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

Sermon for Shabbat Zachor 5783, March 3, 2023

Sermon Delivered at Westchester Reform Temple

Yom Kippur Afternoon, October 5, 2022

The first emotion mentioned in the Torah—this will probably surprise you—comes six chapters in, well after the stories of the creation of the world, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and all their kin.  You might think we’d read about God’s joy in the wonders of creation, or the fear Adam and Eve felt upon their expulsion from Eden, Cain’s jealousy and rage which resulted in the murder of Abel, or Adam and Eve’s grief at the death of their son; but, no.  The first emotion in the Torah belongs to God:

וַיִּנָּ֣חֶם יְהֹוָ֔ה כִּֽי־עָשָׂ֥ה אֶת־הָֽאָדָ֖ם בָּאָ֑רֶץ

“And God regretted having created humankind on the earth,” a sentiment followed immediately by these words:

וַיִּתְעַצֵּ֖ב אֶל־לִבּֽוֹ׃ וַיֹּ֣אמֶר יְהֹוָ֗ה אֶמְחֶ֨ה אֶת־הָאָדָ֤ם אֲשֶׁר־בָּרָ֙אתִי֙ מֵעַל֙ פְּנֵ֣י הָֽאֲדָמָ֔ה מֵֽאָדָם֙ עַד־בְּהֵמָ֔ה עַד־רֶ֖מֶשׂ וְעַד־ע֣וֹף הַשָּׁמָ֑יִם כִּ֥י נִחַ֖מְתִּי כִּ֥י עֲשִׂיתִֽם׃

“And with a sorrowful heart, God said, “I will blot out humanity, which I created, from the face of the earth, along with all the beasts, and the creeping things, and the birds of the sky, for I regret making them at all.”¹

Maybe it says something about God, regret coming first of all feelings.  I think it says more about us:  that the authors of the Torah so identified with the feeling of regret that they saw fit to ascribe this emotion first and foremost to God.  

For while it is true that the God of the Hebrew Bible is anthropomorphic—that is, described with human form and human features (eyes that see, a mouth that speaks, ears that hear, an outstretched arm and a mighty hand, and even, in one of my favorite Biblical expressions, a “nose that glows,” which is how the Torah describes God getting really angry)—it is even more true that the God of the Hebrew Bible is anthropopathic, meaning, described as having human feelings:  a God capable of feeling and acting on love and hate, sorrow and joy, jealousy and rage, disgust and yes, regret.   

There’s actually something comforting to me about this image of a God who expresses regret, and so early in the Torah, too.  For if God can second-guess having created the entire world; if God can say, “no, I really wish I hadn’t done that,” doesn’t that give us a little permission to live with regretting some of our own (considerably less consequential!) decisions?  

Especially on Yom Kippur, this God of regret speaks to me.  It won’t be God’s last time, either, by the way.  God delivers the Israelites from Egyptian slavery only to find them, time and again, to be unruly, uncooperative, unfaithful; and, more than once, God expresses regret in having freed the people in the first place.  

Again, it may say something about the Divine nature, that God can feel regret, wish things had gone differently, but it probably says more about us, that we would enshrine such natural and pervasive human feelings to the Divine.

Another tale from the Torah.   It’s a long and complicated story found in the Book of Numbers, complete with a talking donkey and possibly even a cyclops, but here’s the gist.  It features an unusually flawed protagonist, a Gentile sorcerer named Balaam.  His employer, a fellow named Balak, King of the Moabites, sworn enemy of the Israelite nation, has summoned Balaam to do his dirty work for him:  to curse the Israelites so that they will fall in battle. 

Balaam shows up for his unholy mission, but not before God gets to him and hijacks his ability to curse the Israelites, forcing him to bless them instead. “I can utter only the word that God puts into my mouth,” he confesses.  “When [God] blesses, I cannot reverse it.”  So Balaam stands on the hilltop, gazing down at the Israelite encampment, and instead of damning the people, he graces them with words  now enshrined in the prayer book, recited at every morning service.  “Ma tovu ohalecha Ya’akov, mishkenotecha Yisrael,” “How beautiful are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling-places, O Israel!”²  

While all this is happening, Balaam offers a candid aside.  Gazing at the Israelite encampment, he says, “If only I could die a righteous man.  If only my fate were like theirs!”³

How human of this fallen spellcaster, how poignant, for him to express regret like this.  How real, and how raw, for him to think, “I don’t want my epitaph to say, ‘Sorcerer and Charlatan.’  Let me die the death of the upright.  Let me redeem myself in righteousness before it’s too late.”  

Balaam is saying a prayer that from time to time probably crosses our own minds:  

Please, don’t let me die with regret.  Don’t let my frailties and failings define me.  Please let me go to my eternal rest feeling good about how I lived my life.  Let me share in the fate of the people I admire most, the ones whose names I bless.⁴  

And yet, we all carry regrets, even to the grave, because that too, is what it means to be human.  If God carries regret, why not we?

This penultimate hour of the Day of Atonement, this Yizkor hour, is heavy with feeling.  Not only because we come to this place and this moment with all our stored-up memories and love—all the sorrow that never really goes away, but just finds a sturdier container within us to hold it—but also because we come here with our regrets.  

How could we not?  It is true that grief is another form of love; and it is true that the love we shared with our dear ones—a wife, a mother, a father, a husband, a grandparent, a friend, a teacher, a sibling, a child—was never destined to last.  But it is also true that our love, like all things human, was not devoid of flaws, was not perfect.  It was, and is, a love tinged with regret.

A rabbi I met only once, Sam Karff, was one of the elder statesmen of the Reform Movement and a friend of WRT’s own Rabbi Jack Stern, z’l.  Sam died two years ago.  Contemplating his own mother’s death, he wrote:  “It was not a perfect goodbye which only highlighted that—for all our precious bonding—ours was not a perfect relationship.  There are none.”

Hence this Yizkor time together, and on Yom Kippur no less, day of forgiveness.  Because today we seek not only forgiveness for the living among us, but forgiveness for our dead as well.  

They hurt us sometimes by what they did or said, or what they failed to do or say.  They hurt us by leaving us here alone, alone to negotiate our grief and wounds and memories; they left us alone with our regrets.  Unfinished business, unspoken words, hopes unmet and dreams unfulfilled.  

Come to think of it, we need forgiveness for ourselves, for all that we regret, too.  And so we have this Yizkor time, for remembrance, for letting go of regret, this time, an hour before the gates are closed, for picking ourselves back up in order to move forward with renewed hope, into the new year.

When Stephen Sondheim died the day after Thanksgiving last year, you could count me among the legions of fans and admirers who greeted the occasion with mourning, albeit with only one regret, that I never met him.  (He was on the short list of “people I’d love to have dinner with before I die.”)  

But, speaking of regret—outside of the Torah itself, I don’t think any writer in any genre ever gave better voice to this feeling.  “Send in the Clowns” is a masterclass in regret.  There are many others.  Regret provides the emotional through-line of entire Sondheim musicals:  Follies and Merrily We Roll Along come to mind. 

And then there’s Company, which many of you saw on Broadway this past year in a bold gender-inverted staging that Kelly and I saw in London back in 2019.  Company does something unexpected, at least in Sondheim:  it suggests a way to move forward in life and not languish in regret. 

Company ends with a song called “Being Alive.”  It’s sung by the protagonist, Bobby, a 35-year old bachelor (or bachelorette, in the newest production) who “realizes that being a lone wolf isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”  In the song, Bobby “declares that he wants to take the chance, be afraid, get his heart broken—or whatever happens when you decide to love and be loved,” as a reviewer from the Washington Times once described it.

Sondheim actually tried two other songs to close out the show before (reluctantly) settling on “Being Alive,” which moves away from cynicism, toward hope, away from regret, toward renewal. Regret, the song teaches, is no reason to keep us from living most fully.  

In the opening stanza, love is just 

Someone to hold you too close

Someone to hurt you too deep

Someone to sit in your chair

And ruin your sleep

By the end, Bobby is pleading:

Somebody crowd me with love

Somebody force me to care

Somebody let me come through

I’ll always be there

As frightened as you

To help us survive

Being alive

Death is the price we pay for being alive, and mourning is the price we pay for loving another person deeply, flaws and all.  

Being alive means acknowledging our failings and theirs, the things that hurt us and frighten us.  

Being alive means accepting that to be human is to live with regret.  

Being alive means choosing to live, and to love, despite it all, to move forward, come what may. 

May God’s compassionate embrace enfold our loved ones who have died.  

May God’s eternal presence comfort us in our hour of need.  

And may God’s abiding love move us to give thanks for being alive.

ENDNOTES

¹ Genesis 6:6-7.

² Numbers 24:5.

³ Numbers 23:10.

⁴ Special thanks to my teacher, Rabbi Jonathan Slater of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality (recently retired), for his insight into the theme of regret in this Biblical narrative.