Thursday, April 24, 2014

Why? A Drash for Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) 27 April 2014

I was living in Europe in the year 2005, for the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe.  There were celebrations as well as solemn services.  Veterans of the war, from both sides, gathered to remember.  As the only rabbi then assigned to US forces on the European mainland, I took part in several of these gatherings.  In each one, ambiguous feelings about the ear and its aftermath were expressed.  This was a reflection of the ambiguity that had engulfed the Continent 60 years before.
In 1945, for a continent at war for almost six years, it was as if the darkness had finally lifted and ‘normal’ life could resume.  But there would be no return to ‘normality’ for Europe.  There was too much destruction, there were too many dead and displaced.  And there were too many unanswered questions.
          For the Western Allies, the cause of the war was totally unambiguous.  The totalitarian Nazi regime in Germany had sought to rule the entire continent, and very nearly succeeded.  The British and Soviet Empires alone held out to fight back.  And later, when the Americans joined the battle, the Nazi machine was overwhelmed.
          So the question of why the war had taken place, was not difficult to answer.  But other questions eluded the intellect.  And they still do.  How could such a hateful, racist ideology engulf and motivate an entire ‘advanced’ nation?  So much so that it is often said, the Nazis’ obsession with the Jews and other racial ‘enemies’ of the German Volk, was what lost them the war by consuming resources that would otherwise have been brought to bear against the Allies?
          During the war, there were rumours and eyewitness accounts of Nazi atrocities.  And there was credible word of the death-camps, after the Wannsee Conference resulted in their establishment.  But it was not until the Western armies began to break through eastward, and the Soviets westward, that the enormity of the industrialised regime of abuse, killing and destruction became clear.  And if the enormity of the crime could not be quite comprehended then, the ensuing 69 years have not brought much more clarity.
We have gained a better understanding of how the Nazis managed to destroy the world of the Jews of Europe.  We understand the mechanics of how it was done.  We understand how the Nazi propaganda machine made the Jews into Public Enemy Number One.  We think we can begin to understand the totality of the terror, and the enormity of the suffering of the victims.  But we still can’t seem to comprehend the why of it all.
          If the passage of time has not brought any more clarity, then recent events only worsen the confusion.  Despite everything, despite that the Shoah was the culmination of centuries of persecution of the Jews of Europe, some remained and rebuilt their lives.  Even in Ukraine, site of perhaps the worst example of a local population participating gleefully in the destruction of the Jews.  Of cooperating, in the matter of the Jews, with their hated occupiers.  Today in Ukraine, the estimated Jewish population is 67,000.  This, from an estimated 2.7 million Jews in Ukraine on the eve of the Second World War.
          But last week, masked men handed out leaflets to Jews emerging from the remaining synagogue in Donetsk.  These leaflets, calculated to evoke terrible memories, ordered the Jews to register with the local authorities, on pain of losing their citizenship if they did not.  Who exactly were these masked men?  Nobody’s claiming them as the world expresses its ‘revulsion.’  But in reality, it isn’t that important who they were.  The important point is that, almost 70 years after the Shoah, some local forces sought to use the Jews as objects for terror, and to use them as a wedge in the dispute between the pro-Russian and pro-Western factions.
          Last week, I wondered why there are any Jews still living in Ukraine.  I said it then and repeat it now, realizing that I am flirting with controversy by doing so.  How can I say that we should give in to evil forces that want to make vast swaths of the world Judenrein?  But my point is not that we should capitulate to evil.  Rather, those who live in such places should ask themselves; how long must they continue to live with the misery of never quite belonging to the place of their habitations?
          But that’s a question that only Ukrainian Jews can answer.  I cannot, but I wish I could intellectually grasp an answer.  Just as I wish I could grasp an answer as to why, nearly 70 years on and with such a tiny remnant still there, someone in Ukraine should seek to single out the Jews to use as a wedge in this way.

          But intellectually grasping an answer to this question will have to wait.  As will grasping an answer – a really, good answer – as to why the Jews would merit the persecutions of centuries of Europeans at all.  Culminating in the Ultimate persecution, the Nazi Death Machine.  But sadly, an intellectual grasp is not yet forthcoming.  Today we cannot yet understand why.  Today we can only remember.

Early in the Morning: A Drash for Anzac Day, Saturday 26 April 2014

I’m no stranger to getting out of bed early.  Time and again, during my years of military service, duties would interrupt my sleep.  No more so than during the years when I was on aircrew status.  Our missions often launched as early as six-thirty in the morning.  Since we had to be at the office for our pre-mission duties two hours before launch, that meant I would be en route to work at a bit after four AM.  If the mission was on a Sunday morning, then I would be driving to work through the streets of Athens whilst the locals were still partying at the local tavernas, drinking to excess, breaking plates, and generally having fun on a Saturday night.
          When I was a chaplain, the early mornings were often because I was duty chaplain that week.  A nocturnal call could come from a First Sergeant, wanting me to mediate a fight between one of his troops and their spouse.  Or it would be a notification that an aircraft bearing war wounded was inbound and I was needed to be part of the greeting party.
          So I’m no stranger to waking very early.  But that doesn’t mean that I like it when I have to!
          I’m guessing that almost everybody in this room, even if they never served in the military or worked odd hours, can relate to the concept of awaking before dawn.  How many times were your children fussy in the middle of the night?  How many times did you have to get up “ridiculously” early to catch a plane to some faraway place?
          There are lots of pithy sayings regarding getting up early in the morning, and surely you have heard some of them.  How about:  Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise?  I doubt I’m being overly cynical in saying that early to bed, early to rise, makes you perpetually tired and antisocial.  And how about:  You’d have to get up pretty early in the morning to fool me?  If I got up pretty early in the morning, I wouldn’t be able to fool you very much.  My thinking would be far too muddled from tiredness.
          And yet, getting up early is taken as a sign of devotion.  We’re all familiar with the Torah reading for Rosh Hashanah, from the 22nd chapter of Genesis: Then Abraham got up early in the morning, and saddled up his ass, and took his two servant-boys and his son Yitzhak.  The understanding of the import of (he) got up early in the morning, is that he was in a hurry to do God’s will.  This, despite that what God had told him to do was extremely distasteful, to say the least.  So from this and so many other sources we understand that getting out of bed early in the morning is a symbol of devotion.  Our Shabbat and Festival morning services at Temple Shalom always start at a very leisurely 10.00AM.  But throughout the Jewish world, the devoted go to shule sometimes as early as six in the morning for the weekday morning prayers.
          So that’s what I thought about the prospect of getting myself to Southport at 5.00AM for the Dawn Service commemorating ANZAC Day.  Apart from the aesthetics of a solemn assembly whilst the sun rises, I thought the timing of the service was a matter of devotion.  If it is important to do, then why wait until later in the day?  My bubble was burst, although really not that much, when I found out that the reason for the early hour is actually to commemorate that the Gallipoli landing kicked off at sunrise.  It was at sunrise, that the disaster began to unfold.  That the first ranks of the youth of Australia and New Zealand stepped into the inferno that would be their testing ground – and for many, their final resting place – over the next months.
          So I awoke shortly after four, and drove through the city’s deserted streets.  And there I found thousands of citizens, aroused from their comfortable beds like me, assembled in the place to pay honour to those who died in a campaign that took place 99 years ago.  And it was not just crusty old veterans who showed up; there plenty of young adults, including legions of parents with sleepy children in tow.  The parents of Australia, making their children understand the importance of arising early to do something important.  And I knew that this assembly of thousands, was being duplicated at that very moment in numerous other locations on the Gold Coast.  And elsewhere on Australia’s East Coast.  To be followed later by communities farther west.  And even later for the ‘citizens’ services’ that would take place at a more commodious hour.
          So perhaps Australia’s finest hour was when the her youth stepped off those boats onto Turkish soil 99 years ago, ready to lay down their lives for the cause of world peace.  But it was also a fine hour at five this morning, when thousands upon thousands of Australians who were not alive then, stood at attention at the Cenotaphs across the country to honour the sacrifice made by those young men, so long ago.
          This devotion represents the epitome of what’s good about Australia.  And we should keep it in mind, when opportunities arise to perform acts of devotion.  Even ones of the more prosaic kind.  They’ll all important.  They all add to the goodness of our country.  Collectively, they provide a counterweight to the acts of selfishness that we’ve unfortunately come to see as emblematic of our place and time.  Shabbat shalom.    

To Be Set Apart: A Drash for Parashat Kedoshim, Friday, 25 April 2014

As you know, Clara and I have two children.  As with many parents who have more than one child, we found that the two were as different as night and day when growing up.  Both are in university now.  They both attended a Jewish high school, but up to year eight they attended public schools.  They were always two of only a handful of Jewish kids in their various schools.
          Our son always reveled in his Jewish-ness.  Whenever his teachers invited me to make a presentation on some Jewish occasion in his class – as usually happened a few times a year because I was the local Jewish chaplain – he would take delight about his Abba coming to class to share with the other children something that was special for us.  Occasionally Clara would go to class to make the presentation, in which case our son got to show off an additional special possession:  his Israeli mother!
But our daughter had a different attitude.  She used to dread such occasions.  She didn’t want to be singled out as different from her classmates.  And she would be especially embarrassed if it was her Ima who went to class to make the presentation.  She didn’t want her classmates to get a good look at her ‘foreign’ mother.
Many Jewish parents can doubtless relate to this experience.  We want our children to take delight in our unique traditions.  But we don’t want those traditions to seem onerous to them.  And we understand that children often loathe being different from their peers.  Understanding how important it is for growing children to develop healthy peer relationships, we try to minimize those differences, and help them fit in and make friends.
And yet…in this week’s Torah portion we read:  Be holy; for I, the Lord your God am Holy.
‘Holy,’ in this context – kadosh in Hebrew – means set apart, distinctive, reserved for a specific purpose.  So here, in the 19th chapter of Leviticus, we’re told that we’re davka to be different.
And the reason we’re to be different, is because God has a unique purpose in mind for us – a special calling, if you will.  If we are just like everybody else, how can we serve a unique purpose?
Much conflict in Jewish life today, focuses on what this unique purpose is.  Traditionally, it is to serve as witnesses to God’s Presence and God’s Love in a world of capricious gods whose cults often terrorized their adherents.   In our day, in our particular Jewish circles, we often see our purpose in other terms:  standing up for the oppressed, for justice, for ethical values. 
There’s also ample conflict concerning exactly what form our distinctiveness should take.  Are we to look different from other people?  The other day as the sun was setting over Surfers Paradise, Clara and I – wearing indistinct street clothes – were out walking and passed Rabbi Gurevich, the local Orthodox rabbi and several of his sons walking towards their shule for the evening service for the Eighth Day of Pesach.  They were, of course, all dressed distinctively in their black suits and hats.  Anybody would know on sight exactly who and what they are.  In contrast, Clara and I were entirely anonymous.  I won’t say we felt self-conscious, but it did get me to thinking.
Some of the specifics as to our distinctiveness that are detailed in the 19th chapter of Leviticus have to do with appearance:  the way we groom and dress ourselves, avoiding gashing of the skin and tattooing.  And they also have to do with occult practices:  avoiding communication with the dead, fortune-telling, and other forms of occult.
Well, there we go – to hell in a handbasket!  Whilst Jews my age are probably only rarely tattooed, I’m guessing that amongst those 20 years younger many are.  So I don’t sport any “tat’s.”  But…I’ve been known to amuse myself by reading a horoscope here and there.
But also included in the list of distinctions, are things that are likely to resonate more deeply.  For example, the practice of leaving the corners of one’s field un-harvested, and of not gleaning the fields or vineyards.  For those of us not engaged in agriculture, we usually read these as requiring that one set aside a portion of one’s increase for the less fortunate.
So there is a principle beyond dispute; we’re supposed to be holy, set apart, distinctive, reserved for a specific purpose.  But the details of exactly what that purpose is, and exactly what form that distinctiveness should be, are the stuff of long discussions into the night.
  And the important thing is that we have these discussions.  Different Jews will arrive at different solutions to the questions posed above.  But we are used to a high degree of ‘noisiness’ in Jewish life; we are used to having plenty of disagreement on the details, even when we agree on the broad principles.
So what about my daughter, who when younger did not want to stand out as a Jew?  Thankfully, she got past that stage.  It helped that she attended a Jewish high school.  Last week, at uni in Boulder, Colorado, she needed little prompting from Clara and me to seek out a Seder to attend.  And when we Skyped with her later in the week, she was munching on matzo in her dorm room.  Talking with her, watching her in the webcam as she dribbled matzo crumbs on the desk in front of her, we thought:  Yes!

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Freedom from Sorrow: A Drash for Saturday, 19 April 2014 Shabbat Chol Hamoed Pesach

Even today, Egypt is a place of sorrow
As I said last night, and have said on numerous occasions before that, one can easily make the argument that the Passover festival is the foremost sacred occasion of the year bar none.  Of all the traditions and observances of Judaism, nothing comes closer to encapsulating the very essence of the Jewish world-view and God-view.  The centrality of this narrative in the Jewish consciousness speaks volumes about what is at the root of our Tradition.
I pointed out last night, that it is not for nothing that the Torah tells us, over and over again, to remember that we were Slaves in the land of Egypt.  The Jewish Ideal sees a life free from external tyrannies is being absolutely essential to a life of obedience to God.  The Jewish Ideal prays for, and actively seeks, freedom from all such tyrannies.  But not just for Jews; the Jewish Ideal seeks this freedom for all peoples.  The Torah drives home this point again and again, lest we forget it or minimise its importance.
          ‘Egypt,’ Mitzrayim in Hebrew, when invoked in the Torah is understood to mean a number of things.  Of course, it’s a physical place, the actual setting of the drama that saw the birth of the People Israel.  But it can be seen as linguistically connected to the Hebrew word tzar, meaning ‘narrow.’  Anybody who knows the geography of Egypt understands this.  Our Tradition also sees the narrowness represented by Egypt as a mindset.  As a sense of limitation and constriction.  I explained this in last night’s drash, and I’m sticking to my story!
          Linguistically, Mitzrayim can also be related to the Hebrew word tzar meaning ‘sorrow,’ or ‘trouble.’ 
That Mitzrayim was a place of sorrow and trouble for the ancient Israelites, is self-evident.  Sure, their descent to Egypt represented their ultimately joyous reunion with their brother Joseph.  The latter had become ruler over Egypt, second only to Pharaoh himself.  But their descent also represented the plague of famine descending upon the Land of Canaan, the land promised them by God.  So their very entrance into Egypt signified the end of their ability to live where God had sent them.
Further tragedy visited them when “a new king arose, who knew not Joseph.”  And the people were ultimately enslaved to Pharaoh to build his temples and storehouses.  Even after God had freed the people “with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with signs and wonders,” they could not shake the mentality of slaves.  Thus, the people were consigned to wandering in the desert until the last of the generations born in Egypt had died off, before the triumphant re-entry to the Land of Israel could commence.  On so many levels, Egypt was not a happy place for the People Israel.
But again, like with the definition of Egypt as ‘a narrow place,’ we can take Egypt as an actual place or as a metaphor.
If Mitzrayim is a metaphor for ‘a place of sorrow,’ then there is a clear message in the narrative of the Exodus.  We should not remain in a place of sorrow.
As you know, half of all European Jews are estimated to have perished in the Holocaust, in the Nazi Shoah.  After the war, after liberation, so many of the survivors had only one thing on their minds:  get out!  Jews left Europe in droves, making it seem for generations as if the Nazis had succeeded in wiping out the Jews.  Except for small pockets here and there, it seemed that the European continent was, in fact Judenrein.  Many of us have spent time in Europe and found it lovely in various ways.  I’ve shared with you many anecdotes of pleasant times on the Continent, when Clara, the children and I were posted to Germany for four years.  But if you superimpose in your mind’s eye the world of the European Jews, a world which has all but vanished, it is difficult not to feel some sense of despair over what was, and is no longer.  
And who could blame the Jews for leaving?  All of Europe was a House of Death.  With precious few exceptions, the different peoples of Europe had been happy to let the Nazis do what they had thought all along should be done to the Jews.  In many cases, they even helped the Nazis.  So, after the war, Jews streamed west to the USA and Canada.  South to Australia and New Zealand.  East to the reborn State of Israel.  Europe was not a place to remain.  It was a house of sorrow.
Look at the Continent even today.  Many of you have been following the story coming out of Ukraine this week.  On Monday evening, masked thugs awaited Jews’ exit from their synagogue after the Pesach evening service in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk, to inform them that they must register with the pro-Russian authorities or lose their Ukrainian nationality and their property.  The supporters of Russian rule in Eastern Ukraine are distancing themselves from the initiative, but it is very telling of local attitudes toward Jews.  When combined with attacks on Jews in other places in Europe, it makes one wonder why any Jews still live there.
So the message, that one should not remain in a place of sorrow, is an apt message.  But what about remaining in a state of sorrow?  Same message, if you ask me.
You’ve heard me say that happiness is a choice, and I stand by that definition.  If our happiness is dependent upon others, we will almost never achieve it.  But if it is within us to claim, then it really is a choice.
We often choose misery and sorrow.  Here and elsewhere, I am continually saddened by the misery in which Jews wallow, year after year after year.  So many of us seem to have forgotten not only how to be happy, we have forgotten about the very existence of happiness.  So we wallow in misery, and our interactions with others reflect this essential unhappiness.  It’s as if  happiness itself was a subversive state that we are not supposed to reach!
But our Tradition informs us otherwise.  For example, the existence of Shabbat is supposed to give us a taste of happiness that will, ideally, make us so want more that we will focus on bringing a bit of ‘Shabbat’ to the coming week.  That’s the very message behind the Havdallah ceremony which so many of you enjoy when we perform it prior to a Saturday evening activity.  But instead of experiencing Shabbat joy and trying to make it last in small measure, we experience Shabbat herself as a regime of limitation.  No wonder so many Jews have no desire to come and celebrate with us on Shabbat!  For so many of us, our very mindset is that Shabbat is supposed to be miserable.  And if we cannot experience joy even on Shabbat, then it is no wonder that our lives in general are joyless, are ‘places of sorrow.’  Enough, people!
     Soon, either Monday night or Tuesday night depending on how traditional you are, Pesach will be finished.  The dry taste of matzo will fade from our mouths.  We’ll exult in being free once more to eat pizza and pasta and croissants.  Yum!  But will we remember the essential message of Pesach?  Indeed, will it have ever even registered, or will we have missed its message one more year?

God took us out of a Place of Sorrows.  We are not supposed to be in a Place of Sorrows.  Or even a State of Sorrow.  If you are stuck in such a state, then you know what to do.  Get out!  No, it isn’t easy.  But few things that are worthwhile in life, are easy.  Nobody else will remove the sorrow from our souls.  It is up to us to choose happiness.  To get out of our personal Egypt – our own Place of Sorrow.  Let’s do it now.  Shabbat shalom and Chag Sameach.

Freedom from Narrowness: A Drash for Friday, 18 April 2014 Shabbat Chol Hamoed Pesach

As I have said before, one can easily make the argument that the Passover festival is the foremost sacred occasion of the year bar none.  Of all the traditions and observances of Judaism, nothing comes closer to encapsulating the very essence of the Jewish world-view and God-view.  The centrality of this narrative in the Jewish consciousness speaks volumes about what is at the root of our Tradition.
It is not for nothing that the Torah tells us, over and over, to remember that we were Slaves in the land of Egypt.  The Jewish ideal acknowledges that a life free from external tyrannies is an absolute prerequisite to a life of obedience to God.  The Jewish ideal understands that this freedom is not only for us but for all peoples.  The Torah drives home this point again and again, lest we forget it or minimise its importance.
Unfortunately it is too easy to not feel an emotional bond with our distant ancestors.  It is easy to ask, as does the Wicked Child of the Seder, “What is all this to you?”  That is, to you, and not to him.  In our local community, with the exception of two members who were born there, we have not literally come out of Egypt.  We might therefore, perhaps understandably, find it difficult to empathise with our ancestors.  We might find it difficult to identify with this aspect of their experience.
That’s why the Midrash makes the point of explaining the meanings behind the Hebrew word Mitzrayim.  Mitzrayim is, of course, the Hebrew equivalent of ‘Egypt.’  If you attended our Seder here at temple, or if you’re otherwise familiar with A Family Haggadah, the version we use, then you surely noticed that it does not translate Mitzrayim as ‘Egypt,’ but renders it as transliterated Hebrew in the English text.  And there’s an important reason for this.
In Arabic, the word for Egypt is Misr, which means ‘corn,’ or ‘grain.’  Of course, this is a reference to the Valley of the Nile being a breadbasket for a part of the world that has always suffered from scant and uncertain annual rainfall.  The Hebrew Mitzrayim could be assumed, linguistically, to be a plural form of Misr.  But the Hebrew equivalent of Misr is actually Dagan.  Although Egyptian Arabic and Hebrew are somewhat-related languages, the word-root in this case is not common.  Rather, the Rabbis inform us that the meaning of Mitzrayim is, ‘a narrow place.’
This makes sense if you have ever been to Egypt or if you are aware of its geography.  Because although Egypt appears on maps as a rectangle with the Sinai Peninsula appended to its northeast corner, almost the entire population of the country lives on the banks of the River Nile, or its delta.  Ancient Egypt was not nearly as crowded as the country is today with its estimated 86 million inhabitants.  But Herodotus, a Greek historian in the 5th century BCE, described the Egypt of his age as being densely populated despite periodic famine and a short life expectancy.
So the Egypt that the Israelites experienced was a narrow place.  Physically, to be sure.  But also spiritually as it was ruled by the Pharaoh who capriciously ascribed to himself the powers of a god, and who ruled along with the priests of the cults of the various other gods.  Perhaps that’s why the Hebrew term Mitzrayim is plural.  Or perhaps, because the land was narrow for the Israelites and other resident aliens, as well as for the Egyptians themselves.  After all, the same Herodotus described in detail a land of extreme poverty and poor distribution of its considerable wealth and resources.
As with most lessons from our Jewish past, the lesson of the Exodus comes as both a history lesson and as a metaphor for us to apply today.
The ‘problem’ with Egypt was that it was a place of narrowness, and lack of freedom and opportunity.  Just as our ancestors trusted God to free them from that place of limits and constriction, we in our age should trust God to free us from places of limits and constriction.  And just as the narrowness of Egypt refers to both its physical reality and the mindset that this and its culture fostered, so too should we avoid ‘narrow’ places of all kinds:  physical, intellectual, and spiritual.  Jews have heeded and embraced this lesson through millennia of life in difficult places and times.  We have a history of transcending limitations and reaching for greatness.  But I fear that the lesson is now fading.  Nowadays I often hear, in conversation with Jews both here and elsewhere, far too much whining about limited potential and opportunity.  About the ‘disabilities’ that come from being a Jew.  About an expectation of marginality because of our ancestry, our religious affiliation, or both.
But this whining and self-pity is not the eternal way of our people.  Jews represent only 0.2 percent of the world’s population, but Jews have won 41 percent the Nobel Prizes in economics, 28 percent in medicine, 26 percent in physics, 19 percent in chemistry, 13 percent in literature, and nine percent in peace.  This is only one narrow measure of our impact.  But by almost any other measure, the positive impact on the world by Jews has been far out of proportion with our numbers.

For most of us, the tiredness from staying up late to complete the Seder has now passed.  Soon, so too will the dry feeling in the mouth from eating matzo.  But my prayer tonight, is that this lesson will continue to linger.  Our Rabbis understood that the ancient Israelites experienced Mitzrayim on a number of levels.  And one of those levels was a lack of ‘space’ to achieve and flourish.  May we never inhabit such a space, either physically or in our minds.  May we be freed of all narrow places, and thus be free to allow God to inspire us to greatness.  Shabbat shalom and Chag Sameach.    

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Restaurant Regret: I Bought an Old Man Lunch. Did I do the Wrong Thing?: A Message for Saturday, 12 April 2014 (By Jason F Wright)

Sometimes I find, in the writings of someone else, complete agreement with a theme that I propound in my own writing and speaking.  When I do, I of course find it most affirming!  And when I do, I will often quote that other writer, with attribution, in the presentation of my own theses.  But I have never stood before you and simply read someone else’s writing here, from the pulpit.
          Today, I’m going to do just that.  The other day, I came across a column by Jason F Wright, on Foxnews.com, that expresses so well a theme that I have presented to you before.  Please listen as Mr Wright so eloquently reminds us of the most important gift we can give. 

A few days ago I had lunch with a buddy at a local restaurant. The food was fine, sure, but this is a friend who makes the menu irrelevant.
He’s the kind of guy who makes you laugh so hard you’re snorting Sprite and spitting chip shards before the (mains) even arrive.
About halfway through lunch, we noticed an older gentleman being seated directly across from us. It was obvious it would be a table for one.
My pal and I said hello and complimented him on his unusual hat. Then he launched into a description of it, and we listened politely until we could return to our own discussion.
Even as our attention turned back to our own stories and laughter, it was impossible not to notice how slowly the man ate. It was as if he had nowhere to go and no one to go home to.
When our server cashed us out, we asked if we could also pay the gentleman’s bill. After all, who doesn’t like a free lunch?
As we waited for the server to return, we imagined all sorts of things about the man. Maybe he’s on a fixed income? Maybe this is a rare lunch out?
A moment later we gathered our things and slipped out. My friend had errands to run and I had plenty of work to do. But didn’t we feel so good about ourselves!
Let's have a parade. We bought lunch for an old man.
Soon I was back at my desk and my hands went on to other projects, but I couldn’t keep my mind from wandering back to the restaurant. I had the unmistakable sense that we’d let a friend get away.
At the time, sacrificing $12 for his lunch and a tip seemed the least we could do. I’m afraid we were right – it was the least we could do.
It’s certainly possible the man was grateful for the meal and that our very small gift allowed him to treat himself out again another day.
It’s also possible that he likes to eat alone and that his trip to the restaurant was a much-needed break from caring for someone else or worrying about one of the thousand things that adds stress to the life of many seniors.
But what if?
What if he awoke that morning and decided to take himself to lunch in hopes of having some conversation?
What if he had a story to share, a lesson to teach or a memory to paint that just might have been a blessing for all three of us?
What if the least of his concerns was the gift of money, when what he really prayed for was the gift of time?
Maybe if I spent less time patting myself on the back for giving someone a free lunch, I’d have more time to extend that same hand to make a new friend.
Of course, it’s conceivable if we’d asked to join him or invited him to our table, he might have politely declined. But we’ll never know, because we were too absorbed to even ask the question.
Lesson learned.
You can be sure I plan to visit that restaurant again. When I do, I sure hope to run into that man and his fancy hat.
Maybe I’ll offer to buy his lunch. But trust me, if I do, it won't be from across the restaurant.

You’ve heard me say this before.  Time is the most precious gift we can give.  This is because it is finite.  Our days are numbered.  We can never recover the time that we give to someone else.  We can never recover the time spent on any particular activity, by creating more time.
          So the opposite is also true.  When we demand or take someone else’s time, that’s the most ‘expensive’ thing we can take from someone else.  And to ‘steal’ someone’s time, is probably the worst kind of theft possible.

          Gifts of money and material?  Of course give!  They are important and can accomplish much.  But the most precious gift you can give by far is that of your time.  It uplifts the recipient.  And the giver.  Think about it.  Shabbat shalom, and a joyous festival.

The Passover Journey: A Drash for Friday, 11 April 2014

Before the rise of Reform Judaism, rabbis serving congregations typically gave only two ‘real guy’ sermons each year.  Oh, they might stand briefly each Shabbat and offer some pearls of wisdom from the Tradition that would shed some light on the weekly Torah reading.  But a sermon, or drash as we call it, would be a rare occurrence.  Twice a year, to be exact.
          The rabbi would stand in shule and give major sermons on Shabbat Shuvah, and on Shabbat Hagadol.  Shabbat Shuvah is the Sabbath that precedes Yom Kippur.  Shabbat Hagadol is the Sabbath immediately preceding the onset of Pesach.  Of course, that’s this Shabbat.  The rabbi would expound at length on these two occasions of the year, in order to deliver clear instruction to his community, on the laws of observing the respective holy days.  On the nuts and bolts of how to do it.  Since it was simply accepted that these laws were legislation from God Himself, it was considered most important that everybody carry them out correctly.
          Like many teachers, I find that I learn from my students.  Sometimes I learn such profound lessons from my students, I can only pray I’m giving them half as much as they’re giving me!  My students’ insights are a sublime gift, that give me the inspiration to go on.  Even on those days when I feel like giving it all up and going fishing.
          In my Judaism for Dummies class the last few weeks, we went out of the sequence of the book’s chapters to talk about Pesach.  Makes sense, right?  Since we were going to talk about Pesach sooner or later in any case, we might as well talk about it now.  That way, especially my students who are candidates for conversion can begin to understand as they join the community for the first time, just what this is all about.
          I generally don’t focus too sharply, as an Orthodox rabbi would, on the nuts-and-bolts of observance.  After all – and this is not a criticism! – we Progressive Jews tend to be easy-going about our ritual observance.  We do things as we know how.  And we ideally draw joy and meaning from the positive act of observing.  Those who want more help with the nuts-and-bolts, usually come to me individually with their questions.  Or they look them up on a website.
          But of course, students in my class, which serves for most participants as a basic introduction to Judaism, are not in the same position as our members generally.  They are ‘trying on’ these observances, often for the first time.  They are more concerned than you, the members of my community, with the nuts-and-bolts.  If they are to draw the same joy as you get from the observance of the Passover, they need basic instruction first.
          So these sessions on Pesach have consisted largely of a series of rapid-fire questions from members of my class.  These, followed by sometimes long, involved answers from me.
          After the first week of our focus on Pesach, one of my students made an important observation.  He told me that he had detected more than a bit of frustration on my part during class.  He wondered if the students were in danger of missing the forest for the trees.
          I realised that he was spot-on.  Of course it’s important for these students to know how to ‘do’ Pesach.  But it is possible to focus so strongly on the how, that we miss the why.
          I’d like to share one aspect of the why with you, right now.  Of course, we know the basic outline of the historical reason for the festival.  But there’s a more profound reason why it is important.  Why the Pesach defines us as Jews.  Why the Pesach serves as a metaphor for life itself.
          The ‘original’ Pesach of course served as a process for an important transition.  The transition from slaves to free people.  That wasn’t an easy process!  I mean, it was so difficult a transition that God stretched it out to 40 years.  In other words, in the end the transition simply wasn’t possible.  A generation raised as slaves, as the children of slaves, could not forge a free society under the sovereignty of God.  It would take their children, born in the wilderness without the yoke of slavery, to accomplish that.  Even Moses, the great leader and law-giver, was judged the wrong guy to lead them into the Promised Land.  His function was to lead the people through the transition.  He was not the one who would lead the people to create a new land and reality.
          So a most important aspect of this observance is that it commemorates the Mother of all Transitions.  Now transitions are generally difficult.  Two weeks ago tomorrow, I spoke about why we human beasts tend to be ‘conservative.’  We like constancy.  It provides comfort.  Even when the constant is not an especially good regime.  We see this in our ancient forebears, in how they rebel against Moses again and again, demanding to be taken back to Egypt.
          So we should see Pesach as a journey, as a voyage of transition.  And as in any voyage, there’s a danger in focusing too heavily on the hows.
          Many of you have been on cruises, some of you multiple times.  For many, it is a singularly enjoyable way to spend your important vacation time.  And in embarking on a cruise, there is always a certain learning curve.
When I took a cruise, the first event was the orientation.  At this session, the Cruise Director and others instructed the passengers in everything we would need to know to have a safe and enjoyable voyage.  Of course, we needed to know what to do if there was an emergency at sea.  We needed to know where to find life jackets and how to put them on.  And we needed to know our lifeboat assignments.  But also, we needed to know when to go to dinner.  Where to sit.  How to order a special diet.  What areas of the ship to avoid all the time, or during bad weather, or when docking.  What to take when going ashore on an excursion.  This was all important information! 
But if we would spend the entire cruise obsessing over the details of what, where, when, and how, then we would miss the point.  The experience of the journey would simply go by, unnoticed.  So when we go on cruises, we don’t worry overly about these details and obsess over them constantly, right?  Once we know what we need to, we shift our focus to the experience of the voyage.  If we succeed in doing so, then we find the experience refreshing.  So much so, that we soon begin contemplating our next cruise.  As long as the food was memorable…
          Pesach is like that.  We do need to know the nuts-and-bolts.  But then we need to simply do it and let the experience transform us.  To absorb the lesson of transition and enjoy the journey.  Because after all, our lives are nothing if not a series of transitions.  Occupational transitions.  Personal status transitions.  From single to married, and sometimes back to single.  From child to adult to parent.  Geographic transitions.  And, for some, religious transitions.
          Judaism is, generally speaking, about distinctions.  Through distinctions, we find our place and create our own space.  But Pesach, Judaism’s most important festival, is about a transition.  And its story provides us with many important lessons about how to make transitions.

          May your own transition this year be a blessing to you and those close to you.  Chag sameach.  Shabbat shalom.

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Ugly = Evil? A Drash for Saturday, 05 April 2014

Some 30 years ago, I was living in Greece.  Whilst there, I tried to see as much of the country as I could.  As some of you already know, Greece is a country of rugged and forbidding landscapes, as well as beautiful and scenic ones.
          I was touring Crete, the largest of the Greek Islands, in a rented car with a companion.  The island’s south shore consists primarily of towering mountains plunging thousands of feet into the sea; along much of that shore there are no beaches and no protected bays and harbours.  On the island’s gentler north shore, in contrast, there are many bays, peninsulas and islets.
          We were on the north shore, just north of the fishing town of Agios Nikolaos, and came upon the peninsula known as Kalydon.  There was a narrow isthmus connecting this land to Crete, and there was a narrow road on the isthmus, on which one could drive onto the peninsula.  I drove across it, then north to the end of Kalydon, which was entirely rural and served as grazing land for a large flock of goats.  At the end of the peninsula was a taverna, a casual restaurant with a gaggle of fishing boats beached behind it.  Across a narrow strip of water, little more than a stone’s throw, was a small island which we knew from the map to be Spinalonga.  We could see that there were ancient fortifications on the island.  Since it was not yet lunchtime, we stepped behind the tavern and enquired as to the possibility of a lift to the island in one of the boats.  We got more than that; one of the boatmen offered to guide us around the island.  We negotiated a price, and the man rowed us across.
          Whilst walking around the island’s ruined fort, our guide told us that, after the Venetians left, the island became a leper colony.  Hearing that pronouncement, my companion and I looked at one another and our faces told it all.  The morning was ruined for us.  Not worried about appearing to be weak-hearted, we ended the tour very quickly and pronounced our readiness to return to the taverna.  But we didn’t stop to eat.  We climbed back into the car and started driving back from whence we came.  Our reaction to the news that we’d been casually walking around a former leper colony, was so visceral and emotional that we instinctively felt we needed to put distance between it and us.  Whilst crossing back over the isthmus road, I stopped and we shared a hearty laugh about our behaviour.  When we finished our laugh, I shifted the car into gear and drove back to Agios Nikolaos, where we stopped for lunch.
          Leprosy, nowadays called Hansen’s Disease, is manifest by the formation of hard crusts that disfigure the skin of its victim.  It destroys the nerve structure underneath the skin, and sometimes the extremities actually rot away and fall off.  It’s a rare condition and not contagious.  But in the ancient world, it was feared; its victims were shunned from normal society out of revulsion for the condition and the fear that it would spread.  They were consigned to colonies where they could be quarantined from others.  In these colonies, they would ultimately die horrible deaths with only other victims of the disease to comfort them.
          This week’s Torah portion opens by prescribing a purification ritual for tzara’at, which is usually translated ‘leprosy.’  The person so afflicted is called a ‘metzora’ which is usually translated ‘leper.’
          The portion is almost certainly not talking about leprosy at all.  After all, the text telling of the purification procedure assumes that the person’s condition will be cured relatively quickly.  And to repeat, there is no cure for leprosy.  So it had to be talking about something that was not only curable, but expected to disappear within a few days.  But the translation ‘leprosy’ stuck. 
Whilst ‘leprosy’ is not accurate, perhaps it accurately conveys the ancient man’s revulsion for those afflicted with diseases of the skin.  Leprosy was rare, but other skin conditions were more prevalent.  Just as they are today.  Skin conditions, being so readily visible, cause many people to step back and see the sufferer as an untouchable.  They are afraid to be in contact with them.
This attitude persists even to our day.  People manifesting skin conditions are often seen as embodying evil.  I can’t tell you how many films I’ve seen where a person with bad skin was cast as the villain.  Or novels where the bad guy was described as having bad skin.  In the case of leprosy, the ‘mother of all skin diseases,’ my own reaction serves to remind me of this revulsion.  Even centuries after the fact, and even though I knew intellectually that Hansen’s Disease is almost extinct and non-contagious, I reacted quickly and negatively to the idea that I was treading ground where lepers once were quarantined.
          But it’s not just skin irregularities that cause us to judge others.  In general, those displaying such physical traits as to be considered ‘attractive’ are assumed to be of good character, whilst those thought ‘unattractive’ are immediately suspect.  Think in general about how film and television cast those fitting the description ‘attractive’ as the ‘good guys,’ whilst the ‘bad guys’ are usually played by ‘unattractive’ people. 
Given all that, it is understandable that ancient man saw skin afflictions as indicative of character flaws, and why Biblical Judaism prescribed a purification ritual by the priests.  Some of that attitude persists even to this day, although nobody has recently come to me for help with a skin condition.  If they did, I would try to help them find a good dermatologist.

We no longer perform purification rites such as those reflected in this week’s Torah reading.  But we can purify our thoughts, and decide not to judge people based on their outward appearances and afflictions.  Shabbat shalom.