Friday, November 10, 2023

What appears, in the opening verses of this week’s parasha, Chayei Sarah, to describe a routine real estate transaction, turns out to be a statement of religious significance for us and our connection to Eretz Yisrael, our Biblical homeland.

The passage concerns Abraham who, having just become a widower (at the ripe old age of 137) with the death of Sarah (not far behind, at 127), must negotiate the purchase of a suitable burial plot from the local landowners, a people known as the Hittites, who trace their origins to what today is Turkey.

By the earliest period of Israelite history–we’re talking about 3,500 years ago, give or take–the Hittites had already become a dominant Near Eastern civilization, ruling over large swaths of the territory of today’s Middle East, including Canaan, or what we think of as Eretz Yisrael, the Biblical Land of Israel.

The passage describes a detailed negotiation between the bereaved Abraham and a man named Ephron, son of Tzohar, the designated representative of the Hittites.  After exchanging formalities and explaining Abraham’s unfortunate circumstances, extensive bargaining ensues around the terms under which a burial plot may be purchased.

The language of their negotiation is polite, even obsequious, filled with formal entreaties and honorific titles.  

Abraham begins modestly:  גֵּר־וְתוֹשָׁ֥ב אָנֹכִ֖י עִמָּכֶ֑ם — “I am a stranger and sojourner among you.”  No mention of his wealth, his storied exploits, his Divine election, or his and Sarah’s status as patriarch and matriarch of a fledgling nation.  For the purpose of buying land, he’s just a “stranger and a sojourner.”  

The Hittites reply:  “Hear us, my lord!  You are the elect of God among us.”  From there, the negotiation proceeds like a ritualistic dance, right down to the way Abraham bows before the landowning citizens of the Hittite nation.  When they finally agree upon a figure, the price is steep and each shekel carefully counted.

After twenty verses–the entire 23rd chapter of Genesis!–the episode concludes on a perfunctory note, with Abraham officially acquiring the Cave of Machpelah in what is today the West Bank city of Hebron, as a permanent burial site for Sarah (and, later, for Abraham himself, and their posterity).  It is, to this day, a sacred site of pilgrimage for religious Jews (and a frequent hotbed of unrest between Palestinians and Haredi Jews who reside in Hebron).  

This kind of elaborate negotiation may in fact be familiar to anyone who’s ever bought anything in the bustling souks and bazaars of the Middle East.  My friend and teacher Rabbi Les Gutterman once shared a story originally told by Rabbi Mordechai Waxman (of blessed memory), who had

visited Athens where he was invited out to dinner.  On the way, he saw a vendor selling flowers and so he stopped to buy some for his hosts.  He asked how much they were and the vendor said, “Twenty-six drachmas.”  He started to reach into his pocket and take out the money when the vendor said, “No, no, no.  You don’t understand how it is done.  I am supposed to say, ‘Twenty-six drachmas’ and you are supposed to say, ‘No way.  The most I will give you for these poor flowers is five drachmas.’  And I am supposed to say, ‘You are taking bread away from my children, but I will come down to twenty-three drachmas.’  And you are supposed to say, ‘No way.  The most I will give you for such poor, half-wilted flowers is ten drachmas.’  And I am supposed to say, ‘You are a merciless negotiator and these flowers really cost me much, much more than this, but I will give them to you for eighteen drachmas.’  And so we are supposed to go back and forth until we finally agree on thirteen drachmas.’

Rabbi Waxman said that he stood corrected and started to pay the thirteen drachmas.  The man said, “No, thank you.  From my students, I don’t take money.” And he gave him the flowers for free.

So, back to Abraham and the delicate matter of buying a burial plot.  Why such painstaking detail?  Why such length?  Why such formality?  Does the passage exist merely to to convey helpful tips for the next time we find ourselves bargaining in the Middle East?  Are we, like Rabbi Waxman, just hapless students in the marketplace of life, with Torah our humble guidebook, filled with practical wisdom for the naïve traveler?  Or is there more to it?

This evening I’d like to offer a couple of takeaways from this passage which illuminate its importance: first, in Jewish history, and second, in the Jewish psyche.  

The first takeaway comes from Avraham Ibn Ezra, the great 12th Century Spanish Sage.  He said that the thrust of this passage is “to make known the special status of Eretz Yisrael, surpassing all other lands, both for the living and the dead, as well as to fulfill God’s promise of a permanent inheritance for Abraham [and his posterity].”  

Ibn Ezra speaks to the centrality of Eretz Yisrael in Jewish life, Jewish history, and Jewish memory, a statement made all the more powerful–and ironic–given that Ibn Ezra, like generations of Jews before and after him, lived and worked exclusively in the Diaspora.  But even in Jewish dispersion–perhaps all the more so in Jewish dispersion–Israel has played a central role in our spiritual lives, both, as Ibn Ezra himself notes, for the living, and the dead.  

Even nowadays, Jews around the world make plans to be buried in Israel.  Here at WRT, we have, over the years, assisted a number of congregants with this request for their loved ones.  In fact, one estimate has it that over 60% of El Al planes carry a dead body to be buried in Eretz Yisrael.  

An article published a little over two weeks ago in the New York Times highlighted “seven Jewish New Yorkers whose lifelong desires were being fulfilled. They were in seven coffins in the cargo hold of an El Al flight to Israel, where they would be buried.”  Some Jews cling to an old belief that the soil of Eretz Yisrael absolves one of earthly sin–which is why, even here, outside Israel, many are buried with a satchel of soil from the Holy Land in the casket, or sprinkled in the grave.  Others simply view burial in Eretz Yisrael as a final homecoming. 

Because that’s what Israel is for the Jew:  Home.  Even for those of us who have never lived there, even if we’ve never even visited.  

Today, our home is under siege, and not just from Hamas.  Even after 75 years of internationally recognized statehood, Israel’s legitimacy is being challenged like never before.  I, like you, am sick and tired of inflammatory and derogatory claims hurled by anti-Israel activists in the public square, on college campuses, on social media, all part of a concerted effort to delegitimize the legitimate homeland of the Jewish People.  

Words like “settler colonialism,” in particular, get under my skin.  “Settler colonialism” is a smear intended to depict Israel as a society illegitimately established by European imperialists seeking to displace or dominate an indigenous population, when in actuality Zionism began as an anti-colonialist liberation movement seeking to bring a displaced indigenous population back home after 2,000 years of forced exile.  

In fact, in Israel’s pre-State years, Jewish patrons like Baron Edmond de Rothschild, emulating Abraham, purchased land in Eretz Yisrael directly from the Ottoman Empire (that is, before the Ottomans began banning land purchases by Jews and Christians alike). The vaunted Jewish National Fund got its start with land purchases from the Ottoman Empire.   

Later, Zionism would become a great force against British colonialism, throwing off the shackles of imperial rule to establish independent statehood in 1948.  So you can understand why the portrayal of Zionism as a “settler-colonialist” movement sets my teeth on edge.  

First and foremost, the episode at the outset of the parasha, in which Abraham acquires a burial plot in Eretz Yisrael, is intended to establish the legitimate claim of our people to this land.  He pays for the territory fair and square.  It passes to him and his posterity from its original owners without conditions and without contest.  The Torah wants to underscore that our people had a legal and inviolable claim to this place.  

And this leads us to the second takeaway, which is about the Jewish psyche, observable in how Abraham introduces himself at the outset of the parasha.  גֵּר־וְתוֹשָׁ֥ב אָנֹכִ֖י עִמָּכֶ֑ם, he says:  “I am a stranger and sojourner among you.”

In one of his celebrated public lectures, the great 20th Century Modern Orthodox Rabbi, scholar, and author, Rav Joseph Ber Soloveitchik, unpacked the paradox of Abraham’s dual title:  גֵּר־וְתוֹשָׁ֥ב in Hebrew.  He translates ger as stranger, but toshav he understands not merely as a “sojourner” but as a “resident.”  This is a totally valid translation.  Soloveitchik said:  

Avraham’s definition of his dual status, we believe, describes with profound accuracy the historical position of the Jew who resides in a predominantly non-Jewish society. He was the resident [תושב-toshav], like other inhabitants of Canaan, sharing with them a concern for the welfare of society, digging wells and contributing to the progress of the country in loyalty to its government and institutions. Here, Avraham was clearly a fellow citizen, a patriot among compatriots, joining others in advancing the common welfare.

However, there was another aspect, the spiritual, in which Avraham regarded himself as a stranger [גר-ger]….  His was a different faith and he was governed by perceptions, truths, and observances which set him apart from the larger faith community. In this regard, Avraham and his descendants would always remain “strangers” (Reflections of the Rav, Chapter 16, emphasis mine).

Through Rav Soloveitchik’s observation, we see how our passage reveals a deeper truth about Jews and Jewish identity throughout the ages… especially, now, in the post-1948 era of Jewish Statehood, of Jewish sovereignty and Jewish self-determination.  

For the vast majority of Jewish history we have lived, at best, like Abraham:  dual-status Jews, part resident, part alien.  For much of our history we could not obtain citizenship in the many far-flung lands and empires in which we put down roots.  In such cases, we adhered to the Talmudic dictum דינא דמלכותא דינא (dina d’malkhuta dina), “The law of the land is the law,” a statement of intent to become law-abiding citizens wherever we found ourselves, contributing, as Soloveitchik observes, “to the progress of the country in loyalty to its government and institutions,” including here in America.  Following the law of the land as a matter of Jewish principle also provided us with a preemptive response to the oft-leveled antisemitic charge of “dual loyalties.”  

Given the appalling rise in antisemitism right here, right now, in reaction to Israel’s defensive war against Hamas, many of us feel acutely aware of that part of the Jewish condition known as ger: the stranger, the foreigner.  It accounts for why so many of us feel particularly abandoned and alone at this time, and, yes, betrayed.  We think:  “How can you treat me this way when I, and my parents, and my grandparents, and even perhaps my great-grandparents, were all born in this country and have been nothing less than exemplary, loyal, patriotic, citizens?”  How, indeed. 

In the Torah, the words “ger v’toshav,” “stranger and resident,” are written with a maqaf, a hyphen, between them, underscoring that for the Jew, our two identities are inextricably linked: at some level, we are always strangers, even when we have resided in a place for a very long time, abiding by the law and contributing to the social welfare.  We have never been able to shed our identity as “strangers” in the eyes of others, even when we no longer see it ourselves.  

1948 was supposed to have changed that.  This, then, is the true meaning of Israel: that we would have a place where we can be toshav and no longer ger:  a place to call home.  A place that would change not only Jewish history but also the Jewish psyche.  A home: not just for the dead but for the living, for the living, thriving Jew; for the living, thriving Jewish people.  1948 severed the hyphen between ger and toshav and allowed us to live out the destiny to which Abraham only alluded, the destiny to which God had called him:

Lhiyot am chofshi b’artzeinu

Eretz Tzion vYerushalayim

“To be a free people in our land:

The land of Zion and Jerusalem.”

Shabbat Shalom

Delivered October 13, 2023 | 28-29 Tishrei 5784

Said the Kotzker Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Morgenstern of Kotzk, Poland, the direct ancestor (it so happens) of our own dear friend, colleague and neighbor, Rabbi Jonathan Morgenstern of Young Israel of Scarsdale:

אין שלם מלב שבור

There is nothing so whole as a broken heart.  

It is a paradox, and yet it is true:  we grow more whole when our hearts break, because we grow in compassion, empathy, wisdom, and understanding.  When Leonard Cohen sang, “There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in,” he conveyed a truth about the human heart as much as about the world.  

So much has grown up in the cracks of our broken hearts—mine as much as yours—ever since Hamas terrorists attacked Israel last Shabbat, Saturday, October 7th, on the Festival of Simchat Torah.  Through our brokenness we have become more empathic, more emotionally and spiritually connected across great geographical distance.  Israelis (and Diaspora Jews) have, by and large, set aside enough differences that have been tearing us apart from within for the last year, in order to stand together, behind a wartime unity government:  a development that we welcome, even if brought about through broken-heartedness. 

It is not easy to teach Torah with a broken heart.  It’s not easy to do anything with a broken heart.  But Judaism does not summon us to do easy things.  Judaism demands that we do hard things, holy things.  And when it comes to a Jewish understanding of morality, the Torah provides eternally relevant precepts.  So we must learn, teach, and live Torah, even with our broken hearts.  

As it so happens, the shedding of innocent blood is one of the first topics that the Torah takes up.  When, in this week’s parasha, Bereshit, the very first portion of the Torah, Cain slays his brother Abel, the Torah reports:   

וַיֹּ֖אמֶר מֶ֣ה עָשִׂ֑יתָ ק֚וֹל דְּמֵ֣י אָחִ֔יךָ צֹעֲקִ֥ים אֵלַ֖י מִן־הָֽאֲדָמָֽה׃

And God said, What have you done?  Your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground!¹

In Judaism, to shed innocent blood is a gross affront to God.  Even in a world where human justice and compassion are in short supply, the Divine demand for justice and compassion is unrelenting.

Whole families, whole communities, snuffed out in an orgy of violence. 1,300 Israelis murdered. Human beings targeted simply because they were Jews living in the world’s only Jewish State. Children butchered in front of their parents and parents in front of their children. Revelers at a desert party gunned down in cold blood. 

Our Israeli family members, maimed, tortured, raped—the young, the old, the defenseless and disabled.  Jews kidnapped and paraded through the streets of Gaza while onlookers cheered.  Some living, terrified; others, already beaten and bullet-hole-ridden corpses.  

You know all this and yet we must repeat it, again and again, for the world to hear, to hear that our brothers’ blood, our sisters’ blood, cries out to God—and to us—from the ground!

Picture Adam and Eve, helpless parents clutching each other when they learn that their boy was slaughtered in an open field, and you will know the heart of every Israeli, every Jew, every person with an even rudimentary grasp of basic morality and human decency.

Unfortunately, just five days in, we’re already seeing plenty of folks taking up airtime without a rudimentary grasp of basic morality:

Do not stand for the sophistry of those who want to convince you that the situation is “complicated.”

Do not accept the specious argument that Hamas cares about the lives of Palestinians living in Gaza or the West Bank, or about a two-state solution, or about 1967 borders, or about human rights or freedom—buzzwords and phrases that their defenders casually throw around as they try to turn the conversation away from the unavoidable fact.  To wit:  Hamas has been crystal clear, in word and in deed, about their motives:  to murder and terrorize as many Jews as they can, to shed as much Jewish blood as they can.  Not only Israeli blood but Jewish blood, targeting us wherever we live.

Do not stay silent when pundits on TV, and your so-called “friends” whom you follow on social media, and your college and high-school classmates, and your elected officials, engage in “both sides-ism,” moral relativism, or rationalize the murder of Jews as the legitimate tactics of a desperate and deprived Palestinian people—which, by and large, they are—or blame Israel for the entirety of Palestinian suffering, or try to link this vicious program on the “occupation.”  

No.  

There is no moral justification for murder, full stop. 

Hamas has announced its intention to avenge “Al Aqsa,” the chief Islamic shrine in Jerusalem, meaning that Hamas sees this as an Islamic Holy War against the Jews and the Jewish State:  not against the IDF in the West Bank, or the blockade of Gaza overseen jointly by Israel and its strategic ally Egypt, a Sunni Arab dictatorship that nonetheless does not misconstrue Hamas’s intentions, correctly categorizing Hamas as a terrorist organization in league with the Muslim Brotherhood, and a direct threat to Egypt and the Middle East.  

Egypt and Israel know full well what Hamas stands for, and so does the United States, and so do we, as do all people of conscience and unclouded moral vision:  Hamas seeks a holy war that will eradicate Jews from the earth.  Their charter says as much, in writing. 

Do not be seduced by the reductionist, morally relativistic, and intellectually shoddy arguments of those who would analyze this nightmare according to a simple body count, fetishizing “proportionality,” as if morality were simply a game of tit for tat, as if it would be an acceptable outcome to allow even a single Israeli family to live in terror and trauma in their own country. Would any of us Americans ever accept such an arrangement with a virulent enemy on our borders?²

As I highlight all of these talking points that we are hearing from those with broken moral compasses, I also want to take a moment to highlight the bravery and moral clarity of other leaders.  We applaud the strong and outspoken support of the Biden administration, including the unwavering moral clarity of the President, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

Earlier this week I spoke with our own New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand who has been an outspoken, compassionate, and supportive ally and who has pledged ongoing support for Israel and for the New York Jewish community, including Westchester Reform Temple.  Her words, sent by email just a few hours ago, show us what moral clarity looks like.  She writes:

This was a very difficult and tragic week in the wake of Hamas’ attack against Israel and the evil atrocities committed against innocent men, women and children. I strongly condemn this unprovoked terrorist attack and stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel and the Jewish community in this moment of tragedy. We share your sorrow and your grief.

We also share your resolve. I will be working hard to make sure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself and support efforts to safely recover hostages, including American citizens, who are being held by Hamas.

Let me make something clear: the United States will support Israel in its efforts to defend itself and its people. This a moment to show the world and our adversaries that the bond between the United States and Israel is unwavering and unbreakable.   

I want to thank the Senator’s Senior Adviser and Senior Counsel, our congregant Patti Lubin, who is here with us tonight, as well as our congregant, Westchester District Attorney Mimi Rocah, also here in the sanctuary, both of whom have been allies and friends to us all.

And, just this afternoon, I engaged in conversation with a Harvard student who grew up at WRT.  He is a student leader who helps to run a Speakers’ Forum, bringing in noted public intellectuals to hold forth on the Harvard campus about pertinent issues.  To his dismay, a majority of the student board of the Forum could not agree to publish a simple statement unanimously condemning Hamas’s terror, even as the draft also acknowledged the human cost of this war to innocent life, Israeli and Palestinian alike.  As an act of principled protest, he and two fellow student leaders resigned from the Forum this afternoon.  

We offer deepest gratitude to all those leaders whose words and deeds are lighting the way. You practice what we preach. You live the values the Torah teaches.  

So let us return to Torah:

ק֚וֹל דְּמֵ֣י אָחִ֔יךָ צֹעֲקִ֥ים אֵלַ֖י מִן־הָֽאֲדָמָֽה׃

Your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!

The definitive midrash on this verse, Bereshit Rabbah 22:9, quoted by Rashi, observes that the word for blood, usually the Hebrew דם, “dam,” is presented here in the plural, דְּמֵ֣י אָחִ֔יךָ, “d’mei achicha,” literally, “your brother’s bloods cry out to me from the ground,” affirming that when Cain slew Abel he also destroyed all possible descendants.  The blood of all potential life was also on the hands of the murderer.

So the Talmud says, and so we must affirm, that to destroy one life is to destroy an entire world. 

And, conversely, to save a life is to save an entire world.³ 

So let us give thanks for all those Israelis and their allies—the soldiers, civilians, medical workers, volunteers, donors, parents, children, and friends—who have been heroically saving lives, even, for some, at the cost of their own lives.  From the moment that gunmen burst into their homes, many of them fending off attackers with whatever makeshift weapons they could find around their house, some with only their bare hands. 

Let us give thanks for the brave men and women of the IDF who have been tasked with the unthinkable:  to save the lives of those taken hostage while minimizing the loss of innocent lives trapped in the Gaza Strip (despite the cheap price that Hamas places on Palestinian lives). 

And let us do now what we must, to save lives, the paramount mitzvah of the Jewish tradition.

Our WRT website, wrtemple.org, maintains a regularly updated list of organizations for which we encourage your robust support, placing a priority on those that are saving lives and providing care for Israelis in harm’s way.  

WRT’s Rabbis’ Discretionary Fund provides tens of thousands of dollars of tzedakah each year to support our partner organizations in Israel, and, this year, we will be directing our tzedakah foremost toward those charities that are saving lives and healing wounds (physical and emotional), including the many incredible Israeli medical facilities and emergency services that work tirelessly to save lives without regard for nationality or creed:  Jewish and Muslim lives, Israeli and Palestinian lives alike.  

Even as our brothers’ and sisters’ bloods cry out to us from the ground, we must never tarnish our humanity by losing our ability to care about, and for, noncombatant Palestinian lives that have been, and will be, taken and injured in the war. 

Dear friends:

Our hearts are broken.  Our spirits are not.

Our hearts are broken.  Our resolve is not.

Our hearts are broken.  Our ability to show compassion is not.

Our hearts are broken.

But our People, the People of Israel, the Jewish People—We—are not.  

Am Yisrael Chai

1. Genesis 4:10. ↩︎
2. The article “Fighting a Just War Against Hamas Justly” by Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman is as relevant today as when it was written in 2009. ↩︎
3. Sanhedrin 37a. ↩︎

Rabbi Jonathan Blake, Westchester Reform Temple

For me, this Yom Kippur service began way back on a bright spring afternoon while driving home from a cemetery on Long Island, listening to WQXR Classical Radio. 

Fittingly for a post-funeral drive, on came the familiar strains of Mozart’s Requiem, the Catholic Mass for the dead, an undisputed masterwork that the master left unfinished at the time of his death at the age of 35.  A little “light traveling music.”

As it turns out, this recording of the Requiem jarred me right up in my seat:  it was, first of all, fast: too fast, I thought; dance-like, even.  Gone was the usual sense of gravity and grief, and, in its place, a vigor and something like mischief.  

No surprise, this new recording has attracted its fair share of detractors and defenders, with one critic in the former camp describing it as “brusque and perfunctory,” and another in the latter praising its “immediacy” and “intensity.”  

In any case, I was able to track down the recording, which was released in March and features a performance by a small (26-piece) period instrument ensemble called Les Concert des Nations, comprised of players from different countries, and a small (24-voice) choir from Spain¹ under the direction of the Catalan maestro and virtuoso string player Jordi Savall.

The liner notes feature an essay by the 81-year-old conductor, a bit of which I’d like to share with you now:

“The course of my whole life would undoubtedly have been very different,” he begins, “if, one October evening in 1955, I had not been fortunate enough to hear a live rehearsal of Mozart’s Requiem. 

“A few months earlier, on 1st August, I had turned 14, and luck would have it that my teacher… decided to prepare the work with the choir of the local Schola Cantorum. That evening I was on my way to the Conservatoire to attend my usual counterpoint and harmony lessons with him; for some reason, I didn’t receive the message telling me that classes had been cancelled due to a rehearsal of the Requiem.

“So I discreetly sat in on the rehearsal at the back of the hall, where the choir… was accompanied by just an organ and a string quartet. From the very first notes, I was totally fascinated by the incredible beauty of the work and the expressive power of the melodies, by every movement, by the originality of the various themes and the perfection of the counterpoint and the richness of the modulations. By the time the final bars sounded, I had been profoundly moved by this extraordinary experience, which transported me to a dimension I had never experienced before. 

“As I walked home, I said to myself that if music could touch a person’s soul so powerfully, I wanted to be a musician.

“A few days later, I went to Barcelona to buy a second-hand cello. On my way home, I tried to play a little and, after the first few moments of hesitation, I suddenly felt a great affinity with the instrument. The fingers of my left hand positioned themselves and moved easily and deftly on the neck of the instrument, while, with little effort, my right hand was quickly able to control the quality of the sound with the bow. In short, I had the wonderful feeling of being able to sing again and I felt completely at home! 

It was then that I understood the unique feeling described by Mark Twain when he said that ‘The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.’”² 

I read this story of the 14-year old Jordi Savall hearing Mozart’s Requiem for the first time, picking up his first cello, dragging the bow across the strings, hesitantly at first, then with greater confidence and ease; in time feeling the instrument vibrating in tandem with his body; developing the muscle memory to know where to put his fingers on the neck; his hands, ears, head and heart gradually falling into alignment; learning, by doing, how to make it sing—and I remembered a time in my life where, for lack of a better way of putting it, it all came together.  

It was early fall, 1992, the beginning of my sophomore year of college, and I had just turned nineteen.  Most of my classmates had spent freshman year figuring out the answers to important questions like these: 

• Rounding to the nearest 30 minutes, what is the minimum amount of sleep that I need in order not to come off like an idiot on my chemistry midterm?

And,

• Expressed as a percentage, how much of my monthly budget can I reasonably spend on (the admittedly excellent) slices from Antonio’s?

Meanwhile, I was turning myself into knots over this question:  

What am I going to do with my life? 

I may not have been the most fun to be around, but I was definitely going to be the first of my roommates to figure out my career path.

I had spent most of freshman year second-guessing my plans to major in geology and pursue a career in environmental science.  An exploratory dinner conversation with a hydrogeologist (that is, a person who tracks groundwater for a living) was (I know this will shock you) dry as a bone, and a field trip to unearth clamshells for a course in invertebrate paleontology, left me cold, especially the part where I found myself knee-deep in thick Cape Cod muck at 7 AM wondering how I would ever survive a career with so. much. dirt.  

Long story short, I began to contemplate alternative pathways for my life that felt like a better fit. 

Monday, September 28th, 1992—Rosh Ha-Shanah—was a quintessential New England early fall day:  bright sunshine, crisp breeze, temperatures in the mid-sixties.  As sunlight streamed through Johnson Chapel, the ecumenical space where Amherst and Smith College Hillel chapters join forces for the High Holidays, I sat in a pew about seven rows back and, some time during the chanting of the Unetaneh Tokef, a realization struck me.  I’m sure it didn’t take the form of words at the time, but, to me, it felt like the universe saying:  “You’re supposed to be up there on that bimah.”  

In that moment, many pieces of my life came together:  my love of Judaism, my desire to share it with others, to share its message of hope and its profound insights into the human condition in word and in song, in art and ritual, to teach and to learn, to shape lives in a direction of meaning:  these are some of the vibrations that resonated within me during that service.

Within days I had changed my major to English literature and set an appointment with the Hillel director, Rabbi Yechiael Lander (still alive and well at 96 years old!), to talk about my aspirations.  From the very first, he encouraged and supported my path and assured me that becoming a rabbi was a wonderful profession for a nice Jewish boy.

I feel blessed that, for me, “the day you find out why” happened when I was 19 and turned out to have spoken true and clear.  I have also come to believe that a “calling” is not reserved for clergy and does not require any special connection to God or spirituality.  

Each of us has a calling, maybe more than one.  Probably more than one!  Each of us can respond to an urging that comes from either within or without:  a way through life in which we can participate with purpose and presence in the unfolding of the world.

To hear the call, to feel the urge, to respond with our innermost being:  these are not privileges reserved for people of the cloth; any person in any clothing can discover what resonates with one’s soul.  

“Calling” is also not to be equated with career.  The two may overlap entirely, or partially, or not at all.  We know people who practice medicine, law, economics, psychotherapy; who are teachers and cooks and copywriters, athletes and entrepreneurs and countless other ways through the world, each of whom experienced a day they found out why.  

We also know people who who “found out why” the day a child, or grandchild, or pet, or another grown person came into their lives, transforming one another through relationship; people who “found out why” when they studied with a teacher, or read a book, or heard a song, or saw a work of art that changed the direction of their life; people who heard the call in the solitude of a mountain hike and people who heard the call in the crowd.  

Every moment of calling is about recognizing a connection with something greater than ourselves.  Some people would call that something “Nature,” others, “The Universe,” still others, “God.” 

Maestro Savall heard the call when he picked up a cello and felt a sudden affinity for the instrument.  The bow in his hands passed over the strings and instantly the vibrations of the strings passed through his hand into his body.  

It is like this, I think, for many of us:  a moment, hard to put into words, but perceptible nonetheless, when the vibrations of the universe resonate at the same frequency as the vibrations within us.  If this was you—as you sit here today and reflect—can you think of such a moment?

But what of those of us who haven’t felt the vibrations, who haven’t heard the call, who haven’t lived “the day you find out why?”  

And what about those who have felt the vibrations, but doubted them when others pooh-poohed them?  Maybe they told you your purpose was invalid, not worthy—especially if untethered to a paycheck.

Or what of those who once heard the call, but then things changed?  I know so many people who describe their greatest fear, or their greatest sorrow, as “lack of purpose.”  Many of them have suffered the loss of a person or profession that infused their lives with beauty or goodness, energy or meaning or all of these.  A brilliant surgeon debilitated by neuropathy, where the physical pain pales next to the injury to vocation (and sense of self-worth); a parent who has buried a child; a business owner who built the operation from scratch and had to close down during the pandemic.  

And what about those for whom the call stopped sounding, the vibrations stopped vibrating?  Last year, the New York Times featured a podcast interview with Dan White, Jr., a former church pastor who was diagnosed with symptoms of PTSD brought on by the stress of managing his congregation in a climate of growing political rancor, increasingly vindictive criticism directed at church leaders, and just plain burnout.  He noticed that he was not alone; he would meet pastor after pastor whose love for the church remained undiminished but who found the role they were asked to fulfill in the lives of others to be unlivable for themselves, and decided to call it quits.  Now Pastor White spends his days coaching and helping other pastors through their challenges.³  This “Great Pastor Resignation” mirrors recent trends in the Jewish clergy world as well; and, just as clergy are not unique in the ability to have a calling, so too are they not unique in their ability to hear the call no longer, to have it snuffed out.  

Things change.  The “day you find out why” turns out just to be one day, a day that mattered when it mattered, but not a day that should dictate all the days of your life.      

In 1958, the journalist Hunter S. Thompson wrote a letter to his friend Hume Logan in response to a request for life advice.  What he wrote in that letter offers wisdom far beyond the author’s 22 years.  

It also illustrates why Thompson became an icon of the counterculture.  In the letter, he takes direct aim at the conventional advice that a person should set goals and follow them, telling his friend instead that the real question is “whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal.”

“[T]he tragedy of life,” he goes on to say, “is that we seek to understand the goal and not the man.”  He illustrates:

When you were young, let us say that you wanted to be a fireman. I feel reasonably safe in saying that you no longer want to be a fireman. Why? Because your perspective has changed. It’s not the fireman who has changed, but you….  As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on. Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective.

So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything other than galloping neurosis?

The answer, then, must not deal with goals at all, or not with tangible goals, anyway….  So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.”⁴

What Thompson is saying is that, until or unless we love where we’re going, we should spend our time floating rather than swimming.    

This is a great truth of existence:  The universe is in constant flux, and we along with it.  In the Vedic tradition, the great source of Eastern spirituality that flourished in the Indian subcontinent around the same time that the Torah was taking shape in Eretz Yisrael, we learn of the flow, the never-ending cycle of existence: Creation, Maintenance, and Destruction.  

Naturally resistant to change, we human beings often seek security in the maintenance of the status quo when in fact Nature insistently prods us toward destruction or creation: of the self, our goals, our way through the world.  Indeed, both are necessary for evolution: destruction clears the way for creation of the new; and the natural order of things is that destruction begins the moment after creation.  Life is meant to be dynamic.  Life is fluid, so why not your purpose?  Maybe we’re spending all this time swimming toward a goal, when, all along, we should have been figuring out how to float. 

So here we are, having floated all this way to the Yom Kippur message that I hope you will carry with you.  It comes to us from Avraham Yitzhak Kook, the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of pre-State Israel, and one of the most influential Jewish thinkers of his age, or any age.  

Rav Kook teaches:

“The primary role of Teshuva… is for a person to return to oneself, to the root of one’s own soul.”⁵

For Rav Kook, Teshuva should not be translated the way we usually do, as “repentance,” a “word that conjures up a negative sense of feeling sorry and broken for our misdeeds or moral shortcomings.” For Kook, Rabbi Aaron Goldscheider explains, “Teshuva is empowering and invigorating. Teshuva is a return to our true selves – bringing ourselves back to center.”⁶

Rav Kook affirms:  “Teshuva is when the soul feels the healthiest.”⁷

The essence of Yom Kippur is not the fasting, the beating of the chest, the confession of transgression.  We do not come here today to indulge in self-flagellation, to wallow in guilt or pity, “to put on sackcloth and ashes and bow our heads like a reed,” as the Prophet said.⁸  The essence of today is Teshuva:  to nurture our souls back to health and vitality.  To bring ourselves back to the center.  To stop swimming for a day and remember what it feels like to float.  

And if we’re still seeking the way, if we’re still hoping to “find out why” we’re here in the first place, consider this approach: instead of casting about, waiting for our purpose to announce itself, waiting to hear the call, we can just float in the direction of serving others.  There’s a world of need out there; countless ways to serve; countless ways to connect to something greater than yourself.  Who knows?  Maybe some other fellow seekers will find their purpose for the first time when they meet you.

“The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.’”   

Well, maybe, Mark Twain, but maybe not.  Maybe it’s not just two days.  It could be thousands.  Who can say?  Who knows when you’ll find out?  Maybe it’ll be tomorrow, or the tomorrow after that.  Who knows?  One of these days might just turn out to be the most important day of your life.

1. Capella Nacional de Catalunya. ↩︎
2. You can read Savall’s essay, and explore the recording, online at https://www.highresaudio.com/en/album/view/e84q8a/jordi-savall-w-a-mozart-requiem-in-d-minor-k-626. ↩︎
3. See/listen to “A Pastor Ripped Apart by our Divided Country,” recording and transcript available at New York Times (online edition), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/opinion/a-pastor-burned-out-by-our-divided-country.html. ↩︎
4. You can find Thompson’s letter online; I recommend seeking it out among the many other fine entries in the book Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience, ed. Shaun Usher.  Edinburgh/London: Canongate UK, 2016. ↩︎
5. Orot Ha-Teshuva, 15:10. ↩︎
6. Rabbi Aaron Goldscheider, “Reimagining Repentance,” as cited on the website of the Orthodox Union, https://www.ou.org/holidays/reimagining-repentance/. ↩︎
7. Ibid, 5:1. ↩︎
8. Isaiah 58:5, which is taken from the Haftarah for the morning of Yom Kippur. ↩︎

Sunday, September 24, 2023

Rabbi Jonathan Blake, Westchester Reform Temple

Did you know that, with the newest iPhone software, you can undo a text message for up to two minutes after sending it?

Now, don’t take out your phones.  Trust me.  It works.  But, it’s not foolproof.  For starters, it notifies the recipient that your message was recalled.  And, it can’t prevent the recipient from seeing the message when it first comes through.  So, actually, it’s pretty useless.

The desire to hit “undo” strikes me as fundamental to human nature and fundamental to this Day of Atonement.  Aren’t we all here because of things we wish we could undo?

Unfortunately, in real life, all sorts of things can’t be undone.  Yom Kippur things.  Words that can’t be unsaid, promises that can’t be unbroken, feelings that can’t be unhurt.

And so we arrive at Kol Nidre: 

….כל נדרי ואסרי Kol Nidre ve’esarei …

All vows and oaths… that we have undertaken are hereby undone….  Our vows are not vows; our pledges are not pledges; our oaths are not oaths.

The Kol Nidre prayer is a preemptive “undo” button:  it’s a Medieval legal formula designed to annul, to undo, any vows that we might take upon ourselves from now until next Yom Kippur.  Most prayers plead with God.  This prayer pleads with us to think carefully about our future actions, to stop ourselves before we do something we’ll regret.  Something we can’t undo.  

I offer this interpretation because we have arrived at what I have come to think of as a “Kol Nidre moment,” a point beyond which there is no going back, for which there may exist no opportunity to “undo.”  

Many of you remember where you were, 50 years ago this day on the Hebrew calendar, October 5-6, 1973, when the Yom Kippur War broke out.  It is not uncommon these days to hear Israelis comparing this moment to that moment. Many have concluded that this moment is no less existentially consequential.

For the last 37 weeks, every Saturday night, including last night, mass protests have filled Israel’s streets.  To give you a sense of scale, if Israel were the US, its population of about 9.5 million scaled to our population of about 330 million, this would be like 10 million people taking to the streets in every major American city, week in and week out.

What has generated such a maelstrom of civic unrest is the pervasive sense that Israel is on the brink of decisions that have no undo option, no Kol Nidre to avert fundamental changes to the nature of Israeli democracy and Israeli society.

I want to make it clear that what I share with you tonight will not be a foreign policy talk but rather a family conversation.  When we talk about Israel, we aren’t having a “foreign policy” discussion, because, for us, Israel isn’t “foreign.”  Israel, for us, is home, identity, mishpacha.  As my friend and colleague Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh recently put it:  “Talking about Israel is like talking about your Momma.”¹ 

Here’s the crux of what’s happening:  in late 2022, after four elections that failed to establish a government, Israel’s citizens democratically elected a government that, because of the way in which coalition politics works, is comprised of one big right-wing party, Likud, plus five smaller parties, all of which are considerably more right-wing, most of which don’t really care whether or not Israel remains a democracy, even after 75 years of democracy.  The simplest (and, forgive me, oversimplified) explanation for this lurch to the far right stems from the uncomfortable fact that only these parties, and their ideologically extreme leaders, will offer Prime Minister Netanyahu, currently under multiple indictments, the political protection he seeks.  The moderates simply won’t join a coalition with Bibi.      

In February, I visited Israel for the first time in four years.  Among the highlights of my trip was a chance to catch up over coffee and pastry at a charming Tel Aviv café with the Zaidenberg family, natives of Israel, who had affiliated at WRT for several years before moving to Switzerland and then back to Tel Aviv with their children and grandchildren.  Amnon Zaidenberg, a soft-spoken and sensible financial executive, greeted me with a warm embrace before launching into this speech: 

“I have watched this country grow for nearly 70 of its 75 years, have served my homeland in uniform, and I am telling you, Jonathan, you have arrived at the most critical juncture in Israel’s history.”

And then, without taking a breath, he leaned in and said, “So, what are you going to tell your congregation?”  

I said, “Nice to see you too.  How’s the danish here?”  

For two hours we all sat and talked.  I heard their anxiety, their heartbreak, and, to a lesser but still discernible extent, their hope.    

That Saturday night I attended a mass demonstration in downtown Tel Aviv, marching with a delegation of over 200 Reform Rabbis.  I had tried to coordinate a meet-up with the Zaidenbergs, but our bus got snared in traffic and we had to walk about a mile to join a group already 170,000 strong.  All of a sudden, in the middle of the crowd, I turn around and Amnon, Zafy, their son Itay, who was in my first Confirmation class at WRT and who is now married with a baby girl, their son Amit, at whose Bar Mitzvah I officiated, and Amit’s girlfriend, are standing three inches from me, grinning.  

I said, “How’d you find me?”  They pointed to the giant banner overhead, which read, “The Reform Movement Stands for Judaism and Democracy,” and said, “We followed the sign.”

There we were:  standing in a throng where virtually every adult has served in the IDF.  We marched with military reservists and high-tech executives.  We marched with people old enough to remember Israel’s founding, many with children and grandchildren.  We marched with Jews who call themselves “Orthodox,” and Jews who think of themselves as secular, but who also believe that living in Israel is a fundamental demonstration of Jewish commitment.  We marched with LGBTQ Israelis in their alarm about homophobia espoused by several government ministers, and alongside Jews of color, whose families come from Ethiopia and Yemen, Africa and India, in their distress over the uptick in racist rhetoric and policy positions.  We marched alongside thousands who love the Jewish State, care about the rights of Palestinians, and are worried about the possibility of government annexation of the West Bank.  We marched with several hundred women dressed in red cloaks and white bonnets, like Margaret Atwood’s Handmaids, decrying proposals that would force women to dress according to Ultra-Orthodox modesty codes and sit in the back of the bus on public transportation.

And Reform and Conservative clergy cannot just stand on the sidelines.  There are crucial issues at stake for us and our communities, too; issues that, for us–for all of us–are personal, not political, including the right to have the marriages we solemnize, the conversions we oversee, and the synagogues we lead and attend, recognized by the world’s only Jewish State.  Do you have someone in your family who converted to Judaism under non-Othordox supervision?  Think about what this could mean for that person’s right of return, or the Jewish status of their children.    

However disparate the protesters’ concerns may seem on the surface, they all converge at one flashpoint issue:  the government’s determination to overhaul the way that the Israeli Supreme Court functions, with the intention to strip it of significant authority.

It’s easy to argue that there are two sides to this story, that each side has a legitimate grievance.  Those in favor of a “judicial overhaul” argue that Israel’s Supreme Court enjoys power above and beyond that of high courts in other Western democracies.  They will tell you that the makeup of Israel’s Supreme Court, predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish justices, does not correlate to the demography of present-day Israel and therefore cannot truly represent the will of Israel’s citizens.  Members of the Knesset who support the overhaul “say that as elected representatives, they have a democratic mandate to govern without being hobbled by the court, which they portray as a bastion of the left-leaning elite.”²     

Such arguments merit public debate but hide the coalition’s intention:  to undermine the only real institutional check that Israel has on its legislature, the only balance that Israel has to halt the government from summarily passing whatever laws it likes with a simple majority of 61 Knesset votes, removing the essential process of judicial review that can question a law’s validity.  

Meanwhile, the government has given false assurances of plans to provide new and better guardrails for a future Supreme Court, details left “TBD.”  And it has disregarded pleas for compromise with the opposition, despite the tireless efforts of President Isaac Herzog to broker one.  

No wonder the opposition does not trust the coalition.  Reneging on promises again and again is like reciting Kol Nidre with no intention of changing one’s ways. 

And so we have 37 consecutive weeks of angry but non-violent protests, a mixed multitude chanting this easy-to-translate word: “DEMOKRATIA.”  

A number of rabbis serving in Israeli congregations have brought the protest movement to the heart of their synagogues:  next to the holy ark, at the front of their sanctuaries, they have affixed Megillat Yisrael, Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which says, in part:

THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture…..

For Israel and those who love Israel, these are holy words, deserving of their place next to the Holy Torah.  They also make clear that Israel, like every democracy, is, as my friend and teacher Rabbi Jan Katzew puts it, “a state of ideals, not an ideal state.”  We of all people should appreciate how fragile democracy can be.

A few months later, I returned to Israel, this time joining a delegation of a dozen American rabbis brought together by the American Israel Education Foundation, an educational charity affiliated with AIPAC:  Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform, lovers and outspoken supporters of Israel all.  Since February, the pro-democracy movement had grown dramatically.  Our attempt to board a return flight was nearly thwarted by a mass protest that shut down the arrivals terminal of Ben Gurion Airport.  

Everywhere we went, we interacted with leaders from across the spectrum of Israeli life:  diplomats and ambassadors, journalists and politicians, military experts and hi-tech entrepreneurs, religious leaders and civil rights activists, Jews and Palestinians.  Conversations swirled around open-ended questions like these:  

• How far will this go?
• If Israel’s democracy is weakened or altered beyond recognition, what will happen to the millions of Israelis (and others across the world) who no longer feel at home in Israel?
• What will these potentially sweeping changes inside Israel mean for those neighboring Arab countries, who have begun to normalize relations with the Jewish State after decades of treating Israel like a pariah?  Will this government disregard those regional advances that are reshaping the Middle East?
• And, even as we fear that these changes inside Israel will bode dangerously for religious minorities, the LGBTQ community, women, and non-Orthodox Jews, what will they mean for Palestinians living in the territories that many in the government believe is land rightfully claimed by Israel?

At least for now, no one I know has the answers.  

But this is no time for sitting on our hands, paralyzed in worry. 

Kol Nidre is, when all is said and done, a prayer of hope—a Hatikvah prayer, if you will—because it forces us to think about how the coming year could be different.  If despair is, as has been said, “the belief that tomorrow must be the same as today,” then Kol Nidre says the opposite: tomorrow could be different.  We can’t undo what is done, but we can choose a different way before it’s too late.  

And what can we do?  The advice I can offer is not my own; I sourced it from Israelis:  friends, colleagues, and the people I met on these recent trips.

Not surprisingly, opinions ran the gamut; this is the Jewish State we’re talking about.

But taken together, they offer direction and hope, tikvah.  Here are some takeaways:

First, this is no time to abandon Israel.  The words came back time and again, resoundingly:  “We need you now more than ever.”  And, “Continue to love Israel no matter what you think of the government.”  And, most of all, “We are family.”  

Second, do not withhold support.  This advice is directed to individuals, organizations, and the US government.  All talk of conditioning aid should be off the table.  “We are not allowed to forget the existential threats,” says my friend Gilad Kariv, a Reform Rabbi and member of Knesset who sits in the opposition Labor Party.  “We need to understand that there are a few red lines that we cannot cross.  Conditioning foreign aid is one of those bright red lines.”  Each one of us can contact our Members of Congress to remind them to support critical financial aid to Israel which ensures its safety and security. 

At the same time, Israel needs to hear from our elected officials that if Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State is at risk, then Israel’s security and the US-Israel relationship are also at risk, along with the strategic and economic gains, actual and potential, brought about by the Abraham Accords.

Third, stay up to date on the situation.  Please do not rely solely on your rabbis and cantors, well intentioned and informed though we try to be, to be your Israeli news station.  And, for heaven’s sake, please stop getting your Israel news exclusively from American media or, worse, from social media!  On your way out of the sanctuary, you’ll find a resource sheet that directs you to reliable news sources, most of them Israeli, that also present a diverse array of opinions and which are consistent with the values of WRT and the Reform Movement.

And finally, connect.  Reach out to friends and family in Israel.  Call, text, email them to let them know you’ve been thinking about them.  Haven’t spoken in ages?  The day after Yom Kippur is the perfect time to pick up the phone.  And make plans to visit.  Cantor Kleinman and I are excited to lead our next congregational trip to Israel in December, for which registration is, alas, already closed.  The good news is that we’re already planning our next congregational trip for 2025.  We need you with us.  There is no reason why we can’t bring 50, 60, 80, 100 congregants to Israel for the trip of a lifetime, every time.  

Especially if you’ve never visited Israel, will you make this trip a priority?  Don’t worry.  It’s just something to consider. I’m not asking you to take a vow.    

….כל נדרי ואסרי Kol Nidre ve’esarei …

Kol Nidre insists: the future is not predetermined; our choices matter.  And even as the fate of the Israeli Supreme Court hangs in the balance, in the Heavenly Supreme Court, our deeds will dictate our fate.  

I pray that, in the year to come, we will all follow the sign:  the one that proclaims, “The Reform Movement Stands for Judaism and Democracy.”  

I pray that Israel’s leaders will negotiate a way to preserve these twin pillars of identity that have distinguished Israel as a light unto the nations for 75 years.  

I pray that our congregation and the American Jewish community will make known to Israel our love, our concern, and our investment in an Israel that is vibrantly Jewish, pluralistic, and that honors the Divine Image in all its people.

We cannot undo what cannot be undone.  But there is much we still can do.     

On this Kol Nidre, this night of nights, we can pause, and pray, and, with God’s help, choose our way. 

1. Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh, spoken at the RE-Charging Reform Conference in New York City, May 30-31, 2023. ↩︎
2. Associated Press, “Netanyahu’s Judicial Overhaul Faces First Legal Challenge in Israeli Supreme Court,” September 12, 2023, 10:27 AM EDT.
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Saturday, September 16, 2023 | 1 Elul 5784

Rosh Ha-Shanah used to go by a different name.  In Talmudic times, it was called Yom Ha-Zikaron¹, “The Day of Remembering.”  

Today I’m remembering Judy Weinberg, z”l, the last of WRT’s Founders, who died in July at the age of 97, marking the end of an era.²  

So join me in a collective act of Zikaron, remembering back to our beginning:  

With the Baby Boom booming, the story of WRT begins like that of countless other American synagogues in the post-War era:  young couples moving to the suburbs, raising families, forming communities.  News of an initial planning meeting convened by eight couples in April of 1953 spread quickly.  By mid-summer, interest had grown to fifty families, spurred by a letter circulated by our Founders:

“For some time,” it says, “the feeling has been expressed that it would be desirable to create a new Liberal Jewish Organization for our area in Westchester County.  This movement will be a forward-looking, creative undertaking.” 

Within weeks, we had become a congregation.  Volunteers rolled up their sleeves, pledged to attend Shabbat services at a rotating roster of nearby institutions, and built a little, handmade Ark, which lived in the Weinbergs’ basement and was transported by station wagon each week to wherever services were held. 

Our first first Rosh Ha-Shanah service took place on September 9th, 1953, at the Scarsdale Congregational Church, with Rabbi Eugene Lipman at the helm. 

By October, membership stood at over 100 families.  Dues were set at $100.

In one of his first letters to the congregation, Rabbi Lipman wrote:  

“The essential virtue of Reform Judaism is our ability to grow and change as our living needs as Reform Jews grow and change.”³

We are struck, hearing these voices from WRT past, by the clarity, positivity, and farsightedness of their message.  All look to the future.  All speak of growth and change, creativity and progress.  Not one links the establishment of WRT to the survival of the Jewish people even though less than a decade had passed since the gas chambers and the crematoria.  Not one mentions antisemitism, although in 1953 there were still neighborhoods in Scarsdale where it was an open secret that our people were not welcome.  

We remember, on this Yom Ha-Zikaron, back to the days of our Founders.  But when we listen to what they had to say about who we are, and how we got here, we hear an invitation to remember forward, the other kind of remembering.  

For the Jew, memory works both backward and forward.  

Zikaron, memory, comes from the Hebrew root Zayin – Kaf – Resh, or Zecher [.ז.כ.ר], a verb that means both “to bore down,” like a drill, and “to point,” like an arrow.   

Amazingly, this Jewish understanding of memory, memory that works both backward and forward, mirrors a scientific understanding of memory.  Neurological imaging has established that the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory, is also active in dreams and imagination.  What memory does is not so much preserve the past, word for word, image for image, but, rather, link the past, present, and future:  a combination of remembering and imagining.⁴ 

Memory both drills down, through layers of history and experience, and points forward, to undiscovered vistas.  

Without memory—where we’ve been, what we’ve discovered along the way—we cannot imagine where we’re going.  Without memory, we cannot dream what we might become.

So join me now in another act of Zikaron, as we remember forward.

The year is 2053.  

I have just turned eighty, and I feel grateful to share these remarks, delivered on the occasion of WRT’s 100th birthday:

Shabbat Shalom.  

How honored we are to return to WRT for this auspicious occasion.  These days it takes a lot to get Kelly and me on an ElectroJet, especially given the option to Zoom our holograms anywhere on the planet without spending $6,000 on a so-called “economy” round-trip hypersonic ticket.  

Still, for WRT’s 100th, only in-person will do, and I feel especially grateful for all the kind people who have told me that I don’t look a day over fifty.

Appearances notwithstanding, much has changed since I last spoke from this bimah.  Long before WRT officially changed its name to We Reform Together in 2038, this community understood that in a global era, our vision and mission could not remain provincial.  Judaism is not only that thing we do inside a sanctuary or around the dining room table; Judaism is a comprehensive approach to life.  It invites us to apply its wisdom to an ever-changing world, inspiring us to meet the challenges of our time—every time—with courage, integrity, and dignity.  

From the very first, Judaism emerged as a tradition rooted in creative responses to communal trauma:  

Out of bondage in Egypt, we emerged as a People of God, who would never again serve a Pharaoh or any human master, but only God, the One Source of all.  

Out of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans, we emerged as a People of Torah, dedicated to reading together, learning together, praying together, united by the accumulated wisdom we call Torah.  

And out of the smoldering embers of the Holocaust, we emerged reborn as the People of Israel, bound by our determination to revitalize our identity, our culture, and our faith, both within and beyond our ancestral homeland. 

These identities intertwine, a threefold cord that will not break.  Now, in the year 2053, we see how we have had to summon all three identities in confronting the great challenges of our time.  As People of God, People of Torah, and People of Israel, we have had to marshal our People’s collective spiritual, intellectual, and communal resources in order to meet the defining trials and tribulations of our era:  the ravages of climate change, the rise of artificial intelligence, and the global lurch toward authoritarianism.  

Each of these crises has forced us to lean into the transcendent values of God, Torah, and Israel which have always anchored how we, the Jewish People, creatively respond to a complex and challenging world.  

Our desiccated and desecrated little planet now has few communities left unscathed by climate change.  (I say this fully aware that some of you are watching this service on the Immersovision from your summer homes in Nova Scotia and Greenland.)  

We do not use the word “Holocaust” lightly, reserving it for its proper historical definition as the systematic murder of millions at the hands of the Nazis.  But when spelled with a lowercase “h,” holocaust means “to be entirely burned,” and it is no exaggeration to use this word to describe how we have exploited countless ecosystems, endangered and exterminated unprecedented numbers of species, and precipitated the displacement of close to a billion people, making the present-day global refugee crisis tenfold what it was in 2023.  

Amid this grim backdrop we nevertheless applaud how WRT has consistently responded: from building the world’s largest environmentally conscious synagogue (2008), to inaugurating the first major synagogue effort to achieve Zero Waste (2013), to converting to renewable energy at the twilight of the fossil fuel age, to your present work, resettling climate migrants from drowned communities nearby as the Far Rockaways and far-flung as Sri Lanka.  

In order to do all this, we’ve had to remember that we are a People of God, that takes as an article of faith our responsibility to safeguard God’s creation, to stand before the vast and mysterious Universe in humility, awe, and gratitude.  

Technology advances.  We become ever more powerful masters of the world.  We can now manipulate genetics, regenerate tissues, organs and limbs, grow animal proteins in a lab, and, as announced just last week, terraform six square kilometers of Martian soil into a working farm, with seeds from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway.  

But Judaism would remind us that the godlike ability to create and destroy worlds does not entitle us to use and abuse the world for industry, profit, and human benefit.  

Said the psalmist:  לַֽ֭יהֹוָה הָאָ֣רֶץ וּמְלוֹאָ֑הּ תֵּ֝בֵ֗ל וְיֹ֣שְׁבֵי בָֽהּ׃

The Earth is God’s and the fullness thereof, the world and its inhabitants.⁵  

We are but tenants here.  We are not God; we are the People of God, tasked with caring for God’s world.  

Our Jewish values inform how we nurture the world around us, as well as the worlds within us:  the realms of conscience and character that ennoble our humanity.

Could the Founding Families of WRT have envisioned how thoroughly Artificial Intelligence would change our lives, to the point that we now stand on the cusp of a new era in human civilization, one that will fundamentally redefine the nature of human consciousness?⁶

And yet, our Founders labored so that their forward-looking, creative undertaking would never shy away from applying the creative genius of the Jewish tradition to unprecedented challenges. 

Reform Judaism honors tradition while embracing modernity.  It proposes that no matter how much may change in our world, no matter how far we advance in intelligence or power, we must maintain our moral compass. 

To this end, we appreciate that the technologies of our age have allowed us to live longer and healthier lives, to eradicate dreaded diseases, to lift millions from poverty, to explore new worlds.  We enjoy an endless array of consumer goods, entertainment and diversions, comforts and conveniences, custom-tailored to our every preference.  Piping hot synthetic Korean fried chicken from a vending machine?  Sure.  A 3-D-printed bespoke suit and one-of-a-kind Louboutins at the push of a button?  We can do that.  1-hour drone delivery of a custom-built family hovercraft?  Easy.  A streaming holographic sitcom featuring simulated likenesses of all your best friends?  Done.   

At the same time, we have traded off privacy, choice, and autonomy.  Imagine a time, not distant from now, when your thoughts can be uploaded to the cloud, stored, retrievable, transmissible.  You’ll never again forget an appointment, but every mistake you’ve ever made will be remembered, accessible to all of humanity in perpetuity.

Even with the democratization of information made possible by the internet, it should surprise no one that the information technologies of the 21st century have managed to turn our data into profit, allowing powerful interests to become ever more powerful.

And yet, we’re here today for reasons whose value could never be reduced to data points.  We’re here to affirm a powerful idea:  a conversation encompassing millennia and a multitude of voices, all conveying how to live with purpose and creativity in a reeling world.  We are the People of Torah.  We affirm with our lives what Torah affirms with its words:

That life is a gift, not an entitlement.  

That to harm or hurt or humiliate another person violates our dignity and dishonors the image of God in the human being.  

That we are summoned to live beyond ourselves, in service of those who have less and who need more.

Torah principles transcend time and circumstance.  They usually defy what’s trendy, popular, or socially encouraged.  They speak, as my friend and teacher Rabbi Larry Hoffman memorably put it, “in a register that does justice to the human condition.”  That is why they matter now more than ever.  

At some point, everyone agrees (although no one agrees exactly when), artificial intelligence did become intelligent.  Extremely intelligent.  Writing prize-winning biographies / negotiating international treaties / re-conceptualizing particle physics-intelligent.  Throughout human history, deeds both heroic and horrific have been carried out with advanced intelligence.  But we are Jews, People of Torah, and we prize wisdom above intelligence.  Our Founders would be proud that you have continued to embed Torah at the heart of everything WRT does.

In one further way you have kept the flame of our Founders’ vision burning brightly, even in darkening shadows.  The erosion of democracy and the global lurch toward autocracy must continue to be forcefully resisted.  Democracy is not a birthright; it is a struggle that must be won by every generation, in every election.

At the dawn of the new millennium, many optimistically hailed the 21st as the “century of democracy.”  Authoritarian regimes like Malaysia, Myanmar, and Tunisia all became democracies.  Across the globe, the future looked bright.  

What we can say now, in hindsight, is simply this:  we were wrong.

A vast array of contributing factors to democratic backsliding accumulated in rapid succession:  

A rise in violent extremism following 9/11; the swift ascent and crushing fall of the Arab Spring; the social-media-fueled proliferation of conspiracies and lies; the growing disdain for international norms; the exploitation of xenophobia for political gain; the leverage wielded by anti-democratic regimes like Russia, China, and Iran to erode Western confidence in democracy; the silencing of dissent; the banning of books; the empowering of autocrats and their sympathizers.  Meanwhile, with every passing year, checks on abuse of power have deteriorated and “democracy’s opponents have labored persistently to dismantle… [the post-World War II] international order and the restraints it imposed on their ambitions.”⁷

Many of us, watching this disaster unfold in slow motion over the first twenty-five years of the new century, crossed our fingers and held our breath, hoping it would just be a phase. From the view today in 2053, when more than half of the world’s ten billion people live under authoritarian rule, we know better.

Still, this wouldn’t be a Jewish message if I said, “all hope is lost.”  For we are the People of Israel, and we were born to resist tyranny.  From antiquity, Judaism has warned against rulers who arrogate authority unto themselves.  Moses feared that a king would hoard treasure and accumulate stables and harems; that a king would inevitably “bring the people back to Egypt,” which may or may not have been a metaphor.  So Moses demanded that the king must keep a scroll of the Law by the throne at all times.  No person, not even the king—especially not the king—is above the Law.⁸

So you should take pride that, shortly after our rededication as We Reform Together, WRT also became a chartering member of the Alliance for Human Advancement (“AHA”): a collective of spiritual communities and civic institutions all dedicated to the advancement of human freedom, to open spiritual expression, to the promotion of democratic principles.  Since its founding in 2043, AHA has grown from 100 member institutions to over 25,000, operating chapters on every continent, in over 170 countries, and in all 52 United States.  

You have come to realize the great good we can accomplish together as a congregation; but what we can accomplish together as a global community is orders of magnitude greater.  

Throughout my rabbinate, I’ve heard innumerable objections to “organized religion,” a common trope among those who extrapolate a damning appraisal from the (admittedly too many) examples of willfully ignorant fundamentalism and violent extremism.  Such critics, though well-intentioned, paint with too broad a brush, neglecting the unsung heroism of spiritual communities like ours, that do God’s work here on earth, day in and day out, that magnify and multiply the good that any one person could do, acting alone.

We desperately need our congregations, our spiritual collectives.  As the 21st century dawned we entered a period of hyper-individualism.  Families, social clubs, bowling leagues, and especially congregations, began to disintegrate, their prominence in American life fading with each passing year.  

By 2023 the great “dechurching” of Americans had reduced congregational affiliation by at least 15%, with no end in sight.⁹  We began to spend more time with our cell phones than with other people, taking in only those curated sound-bites that would corroborate our already-held views, increasing our isolation even as we boasted of how “connected” our tools had allowed us to become.  We endured not only pandemics of pathogens but pandemics of loneliness, aimlessness, loss of purpose.  Many of us lost our way.

Many forgot that, above all else, our Founders cherished community and understood that Judaism cannot thrive without a People to live it and love it.  We, the Jewish People, have to shoulder the responsibility to keep our sacred enterprise vital.

But you, who have carried this torch of commitment to WRT for a century, understand that congregations must aspire to so much more than providing life-cycle rituals and High Holiday services in exchange for something called “dues.” 

Congregations are a force-multiplier for good.  Congregations are where we, the People of God, Torah and Israel, come together to speak in a register that does justice to the human condition.  Congregations are where we remember: who we are, what matters, what we will accomplish together.

Every time you renew your membership at WRT, you re-member.     

And what you have remembered along the way marks the fulfillment of our Founders’ vision:  that we are not an island, but part of an ecosystem, one in which we all take turns giving and receiving, needing and being needed, and where our actions make a difference that we may not perceive here and now, but which will bless the generations after us.

This ecosystem needs to be nourished and nurtured, day by day and year by year:  not just by your clergy and professional staff, but by you–the congregation.  For all our advancements, when it comes to building a flourishing congregation, there is no substitute for rolling up your sleeves, showing up, and doing the work.

And that, my friends, is what I hope we will remember—backwards and forwards—on this first day of the next one hundred years of our journey.

But, oh: The flasher on the ChronoSync is telling me to wrap this up, and I hear that Jack from Standing Room has prepared a lovely Oneg for us (some things never change), so Kelly and I will look forward to greeting you on the rooftop holodeck¹⁰ after services.

Chazak ve’ematz:  be strong and of good courage, WRT, and may God bless our work, our community, our People, the human family, and this little home we call the world.

1. This is the term favored by the machzor, the High Holiday prayer book; see, for example, the language of the Yom Tov Kiddush and the blessings after the readings of Haftarah. ↩︎
2. Judy z”l and her late husband Charles Weinberg z”l (1920 – 2015) were the last of the original eight founding couples to remain affiliated with WRT until the end of their lives. Their support for WRT remained steadfast throughout our seven decades of growth and evolution, and their descendants continue to remain connected to our congregation. ↩︎
3. Gratitude to WRT congregant, author Barbara Josselsohn, whose essay chronicling WRT, 1953-2018, “Generation to Generation,” presents this background. ↩︎
4. See this article and its bibliography for more. ↩︎
5. Psalms 24:1. ↩︎
6. I would encourage you to read Danny Schiff, Judaism in a Digital Age: An Ancient Tradition Confronts a Transformative Era. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. Schiff’s book deeply influenced the direction of this sermon, and my thinking about the future of Judaism. ↩︎
7. Sarah Repucci and Amy Slipowitz, “The Global Expansion of Authoritarian Rule,” as reported on FreedomHouse.org, 2022. ↩︎
8. See Deuteronomy 17:14-20. ↩︎
9. See Jessica Grose, “The Largest and Fastest Religious Shift in America is Well Underway,” New York Times (Online Edition), June 21, 2023 ↩︎
10. As popularized by the TV franchise Star Trek. ↩︎

Sermon for Parashat Emor | Chai Society Shabbat at Westchester Reform Temple, May 5, 2023

Our annual Chai Society Shabbat, at which we bless our congregants of longest vintage (pro tip: never say “oldest congregants”), and induct the newest “class” of those who have affiliated for 18 years, prompts me to take us on a walk down memory lane.  

This year we look back to 2005, when our newest Chai Society members joined the synagogue. At that point, at the age of 32, I had served for two years as WRT’s associate rabbi, working alongside Senior Rabbi Rick Jacobs, Cantor Stephen Merkel of blessed memory, and Rabbi-Cantor Angela Buchdahl.  Rabbi Jack Stern and Cantor Joe Boardman, now both of blessed memory, lent their friendship, guidance, and support.

Times have certainly changed.  Among other distinctions, I am now not only the oldest, but also the tallest member of the WRT clergy.  

Don’t get too excited.  I am soon to be eclipsed by Isaac, who joins our team full-time on July 1st.  (I will enjoy lording my temporary and not particularly impressive stature over my colleagues for as long as I can, thank you very much).

But back to 2005.  Major headlines included the 2nd inauguration of President George W. Bush, the death of Pope John Paul and election of his successor, Benedict XVI, the terrorist bombings of the London Underground, the withdrawal of Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip, and Hurricane Katrina.

Amid all these, one minor headline also caught my eye.  From the April 2nd, 2005 edition of the Washington Post, it says: “For a Big Conservative Synagogue, a New Style of Rabbi,” and the article goes on to declare that, with the hiring of Francine Green Roston, age 36, “A New Jersey synagogue [Congregation Beth El in South Orange] has secured a small place in Jewish history, becoming the first Conservative temple anywhere with more than 500 families to hire a female rabbi since the denomination began ordaining women in 1985….”

The same year, the Conservative Movement was roiled by a debate about whether or not to ordain gay and lesbian clergy, a decision that they reached in the affirmative the following year.  Given WRT’s own long history of hiring diverse clergy, including clergy who are women, who are gay, and who are Jews of color, it might surprise you to learn that just 18 years ago such matters even made the news; it might also surprise you to learn that the Conservative Movement was not really all that far behind our own Reform Movement, which ordained women beginning in 1972, started admitting openly gay clergy to Hebrew Union College only in 1989, and which hired the first woman to lead a major metropolitan congregation, Rabbi Laura Geller at Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, in 1994: less than 30 years ago.

In other words, the rabbinate, and, at the same time, the cantorate, have been changing rapidly and relatively recently.  And gender, sexual orientation, and skin color are only a few of the lenses through which to observe and explore this phenomenon.  Many other changes—less overt, perhaps, but no less significant—have also transformed the role, definition, and expectations of Jewish clergy, at least in the non-Orthodox world.

The images of cantors and rabbis that I carried into my rabbinate came, as expected, from childhood, growing up at a Reform congregation in Allentown, Pennsylvania:  Cantor David Green, portly and jovial, with a bushy black beard and glasses with Coke-bottle-thick lenses and a magnificent baritone voice, who, when I was 10, took me under his wing to study trope, Torah and Haftarah cantillation, and, later, cantorial nusach; Rabbi Herb Brockman, also lushly bearded, who spoke with passion and eloquence and who blessed the congregation at the end of the service with a formal benediction, hands extended in the sign of the Kohen: “May the Lord bless you and keep you….”

They wore black robes and stood on a high bimah and we listened politely and raptly to the organ and a choir who sang from a loft, heard but never seen.  It was all very impressive.  

When I was a teenager, we also affiliated at a Conservative shul in nearby Bethlehem, where I learned to davven Shacharit on Shabbat mornings, to refine my skills in leyning Torah, and to tutor students for Bar and Bat Mitzvah (a gig that proved to be a whole lot more lucrative than my first after-school job as a Customer Service Representative at Blockbuster Video).

Blockbuster Video:  now there’s a sign of how times have changed.

In a world where you can stream services online (and, hi, we appreciate that you’re joining us out there), thank goodness synagogues like ours have not become the Blockbuster Videos of Judaism.  

We have not resisted change, but, rather, have found meaningful ways to adapt to the relentless march–more like sprint–of technological advancement.  After all, as I often remind us, here at WRT, Reform is our middle name, and our embrace of innovation has long distinguished us as a congregation on the vanguard of Jewish life in America.

Still, change, even when necessary, is rarely easy, and I know that I speak for innumerable colleagues as well when I confess that the changes in the rabbinate and cantorate of the last couple of decades (at least in the non-Orthodox world) have oftentimes knocked us off our keel.  Many of us Reform clergy shed the robe, lowered the bimah, sold the organ, brought the choir out from the loft, picked up a guitar, and hired a world-famous jazz pianist to lift our voices and our spirits.

And that’s just what happened in this room; everywhere else, our work and our role has also changed.  My first rabbinic mentor, Les Gutterman, at my first pulpit, Temple Beth-El in Providence, Rhode Island, where I served as Assistant Rabbi from 2000-2003, received handwritten pink telephone call memos from an assistant he called his secretary, who also took dictation for his sermons and newspaper articles.  In contrast, I was the first rabbi to sign up for Facebook and to use it as a workplace communications tool for reaching high school and college students who had grown up at WRT.

In those days (and yes, it sounds funny even to me to refer to the the year 2000 as “those days,” but, still, “those days” applies), the rabbi was perceived to stand not only above the congregation, but also, in significant ways, above the cantor, with highly differentiated roles and responsibilities:  cantor sings, rabbi preaches.  

And even if this public perception failed to capture the nuanced behind-the-scenes reality of rabbis, cantors, and other leaders, both lay and professional, working together, it nevertheless contained a kernel of truth.  

But that was then and this is now, and cantors today are not merely invested, but ordained with the authority to lead communities alongside rabbis.  Here at WRT, for instance, all of our rabbis and cantors not only lead worship and teach, but also preach, conduct weddings and b’nei mitzvah, namings and funerals, counsel congregants and represent our congregation in local and national leadership positions.  

Just this year, Cantor Kleinman represented WRT at the National Council of AIPAC in Washington, DC, and was recently elected to the Board of the American Conference of Cantors.  

Each week she joins me, the temple president, and Executive Director at our leadership conference and participates actively in temple Board and Executive Committee Meetings.  When I took sabbatical, Cantor Kleinman served as our senior spiritual leader, managing the clergy team and many of the day-to-day decisions for WRT.  

Even as rabbis and cantors have, at least in congregations like ours, begun to share the responsibilities of leadership, we have all seen our perception in the Jewish community shift as well.  Over the last couple of decades, rabbis and cantors have become radically more accessible to the community.  And as we have come down off the bimah—literally and figuratively—congregants have come to know their clergy as human beings, with all the wonderful and beautiful qualities that come with human relationships, as well as the disillusionment that often accompanies the recognition of another’s humanity, with all our flaws and frailty.

In the Jewish tradition, clergy, that is to say, spiritual leaders, today’s rabbis and cantors, sometimes collectively go by the nickname כלי קודש, k’lei kodesh, which means “instruments of holiness.”  

Originally the term applied, in a literal sense, to the vessels used in the ancient Temple–the utensils used by the Kohen, the Israelite Priest, in the sacrificial service; it also applies to things like kiddush cups and Shabbat candlesticks and Seder plates and all sorts of other Judaica you have in your home.  But idiomatically, k’lei kodesh, “Instruments of Holiness,” refers to those who serve as Jewish spiritual leaders.

The original k’lei kodesh, the Kohanim or Priests, were subject to Biblical regulations and restrictions that defined and maintained their status as instruments of holiness.  They were to be kept from ritual contamination and, on account of this, could not even mourn their dead relatives, death being a primary source of ritual impurity.  To this day, as many of you are surely aware, a Jew who derives from priestly lineage, a Kohen, may refuse to enter a cemetery, even to bury a parent.  These restrictions designed to maintain priestly holiness comprise the several opening verses of this week’s Torah portion, Emor.  

Another way of protecting the holy status of the Kohen was by restricting his selection of a wife to a virgin bride from among the Israelite nation—divorcees, widows, harlots, or non-Jews need not apply.

Lest you think that public scrutiny over whom the k’lei kodesh may marry is but an arcane relic of an ancient cult, I would draw your attention to a debate that has, from time to time, garnered public attention, including over the past several months and years.  

For as long as anyone can remember, Hebrew Union College–our seminary, the training ground for Reform k’lei kodesh and other Jewish professionals–has restricted its admission for the rabbinical and cantorial programs based on the religious identity of a candidate’s spouse or significant other.  

From the website of HUC:  

The Reform movement and HUC-JIR share a proud record of reaching out to all who seek to develop their Jewish identity with love and acceptance. Even as our students actively engage in this important work, as rabbis or cantors, we expect them to model a firm and lasting commitment to the Jewish home and the Jewish future through the choices they make in their own family lives. We celebrate the contribution of people of all faiths toward building and sustaining loving Jewish homes, and yet we believe that rabbis and cantors should exemplify a distinct standard of Jewish continuity. Therefore, HUC-JIR will only admit, graduate or ordain candidates who, if in a committed long-term relationship, are in such a relationship with a Jewish partner. It is important that candidates for our program be aware of this policy at the point of application. We encourage you to speak with an admissions director if you have questions or concerns.

To say the least, students have indeed expressed questions and concerns over the last many years and presently the leadership of the seminary is weighing a possible change in policy, yet to be announced.  

Recent decisions by both the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philly and Hebrew College (not to be confused with Hebrew Union College), a trans-denominational Jewish seminary in Boston, to admit candidates in marriages or serious relationships with non-Jewish partners, have accelerated and amplified the debate within Reform Jewish circles about HUC’s own restrictive policy.  

I will not opine here about how I think the decision should go, because I do not wish to exert undue influence on your ability to think through the issue; I will go so far as to say that the fact that this long-standing policy is up for reconsideration is itself another sign of the times, a sign of the changing role of k’lei kodesh, another indicator that Jewish society is grappling with how much its clergy should mirror the Jewish practices and family norms of the people we serve, or should adhere to different (that is, more stringent) standards, the same way the Kohen and the expectations surrounding his choices were different than for those of an ordinary Israelite.  

It’s also a sign of the times that, a little over a month ago, New York passed a law, sixteen years in the making, that authorizes any person to solemnize weddings for one day–a shift in the longstanding state law requiring that only duly ordained clergy or permitted government officials preside over weddings.  

As a result, the rabbis and cantors of WRT might expect to conduct fewer weddings over the coming years, as more and more couples ask friends to officiate and the unique role of k’lei kodesh, at least here in New York, is, as a consequence, diminished.  

A few concluding reflections.  This Shabbat is, for me, bookended by two celebrations.  Just yesterday, I attended the graduation ceremonies of the Hebrew Union College at Temple Emanu-El, that great Reform Jewish cathedral at 65th and 5th, at which degrees were presented to many of my closest friends and colleagues who were ordained in 1998 and who are receiving an honorary 25-year D.D., which stands for “Doctor of Divinity,” but about which the inside joke is that it stands for “doctor of durability” or even, “didn’t die.”  

These friends include Rabbi Ken Chasen whom I met in rabbinical school back in 1996, Rabbi Laurie Katz Braun, who happened to grow up on the same block as me, and Rabbi Daniel Gropper of Community Synagogue of Rye: all of whom served WRT “back in the day,” all of whom have toiled in a milieu of Jewish professional service that is changing faster than any of us ever imagined.  

And on Sunday morning, the clergy team of WRT will all go back to Emanu-El to witness and celebrate the Ordination of the new class of Reform k’lei kodesh, including our own Isaac Sonett-Assor who will be called to the bimah to be ordained Cantor (considerably later in the morning than he would have, had he not hyphenated his name when he got married, but what can you do).

These newly minted spiritual leaders face challenges and opportunities that we have only just begun to contemplate.  As Israeli historian, philosopher, and best-selling author Yuval Noah Harari wrote just this week in The Economist:  

What will happen to the course of history when ai takes over culture, and begins producing stories, melodies, laws and religions? Previous tools like the printing press and radio helped spread the cultural ideas of humans, but they never created new cultural ideas of their own. ai is fundamentally different. ai can create completely new ideas, completely new culture.

And so this Shabbat, at least for me, stands between two windows: one that allows us to appreciate the veteran k’lei kodesh who have adeptly navigated these challenges and changes in Jewish life, and one that allows us to look ahead with joy, excitement, wonder, and yes, a great deal of uncertainty, at the needs and priorities of the Jewish community and its k’lei kodesh in the decades to come.  

In order to succeed, both those of us of longer vintage and those for whom Jewish professional service is still an open vista will need to lean into the enduring relevance of Judaism, our unique value proposition, our undying message and mission:  to bring holiness into a mundane, often vulgar, world; to transform lives with purpose and vigor; to heal the brokenness in hearts and homes and communities; to live beyond ourselves; to teach and model Torah in a world deprived of its sustaining wisdom; and above all, to affirm God in a godless era.

What is most important to understand in this moment is that even as the role of k’lei kodesh evolves, so do the Jewish people whom we serve.  Indeed, the evolution of one cannot be separated from the evolution of the other.  

Together we will ride the current of an accelerating river, the ever-changing and yet eternal river of Judaism, the river of God, Torah, and Israel.  

Sermon for Parashat Tzav 5783, March 31, 2023