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.

Yom Kippur

Sermon by Rabbi Jennifer Hartman
2019/5780

It is never quite clear what brings us into the sanctuary on Yom Kippur.  For some of us, it is our commitment to Jewish observance; for others it is our commitment to family; for still others it is about tradition. But, underlying all of this, there is a feeling in our kishkes about the true awesomeness of this day. It is the imagery of the gates closing and our fate being decided that pulls many of us in. Even those of us who do not believe in God, or are not so sure about this whole book of life and death thing, still decide to hedge our bets and show up. We walk into the synagogue, we are moved by the prayers chanted by the cantor, we are inspired by the power of this day. 

Yom Kippur forces us to face our mortality, and allows us to enter the year renewed. The symbols of Yom Kippur, from fasting to wearing white, to staring into an empty ark during “Kol Nidre,” simulate our death in order to shock us into fully living our lives every day. It gives us time to engage in t’shuva, repentance, and cheshbon hanefesh, the cleansing of our souls.  It allows us to evaluate our lives and enables us to confront the New Year with strength, resolve, and excited anticipation.  

Rabbi Alan Lew writes a stunning description of Yom Kippur in his book This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation.  He explains: “On Rosh HaShanah the Book of Life and the Book of Death are opened once again, and our name is written in one of them. But we don’t know which one. Then we come to Yom Kippur and for the next twenty-four hours we rehearse our own death. We wear a shroud and, like a dead person, we neither eat nor drink. We summon the desperate strength of life’s last moments . . . We utter a variation of the confessional that we will say on our deathbeds. Our fists beat against the wall of our hearts relentlessly, until we are brokenhearted and confess to our great crime. We are human beings, guilty of every crime imaginable . . . Then a chill grips us. The gate between heaven and earth suddenly begins to close . . . This is our last chance. Then the gate clangs shut and the great horn sounds one last time.”

The imagery described above shakes us to our core. It is meant to wake us up and ask us to take ourselves and our actions as seriously as they deserve. This is emphasized with the prayers of our machzor, those like the Unetaneh Tokef, whose words spell out all of the possible ways we could die.  The prayer begins: “Let us proclaim the holiness of this day for it is awe-inspiring and fearsome” and continues by asking, “Who shall live and who shall die? Who by fire and who by water?” This could easily paralyze us. Yet, in our tradition’s brilliance, it does not allow us to remain in the fear. Instead, it lifts us up and out of it by giving us a way to counter God’s judgement. Embedded in the Unetaneh Tokef are directions for taking control of our future, the way that we can influence the judge’s verdict. Through repentance, prayer, and charity, we can avert God’s severe decree. 

Every year, we come into this sanctuary to enact our own death and be restored to life with a new sense of hope and resolve.  We come together for the courage to let go of our fears and our doubts.  We come together to answer the call of Nitzavim, the Torah portion Cantor Kobilinsky just chanted so beautifully. 

הַעִדֹתִי בָכֶם הַיּוֹם, אֶת-הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֶת-הָאָרֶץ--הַחַיִּים וְהַמָּוֶת נָתַתִּי לְפָנֶיךָ, הַבְּרָכָה וְהַקְּלָלָה.

“I call heaven and earth to witness this today: I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse — therefore choose life!” 

Hope. The imagery is severe, but it never leaves us without hope, which can be one of the hardest emotions to conjure. Renowned writer and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel teaches that just as a person cannot live without dreams, he or she cannot live without hope: “It is hope that gives us the strength to fulfill our dreams; it is hope that allows us to take the next step forward even when all seems lost.”  For Wiesel, it was hope that allowed him to survive the camps. He explains, “After experiencing the concentration camps, [he] had been a part of a universe where God, betrayed by humanity, covered God’s face in order not to see. Humanity, jewel of creation, succeeded in building an inverted Tower of Babel, reaching not toward heaven but toward an anti-heaven, there to create a parallel society, a new ‘creation’ with its own princes and gods, laws and principles, jailers and prisoners.” Even having experienced all of this, Wiesel still understood the integral role that hope plays in not only the Jewish story, but also that of humanity.

Hope, survival, continuing on, is ingrained in our souls even if it is not always accessible.Hope is the reason children are born in displaced person camps or refugee camps; it is the reason that people get on boats that very well might sink or walk for miles and miles with only the clothes on their backs for the potential to enter a new land. It is what motivates each of us to work to try to make the world better for the next generation – even when it is an uphill battle. Yes, hope is a part of the very fabric of being human, yet it often feels that we have lost the ability, or maybe the courage, to hope.

Therefore, maybe we can find inspiration in the stories of those who find hope in the face of uncertainty. A dear friend and mentor recently recommended that I read an essay by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi entitled “Toward a History of Jewish Hope,” in which the author reframes our past of exile and expulsion from one of sorrow and pain into one of resilience, confidence, and possibility. Yerushalmi understands that since the Holocaust, the Jewish community has organized its collective lives around that era of destruction and death. He embarks on the journey of finding hope in our collective history in order to reorient future generations from fear of extinction to hope for prosperity. He argues that “Memory of the past is incomplete without its natural complement – hope for the future.” And, he continues, from ancient times through today, this hope can be seen in our people’s willingness to resettle. 

The urge to change our place in order to change our luck dates back to the Torah. There is a Hebrew saying that means just this – meshane makom, meshane mazal. From the birth of the Israelite nation where God tells Abraham and Sarah “Lech lecha – leave your homeland and go to a land that I will show you,” to the Israeli covert operation Solomon that brought Ethiopian Jews to Israel in the early 1990s: as a people, we have an expansive history of leaving one land with the faith and hope that we will be able to live rich Jewish lives in the next.  

So many of us have these stories of parents or grandparents or even ourselves, picking up and moving to a foreign country. For some of us the reason is obvious – either we live or we die. The future may be unsure, but the alternative is dire. For others, the reasoning is less concrete. We want a better life, we think the new place will have more opportunities for us, we need a change!We engage in our own personal Yom Kippur; we have a reckoning with ourselves, our families, we see what life will be like if we continue on the path we are on, and we choose hope in the future. This hope, in the face of adversity, coupled with courage and ultimately action, can be transformative.  

Two years ago I was selected as a member of a religious leadership cohort called the Collegeville Multi-faith Fellows Program. This program brought together 11 religious leaders from the Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim communities several times over a two-year period to meet with leaders from various facets of society including government, business, education, criminal justice, and health care. The purpose of this cohort was two-fold: (1) to gain insights into the unique opportunities and challenges Minnesota residents are expected to encounter in the decades ahead from a worker shortage to a growing senior population; and (2) to establish interreligious relationships with like-minded leaders so we can partner in creating solutions. Rabbi Barry Cytron and Dr. Marty Stortz of Augsburg University co-directed the program.

As this cohort met, debated, and unpacked the insights and predictions of our speakers, I was struck by Marty’s quiet optimism about the future.  About halfway through the fellowship, I came to understand how deeply this optimism had been tested.  I learned that only a few years into her marriage to Professor William Spohn, he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer. Through his illness and untimely death, Marty learned much about hope and the role that it plays in sustaining people during their darkest moments. In her writings, she reframes what it means, and how we come by hope. As Marty and her husband William faced the cancer, the treatments, the side effects, and ultimately his death, they found that they never lost hope – they just changed what they hoped for.  

Marty and William were deeply religious and spiritual people, yet it was not beyond them to become angry at God. To shake their fists and scream and yell. In truth, they may have done this in the privacy of their own home, during their nightly recaps, as they learned their physical time together was coming to an end. But they also felt God’s presence strongly. They felt God was paying attention to them through the love of their friends and family. 

In one particular article, Marty admits that she could not always imagine what to hope for, but a deep and abiding hope held her and William. All they had to do was fall into it, like a trapeze artist falling into a net. The trapeze star had missed the catch, but she dared everything, because she knew the net was there. Neither of them had fallen off God’s radar screen, for they were both surrounded by the love of family and friends. So she was hopeful—devastated, no doubt, but also hopeful.

For Marty, this was the kind of hope that did not look forward to possible outcomes, but reached back to what was real. And what was real? For them, it was the sturdiness of the relationships with family and friends, the solidity of work, the daily graces that swarmed them. It was the family who came for a visit and knew not to stay too long, the friends who brought food to nourish them.  It was colleagues who allowed them respite from the ups and downs of treatment. This is what sustained them during the never-ending tests and appointments. This is also what gave Marty the hope, and the courage, to leave California when a wonderful opportunity opened up for her here at Augsburg. 

Hope is at the center of the story of Aaron Rapport and his wife Joyce. Aaron graduated from the Blake School in 1999 and went on to receive a graduate degree at Northwestern before completing his doctoral program at the University of Minnesota. It was here in Minnesota that he met his wife. They both became professors, first teaching in Atlanta and then in Cambridge. As the two built their careers and their lives together, they also fought cancer together. 

Joyce was diagnosed in 2010 and Aaron in 2015. Neither allowed their diagnosis to stop them. Joyce became the assistant director of the newly-established University of Cambridge Office of Scholarly Communication, eventually working on special projects for the department in order to encourage researchers to share their data.Aaron was a Fellow of Corpus Christi College and lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Studies at Cambridge. He had already established a considerable international reputation, particularly following the publication of his book Waging War, Planning Peace in 2015. 

It was their hope for the future that allowed them to move their lives to Cambridge, to build their careers, to continue to teach and work until the very end. Hope is what kept their marriage strong, even as they both went through their respective chemotherapies. For those who knew them, they will always be thought of as a perfectly-matched pair who never shied from sharing their philosophy of life with their students. During one conversation, Aaron’s student opined that “you only live once.” Aaron’s response? "You only die once; you live every day."Both Aaron and Joyce passed away this summer.

After sounding the alarm, the wake-up call that summons us on Yom Kippur, Rabbi Alan Lew looks further into our tradition and teaches us that at its core, Yom Kippur is a day of healing, a day of repair, a day that recognizes our fundamental brokenness and provides us with a remedy.  Yom Kippur, in other words, is a day of hope, hope to carry us into and through the New Year. It is a day devoted to strengthening the hope we have and allowing us to renew hope that may be waning. It is a day when we pray not only to be sealed in the book of life, but also to have the courage for a life lived with hope. Ken Yahi Ratzon, May this be God’s will.

Rosh HaShanah: Sanctuary Service

Sermon by Rabbi Jennifer Hartman
2019/5780

Failure is not an option. 

This famous phrase is associated with Gene Kranz, the renowned NASA flight director for the aborted Apollo 13 space mission. It also became the tagline for the eponymous Hollywood movie . . . and it is purely Hollywood.  Krantz never actually said this phrase.

In my opinion, the line should have been failure is always an option. In fact, when we look back on the greatest inventions, failure – and more importantly, the courage to fail – is what led to success.

Which is why it is so confounding that we tend to focus on the “either/or” of success and failure, rather than the both/and. In fact, who we are, and how we respond to the events of our lives, makes a much greater impact than the events themselves.  Our first example of this is in God’s actions.  In Torah, God has many human attributes: God loses God’s temper and questions God’s own judgement.  God changes God’s mind and decides to take a different direction based on experience.  Even God is not so headstrong as to be unable to learn from mistakes.  We see this very clearly in the story of Noah’s ark.  We read in Genesis that God brought a flood to the earth because “God saw how much human evil there was on earth and felt that the only way to remedy this was to destroy humanity and begin again with Noah.” After the flood, there seems to be a change in God’s opinion.  The Torah reads: “I will not again curse the land because of humans, since the human heart is immature.”  

This idea of an immature human heart intrigues the rabbis.  They determine that it refers to our yetzer harah – our inclination to act only in our own self-interest without thinking of the bigger picture  (as opposed to our yetzer hatov – our good inclination – which comes later).  In the story of the flood, it is the yetzer harah that made humanity act dreadfully and anger God to the point of destruction.  It was only after seeing the effect of the flood on the world that God took a minute to unpack what caused humanity to act with such baseless instincts.  God began to try to better understand people and reflect on that hasty judgment in order to treat people with more patience moving forward. God, our commentators write, determined that Noah’s contemporaries were ruled only by aggression, viciousness, greed, and moral indifference.Therefore, God decided to give humanity the Torah with lessons of humility and honesty. 

As the sages unpacked this view of humanity, they began to realize this was only half of the story.  We are not all bad!  This is where the yetzer hatov – our good inclination – comes into play. The yetzer hatov enters us when we come of age, around the time of our bar or bat mitzvah. The sages continue by teaching that as we grow and mature from adolescence to adulthood, we develop our ability to balance these two sides of ourselves. 

While an interesting idea and explanation, this simplifies the concept to a degree that makes these two drives polar opposite rather than on a spectrum.  As Professor Jeffery Spitzer explains, our yetzer hara is not a demonic force that pushes us to do evil, but rather a drive towards pleasure or property or security.  It is a worldview that is just about us.  It is the material force inside of us.  

On the other side, the yetzer hatov is a worldview that holds us responsible for the other people in our lives.  It is what allows us to feel empathy for another person, to want to reach out and help.It is the spiritual force within us.

Both of these forces, if left unchecked, have negative consequences.  With our yetzer hara we act only in our own self-interest.With our yetzer hatov we act only in the interest of other people.When the two come into balance we do things that benefit ourselves and the community – like get married and raise families, start businesses that employ others, work for safe and friendly neighborhoods.  This allows us to live in harmony with our inner selves.    

A popular comedy that just began its fourth and final season, The Good Place, picks up on this very Jewish idea that each of us has good and evil inside of us.  Spoiler alert! The show begins with Michael, a demon, conducting a radical experiment on a new way to torture human beings.  He picks four people with questionable ethics, who would never have gotten along in life, and puts them into close community.  When they “arrive” in his neighborhood, he tells them they have come to “the good place” – heaven – and lets them loose.  His theory is that humans are self-centered and mean enough that they will spend eternity torturing one another.  

Then enters the protagonist, Eleanor, who wants to become a better person. When Eleanor enters The Good Place she is told it is because of all the humanitarian work she did in life. She is then introduced to her alleged soulmate Chidi, a professor of ethics.  During the first season Eleanor admits to Chidi that there was a mistake and she was not a humanitarian in life.  But, she wants to learn how to keep her yetzer hara in check. She wants to balance it with her yetzer hatov!  Chidi agrees to teach her ethics.  In return, and unknowingly, Eleanor helps Chidi to keep his yetzer hatov in balance: you see, in life, Chidi was so concerned with making the ethical decision that it paralyzed him making him unable to make any decision at all.  Eleanor’s self-centered experiences are exactly what Chidi needs to live life – even if he is already dead!

Recently at Temple, we heard an extreme example of what happens when our yetzer hara (our “selfish” side) is out of balance.  Oshea Israel and Mary Johnson-Roy told us their story of betrayal and forgiveness. On February 12, 1993, Mary’s 20-year-old son was shot and killed by then 16-year-old Oshea during a fight outside of a bar. Oshea was sentenced to 25 years in prison for second degree murder.  Twelve years into Oshea’s sentence, Mary sent a request to visit him in prison.  At first Oshea refused, but eventually he changed his mind.  The two met and talked for over two hours.  Oshea admitted to the murder and Mary forgave him, fully and completely.  She could not believe she was able to do this, but she said that as she did, she felt like a weight physically lifted from her.  For Oshea, Mary’s forgiveness brought both changes and challenges to his life.  He said, "Sometimes I still don't know how to take it, because I haven't totally forgiven myself yet. It's something that I'm learning from Mary. I won't say that I have learned yet, because it's still a process that I'm going through."

For Oshea, part of forgiving himself is allowing himself to make big changes to his life, and surround himself with people who will help him do this.  As he was speaking here at Temple, Oshea talked about adders, subtractors, multipliers, and dividers.  Adders are people who add to our lives while subtractors take away from our experiences.  Multipliers, on the other hand, lift us up to a higher plane then we could have imagined for ourselves while dividers pull us down into deep holes.Oshea talked not only about the need to surround ourselves with multipliers and adders, but that each one of us, at different times, are all of these things to ourselves and to others.

We all find ourselves in difficult situations, big and small.  And we all make mistakes.  But that should not, and cannot, keep us from asking: Who are we?  What role are we playing in the success or failure of our own life or the lives of others? What can we do next to move forward?  How can we help our compassion win over our fear? Our kindness over our greed?  This is the lesson of t’shuvah, of repentance, of cheshbon hanefesh, of examining our souls.Our goal is not to be perfect, but it is to be open enough to learn from our actions when we are out of balance.Our goal is to never stop trying to be the adders and multipliers in the world.  And those years when we are more to one side or the other then we would like to be?  Those are the years we tend to beat ourselves up the most.  But, in reality, those are the years when we have the most opportunity for growth. 

Rosh HaShanah is known in Jewish texts by many names including Yom HaZikaron - "The Day of Remembering” and Yom Hadin - "The Day of Judgment."  We understand the reason for Yom Hadin, but why, the rabbis wondered, is Rosh HaShanah referred to as a day of remembering?  The answer comes from a midrashic description of God sitting upon a throne, while books containing the deeds of all humanity are opened for review, and each person passes in front of God for evaluation of their deeds.  While I am not sure that my theology is such that I believe in a God who sits on a throne examining all of our actions over the past year, I do like the idea of spending time remembering – and assessing – our own past conduct and contemplating our path forward.

This image helped me recently as I thought about a comment a student made.  She felt that she apologized for wrongdoings as they occurred and therefore did not need a dedicated day of repentance.  As I thought about her comment, I realized that we give the wrong impression if we think that these days of awe replace apologizing in the moment.  Rather, they give us time to look back and reflect on the past year. Unpack times in which our inner selves were unbalanced.  Go back and finish conversations we only started.Maybe even apologize again, with more thought and meaning this time, to people we hurt.

As I think about my student’s statement, I cannot help but think about how defensive we all become when confronted with our wrongdoings.  When asked what made Oshea finally agree to see Mary, he said, “For years I didn’t even acknowledge what I’d done and would lay the blame on everyone else. I didn’t want to hold myself responsible for taking someone’s life over something so trivial and stupid. You blame everyone else because you don’t want to deal with the pain.  Eventually I realized that to grow up and be able to call myself a man I had to look this lady in the eye and tell her what I had done. I needed to try and make amends.Whether she forgave me or not was not the point.”  

It is truly all about the framing.  Oshea could have viewed apologizing for his crime and all of the pain he caused as a weakness, as something only cowards do.  Instead, he realized that this took courage and maturity.  It was not easy, but it has allowed him to use the senseless act of crime to help others avoid his mistakes.   Acknowledging, admitting, even accepting and embracing our flaws and imperfections is what will enable us to become the best versions of ourselves.  It is our drive to be perfect that can paralyze us from action.

I wonder what would happen if we understood and internalized that we are ALL at different points of the same path. That we have years when we take more steps forward and other years when we take more steps back.  That God is not perfect, therefore we should not and cannot expect ourselves to be perfect.Would this allow us to open our hearts and our souls to one another?  Would this enable us to look another person in the eye and say “I am sorry” with meaning and conviction? Would facing ourselves with this level of chesed, of kindness, allow us to see the other with the same empathy?  

Our machzor teaches that, “For sins against God, the day of atonement atones, but for sins from one human being to another, the day of atonement does not atone until we have made amends with each other.”  This very important text leaves out one integral part of the scenario.We cannot embark on the work or the lessons of t’shuva until we learn to treat ourselves with kindness and compassion.  Until we are able to admit and forgive our own wrongdoings.  Then, and only then, will we be able to look kindly on each other.  This is our challenge in the coming year, this is our path to move forward.

Yom Kippur

Sermon by Rabbi Jennifer Hartman
2018/5779

Every year in late October, I wake up extremely early and drive to Armstrong High school to attend the New Hope Prayer Breakfast.  Started by the current mayor of New Hope, the breakfast is meant to honor all of the religious backgrounds that are represented in the suburb.  Every year I dread this day because I am NOT a morning person (although Fred is working very hard to make me one!), and it is always cold and I don’t particularly like the cold.  Yet every year once I enter the auditorium and am embraced by the warmth and kindness of those in attendance, I am reminded of why I attend.  I always find inspiration, both from my colleagues and from the students who participate in the morning program.  A few years ago, the program honored a particularly inspiring high school graduate.As he approached the podium, I saw a handsome young man in his early 20s who needed some help finding his way to the lectern.  Once settled, he began to tell us his story.  Elias was driving home from college in North Dakota a few years ago, when, out of nowhere, a car driving at full speed in the wrong direction, struck his car head-on.  The next thing Elias knew, he was lying in a hospital bed, barely able to move and unable to see.  Elias had been hit by a drunk driver, rendering him blind.  

Over the days and weeks and months that followed, the swelling in his body went down, the bones healed, and Elias was even able to attend the court hearing of the drunk driver and find forgiveness.  But he never regained his eyesight.  So began Elias’s arduous and painstaking task of learning how to navigate the world without the ability to see.  He has not given up on any of his dreams, they are just taking a bit longer to reach. Today, he happily lives on his own, in a townhouse in Brooklyn Center.  He is finishing his master’s degree in education and he is a student teacher working with middle school band students.  He still loves to play music and, if I remember correctly, he has a girlfriend.  

At the end of the program I approached Elias and asked if he would be willing to come and speak to our 7th grade students. He agreed without hesitation.  When the students entered the room and saw the guest speaker they questioned what he was doing there.  When they learned he was going to tell them about how he became blind they were surprised.He did not fit any of their preconceived notions of a blind person!  They were in awe of his incredible determination.        

Evelyn Glennie is a Grammy-winning percussionist and composer – who, due to a genetic abnormality, was almost completely deaf by the age of 12.  Evelyn remembers that year, when her music teacher expressed concern with Evelyn’s ability to play given her disability.  The teacher’s logic was understandable: one cannot play music without hearing it.  How would Evelyn be able to hear the music she was playing?  The teacher did not understand that Evelyn could hear the music with her entire body as she could feel the vibrations from her head to her toes.Evelyn’s resolve forced the teacher to devise a new lesson plan.  They soon began each lesson tuning drums.  Rather than hear the tone, Evelyn needed to be able to feel in her fingers the very subtle changes in pitch.  Her teacher started Evelyn with the kettle drum, the most difficult to tune, understanding that once she mastered this instrument the rest would become easier! During her lessons, Evelyn put her hands on the wall of the music room, and would "listen" to the sounds of the instruments.  In this way she connected with those sounds far more broadly than simply depending on the ear. Because of course, the ear is subject to all sorts of other factors: The room one happens to be in, the amplification, the quality of the instrument, the type of sticks – they're all different.

As Evelyn grew older and honed her craft, she decided to audition for the Royal Academy of Music in London.  At her audition the admissions committee said they would not accept her because they did “not have a clue about the future of a so-called 'deaf musician.’” She could not accept that and said to them, "Well, if you refuse me for those reasons, as opposed to the ability to perform and to understand and love the art of creating sound – then we have to think very, very hard about the people you do actually accept." And as a result of her challenge to the admissions council, as well as her two outstanding auditions, Evelyn was accepted into the program. Furthermore, this incident impacted music institutions throughout the United Kingdom.A law was passed that made it impossible for an institution to refuse an applicant on the basis of their physical limitations.  The admissions committee needed to listen to every single applicant play before deciding to accept or reject them. This led to much more diversity in professional orchestras throughout the world.[1]

Shaquem Griffin is a rookie linebacker, drafted by the Seattle Seahawks in this year’s NFL draft. He is NOT your typical football player. Due to a pre-natal condition, Shaquem’s hand was amputated when he was 4 years old. He nevertheless grew up to star for his high school in track, football, and baseball before winning an athletics scholarship to the University of Central Florida alongside his twin brother.  In 2016, Shaquem was named American Athletic Conference defensive player of the year.  Shaquem drew national attention at this year’s scouting boot camp when he bench pressed 225 pounds 20 times using a prosthetic hand. He followed that up by recording a 40-yard dash time of 4.38 seconds, the fastest time ever by a linebacker.  When asked about his success with only one hand he responds: “People all get tackled the same.”  Shaquem has never had much patience for perceived limitations, and has overcome the challenges that could have stood in his way. 

Recently, Shaquem was at his nephew’s football game when he saw a young boy on the field who was missing a hand. Shaquem called him over and introduced himself.  The boy could not believe he was meeting a real NFL player and that this player was also missing a hand.  The boy looked down to hide his tears of gratitude and awe. The one-handed linebacker nudged his little chin upward.  “Don’t let anybody tell you what you can’t do,” Shaquem said.

Torah teaches us that we are not to curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind.  Elias, Evelyn and Shaquem had significant obstacles in their way. Each of them could have let these obstacles dictate their future.  Elias could have decided he was no longer able to become a teacher.Evelyn could have listened to that first music teacher of hers, accepting that since she could not hear with her ears, she could not become a musician.  Shaquem – knowing that NEVER before had an athlete without both hands played in the NFL – could have easily given up on his dream.  No one would have blamed them for taking a different path. These three people took the commandment from Leviticus one step further.They made sure not to put a stumbling block in front of themselves.  They did not allow fear, insecurity, or societal norms to determine their destinies.They looked into their hearts and they found the courage and the determination to follow their own path.  

Yom Kippur is the time when each of us is called on to uncover our unique trail, and to evaluate our lives in order to find motivation to move forward.  The prayers and the choreography of the service are meant for us to feel the awe of our final days on earth.  For example, we rise for Kol Nidre and face the empty ark – as if we are staring into an empty casket – to ask forgiveness for the promises we made, but did not keep. We are to ignore our bodily needs like food and water.  We do not look for refuge in alcohol, social media, TV, or music.  This is the day when we look squarely at who we are and the stumbling blocks in our way.  This is the day we begin to remove those blocks, and Judaism is here to help us with this work.  

Judaism is the “satellite navigation system” of the soul, and these High Holy Days are a gift that allows us to stop and see whether we need to change direction.Maimonides, the renowned middle ages philosopher, once said the following regarding the blowing of the shofar:“It is God’s wake-up call to all of us.Without it, we can sleepwalk through life.  We waste time on things that are urgent but not important, things that promise happiness but fail to deliver.” 

How many of us have experienced this sentiment firsthand?  How many of us follow the path directly in front of us, rather than stopping, taking stock, and reevaluating in order to follow our own route?  How many of us feel constricted by handicaps that are not visible but we feel intensely? Jewish tradition gives us many examples of people who overcame obstacles, and fought for their goals.  

We only need to look to Moses to comprehend how hard this can be.  In the Torah, Moses is described as being heavy of tongue.  Yes, the greatest orator of our tradition had a speech impediment.  He overcame not only this handicap but also his intense shyness to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and speak the beautiful poetry and prose that fill the book of Deuteronomy.  

Or we can look to one of the greatest teachers and rabbis of our tradition, Rabbi Akiva, who was born into an extremely poor family and remained illiterate into adulthood. Yet, he had a thirst for knowledge and, with his wife’s encouragement, he finally took the journey to the closest academy to learn Torah at the age of 40.  He excelled in his studies. He quickly became a prolific writer and famous teacher with over 12,000 students.  We still learn from Rabbi Akiva today, almost two THOUSAND years after his death. 

God commands us: Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind.  While this sounds like an easy charge it can be the most difficult as it not only applies to our neighbor but also to ourselves.  It was not easy for any of the people I’ve described today to overcome their challenges.  It took courage, fortitude, and the support of their communities.Yet, each one of them knew they had to pursue their dreams.  They could not live lives unfulfilled regardless of the physical and emotional barriers in front of them.  In removing these barriers they brought inspiration, knowledge, and great change to themselves and their communities.  These changes have improved the world for all of us.In today’s day and age we have the technological innovation to make almost anything possible.  It is up to us to find the resolve to remove the physical and emotional obstacles that stand in our way.  

Over a year ago, when Thomas Friedman was here for our Voices series, he charged us saying: For the first time in history all of us together can fix all of the problems in our world.  I challenge each one of us, in this New Year 5779, to heed his call and pay attention to the commandment of our tradition.  May we each work to remove the stumbling blocks in our lives so that we can not only fulfill our greatest potential, but also bring inspiration and transformation to our world.  

[1] https://www.ted.com/speakers/evelyn_glennie

Rosh HaShanah: Hello TIPTY!

Sermon by Rabbi Jennifer Hartman
2018/5779

Hello TIPTY!

I missed you guys last year!  Thank you for your understanding of my maternity leave.  And while I’m speaking to everyone in attendance today, I want you to know that YOU are the inspiration for today’s sermon!  I am sorry I am going to have my back to you, but I hope you will still listen!

With the production of Hamilton being in town, I would be remiss if I did not reference it!  In the show, Hamilton uses the refrain:

I am not throwing away my shot

I am not throwing away my shot

I’m just like my country

I’m young, scrappy and hungry

And I’m not throwing away my shot

So many of the most amazing changes in history were started by ambitious, energetic, and brave young people – like you.  This includes the establishment of the United States of America. At our nation’s inception, three of our most influential founding fathers were James Monroe at 19 years old, Aaron Burr at 20, and Alexander Hamilton at 21.  I understand this may be too “ancient history” for you to feel a connection with these great historical figures.  So, let us look more recently.  How about to the 1960s when four black teenagers walked up to the all-white Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C. and refused to leave – leading to countless sit-ins that swept the South, and forced our country to confront racial injustice.  

Or how about the 1970s uprising of black high school students in Johannesburg, South Africa.  At this time, the white and black communities spoke different languages.  The South African government made a law that only the white language could be spoken, making it nearly impossible for black teachers to teach and for black students to learn.  This government mandate was forcing these students into poverty, without any chance of upward mobility.  Several of these students courageously responded with a peaceful protest, which turned deadly when police attacked the students with guns and tear gas. The parents of these students could not understand what their children had done.These parents felt that, by standing up and challenging their government, their children were only making life worse for the community.  But these inspirational students understood that this new law meant the end of their education and that was untenable for them.  Their protest brought international attention and outrage to issues of racial equality, which ultimately led to the dismantling of Apartheid.

Or we can look to this past February when the students of Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL turned their tragedy into action.  These students took up the cause of gun control and have not only spoken with President Trump, but have also persuaded companies such as Delta and United Airlines, Hertz and Avis Car Rentals, and Metlife Insurance to cut their ties with the National Rifle Association.  These students have done more in a few short months than many lobbying groups, with much deeper pockets, have done in years.  

In all ages, society has leaned on its youth to have visions of a better future, while listening to its elders share their dreams about a life once lived.  As the prophet Joel so eloquently teaches in the Tanach – “the old shall dream dreams, and the young shall see visions.”  During the time that the prophet Joel lived, only select individuals - those who showed their commitment to God by living lives dedicated to helping the vulnerable and taking care of our earth - were given the gift of prophecy.  Joel prophesizes that in days to come, in a world where we all work toward justice, at that time, all of our youth will have visions of the future, all will hear and pay attention to God’s voice. While we do not yet live in this more perfect time, we do live in an amazing era where our young adults not only see visions of what needs to be done, but have the courage to act on these visions to help build a future of which we can all be proud.

I want to tell you, the youth who are here today, the ones in the TIPTY choir and the ones in the congregation: the adults in your world are noticing all that you do! While I was working on this very sermon, a friend sent me a text asking if I wanted topic suggestions.  Out of curiosity I replied “sure.”  He texted: “If I could write the sermon, my topic would be ‘How adults in our country need to be as good as our youth.’”  I was delighted to have evidence that I am not the only one who notices all of the work you are doing and change you are making.  While we debate and discuss, you are out there getting things done.  You are changing the world.  Do you, the youth of our congregation, our world, truly understand the power that you have?  The difference that you can make?  I still hear too many of you question the kind of impact you could have; I see you shrug your shoulders in defeat.  The reality is that you are the ones who inspire the rest of us to act.  

In 2015 I traveled with a group of 8th grade students to Alabama and Georgia to explore the intersection of the Civil Rights movement and Judaism.  The movie Selma had just come out and it was the 50th anniversary of the march which happened because of the work of two brave young people – James Bevel and Diane Nash.  James and Diane understood that segregation was eating at the soul, not only of their community, but of the nation.  Our group thought of their courage as we walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge with images of the beatings in our head.  When we entered the town of Selma we were met by a middle-aged and very energetic woman named Joanne.  She pulled us all together with her strong yet sweet voice and began to tell us her story.She spoke of the rush of excitement in early spring of 1965, as she walked across the bridge surrounded by her community, holding hands with her family.  And then the sheer terror she felt as the police descended on the march.  She remembers being beaten to the ground and out of nowhere being picked up and put into a car and taken to safety.  The events of that day defined her and her drive to bring equality to her community.  She challenged the students on the trip to find their passion and not let anything get in their way.  

Joanne did not know it at the time, but standing in the front of the line, next to Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, was Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. The two became fast friends in the early 1960s.  Both were speakers at a conference on religion and race organized by the National Conference of Christians and Jews[1].  They supported one another through many endeavors including the march from Selma to Montgomery.  After the march, Rabbi Heschel was asked if he had time to pray on the journey.  He responded, “I felt my legs were praying.”  His marching, his protesting, his speaking out for Civil Rights was his greatest prayer of all.  He, as well as Joanne from Selma, did not let anything interfere with their vision, or actions towards, a more accepting, more equal, and more just society.  

You, the students of Temple Israel, the students of Minneapolis, have as much courage, passion, and fortitude as all of the students I have been talking about; these characteristics are ingrained in you, and I marvel at this all the time.  In the aftermath of the Parkland shooting earlier this year, you coordinated walkouts at your schools in conjunction with your peers in Florida.  Through the organization Students Demand Action, you planned and implemented a march that brought thousands to our state capital.

Your civic involvement is unprecedented in many ways.This is why I was not surprised to learn that youth, ages 18 to 24, decided the 2008 election.  Just by showing up to vote in greater numbers than previous decades, you changed the course of history and elected the first black president of the United States. In fact, according to the Youth Electoral Significance Index, voters between 18-29 years old will have the greatest impact of any age group on our Minnesota elections.  The races here are projected to be very close and in close races, even slight boosts in youth voting could mean the difference between defeat and victory for candidates from either party.  It is our responsibility as part of the Jewish community to play an active role in choosing our leaders. The Talmud teaches that "A ruler is not to be appointed unless the community is first consulted."[2]  Judaism views voting as a responsibility and as US citizens, it is our privilege and an opportunity for each of us to express our beliefs on what is best for our country.  

Not only do we, your parents, teachers, and clergy, listen to you and find inspiration in your words and your actions, we are also here to help you develop your skills of advocacy.Many of these skills are already built into what you do at school[3]. Problem-solving, critical thinking, collaboration, and perseverance are all a part of your daily experience. This morning, I have given you historical and modern-day examples of youth and young adults who are using these skills to change history.  My hope is that you will see yourselves in these stories, see that the current movements you are already a part of are connected to those you learn about in history class.  Your work for justice also connects you to our Jewish tradition.  If you have not yet reached confirmation, 10th grade, then you will soon learn more about this link.  During Confirmation class, Temple Israel students connect their Jewish learning to activism and spend the year studying Jewish texts - Torah, Tanach, Talmud. In these studies I work to show you how ancient texts are directly connected to current events.  Together, we use these texts to lobby on Capitol Hill! Jewish tradition supports you when you choose to protest or organize or speak truth to power.

You, the youth of today, are a part of a community of young people with a shared vision of a more equitable society that stretches back to Alexander Hamilton and even farther – to Moses, to King David, and to Rabbi Hillel who is so often quoted as saying:  

If I am not for myself who will be for me?

If I am only for myself who am I?

If not now, when?

If not now, if not when you are young and energetic, when you are idealistic and committed, then when will you, or any of us, have the determination to do this most important work?  You, the youth of today, have the knowledge, the passion, and the resources to change our world.  I want to be sure, before we leave this morning, that you know, unequivocally, that you have this power, this strength, this courage and that we, your teachers, your parents, your trusted adults are here to support you in your passions and, mostly, to stay out of your way as you work to bring justice to this world.I strongly believe, knowing you as I do, that you are NOT going to throw away your shot!     

[1]https://www.plough.com/en/topics/community/leadership/two-friends-two-prophets

[2]Babylonian Talmud Berachot 55a

[3]https://www.ted.com/talks/sydney_chaffee_social_justice_belongs_in_our_schools/transcript?rss#t-593794

Yom Kippur: Forgiveness

Sermon by Rabbi Jennifer Hartman
2016/5777

I got a new name! Okay, I got married and decided to change my name.

As friends, family and community learned of my engagement, I began to receive a lot of advice about marriage.  Having never been married before, I was happy for any insight and anecdotes.  The advice included well-known adages such as: “never go to bed angry,” and “pick your battles.”  Others that I had not thought of: “If you have kids, make sure to take vacations without them.”  Or ones from blogs: “Never compromise; in every argument someone will have a stronger opinion and that person should win.”  One piece of advice I found particularly intriguing comes from “the Notorious RBG” – Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.  When asked if she has any advice to share with the public, she often quotes her mother-in-law: “In every good marriage, it helps sometimes to be a little deaf.” [i]

How I interpret this, and most advice given about marriage or any relationship, is that when living with another person you must be able to ask for and grant forgiveness.  It sounds so easy, but both asking for and granting forgiveness is extremely hard.  To ask for forgiveness we must admit that we have made a mistake, al cheit, we have sinned, we have missed the mark.  None of us likes to be wrong.  You can ask Mike: I am no exception.  It is painful to admit when we are incorrect.  It hurts our ego and our pride.  Recently a girl friend of mine sent me a picture that truly depicts this difficulty.  It was of her oldest son crying.  He had been misbehaving and needed to apologize.  Instead of saying “sorry” he lay on the ground crying: “It hurts too much to say I’m sorry.” Out of the mouths of babes can come the most profound statements.  

(Last night Rabbi Zimmerman spoke to us about non-apology, apologies, but what does it take to truly ask for and grant forgiveness).   It is very hard to say “I’m sorry,” but this very action is critical to enduring relationships and healthy communities.  If it were easy to ask for forgiveness, we would not need a designated time in our calendar to ensure that we are performing teshuva, repentance.  This process starts during the month of Elul, the month before Rosh Hashanah.  And it continues through the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  And for those of us late tax filers, our tradition says that if you need still more time, the window of repentance stays open until Sukkot!  To assist us in our repentance, the great teacher Maimonides provides specific instructions on how to perform t’shuva.  First, we have to confess, verbally, what we did wrong, and we have to do it in detail.  We cannot just say: “I was selfish.” Instead, we are to say, “My husband asked me to play golf with him, but four hours on the golf course sounded extremely boring so I said ‘no’,” or something of that sort. And then, we apologize to the person we harmed.  We are to do this openly and explicitly.  We are to resolve not to make the same mistake again.  If there is anything that we can do now to repair the damage, we are to do so.  Then, and only then, our rabbis teach, we have the right to ask for forgiveness.

You see, t’shuvah is more than an apology. T’shuvah is a serious, deep process which is meant, ultimately, to lead to self-improvement.  That's why our sages teach that a person knows t’shuvah is complete only when he or she resists committing the same sin again. The ultimate goal is not to obtain forgiveness from someone else, or to wipe away our sense of guilt. The ultimate goal is to become a better person – the kind of person who would not cause this harm in the first place. [ii] When we truly atone for our sins, when we perform t’shuva, repentance, our changed behavior redeems our past actions and enables us to move forward. 

This process of t’shuva is very hard.  Many people decide to skip it.  They have no desire to look into their hearts and souls and uncover the motivations that caused them to bring about such pain.  Such heartbreak.  Instead, there may be an insincere apology, or nothing at all.  There are, however, stories of people willing to engage in this difficult endeavor.  The New York Times Magazine recently featured the stories of reconciliation still taking place in Africa, as a result of the Rwandan genocide that occurred in the mid-1990s .  Their piece, entitled “Portraits of Reconciliation,” featured pictures of Hutu perpetrators and Tutsi survivors working to rebuild relationships, 20 years after the Hutu murdered almost one million Tutsi.

With the help of a small non-profit organization, the Hutu are engaging in the very notions set forth by Maimonides, (okay they may not know it is Maimonides, but it is).  The Hutu learn the true consequences of their actions.  They gain understanding of the deep loss and pain they caused.  They uncover what actions and stereotypes they need to change in order to move forward.  They serve time in jail.  They rebuild homes and provide food for the Tutsi.  Then, and only then, after many months of counseling, do they formally ask the Tutsi they wronged for forgiveness.  The Hutu did the hard work of t’shuva.  

One Hutu perpetrator noted: “My conscience was not quiet, and when I would see [the woman that I harmed] I was very ashamed. After being trained about unity and reconciliation, I went to her house and asked for forgiveness. Then I shook her hand. So far, we are on good terms.” 

The work of the Tutsi – the victims –  is just as difficult.  Many of us could never imagine the grace, the understanding, the compassion it takes to pardon someone who murdered our children, our spouse.  The women in these stories lost everything.  Still, they dug into the depths of their souls and found the sympathy and charity to grant mercy to their enemies. They were able to let go of the anger and hatred that had been controlling their lives. They came to understand that revenge would not give them the peace they could attain with forgiveness. 

One Tutsi survivor writes: “He killed my father and three brothers. He did these killings with other people, but he came alone to me and asked for pardon. He and a group of other offenders who had been in prison helped me build a house with a covered roof. I was afraid of him — now I have granted him pardon, things have become normal, and in my mind I feel clear.”

Rwanda is a wonderful example of what can occur when we have the strength and determination to ask for and grant forgiveness.  Musical genius Lin Manuel Miranda expresses the difficulty and reward that comes with this process in his musical Hamilton. (I still have not seen it but I can’t help but use its brilliance!).  Hamilton and his wife Eliza have just been through two devastating events.  First, Hamilton has an affair and publishes the details of it in order to avoid blackmail.  Then, their eldest son is killed in a duel defending Hamilton’s honor.  It is hard to imagine that Eliza will ever forgive Hamilton for these transgressions, but Hamilton apologizes and then waits.  He says:

I don’t pretend to know

The challenges we’re facing

I know there’s no replacing what we’ve lost

And you need time

Just let me stay here by your side

And we learn that for Eliza: 

There is a grace too powerful to name

We push away what we can never understand

We push away the unimaginable

She takes his hand 

And they find their way back to one another. 

Forgiveness. Can you imagine? They are going through the unimaginable.

Around the world we see countries that have done the unimaginable.  They have found a path to healing through forgiveness.  We can look to South Africa where in place of trials, Nelson Mandela created a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.  Here, victims and perpetrators were allowed to tell their stories.  Through restorative justice, not revenge, the wounds healed and the country moved forward.  We can look to Ireland, where after over 30 years of fighting a peace agreement was reached that included a power-sharing government with political forces that had been aligned with armed groups on each side of the conflict.  We can look to the work that is being done by individuals in Israel.  The Parents Circle-Families Forum (PCFF) is a grassroots organization bringing together Palestinian and Israeli families who have lost immediate family members due to the conflict. They believe that a process of reconciliation is a prerequisite for achieving a sustained peace.  In each one of these cases, people on both sides of a conflict come together, face one another, look into each other’s eyes and see the humanity of their enemy.  In these powerful moments and through much hard work, fear and hatred gave way to compassion and tolerance.  We can only hope and pray that this same peace will come to countries currently engaged in civil war.

There are also times when we choose forgiveness, not because we have been asked, but because we understand that the hatred and fury we hold in our hearts is debilitating to us, while not affecting the perpetrator.  Nelson Mandela teaches this lesson well.  As he was leaving prison after 27 years, he is quoted as saying: “Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.”  He understood that he would only be free if he could release the shackles of anger.  Otherwise he would be grasping a hot coal with the intent of harming another, but he would be the one who got burned. [iii] Through forgiveness, Mandela accepted the reality of what happened to him and found a way to live in a state of resolution.  He was able to identify, fully feel, express and then release his rage and his pain, and find healing.

The people of Charleston, SC, also found their way to forgiveness.  Last summer, you may remember, a gunman open fired in a church basement there.  Nine people were murdered and five survived.  Given the racial tensions in Charleston, the city could have erupted into riots, but instead, led by the survivors of the Emanuel Nine, Charleston erupted in grace. Within 36 hours of the killings, and with pain racking their voices, family members stood in a small county courtroom to speak the language of forgiveness [iv].  It happened suddenly when Nadine Collier, the daughter of murdered Ethel Lance spoke at the bond hearing.  She remembers being “angry and mad” because her mother had “more living to do.” At the same time, racing through her head were lessons she had learned long before: “You have to forgive people, because when you keep that hatred, it hurts only you.”

It was this courage of the Charleston survivors that brought about an outpouring of all races and ethnicities, who filled the streets with unity.  As a result of their grace, “within days of the shooting, the most contentious public symbol of South Carolina’s Civil War past, the Confederate flag, was finally removed from the state capitol” [v].  It was a truly remarkable feat of forgiveness that brought with it much healing.  Collier’s ability to forgive the pain and loss that she endured brought peace to her city.  As the Dalai Lama says: world peace can only develop from inner peace.

Right here in Minnesota, we show our own ability to forgive with our unwavering support of the Minnesota sports teams who seem to break our hearts over and over again.  Yet despite all of the (and I quote), “agony”, “dashed hopes” and dare I say “failure,” Minnesotans continue to bounce back and forgive!  

And still, I must acknowledge that there are times when forgiveness is not possible.  Abuses endured that can never be pardoned.  Some of these have been making the headlines recently – in the political debates, on college campuses and beyond.  We pray for the victims of such violence, those sitting here with us today, and those outside this sanctuary. We pray that they are able to find peace and healing despite the fact they may never be able to reconcile why or how this happened to them.  We wish that the sharing of stories through social media will show them they are not alone, and will give them courage to speak out.  We hope that accounts of unimaginable forgiveness will give those in pain strength and fortitude as they carry their burden.

The work of repentance and forgiveness is hard, but it is important and worthwhile work.  We are blessed with only one soul in this life. It is for us to determine how to fill it.  Will we fill it with self-righteousness and arrogance?  With anger and hatred?  With retribution and revenge?  Or will we work toward reconciliation and understanding, compassion and sympathy, peace and harmony?  As we begin this New Year, may we work to elevate our lives and our relationships to new heights.  May we use this time to bring to mind the mistakes we have made, the offences we have committed, the times we have missed the mark.  May we take our transgressions and turn them into opportunities for engagement and renewal.  May we engage in teshuva, in repentance, in order to return to our true and best selves and move forward into the New Year with deeper and more meaningful relationships.   May we find the strength, the courage and the resolve to forgive those who have wronged us.

The rabbis teach that the Torah begins with a bet – and not an aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet – for a reason.  It is because Bet is only open on one side, to the future.  May this season of repentance, of possibilities, and of new beginnings, give us all the strength to imagine forgiveness in order to move forward into a bright and meaningful future.

Gamer chatima Tova. May we be sealed in the book of life.

[i] Ginsberg, Ruth Bader. Ruth Bader Ginsbergs Advice for Living. New York Times October 1st, 2016.

[ii] Lew, Alan. This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared.

[iii] http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/b/buddha104025.html

[iv] Time Magazine. How Do You Forgive a Murderer. David Von Drehle and Jay Newton-Small and Maya Rhodan. http://time.com/time-magazine-charleston-shooting-cover-story/

[v] Ibd.

Rosh HaShanah: Watching Our Words

Sermon by Rabbi Jennifer Hartman
2016/5777

“The time has come

The walrus said

To talk of many things:

Of shoes- and ships-

And sealing wax-

Of cabbages and kings-

And why the sea is boiling hot-

And whether pigs have wings.”  

With words such as these we are pulled into Lewis Carroll's famous book, Alice and Wonderland, in which Carroll so vividly paints a mystical magical world for us through the use of his pithy phrases, short anecdotes and even, gibberish.  We follow as Alice, bored with the conversation of grown-ups, finds a topsy-turvy, upside down universe filled with entertainment and adventure.

As a little girl, I loved to escape behind the looking glass with Alice.  I was introduced to these stories by my grandfather.  Still a man of few—but powerful—words, he has always connected best through the wit and wisdom of books.  Whenever we were together, we had a nighttime ritual.  Once I was in bed he would come into my room and tell me a story.  Using the characters from Alice and Wonderland, he created an imaginary world and sent Alice, with me as her sidekick, on an adventure.  I could not help but be enchanted by the reality he created.

On one of my recent visits to my grandparent’s home I found Carroll's book amongst the vast array of volumes overflowing my grandfather's shelves.  I picked it up and began to read.  I was quickly reminded of Carroll’s brilliance and his mastery of the English language.  His riddles stay with us as their logic, combined with their whimsical nature, reverberates in our minds.  It is his creative genius and wordplay that keeps us engaged in the story.  Words have that power.  They have the ability not only to impart information but also to engage, motivate and transform. 

The great speeches of our time are remembered for more than the speaker's personality or charisma.  They are remembered for the anecdotes that speak to our hearts and endure in our minds.  “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” “I have a dream.”  I get chills just thinking about these words that marked such astonishing human achievements -  the celebration of space exploration, a President summoning us to be our best selves, and the greatest civil rights leader challenging the status quo.  They are motivational and inspirational.  They move us to act, they propel us forward, they enable us to envision a brighter future and bring that vision to reality. These are words that have the strength to inspire us to action.     

Our Jewish tradition understands the power of words.  In just a few weeks we will begin the Torah anew with these words: “Bereshit barah elohim et hashamayim v’et haratz. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)    God spoke and the world was created.  It is through God’s words that the world came into being.  With words we humans also create.  When a new couple stands beneath the wedding chuppah excited and nervous to begin their lives together, they exchange vows - Harei at mekudeshet li - that bind their lives together.  With their words they build a family.  For any of us who have had the privilege and the honor of witnessing this moment we can feel its power, its exhilaration, its hope.  In that moment we witness creation.

Words, however, also have the ability to harm.  We have all been at the other end of a snide remark, a hurtful comment, and a bad joke.  We all know that the nursery rhyme “sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” is far from true.  Words hurt, a lot.  They get under our skin and attach to our soul. We carry harmful words around with us like bricks weighing us down.  They make us look at ourselves differently.  They deflate our confidence and cause us to question our being.  Now, more than ever, it seems we cannot escape the critical words that aim to tear us down.  They are everywhere.  They are on our many screens, in our pockets, at work and sometimes even at home. 

Do you know that there are people today who are surfing the Internet with the sole purpose of criticizing others?  They are called trolls, which is Internet slang for a person who sows discord by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community. Factors like anonymity and a lack of authority strip away the morals that we as a society have spent millennia building, giving people the freedom to attack others.  They use social media to perform pranks, harass and threaten their victims.   

This is not a new issue or a new concern.  Entire books have been written on the dangers of having an evil tongue.  The Torah refers to the slander as lashon hara - derogatory speech about another person.  The prohibition against this is found twice in the Torah, both in the third book, the book of Leviticus.  “You will not go up and down as a tale-bearer among thy people” (Lev. 19:16), “You shall not wrong one another with speech” (Lev. 25:17).  The Talmud teaches us that the act of lashon hara kills three people - the person who speaks it, the person who hears it and the person about whom it is told.  In fact, the rabbis went as far as to say that slander, tale bearing, and evil talk are worse than the three cardinal sins of murder, immorality, and idolatry.  In truth, it is with words that we can affect others to the point of causing these latter three offences.

This is why sins committed with our words hold a central place in our confessions on Yom Kippur.  Of the 43 sins enumerated in the Al Cheit confession recited on Yom Kippur, 11 are sins committed through speech. According to Jewish tradition the tongue is the most dangerous of all instruments.  For this reason it must be kept hidden from view, behind the two protective walls of the lips and teeth, in order to prevent its misuse.

I would argue that our lips and our teeth are not doing their job these days.  The words that we are hearing from our pre-school children to our politicians are mean and alarming.  This summer I was at Camp TEKO sitting with a first grade group as they ate their snack when I heard one camper say to another, “Donald Trump is racist and hates woman.”  The camper responded “Hillary Clinton is a liar and a cheater.”  While it would be unwise to underestimate the aptitude of Camp TEKO first graders, I am fairly certain that our campers did not come up with these assessments on their own.  They were merely repeating what they heard around the kitchen table.  While they may not fully understand the words they are saying, they do know they are unkind. 

We have come very far from the debates over the white picket fence author Bill Bishop describes in his book, The Big Sort. He writes that although “America is more diverse than ever coast to coast, the places where we live are becoming increasingly crowded with people who live, think, and vote like we do. We've built a country where we can all choose the neighborhood and church and news show — most compatible with our lifestyle and beliefs. And we are living with the consequences of this way-of-life segregation. Our country has become so polarized, so ideologically inbred, that people don't know and can't understand those who live just a few miles away.” This trend is apparent in the way in which we speak to one another about the topics over which we disagree. 

This year’s political discourse has been characterized by a certain coarseness and demeaning quality.  Instead of news that teaches us about the merit or problems with each candidate’s policy suggestions, we are reading and hearing personal attacks on politicians themselves. And we, as private citizens, are repeating and perpetuating these campaign smears while also applying our judgment to our peers.  We are attacking each other for our political opinions. I regularly see Facebook posts threatening to end friendships over politics. We question the intelligence and sanity of those with whom we disagree. We are using our words to attack one another’s very being. We are judging people’s souls based on their political leanings.  We are assuming that because their thoughts differ from ours they are evil, malicious and going to cause the destruction of the country. We have replaced listening with judging.

Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad. Listen Israel Adonai is our God, Adonai is one.  Listen Israel.  These are the words that Jews are commanded to say each time we pray, they are the words that our on our lips when we go to sleep at night.  They are on the doorposts of our home. We teach them to our children. They are the last words we say before we die. These words teach us to pay attention. We are not just to let the sounds pass by our ears. We are to use the skill of listening, not just the physical ability to hear, which not all of us have. Yet, we can all listen to the words being communicated to us, whether it be through speech, sign language or the written word. In fact, listening, paying attention, Sh'miat Haozen, is one of the virtues we are to aspire to. When we are committed to attentive listening we have the ability to understand and learn from one another.  

The Torah is full of times when God is trying to get our attention. “Listen well, O heavens, and I will speak.” (Deuteronomy 32:1)– only if we are paying attention will God talk to us. This idea of listening is of utmost importance in the Torah. Torah does not mince words.  Tradition tells us that every word is used for a purpose. It is no accident that we are commanded time and again to pay attention. The Israelites were not very good at listening. They rarely understood what was being communicated to them. Instead, they interrupted with their list of grievances. Too often, we are like the ancient Israelites. 

If we are honest with ourselves we know that we don’t listen very well. And when we do, we are often listening for what we want to hear. We have made a decision about what the other person will say and we are biding our time, waiting for when we can interject with our own opinion, or discredit the speaker with a counterpoint. Rarely do we slow down enough to ask questions, to dig deeper, and to understand another’s point of view and core values.  Rarely do we hear, let alone look for, the truths that differ from our own assumptions or understandings.  Rather than using our conversation to learn something new, we use them to convince others of our side.  All too often this leads to yelling and arguing, instead of listening and understanding.  

We all know how much better we feel when others pay attention to us. This is when we feel most valued, most understood, most important. It is also when we are most able to listen to another’s point of view. It is in this duality that we are able to find common ground where our paths, our passions and our concerns meet and where we can find solutions that were never imagined.    

As hard as it is to choose our words carefully, it is even harder to listen to those with which we disagree. Game of Thrones is a TV series, based on a book, that shows the best and worst of humanity. It happens to be much too gory for me, but I still can’t stop watching when Mike has it on! There are characters in it that are so despicable it hard not to root for their destruction. Then there are others whose wisdom far exceeds their position or stature. One such character, who happens to be my personal favorite, Tyrion Lannister, remarked: “We make peace with our enemies, not our friends.” Guarding our tongue and listening attentively are two crucial skills to living together amongst families and within communities. 

In a conversation with the Mad Hatter, Alice begins a sentence “I don’t think…” Before she has a chance to finish the Hatter jumps in with: “Then you should not speak.” This of course frustrates Alice to no end, for the Hatter is clearly not listening to her. In fact, in many ways it is the lack of listening that propels the story of Alice forward. But, in this instance, it is not the art of listening that the Mad Hatter is trying to teach us. He wants Alice to realize that she is not choosing her words carefully. So often we don’t think, but we do speak. We speak out of anger and frustration; we speak out of boredom or to fill the silence. We use our words without discretion. In so doing, we forget the power we have to create and to destroy.  Instead, we view speech as a credit line with no limit, rather than the most valuable possession we have. And the value of our credit is plummeting. 

It is time for us to take back the importance of speech and relearn the art of listening. It is time for us to work toward understanding one another. Our words, once released, are like an arrow. They cannot be recalled; the harm they do cannot be contained. Just as the feathers in the well-known parable cannot be put back into the pillow once they have been shaken out into the wind, our words have a tendency to fly away to places unknown where we are unable to collect them and the damage they do cannot be undone. But, as is said in Proverbs, kind words are like honey, they are sweet to the soul and healing to the body. They promote kindness and compassion. 

Therefore, as we celebrate this New Year, we have a choice to make. Will we use our speech to heal or to harm? Will we speak rashly like the thrust of a sword or bring healing with the wise tongue? Will we use our words to light fires in our minds or to wring tears from our eyes? And to whom will each of us commit to listen? Whose opinion will we try to better understand? Whose fears will we begin to acknowledge? Now is our chance to change the conversation. For:

“The time has come

The walrus said

To talk of many things”

Shana Tova

Yom Kippur: The Blessing of Failure

Sermon by Rabbi Jennifer Hartman
2015/5776

This morning I would like to talk to you about the blessing of failure.

Moses - known as the greatest leader of the Jewish people, began his career reluctantly, terrified of the task placed before him.  As you may remember, Moses first encounters God at the burning bush.  God says to Moses:  “I am the Lord your God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  I have heard my people cry out to me from their enslavement and it is time for me to set them free.  I will send you to Pharaoh to bring forth my people.  Moses’ responded – and I paraphrase: “You must be kidding.  You want me to go up against Pharaoh?  You think that I can help you?  You definitely have me confused with someone else.  No one will ever believe that I have God on my side.  I am just a shepherd with a lisp.  Please God, choose someone else.”  In this moment Moses had no faith in himself.  He was afraid that he would fail and an entire nation would suffer the consequences.  

I make light of this dialogue, but Moses’ trepidation was very real.  We have ALL experienced doubts and concerns associated with the possibility of failure – whether in our professions, our relationships, our schooling or our finances. We might know, intellectually, that taking a risk is the right thing to do… but wow is it scary.  What if we can’t do it?  What if we fail?  We might be humiliated, we might cost our company, we might lose our job.  Life may not be exactly the way we want it, but what if we take a chance and end up worse off? This is the reason we try to protect ourselves and our children from failure. We are afraid that if we step outside our comfort zone there will be dire consequences rather than great reward.  We forget that so many of the most successful people – Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey - took big risks and faced failure. And here’s the thing – they needed to fail in order to succeed.

What better example of this than the founder of Apple, Steve Jobs?  Jobs, who never graduated from college, was fired from Apple – the company he created!  In his 2005 Stanford commencement speech, Jobs recalled the devastating public humiliation of being ousted, yet states “…. getting fired was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything, freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.  I had been rejected, but I still loved what I did, so I decided to start over.”  

I know what you are thinking.  It is easy to consider Steve Jobs failing.  He had the resources to take risks and not worry about paying the bills.  It is easier to take a chance when we do not have anything to lose – either because we have nothing, or because we are extremely successful. This is why many of the wealthiest people continually try new endeavors.  This is also why sociologists teach that, in the United States, 1st generation immigrants are particularly innovative. They come here looking for a better life; they have nothing to lose and everything to gain.   Political Junkie Ken Rudin suggests that to solve the immigration crisis we should all emigrate after three generations, and start over.  I am not advocating that we all get up and leave, but it is interesting to think about what happens once we are comfortable.   This is when the fear of going backwards restrains us from being creative.  Yet, even if we may not all invent the light bulb, we will all face disappointment in our lives and recognizing how to handle this may determine the outcome of our struggles. 

Knowing that failure is often critical to success, the question becomes how do we accept setbacks gracefully, and teach our children to do the same, when we are so afraid of it?  To do this we need to remember that failing rarely brings the dire consequences we anticipate. There is a famous story about one of the first IBM computer designs.  This computer had serious flaws and was quickly dropped from production.  The project manager, expecting to be fired, asked his boss if he should clean out his desk.  The supervisor replied: “We just spent several millions dollars training you.  Why would we want to fire you?”  This man cost his company and yet his boss understood that this would make him better at his job.  He learned so much about the consumer from his failure.  In addition the employee became more valuable because he showed IBM he could 1. Learn from the mistake, 2. Own it, 3. Fix it, and 4. Put safeguards in place to ensure the same mistake was not repeated. What an amazing lesson to know that failures are to be learned from, not to be ridiculed. 

If we can take risks and learn from our mistakes then we will set an incredible example for our children.  When my aunt was in her mid 40s – after raising three children – she decided to go to law school.  She had been out of school for years and had no idea if she would be able to get in, let alone do the work once she was there.  She ended up having an amazing three years of school and loved every day she practiced as a litigator.  She faced the possibility of failure and it changed her life for good.  She also set a powerful example for her children and nieces and nephews that it is never too late to fulfill your dreams. 

We have a hard time allowing children to fail.  We tolerate misjudgments when we teach them to ride bikes, ice skate, even drive a car.  They fall and we insist that they get back up and keep going.  Yet when it comes to school or relationships we have a much harder time letting go. 

I will never forget how impactful being allowed to fail was for me.  I was 15 and it was my first time behind the wheel of a car.   I was with my dad in his new sedan and we went for a drive around the neighborhood.  He told me to turn right, but I did not turn fast enough.  I ended up driving over the curb and over a sapling.  Yes, I drove over, not into, a tree.  The bottom of his car was punctured and, adding insult to injury, we had to go buy the city a new tree.  I was so embarrassed.  We then went home to tell my family what had happened.  My brother was relentless with the teasing comments. I assumed that as far as my father was concerned, I was done driving for a while, and frankly in that moment I would have been happy to never drive.   Still, the next day, my dad made me get right back in the driver’s seat and try again. I learned more about being a safe driver from my mistake – my failure – than from hours of drivers ed.

Not only did I learn about driving, I learned about making big and expensive mistakes. I learned they are painful, they are embarrassing, and they are scary.  I also learned that I have the ability to fail and that I have the resiliency to pick myself back up and continue.  Unfortunately, this cannot be taught any other way. When we protect ourselves and our children from defeat we rob them of these lessons. When we protect our children from failure we do not give them the tools to tackle the world on their own. We end up with young adults who do not believe in their own abilities.  Renowned therapist and author Dr. Wendy Mogel tells a wonderful story about getting into trouble as a child. When she would present her predicament to her father he would answer: “That is very interesting, how are you going to solve it.”  Mogel’s parents intuitively understood that children usually get themselves into age appropriate trouble and given time and encouragement they can get themselves out of their dilemma.

Psychologists agree that although, at the time, we feel that failure is the end of the world, it actually helps us to move on to the next stage of our lives. Letting kids mess up is tough and painful for parents. But it helps kids learn how to fix slip-ups and make better decisions next time.  Children who are allowed to fail, have a stronger sense of self.  “When they step into a situation, [resilient kids] have a sense they can figure out what they need to do and can handle what is thrown at them with a sense of confidence.”

Failing is not the end of the world, it is the beginning of a new challenge. Failure only becomes a serious problem when we confuse it with our self-identity.  Failing is not the problem; it is how we frame it that is the obstacle.  Rather than admitting we made a mistake we need to fix, we call ourselves failures.  We define ourselves by the setback.  This definitely does not help us learn from our blunder and move forward with new knowledge and confidence to face whatever comes in our way.

Moses, our teacher, leader, and law giver who is arguably the greatest individual of our tradition, failed over and over again.  Even with God's help, he had to go back to Pharaoh 10 times before the Israelites were freed.  After the crossing of the Red Sea, he goes up to receive the 10 commandments and returns to find the Israelites worshipping the golden calf.  Over and over again the people lose faith -- he loses patience and, finally, his temper. He fails to achieve his primary career goal, the ultimate promotion -- to enter the Promised Land.  And in the end, his failures teach us as much as his successes.  Moses teaches us that our goal is not to be perfect, but to improve the world even if it means we will face failure in the process.  On this Yom Kippur, as we stand before God with all of our imperfections, our fears, doubts, and anxieties, let us pray not for certainty but for courage, not for ease but for resilience, not for finitude but for faith, not to reach our destination but to embrace the mystery and wonder of the journey of our lives.

Rosh HaShanah: Transformation

Sermon by Rabbi Jennifer Hartman
2015/5776

This summer I had the opportunity to hike in the Dolomites, a beautiful region of the Alps located in northern Italy.  I was amazed to learn from one of our guides, that two hundred and eighty million years ago, this mountain range was completely under water.  The white, rock-like material that comprises these mountains is actually sea coral.  It was incredible to think about how much change has taken place since that time.  The continents moved, the water receded, and the mountaintops are now as high as 11,000 feet above sea level.  Rather than scuba diving down we were climbing up, rather breathlessly at times, to see the stunning views.  Canvassing this mountain range, hiking up farther and farther until we were above the tree line, seeing places where streams had slowly eroded the limestone and the way the rocks had settled into place, I could not help but think about the broader issue of how change occurs in the natural world… and in us.

One thing I realized, as I spent five days surrounded by the serenity and the beauty of this vast mountain range is that nature, when left alone, evolves very slowly.  As we hiked, higher and higher, day after day, pushing ourselves to take one more step, willing our lungs to fully take in the thinning air, wondering why uber was not there to quickly take us home, I realized that we – humans - also change slowly - both our minds and our bodies.  It takes a lot of time and patience for us to change our mindset, our thought process, the lens through which we see the world.  And it certainly takes a lot of time and patience for us to lose weight, to build strength, to gain endurance. I learned this as each morning I woke up and thought to myself, there is no way that I can do this again, and each evening as my calves and my knees and my feet ached I thought I cannot believe what I was able to accomplish today.  It was not until the last day when my muscles and joints hurt a little bit less that I knew I could conquer one more peak, that I appreciated that the reward would be incredible.  It took perseverance to reach this understanding.  If I had given up just a day earlier I never would have realized the full reward.

The transformation that took place to the dolomite mountain range and to me while hiking there made me remember a wonderful TED talk I had heard about one man’s personal transformation. Today, this man is a   prolific author and inspirational speaker who travels to inner-city schools around the country helping students understand they have many paths from which to choose.  This man, Shaka Senghor, knows this because he spent 23 years in jail. 

Senghor was raised in Detroit.  He was an honor roll student with dreams of becoming a doctor when his parents divorced leaving him angry and confused.  In his teen years, he fell in with a rough crowd and at 17 he was shot multiple times.  No one was there to help him through this trauma and instead of confronting his fears and anxieties he became irrational and paranoid.  Fourteen months later, at 19, his life changed forever when he shot and killed a man.  Senghor was convicted of murder and entered prison bitter, enraged and hurt.  He blamed everyone else for his position in life.  In jail Senghor fell deeper and deeper into trouble.  He ran the black market, he sold drugs and he broke all the rules.  Eventually he was sent to solitary confinement for 7 and a half years.  It was during this time that he received a letter from his 8-year-old son.  His son began the letter by writing, in capital letters, MOM TOLD ME WHY YOU ARE IN PRISON - MURDER.  His son went on to say, Dad, don’t kill, God is watching you.  In that moment Senghor learned that his son now knew what he had done and defined him by his action.

Senghor was transformed by this letter in a way he did not know possible.  It struck a chord in him that caused him to reexamine his life. He allowed the words of his son to touch his soul.  He did not become defensive but rather contemplated the message as he stared down at the letters.  He decided he would not allow them to define him.

He needed to take a step back and examine himself in order to bring about a transformation.  For Senghor this process was long, hard and included four key components – (1) mentors, (2) books, (3) familial support, and (4) writing.  Senghor had great mentors, including his son, who spoke to him honestly and candidly enabling him to see uncomfortable truths about his life.  He read inspiring books and poems by brilliant black scholars, philosophers and activists including Malcolm X.  His readings showed him he had other choices available to him and other, more fulfilling, paths to walk.  His family stood by his side while he was in jail, especially his father who was with him every step of the way.  This gave him confidence when stumbled and support when he felt discouraged.  Lastly, Senghor wrote, he kept a journal of all of his actions.  The process of writing down his experiences helped him to confront his choices and to realize his need to atone, to acknowledge that he had been hurt and had hurt others, to take the time to apologize even if he received no response in return.  This allowed Senghor to free himself of his harmful past deeds, to no longer be held hostage to his prior actions. In this way, when he was finally released from prison twenty years later, he was able to begin a new life as an author and speaker – a positive and productive member of society. Senghor was able to do what we are asked to do during the High Holidays, to see life with clear eyes and to begin, slowly, to change the parts of ourselves that are destructive and detrimental.  He began to see the potential blessing and burden in each moment and chose the blessings.  He learned that selecting good over evil, is a matter of life and death.       

So, you may be asking, what does a man who committed murder and a mountain range have in common?  They both teach us that to truly improve, to truly change, takes time.  Today, as we celebrate the beginning of the Jewish year 5776 we search our souls and cleanse our hearts of the trials of the previous year.  We have actions for which we need to atone, there are mistakes we still need to rectify.  We ask God to be lenient with us as we go through our process of teshuva, repentance. Yet, we know that to truly improve, to truly change, to truly transform, we must work beyond the ten days of atonement.  Beginning this work on Rosh Hashanah and ending it on Yom Kippur is akin to dieting between breakfast and lunch and thinking we will lose weight.   Change does not happen in a day.  It takes determination, commitment and resolve.  It takes openness, understanding and compassion.  It takes perseverance and persistence and lots of time to reach a beautiful place of blessing. 

This reality, that change takes time, is our greatest challenge.  Nothing else in our modern society takes time.  We expect responses to our emails within 5 minutes, we can watch whatever show we want whenever we want, and eat anything at anytime.  With our cell phones in our hands we are always accessible and can find information on anything with just a few clicks of a button.   It is no wonder we are frustrated when we do not understand a concept, conquer a challenge, or make a change instantaneously.  Any musician, scholar, linguist will tell you that becoming proficient in their field was partially talent and majority tuchas - sitting and studying for hours and hours on end.  Scientists have even gotten it down to a number.  It takes 10,000 hours or 416 and 2/3 days to become a master.  The greats in any field had to persevere through the tedium and boredom, the set-backs and failures, the frustrations and irritations.  They needed to push themselves to the end and be patient in order to succeed.   

When I think of the Dolomites I think of what majesty and beauty comes from slow and patient change.  They took millions of years, to become what they are today.  Senghor took time, years in prison that he spent working on himself, to turn his life around and become the motivational speaker and author he is today.  These days are not the time to complete the work, but they are a time, every year, for us to renew the work, to continue the work, to jump start the work on ourselves, the work that takes a lifetime to truly finish. 

Life is a journey with many peaks and valleys, at times we will try and try and try and still fail, at other times we will find great success.   The lesson for us to learn is to never give up. It takes time and it is hard to bring about change in our lives, but the reward is brilliant.  These days of awe help us to acknowledge our faults and failures, while still keeping the door open on change and improvement, embracing all that we have ahead of us.  If hiking in the Dolomites taught me one thing, it is that while change can be scary it can also bring about magnificent beauty.  Senghor’s story teaches all of us that even our worst deeds, our darkest moments, do not determine the final outcome of our lives.  Life can only be lived one moment at a time.  Our past does not have to determine our future.  We have a choice to make.  We get to decide what comes next. For this reason, the lessons of the High Holidays are only effective if we can carry them with us throughout the year.  Therefore, we pray that these days will bring about inspiration and give us strength to never give up on uncovering our true potential.   

Shanah Tova

Yom Kippur: Mental Health

Sermon by Rabbi Jennifer Hartman
2014/5775

“Gooooooood morning, Vietnam! It’s 0600 hours. What does the ‘O’ stand for? O my God, it’s early!” – Adrian, Good Morning, Vietnam

“You’re not perfect, sport, and let me save you the suspense: this girl you’ve met, she’s not perfect either. But the question is whether or not you’re perfect for each other.” - Good Will Hunting

“You treat a disease, you win, you lose. You treat a person, I guarantee you, you'll win, no matter what the outcome.” - Patch Adams

“Carpe Diem, seize the day. Make your lives extraordinary” - Dead Poets Society

When I learned that Robin Williams had died I was heartbroken. The world had lost a funny, brilliant and kind man who shared his talents and his resources with all of us. Upon hearing the news I must admit I thought it was a joke. TMZ was pulling a prank on social media. When I realized it was true, I thought it was from an accident, or maybe he died suddenly of a heart attack. I later learned that was not the case at all. Robin Williams died from a terrible illness that affects millions of Americans. It does not discriminate by age, gender, sexual orientation or economic status. He died from something that no one likes to talk about because of the social stigma associated with it. People avoid the subject, whisper about those who suffer from it, turn their backs and walk away. Robin Williams died from depression.

Even his life circumstances could not protect him. One sufferer described depression as: “having nothing to do with who you are, how much you earn, how popular or famous you are, unpopular or unknown you are, it just is. Like cancer is. Like asthma is. Like diabetes is. Some people get it, some people don’t. It is an illness and it must be viewed and treated as such.”

We must end the stigma. It is becoming so detrimental to our society that just the other day I heard a commercial on cities 97 asking the community to fight against the stigma. The ad was sponsored by the “Make it OK campaign”, a new effort being piloted right here in Minnesota to end the silence around mental illness. This is a step in the right direction but the mission is difficult. We live in a society that tells us to be happy all of the time. All we have to do is log on to facebook to witness this point of view. The self-selecting “shares” of our friends and family reinforces the idea that everyone else is enjoying an enviable vacation, job promotion, engagement, or anniversary with a doting spouse. It is natural to only want to share what is extraordinary and exciting in our lives, but it gives the perception of perfection rather than the reality that our lives are wonderfully messy and complicated. It is no wonder that individuals and families feel they need to keep their depression a secret. The message is they are the only ones who are struggling.

The media, magazine covers, and news stories convey the message that only the poor, the homeless, the unsuccessful struggle with their mental health. Only the perfect can compete in our society. Everyone else fails. All one has to do is look at fashion or teen magazines to see that pop-culture sells an impossible ideal. A person must be perfectly thin, perfectly tall, and perfectly muscular. 

So many of our high schoolers, and now those in middle and grade school feel they must play an instrument perfectly and speak a foreign language perfectly and get perfect grades in order to be accepted to an elite university. If they don’t do all of this then the rest of their life is doomed to failure. Depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, anorexia – these do not fit into the unrealistic stereotypes of what makes a person thrive and happy. Yet, everywhere we look there are remarkable people who do not fit this mold. All the accomplished people I know have struggled. These are not always the stories published, the anecdotes told, but they always exist and frequently form the basis for success. Yet, somehow, we think that facing turmoil is the exception rather than the rule. We forget that Steve Jobs never graduated from college that Jim Carey suffered from depression, that Ashley Judd overcame an eating disorder, and that as a teenager, Wynona Ryder suffered from panic attacks.

Let us seize this day and say to each other it is enough – enough of asking people to hide, enough of asking them to keep secrets, enough of our loved ones bearing this burden alone. It is time for us to end the stigma of depression that is ingrained in our culture. It is time for us to stop making unwarranted assumptions about those who struggle with their mental health. We must stop assigning blame, we must stop underestimating others abilities. We must do this for the rising number of teens who attempt suicide every year. We must do this for our parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends whom we love so much.

Our tradition can help us change the conversation for in it we find great leaders who suffered from depression. King Solomon, known for his wisdom and justice, was one of these leaders. The rabbis teach that:

One day Solomon asked his most trusted minister to find a ring that upon looking at it would make a happy man sad and a sad man happy. Spring passed and then summer and the trusted minister had no idea where he could find the ring. Finally, he decided to take a walk in one of the poorest quarters of Jerusalem. He passed by a merchant who had begun to set out the day's wares on a shabby carpet. "Have you by any chance heard of a special ring that makes the happy wearer forget his joy and the broken-hearted wearer forget his sorrows?" He watched the elderly man take a plain gold ring from his carpet and engrave something on it. When the minister read the words on the ring, his face broke out in a wide smile.

The Minister returned to King Solomon. "Well, my friend, have you found the ring?"

The minister held up a small gold ring and declared, "Here it is, your majesty!" The jeweler had written three Hebrew letters on the gold band: Gimel, Zayin, Yud, which begin the words "Gam zeh ya'avor - This too shall pass."

You see, even the king needed a reminder that he could overcome his depressive episode and that through the good times and the hard times, when he was successful and when he stumbled, he was a valuable and worthy leader. If God did not deem depression to be an inhibitor of King Solomon’s leadership abilities, who are we to judge?

Our tradition is full of strong, powerful, extraordinary leaders who face personal challenges. Judaism does not ask us to be perfect or hide ourselves. In fact, it does quite the opposite. It asks us to confront ourselves. It understands that individuals have many struggles in life, and that this only adds to their character. In a few weeks we will read from the Torah portion Vayetzeh where Jacob wrestles. No one is quite sure with whom Jacob wrestles. The text is ambiguous. There are many explanations. One explanation that resonates with me is that Jacob wrestles with himself, with his past self, with his demons, with the actions he has taken that haunt him. He is forced to uncover all of his secrets. The ones he has kept from others and the ones he has kept from himself. In the end his struggle brings him blessing. Jacob confronts his fears and wins. For this he is given the name Israel and an entire nation is named after him. Not only is he given a blessing, he becomes a blessing, but this comes at a cost. Jacob leaves this encounter with a limp he has forever. It is his reminder that through our struggle and our pain we can encourage ourselves and each other to lead more fulfilling, more engaging and more meaningful lives.

Not one of us will make it through life unscathed. We will have to confront challenges. They may be financial or relational, they may be academic or health related; some will endure abuse or addiction. Confronting these alone only makes the burden that much heavier. Hiding our struggles leaves us depleted of energy and hinders our ability to recover. When we acknowledge our hardships we find others who can help us, support us, and understand what we are facing. We can work together to create spaces where it is safe to discuss our feelings, to uncover our vulnerabilities, to reveal our complex selves. We are able to allow one another to be the imperfect wonderful human beings we are. Only when we talk and discuss, educate and examine, will we be able to end the stigma associated with depression.

This is possible for us to accomplish. We have been able to de-stigmatize other issues in our community. Remember when one could not be openly gay in Minneapolis? Remember when cancer was spoken about in a hushed voice, with people seemingly afraid they might catch it if they talked too loud? Remember when people thought you could contract HIV from sharing silverware? 

Through conversation and education we were able to reverse these notions. Today there are support groups for those fighting cancer and their caretakers, gay marriage is legal in our state and we understand and are able to treat and prevent HIV. Depression is also an illness and we must acknowledge this in order to help our community, our children. When we confront mental illness as we confront cancer and diabetes and heart disease, we affirm that all people are valuable. By ending this harmful stigma we make our community live its Jewish values of betzelem eloheim – everyone is created in God’s image!

A defining text on Yom Kippur is from the Torah portion Nitzavim. God sets before the people life and death: “This day, I call upon the heaven and the earth as witnesses: I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. You shall choose life, so that you and your offspring will live.” As long as we whisper we tell others that depression is a curse and we are inhibiting their ability to live. We must end this detrimental behavior. We must choose life, for ourselves, and future generations by fighting the battle that will bring healing. We must speak frankly, openly and honestly. Only in this way can we help end the stigma that causes so much shame. Only in this way will everyone have the support to fight this illness. Only in this way can we be sure that everyone is given the opportunity to be a blessing in life. For, as Robin Williams character said in Hook, “To live, to live would be an awfully big adventure.”

Rosh HaShanah: A Day to Regroup

Sermon by Rabbi Jennifer Hartman
2014/5775

There is so much going on in the world today. Most of the events are terrifying. There is the threat of ISIS, the conflict in the Ukraine, anti-Semitism and racism. This summer planes fell out of the sky, we learned more about the ever warming planet and Israel engaged in operation project edge. Add to all of this our everyday fears and worries - balancing work and children, paying our rent or mortgage, saving for college and retirement. We are concerned about our kids’ birthday parties, our jobs, making our relationships work. Just thinking about all of this makes my anxiety rise. How is yours doing?

I hope that most of you have your cell phones with you today. I would like you to take them out and turn them on! Yes! I know this is the exact opposite of what you were asked to do when you walked into the Sanctuary this morning, but I would like for us to be in conversation with one another. On the wall behind me you will see a number. During my sermon I am going to ask all of you a few questions. I would love for you to text your responses to the number. For those of you streaming this service, please participate also! If the technology works the way it is supposed to, and we all know that this is a big if, your responses will appear, anonymously, on the wall behind me. In this way we will all be able to share our thoughts and feelings and hopefully learn a bit more about our community.

Here is my first question for all of you: I wonder, what did I miss? What is making your blood pressure rise? What is keeping you up at night? What event in our society is making you want to lock your door, close your blinds and shut out the world?

Are you getting more and more stressed as the issues come streaming in? I know that I am and the more stressed I become the less I am able to confront any one issue. I think that looking to the wisdom of Judaism may help us to center ourselves in a society that seems to be spinning out of control. When we turn off the noise, the competition, the 24 hour news cycle, the doubts about ourselves and our families that social media and pop culture put in our heads, we are able to focus on our priorities, our values, our beliefs. We are able to return to the core of who we are as individuals.

We are taught in Genesis - God created the world in six days. God rested, blessed and hallowed the seventh day as holy time thus creating tranquility, serenity and peace. The Talmud teaches that Shabbat was God’s precious and guarded treasure, which God gave to the Jewish people as a gift. God gave us a time to reconnect, renew and refocus after a week of toiling. God understood people need this time to be productive, creative, and generous during the week.

Another question: How do you relax? How do you unplug? - Share this with us?

At the end of June my grandmother died, 24 days shy of her 92nd Birthday. As I watched my family during the funeral and the days that followed I was amazed by what my grandparents created. My grandparents had four children, twelve grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. They built a large, tight knit and Jewishly committed family! Of my grandparents’ dozen grandchildren some of us went to day school and some to supplementary school, some of us went to Jewish overnight camp, some spent extended periods of time in Israel and some went for only a short period of time. However, all of us had Shabbat dinner every Friday night. All of us gathered around our respective tables to bless the candles and the wine and to say the Motzi. All of us missed social outings in order to be with our families, to talk to our parents, to refrain from fighting with our siblings and to play with our cousins. We all laughed a lot, ate too much and knew, without question that we were Jewish and that Judaism was completely connected to our family and both of these came before everything else. It is this connection and commitment that has lead to Jewish weddings and Jewish babies, to Rosh Hashanah services and Passover Seders, to great-grandchildren going to day school.

There is a famous quote by the Israeli author Ahad Ha’am that says: “More than the Jews have kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept the Jews.” The regulation of time through the laws of the Sabbath gave the Jews the chance to regroup in communities at the end of every week, and that regrouping sustained their Jewish identity. As the ancient historian Philo taught, Shabbat does not have us abstain from work in order to instill laziness within us. Shabbat is intended to allow us to have time to relax from continuous and unending work. Our bodies and our minds need regularly scheduled breaks from labor. Giving ourselves this time to rest allows us to collect our strength and reenter our daily routines with better concentration and effectiveness. This was so true for my family. Our shared Shabbat experience made us stronger and more able to confront adversity both individually and together.

What is your favorite memory of spending time with family or friends? Please share with us!

Every Friday night my grandmother stood in front of the large, bronze Shabbat candlesticks that her mother brought to America from Russia. She said the blessing and then she closed her eyes, rubbed her hands together, and prayed silently for a few moments. It did not matter how much chaos was taking place around her, she was able to shut out the world and be alone with her thoughts, with her ancestors and with God. I knew, from a young age, that I was never to interrupt this ritual. When she finished she went back to the business of feeding and taking care of her children and grandchildren. Yet, now that we all saw the candles were lit, we all felt a little calmer - the sacred time of Shabbat permeated our home.

As Abraham Joshua Heschel so eloquently states: “Six days a week the spirit works under strain, beset with worries, enmeshed in anxieties - on the seventh day we are given a respite from this”. It is a time for us to be together, to talk to one another, to linger around the table longer than we ever would during the week and to relax.

Growing up the Shabbat table was where we connected, nurtured our family relationships, and learn about the world. At the Shabbat dinner table my politically diverse family argued vehemently about the Middle East peace processes, presidential candidates and domestic policy. We rarely agreed but that did not keep us from having the conversations. At the Shabbat table we learned about our history, hearing stories about our great grandparents, aunts, and uncles, their lives in Sioux City, Iowa, Aberdeen, South Dakota and Trenton, New Jersey. At the Shabbat table we learned to be proud of our roots and our heritage. Our stories informed our sense of self. There we shared triumphs and joy – successful report cards, promotions at work, engagements – and sorrow and pain, moments of heartbreak, divorce, and the death of family or close friends. It was at this table, at which we were all expected to be, that we understood completely we were not alone and perseverance through the hard times was our ONLY option.

Do you have a Shabbat memory? What is your favorite one? Please share it with us!

When we allow it to, the traditions, teaching and rhythm of Judaism keep us grounded when we feel pulled in many directions. The Torah reminds us from who and where we come, teaching us that every family has trials, but it also has joyous moments. Judaism gives us hope when we think things will never improve. We see this strongly in the symbols of Rosh Hashanah- a round challah to show that things are ever changing and evolving; honey to remind us that life is sweet, pomegranates whose many seeds remind us of the power of mitzvot to bring healing to the brokenness in our world. The holiday of Passover takes us on the difficult journey of becoming a free people, and teaches that after very cold, very bitter winters, spring does indeed come. Judaism brings us home to our community and our family by demanding that we mourn and rejoice with others. We are to say Kaddish with a minimum of ten people and we are also commanded to rejoice with the bride and groom. Shabbat helps us to regroup and refocus, brings us together to reconnect and reaffirm. In this way it helps us to gain perspective because we can take a deep breath and sit with our thoughts rather than have to react immediately in our society that seems to never stops moving.

I am not originally from here. I no longer have my Grandmother to make me matzo ball soup or my aunts are not in Minneapolis to make challah, brisket and blond brownies. I no longer open the door to my childhood home to the smell of roasted chicken and potatoes. It is hard for me to prepare Shabbat dinner. It takes planning ahead. It means inviting friends before their calendars get booked. It means preparing meals ahead of time. It means eating dinner late. Too often all of the preparation and planning feels overwhelming. I get stuck in the notion that if I can't do it big then I should not do it at all. That is not the purpose of Shabbat.

Shabbat is not about being extravagant, it is about being together so that we are better able to face challenges. The world is less scary, change seems possible, the work feels lighter when we open our homes and fill our tables with loved ones and friends, with people new to the community and those we want to get to know. So, I challenge you this year - light Shabbat candles, light them more than once, and see where that leads you. Now, turn off your phones :)

Israel’s Future

Sermon by Rabbi Jennifer Hartman
2014/5775

A student recently asked me a difficult and thought provoking question. I want to share his question and my response with you. For the purpose of this sermon I will call the student Josh.

Dear Josh,

You recently asked me why, in the early part of the last century, as you put it, “the Jews kicked out another people in order to establish the State of Israel”. While I don’t agree with this description of events, this letter is not an attempt to convince you otherwise. There is no doubt that the establishment of the modern State of Israel has been a very, complicated, messy, and at times disappointing process. The history of how we came to have a country is one that often makes people on both sides of the conflict confused, angry and defensive. Shelves of books have been written on the subject, dissecting every angle. Each side feels they were fighting for the land that was rightfully theirs. In the end the Jewish people did what they felt necessary to regain their ancestral land. Whatever happened in the past, today there are two people who feel strongly that the land is theirs. If we focus too much on the question of who really belongs in the land, we will never attain peace. Today, we must focus on how these two people can live together. I must be honest, hearing your question invoked in me a visceral negative reaction. I felt Israel was betrayed by one of its own. Yet, when I took a step back, I realized that your question has within it an invaluable lesson.

I write to you today because you made me aware of a critical failure of mine. I took for granted that you would automatically love and support Israel by virtue of being Jewish. I now realize that this is not the case. I, none of us, can assume that future generations will defend and care for Israel. It has now been well established that many of your peers view Israel’s policies with skepticism. The 2014 Pew research study on the Jewish population in America shed light on this reality, when it indicated that just 23 percent of non-Orthodox Jews between the ages of 18 and 29 think the Israeli government is making a sincere effort toward peace. This compared to 44 percent in the 65+ range.

Josh, the generation of your grandparents and great-grandparents rejoiced in 1947 when they witnessed the passing of the United Nations partition plan to divide the Palestine Mandate into a Jewish state and an Arab state. Through the United Nations the world community legally gave part of the land to the Jewish people. Jews around the world could hardly believe that their dream had become a reality. There really was going to be a Jewish state. Your parent’s generation grew-up with the knowledge that wherever they went, they could feel safe as Jews in the world. They grew up secure in the knowledge that the horrors that happened in the Holocaust would not happen to them, because Israel would always protect all Jews. They beamed with pride when Israel won the ‘67 war and the Yom Kippur war. My generation was astounded by operation Solomon which brought over 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel. We were in awe that this small country of found a way to help all of these people, our people. We were proud when Israel took in the Russian Jews who were finally able to leave the former Soviet Union.

But, we also watched the first Intifada in the early 1990s, when Palestinians threw stones and Molotov cocktails at Israeli military and civilians. Ten years later came the 2nd intifada, where we saw buses and cafes blown up, murdering our Israeli brothers and sisters. We saw the horrific violence and terror that those opposed to peace and the existence of our people in our ancestral land were willing to commit against us. And while we have cheered the calm brought on by the security fence and amazing technology, we have also seen actions that some believe has made the dream of peace further away. As we Jews are accustomed to doing, we began to wonder, question, and debate: How could Israel make a lasting and mutually beneficial peace with its neighbors that would bring prosperity to all? What would, should and could both sides possibly give up making this a reality.

Josh, my generation has done you a disservice. We began to raise questions about Israel’s behavior before giving you the chance to fall in love with the country on your own. You see, my generation was the last generation to unequivocally support the need for a Jewish state. As teenagers and even adults we spent time with our grandparents who survived the holocaust. We listened to our parents whisper “Jewish” in public. We watched Shalom Sesame to feel that Judaism was part of pop-culture. We may not have felt it directly, but we understood that anti-Semitism was still out there...somewhere. We knew that Israel was a place not only where we could be safe, no matter what, but also a place where we did not have to explain eating matzo for a week every spring or missing school on Yom Kippur. Of course we were going to spend a summer in Israel. Our parents were not going to send us to France or Italy or Peru instead. This gave us the opportunity to develop our own relationship with the country.

That is how I came to see Israel as my home. My parents and grandparents were ardent Zionists. My grandparents even took my entire family to Israel when I was 9. But, it was not until I went on my own that I truly understood the power of the country. You see Josh, when I was a senior in high school I did an exchange program in Israel. I spent two weeks traveling the country with Israeli teenagers. I got to see it through their eyes. This is when I met one of my closest friends to this day, Yishai.

Yishai had just turned 18 when we met and he was proudly preparing for the army. He was excited to join the Israeli Defense Force and have the opportunity to defend his country. He loved the land – the beauty of the Golan Heights, the history of the Beit Shean valley where he lived, the beach of Tel Aviv, the religious center of Jerusalem. He loved the people – the Orthodox Jews and the Ethiopian Jews, the Russian Jews and the Sephardi Jews. He would speak about the traditions of each culture and when they clashed and when they complimented one another. I saw Israel through his eyes, and the eyes of my Israeli friends and I could not help fall in love with the land, the food, the culture and the people.

It is from that love that my friends and I became the first generation to question Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank. We asked them together with our Israeli friends. We asked them because we wanted Israel to be, as the prophet Isaiah described, a light unto the nations. I will never forget having conversations with Yishai as he took a break from patrolling the Lebanese border or from a west bank check-point. We talked through how the interactions he witnessed between Israeli-Arabs and Israeli-Jews and Palestinians both inspired and saddened him. We continued these conversations through many visits, exploring tunnels outside of Jerusalem, lying on the beach in Tel Aviv, walking the trails of the Galilee. We discussed Israel’s future – our hopes and fears.

Our conversations were as important as ever when he was called to serve during Operation Protective edge. We texted as he proudly took on his duty to serve the Jewish people, as he wondered about some of the governments decisions, as he worried about his wife home alone.

You see, it is from this devotion that my generation inquired about how Israel might treat the Palestinians and Arab Israelis better. We felt uncomfortable giving Israel a free pass to use force however she deemed necessary. We began to criticize the Israeli government while pushing for a two state solution. Israel, many of us felt, was not living up to the morals and values associated with a Jewish democratic state. Israel could do and be better, and our work was to make it a light unto the nations. We want Israel to live up to the values as written in the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel which said: “The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisioned by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions.”

Josh, I owe you an apology. With you and your peers I think we started with questions rather than sharing our love of our land. You see Josh, we want you to love the Jewish state, but we also want you to know it. We do not want to paint you an idyllic picture because we know that you will discover that Israel is not perfect. We do not want you to be crushed when this happens. We want you to love Israel, warts and all. I now understand for that to take place we Jewish professionals, Jewish educators, parents, and grandparents need to give you historically accurate and nuanced answers to your hard questions. We are obligated to show you how Israel struggles to be a democratic and Jewish state, how competing values make it hard to protect its people and take care of the stranger. We must teach you the importance of Israel, not just to us but also to the world. Israel is where we are able to live our calendar, see our history, and walk in the footsteps of our ancestors. Israel is where the desert blooms, solar power prevails, water is conserved and the internet came to life. We want to ensure you know all this, but we must teach you while listening to you. It is essential that we hear your concerns. We need to discuss all of Israel’s actions with you. We have to ask you questions. If we don’t then you will get your information from other sources, and I am sure these will not include all that is good and wonderful about Israel.

Israel is the birthplace of our people. There we can trace our history, visit the graves of our ancestors, see where they first prayed, debated and dissected Jewish law. As we see our history come alive we learn about ourselves. I asked a few students who recently visited Israel why they chose to go. Their answers were moving. One shared: “visiting Israel has enhanced my understanding of Judaism and brought me closer to my roots”. Another said: “In Israel, I felt fully Jewish, I saw the community as my family, I felt I could truly be myself.”

Many adults spend much time defending Israel to non-Jews. Many attend AIPAC and J-Street events in order to support Israel. They donate to politicians in hopes they will influence pro-Israel legislation. All of these things help, but Josh, if we don’t get you and your friends to fall in love with our country then the support of today will not last until tomorrow. Life is complicated and messy. We crave easy answers, black and white scenarios, but the truth is that we live in the grey in between. It is not possible to always agree with something or someone you love. Just as our parents and siblings can annoy us like no other person, they are also the people who we love the deepest and depend on the most. No important relationship in our lives will be easy, simple, or infallibly happy. Often our most important moments of growth and insight come out of conflict. I understand that I must work to help you and your peers treasure Israel so that you will ask questions in order to improve Israel and so that you will defend the land of our people, the land of our history, and the land of Israel to anyone who wants to cause her harm. Only in this way can we ensure a bright and lasting future for the Jewish state.

Yom Kippur: The Choices We Make

Sermon by Rabbi Jennifer Hartman
2013/5774

I am directionally impaired. When I lived in New York City, without fail, every time, that I got out at a new subway stop I went in the wrong direction. Even when I tried to anticipate that my instinct was to go the wrong way, and go the other way, I still ended up going the wrong way. Imagine then, the sinking feeling of dread in my stomach when I first moved to Minneapolis and found myself driving north on 35W. I immediately called my father to tell him that there was no way I was ever going to find my way around this city. I was driving NORTH on 35W!!!

Now, most of you are probably thinking - Rabbi Gertman just get a GPS. I have one, and when I follow it, it is wonderful, but I have also learned that I am much better at listening to people than to machines! I often make a wrong turn, miss an exit, or just completely ignore my GPS. It is something I am working on. At times I also make the decision not to use my GPS. I think that I know where I am going, or I am to lazy to plug in all of the information, or I am too impatient to wait for the information to load. I make a choice and I live with the consequences. Often times the it is an unplanned detour. In this I have found reward and punishment. Finding a new way to go somewhere, learning that I actually know the city better than the GPS, discovering shortcuts are all positive outcomes of deciding not to garner help on directions. Being late for a meeting, missing a performance or leaving a friend to wait are all negative consequences of these poor decisions. And they are damaging, trust me I have experienced all of them!

We have so many choices to make in our lives. This is both a blessing and a curse. Personally, I was able to choose the college I wanted to attend, the country where I wanted to study abroad, the city I wanted to live in after graduation, the profession I wanted to pursue. When I was ordained I was able to take the job that was the best fit regardless of the location. In my personal life I can choose to date or not to date, I can choose whether or not to get married and if I want to have children. I can choose to be vegan or vegetarian, to eat only organic or only unprocessed foods that are not GMO. At the grocery store there are endless options for everything I want to buy from toothpaste to shampoo to nut mixes. We are very lucky to have all of these choices, but they could drive a person crazy. I think that often times the abundance of decisions we must make every day heightens our anxiety.

I am a bit of a perfectionist and I am fairly risk averse. I spend much time and energy analyzing my decisions, weighing the negatives and the positives, trying to foresee the outcome. I hate the thought of making the wrong choice. Yet, so often there is not a clear right choice. It is not possible for me to make a decision with the utmost certainty that it will have the best possible outcome. I am amazed by how I do not know what decisions to make for myself, but the “experts” have decided they do. In popular magazine articles, newspaper op-eds, television panels, and social media, we are bombarded with their opinions. These “experts” tell us exactly what we should do in almost any given situation. They also let us know that if we take an alternative path, we are going to ruin our lives. We are told to eat local, no eat organic, no eat only what you can find that is both local and organic. Get married young and have children right away, it is healthier for the mother and the baby. No, wait to have children; children with older parents are more successful. Fathers need to take more vacation, spend more time with their children. No, they need to work harder and make more money so that their wives can stay at home. Same sex marriages are going to ruin children. No, as long as there are two loving parents in a home it does not matter what their gender is. Two parents are better than one parent, but if a woman wants to have children and is unmarried she should have one on her own. This will make it impossible for her to ever get married. No, this will make her more respected; she had the courage to pursue her dreams.

The opinions on whether and how a woman should work are endless. Sheryl Sandberg, CFO of Facebook said that women need to sit at the table. Women must aspire to climb the corporate ladder and the men at the top are obligated to support and actively encourage them. In reaction, journalist Vanessa Garcia came out encouraging women not to lean in, but to stand up straight. She argues that leaning in is the same as giving in to the male controlled business culture. Then, Deborah Spar, the president of Barnard College in New York City told all women everywhere that the only women who ever had it all are fictional, found on TV and in movies. She reminds us that "Every woman, every person, at the top makes trade-offs".

However, we want the options without the trade-offs. We want to be able to have and do it all and we are so afraid that we will miss out that we become paralyzed by the plethora of choices. There is even a term for this - FOMO - fear of missing out. Most of us have it. It is the reason we check facebook every five minutes, and yes I do this also, to make sure the choice we did make did not cause us to miss out on the most fun, most exciting, most meaningful event of our lives. It has become such a problem that there is an abundance of articles on how to deal with this issue: 3 Strategies To Beat Your Fear Of Missing Out; 4 Ways To Combat Midlife FOMO; How To Handle FOMO At The Office. We need others to tell us how to relax and enjoy the choices we have made. Not only do we want a guarantee that what we are doing is right for our future, we also want to know that our actions are the best for right now. We want to know we are raising our children correctly, that we are treating our partners well, and that we are good at our jobs. We post incessantly on facebook so that we get the immediate gratification of knowing that what we are doing is worthwhile.

Of all the books and articles I have read my favorite is: “Why the woman who has it all Does Not Exist”. In it Deborah Spar reminds her readers: “Wonder Woman doesn't exist. She is fiction, and you are real. Building a life on fantasy is never a good thing. Just because we are told we can do it all, does not mean that we should”. In truth, we can’t do it all, we can’t have it all and we can’t be whatever we want. Sorry, our parents sold us a bill of goods on that one. I am talking about all of us here, not just woman. I am never going to be a cartographer or a great musician for that matter. I learned that when I tried to play cello. My bow would be going up when the notes were going down and it would be going down when the notes were going up. I made a choice and it was a bad choice. It was a decision that caused me to have to carry a large and heavy instrument to and from school on a regular basis, it caused my parents’ ears to suffer and it caused me quite a lot of frustration, but in the end I learned a great deal from my mistake. I learned that I am physically stronger and mentally more determined than I had thought. I learned that I could handle bad orchestra teachers and having to do something I hated. I also learned that I would not be pursuing a musical career. It was a bad decision but I learned more from it then if I had decided not to play an instrument at all.

Another bad decision that I think we can all relate to is one in the realm of dating. How many of us have dated the absolute wrong person. We have ignored all of the advice of the people around us because we were sure that we could make it work with this person. These can be the relationships from which we learn the most. We find our true selves, what we want from another person, and our resilience. They often lead us to find the right person.

We need to stop being afraid of the negatives, of the possibility that we might choose incorrectly, we might fail, we might close the wrong door, make an irreversible decision. Whatever decision we make, we will learn from its outcome. We will grow from its consequences. All we need to do is look to the Israelites to understand this. A trip that should have only taken them weeks took them 40 years. And no, it was not because Moses could not follow directions. It was because they had a lot to learn. They did not know how to be free. They did not know how to govern themselves. They had no understanding of how to interact as a community. They learned all of these lessons while wandering in the desert. They learned them in the midst of making very bad decisions. Remember the golden calf! The Israelites engaged in idol worship. They broke one of the Ten Commandments. Still they were forgiven.

We are still enslaved and we are still learning. We are enslaved by the fear of not being perfect. We have the time and the lessons of these High Holidays to try to move ourselves farther from Egypt and closer to the Promised Land. Isaiah asks us in this morning’s Haftorah portion: “is this the fast I desire... A day for you to starve your body? Is it bowing the head like a bulrush And lying in sackcloth and ashes? Do you call that a fast, A day when the Lord is favorable? No, this is the fast I desire: To untie the cords of the yoke. To let the oppressed go free; to break off every yoke.” The prophet Isaiah is telling us that starving ourselves and flogging ourselves does not fulfill the intention of the fast. These things are for show, they make us look like we are repenting, like we are changing, but they do nothing to transform us. This is not how we improve ourselves or our world. Rather, we show that we are taking the commandment seriously when we alter our actions so they help others and ourselves.

Isaiah wants us to free the captive. Each one of us is captive to something. For many of us the master is the plethora of choices we have to make and the unsolicited advice on how to make them. These have paralyzed us; they have wrought us incapable of moving forward. We are enslaved by the tyranny of seemingly relevant choices that all play on a fear we have. We are afraid of being different, not being liked, of not being attractive and of missing out. We worry that we will be unsuccessful, that we will fail. No decision is easy and there are no grantees that any decision is the correct one. One thing I can grantee is that we will all miss out on something we consider to be important and we will all fail at some point. That is the privilege and the burden of having many opportunities. It is the price for being a human being and it is what Yom Kippur is all about. Yom Kippur allows us to be human, flaws and all. It shows us that we can recover from our mistakes. Some of our mistakes are harmless and even beneficial. They teach us without hurting anyone or anything. Other mistakes require more work to mend. They require confronting loved ones we have offended or co-workers we have hurt. Even when we did not mean to cause pain or destruction, we are commanded to acknowledge the impact of our behavior in order to truly correct our actions.

Yom Kippur helps us to progress from a place of pain and foible to one of growth and maturity. All choices, good and bad, have the potential to move us forward. Hopefully this knowledge will free each of us to make the best decision possible with the information provided and then enjoy where it takes us. As we go into this New Year may we be renewed in our capacity to learn and grow. May we be able to step forward rather than stand paralyzed. As the former New York Yankee and oft quoted cultural philosopher Yogi Berra said: “When you come to a fork in the road --- take it”! It may just lead someplace wonderful!

Rosh HaShanah: Living a Life of Meaning

Sermon by Rabbi Jennifer Hartman
2013/5774

Our son will get straight A’s and be the captain of the lacrosse team. While in high school he will design a web program to help teachers create their own computerized multiple choice tests and it will be such a success that the profits will cover the small gap between his tuition and the giant scholarship that he will be offered by his college of choice. He and his girlfriend will give swimming lessons to underprivileged children during the summer.

Our daughter has to take a pre-AP course now, in eighth grade, or she won't be setup to take AP classes later on. And without AP classes on her transcript, she is looking at a state school, maybe not even the main campus of a state school. She definitely cannot take time off from Model United Nations to join the film club because everyone knows that the film club is code for “slacker kid.” Once she is ready to apply for college we will have to hire a professional to polish her personal statement because everyone else does.

Are you anxious yet? I am anxious! The expectations these parents are putting on their children are overwhelming for both the parents and the children. Yes, these are real anecdotes drawn from the work of child psychologist Wendy Mogul. I have a feeling that many of the people in this room have dreamed the dream or felt the pressures described above. There is a belief that the only way we, or our children, will find success is through a degree from a prestigious college or university and a high powered profession. We think that the best predictor of adult achievement is high school and college degrees. And yet, we know well that too often academic and financial success do not give us a sense of meaning or purpose. This was recently reinforced for me when a friend returned from a life changing trip to Israel.

My friend took a ten day trip to Israel to see the work that the Jewish National Fund is engaged in, visit with friends and explore the reform movement. He had the opportunity to watch as hundreds of people, most of them in their 20s and many of them all alone, descended from an El Al plane to a sea of cheering and smiling faces. These people were making Aliyah and being welcomed to their new home. These were individuals truly living their ideals, their values, their dreams. As he traveled the country he was exposed to the ingenious inventions and designs that Israelis have created and the priorities of the Israeli people. He saw an indoor playground that was built by the Jewish National Fund for children in Sderot. Rocket fire from the Gaza strip makes it too dangerous for them to play outside. He had Shabbat dinner with friends outside of Tel Aviv. He sat at the table with multiple generations of one family. Great-grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins all came together to have a joyous and festive meal, to be together and a part of each other’s lives. This trip was truly a coming home experience for him.

This was not his first trip to Israel, he had been there many times before. Yet this time he was seeing things anew. Before his trip he had begun to feel unsettled, during his trip he began to articulate what had been gnawing at him. He wondered why so many of us choose to live far from our families. He felt that we have our values backwards. This was coming from an Ivy League educated young man with a lucrative job in New York City. By most accounts he was living the dream, but he began to question if he was living the right one. While his job was profitable and fun he did not feel that he was contributing to society, he did not feel that his work had a higher purpose, he did not feel he was making the world a better place in which to live. He realized that his soul was missing something.

There was recently an article in the New York Times entitled “The Busy Trap” by Tim Kreider. In it the author talks about how many of us proclaim that we are busy. We are proud of this, but we veil it as a complaint. The author writes: “Almost everyone I know is busy. They feel anxious and guilty when they aren’t either working or doing something to promote their work. The people who complain are almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in. They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence.” We live to work when people in most of the western world, Israel included, work to live. We are busying ourselves with things that we think will make us successful or feel fulfilled when too often it does not.

Interestingly, Psychologist Daniel Golman writes that high school and college degrees are not the best predictors of one's success as an adult. Empathy, optimism, flexibility, a good sense of humor, the capacity to function as a team member, and a positive reaction to setbacks are what will best predict our future ability to succeed. These are also many of the same values that will ensure our souls feel fulfilled. Let us look at these attributes one by one.

Empathy. We are commanded as Jews to comfort the mourner and rejoice with the Bride and Groom. The bereaved cannot say the mourner's Kaddish without having ten people present. We, the community, must be there to feel their pain, to walk with them through their grief, to support them and care for them when they feel most alone. The sheva brachot, the seven blessings that are said at every Jewish wedding ceremony cannot be said without a minyan. Our tradition is structured so that the bride and groom do not rejoice alone. We are obligated to visit the sick and take care of the widow, and the orphan. What could better teach empathy than being with people during times of their deepest sorrow and greatest joy?

The capacity to function as a team member. To be able to work and share with others takes all that we learn with empathy as well as discipline and preparation. Our tradition teaches that we need to have savlanut (patience and tolerance), rachamim (compassion) and acharayot (a sense of responsibility). We need to be tolerant of both the things that are within our control to change and those that are not. We need to have compassion for the other people in our group, our business, our community. We need to treat them with dignity and respect, leaving space for their thoughts and ideas. We need to take responsibility for our actions and for other people.

The root of the word achrayut is achar which means “other”. We have a responsibility not only to do our part, but also to care for each other. When we live these values we root out entitlement and we extend ourselves beyond our own ego. Only in this way are we able to work cooperatively and productively with others.

Optimism. There is a rabbinic value - hakarat ha'tov - which means "recognizing the good." The idea is that there is already good in our life, but it is up to us to uncover it. This is why, when something apparently "good" happens to us, we offer the blessing, Gam zu l'tovah, which means, "And that is also for the good." And also if something "bad" happens to us, Gam zu l'tovah, "And that is also for the good." There is no more optimistic outlook than this, the Jewish belief that no matter what happens we have the ability to turn it into something positive. In every challenge is an opportunity to advance our lives.

A good sense of humor. There is a theory that the reason humor is such a part of Judaism is because we have suffered so much oppression that laughing is the only thing we can do to stay afloat. It is survival by levity. Sigmund Freud said that humor is a means of circumventing civilization’s obstacles by making our enemy small, inferior, despicable or comic. The holiday of Purim is a perfect example of this. We dress up and parade around to show how absurd our oppressor was. We even made his hat into a cookie that we joyfully eat. It is a skill to be able to take life’s disappointments and turn them into laughable moments of wry recognition and honest reflection. It is one not easily learned, but one that can help us put situations into perspective and better live with them.

Being flexible and having a positive reaction to setbacks. The story of the Jewish people is one of disastrous defeats and miraculous triumphs, one of change and reinvention, one of perseverance in the face of great odds. Knowing our story should give us all strength and a sense of determination. According to a recent article by Bruce Feiler, recognizing and understanding one's story, helps that person to feel grounded and at the same time a part of something bigger than themselves. The children who do the best are the ones who know their family’s story. They know the struggles their family overcame. They have heard about the hardship, the failed business, the sickness, the tumultuous relationships. They also know the success, the stories of travel and celebration. They see that through it all their family has remained together, they have figured out how to survive! In this way they have a strong “intergenerational self.” They know they belong to something bigger than themselves and this it will survive even in the face of hardships. They have an identity, rooted in their past, that guides them. The Jewish story can do that for each one of us.

You may be thinking, Rabbi Gertman, this is all well and good, but we still need to work and our children still need to go to college. You are correct, there is a reality and we cannot ignore it, but that is a message you are hearing everywhere. And it has come at the expense of teaching our children and reminding ourselves that we must also be menches, upstanding, respectful people. Having an MBA from Harvard is meaningless if we don't have the moral character to conduct our lives properly. We need to raise children who understand they are a part of a bigger story, who give back to the community, and who treat each person with dignity and respect. The Talmud tells us that parents must teach their children to swim. They must teach their children not only the proper stroke, not only the skills to move forward, but also the correct way to breath, the way to take in air. We know how to successfully move forward, but we do not know how to nourishes ourselves and nurture relationships as we do this. We need to take in the values that nourish our souls and incorporate them into our lives. As these are the ones what will sustain us and our children as we move forward. These are the tools that help us succeed in teams and relationships. This is how we learn to accept defeats with grace and dignity. It is the breath that gives us the courage to explore the world and determine who we are. It is the ability to climb the corporate ladder with integrity and virtue. Our world will not end if we have less Ivy League graduates, but we will have serious problems if we forget how to treat each other, if we stop seeing each other as created btzelem eloheim, as created in the image of God.

Therefore I hope and pray that as we enter the New Year we all ask ourselves: are we raising citizens of the world? Are we living a life of values and intention or are we filling our time with meaningless tasks in order to satiate an inner emptiness? The holidays bring us face to face with these questions. Let us hope that we have the strength, the courage, the wisdom and the will to emerge from these days with a renewed sense of our goals and our purpose in the world.

Erev Rosh HaShanah: A Rabbi With No Voice

Sermon by Rabbi Jennifer Hartman
2013/5774

About three weeks ago I lost my ability to talk. The first tickles of discomfort began on a Wednesday and by Friday my voice was completely gone. It was less than three weeks before Rosh Hashanah. I needed my voice for the High Holidays. I made an emergency appointment with an ENT. I went in and they had me try to speak and make lots of funny sounds. They did a scope of my vocal cords and had me make more silly sounds. Finally they came to a conclusion. My vocal cords were red and inflamed, most likely the side effect of a cold. There was no infection, no real irregularity. So, what could I do, I asked? How could I fix this? Drink lots of liquids, get plenty of rest, gargle with salt water, try not to cough, and speak as little as possible. Umm, WHAT??? Hello, do you know what I do? I am a rabbi, I speak for a living. I have services tonight and tomorrow. “Not possible” they said. You are going to need to find someone to cover for you. They did not put me on complete vocal rest, but directed me to “say only what is important”.

Say only the words that are important. What an interesting concept to think about. Research says that children in professional homes hear 2,100 words an hour. An hour! That is a lot of talking. No wonder Judaism tells us many times and in many different ways that we need to be careful with what we say. We know that Judaism speaks against lashon hara, having an evil tongue. The Psalms teach us to guard our tongue from evil and our lips from speaking lies. Many Torah portions speak about oaths. We are told, in detail, how to make oaths in order to guarantee it is fulfilled. The Torah teaches that: “An oath must be phrased so as to indicate that swearing is intended; there is no punishment unless a Name or attribute of G-d is mentioned. It must be expressed orally and the speaker's intent must agree with what is said”. We are also forbidden to swear falsely or in vain. What you say, and the way in which you say it, is extremely important.

Of course! There is nothing new here. We have heard professionals tell us that when fighting one should never be accusatory, but instead use “I feel....” We have all been reprimanded for gossiping or idle chatter. And how many times were you told as a child: if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all? We know these lessons and can repeat them back, but as with all lessons it is never completely clear how deep they make it into our psyche. I knew all of these things, but still the idea of saying only what was important was new to me. What do I say? What do I avoid saying? Most importantly when are the times during the day when I really need to speak? I knew I had to avoid speaking at all other times.

It turns out that not only do I spend much of the day talking, I also enjoy speaking. I like hearing what people have to say and contributing to the conversation. I like asking questions in order to uncover other’s stories. I enjoy sharing my experiences. Yet, and this is difficult for a Rabbi to admit, not all of my words are spoken in the context of an enriching personal interaction. I also talk when I am bored, contribute when there is really nothing to add, make sarcastic comments and tell stories about others that are not mine to tell. From my experience I learned that email and texting is not the same as talking to someone. No matter how many emoticons you use, tone of voice does not come through in text, yet in many contexts we have come to treat these exchanges the same way as a voice conversation. We have trained ourselves to think that it is the same thing. In emails we express and explain the emotions that are behind our words. We know that the reader is guessing our expression and our mood, so we are not shy about being explicit.

In text on the other hand, maybe because it is on our phones, we think that the other person will understand our tone of voice, our intention. I do not usually have entire conversations over text. Mostly I use texting for logistics or checking in - what time are we meeting at the restaurant, are you getting snacks for the students, did everything go smoothly at the event? If a conversation needs to take place, then I pick up the phone. During the time that I could not speak almost all of my conversations were over text. Let me tell you, I got into trouble. I had more misunderstandings with people I care about and who know me well, then I had ever had before. It was such a relief when I was finally able to make phone calls!

But it is not just that texting can lead to miscommunication, it is also that hearing another's voice is intimate. I never thought about it before, but our voices are a part of who we are. It is a part of what defines us in the hearts and minds of others. I had not thought about missing the sound of one’s voice. It is not just the words that we say that are important, the voice that says them is also important, the tones and the expressions, the deep masculinity or the high pitched soprano voice. All of these things are part of what bind us to others. When I could speak again, those close to me told me how much they had missed hearing my voice.

I learned that much of what I say is unnecessary. My words are not always productive, helpful, or kind. Curt comments, complaints, biting remarks and jokes were all the first things that I stopped saying. They are not only unimportant; they are futile and sometimes painful. My days of restricted speech made me think much about my grandfather. He is a man of few words, but when he speaks, everyone listens. We know his words are meaningful and worth listening to. When my family gathers together, thirty or more of us, you can barely get a word in edgewise. However, when my grandfather begins to motion that he wants to contribute to the conversation, people start yelling, “shhh Grandpa is going to talk”. It is probably the only thing that can get all of us to settle down.

What if all of our words were so important to hear? What if all of us were able to avoid saying what is hurtful or sarcastic, what we know will have the proverbial effect of punching another in the stomach. One author writes a painful, but true statement about our use of words. “There exists, for everyone, a sentence - a series of words - that has the power to destroy us. Another sentence exists, another series of words that could heal us. If we are lucky we will get the second, but we can be certain of getting the first”[1]. The hardest part about this is that too often, the people who destroy us with words are the ones who we are closest to, the ones who know us the best and are supposed to love us. Sometimes when we speak we are not trying to enhance or enrich someone’s life, nor are we trying to resolve an argument or dispute, all we are trying to do is hurt the other person. These are the words that would be best left unsaid. Words are powerful. They help us to connect with people. They convey our state of mind and help us to uncover what others are thinking and feeling. They show our humanity and help us to recognize that in others. When we have a pleasant interaction with the barista at the coffee shop, when we say thank you to the cashier at the store, when we ask how another’s day is going we show that we care about them and that we are aware of the thoughts and feelings of others. Even when we use our words to have difficult or uncomfortable conversations, or when we use them to fight for something in which we believe, we are using them for good, to bring change to our world and better our society. We are using them to improve and strengthen our relationship. We are using them with positive intentions and heartfelt conviction.

I am a rabbi, I speak and use words for a living, and this experience has made me reevaluate how I use them. I had to do this for almost two weeks. I had to consider the benefit of my words versus the cost to my health before I spoke. I needed to weigh the relevance of any comment I was going to make to determine if it would be productive, helpful, useful. Would my speaking add to the conversation? Would it give new meaning or insight? Would it help solve a problem? Would it brighten someone’s day? Would it bring healing? If the answer was no to these questions then I would remain silent. After all, I could only say what I considered to be truly meaningful.

I hope that I will be able to carry these lessons into the New Year. I pray that I will choose my words wisely and continue to say only what will positively impact another’s life. May we all come to understand that “Words... are innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if we look after them we can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they are used improperly they are powerful enough to start wars. Words deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can bring change to people and the world.”[2] May we remember this as we head into the New Year.

[1] Philip K. Dick, VALIS 

[2] Tom Stoppard, The Real Thing: A Play

Yom Kippur: Being a Proud Reform Jew

Sermon by Rabbi Jennifer Hartman
2012/5773

Recently a blog post circulated among reform rabbis [1]. The article surprised and appalled many of us. Written by Rabbi Berg Wein, an orthodox rabbi, the article begins: “The modern liberal Jew has redefined Judaism according to his or her wants and fashion. The modern liberal Jew cares more about their child attending an Ivy League school then having a Jewish education, is ashamed of Israel and abhors tribal loyalties”. The rabbi goes on to say: “As long as attending Harvard or Yale is more important to Jewish parents than giving their children a basic Jewish education and the ephemeral pursuit of utopian world justice is more important than Shabbat or marrying a Jew then the disappearance of large swaths of American Jewry is guaranteed”.

This is quite the criticism of modern liberal Judaism! Wein is not alone in his critique. A professor of mine at the Hebrew Union College, Steven M. Cohen, writes and teaches that intermarriage will bring about the end of Judaism [2]. This he told to a class of 25 rabbinical students, 20% of whom were born into intermarried families. Wein and Cohen are only representing half of the picture! They are not in this synagogue, and they do not see what I see every day.

Rabbi Wein accuses us of being ashamed of Israel. We are not ashamed of Israel. We, especially those of us under 35, ask different questions than previous generations. This does not however mean that our connection has weakened. Almost half of last year’s confirmation class chose to spend an extended amount of time in Israel and Temple Israel sends a full congregational trip to Israel every year. I have spoken with people in their 20s and 30s so eager to take a trip to Israel they have opened savings accounts to make this a reality. In addition, programs on Israel fill our auditorium!

We are accused of living Judaism in a way that is unsustainable. I find this difficult to believe when 16 and 17 year old students ask to continue their Jewish education past confirmation. With sports and exams, extracurricular activities and homework, they still want to commit time to learning and being together in the synagogue, when we engage them in real relationship and meet them where they are at.

I believe that Jewish families want to make a commitment to Judaism when we have great interest in our pilot program, Judaism in Real Time. This program asks families to commit time to learning, studying and practicing Judaism together, in their homes and the synagogue. On Rosh Hashanah afternoon we gathered together to eat apples and hone, sing songs and discuss the lessons of this season. Instead of parents dropping their children off at religious school or Hebrew school and continuing on with their day, Jewish learning becomes a family endeavor. These are families committed to living the Jewish calendar, not changing it to fit their needs.

I believe in the power of Reform Jewish theology when conversion students sit in my office and tell me that their attraction to Judaism came from our emphasis on education and tikkun olam. They tell me they love the fact that Judaism does not ask you to leave your analytical skills at the door when you enter the building. They feel empowered by the reform movement’s tag line “choice through knowledge”. This lets them know that they will be able to live a Jewish life that makes sense to them within the context of the modern world. The pursuit of world justice is not our weakness, but one of our greatest strengths. Isaiah tells the Israelites to be a “light unto the nations.” How can we possibly do this if we only interact with the Jewish community? One of the most famous quotes by Rabbi Hillel is: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when? We live out our religious ideals and our desire to work for the good of the community when we work to improve the world. By actively supporting the Vote No campaign Temple Israel demonstrates to all the residents of Minnesota that as Jews we perceive that all people are created B’tzelim Eloheim, in the image of God. We express to all that we will not stand idly by as one group is discriminated against. Our confirmation students learn this lesson when they travel to the Religious Action Center in Washington D.C. and meet our congressional representative and senators to make their cases for or against issues about which they are passionate. Last year 100% of our class attended this trip and it looks like we will be close to the same this year. These are students who understand that their Judaism is about both civic and religious responsibility.

If there is anything that the High Holy Days teach us, it is that life is complicated and messy! Judaism sets out black and white principles of right and wrong, but we live in the grey area between them. We want to come to Temple on Yom Kippur, but we don’t really understand why we can’t break our fast with eggs and bacon. We love and support Israel and we want to visit, but we also want to go to Spain, Italy and France. We want to fall in love with who we fall in love with, but we want to marry them under a chuppah and break a glass. We think peace will come in the Middle East, but we are afraid that it might not. Student Andrew Lustig insightfully and elegantly describes our complex, ambivalent, passionate identification in his spoken word poem posted on you tube [3]. He tells the viewer: 

“I am the Jewish star tattooed on the chest of the Jewish teenager who chooses to rebel against his parents and grandparents warnings of a lonely goyim cemetery by embracing that same Judaism and making permanent my Jewish identity.” “I am a concept foreign to the rest of the world, I am not Judaism I am sleep away camp.” “I am your grandmother who has seen Auschwitz and Berkenow, who has seen 49, 67 and 73; who is tired of trying to make peace with those people who just want to blow up buses and destroy her people. I am the 19 yr old who has seen Budress, Waltz with Bashir and Don’t mess with the Zohan and who thinks, who knows, peace is possible. I am the complicated reason you take the cheese off the burger you eat at the Saturday morning tailgate. I am never asked if I have horns or a pot of gold, if I rule the world or killed Jesus. I am asked where my black hat is, if I really get 8 presents on my Christmas, why my side burns aren’t long and if I really have never tasted pork. I am asked what a gefilta fish is, I say I don’t know, I don’t like it, nobody does, but we eat it anyway”.

“I am on JDate and not match.com because well it is just easier that way. I am your Hebrew name, your Israeli cousins, your torah portion, your 13 candles, your bat mitzvah dress and the cute Israeli soldier on your birthright bus. I am 18 when I discover that Israel is not actually a Garden of Eden, of milk and honey where Jews of all backgrounds come together eternally grateful to do a hora in the streets. I am still confident that it will be. I am the way your stomach forgets to be hungry and your lungs forget to breathe when the rabbi commands the final tekiah gedolah and the entire congregation, the congregation that is not a synagogue but an entire people listening to the call of the ram’s horn. I am Jewish.” [3]  

Many of us can relate to something in this poem. This spoken word piece was posted on YouTube on January 11th, 2012 and has had over 250,000 hits. The video has been posted on websites and blogs. It speaks to Jews because it highlights the contradictions and struggles with which we all live. Judaism is a religion but also a culture, it is about community but also the individual, it is a legal system but also a system of belief. It is particularistic, defining Jews as God’s chosen people, but also universalistic with an understanding that all human beings are needed to make the world a fair and just place. It is a religion that is over 5,000 years old yet it is still relevant. It is always the same yet ever changing and right now we are in a period of great change. As Rabbi Zimmerman spoke about on Erev Rosh Hashanah, the world is changing quickly around us and as Jews we must decide if we will change with it or become irrelevant.

Judaism has a great tradition of change. “Rabbi Moses Isserles the great author of the preeminent code of Jewish law, the Shulchan Aruch, enunciated the principle of “Ha-idana – the present time” in his own legal writings. This principle holds that if contemporary sociological conditions and philosophical understandings have changed from what they were in earlier epochs, then adaptations and changes in customs and practices are permitted and even required. Rabbi Isserles teaches us that Judaism’s views change and adaptation is part of our heritage, even as our people continue to find rootedness and celebrate the sense of community that derives from the traditions that we have inherited.” [4] Moses, a Jew may have been given the Torah for the Israelites, but Adam, a human, was given dominion over all the earth. We are the inheritors of both of these gifts. We are Jewish. We feel it in our bodies and souls. But, we are also human beings and we want to be as much a part of the world community as we are a part of our Jewish community. Many clergy reacted defensively to much of Rabbi Wein’s article. But, when we took a step back, we realized the article had some valid points. The article brings to light truths that we must take into consideration if we are to truly understand ourselves and others perception of us, even if it is hard to hear. Our commitment to Israel may seem as if it is waning when families choose to send their teenager on a summer experience to an obscure part of the world rather than Israel because they can go on Birthright for free. Birthright is an amazing and wonderful opportunity for students disconnected from Judaism. It gives them a chance to explore their Jewish roots and uncover their Jewish heritage. All too often it is used by people with strong Jewish upbringings who choose not to prioritize exploring their homeland.

We cannot ignore Wein’s statement that Judaism is in danger when parents do not prioritize Jewish education. We at Temple Israel can only teach the children who enter our classrooms, and you, the parents and grandparents are the only ones who can guarantee they will be there. I remember when I was in 6th grade. I, the child of a cantor and ordained rabbi, asked my mom if I could end religious school with my Bat Mitzvah. My mom looked at me and said: “I would never let you drop out of secular school at 13 what makes you think I would let you drop out of religious school at 13?” That, as they say, was the end of the discussion. With one sentence my mom taught me the importance of Jewish education.

The modern world gives us a choice. We can choose to be Jewish or we can choose to leave our heritage behind. We can choose to celebrate our Judaism only in our home and hide our faith outside, or we can live our Judaism wherever we are. These are difficult decisions for us to make because we feel so comfortable in the modern world. I mean, how can we possibly feel like outsiders when Jon Stewart proudly speaks about being Jewish and the Colbert Report does a bit on Rosh Hashanah? Yet, we still struggle with our choices. I know, because I have to make them also.

Temple Israel has been blessed with a wonderful female rabbi for 25 years. Our members are not surprised to see a rabbi in heels or wearing a dress or make-up. Even though there have been women in the rabbinate for over 30 years, in the popular imagination a rabbi is still an old man with a white beard and long payyos. I feel lucky to be able to be a rabbi in a congregation where I can truly be myself. You would be surprised by how many people in New York City were stunned to hear that I was in rabbinical school.

In a city with 1.5 million Jews one would think the average person would know what it means to be a rabbi, yet I would get some truly interesting questions and comments. My favorites were: “Is that like a nun?” and “Can rabbis get married?” I must be honest. I sometimes wondered if it was worth telling people that I was studying to become a rabbi. It would not be hard to give myself a new profession. Whereas here in Minneapolis it feels like every other person works for General Mills or Target, in New York, its finance. All I would have to do is say that I worked in finance, pick one of the five or six major firms, and the conversation would quickly turn to a new topic. It would be a fast and easy way to avoid what often became an awkward and intense conversation.

How do I know it would be so easy? I tried it a few times. I was curious. What would it feel like to hide my profession? How would the conversation flow without the look of shock, the quizzical expression, the fumbling with what to say next? How would I feel different if I did not have to explain to the person standing next to me that really I am a normal person?

Well, I can tell you now, it did not feel good. It was uncomfortable. It was a lie. I was not presenting my true self. The conversations went flat. It had nowhere to go because I was not being myself. I loved that I was studying to be a Rabbi and I am proud to be a Rabbi. Judaism is, and has always been, a big part of who I am. Judaism gives me direction in a complicated world. It is where I turn when I have big questions or small problems. Jewish holidays and rituals are what bring my family together. It is my moral compass, my guide when life becomes confusing.

I chose, consciously and purposefully, to commit to Reform Judaism. I did not pick a form of Judaism that is the easy way out, I did not pick Judaism for lazy Jews, I did not pick inauthentic, unsustainable Judaism. I did pick Judaism that is complicated and difficult because I believe in its message. I did pick Judaism that enhances life through ritual and tradition. I did pick Judaism that moves my soul and my spirit. I did pick Judaism that provides me with guideposts in a universe that is often hard to navigate.

Reform Judaism, liberal Judaism, is not perfect. Judaism is over 5000 years old while Reform Judaism is not even 200 years old. We still have to work to identify how we can best be Jewish in this ever spinning world. We do not even have a name that properly fits us. We are called– Reform, liberal – none are quite right. We need to continue to explore our relationship to each other, to Israel and to the wider community. We need to commit ourselves to Jewish learning and Jewish practice. We need to solidify our feelings of community. During this time of soul searching we need to examine the criticisms imposed on us and look into our communal selves to see if we have indeed missed the mark. Liberal Judaism has much to offer the Jewish and secular worlds. There is meaning we can garner and purpose we can uncover if we are willing to take the time to do so.

We will only gain as individuals and as a community when we strengthen or beliefs and our practice. I would like to end by adding my own versus to Andrew Lustig’s poem: “I am the proud Bat Mitzvah who leads Shabbat morning services for my community. I am the student who is sad to go on summer vacation because I will miss my religious school friends. I am the 20 something who attends Shabbat evening services and then goes to dinner with friends. I am the teenager who learns about my heritage while trekking through Israel with peers. I am wearing high heels, fashionable clothes and a kippah to lead services. I am what a modern rabbi looks like. I am how a modern Jew acts. I am proud.”

[1] http://www.rabbiwein.com/blog/post-1378.html

[2] http://www.jewishlife.org/pdf/steven_cohen_paper.pdf

[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJe0uqVGZJA

[4] Rabbi David Ellison, HUC-JIR Chronicle 74

Rosh HaShanah: All I Need to Know I Learned at Camp

Sermon by Rabbi Jennifer Hartman
2012/5773

There is a book and also a poem some of you may have heard of entitled All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum. It is one of my favorite poems. I had a poster of the poem hanging on my wall all through college. There was something wonderfully ironic about staring at this poster while I spent hours doing homework. For those of you who don’t know the poem I will share it with you now.

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.

These are the things I learned: • Share everything. • Play fair. • Don't hit people. • Put things back where you found them. • Clean up your own mess. • Don't take things that aren't yours. • Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody. • Wash your hands before you eat. • Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. • Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. • Take a nap every afternoon. • When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together. • Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. • Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we. • And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.

I must admit I have not thought about this poem much since college. When I packed up my college dorm room for the last time and moved into an apartment I decided it was time to hang things with frames. My posters got rolled up and put into a poster tube and stored at my parent’s house. Maybe, one day, I would pull them out again. Then something completely unexpected happened in June. Our Camp TEKO director had to resign two weeks prior to the start of camp due to a family emergency. I was asked to step in. I would be less than honest if I said I jumped at the opportunity. While I was excited by the idea of spending the time helping to grow our camp and getting to know the campers, I was nervous. Was I capable of this endeavor? How would I quickly learn all there was to know about TEKO? Would I be able to make sure that every camper had a positive and memorable experience?

Growing up I went to camp every summer. JCC camps and theater camps, sports camps and overnight camps, I tried them all. I learned that I missed Shabbat and singing Jewish songs when I was at secular camp. I also learned that I did not really like overnight camp. More than that, all I knew was that camp was fun and something I had to do. As they both worked, my parents did not believe in letting my brother and me have two and a half months with no structure. When I talk to my friends who spent summer after summer going to Jewish overnight camp, their analysis is much different than mine. For them camp was not something fun to do over the summer, but a place where they discovered their true selves. It was a place where they felt independent and where they could safely explore their ideas and beliefs. It was the place where they made friends who knew them better than anyone else.

I became a believer in camp as an adult. As a rabbinical student I had the opportunity to observe the beginning stages of a new Union for Reform Judaism camp in the Pacific Northwest. Their enthusiasm for camp and all it has to offer children and families was contagious. This led me to run two summer programs for teenagers. One, in San Francisco, taught students about tzedakah and tikkun olam through volunteer projects around the city. The following summer I, along with other staff, led 40 teenagers through Eastern Europe and Israel. It turns out that everything I had ever heard about camp experiences is true. I watched as these teenagers blossomed through their experiences together, their need to rely on their inner strength and their new found friendships and their desire to forge connections with adults other than their parents. I was convinced of the benefits of sending teenagers away from home for a summer!

This past summer I saw, first hand, the incredible impact that camp, Jewish camp, had on over 300 children. I was witness to painfully shy children reaching out to others to make friends. I saw very competitive campers learn to lose with grace. I observed as kids learned how to make accommodations for their group members with special needs. I had the unbelievable responsibility of ushering 3rd and 4th graders into a stage of independence by helping them find the inner resilience to stay away from home for the first time. It was incredibly rewarding to see these children go from anxious, unsure campers to outgoing, independent, sleep away experts. For me, what was even more thrilling was seeing the campers excited about Judaism. By the end of their time at camp TEKO they knew the Motzi and Birkat Hamazon, they sang Modeh Ani with enthusiasm and Hatikvah with respect. The campers excitedly used the Hebrew word of the week and loved to guess the super heroes and heroines. It was exhilarating to see them engaged with Judaism.

Camp is a magical place. It is a place where “Parents, while supportive from afar, allow for the challenges of life, the successes and setbacks that a professional staff is prepared to channel into positive learning experiences. Children learn to respect one another and learn how to share.” In addition, the counselors at camp also learn and grow. As one camp counselor stated in a recent article: “What I do there matters.” She talked about helping a camper cope with her mother’s debilitating depression and comforting others whose parents were fighting or separating. She talked about the many hours devoted to water-skiing lessons, about instilling the confidence needed by awkward, gawky, painfully self-conscious 8 and 9-year-olds to stay prone in the water, hold on to the rope, then rise up and stay on their feet as the boat pulls away. “What’s more important than that?” she asked. Being a camp counselor gave her incomparable preparation for the future, requiring the skills to manage group projects and motivate individuals, set goals and juggle tight schedules, and stay available for 24 hours a day, six days a week, in sickness and in health.

As camp came to a close and I thought about all I had learned and all I had seen the campers and counselors learn over the summer I realized:

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned at camp. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the gaga pit. These are the things I learned: • Be patient. • Help others. • New experiences help us grow. • Remember to be thankful. • It is ok to take a risk. • Friends are a treasure. • Be a good listener. • Drink lots of water. • Wear sunscreen. • Running, jumping and skipping are all good for you. • Play is a great way to learn. • Everyone, even grown-ups, make mistakes. • When you are scared, take a friends hand and approach life together. • It is amazing what you can accomplish when you work as a team. • Sometimes in life we need to get dirty. • We all need Shabbat.

As I moved from being a camp director to a rabbi preparing for the High holidays these lessons stayed with me. They are the lessons we remind ourselves of each year at this time. As we look back on the year we reflect on times we wish we had been more patient with ourselves and others. We think about the times others reached out their hand to help us in our times of need and are grateful for their love and friendship.

During this season we take the risk of looking deep into our souls. It can be an uncomfortable endeavor because we do not know what we will find. We find the courage to take this plunge because, as with most risks in life, the rewards are immeasurable. Doing this work together as a community makes it much less frightening! Our rabbis, in their wisdom, wrote the confessional prayers in the plural for just this reason. We admit our sins with the prayers of this season, almost all of which are written in the plural; we have sinned, we have transgressed, we turn to God, we ask for mercy. Alone, the act seems overwhelming, but together we can take on any challenge or confront any fear. This is one of the primary lessons of camp.

At camp we learn to listen, listen to counselors and life guards, but also to our friends. Rosh Hashanah reminds us of the importance of listening to and really hearing one another. Shema! We often forget to listen not only to what is spoken, but also to what is unspoken. Listen to the heart of another. Listen to the words of the eyes and the soul. Only in this way will we be able to ask for and give forgiveness. Only in this way will we truly be aware of all the blessings in our life and be grateful for them. The capacity to forgive, and the willingness of others to forgive each of us, is truly one of these blessings.

Life, not just camp, is dirty. It is filled with mud and dirt, scraped knees and elbows, hurt feelings and bruised egos. It is in these moments of messiness that we learn the most, grow the most, and uncover the most about our true natures. These are the times we learn to treasure our friends, not fight with them. They are the times we are reminded we are resilient enough to fall. They are the times we remember how important it is to take proper care of ourselves and our environment. As children we are encouraged to take risks and make mistakes. We are told that they are not a big deal and a part of learning. As adults we forget this lesson and think that we must always be perfect. We try to present ourselves as flawless. It is an ideal we cannot sustain. How much happier would we be if we gave ourselves the permission we give our children? How much more fun would we have if we held hands and joyfully skipped from one activity to another?

Most of us no longer have the opportunity to go to camp. Nor do we have the built in time for vacation that the school schedule provides. Rarely in our busy lives to we slow down and take account of all that has happened in our lives both good and bad. We rely on these High Holidays for a time to reflect. They support us, guide us, and help us to uncover these important lessons. During this time we are reminded of our obligations to ourselves, to each other and to our tradition. We are reminded of all we do every day and all those around us do to help make our lives meaningful.

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur remind us of the lessons, but it is in our daily experiences that they come alive. That is part of what makes camp so special. It is a microcosm of what we wish the world might be. Let us leave these 10 Days of Awe renewed, restored and re-dedicated to making the wisdom of the Gaga pit real in our lives.

i May 29, 2012, The Camp Counselor vs. the Intern By DAN FLESHLER