Yom Kippur: Morning Service

Sermon by Rabbi Jennifer Hartman
2020/5781

In the words of poet Langston Hughes:

Well, son, I’ll tell you:

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

It’s had tacks in it,

And splinters,

And boards torn up,

And places with no carpet on the floor—

Bare.

But all the time

I’se been a-climbin’ on,

And reachin’ landin’s,

And turnin’ corners,

And sometimes goin’ in the dark

Where there ain’t been no light.

So boy, don’t you turn back.

Don’t you set down on the steps

’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.

Don’t you fall now—

For I’se still goin’, honey,

I’se still climbin’,

And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

This poem entitled “Mother to Son” has been on my mind a lot lately. I could not tell you exactly when I learned it, but I believe it was in elementary school…so a long time ago.  It is a poem that rises to the front of my consciousness every so often, usually when the future seems uncertain.  There is no question in my mind why this poem has been floating around in my head over the last few months.  This poem portrays a letter written by a black mother to her black son.

You see, the morning after George Floyd’s murder, my son Fred and I went out for our usual morning walk.  It was early.  The summer sun had just risen and the dew was still on the grass.  There was a stillness, a quiet that was simultaneously both eerie and comforting.  Fred did not seem to notice anything different about this particular morning as he ran down the sidewalks of downtown Minneapolis noticing all of the trucks and buses and construction vehicles.  As we walked we passed a father and his son also enjoying the early morning air.  The father and I looked at each other and smiled and then he said: “We have to get them outside before things get crazy again.”  I nodded as we both continued our walks.  But, as we walked away, the full realization of the difference between the trajectory of Fred’s life and that of this little black boy hit me like a ton of bricks, the tears rolling down my face.  Our children, all of them, deserve a better world than the one that we have created for them.  We cannot go back to the way it was, and I know I will never truly understand how bad it has been for my neighbors, my friends.

There is no doubt that COVID-19 has been a tragedy.  In the last 7 months we have struggled to educate our children while working, we have missed time with friends and family that we desperately need.We have replaced gathering at Temple with zoom services for Shabbat, holidays, B’nai Mitzvah and Baby namings.In this time we have said goodbye to loved ones over FaceTime and buried them over Zoom.  We have lost our jobs and we’ve navigated economic hardships we could not have possibly anticipated.  Our loneliness has become suffocating.

At the end of May, George Floyd, an unarmed black man, was murdered with a knee on his neck, and protestors took to the streets.  Since the beginning of this pandemic, we lost some of our greatest advocates for truth and justice in Representative John Lewis and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Each day we wake up bracing for the next news headline telling us what else in the world has broken.  From skies thick with smoke out west, to east coast hospitals overflowing with patients, every time we think that things cannot get any worse...they do.

Yet, with all of the tragedy, we have been given the potential gift of insight.The lush carpet has been pulled back and the striped boards lay bare.  In a poem written by Australian teacher and author Tania Sheko that has gone viral we see all that the virus has revealed about this world. 

It begins in a world where there is poverty and plenty.

Back before we understood why hindsight’s 2020

When we were able to get anything that we dreamed of with a click of a finger.This is when the work life balance broke and families stopped talking to each other.  Before 2020 when our children, where continuously connected to the entire world through their cell phones and devices, yet they always felt alone.We drove our cars and flew our planes to find the stars we could no longer see through the smog filled sky.We filled our sea with plastic and strangled our sea life and starved our birds.  

And while, the poem continues, we drank and smoked and gambled, our leaders taught us why

It’s best to not upset the lobbies, more convenient to die

Sheko portrays a compelling view of how off course our world has gone.  Like the poem, Mother to Son, at first glance both can be seen as only about hardship and adversity.  But, let us look closer at the poem.  When read a few more times, we can see that it is actually about resilience and determination.  

Don’t you sit down on the steps

’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.

Don’t you fall now—

For I’se still goin’, honey,

I’se still climbin’,

After a lifetime of hardship, this mother is still climbing.  What is the source of her strength?  What is the secret to her determination?  How, in a world that is stacked against her, is she still going forward?  There may be many answers, but I believe the answer is hope.  Hope is what has sustained so many of us through the hardest and scariest moments in our lives.  NOT unfettered optimism, NOT idealistic fantasy, but hope.  As Eli Wiesel writes, Just as a person cannot live without a dream, one cannot live without hope.  Hope has sustained the Jewish people.  Hope allows us to acknowledge the challenges of today without losing faith in the end of the story.  It is hope, along with resilience and determination that has allowed us to move forward.

We are all here today because, in many ways, our hope is born of our Jewish faith.It is not in our DNA to despair.On the contrary, in the mystical tradition, hope is a soul trait.  Hope is a characteristic that we mindfully cultivate in order to become fully realized human beings.  The mystical tradition, otherwise known as Kabbalah, teaches that we are all born with qualities of God imbedded within us.  At any time, if we are not feeling this to be true, it is because we are unable to access them.  Yet, through training and self-reflection we can bring these forward.  Within us, right now, we all have the capacity for hope. We will still be confronted with despair, but we have the ability to convert it into hope. 

In fact, we know we cannot “command” ourselves not to despair; it is inescapable at times.  In such moments, we may instinctively lash out against even those we love, sometimes even against ourselves. This is when we learn to hold ourselves with compassion and use the energy generated by our despair to invite hope in: we utter a word of prayer for God to be with us; we call a trusted friend with whom we can share our anguished thoughts and feelings; we go out into nature; we read inspirational literature; we take an action, even a small one, against injustice. If our despair can lead us to action then it can also restore our hope.

With Judaism as our guide, we have the ability to continue to climb, even when the staircase looks impossibly steep.  It is our Jewish values and teachings that will allow each one of us to lift our heads out of the self-isolation and the fear of change and begin to pay attention to the change that is already occurring.  

Pay attention to the hospital workers living out the value of pikuach nefesh, saving a life, in their daily work with Covid-19 patients and all patients – especially those navigating terminal illness during this time of separation and isolation – speaking with and saying goodbye to loved ones over FaceTime. 

Pay attention to those patients living every day with courage and conviction, living out the value of choosing life even when they know they will die soon.

Pay attention to the aerospace workers in Massachusetts who put tikkun olam, making the world a better place, ahead of profits and demanded that their factory be converted to ventilator production.  

Pay attention to the Floridians holding the government accountable by standing in long lines because they couldn’t get through by phone to the skeletal unemployment office.  Their actions reminded all of us of the Jewish value of lo ta’ashok sachir - to treat all workers fairly.  

Pay attention to the residents of Milwaukee, who braved endless waits, hail, and contagion to vote in a special election making sure that, as the talmud teaches, a ruler was not chosen without consulting the community.  They did not allow the virus Al tifros min hatzibur – to separate them from their community.  

And, closer to home, pay attention to the thousands upon thousands of people who marched for the value that EVERY person is created in the image of God. 

The time is now for us to act on all that we have realized!  For, while the temptation is to wonder when things will get back to normal?  The challenge is to ask, how will we reinvent, transform, and adapt for the future?  

The last 7 months have brought disruption to all of our lives.  We have postponed, cancelled, changed, and reimagined so many milestone events.  We know that there is no real “redo” for any of these things, and, if Judaism teaches us anything, it is that going back is not the goal.  Our Torah portion this morning reads: Atem Nitzavim kolhem hayom - I say to you THIS DAY, I have set before you life and blessing, death and curse, choose life so that you and your descendants shall live.  

This is our time to choose life by reimagining, reinventing, rethinking.  This day Black lives do matter, this day women’s rights are human rights, this day we have to listen to our earth crying out from beneath its burden, this day our health care is not the same for all who are sick, this day our children are suffering from failing school systems.  The video The Great Realization continues with a prophetic vision of what our world could look like.

Sometimes we must get sick, in order to get better.  This day let us commit ourselves to the healing, the realization of the dreams, of the vision, of a better future to which this pandemic is pointing.  Let us not give up on the hope that Langston Hughes described so eloquently. 

Let us not turn back, 

Let us not sit down on the steps, 

‘cause we find its kind of hard,

Let us keep going,

Keep climbing up,

This day when we choose life.

Erev Yom Kippur/Kol Nidre: Traditional Service

Sermon by Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman
2020/5781

There once was a rabbi who escaped disaster and fear from a small town in Russia. He escaped to find a safe haven in a small Hungarian town right outside Debrecen called Hoidenanash. This rabbi, when it was safe for him to return home, he left the family in this small town a gift. It was an ark covering, and he said to the family, “This parochet, this beautiful ark covering — I want you to have it to thank you for all that you have done for me. I want you to use this parochet as a chuppah for your family. The generations to come will be married under this parochet, and your family will have many descendants.”

Fast forward. 

The Holocaust came, and that parochet made it here to the United States safely. Frank and I were married under it 36 years ago. We stood under that parochet and felt the generations of our family—those who died in the Holocaust, and those surrounding us who lived. Out of the brokenness and disaster of that rabbi’s life in Russia, and of the Holocaust, was a new blessing — a blessing that began a long and beautiful journey.

My father-in-law, Dr. Stephen Hornstein, told that story at our wedding and we felt the power of both the brokenness and the blessing. 

Rebecca Solnit tells us that in disaster the world is changed and our view of it. She tells us that what we deem important shifts, and what is weak actually falls apart under the new weight of that disaster. What is strong endures, and what is hidden emerges. Mother Nature knows this for a fact. On the floor of the forest are pods that are held shut by resin. Inside, these pods are new seedlings, and these pods only open up when there is a forest fire. Through the fire and the brokenness these pods create new life in the forest. And with the horrific and tragic forest fires that are out west, we only pray these pods will remain and survive and open up. With its devastation it cannot replace, but there can be a new a growth emerging out of what was hidden.

Judaism understands this power, and we all know it. The stories we have heard throughout our lives. Eve in the Garden of Eden — it is said that Eve actually ate from the Tree of Knowledge knowing that the idea of the garden and paradise would not teach us, and so we got thrown out so we could become partners with G-d in healing this broken world.

Jacob who became Israel — that story is so well-known. He struggled and wrestled and he asked for a blessing, and received it. And when it was all over, Jacob was limping, was still broken.

And then we have Moses and Miriam. They are at the sea. Here they are, between water and the pharaoh’s army. And before they can truly see the water break, they have to go in with small steps in order for the dry land to emerge. What was hidden emerged, and our people came out on the other side free from slavery.

Yom Kippur is a time where we are supposed to bring our brokenness. We are invited into this holy space, saint and sinner alike the liturgy tells us. No matter how far one has strayed from our tradition, no matter what you have done we are coming together — at-one-ment — together  because Yom Kippur can heal us and make us one. 

Now, it is funny that every year after Yom Kippur somebody calls me and says, “Rabbi, I didn’t run to do sin, but that’s what it said in the Vidui.” “Rabbi, I didn’t take a bribe or give a bribe. Why do I have to say it?” 

And then there are the ones that we all know. Gossip. Irreverence. It is about this idea that all of us are together as one, and that we can be here for someone’s weakness to become another person’s strength. 

In ancient times the priests use to burn incense on Yom Kippur. It was called ketoret. And the ketoret were a variety of different spices, but there was always one spice that was foul smelling. You ask why. Because the idea that all of the spices together, when they burn together, it is as though the community comes together. All of us have something to ask forgiveness for. All of us have our weaknesses and all of us have our strengths. And when we come together as a community on Yom Kippur, on this Kol Nidre, we are told the power of being together, the power of this day to heal us, to make things better, to move us to acts of righteousness and hope and courage. 

Now we come as individuals, and that is a very interesting dilemma, isn’t it? We so often want to get rid of the things in our very personalities that we don’t like. Vulnerabilities and fears that we’d rather keep at bay. And what our tradition teaches us is actually that we have to bring all the different parts of us together, and that we have to give voice to even those things that we are afraid of or that we don’t like in ourselves. Sometimes we naturally want to take the best of all the other people that we know in our lives and put them in our being and get rid of the things we don’t like. Like we want to be as entrepreneurial as Steve Jobs, we want to be as beautiful as — you decide for yourself who that might be, or we want to be as smart as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. It’s been said that she’s a super hero; I’ve heard it many times. She does actually have an action figure, which is pretty cool. And she did so much for women throughout time, but we also know that we all are human no matter how big our lives have been. You and I and everybody, we sometimes feel competent and confident, like we can do it all, and are really smart. And then there are other times we feel like a complete imposter. It is the reality. We feel the both/and. That is what’s so important. 

Temperament and personality make the day. One of my favorite lines is, “You are perfect the way you are, and you need a lot of work.” You see, we can change greatly, but not fundamentally. We are brought into this world with so much and we need to bring out those vulnerable, scared aspects of ourselves that we will nurture and care about. Because when we nurture the inside reality, then it expresses itself as tolerance rather than judgement, of understanding rather than dismissal. 

When we disavow those parts that we don’t like in ourselves, it is said that they boomerang right back at us. They don’t go away, we just need to give them a microphone so that we can hear and we can transform the parts that need tempering in our personalities, one psychoanalyst said it beautifully.

You see, the internal work we have to do on this Yom Kippur — it’s not a construction project. It’s actually a renovation project. We might need to put a chair in the corner of the room, or rearrange the room so that some parts of ourselves can have a voice. And others that maybe have had too much of a voice can find some quiet. That is about coming together, of being human, of knowing the brokenness if each of us can become one and whole.

So what do we do in this year that feels so broken? A year of pandemic, a year of fires and hurricanes, a year of discontent. How are we going to find the hidden that must emerge? How do we find and, like Jacob who became Israel, understand that wrestling with the brokenness is what we need to do?  

Let me be clear: the brokenness is not the blessing. The blessing is in the ability of each of us to demand something different. To do the work internally and in our community. The blessing is Jacob. We might be limping afterwards, but we will be blessed.

There is a beautiful Midrash in Lamentations Rabbah (14:49). It is a midrash about a king. You can actually say most of the time a Midrash king equals G-d; queen equals G-d. The king built a chuppah for his son. His son was not very appreciative. Actually, the Midrash basically says the son was a brat. So the king destroys the chuppah, thinking that the son doesn’t deserve such a beautiful gift. But the son’s tutor, the son’s teacher, took one of the broken poles of the chuppah and made a flute. The tutor made music out of the brokenness. The tutor made music for G-d. 

Thirty-six years ago Frank and I stood under that parochet that became a chuppah; we felt blessed. Even though the chuppah had been through so much — the brokenness of destruction and oppression and hatred — in a remarkable way, that chuppah had more blessings than I can even articulate. We stood under that chuppah and felt those blessings all around us. And it’s interesting, at every wedding we end our service, the ceremony, with the breaking of the glass, don’t we? Out of the brokenness comes the blessing. Out of the brokenness comes the celebration. Out of the brokenness comes the work that we must do — that everybody must do — to help a community be at one. To help each individual to be at one. 

So what else to do today in this broken year, in this broken time, in the brokenness that we bring to the sanctuary via streaming, the brokenness of it all? Well, I’ll tell you. We’re going to break a glass, and then send you off to do the work Yom Kippur. 

Mazel Tov.

Rosh HaShanah: Morning Service

Sermon by Rabbi Sim Glaser
2020/5781

Fear

As we celebrate Rosh HaShanah we are afforded the opportunity to express gratitude for our blessings. Even unusual places where blessing might be found. Zoom, for instance, has blessed my life in many delightful ways. Who knew how well a jacket and a tie would go with pajama bottoms? And that mute button! What’s going to happen when we get back up on the bimah and you are sitting in the pews and we can’t mute you as we have been doing? 

As the new year begins, we also weigh the consequences of our actions of the preceding year, and what we might have done differently. I was saying to myself only yesterday, “If I only I could go back to February and buy shares of Zoom stock when it was trading at $118 and has since quadrupled…” But I digress.

Over the past few months we have received many kind words about Temple’s ability to adapt to our unique and challenging circumstances. In fact, while some religious communities deliberated over whether it was kosher to use electronic media on Shabbat or Yontif, Reform congregations around the country pretty much jumped in doing virtual services, classrooms, counseling sessions, funerals, weddings, and b’nai mitzvah celebrations fluidly. My biggest challenge was keeping the Torah I had brought home away from the family dog who has never smelled that much animal skin in one place before. My dog Flora was begging me to let her do a devour Torah! Don’t worry, it didn’t happen.

Additionally, the word “zoom” has increased its status as a verb: “Shall we zoom?” “It’s been nice zooming with you.” “Hey, I was zooming with my friends.” “Should we text or should we zoom?” 

Thinking about “zoom” as a verb reminded me of how the “reform” in Reform Judaism has also been long regarded as a verb. Not only did we reform Judaism 200 years ago, we have never stopped reforming! Our bold, audacious movement has always embraced change. And that reforming has often required great courage and intentionality during difficult times. 

A notable example is the bold 1983 Patrilineal Descent ruling that recognizes the child of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother as a Jew. A decision that sent shock waves through the Jewish world. Imagine the chutzpah of the largest movement of Jews in the United States changing the very definition of who is a Jew! But in the long run we saved tens of thousands of souls who otherwise would have been turned away from living Jewish lives, and their children and grandchildren after them.

Such a decision had to transcend fear of the consequences. One had to have faith that, despite our profound trepidations, we were doing the right thing and move on that assumption. 

An even more dynamic shift occurred now 48 years ago in the ordination of the first woman rabbi, Sally Priesand. Had other movements not followed suit they might not exist today. There are even branches of Orthodox Judaism that are now in the process of ordaining women, something that many believed would and could never occur. The progressive movement of Judaism has long been at the center of Women at the Wall in demanding the right to bring a sefer Torah to the women’s section of the Kotel.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was drafted at the Reform Movement’s Religious Action Center in Washington. It is also a hallmark of our movement to have taken the lead on immigration and sanctuary congregations. After much discussion on the consequences of assuming that posture, we forged ahead, knowing it was the right thing to do. Were we concerned about the fallout? Absolutely we were. Did we let it stop us? Absolutely not!

If we allowed our fear of the consequences to rule the day we would be fossilized and frozen, time would march on without us. But Reform Jews face their fears and thus we remain dynamic.

If we have learned anything during the past several months, it is that we cannot go forward governed by fear. We all have seen someone in the grip of fear — the staring eyes, the shivering, the flailing at self-defense to try and articulate what is happening. The anger that fear generates between one person and another. The retreat into safe monolithic camps. This cannot be the kind of posture our God wants us to take in a real world with real crises. 

Fear led many of us to make really moronic decisions over the past several months. I am reminded of the sign someone posted on an empty drugstore shelf which read: “To the people who have bought out the entire supply of hand sanitizer, may I remind you that you have left none for the rest of the population to protect themselves and thus not infect you?” Or the liquor store where all the six packs of beer were cleaned out, except Corona Beer. Or my west coast siblings reporting a deserted Chinatown in San Francisco because folks didn’t want to be exposed to the “Chinese flu.”

And yet for all of human history, fear has been a powerful motivator. According to social scientists, fear makes us hold more tightly onto what we have, and to regard the unfamiliar more warily. Put simply, fear makes us want to be protected, regardless of the reality of the threat. 

At this critical moment in our world I believe it is important for us to sit up and take notice of any news, or policy, or demagoguery that seeks to alter human behavior by poisoning minds with fear. If somebody is preaching fear rather than hope or faith, you can be sure they are misguided, and are leading us down a rabbit hole that does not have our best interests at heart.

We know that living without fear is impossible. But our Jewish tradition teaches us that it is possible to fear wisely, to fear with courage, to change our fear reaction from immobility and retreat to constructive action.

There are two different Hebrew words for fear: Yirah and Pachad.

Pachad is the projected or imagined fear of something. Pachad is the over-reactive, irrational, lizard-brain fear: the fear of horrible rejection that will destroy us, or the fear that we will simply combust if we step out of our comfort zones.

The second Hebrew word for fear is yirah. Yirah is the fear that overcomes us when we suddenly find ourselves in possession of considerably more energy than we are used to, we suddenly inhabit a larger space than we are used to inhabiting. It is also the fear we allow ourselves when we are standing on sacred ground.

If you’ve ever felt a deep calling in your heart, or uncovered an authentic dream for your life, or felt a mysterious sense of inner inspiration around a project or idea, and it terrified you, you have experienced yirah. This is the fear that emboldens us to make constructive, albeit sometimes risky, decisions for ourselves and for the betterment of our world. 

Yirah has a tinge of exhilaration and awe while pachad has a sense of threat and panic. Pachad freezes us in our steps, or causes us to react robotically, while yirah calls us to greater things. 

These days there are many things being called to our attention to be feared — the fear of others who don’t think the same way as we do, the fear of a warming planet, the fear of the foreigner at our borders, the fear of totalitarian authority, and foreign espionage. And they are often brought to our attention to stun us into frozen submission.

A call to fear the immigrant is a classic appeal to pachad. The very reverse of the biblical injunction to welcome the stranger! Instead, we become frozen in our places and demand barriers to keep this perceived threat at bay. The Jewish people know firsthand the fatal consequences of turning away desperate refugees without a timely and fair hearing. Our ethical teachings require us to extend the same opportunities to those escaping violence. 

This coming year of 5781 is going to demand courage in the face of adversity. Most of us will experience fear, but which kind of fear will it be? The destructive pachad or the empowering yirah? 

In the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, no less than 40 times, God comforts us with the words al tirah, do not fear. It is a timeless message for our people that is as important in our time as ever. God is not saying to have no fears — that ain’t going to happen. Rather, God is telling us to push through our healthy fears and keep them in check.

The God I believe in is not bent on scaring the living hell out of us. The God of justice and mercy wants us to create a society in which all human beings are endowed with dignity and blessed with security. The fear that we call yirah may be frightening to us because we know it is challenging us to enact Divine change!

One of the most profound narratives in the Torah involves the scouting out of the new territory promised to the Israelite nation. The spies that returned give a report based entirely in pachad —an irrational fear of the unknown. And because of that reaction, what occurs? An additional 38 years of wandering are mandated. There is no moving forward when pachad is the guiding motivator.

And the terrifying story we just heard chanted, and that we listen to every Rosh HaShanah morning — the story of Abraham and Isaac on Mt. Moriah — is the chronicle of a man about to do something really stupid out of pachad —out of fear — to take the life of his beloved son. The pivotal moment comes when Abraham’s God says: Al tishlach yad’cha el hana’ar —do not lay your hand upon the lad —ki yadati ki yir’ah Elohim ata! —I know you are one who fears God. Or to put it another way: I know you are scared about what lies ahead of you; it is scary! But don’t let your fear make you a fool! 

In essence, we are not a fear-based people and we don’t operate with blind allegiance!

There will likely be moments of fear this year for each of us. But I pray it will be not pachad —the fear that stops us cold in our tracks, but yirah —the sensation of outrageous audacious possibilities. The fear that leads to hope! Taking a chance of getting to know someone different from ourself; taking the risk to make ourselves bigger than we are today; allowing our dreams to take flight and not be held captive by the possibility of failure. 

May we someday look back at 5781 and say that was the Jewish year we faced crises, but transformed fear into faith that we can and will affect Tikkun— we can and will repair a broken world.

L’shana tova.

Rosh HaShanah: Confirmation Service

Sermon by Rabbi Jason Klein
2020/5781

Charge to Confirmands

Shanah tovah, everyone.

Earlier this week, in a very quiet Temple Israel, I put on my face mask and traveled to the floor we affectionately call the Lower Level, and visited the consecration class photograph of 2009, 5770, which you likely saw at the beginning of this service. I struggled a bit. It was easy to pick out Darcy standing alongside you, Shiri, your kindergarten teacher, and our clergy, but it was harder for me to recognize most of your faces right away. Luckily I had Wendy and Abby’s help and I started to see more clearly—Gigi’s stance, Robert’s smile, Melinda’s face. And now, eleven years later, some have gone and some relative newcomers have arrived. I am grateful that you are all here.

You started this afternoon echoing a long-time Temple Israel custom in virtual space. Since you could not pass actual sifrei torah, Torah scrolls, to one another, peer to peer, symbolizing a more adult relationship with Jewish tradition and values as you make your way through adolescence, you shared lessons from this summer, a summer with a bit of a quality of the Passover seder: “Why was this summer different from all other summers?”

The Torah portion that we read next Shabbat is called Ha’azinu, It is the last before Simchat Torah, Moses’ final song of warning to the Israelites before they would cross the Jordan into the land of Israel and he would finish his 120 year life on earth. There is a curious scribal tradition for Ha’azinu. Ordinarily words in the Torah might look something like this:

This is the very beginning of the Torah, Bershit barah, in the beginning, God created, written in a style that appears to be prose. You might also be familiar with a different scribal tradition in the Torah, the tradition of scribing Shirat Hayam, the Song at the Sea, in a different way. The Israelites have escaped Egypt, have crossed over the Sea of Reeds, and are now singing out their joy. 

It has been noted that the way the song is written may resemble two sides of the sea parting with our ancestors crossing in between. The text is both separate and yet connected.

This week’s Torah portion is different; it also appears in verse but in two mini-columns:

Why? Jhos Singer (in Torah Queeries) notes that it is as if at the Song at the Sea there was the beginning of separation—presumably from slavery in ancient Egypt, shown in the scribal tradition; in Ha’azinu, that separation is even more dramatic. There is a column of empty space between one column of text and the other. A whole generation of slaves has died in the 40 years in the wilderness; practically the entirety of the book of Deuteronomy, the last book of the Torah, is Moses’ warning to the people that the stakes will be higher now; the people will be more accountable in their own land, they will be more subject to outside influence as well. How separate are the columns? How wide is the space? Have the parents taught their youth the best lessons they were taught by their own parents growing up? Will the youth remember the lessons of their parents? Will there be a chasm between generations? 

We celebrate Confirmation in the middle of your teenage years to acknowledge that, in the words of Sharon Shorofsky Mack, separation is a lifelong journey. There are likely some ways in which you all may feel a greater sense of independence in and even from your family of origin that you did at the time of your b’nai mitzvah, but you are still a ways off from being further from home in that way that the post–high school years may bring. Confirmation celebrates your ongoing choice—to be engaged in Jewish community, to act Jewishly, and to grow in our faith, our doubts, our hopes, and our dreams.

About a year ago, you all came together; some had known each other since kindergarten or even nursery school; others just met in Minda Hall on Temple’s Lower Level. And in lots of ways, by sharing highs and lows, talking about Jewish tradition from kabbalah to contemporary music, reflecting on your own growth, half of you traveling to our nation’s capital and lobbying for what you cared about, reintegrating with the rest of the group, and transitioning to this world of remote learning and connection, you have become, in your own way, a kehillah, a community within a larger community.

“Yesterday was history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift. That’s why they call it the present.” Today is a gift. You are all together in a way that was unpredictable a year ago—intellectually and emotionally so connected, even when physical togetherness is different. You have likely spent more time in person near your parents and your siblings than you might have imagined these past six months. Perhaps sometimes this is challenging. But it is real. It is the present. It is the moment. It is a gift. That’s why we call it the present. 

Scene after scene in the controversial and thought-provoking Netflix series “13 Reasons Why” reveal adult after adult who somehow just don’t get it. We as the viewers maybe see something obvious about a child who is struggling, about a teenager who is distressed. And somehow these adults appear somewhat oblivious to some obvious cues and clues, leading to a variety of complicated, painful, and tragic consequences for these teenagers.

You are a group who gets it and continues getting it more and more, understanding each other, who appreciates—each of you in your own way—when people show up for you and when you have the opportunity to show up for other people. These six months and now the time ahead, I believe, has provided you opportunities to grow with your family and grow yourselves that you may not have had in other circumstances, and I hope you will feel like a great blessing in the long run. I believe you will. Sure, you have still had to learn a certain kind of independence, a kind of resilience, but you have also learned to connect and reconnect to others near and far in whole new ways, ways in which I believe will come to serve you well in the long term.

You continue to grow in a world that needs you. Sometimes there seems like a gap, like in that Torah reading next week across the generations—sometimes generations talk past one another, you know—all the stuff the “hey boomer” jokes are made of. But the reality is that the generations are intertwined, like the scribal image of the Song at the Sea, the Israelites crossing—one generation entangled with the next. The world as your parents’ generation has shaped for you and that you have found has been wonderful in so many ways—miraculous ways that are hard to count, but it is also profoundly broken. This year of being reawakened to the global climate crisis, and this has been a year—and I believe we are only at the beginning—of re-understanding the American story as one of deeply seated racism that has needed to be undone for hundreds and hundreds of years. We want you to be connected to us like the Song of the Sea, but I hope you will also find the breaks in the columns when you need them, because sometimes the world needs something brand new, and we are depending on you to get us there.

I know Abby, Wendy, all our clergy and your teachers join me in saying we look forward to continuing to learn and grow with you.

Shanah tovah and mazel tov!

Erev Rosh HaShanah: Traditional Service

Sermon by Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman
2020/5781

On average we breathe between 12 and 16 breaths every minute. By the time we are 50 years old, we have 400 million breaths. This is truly a remarkable reality; a sense of miracle. Physically, of course, breathing gives oxygen to every cell in our bodies. It is amazing to see the beauty of breath come into this world with an inhale, and we exit with a last exhale. The breaths of life: breathe in, breathe out.

In Judaism, breath is a part of what it means to be G-dlike, to have the divine essence in us. It is about remembering every morning we say elohai nishamov shenatata bi t’horah hi. Every morning we say, “G-d, you have implanted our soul within us. You have formed it. You have created it. And you have breathed it into me.” 

In Genesis, G-d’s breath gives life. G-d’s breath hovers over the surface of the water. G-d gives breath to all the animals on the land, the birds in the sky, and all the creeping things on the ground. G-d gives breath. From that dust of the Earth, G-d breaths into the nostrils of the first human being the breath of life. It is amazing. It is miraculous. A daily miracle 20,000 times a day.

Covid-19 takes away the oxygen in our bodies like no other respiratory disease, and it doesn’t always show distress. In Norway, Dr. Marie Seim visited a man in his home. He was in his 60s and he had flu-like symptoms for over a week. Of course, with Covid-19 on her mind, she walked into his living room and could not believe what she saw. She saw this man sitting up, smiling – not looking upset or distressed at all. His breaths were fast and shallow, and he had a tint of blue around his lips and on his fingers. Dr. Seim really did not think that he was as sick as he really was until she measured his blood oxygen. Normally our blood oxygen is well above 90 percent. Her device read 66 percent. She thought she had it upside down and so she, again, measured the man’s oxygen; it was 66 percent. She called the ambulance. 

Covid-19 has scientists and health workers perplexed. Really. They walk in and here are people who have such low oxygen levels that healthcare workers would expect them to actually be incoherent or in shock. But instead, these individuals are sitting in their chairs talking to their physician and calling people on their cell phones. 

Silent hypoxia, it is called. It is the reality of truly giving one this consent, this view that they’re okay but really they’re in deep, deep distress. This is Covid-19. It is a respiratory disease that can quietly take your breath away.

It is amazing what we are living with in our times. Many of us have known people who have had Covid-19. And some of us might have even experienced what Dr. Seim experienced. But what’s amazing to me is this silent hypoxia, if I were a biblical writer, I would actually think that this is a reflection of our social reality. That actually, in so many ways, our social body is being deprived of oxygen. That we go about our day as poverty increases and homelessness is all around; where people are having difficulty finding food; one out of every five children doesn’t have food. 

Racial inequity, police brutality, pandemics. It is really this possibility of finding the symbolism of this silent hypoxia, of where we go about our lives talking on the phone acting as though the problems of this world are too big or overwhelming for us to take on. Or worse yet, we are in denial and we deny that they even affect us, the problems of this world – the epically, biblically, possible problems in this world. That they don’t even affect us. 

That seemed to change on May 25. Here in Minneapolis at 38th and Chicago, when George Floyd yelled out, “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe,” as a Minneapolis police officer put his knee on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds. “I can’t breathe.” 

In July the bodycam coverage was released, and we found out a few new things. That the police officer as we knew had his hands in his pocket, but we heard from the first time his words. His words not paying attention or empathetic to the distress that George Floyd was in. “I can’t breathe.” The officer said it sure takes a lot of breath, a lot of oxygen, to talk.

George Floyd went into shock. He became incoherent. And his battle cry – I can’t breathe – was at the center of demonstrations throughout this world. It is the moment where that idea of breath was taken away. And for us, that cry is to be in the presence and to fight for racial justice and against police brutality.

When I was 20 years old I was at an urban studies program in Chicago. I all of a sudden was living and learning in the heart of the city. In this diverse world that I had never been in before, I took a class; it was Racism in America. The teacher, Pat Berg, she was the first person to confront me about my own racism and implicit bias. She made sure that all of the white students in that seminar had a reckoning with ourselves and became truth-tellers about our own history and our own sense of race, or the lack thereof. And so she was a contender. This strong and compassionate black woman became one of the most important educators in my life. She changed my world. She helped me see things differently.

My grandparents, like many of yours, were immigrants to this country from Russia. They came here to escape anti-Semitism, and to create a world and a life that was better for their children and their grandchildren. My parents, they were good and loving people. They worked hard. And my father, a doctor, he wanted to help people. But in that seminar, I had to come to terms with the reality of the phrases used in my house about the black community; perspective and opinions shared. I had to become a truth-teller about my own background. It isn’t just what my parents and grandparents said. It was the television programs I was watching in the ‘60s and ‘70s; it was the commercials that were on; it was the school that I went to, and the lack of diversity; the neighborhood I up in. On and on and on. I had to wrestle with the realities of the life that I was raised in and I had to tell the truth. It was so important. 

In that seminar there were times I got defensive. I got fragile. I got upset. I didn’t understand. I felt misunderstood. But what was amazing is Pat Berg just kept on quietly, strongly, loudly telling me the realities of racism in this country. And I know with every breath I have that I have to wrestle with that every single day of my life. And I have tried from that moment on; I have been successful some and I have failed others. And I know that confronting racism is not comfortable. There is discomfort in that process, and I bring it on because it is the only way that I will grow. It is the only way that I can change. It is the only way that I can be a part of the solution, not the problem. 

Immediately after George Floyd, it was amazing to see what happened here at Temple. My phone started ringing constantly. Congregants from white Ashkenazi backgrounds were saying Temple has to do something. People who had never spoken about race, who had never come to any program about race, all of a sudden were calling me and wanting us to do something; wanting to make it better, wanting to be a part of a world that stops systemic racism. They didn’t always know what to do. They didn’t always have the words to do it. But they wanted Temple to do something. 

We started a white ally group, and that group is here to support our congregants of color group that started over a year ago. Jessi Kingston, who is a member of our Board of Directors, and I are partners in this work here at Temple Israel to confront racism, to make sure that we become anti-racist in fighting the fight against systemic racism. We reached out to all of our congregants of color to make sure that they knew we were thinking of them and wanted to know how they were doing. Of course as time went on and the violence in the streets happened, many people called and were unsure how to understand it. Others were upset about it, and actually began to disconnect from their initial desire to do something. Let me be clear: I condemn violence. I condemn what happened on those streets. That was broken glass. But I do understand that if we don’t get to the root of things, that that will never change. 

Congregants at Temple were directly affected by that violence, businesses destroyed, and broken glass and chaos outside the living room windows of people who were afraid. We need to also understand, as frightening as it is, as absolutely unacceptable, we have to get to the roots of things. We have to look at this broken world. 

Judaism believes that the world is broken. We were kicked out of the Garden of Eden because we were not ready to take on paradise, and the hopes and dreams of a perfect world. So we are not going to find that perfect world or the garden until we do the work in this world.

John Lewis, may his memory be for a blessing; he actually told us the importance of what it means to fight for freedom. He says, “Freedom is not a state, it’s an act.” It’s not some garden set in a plateau set in this beautiful place where you can eventually sit down and rest. That’s not freedom. John Lewis reminds us that good trouble is about the freedom of the work we all have to do in every generation. Freedom is doing that work. Freedom is about the hard work, not being fragile. Finding a place that it’s okay to feel uncomfortable because that’s how we grow. 

In this work I have to be honest. We’re going to break a little, too. It’s just part of it. In apartheid South Africa there’s a story that I love about a white teacher who actually decides that his school of all-white students is going to play hockey with an all-black school. His name is Robert Mansfield and he did this until his Board of Education told him he could no longer do it. So Mansfield resigns in protest. Emanuel Nene is a leader of the black community is apartheid South Africa at the time, and he goes and seeks out Mansfield and he says to him, “I want to meet the man who doesn’t want to prevent children from playing with each other. I want to join you in your fight.” And Mansfield responds, “You’re going to get wounded.” And Nene responds, “I don’t care about the wounds, because when I get up there -- and I am going to get up into the heavens – the holy one will ask me, ‘Where are your wounds?’ And if I say I have none, then the holy one will respond, ‘Was there nothing worth fighting for?’ And I cannot answer that question.” That’s what’s being asked of us today. Is there something worth fighting for? Where are our wounds? 

Rabbis Minda and Shapiro and countless laypeople have decided to stay in the city. Temple Israel is a beacon – a beacon of social justice, a beacon of Judaism, a beacon of religious voice – and we have stayed here because we understand that it is up to us. We have the possibility of helping, we have the brain-trust, we have our circles of influence, and we have the power to make change. Where are our wounds? What is worth fighting for? Because for me, if we sit out on this one then I just wonder, and I ask you, what will our history say about us? What will we say to the holy one when the holy one asks us where are your wounds? What will our precious city say if we sit this one out because it’s too complicated? 

I love this complicated world. I am eager to do the work that we need to do. And so, our white ally group made a bold statement. They wanted to do something that was very essential and powerful. So the ally group went to the Board of Directors and asked, or proposed, let’s put it that way, that Temple Israel put a Black Lives Matter poster outside facing Hennepin Avenue so that we could give life and breathe life into the Isaiah quote over our doors: This house should be a house of prayer for all peoples.

This Rosh Hashanah we have our breath and out of our breath comes the sound of the shofar. The shofar awakens us. It is a place for us to make sure that you join Temple Israel in a robust program around race. We have been working on it for years now, and this year the initiatives are particularly important. We invited you to come with us to share in reading and share in opinion, but to make sure that we do that work. 

In the month of Elul, just prior to today, we amplified the voices of those congregants of color. They are astonishing and exquisite. They are powerful. I invite you to go to our webpage and hear them. And I want to say that there was a nine-year-old, her name is Izzy. Izzy was born into this congregation as her mother was. Izzy is part of a multi-racial family. Izzy has a few things to tell us, and instead of paraphrasing it, I decided I think we should let Izzy speak for herself. 

Izzy: 

“When I was two years old I was having a fit over nothing like most two-year-olds, right? Of course I was with my dad who is a person of color along with my sister. A random woman saw me crying and snatched me away from my dad. I cried as hard as I could without choking on my own spit. I was reaching for my dad as long as my little two-year-old arms could reach. My dad reached out an managed to grab me back. The woman, still feeling what she did was right, walked away. In the nine years of my life I’ve seen more than that. For example, when I was four years old, and my dad had taken me to the park. It was a bright, sunny day and I was playing in the sand with him. Then a woman came over and started yelling, “He is not your dad. Why don’t you adopt a black kid, not a good white one.” She yelled and yelled and yelled until I started whimpering and told my dad, “Can we go dad? I’m scared.” He was about to tell me to pack up the sand toys, but we just left and walked back home. And the woman was still ranting. I understand I just took a glimpse into the world of which black children and black people live in all of their lives, but that has really given me my perspective on life. Why throw stones when you can hold hands? Why use violence when you can go to a peaceful protest? So many people used to choose to use violence and throw stones. We need to understand the privilege we have as white people. We need to speak up because we have the ability to do it. All of us need to come together in spite of our differences so we can make a difference. You can donate, or protest, or just tell a friend hang in there, it’s going to be all right. Because you can make a difference. And right now we need all the difference we can get.”

Yes, Izzy, I promise you as your rabbi that Temple Israel will fight for your family. We love you. We love your diversity and we love your perspective. Thank you for having the courage to share it with us.

Twenty-thousand breaths a day. Miraculous and wonderful. But we know it is not just the number of breaths we’re given that truly values our life. Our life is valued by the people we love, by the work we do to make this world a better place. The breaths that we have we must share with the world and breathe life into the new possibilities in the wake of this historic moment. It is the possibility of creativity, the possibility of innovation, the possibility that racial injustice can be our past but not our future. Let us work together, because as the proverb so beautifully says, “It is not the number of breaths that we take in our life, but it is truly the number of moments that take our breath away.”

Shabbat shalom and shanah tovah.

Erev Rosh HaShanah: Nefesh Service & Seder

Sermon by Rabbi Tobias Moss
2020/5781

Conception Changes Perception

This has been a year full of separation and challenge, illness and anxiety, turmoil and tumult, difficulty and death — the difficulty and death that a normal year brings, compounded by the difficulty and death that a COVID year brings.

Of course there have been wonderful moments this year: births and virtual baby namings, Zoom b’nai mitzvah, more meaningful than you might think, technological innovations… But more importantly, human-to-human cultivation — checking in on neighbors, friends, and fellow humans, advocating for causes we believe in, finding ways to celebrate a 110th birthday in our community.

Still, the cheshbon, the accounting balance of the year, has seemed mostly to be in the red, pretty negative.

I keep seeing people on social media wish for this year to be over. One Jewish comedian, Eli Reiter, tweeted yesterday: “I’m lucky to be Jewish because it means there are only three days left to this dumpster fire of a year, and there are four more months for the rest of you.”

Most of us want this year to end, but a new year, with the same world, the same challenges that doesn’t solve much on its own. A year ends, a year begins, but does the world change?

Many of us have been susceptible to an error in Jewish translation, myself included. There’s Rosh Hashanah liturgy that says hayom harat olam — most frequently translated as “today the world is born.” Sounds totally fresh and new, suggesting Rosh HaShanah is the world’s birthday…not quite.

A better translation of hayom harat olam would be today the world is conceived. Today is the gestation of the world. Today we are invited to conceive of what could be, not necessarily tomorrow, but perhaps at the end of these 10 days of repentance, or perhaps what will be three months from now, six months, nine months. What the world could be after struggles and striving.

We are invited to see the world not as an “as is”— born, already in existence, an event.

But rather the world as “in becoming” — what could be, a process.

Quite obviously I don’t know the following firsthand, as I’m neither a parent today, nor a mother ever, but mothers have told me how much perspective changes at the moment of pregnancy — priorities, food choices, the body itself of course, the way you view the state and future of the world, etc.

This is what Rosh HaShanah asks of us: What needs to change for this new world to be born?

It always seems funny that Yom Kippur’s themes of judgment come after Rosh HaShanah. You might think it should be opposite: get your moral/spiritual/relationship affairs in order before the new year. But in fact, we need the eye-widening effect of Rosh HaShanah, a new year, a world that is still just in conception. This eye-widening allows us to see the possibilities of the world unfolding, and that in this great universe and world — a world in which black holes collide, and potential signs of life show up in unexpected places — that we have a role to play. It’s a bit part, but we got cast. We can be a parent, friend, aunt, uncle, cousin of the world that will one day be born.

Noah Ben Shea wrote collections of Jacob the Baker stories. Any of you know of this wise baker? For those who are not familiar, Jacob the Baker was a baker in a small town, whose great wisdom made him village famous — oh, how I’d die to be village famous.

This is one of the stories about him that reflects on the wisdom of a full life lived. This year was so overwhelmingly filled, over-wrought and overrun, that the story seems fitting for just the course of this year. Jacob the Baker:

And so one day, like many other days, kids shuffled over to Jacob’s bakery after school, plopped themselves down on some sacks of flour — the very gluten-filled version of a beanbag — and finally a boy found some courage, and asked Jacob, “Why do you often say, ‘A child sees what I only understand?’”

“A child sees what I only understand.”

Jacob paused, and then answered, his voice with a long-ago quality.

“Imagine a boy, sitting on a hill, looking out through his innocence on the expanse, mystery, and beauty of the world. Slowly the child begins to learn. He does this by collecting small stones of knowledge, placing one on top of the other. Over time, his learning becomes a wall, a wall he has built in front of himself. 

Now, when he looks out, he can see his learning, but he has lost his view. And so he is now a man, no longer a boy. And this man is both proud and sad. The man looks at his predicament, this wall of learning, and decides to take down the wall. But to take down a wall takes time, and when he finally accomplishes the task, he has become an elder, an old man. 

The old man rests on the hill and looks out through his experience on the beauty of the world. He understands what has happened to him. He understands what he sees. But he does not see the world the way he saw it as a child on that first clear morning.”

A young girl interjects, “But, but, certainly the old man can remember what he once saw!”

Jacob responds, “You are right, experience matures to memory. But memory is the gentlest of truths.”

“Are you afraid of growing old, Jacob?” asks a child, giggling.

“What grows never grows old,” said Jacob.

This parable speaks to the full span of life. But I believe it has much wisdom, to speak to the span of a year, especially this past one. A year that began with our hopes and wishes for that coming year. With 10 days of t’shuvah, repentance, t’filah, prayer, and tzedakah, charitable giving, we tried to get ourselves on a good track for the coming year. And then over the course of this year, challenges came upon us, one after another, stone upon stone, boulder upon boulder, until suddenly it was hard to look over that wall. It became hard to see anything besides the challenges of COVID, the challenges of America in distress, the challenges of keeping the public safe—the whole public, no individuals or groups excluded. Inevitably, these challenges blocked our sigh. Will we only be able to see after each is solved, one by one, like in the story?

Quite the opposite. In order to overcome these challenges we need to see, to imagine, to conceive. The offering of Rosh HaShanah is to see anew now. The year changes from 5780-5781. “Should we be afraid of the world growing older?” the little boy might ask. “What grows never grows old,” said Jacob. And this world, it keeps growing, it keeps changing. It invites us to join that process to see over the wall, see with wide, fresh eyes. To see possibility in the world, to see possibility in ourselves. Today the world is conceived, and we can see anew.

Rosh HaShanah is the reset moment on the shechecheyanu prayer: shechecheyanu, vikiymau, v’higiyanu lazman hazeh. From Rosh HaShanah on, we are asked to notice the first time we eat a fruit in this new year, acknowledge the coming of each holiday in this new year, bless the first time we’ve traveled to Israel this year, God willing.

We thank the Source of Life for having given us life, for helping us to withstand whatever could’ve knocked us down, and for reaching this time, this precious moment.

Some of you may have eaten an apple earlier today. Tonight or tomorrow that apple is no different. So why shechecheyanu? You are different. Your perspective is different