could
think about was the blood. I wondered what the smell was like. I wondered what happened to the bodies when snowflakes started to fall on them.

Our main tour guide in Kiev was a young woman named Ana. She was not Jewish. But she wept profusely with us.  She shared with us that her own grandfather had gone to Babi Yar in September 1941 to say farewell to his Jewish neighbors, assuming they would only be relocated. Alas, he was not right.

This was my third visit to a Shoah site. When I was twenty I went to Terezin. Two years ago I was at Sachsenhausen outside Berlin, and now Babi Yar. Each time I leave one of these horrible places, I feel immense guilt, anguish, deep sadness, pain and sorrow-because I can leave. My feet feel like led as I leave because even with all of the empathy in the world, there is no way I could  know what it was like to be in the shoes of our brothers and sisters during those last moments before they  lost their lives.

With us throughout most of our mission was Amir Ben Zvi, the JDC Representative to Central and Western Ukraine. He joined us when we went to Babi Yar.  We walked back together from the site to the bus. I asked him why he did what he did for a living, creating Jewish life out of nothing. He said to me, “if not me, then who” then shared that his grandfather was a survivor.  Amir also told me that he had never seen our guide so visibly shaken like this before.  I asked Ana if she know what we were singing when we sang “Ani Maamin.” When she said no, I told her that it means that we have faith.

On Shabbat Zachor, we are commanded to remember and not forget because if we forget, we will cease to exist. We read about Amalek this morning and we will blot out Haman’s name tonight and tomorrow because– if we forget, we will get lost in an assimilated world.

Remembering is important. For far too long Babi Yar was not remembered. For political reasons an official memorial was not built at the Babi Yar site until 1976.  The first memorial did not even mention the fact that most victims were Jews.  It took a further 15 years before a new memorial (Menorah shaped) was built which today serves as a place for
commemorative ceremonies. The menorah-shaped monument to the Jews massacred at Babi Yar opened on Sept. 29, 1991, 50 years after the first mass killing of the Jews at Babi Yar

But the very first testimony to Babi Yar was a poem, written by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, a Russian poet born in 1933. He wrote his poem in 1961 in part to protest the Soviet Union’s refusal to identify Babi Yar.

By Yevgeni Yevtushenko
Translated by Benjamin Okopnik, 10/96

No monument stands over Babi Yar.
A steep cliff only, like the rudest
headstone.
I am afraid.
Today, I am as old
As the entire Jewish race
itself.

I see myself an ancient Israelite.
I wander o’er the roads of ancient
Egypt
And here, upon the cross, I perish, tortured
And even now, I bear
the marks of nails.

It seems to me that Dreyfus is myself.
The
Philistines betrayed me – and now judge.
I’m in a cage. Surrounded and
trapped,
I’m persecuted, spat on, slandered, and
The dainty dollies in
their Brussels frills
Squeal, as they stab umbrellas at my face.

I see myself a boy in Belostok
Blood spills, and runs
upon the floors,
The chiefs of bar and pub rage unimpeded
And reek of
vodka and of onion, half and half.

I’m thrown back by a boot, I have no strength left,
In vain I beg the
rabble of pogrom,
To jeers of “Kill the Jews, and save our Russia!”
My
mother’s being beaten by a clerk.

O, Russia of my heart, I know that you
Are international, by inner
nature.
But often those whose hands are steeped in filth
Abused your
purest name, in name of hatred.

I know the kindness of my native land.
How vile, that without the
slightest quiver
The antisemites have proclaimed themselves
The “Union of
the Russian People!”

It seems to me that I am Anna Frank,
Transparent, as the thinnest branch
in April,
And I’m in love, and have no need of phrases,
But only that we
gaze into each other’s eyes.
How little one can see, or even sense!
Leaves
are forbidden, so is sky,
But much is still allowed – very gently
In
darkened rooms each other to embrace.

-”They come!”

-”No, fear not – those are sounds
Of spring itself. She’s coming
soon.
Quickly, your lips!”

-”They break the door!”

-”No, river ice is breaking…”

Wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar,
The trees look sternly, as if passing
judgement.
Here, silently, all screams, and, hat in hand,
I feel my hair
changing shade to gray.

And I myself, like one long soundless scream
Above the thousands of
thousands interred,
I’m every old man executed here,
As I am every child
murdered here.

No fiber of my body will forget this.
May “Internationale” thunder and
ring
When, for all time, is buried and forgotten
The
last of antisemites on this earth.

There is no Jewish blood that’s blood of mine,
But, hated with a passion
that’s corrosive
Am I by antisemites like a Jew.
And that is why I call
myself a Russian!

Standing at Babi Yar on a Thursday morning in February, were

32 rabbis,

representatives from the Joint Distribution Committee

and a tour guide of a different faith.

We listened to this poem,

stared into the ravine

and wept.

Reflections on a Memorable Week in Kiev and Israel

Shabbat Morning, February 16, 2013

Parshat Trumah begins:

The Lord spoke to Moshe saying: Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts, you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart so moves him. מֵאֵת כָּל-אִישׁ אֲשֶׁר יִדְּבֶנּוּ לִבּוֹ

What touches your hearts?

In the past few months I have shared my thoughts on the horrible storm Sandy and how it affected my heart.  The gun violence issue still makes me cringe when I think about all of the people in this country who lost their lives. Those are both global and universal issues.

This morning I want to share a more particular issue that touches my heart, something that is so close to home.

Last week I was reminded that not only do I love the Jewish people, but I learned that the resiliency of the Jewish people can move me to tears, which it did, on a number of occasions.

It was an honor to be invited to participate in the JFNA Rabbinic Cabinet mission to Kiev and Israel. I had a fuzzy idea about what to expect, but what I actually experienced left a deep impression.

You know how we sometimes refer to the great miracle of the Negev blooming in Israel; green fields where there was once desert? Well, I saw blossoming Jewish life that followed the Shoah and the KGB, the Soviet regime and rapid anti Semitism.

For the most part, the 350-500,000 Jews of Kiev (depending on who you ask) are undergoing a mass Jewish identity learning process.  It was not uncommon to hear that someone was
14 when they found out they were Jewish, or 17 years old. For many, their first Jewish memory is happening right now, thanks to the JDC and the Jewish Agency for Israel, or one of the other 35 grass roots Jewish organizations that is reaching about 25% of the population.

When we make our pledges to UJA Federation, a lot of our money goes overseas to the JDC, and I always knew that. But it was not until last week that I fully
comprehended the power of those dollars. By sharing what I experienced in Kiev and Israel, I hope to paint a picture of the Joint’s effort to reclaim Jews for the Jewish people.

One of our first speakers was Asher Ostrin, a senior JDC official. Under his tenure, JDC established 15 local offices assisted by 380 field workers. The JDC’s budget to provide life-saving support to Jews in the Former Soviet Union expanded from $400,000 in 1991 to $140 million in 2012 during Ostrin’s time as director of JDC’s FSU department. He told us, rather bluntly, that Jewish dollars are supporting and keeping marginal Jews alive.

Programming has been created that nourishes 160,000 elderly Jews and 30,000 impoverished Jewish children who would otherwise simply disappear, cold and hungry, into oblivion without this tzedakah.

Our first real entrée into Jewish life in the Ukraine took place as our group was divided into teams to make home visits.  I had the opportunity to meet Lev Shehter. Lev was born in 1915 and he is a miracle and beats all odds, since the average life expectancy is 65 for men. In 1938 Lev was drafted into the army and returned back to Kiev and work in a factory in 1940.  Lev was lucky because when World War II started Lev, together with the entire factory, was evacuated to the Novosibirsk region and was there until 1947.

In 1943 Lev married a woman who already had a son. In 1947 Lev and his family returned to Kiev and he joined the staff of a factory specializing in manufacturing aeronautic products.   Lev worked there until he retired in 1992.  Lev`s wife passed away in 1998 and he now lives alone

Lev has beautiful, piercing blue eyes and was excited to have five English speaking Rabbis visit him and take pictures with him. He opened the door with a wide smile. His home was clean and on the wall was a beautiful poster that he received for his 95^th birthday. The greetings were in Cyrillic, so I could not make it out, but the pictures explained how beloved he was.

His apartment consists of a small foyer for coats, a small kitchen with enough room for a table for 2 and a bedroom/living area that contained his bed, a display case of pictures, teacups, some figurines, and a dresser.   We sat in chairs in his room, while he sat on his bed.  An interpreter with us delivered a package of food into his kitchen, and we spent some time listening to his story.

There were no visible signs of Jewish life in his compact apartment, but when we discussed the Jewish social welfare program, called Hesed, which is organized by the JDC , his eyes lit up, and he told us that Hesed was his Judaism, his community and his family. He told us that he likes to watch television show about Israel and feels like it is his own family. He said that when he goes to Hesed he feels like he is in Israel.  Lev has been a Hesed client since 1996.

At midday we were brought to the actual Hesed center, where some 10,000 Jewish people like Lev are brought at least once a month to socialize, learn and share. They receive a decent and healthy meal, as many of the Jews living in Kiev are at or below the poverty line

It was explained to us as follows; poverty in Kiev is so real that by the third week of the month, many elderly people have to begin rationing their medicine, their food, and even essential comforts like diapers for incontinence.  50,000 of the poorest Jews in Ukraine depend on JDC’s debit food cards to purchase their basic monthly staples in local supermarkets. Hesed
is their life saver.

At this Hesed center, I heard elderly Jewish women sing Yerushalayim shel Zahav, sat with elderly women as they made Purim cards and witnesses young children putting stickers on Queen Esther crowns.

We were told on more than one occasion that the effort to help these Jews is having a positive but challenging consequence.  The care these people receive increases their life expectancy.  The longer and healthier their lives are the more long-term assistance they will continue to need. Sadly, the pot is not endless.  Present and future concerns for care are real. And, there is also the fact that so many in the community are leaving, not to us in New York, but one very specific place.

Lev is not the only one who loves Israel. Israel is viewed so favorably by the Ukraine, that much of the Ukrainian delegation to the U.N. was purposely absent during the vote to upgrade the Palestinian State to non-member observer status.

Every single Jewish person I met in Kiev had at least one family member who has made aliyah. At the Kiev JAFI complex, I had the chance to meet a group of ten people about to make aliyah. They credited the Jewish Agency for Israel (who has a strong presence) and Birthright among the reasons for their desire to start anew.

Once we arrived to Israel, I had an amazing, spiritual, restful, warm and sunny Shabbat.  But then on Sunday our impressive schedule started up again. We witnessed the absorption of FSU Jews into Israel in a plethora of settings.

To me, the most impressive example of absorption was JAFI’s Mifgash program for new immigrant doctors at Bet Canada in Ashdod. In the 1990’s thousands of Jewish physicians made aliyah from the FSU. Today, many of them are reaching retirement, and there is a major shortage of Israeli doctors. JAFI has recently facilitated the aliyah of 40 young immigrant doctors from the FSU and created a new program, in cooperation with the Ministry of Absorption to fast track the doctor’s integration into Israel’s medical system. Our group got to meet them,
and hand out Maimonides Prayer for the Doctors, in both Hebrew and their language.

These young doctors receive assistance to prepare for the licensing exams, which they are taking in a few months.  They have a four month Ulpan to learn Hebrew and then they have a two and a half month medical terminology Ulpan. As Israel needs 200 doctors every year, this fills a gap in Israeli society

One of the doctors that we met named Tanya, made aliyah six months ago. Why? She visited Israel on Birthright and fell in love with the country. Her sister made aliyah before her and said to her “we have to go to Israel because we are Jewish.”

Just think back to the years we fought on behalf of Soviet Jewry.

Marches.

Letters.
Smuggling.

And now this is what twentysomethings tell their siblings. The world has changed.

The differences between Kiev and Israel are huge. On Friday morning we left a snowy, grey, dismal, dreary country. People were bundled in hats, babushkas and heavy coats.  And then Friday early afternoon, we landed at Ben Gurion Airport. The sky was blue. The grass was green. It was so bright out that we needed to put on our sunglasses.  Suddenly the WiFi on our smartphones  worked so much better. And all of the rabbis on the bus felt like we were home. We acted like teenagers on our first trip to Israel. We’d only been in Kiev for a few days. But yet so much had changed for us

How could we not help but think what it was like for a Ukrainian Jew to get off the airplane in Israel and begin their life in their new home?

Israel, in my opinion, is just a million times better than Ukraine. It’s home. We know it. And the Jewish community in Kiev knows it. But just like we choose to live in an active Jewish Diaspora, there are Jews in Kiev who are choosing the same thing.

Shimon Peres once said that it is less important whether or not one’s grandparents are Jewish, but more important that your grandchildren are. That to me epitomizes our trip to Kiev and Israel. Reclaiming Jewish lives for the Jewish people. This mission was not random. We rabbis were there so we could tell you the stories of what we saw. And what I saw touched my heart.

I hope it touches yours too when it is time for you to write your checks to UJA Federation of New York.  Our brothers and sisters need recognition and support. I have more stories, but thank God, we have many more Shabbat mornings.
together.

bbat Morning, February 16

Mroe Love, Less Violence

February 2, 2013

On Wednesday, January 9, 2013, Toronto snowbirds Donny Pichofsky and his wife Rochelle failed to show up for a lunch date with a neighbor in south Florida.   The next day, according to a news report, at six-thirty in the evening, a friend with a spare key entered the townhouse to check on the couple.  The neighbor found Donny and Rochelle dead.

Shortly after the discovery, a spokesperson with the Hallandale Beach Police Department announced that the Canadian retirees had been murdered. No more information has been shared. This week, Hallandale police were furthering their investigation up in Toronto.

Donny Pichofsky was a real person.  This is not a description of an episode of CSI: Miami or Law and Order.  I have known of the Pichofsky family my entire life. The Pichofskys have a summer cottage near my family summer home. As a little girl, I remember doing aerobics with Donny’s first wife Sandy, z’’l.  Donny davened with my Zayda of blessed memory, every Shabbat morning during July and August for decades, at the little shul in Jackson’s Point, Ontario.

What I am trying to convey is that people I know were violently murdered.
Murdered. Here, in these United States. In sunny Hallandale, Florida.

Donny and Rochelle’s killer defied the words of God, the words of chapter twenty of sefer Shemot, which was read just this morning. Donny and Rochelle’s killer broke mitzvah number six (out of the ten that were given during the revelation at Sinai).

לֹא תִרְצָח

You shall not murder

Lives are taken daily.  Not by God, but by other people, multiple times each day in this country. They don’t have that right.

On average, 33 mothers grieve each and every day in the United States, day in and day out, because their children lost their lives. And it is a shundah that we sing about living in the Land of the Free in our national anthem. Those of us who gather to daven together in this room might not see it, because we live in relatively “good” neighborhoods, but the United States is not a safe or free place to live. We lock our cars and front doors for a reason. Our computers have passwords for a reason; crime and violence.

Out of a population of 395, 317, Forbes magazine reports that Oakland, California has a crime rate of 1,683 crimes per 100 000 residents each year. Oakland’s high levels of poverty and proximity to drug corridors combine to generate lots of violence.

Out of a population of 713,239, Forbes magazine reports that Detroit had a violent crime rate of 2,137 per 100,000 residents.  Motown has become the most dangerous city in
America.

And although Chicago has logged more homicides than any other U.S. city lately, (There were 42 as of January 31 for this new year) it does not have the highest homicide rate. That honor goes to New Orleans, whose murder rates was 32.65 per 100 000. Think about that as you watch the Superbowl.

And if you are wondering, our city, New York, home to over 8 million people, only has 2.72 murders per 100 000 residents.

We are all created equal, we are all created in God’s image, yet there are people out there who pick up a gun, and choose, as if it is their prerogative, to terminate the life of another person.

How many more stories do you need to hear until you say enough is enough?

For the media and for the White House, Newtown was the ad kan, the spark that united the country into a national conversation about guns and violence in America.

While Newtown has become a catalyst for conversation and perhaps legislation, we have to remember that what happened in Newtown happens every day in America. That point was emphasized to me earlier this week.

As many of you know I took the train to Washington DC on Monday morning. It was an honor to be invited to spend two days with a delegation of faith leaders, engaging in issues surrounding the epidemic of guns and violence in America.

Monday was a working day. We heard from experts and consultants, and I now know more about the history of guns than I ever thought I would need to know. We honed our joint, unified message throughout the day. We learned best practices from each other. We said “Amen” quite a lot, and the next day, Tuesday, was a presenting day.

While it felt a little unreal to be at the White House, the message that we conveyed to President Obama’s Office and Vice President Biden’s Office overshadowed any of the “I am at the White House” giddiness.

If you saw any of the pictures that I posted on Facebook, you would see that there were not so many white folk at this convening. But it was important that us white faith leaders were in
attendance.  We heard from our brothers and sisters in congregations who serve inner cities, who officiate at funerals for eighteen year olds and sixteen year olds who are killed by guns and gangs.

An understanding that I came away with from my time in DC is that there is just too much fear in this country.

A third grader at Daly Elementary School in Detroit brought a loaded gun to school last week and showed it to a classmate, who then told his mother. That mom called the school, and school officials searched the child and found a loaded gun. Sources say the eight-year-old told police he needed the gun for protection because he was
being bullied. EIGHT YEARS OLD. PROTECTION FROM BEING BULLIED with a gun???

What were we doing when we were eight years old? What did we bring with us to school?

It is possible to lose hope, writes my colleague Rabbi Menachem Creditor, But we are not allowed. Hope is our call.

As modern Jews, we know about hope. It is the name of our Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah. The hope. In that anthem we say lhyot am chofshi bartzeinu, we hope to be a free people in our land.

Just as in Israel, so too in America.

We cannot and should not be paralyzed by fear. Nor can we say that since this violence is not happening in my neighborhood, then it is not my problem. In the words of Elie Wiesel, the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. And if we are being indifferent to the plight of fellow Americans who are being gunned down, then we spit in the face of Rabbi Akiva who said “You shall love your fellow as yourself. This is a great principle in the Torah.” While it is not in the ten commandments found in this week’s Parsha, Rabbi Akiva is right. It is a klal gadol, a great principle. We need to care for all people and find a place in our hearts to love all of God’s people. Being Jewish, being a light onto the nations means exiting our dalet
amot, our four walls and finding a way to care for all.

As we recite each Shabbat morning: We have not come into being to hate or to destroy. We have come into being to praise, to labor and to love.

In our statement that we delivered both at the White House and in a press conference we said: “We are committed to uniting around the common pain and loss of those who have suffered in Newton and New Orleans, Chicago and Columbine and Oak Creek and Oakland. We are committed through our work to heal the soul of the nation.”

As people of faith, when we talk about guns and violence, we have a moral imperative to include those people that the media forgets. As people of faith, we need to ensure that the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of young children growing up in our inner cities stop feeling as if they are living in the valley of the shadow of death, but rather can wake up every morning knowing they are in the land of the living.

It is with these thoughts at the forefront, that the clergy of the PICO National Network Lifelines to Healing Campaign asked for Targeted investments and Approaches from Federal Government in Urban Cities most impacted by gun violence in our statement.

Faith leaders, I learned, have a voice in Washington. Currently, faith leaders from a plethora of traditions are intensely trying to add this essential addition to the gun violence agenda. To be sure, we also support the magazine cap, universal background checks and investment in mental health initiatives. But we want more people to acknowledge that the daily face of gun violence in American is a not a white child in Connecticut, but rather a minority child in New Orleans or Gary, Indian. We cannot turn a blind eye to the violence taking place in this country, whether it takes place in an inner city park or on Park Avenue.

In the parsha, God tells Moshe to say to the people:“Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession.” (Ex. 19:5) The Ishbitzer Rebbe teaches: do not read “treasured possession, instead read the words as “treasure chest.”

By entering into a covenant with God, God implants within each of us the potential to bring goodness and blessing into the world. Thus we are not chosen because of who or what we are, but only because of what we contain.  We contain the ability to help this country heal.

Some may be guilty, but all are responsible, wrote Abraham Joshua Heschel.

So true do his words ring today.

Shabbat shalom.

For another account of this experience, click here http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/guns-and-moses/

Ohr Chadash Shabbat at ICCJ

December 1, 2012 

Here is the scene.

Jacob has been cautiously waiting for the reunion with  Esau for years.  It is time for the showdown.

It is finally time to meet and settle things for good.

Since our Avot are Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, it is understandable why we read this week’s parsha from Jacob’s point of view, and not the view of Esau. We don’t know what Esau does to prepare, but we sure know what Jacob is up to.

In the beginning of our parsha, we are basically granted a behind the scenes look at Jacob’s three pronged approach to a mostly unwelcomed family reunion, twenty years in the making.

Jacob does everything he can to be as ready as possible. He makes strategic military defense plans, prepares gifts to present to Esau to offset any potential residual twenty year anger,
and Jacob davens. He prays to God that he and his family should be rescued from their predicament.

But all of the mental anguish and preparation was kind of for nothing.

When Jacob finally meets Esau… everything seems fine again.  For the reader is almost like a let down.

Esau is all touchy feeling.
He kisses Jacob and they bicker about whether Esau should accept Jacob’s presents. “No take it, please. I want to give it to you.” And “no, no it is not necessary.” For the adults in the room—we know those sorts of conversations really take place.

And then everyone goes on their way.

If I were Jacob I’d feel ripped off. Twenty years of fear and keeping the possibility of the worse case scenario of this day in my head every single day.

Kind of like when we have a fight with a friend or a family member and there is always a possibility that the other person will call. The phone can always ring and a note from them can always end up in our inbox. We keep that somewhere in our brain. It can always happen. Twenty years.

There always was the chance it could happen. Jacob wasted a lot of time and energy on the project and it was all for naught!

Instead of focusing on this potential meeting, he could have just tried avoidance. He could have run away even further with no potential of meeting his brother ever gain.

The rabbis in Bereishit Rabba actually criticize Jacob for inviting an altercation with Esau when he could have traveled back to Israel using a different route and totally avoided the conflict.

However, perhaps we are losing sight of Jacob’s real challenge.

If we assume that the challenge had been for Jacob to figure out how to get past Esau, then the rabbis have grounds for criticizing him. And it is understandable that it would then be a letdown when that fight ended up being insignificant.

But there is another part to the story.

Jacob spent the entire night before this scheduled meeting wrestling with an angel.

And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn. When
he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he wrenched Jacob’s hip at its
socket, so that the socket of his hip was strained as he wrestled with him.
Then he said, “Let me go, for dawn is breaking.” But he answered,
“I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” Said the other,
“What is your name?” He replied, “Jacob.”

 Jacobasked, “Pray tell me your name.” But he said “You must not ask
my name!” And he took leave of him there.”

With the arrival of morning, when it became apparent that Jacob would win, the angel changed Jacob’s name to Israel which, the Torah tells us, is because “you (Jacob) have  striven
with God and have prevailed.”

It would make more sense if the victorious renaming ceremony, where Jacob’s name was changed to Israel, would have taken place following the meeting with Esau.  Until now, what did he do?

It seems a bit illogical that this renaming ceremony took place when Jacob was out at night.  This was the night before he met Esau. What had Jacob accomplished at this point?

Furthermore, why was Jacob’s new name, and subsequently the name of our nation, named for ‘striving?’ or ‘wrestling?’

It would make sense that we should be named after the second half of that verse , וַתּוּכָל. ‘to prevail.’ Or to overcome.

The question can be resolved if we understand that this particular narrative is not actually about the bottom line or the end goal.

Effort and initiative is important as well.
That is we can learn from Jacob. 

Although accolades are often bestowed upon the person with the highest level of accomplishments, like the highest grade in a class gets a prize, CEO gets paid the most,  process also defines greatness.

For God, I truly believe that making an effort is important.

Did you volunteer or send money to victims of Sandy? That is an effort. We cannot rebuild everyone’s house and strip their drywall for them. But we can make an effort. God notices.
It is still a mitzvah.

When you see someone being bullied at school and you tell the bully to stop, even if the bully tells you to butt out, you are still making an effort.

God notices these things.

Perhaps you are not completely shomer mitzvot, an observant Jew, but there are many mitzvot that you do. God notices.

For this reason, I don’t think it is a total  letdown when Jacob  doesn’t have to put his preparation to use against Esau.

This angel who meets him in the middle of the night, and changes his name, in essence tells him that preparation was already put to good use because his effort is what really counts.

Perhaps that is why the Jewish people are named Yisrael after  their striving, and we are not named after a single accomplishments. It is an effort for us just to be.

Because that is really what is asked of us – that we strive, we try to do the best that we can under whatever circumstances we are placed in, to be Jewish. To be actively Jewish.

Accomplishments are useful as a measuring stick to see how successful we are in our striving, but it is the process that we should really examine.

November 29 65 years later 

Kaf Tet B’November Street is  a Jerusalem street, located in the center of Old Katamon, near Jerusalem Theatre and Palmach Street with its shops and cafes.

It is a  short walk from the trendy Emek Refaim. The Cinemateque, The Smadar Cinema and the Jerusalem Theatre are only a short walk away.

At one point, the street probably had a different namebecause  65 years ago, yesterday, the 29^thof November, 1947, the United Nations voted in favor of partitioning Palestine
into two states, one for Jews, one for Arabs.

Reports say that all the Jews in Palestine were listening to the radio as the votes were called, and when enough votes were cast to ensure the measure passed, cheers rang out throughout the country.

The international community was supporting a Jewish state in Israel for the first time in nearly2,000 years.

Meanwhile, in the Arab capitals, the same news was greeted with anger and dismay. Instead of seeing the glass as half-full – there wouldbe an Arab state in Palestine, the first time there would have ever been an independent majority-Muslim country in these parts – they chose to see theglass as half-empty. Their arch-rivals the Jews were getting a few scraps of
land, and they couldn’t tolerate that, and instead of accepting the UN resolutionon that fateful day, they rejected it. When Israel declared its independence six months later the Arabs launched an all-out war.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Israel won the War of Independence in 1948/49, and ended up with a lot more territory than itwould have had if the Arabs had agreed to the UN proposal.

In 1967 the Arab states made another try to crush the Jewish state, and in the process Israel gained control of not onlythe West Bank and Gaza but it took the Golan Heights from Syria as well.

Yesterday, Kaf Tet B’November, November 29, 2012, became a date poised to become part of Palestinian history as well as Israeli history as well.

The UN voted to accept Palestine as a “non-memberstate” – a major upgrade in status. The vote in favor was a far larger majority than supported the original partition plan 65 years ago.

The United States,Israel, Czech Republic, Canada, Panama, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau andNauru voted against the resolution

Nauru is a small,oval-shaped island in the western Pacific Ocean, 42 kilometres south of the Equator.

The Republic of Palau is an island country located in the western Pacific Ocean.  Geographically part of the larger island group of Micronesia.
with the country’s population of around 21,000 people spread out over 250islands.

It’s ironic that 65 years ago the Jews welcomed the partition of Palestine, and accepted a Palestinian state, while the Arabs rejected it.
Today the Arabs are welcoming the partition of Palestine and it’s the Jews who are doing the rejecting.

But there is a reason.

President Abbas’ move in the United Nations is damaging to prospects for peace.

Israel is committed to peace with her neighbors.
Israel continues to seek a solution of two states for two peoples through direct negotiations.

U.S. Secretary of State Clinton criticized the resoution as “unfortunate and counterproductive… plac[ing] further obstacles in the path of peace.”

In what analysts described as a particularly tough speech, U.S. Ambassador Rice insisted that the unilateral Palestinian gambit will cause “the prospects of a durable peace [to] recede.”  Rice’s speech also emphasized that the resolution does not “create a state where none indeed exists or change the reality on the ground” and, more explicitly, “does not establish that Palestine is a state.”

My colleague Rabbi Gerry Skolnik, RA President, said, “We speak for Conservative Jews across the United States and internationally when we emphasize in no uncertain terms
that a vote on the Palestinians receiving enhanced status in the United Nations is counterproductive as long as Palestinian leadership continues to refuse to
engage in direct peace negotiations with Israel.”

One of the reasons I love Vayishlach is because Esau and Jacob reunite. If you can read between the lines, Esau comes back and says I am done with the arguing, the hurt, the
anger, let’s just get past it. And then they come together to bury their father.

Wouldn’t it be nice if Abbas and co followed that example…