Strangers Everywhere
August 9, 2024
Central Reform Temple of Boston
Rabbi Dr Michael J Shire
How would you feel walking around a city with signs like this on every corner and people even wearing T shirts with this message; Strangers Everywhere! On first glance you might be cautious about the meaning, you might even be offended. So what a brilliant provocative theme for the famous Venice Biannele – the international arts expo held in Venice every two years. ‘Strangers Everywhere’ was the theme for hundreds of artists from around the world to explore and exhibit in two huge art exhibitions. One housed in pavilions dedicated to different countries of the world and one in a huge warehouse with thousands of pieces to view and experience. We were fortunate to attend this year and learn about ‘Strangers Everywhere’ in such a artistic global perspective.
The artists focused on immigration, refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants from their own experience. But not just the plight of foreigners but also those who are strangers in our own societies. This disenfranchised and those looked upon as other and alien:; the homeless, the mentally ill, and the dispossessed. We also saw the dangers of labelling those who are different from us as strangers; including transgender people, the LGBTQ+ community or those of a religious or cultural minority.
The Italian word straniero , the French etranger , the English stranger are all connected to the original meaning of the word queer and thus the exhibition unfolds and focuses on the queer experience, the gender fluid body or the variety of sexualities that are often persecuted or outlawed. Three wax policemen menaced us in one exhibition fully decked out in uniforms with weapons bristling but as you stepped behind them, their backs were dressed in silks and lingerie both as a means of contrast but also as a means to remind us that even the powerful and ruthless have softer insides that need exposing.
As we viewed the exhibitions, we were moved by the stories of all of these ‘strangers’.
There were video maps of migrants and refugees talking about their journeys to flee persecution or hunger and find places of sanctuary. From unknown places in Syria or Sudan or the Sahara, refugees make their way towards Europe on wildly circuitous routes often double backing on themselves just to find ways to get to Germany or Sweden or England where they are told a new life awaits them. The dejection in their voices as they described being turned back at each border or having to walk or sail hundreds of miles across continents was palpable.
In the Australian pavilion, we experienced the life and memory of Archie Moore, an aboriginal who depicted piles and piles of death certificates of his ancestors forgotten, abandoned and ignored by Australian society over hundreds of years. In the darkened tent that was the pavilion he had chalk marked the names of his family and ancestors on a family tree which then extended over all the walls and the ceiling as well. Thousands of aboriginal peoples who became strangers in their own land only remembered by fading chalk on a wall in a dark tent. Describing the art installation, Archie Moore wrote: My aboriginal people live where saltwater meets freshwater, where the creation of life in the world is both memory and imagination. But here family and fraternity are always present in the minds and hearts of the living. It felt like a yad Vashem - of their people.
‘Strangers Everywhere’ became more than just a description. It is as Judaism teaches, an exhortation, a call to social action that compels us to be proactive in helping and supporting. For in Exodus, we are commanded to remember the stranger for we were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not wrong or oppress a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not ill-treat any widow or orphan. If you do mistreat them, I will heed their outcry as they cry out to Me. (Exodus 22)
Our task is to relieve the plight of the stranger in our midst, to welcome them with open arms as one who is made in the image of God – b’tzelem Elohim. We are witnessing such prejudice and hatred of the stranger all around us from the politics in the upcoming US election to the atrocious behaviour of hooligans on the streets in British towns and cities. As the social media outlets promote the fear and hatred of strangers, so we must counter with kindness and assistance to support the refugee and the immigrant. It is only in our embrace of the stranger that we come to know our true selves – for then we act without any expectation of return or reward.
My mother, who left Nazi Germany in 1935 is often asked to speak about being a survivor. She rightly points out that she is not a survivor. That is a term reserved for those who survived the concentration camps of the 1940s. Rather she proudly proclaims herself a refugee. That is a label that has a lot of positive resonance for her now. With that label comes the experience of having had to thrive in a new country with a new culture and language. To build a new life in which the freedoms that were denied can be celebrated. As the oldest refugee in her home town, she was asked to welcome a new group of refugees from Syria. She told them it would be hard at first but that their neigbours would help and support them as they had for her in the 1930s. And then she instructed them, make sure you give back to the community that has embraced you for you now have an obligation to them too. Refugees and Immigrants give back so much to our communities and we can celebrate the diversity of cultures, food, art and language that they bring. At the end of her little talk, she spoke to one of the Syrian Muslim refugees who had been a doctor in Aleppo but now was driving buses to earn a living. My mother remarked how she took that bus to her synagogue for Shabbat services and the Syrian man offered to pick her up and take her next time on his route.
For too long we Jews have been made to be strangers in our lands and moved time and time again. On Monday night and Tuesday we will commemorate Tisha B’av – the Nineth day of Av in the Jewish calendar. This fast day is a reminder of all the calamities that have faced the Jewish People over the millenia – from the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, to the expulsion from medieval spain to the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. All events occurring on the 9th Av. And yet we remain true to our core principles in the Torah; love your neighbour as yourself v’ahavta re’echa k’mocha. I was so proud that members of CRT this summer volunteered to distribute food, clothes and supplies to B-Safe youth summer program for in South End and Roxbury. The organizer wrote to us in appreciation saying; You have stuffed and delivered bags, donating your time, energy, and funds. It all counts as proof that we have a vibrant community that understands the word LOVE, as I have heard Pam say it. v’ahavta re’echa k’mocha
Thankyou to all who participated your efforts on behalf of others. There will be more such opportunities that we will commit to in the year ahead.
And then I remembered that on my way to Venice through Logan on the bridge to Departures, I looked down and saw families camped in the Arrivals Hall. Families from Haiti that could not find accommodation in our city. One artist/poet at the Biennale, a member of the Lakota Nation in the American pavilion summed up our viewing of the stranger. Whether it be the immigrant to our shores or those we consider other in our own society.
This is how you see me the space in which to place me
the space in me you see
is this place
to see this space
see how you place me in you
this is how to place you in the spaces in which to see.
As our tradition tells us we need to see ourselves as if we were strangers and from that perspective reach out to others and place them in our hearts so that we see them for who they truly are; holy reflections of ourselves . For there really are ‘strangers everywhere.’
The artists focused on immigration, refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants from their own experience. But not just the plight of foreigners but also those who are strangers in our own societies. This disenfranchised and those looked upon as other and alien:; the homeless, the mentally ill, and the dispossessed. We also saw the dangers of labelling those who are different from us as strangers; including transgender people, the LGBTQ+ community or those of a religious or cultural minority.
The Italian word straniero , the French etranger , the English stranger are all connected to the original meaning of the word queer and thus the exhibition unfolds and focuses on the queer experience, the gender fluid body or the variety of sexualities that are often persecuted or outlawed. Three wax policemen menaced us in one exhibition fully decked out in uniforms with weapons bristling but as you stepped behind them, their backs were dressed in silks and lingerie both as a means of contrast but also as a means to remind us that even the powerful and ruthless have softer insides that need exposing.
As we viewed the exhibitions, we were moved by the stories of all of these ‘strangers’.
There were video maps of migrants and refugees talking about their journeys to flee persecution or hunger and find places of sanctuary. From unknown places in Syria or Sudan or the Sahara, refugees make their way towards Europe on wildly circuitous routes often double backing on themselves just to find ways to get to Germany or Sweden or England where they are told a new life awaits them. The dejection in their voices as they described being turned back at each border or having to walk or sail hundreds of miles across continents was palpable.
In the Australian pavilion, we experienced the life and memory of Archie Moore, an aboriginal who depicted piles and piles of death certificates of his ancestors forgotten, abandoned and ignored by Australian society over hundreds of years. In the darkened tent that was the pavilion he had chalk marked the names of his family and ancestors on a family tree which then extended over all the walls and the ceiling as well. Thousands of aboriginal peoples who became strangers in their own land only remembered by fading chalk on a wall in a dark tent. Describing the art installation, Archie Moore wrote: My aboriginal people live where saltwater meets freshwater, where the creation of life in the world is both memory and imagination. But here family and fraternity are always present in the minds and hearts of the living. It felt like a yad Vashem - of their people.
‘Strangers Everywhere’ became more than just a description. It is as Judaism teaches, an exhortation, a call to social action that compels us to be proactive in helping and supporting. For in Exodus, we are commanded to remember the stranger for we were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not wrong or oppress a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not ill-treat any widow or orphan. If you do mistreat them, I will heed their outcry as they cry out to Me. (Exodus 22)
Our task is to relieve the plight of the stranger in our midst, to welcome them with open arms as one who is made in the image of God – b’tzelem Elohim. We are witnessing such prejudice and hatred of the stranger all around us from the politics in the upcoming US election to the atrocious behaviour of hooligans on the streets in British towns and cities. As the social media outlets promote the fear and hatred of strangers, so we must counter with kindness and assistance to support the refugee and the immigrant. It is only in our embrace of the stranger that we come to know our true selves – for then we act without any expectation of return or reward.
My mother, who left Nazi Germany in 1935 is often asked to speak about being a survivor. She rightly points out that she is not a survivor. That is a term reserved for those who survived the concentration camps of the 1940s. Rather she proudly proclaims herself a refugee. That is a label that has a lot of positive resonance for her now. With that label comes the experience of having had to thrive in a new country with a new culture and language. To build a new life in which the freedoms that were denied can be celebrated. As the oldest refugee in her home town, she was asked to welcome a new group of refugees from Syria. She told them it would be hard at first but that their neigbours would help and support them as they had for her in the 1930s. And then she instructed them, make sure you give back to the community that has embraced you for you now have an obligation to them too. Refugees and Immigrants give back so much to our communities and we can celebrate the diversity of cultures, food, art and language that they bring. At the end of her little talk, she spoke to one of the Syrian Muslim refugees who had been a doctor in Aleppo but now was driving buses to earn a living. My mother remarked how she took that bus to her synagogue for Shabbat services and the Syrian man offered to pick her up and take her next time on his route.
For too long we Jews have been made to be strangers in our lands and moved time and time again. On Monday night and Tuesday we will commemorate Tisha B’av – the Nineth day of Av in the Jewish calendar. This fast day is a reminder of all the calamities that have faced the Jewish People over the millenia – from the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, to the expulsion from medieval spain to the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. All events occurring on the 9th Av. And yet we remain true to our core principles in the Torah; love your neighbour as yourself v’ahavta re’echa k’mocha. I was so proud that members of CRT this summer volunteered to distribute food, clothes and supplies to B-Safe youth summer program for in South End and Roxbury. The organizer wrote to us in appreciation saying; You have stuffed and delivered bags, donating your time, energy, and funds. It all counts as proof that we have a vibrant community that understands the word LOVE, as I have heard Pam say it. v’ahavta re’echa k’mocha
Thankyou to all who participated your efforts on behalf of others. There will be more such opportunities that we will commit to in the year ahead.
And then I remembered that on my way to Venice through Logan on the bridge to Departures, I looked down and saw families camped in the Arrivals Hall. Families from Haiti that could not find accommodation in our city. One artist/poet at the Biennale, a member of the Lakota Nation in the American pavilion summed up our viewing of the stranger. Whether it be the immigrant to our shores or those we consider other in our own society.
This is how you see me the space in which to place me
the space in me you see
is this place
to see this space
see how you place me in you
this is how to place you in the spaces in which to see.
As our tradition tells us we need to see ourselves as if we were strangers and from that perspective reach out to others and place them in our hearts so that we see them for who they truly are; holy reflections of ourselves . For there really are ‘strangers everywhere.’
Getting from Today to Tomorrow
May 24, 2024
Central Reform Temple of Boston
Guest Preacher, Rabbi Howard A. Kosovske
Exactly fifty-three years ago, in the month of May, 1971, when my active-duty US Army chaplaincy in Germany was drawing to a close, I preached a sermon against what then was a wide-spread practice among Army enlisted people. The practice was “counting short,” meaning counting down days to a person’s discharge from the army. The practice stemmed from the time we were at war in Vietnam, any day of which, God forbid, might be a person’s last. It typically started a month before a person was due to leave Vietnam, when, with a calendar affixed to the wall, people X’d out days one after another. That was when people, day after day, would proclaim so many days and a wake up, as in 30 more days and a wake-up, and then 29 more days and a wake-up and so on until two days more and a wake-up and finally, “one more day and a wake-up.”
At least to the Jewish soldiers who were at that Friday night Shabbat service, my sermon excoriated the practice. Why, you ask? Because counting short is not Jewish. Ever. We Jews don’t count down. We count up.
There’s a Jewish text on that: מעלין בקודש ואין מורידין, we ascend in holiness; we don’t descend. 1 In other words, we Jews aren’t supposed to count down in matters of holiness; we may only count up. Not as they do when they launch a satellite – as in 10- 9-8-down to 3-2-1-blast off – we Jews, rather, count the other way.
And that’s what we are doing right now in this very holy time of year. This is the sefira period, and we are counting days from one to forty-eight, something we started on the second night of Passover and which we will continue until the festival of Shavuot, seven weeks later.
Beyond Passover, this counting of days is the first act in the month that really is the beginning month of the year. That’s the month of Nissan, also called the Month of Spring, which unlike the month of Tishrei when Rosh Hashanah occurs, is actually the first month of the year.
This counting practice started back in Biblical times when we primarily were an agrarian people. It went as a fulfillment of this command, where, according to sacred text, God spoke to Moses and said, “Speak to the Israelite people and say to them: When you enter the land I am giving to you and reap its harvest, you shall bring to the priest [a quantity of] an omer, the first sheaf of your harvest. He shall wave the sheaf before God for acceptance in your behalf, elevating it on the day after the sabbath. And on the day of elevating the sheaf, you shall offer as a burnt offering to God a year-old lamb without blemish. A meal offering shall be with it consisting of two-tenths of a measure of choice flour with oil mixed in, a fire-offering of pleasing odor to God.”2
There’s more. A few verses later, the text says, “You shall count for yourselves from the day after the sabbath, from the day of your bringing the omer of wave-offering, seven complete weeks. Beginning with that day, you shall count off fifty days, and then you shall bring a new cereal offering unto God. From your habitations, you shall bring two [loaves of] bread, [each containing] two tenth-parts of fine flours [from which] you shall bake first fruits unto God. And you shall offer, in addition to the loaves, seven unblemished year-old lambs and one bull of the flock and two rams, [all being] a burnt offering unto God along with their cereal offering and their libations, a fire-offering, a pleasing odor to God. 3
In Rabbinic times it went a little differently. The Tosefta describes the way the Omer sacrifice was made at the beginning of the 49-day count. After the sun set, three sheaves of barley were identified and harvested with great fanfare as crowds watched. These were placed in a basket and carried to the Temple where the barley was processed: The kernels were removed from the stalks and singed with a flame, then milled into a coarse flour and sifted 13 times before being mixed with oil and frankincense to make a dough. This dough was held aloft and waved, then a portion of it burned up on the altar and the rest was eaten by the priests.4
By the way, according to the Talmud (and this was said in relation to Sukkot where we wave a lulav and etrog), the waving ritual was meant to prevent harmful winds and dew from damaging the season’s grain crops.5
But about now, how does this all go today in this sefirah period, this counting period,when, just as we Jews have done for centuries, and as we soon shall do here and as you have since Passover, we participate in a counting ritual where we count days from Pesach to Shavuot? And how does the process of the ritual get done?
First, each night we count by number the day and week we are in, as so many days and so many weeks of (or into) the omer. Last night, for instance, we said, “Today is the 31st day, which are five weeks and three days into the omer.” We do that with a
blessing whose meaning is, “Blessing are You, Eternal God Sovereign of the universe, who made us holy through Your mitzvot and commanded us [to perform the ritual] of the counting of the omer.” Note that I said, “each night” and “with a blessing.” I said that because if someone forgets to count at night, the person counts the next day, but this time without the blessing. More, if someone forgets totally to count one day, from that point on for the rest of the counting period that year, the person counts until the end without the blessing, even at night.
But there is more still. Several other things happen during this period. First, this period is considered something of a sad time. People, except on two days during the period, traditionally don’t marry. The days when they do are lag b’omer, the 33rd day of the counting period, and Rosh Chodesh Iyar, the first day of the month of Iyar that occurs during the period (Some people now also add Yom ha’atzma’ut, Israel Independence Day to the list since it intrinsically is a happy day.)
But what is the thing about Lag ba’omer? According to the tradition, in the time of Rabbi Akiva, a plague broke out during this period, and 24,000 of his students died. The plague ended on the 33rd day of the Sefirah period Lag ba’omer.
Also, since it is considered a sad period, one of semi-mourning, up until lag ba’omer, or for some the day after (and lag ba’omer is this Sunday), some people do not cut their hair or shave. In fact, at Meron in Israel, a big celebration takes place each year among very observant Jews on Lag ba’omer. For the first three years of a boy’s life, a child’s hair isn’t cut. That ends on Lag ba’omer when the child is given his first haircut, of course leaving on his payyot, his side-curls.
But what are we counting anyway in this sefirah, or counting, period and what do Pesach or Passover, and Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, have to do with it?
Pesach, of course, is the time of our liberation. It is the celebration of and the reliving of the exodus from Egypt, the time when our enslavement ended and our liberation began. But what about Shavuot? Well, in biblical times, Shavuot, also called the Festival of First Fruits, was an agricultural celebration. Pesach was the time of the barley harvest, and Shavuot was the time of the harvest of winter wheat. But in later times, the Sages, the Rabbis, added another dimension to Shavuot.
They proclaimed the sixth day of Sivan, the date of Shavuot, to be the date on which Moses (and we) received the Torah. Pesach was liberation. Shavuot was revelation. And in this, then, the sefirah period became the reenactment time celebrating why, at least traditionally, we were redeemed, that is specifically, to receive Torah, the blue-print for a perfected world.
As we read in Sefer Hachinuch, a 13th century compendium on the 613 commandments: And because of this —“such is [the] essence of Israel, why we were redeemed and then went up to all of the greatness to which Israel rose: we were commanded to tally from the morrow of the holiday of Pesach until the day of the giving of the Torah; to show about ourselves the great desire [we have] for the honored day, which our hearts yearn [for] like “a slave seeks shade” and always tallies when will come the yearned-for time that the slave goes out to freedom. As the tally shows about a person, all of his deliverance and all of his desire is to reach that time…”
And so, where is all of this today? Here’s the first up-counting: we have counted up from 1 to 230 days since October 7th, when Hamas viciously attacked Israel, when roughly 1,200 people were murdered and some 252 people were taken to the Gaza Strip as hostage, including children, women, and elderly people. May those still there, alive and sadly not, soon be returned to Israel, and may their captivity be ended. Likewise, may the war soon come to an end, and may the final end of Hamas’ existence see reality.
And then, for us here? Let me, please, cite a verse from Psalms. It reads, לִמְנוֹת יָמֵינוּ כֵּן הוֹדַע וְנָבִא לְבַב חָכְמָה, meaning, “Teach us to number our days, that we may get us a heart of wisdom.”6 The process of numbering days is a constant reminder to me, to us, to take each day seriously, and that is something I think about each night when Janet and I count the omer.
I’ve heard people talk about “killing time.” That’s a terrible expression and an
even worse notion. For us, killing time is about as un-Jewish as anything we can imagine. We don’t ever kill time. Rather, our mandate as Jews is to live each day to the fullest. No matter what those days may be for each of us – and I’m sure they will have a
different meaning for each of us – our command always is to use our time, to use all of our time, each day, and from each day unto tomorrow, and from each tomorrow going on all the way to the end of our lives, to do whatever we can to keep on growing and keep on doing everything we can in some way to make the world a better place.
So about the sefirah, the period of counting, this isn’t about counting time. Rather, as the verse from Psalms teaches us, sefirah is about making time count. It’s about using the time we have for a purpose, of taking advantage each day to use the opportunity that each day gives us, not only for ourselves but for a whole world, to use it in the true spirit of what Torah is, to count up to being better and becoming still better, not only for ourselves, but for all humanity. And that is what sefirat ha’omer, counting the omer, is really about.
And so with, in this spirit then, this spirit of counting up, I ask you to take in your hands our sheets of omer-counting liturgy and, if you are able, I ask you, following tradition, to stand as we count the omer!
_______________
1 Berakhot 28a.
2 Lev. 23:9-13.
3 Lev. 23:14-18.
4 Tosefta Menachot 10:6.
5 Sukkot 37b-38a.
6 Psalm 90:20
At least to the Jewish soldiers who were at that Friday night Shabbat service, my sermon excoriated the practice. Why, you ask? Because counting short is not Jewish. Ever. We Jews don’t count down. We count up.
There’s a Jewish text on that: מעלין בקודש ואין מורידין, we ascend in holiness; we don’t descend. 1 In other words, we Jews aren’t supposed to count down in matters of holiness; we may only count up. Not as they do when they launch a satellite – as in 10- 9-8-down to 3-2-1-blast off – we Jews, rather, count the other way.
And that’s what we are doing right now in this very holy time of year. This is the sefira period, and we are counting days from one to forty-eight, something we started on the second night of Passover and which we will continue until the festival of Shavuot, seven weeks later.
Beyond Passover, this counting of days is the first act in the month that really is the beginning month of the year. That’s the month of Nissan, also called the Month of Spring, which unlike the month of Tishrei when Rosh Hashanah occurs, is actually the first month of the year.
This counting practice started back in Biblical times when we primarily were an agrarian people. It went as a fulfillment of this command, where, according to sacred text, God spoke to Moses and said, “Speak to the Israelite people and say to them: When you enter the land I am giving to you and reap its harvest, you shall bring to the priest [a quantity of] an omer, the first sheaf of your harvest. He shall wave the sheaf before God for acceptance in your behalf, elevating it on the day after the sabbath. And on the day of elevating the sheaf, you shall offer as a burnt offering to God a year-old lamb without blemish. A meal offering shall be with it consisting of two-tenths of a measure of choice flour with oil mixed in, a fire-offering of pleasing odor to God.”2
There’s more. A few verses later, the text says, “You shall count for yourselves from the day after the sabbath, from the day of your bringing the omer of wave-offering, seven complete weeks. Beginning with that day, you shall count off fifty days, and then you shall bring a new cereal offering unto God. From your habitations, you shall bring two [loaves of] bread, [each containing] two tenth-parts of fine flours [from which] you shall bake first fruits unto God. And you shall offer, in addition to the loaves, seven unblemished year-old lambs and one bull of the flock and two rams, [all being] a burnt offering unto God along with their cereal offering and their libations, a fire-offering, a pleasing odor to God. 3
In Rabbinic times it went a little differently. The Tosefta describes the way the Omer sacrifice was made at the beginning of the 49-day count. After the sun set, three sheaves of barley were identified and harvested with great fanfare as crowds watched. These were placed in a basket and carried to the Temple where the barley was processed: The kernels were removed from the stalks and singed with a flame, then milled into a coarse flour and sifted 13 times before being mixed with oil and frankincense to make a dough. This dough was held aloft and waved, then a portion of it burned up on the altar and the rest was eaten by the priests.4
By the way, according to the Talmud (and this was said in relation to Sukkot where we wave a lulav and etrog), the waving ritual was meant to prevent harmful winds and dew from damaging the season’s grain crops.5
But about now, how does this all go today in this sefirah period, this counting period,when, just as we Jews have done for centuries, and as we soon shall do here and as you have since Passover, we participate in a counting ritual where we count days from Pesach to Shavuot? And how does the process of the ritual get done?
First, each night we count by number the day and week we are in, as so many days and so many weeks of (or into) the omer. Last night, for instance, we said, “Today is the 31st day, which are five weeks and three days into the omer.” We do that with a
blessing whose meaning is, “Blessing are You, Eternal God Sovereign of the universe, who made us holy through Your mitzvot and commanded us [to perform the ritual] of the counting of the omer.” Note that I said, “each night” and “with a blessing.” I said that because if someone forgets to count at night, the person counts the next day, but this time without the blessing. More, if someone forgets totally to count one day, from that point on for the rest of the counting period that year, the person counts until the end without the blessing, even at night.
But there is more still. Several other things happen during this period. First, this period is considered something of a sad time. People, except on two days during the period, traditionally don’t marry. The days when they do are lag b’omer, the 33rd day of the counting period, and Rosh Chodesh Iyar, the first day of the month of Iyar that occurs during the period (Some people now also add Yom ha’atzma’ut, Israel Independence Day to the list since it intrinsically is a happy day.)
But what is the thing about Lag ba’omer? According to the tradition, in the time of Rabbi Akiva, a plague broke out during this period, and 24,000 of his students died. The plague ended on the 33rd day of the Sefirah period Lag ba’omer.
Also, since it is considered a sad period, one of semi-mourning, up until lag ba’omer, or for some the day after (and lag ba’omer is this Sunday), some people do not cut their hair or shave. In fact, at Meron in Israel, a big celebration takes place each year among very observant Jews on Lag ba’omer. For the first three years of a boy’s life, a child’s hair isn’t cut. That ends on Lag ba’omer when the child is given his first haircut, of course leaving on his payyot, his side-curls.
But what are we counting anyway in this sefirah, or counting, period and what do Pesach or Passover, and Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, have to do with it?
Pesach, of course, is the time of our liberation. It is the celebration of and the reliving of the exodus from Egypt, the time when our enslavement ended and our liberation began. But what about Shavuot? Well, in biblical times, Shavuot, also called the Festival of First Fruits, was an agricultural celebration. Pesach was the time of the barley harvest, and Shavuot was the time of the harvest of winter wheat. But in later times, the Sages, the Rabbis, added another dimension to Shavuot.
They proclaimed the sixth day of Sivan, the date of Shavuot, to be the date on which Moses (and we) received the Torah. Pesach was liberation. Shavuot was revelation. And in this, then, the sefirah period became the reenactment time celebrating why, at least traditionally, we were redeemed, that is specifically, to receive Torah, the blue-print for a perfected world.
As we read in Sefer Hachinuch, a 13th century compendium on the 613 commandments: And because of this —“such is [the] essence of Israel, why we were redeemed and then went up to all of the greatness to which Israel rose: we were commanded to tally from the morrow of the holiday of Pesach until the day of the giving of the Torah; to show about ourselves the great desire [we have] for the honored day, which our hearts yearn [for] like “a slave seeks shade” and always tallies when will come the yearned-for time that the slave goes out to freedom. As the tally shows about a person, all of his deliverance and all of his desire is to reach that time…”
And so, where is all of this today? Here’s the first up-counting: we have counted up from 1 to 230 days since October 7th, when Hamas viciously attacked Israel, when roughly 1,200 people were murdered and some 252 people were taken to the Gaza Strip as hostage, including children, women, and elderly people. May those still there, alive and sadly not, soon be returned to Israel, and may their captivity be ended. Likewise, may the war soon come to an end, and may the final end of Hamas’ existence see reality.
And then, for us here? Let me, please, cite a verse from Psalms. It reads, לִמְנוֹת יָמֵינוּ כֵּן הוֹדַע וְנָבִא לְבַב חָכְמָה, meaning, “Teach us to number our days, that we may get us a heart of wisdom.”6 The process of numbering days is a constant reminder to me, to us, to take each day seriously, and that is something I think about each night when Janet and I count the omer.
I’ve heard people talk about “killing time.” That’s a terrible expression and an
even worse notion. For us, killing time is about as un-Jewish as anything we can imagine. We don’t ever kill time. Rather, our mandate as Jews is to live each day to the fullest. No matter what those days may be for each of us – and I’m sure they will have a
different meaning for each of us – our command always is to use our time, to use all of our time, each day, and from each day unto tomorrow, and from each tomorrow going on all the way to the end of our lives, to do whatever we can to keep on growing and keep on doing everything we can in some way to make the world a better place.
So about the sefirah, the period of counting, this isn’t about counting time. Rather, as the verse from Psalms teaches us, sefirah is about making time count. It’s about using the time we have for a purpose, of taking advantage each day to use the opportunity that each day gives us, not only for ourselves but for a whole world, to use it in the true spirit of what Torah is, to count up to being better and becoming still better, not only for ourselves, but for all humanity. And that is what sefirat ha’omer, counting the omer, is really about.
And so with, in this spirit then, this spirit of counting up, I ask you to take in your hands our sheets of omer-counting liturgy and, if you are able, I ask you, following tradition, to stand as we count the omer!
_______________
1 Berakhot 28a.
2 Lev. 23:9-13.
3 Lev. 23:14-18.
4 Tosefta Menachot 10:6.
5 Sukkot 37b-38a.
6 Psalm 90:20
The Darkest of the Night
April 21, 2024
Emmanuel Church
Rabbi Dr Michael J Shire
The Jewish community will observe the Passover festival commencing on Monday night lasting for seven days in which time we will remove all things fermented from our kitchens and restrict ourselves to unfermented foods including Matza in place of leavened bread. We do so in accordance with the verses in the Torah: “And they baked unleavened cakes of dough since they had been driven out of Egypt and could not delay….For seven days you shall eat matzah that you may remember your departure from Egypt as long as you live[i]”
On Monday and Tuesday nights, the first two nights of the festival we will hold a festive meal in our homes or in synagogues in remembrance and re-enactment of the verse in Exodus: “Remember the day on which you went forth from Egypt, from the house of slavery and how God freed you with a mighty hand…You shall observe this day throughout the generations as a practice for all times”[ii]. The festive meal is called ‘Seder’ in Hebrew which means order and refers to the order of the rituals and ceremonies at the meal that are narrated from a book of order called the Haggadah. The word Haggadah literally means ‘to tell the story’, and that essentially is what we do at the Seder, to tell the story of God’s intervention in human history by freeing the Hebrew peoples from their 400 years of slavery in Egypt and their coming out of bondage to freedom.
The Seder can be a long ceremony with ritual foods and retelling the story and a tradition of asking and responding to questions. Then there are songs and long passages to recite, quite apart from lots of new things to add about freedom, justice, the Jewish People’s continued resilience in the face of prejudice and our responsibility to bring freedom to others, for as the Haggadah says, we are not truly free until all are free. And then in the middle of all that, we get to eat our Michelin starred meal of many courses that seems to go on and on and everything has been baked, battered and browned in matzah meal! A Seder can often go beyond midnight and we know from stories in the Talmud that the rabbis were so engrossed in their Seder ceremony that it took their students to come and stop them saying ‘Rabbis, it is time for the morning prayers now!’ It is in that liminal time between darkness and light, between the evening and the day that the meaning of Seder is revealed.
And this is why we hold our seder in the evening and not in the day when the children of Israel actually left Egypt. The text in Exodus tells us that the evening before was the incidence of the last and most harsh of the ten plagues; the death of the Egyptian first-born. Pharoah had hardened his heart against God’s warnings to let the people go and each plague brought more and more destruction and harm to the Egyptians. The nineth plague plunged the whole of Egypt into darkness and you would think nothing could be more frightening, more dangerous than a world of complete darkness. In the words of Leonard Cohen, ‘It’s written in the scripture and its not some idle claim; you wanted it darker, you killed the flame’. For as Pharoah’s continued to be obdurate, there came the final deadly plague that even affected the household of Pharoah himself with the death of his first born. This was the darkest hour for Egypt, the darkest hour of the night.
The book of Exodus describes that night as ‘Leyl Shimurim l’Adonai’ – a night of watching unto God.
That was for יהוה a night of vigil to bring them out of the land of Egypt; that same night is יהוה’s, one of vigil for all the children of Israel throughout the ages.[iii]
As the angel of God passed over the houses of the children of Israel that had been daubed with the blood of a lamb as they had been commanded to do, the Israelites must have been in dread waiting and watching for the night to end and for the light of day to dawn. These nights of watching and waiting in vigil before redemption are not restricted to the ancient Jewish peoples. The people of Ukraine have been anxiously looking at the night skies for over two years waiting for deadly missiles to rain down on them.
We, ourselves experienced such a night last week as the angels of the night, American, Jordanian, British and Israeli pilots shot down hundreds of missiles targeted at the land of Israel and its peoples of Jew, Arab and Bedouin. We watched and we waited in sheer dread at the potential destruction of this massive attack. The 130 Israeli hostages held in Gaza underground in darkness and despair, in the midnight of their lives are desperately waiting for someone to say stop! It is time for a new day, a new time of freedom. And not only Israeli but Palestinian people have had to endure 6 months of nightly shelling and bombing in a war in Gaza that seeks to stop the massacring and kidnapping of ordinary people along the border that culminated in Hamas’ horrific attack on October 7th. The nights of watching continue but will redemption come in the morning? We all watched the eclipse last week and the amazing sight of the moon covering over the light of the sun as the temperature dropped and the sky went dark. Our ancient forebears and the animals in the forest must have wondered, will it ever get light again? Such is the fear of the dark of the night.
‘It’s written in the scripture and its not some idle claim; you wanted it darker, you killed the flame’.
We hold our Passover Seder precisely at this moment of Leyl Shimurim L’adoni – This night of watching and vigil to God. We teach that Passover is a festival of freedom but the night before our redemption, the night we hold the Seder is a night of terror and warning. It is the darkest of times.
And yet, a Jew never loses hope. The Haggadah teaches us that in every generation a person should see themselves as if they left Egypt. We learn from this that just as there is suffering, redemption is also possible for us. At the end of every seder, we say “Next year in the rebuilt Jerusalem.” We recognize the brokenness of our world, and, at the same time, we believe in our partnership with the Divine to bring about repair.
How is this year’s Seder different from all other nights? We have to renew our determination to have a hand in redemption. The Exodus is known for God’s miracles but we know that redemption from oppression takes human hands and hearts as well. It is at the darkest part of the night that we know that light is ahead. That, in the words of Psalm 23, Even though I walk through the valley of darkness, I will fear no evil for you are with me. Your shepherd’s guiding hand comforts me.
Redemption is a partnership of humanity and Divine providence. It requires an act of faith to bring it about. We put away our store of food for seven days and rely on Matzah to feed us in order to reaffirm our faith that abundance, liberation, lightness will come again. Passover is a moment in our lives to remind us of what is lacking in the lives of others, of what we take for granted, of what work needs to be done so that more will be free. In that liminal moment between dark and light, we are commanded to reflect again on the nature of our freedom. In the Passover story, as the children of Israel cross the Reed Sea with the Egyptians close behind, the sea closes on top of Pharoah’s army. The Midrash tells us "The Egyptians were drowning in the sea. At the same time, the angels wanted to sing before God, and the Lord, God, said to them: 'My creations are drowning and you are singing before me?'
And so at Seder this year, in the darkness of the evening, we will ask the questions, " Have we hardened our hearts, so that we do not hear the cry of the oppressed? Have we waited in the darkness too long – has our night of vigil to stop in order for a new dawning to arise? What will it take for redemption to come about?" I invite us all Christian and Jew to take this time of vigil to renew their faith that we can repair this world and that with another bite of matzah, we will taste the freedom for all.
[i] Exodus and Deuteronomy
[ii] Exodus 12&13
[iii] Exodus 12:42
On Monday and Tuesday nights, the first two nights of the festival we will hold a festive meal in our homes or in synagogues in remembrance and re-enactment of the verse in Exodus: “Remember the day on which you went forth from Egypt, from the house of slavery and how God freed you with a mighty hand…You shall observe this day throughout the generations as a practice for all times”[ii]. The festive meal is called ‘Seder’ in Hebrew which means order and refers to the order of the rituals and ceremonies at the meal that are narrated from a book of order called the Haggadah. The word Haggadah literally means ‘to tell the story’, and that essentially is what we do at the Seder, to tell the story of God’s intervention in human history by freeing the Hebrew peoples from their 400 years of slavery in Egypt and their coming out of bondage to freedom.
The Seder can be a long ceremony with ritual foods and retelling the story and a tradition of asking and responding to questions. Then there are songs and long passages to recite, quite apart from lots of new things to add about freedom, justice, the Jewish People’s continued resilience in the face of prejudice and our responsibility to bring freedom to others, for as the Haggadah says, we are not truly free until all are free. And then in the middle of all that, we get to eat our Michelin starred meal of many courses that seems to go on and on and everything has been baked, battered and browned in matzah meal! A Seder can often go beyond midnight and we know from stories in the Talmud that the rabbis were so engrossed in their Seder ceremony that it took their students to come and stop them saying ‘Rabbis, it is time for the morning prayers now!’ It is in that liminal time between darkness and light, between the evening and the day that the meaning of Seder is revealed.
And this is why we hold our seder in the evening and not in the day when the children of Israel actually left Egypt. The text in Exodus tells us that the evening before was the incidence of the last and most harsh of the ten plagues; the death of the Egyptian first-born. Pharoah had hardened his heart against God’s warnings to let the people go and each plague brought more and more destruction and harm to the Egyptians. The nineth plague plunged the whole of Egypt into darkness and you would think nothing could be more frightening, more dangerous than a world of complete darkness. In the words of Leonard Cohen, ‘It’s written in the scripture and its not some idle claim; you wanted it darker, you killed the flame’. For as Pharoah’s continued to be obdurate, there came the final deadly plague that even affected the household of Pharoah himself with the death of his first born. This was the darkest hour for Egypt, the darkest hour of the night.
The book of Exodus describes that night as ‘Leyl Shimurim l’Adonai’ – a night of watching unto God.
That was for יהוה a night of vigil to bring them out of the land of Egypt; that same night is יהוה’s, one of vigil for all the children of Israel throughout the ages.[iii]
As the angel of God passed over the houses of the children of Israel that had been daubed with the blood of a lamb as they had been commanded to do, the Israelites must have been in dread waiting and watching for the night to end and for the light of day to dawn. These nights of watching and waiting in vigil before redemption are not restricted to the ancient Jewish peoples. The people of Ukraine have been anxiously looking at the night skies for over two years waiting for deadly missiles to rain down on them.
We, ourselves experienced such a night last week as the angels of the night, American, Jordanian, British and Israeli pilots shot down hundreds of missiles targeted at the land of Israel and its peoples of Jew, Arab and Bedouin. We watched and we waited in sheer dread at the potential destruction of this massive attack. The 130 Israeli hostages held in Gaza underground in darkness and despair, in the midnight of their lives are desperately waiting for someone to say stop! It is time for a new day, a new time of freedom. And not only Israeli but Palestinian people have had to endure 6 months of nightly shelling and bombing in a war in Gaza that seeks to stop the massacring and kidnapping of ordinary people along the border that culminated in Hamas’ horrific attack on October 7th. The nights of watching continue but will redemption come in the morning? We all watched the eclipse last week and the amazing sight of the moon covering over the light of the sun as the temperature dropped and the sky went dark. Our ancient forebears and the animals in the forest must have wondered, will it ever get light again? Such is the fear of the dark of the night.
‘It’s written in the scripture and its not some idle claim; you wanted it darker, you killed the flame’.
We hold our Passover Seder precisely at this moment of Leyl Shimurim L’adoni – This night of watching and vigil to God. We teach that Passover is a festival of freedom but the night before our redemption, the night we hold the Seder is a night of terror and warning. It is the darkest of times.
And yet, a Jew never loses hope. The Haggadah teaches us that in every generation a person should see themselves as if they left Egypt. We learn from this that just as there is suffering, redemption is also possible for us. At the end of every seder, we say “Next year in the rebuilt Jerusalem.” We recognize the brokenness of our world, and, at the same time, we believe in our partnership with the Divine to bring about repair.
How is this year’s Seder different from all other nights? We have to renew our determination to have a hand in redemption. The Exodus is known for God’s miracles but we know that redemption from oppression takes human hands and hearts as well. It is at the darkest part of the night that we know that light is ahead. That, in the words of Psalm 23, Even though I walk through the valley of darkness, I will fear no evil for you are with me. Your shepherd’s guiding hand comforts me.
Redemption is a partnership of humanity and Divine providence. It requires an act of faith to bring it about. We put away our store of food for seven days and rely on Matzah to feed us in order to reaffirm our faith that abundance, liberation, lightness will come again. Passover is a moment in our lives to remind us of what is lacking in the lives of others, of what we take for granted, of what work needs to be done so that more will be free. In that liminal moment between dark and light, we are commanded to reflect again on the nature of our freedom. In the Passover story, as the children of Israel cross the Reed Sea with the Egyptians close behind, the sea closes on top of Pharoah’s army. The Midrash tells us "The Egyptians were drowning in the sea. At the same time, the angels wanted to sing before God, and the Lord, God, said to them: 'My creations are drowning and you are singing before me?'
And so at Seder this year, in the darkness of the evening, we will ask the questions, " Have we hardened our hearts, so that we do not hear the cry of the oppressed? Have we waited in the darkness too long – has our night of vigil to stop in order for a new dawning to arise? What will it take for redemption to come about?" I invite us all Christian and Jew to take this time of vigil to renew their faith that we can repair this world and that with another bite of matzah, we will taste the freedom for all.
[i] Exodus and Deuteronomy
[ii] Exodus 12&13
[iii] Exodus 12:42
The Internal View
January 26, 2024
Rabbi Dr Michael J Shire
Here is a puzzle. What is the difference between these fruits:
Grapes, plums and coconuts?
You will not be surprised to hear that Jewish tradition places them in three distinctive categories:
Tu B'shvat (15th Day of the Hebrew month of Shevat) is a minor Jewish festival falling at a time when the trees bud and the sap is rising in the land of Israel and yet here, we are still in midwinter. The name of this festival is actually its date: “Tu” is a pronunciation of the Hebrew letters for the number 15, and it falls in the Hebrew month of Shevat.
For the biblical farmer in the land of Israel, It was an important sign of the onset of spring when planting could soon begin and fruits would appear to be nurtured and protected. It even became known as the new year for trees – hag hailanot and tithing would be calculated from this date to register what the farmer owned and cultivated. It was a time of creation’s renewal and rejuvenation and a promise and a hope that spring and its bounty was on the way. The ancient farmer like the modern farmer lives in the hope of the earth’s cycles and the anticipation of abundance once again.
But we did not remain farmers and we did not stay in the land of Israel. Yet many of our festivals retained their agricultural significance – we still eat greens and celebrate new lambs at Passover at our Passover seder. We still build a booth at sukkot and eat and drink the harvest wine and eat the harvested olives within it. Tu B’shvat however did not have much meaning for Jews in Europe, the Baltic or Russia when snow was on the ground and ice covered every field and surface.
It took the Kabbalist mystics of 16th century Sefat – that little hilltop town in Northern Israel to come up with a new meaning for Tu B’shvat. Instead of looking outwards, they looked inwards! The tree was no longer the tree we see planted in the soil. The tree is now a mystical image that has its roots in the heavens and its branches touching the earth. This image called the sephira is their way of imagining how God manifests in the world and yet is rooted in the heavens.
They asked the question, how can something infinite, unformed and without boundaries come into contact with living creation and creatures that are limited, finite and flawed. They wanted to understand and explain the very idea of a limitless God (in Hebrew ayn sof) being able to exist in the same dimension as a limited world. To picture it, they imagined this sephira, this upside-down tree where the invisible sap is drawn through the fragile capillaries of the tree which becomes more and more physical with trunk and branches and leaves and twigs. Through this tree courses the ultimate flow of universal creation and its flow gives life to organic beings. Though of course drawn from the concept of the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden, it is not that far removed from the notion of a universe vibrating from a common source and expanding over time and space into matter and mass. Their views on God’s presence in the world later was followed by thinkers like Spinoza who surmised that God is a part of everything and flows or vibrates through the natural world. The difference between the kabbalists and later thinkers or people like us, is that the mystics believed they could manipulate these processes through prayer and deeds. They are called mystics because they felt they could come in direct commune with the forces of the universe and shape them to their own ends.
Tu B’shvat, the festival of the trees therefore becomes an ideal vehicle for kabbalist mystical Jews to celebrate these perceptions of creation and life, bringing us back to our fruits. Fruit as well as nuts are the outgrowth of the tree and bear within them the potential of growth of the next tree. The fruit is symbol of the flow of energy and force in the world and its renewal at the time of early Spring. So the Tu b’shvat seder came to be made up of the eating of fruits and nuts. The three kinds of fruit represent three levels of this creative force. The highest form of life is considered soft and ethereal with no need of protection and thus represented by fruits with no shell such as grapes or apples. The middle level of consciousness or imagination is also delicate and fragile and only needs protection at its heart such as a plum or olive and the lowest level, that is nearest our everyday existence needs full protection with a hard shell on the outside such as coconut or pomegranate.
For the Kabbalists of 16th Century, all physical forms–including human beings–hide within them a spark of the Divine Presence for we are created in the image of God. This is analogous to some kinds of fruits or nuts, which hide within them seeds of new life and potential growth. In Jewish mysticism, human actions can release these sparks and help increase God’s presence in the world. On Tu Bishvat, the kabbalists would eat these fruits associated with the land of Israel as a symbolic way of releasing these divine sparks increasing the Divine flow through the tree.
I don’t think any of us here are mystics, though I could be wrong. So what can we learn from their insights into the flow of the universe and the sense of oneness that accompanies it. First at a time when the outside world is barren and cold, when individuals and nations rage at each other, we can understand the spiritual need to shift our gaze from outward to inward. To see in a tree, the flow of life; to see in fruits and nuts, different perspectives on who we are to be; to yearn for a unification of life rather than the destruction of life, trees, humans and all.
Then to understand the big questions of life, of creation and the interconnectedness of all living things towards some sense of oneness, is to reflect the ideas of the Shema; Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad - God is one when we bring oneness to the world.
Finally as we cycle through the year and our lives, to keep bringing newness, hope and freshness to every interaction, every relationship, every connection. To become the living flowing tree or at least its fruit and seed as potential.
Perhaps this is why we might consider Tu B’shvat is actually a crucial Jewish festival and an important time for reflection and transformation. We can learn from what the mystics saw in Tu B'shvat and so the Kabbalists would pray at Tu B’shvat “May it be your will, oh Lord our God and God of our forebears, that by virtue of the eating of the fruits of the trees, which we shall now eat and bless, that they may be filled with the strength of the abundance of your glory to grow and to flourish from the beginning to the end of the year, for goodness and for blessing, for good life and for peace”.
Grapes, plums and coconuts?
You will not be surprised to hear that Jewish tradition places them in three distinctive categories:
- Fruit with no shell either outside or inside so you can eat the entire thing: grapes, apples, figs, carob etc
- Fruit with an inedible internal pit such as dates, olives, plumbs
- And then fruits with a tough outer shell like pomegranates,coconuts
Tu B'shvat (15th Day of the Hebrew month of Shevat) is a minor Jewish festival falling at a time when the trees bud and the sap is rising in the land of Israel and yet here, we are still in midwinter. The name of this festival is actually its date: “Tu” is a pronunciation of the Hebrew letters for the number 15, and it falls in the Hebrew month of Shevat.
For the biblical farmer in the land of Israel, It was an important sign of the onset of spring when planting could soon begin and fruits would appear to be nurtured and protected. It even became known as the new year for trees – hag hailanot and tithing would be calculated from this date to register what the farmer owned and cultivated. It was a time of creation’s renewal and rejuvenation and a promise and a hope that spring and its bounty was on the way. The ancient farmer like the modern farmer lives in the hope of the earth’s cycles and the anticipation of abundance once again.
But we did not remain farmers and we did not stay in the land of Israel. Yet many of our festivals retained their agricultural significance – we still eat greens and celebrate new lambs at Passover at our Passover seder. We still build a booth at sukkot and eat and drink the harvest wine and eat the harvested olives within it. Tu B’shvat however did not have much meaning for Jews in Europe, the Baltic or Russia when snow was on the ground and ice covered every field and surface.
It took the Kabbalist mystics of 16th century Sefat – that little hilltop town in Northern Israel to come up with a new meaning for Tu B’shvat. Instead of looking outwards, they looked inwards! The tree was no longer the tree we see planted in the soil. The tree is now a mystical image that has its roots in the heavens and its branches touching the earth. This image called the sephira is their way of imagining how God manifests in the world and yet is rooted in the heavens.
They asked the question, how can something infinite, unformed and without boundaries come into contact with living creation and creatures that are limited, finite and flawed. They wanted to understand and explain the very idea of a limitless God (in Hebrew ayn sof) being able to exist in the same dimension as a limited world. To picture it, they imagined this sephira, this upside-down tree where the invisible sap is drawn through the fragile capillaries of the tree which becomes more and more physical with trunk and branches and leaves and twigs. Through this tree courses the ultimate flow of universal creation and its flow gives life to organic beings. Though of course drawn from the concept of the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden, it is not that far removed from the notion of a universe vibrating from a common source and expanding over time and space into matter and mass. Their views on God’s presence in the world later was followed by thinkers like Spinoza who surmised that God is a part of everything and flows or vibrates through the natural world. The difference between the kabbalists and later thinkers or people like us, is that the mystics believed they could manipulate these processes through prayer and deeds. They are called mystics because they felt they could come in direct commune with the forces of the universe and shape them to their own ends.
Tu B’shvat, the festival of the trees therefore becomes an ideal vehicle for kabbalist mystical Jews to celebrate these perceptions of creation and life, bringing us back to our fruits. Fruit as well as nuts are the outgrowth of the tree and bear within them the potential of growth of the next tree. The fruit is symbol of the flow of energy and force in the world and its renewal at the time of early Spring. So the Tu b’shvat seder came to be made up of the eating of fruits and nuts. The three kinds of fruit represent three levels of this creative force. The highest form of life is considered soft and ethereal with no need of protection and thus represented by fruits with no shell such as grapes or apples. The middle level of consciousness or imagination is also delicate and fragile and only needs protection at its heart such as a plum or olive and the lowest level, that is nearest our everyday existence needs full protection with a hard shell on the outside such as coconut or pomegranate.
For the Kabbalists of 16th Century, all physical forms–including human beings–hide within them a spark of the Divine Presence for we are created in the image of God. This is analogous to some kinds of fruits or nuts, which hide within them seeds of new life and potential growth. In Jewish mysticism, human actions can release these sparks and help increase God’s presence in the world. On Tu Bishvat, the kabbalists would eat these fruits associated with the land of Israel as a symbolic way of releasing these divine sparks increasing the Divine flow through the tree.
I don’t think any of us here are mystics, though I could be wrong. So what can we learn from their insights into the flow of the universe and the sense of oneness that accompanies it. First at a time when the outside world is barren and cold, when individuals and nations rage at each other, we can understand the spiritual need to shift our gaze from outward to inward. To see in a tree, the flow of life; to see in fruits and nuts, different perspectives on who we are to be; to yearn for a unification of life rather than the destruction of life, trees, humans and all.
Then to understand the big questions of life, of creation and the interconnectedness of all living things towards some sense of oneness, is to reflect the ideas of the Shema; Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad - God is one when we bring oneness to the world.
Finally as we cycle through the year and our lives, to keep bringing newness, hope and freshness to every interaction, every relationship, every connection. To become the living flowing tree or at least its fruit and seed as potential.
Perhaps this is why we might consider Tu B’shvat is actually a crucial Jewish festival and an important time for reflection and transformation. We can learn from what the mystics saw in Tu B'shvat and so the Kabbalists would pray at Tu B’shvat “May it be your will, oh Lord our God and God of our forebears, that by virtue of the eating of the fruits of the trees, which we shall now eat and bless, that they may be filled with the strength of the abundance of your glory to grow and to flourish from the beginning to the end of the year, for goodness and for blessing, for good life and for peace”.
Moses and Martin
January 12, 2024
Rabbi Dr Michael J Shire
Last year at this time, we marched together from our sanctuary to the Embrace statue on the Common. We were honouring both Rev Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King as well as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel who had made it his personal commitment to stand up for civil rights and justice for the African American community. He marched alongside Rev King in Selma and other places in the South. Following his example, we processed with the Torah in joy and celebration marking our renewed commitment to racial justice as the city was also committing itself to equity in housing, pay, schooling and healthcare for all Bostonians. These were the very issues that Mayor Michelle Wu highlighted this week in her State of the City address reflecting her administration’s commitment to the legacy of a remarkable prophet and pastor to his people of the 20th century.
Our Torah portion this week looks back to the first Prophet and pastor of his people, to Moses, who finds himself called to do God’s service at the burning bush. He was reluctant to take on the role and justified it by his slowness of speech. But God wanted him in the role. He learned over time how to speak truth to power as he confronted Pharoah time and time again. His plaintive cry, ‘Let my People go so that they may serve me’ had God’s divine authority behind it, but it was Moses oratory that delivered them. Moses used his words to good effect creating a miracle in getting his People out of Egypt and out of 400 years of bondage to seek a Promised Land. Moses had to transform the minds and hearts of all, his own People who thought he had betrayed them by becoming a son to Pharoah, his family who quarreled with him but who stuck by him especially his older brother Aaron and younger sister Miriam and of course the Egyptians themselves.
All he had were the words:
"Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?"
See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil... I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life.
Go, take possession of the land that יהוה swore to your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to assign to them and to their heirs after them. (9) Thereupon I said to you, “I cannot bear the burden of you by myself. (10) Your God יהוה has multiplied you until you are today as numerous as the stars in the sky.— (11) May יהוה, the God of your ancestors, increase your numbers a thousandfold, and bless you as promised.— and You shall pursue Justice throughout the land for you were once strangers in the land.
He was not able to enter that land but he was able to leave a legacy of great prophetic leadership, moral stature, passionate belief in hope and justice and an unwavering sense of his People’s destiny.
So too Martin Luther King became the Moses to his people. He too was a reluctant prophet. When he and Coretta came to Boston to study at BU, they were scholars and lovers of music and the arts. His alternative destiny was to be a professor or ethical philosopher. But the burning buses and burning hearts drew him back to Atlanta and leadership in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference taking up his father’s pulpit at Ebenezer Church. He also had to transform the hearts and minds of everyone; the Black community that was trampled and worn down, the Black leadership that was fractured and jealous of each other, the liberal whites with whom he had to make partners and of course the racists and white supremacists who were still fighting the Southern lost cause.
He only had his words:
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny
Historians now say that Martin Luther King’s capacity to transform the Nation to the righteousness of his cause was because he used the very words that reflected JudeoChristian teachings of Freedom as spoken by Moses and the words of the American Founding Fathers on liberty. As Kings stated it, to support Civil Rights was to be a faithful Christian and a good American.
Both men played instrumental roles in shaping history, advocating for justice, and leading their people towards freedom. Moses, like Martin Luther King Jr., faced enormous challenges. Both confronted powerful authorities, challenging systems that oppressed their people. Moses' commitment to justice and unwavering faith in God's guidance parallel the qualities that characterized Martin Luther King Jr.'s leadership.
Martin Luther King Jr. King's dream was deeply rooted in the belief that all people are created equal, mirroring the Jewish concept of Tzelem Elohim—the idea that every human being is made in the image of God. Like Moses, King stood against the forces of injustice and inequality, advocating for civil rights, racial equality, and human dignity.
King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech echoes the aspirations of Moses as he led the Israelites toward the Promised Land. Both leaders envisioned a world where freedom, justice, and equality prevail, inspiring generations to come. He reminds us always that We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice
Moses sadly said goodbye to his people on the eve of their going into the Promised Land. He was left alone to die in an unmarked grave. The night before he was assassinated , MLK, echoing Moses’ goodbye to his people said
As you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of general and panoramic view of the whole human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, "Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?" — I would take my mental flight by Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn't stop there.
Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means that we've got to stay together. We've got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery.
Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
As we reflect on these two leaders, we find common threads in their leadership. Both Moses and Martin Luther King Jr. were driven by a divine calling to confront oppression and lead their people to a better future. They faced adversity, yet their unwavering commitment to justice prevailed. Their stories remind us that the pursuit of justice is not always easy, but it is a sacred duty.
In our current world, where various forms of oppression still exist, we must draw inspiration from the examples set by Moses and Martin Luther King Jr. We are called to confront injustice with courage, to lead with compassion, and to work towards a world where every person is treated with dignity and respect.
Our Torah portion this week looks back to the first Prophet and pastor of his people, to Moses, who finds himself called to do God’s service at the burning bush. He was reluctant to take on the role and justified it by his slowness of speech. But God wanted him in the role. He learned over time how to speak truth to power as he confronted Pharoah time and time again. His plaintive cry, ‘Let my People go so that they may serve me’ had God’s divine authority behind it, but it was Moses oratory that delivered them. Moses used his words to good effect creating a miracle in getting his People out of Egypt and out of 400 years of bondage to seek a Promised Land. Moses had to transform the minds and hearts of all, his own People who thought he had betrayed them by becoming a son to Pharoah, his family who quarreled with him but who stuck by him especially his older brother Aaron and younger sister Miriam and of course the Egyptians themselves.
All he had were the words:
"Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?"
See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil... I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life.
Go, take possession of the land that יהוה swore to your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to assign to them and to their heirs after them. (9) Thereupon I said to you, “I cannot bear the burden of you by myself. (10) Your God יהוה has multiplied you until you are today as numerous as the stars in the sky.— (11) May יהוה, the God of your ancestors, increase your numbers a thousandfold, and bless you as promised.— and You shall pursue Justice throughout the land for you were once strangers in the land.
He was not able to enter that land but he was able to leave a legacy of great prophetic leadership, moral stature, passionate belief in hope and justice and an unwavering sense of his People’s destiny.
So too Martin Luther King became the Moses to his people. He too was a reluctant prophet. When he and Coretta came to Boston to study at BU, they were scholars and lovers of music and the arts. His alternative destiny was to be a professor or ethical philosopher. But the burning buses and burning hearts drew him back to Atlanta and leadership in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference taking up his father’s pulpit at Ebenezer Church. He also had to transform the hearts and minds of everyone; the Black community that was trampled and worn down, the Black leadership that was fractured and jealous of each other, the liberal whites with whom he had to make partners and of course the racists and white supremacists who were still fighting the Southern lost cause.
He only had his words:
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny
Historians now say that Martin Luther King’s capacity to transform the Nation to the righteousness of his cause was because he used the very words that reflected JudeoChristian teachings of Freedom as spoken by Moses and the words of the American Founding Fathers on liberty. As Kings stated it, to support Civil Rights was to be a faithful Christian and a good American.
Both men played instrumental roles in shaping history, advocating for justice, and leading their people towards freedom. Moses, like Martin Luther King Jr., faced enormous challenges. Both confronted powerful authorities, challenging systems that oppressed their people. Moses' commitment to justice and unwavering faith in God's guidance parallel the qualities that characterized Martin Luther King Jr.'s leadership.
Martin Luther King Jr. King's dream was deeply rooted in the belief that all people are created equal, mirroring the Jewish concept of Tzelem Elohim—the idea that every human being is made in the image of God. Like Moses, King stood against the forces of injustice and inequality, advocating for civil rights, racial equality, and human dignity.
King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech echoes the aspirations of Moses as he led the Israelites toward the Promised Land. Both leaders envisioned a world where freedom, justice, and equality prevail, inspiring generations to come. He reminds us always that We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice
Moses sadly said goodbye to his people on the eve of their going into the Promised Land. He was left alone to die in an unmarked grave. The night before he was assassinated , MLK, echoing Moses’ goodbye to his people said
As you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of general and panoramic view of the whole human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, "Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?" — I would take my mental flight by Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn't stop there.
Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means that we've got to stay together. We've got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery.
Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
As we reflect on these two leaders, we find common threads in their leadership. Both Moses and Martin Luther King Jr. were driven by a divine calling to confront oppression and lead their people to a better future. They faced adversity, yet their unwavering commitment to justice prevailed. Their stories remind us that the pursuit of justice is not always easy, but it is a sacred duty.
In our current world, where various forms of oppression still exist, we must draw inspiration from the examples set by Moses and Martin Luther King Jr. We are called to confront injustice with courage, to lead with compassion, and to work towards a world where every person is treated with dignity and respect.
Fiftieth Anniversary of Bar Mitzvah
December 9, 2023
Rabbi Dr Michael J Shire
This week’s portion Vayigash means to approach or to step up. Stepping up for me, was 50 years ago at my barmitzvah. My extended family had gathered from far and wide to my home shul in Birmingham England. I can’t say I remember everything about that day but some images remain from the photographs and even a short video taken by my aunt on 8mm film. I recall being bundled up in my new blue double breasted suit with enormously wide lapels and squashed into the back seat of Dad’s car next to sister Miriam, brother David and grandmother Mieze on the way to shul, late as usual. Having faraway cousins Peter and Stephen come play at our house with our soft toy animals that my sister and I had made into a play school. Being given a large number of fountain pen and of course being the centre of attention for just one day.
So too, Joseph starts out at a very young age to become the centre of the longest running narrative in the book of Genesis. His story covering 4 parashiyot and takes us from his youthful beginnings as a na’ar -youth all the way to his becoming a father and grandfather. Parashat Vayigash is the height of his fame and prominence and at the same time, the moment we have all been waiting for as the brothers are reconciled and father Jacob is reunited with his long lost son. But it is a long and arduous path to get here and Joseph does not have it easy. We have to remember that Joseph’s mother Rachel died when he was still a toddler giving birth to Benjamin. That was his first tragedy. His father Jacob, who loved Rachel above his other wives, compensated his loss by loving Joseph more than his brothers and sister. This becomes a family dynamic of jealousy and envy. It is cemented when Jacob gives Joseph the famous multi coloured coat. It may seem like an Amazing technicolour dreamcoat but it becomes an icon of downfall and destruction for the whole family. Joseph must have wondered, like every teenager does, how his childhood dreams would come true: How he would have control of his own destiny and not be subject to the whims of his older brothers and dependent on his father’s affection. But any hope of realizing this freedom goes the opposite way as he is sold into slavery and none of his visions can surely come to pass? He serves another affectionate father figure in Potiphar but again is robbed of achievement when he is seduced by Potiphar’s wife and yet resists her scheming. Joseph may want to achieve greatness but he is not going to do it at the expense of hurting those who now care for him. He has learned a lesson from the experience with his brothers and is not going to antagonize Potiphar in his own house. So the arc of the story is dashed again as he lands in prison, another pit, the furthest away from having freedom to live out his dreams.
He has had to journey alone with no matriarch at this side unlike his parents, grandparents and great grant parents. He doesn’t have direct communication with God like they did. We don’t include him in the Amidah as one of those who was close to God. His connection to visions comes through his dreams. By chance, he becomes the interpreter of Pharoah’ dreams and finally rises to be a pre-eminent figure in Egyptian society. He has learned much along the way becoming more sensitive to the figures he encounters like the butler and the baker and shedding his youthful precociousness. Finally he seems to overcome every obstacle to become the centre of leadership and power. Yet this is not the end of the arc of his story.
For how can the promises God made to Abraham and Sarah come about? Is there a causality in Joseph’s story, as Rashi suggests, that one things leads to another. That if Joseph doesn’t bring his family down to Egypt, there can be no slavery for 400 years and therefore no Exodus at God’s hand to redeem the people and lead them to the revelation on Mount Sinai. Is everything decided before our time and we have no agency to change what will be? What is the role of each actor in the narrative, of each of our own lives, of the decisions we make and the obstacles we have overcome in order to become more self-defined and less in the control of our circumstances. Is there a Deus ex Machina – an artificial power forcing the characters of the narrative in one direction?
Maybe, in the largest scheme of things, we are part of a picture we cannot see, though Joseph seemed to know that one day his people would return to Canaan and commanded his people to take his bones back to Canaan. But Joseph’s story with its twists and turns, ups and downs, reminds us that we are each on our own journeys through life and we do have the choice of how to confront each situation we encounter. At the moment when Joseph finally has power over the brothers, as he dreamt at the beginning of the story, he gives it all away. He says to them, Ani Yosef ahichem, I am Joseph, your brother. This is such a poignant moment when he just wants to be their brother again and return to the embrace of his family. In this pivotal verse, we are told Joseph steps up to his brothers – Vayigash – to reveal his full self and offer his vulnerability to them.
This famous plea, Ani Yosef ahichem is to know that despite the evil done to him, he has been able to make something of himself and build a life of meaning, of service and now accompanied by a wife and children. As Joseph says to his brothers, you intended to do me harm but God intended it for good. I, says Joseph, am the one who made it happen this way and seek reconciliation with you. This was the intent of Pope John 23rd who greeted a group of rabbis in 1958 with the same words, I am Joseph your brother! Pope John’s birth name was Giusieppe/ Joseph but his aim was to reconcile the Catholic and Jewish siblings with the second Vatican Council and a new Covenant between Catholics and Jews known as Nostra Aetarte.
We can change history and alter the course of events. Nothing in our life span is inevitable and we have every opportunity to make our fortune and be agents of our destiny. Joseph never thought, at each downturn along the way, that his story was over. There was more for him to do in the world and the greatest was yet to come. The midrash tells us that when he went back to bury his father in Canaan, he went to the pit, in Hebrew Bor where he had been thrown and he offered a blessing- Barukh hamakom sh’asah Ii nes b’makom hazeh: Praised be God who made for me a miracle in this place..
My late father would have put it another way in one of his favorite sayings, Gam zu l’tova; This can be for the good too. So after 50 years of adult Jewish life, I have learned that we may be part of a larger story but all we can see is our own path and be true to it. To keep faith with our dreams and walk with our loved ones on this sometimes rugged journey. We will hopefully be of service to others, loving and loved, responsible and caring. We should know our own story and yet not sink into our pits of despondency but rather keep dreaming of the next highpoint along the way.
Barukh hamakom sh’asah Ii nes b’makom hazeh: Praised be God who has made a miracle for me in this place.
So too, Joseph starts out at a very young age to become the centre of the longest running narrative in the book of Genesis. His story covering 4 parashiyot and takes us from his youthful beginnings as a na’ar -youth all the way to his becoming a father and grandfather. Parashat Vayigash is the height of his fame and prominence and at the same time, the moment we have all been waiting for as the brothers are reconciled and father Jacob is reunited with his long lost son. But it is a long and arduous path to get here and Joseph does not have it easy. We have to remember that Joseph’s mother Rachel died when he was still a toddler giving birth to Benjamin. That was his first tragedy. His father Jacob, who loved Rachel above his other wives, compensated his loss by loving Joseph more than his brothers and sister. This becomes a family dynamic of jealousy and envy. It is cemented when Jacob gives Joseph the famous multi coloured coat. It may seem like an Amazing technicolour dreamcoat but it becomes an icon of downfall and destruction for the whole family. Joseph must have wondered, like every teenager does, how his childhood dreams would come true: How he would have control of his own destiny and not be subject to the whims of his older brothers and dependent on his father’s affection. But any hope of realizing this freedom goes the opposite way as he is sold into slavery and none of his visions can surely come to pass? He serves another affectionate father figure in Potiphar but again is robbed of achievement when he is seduced by Potiphar’s wife and yet resists her scheming. Joseph may want to achieve greatness but he is not going to do it at the expense of hurting those who now care for him. He has learned a lesson from the experience with his brothers and is not going to antagonize Potiphar in his own house. So the arc of the story is dashed again as he lands in prison, another pit, the furthest away from having freedom to live out his dreams.
He has had to journey alone with no matriarch at this side unlike his parents, grandparents and great grant parents. He doesn’t have direct communication with God like they did. We don’t include him in the Amidah as one of those who was close to God. His connection to visions comes through his dreams. By chance, he becomes the interpreter of Pharoah’ dreams and finally rises to be a pre-eminent figure in Egyptian society. He has learned much along the way becoming more sensitive to the figures he encounters like the butler and the baker and shedding his youthful precociousness. Finally he seems to overcome every obstacle to become the centre of leadership and power. Yet this is not the end of the arc of his story.
For how can the promises God made to Abraham and Sarah come about? Is there a causality in Joseph’s story, as Rashi suggests, that one things leads to another. That if Joseph doesn’t bring his family down to Egypt, there can be no slavery for 400 years and therefore no Exodus at God’s hand to redeem the people and lead them to the revelation on Mount Sinai. Is everything decided before our time and we have no agency to change what will be? What is the role of each actor in the narrative, of each of our own lives, of the decisions we make and the obstacles we have overcome in order to become more self-defined and less in the control of our circumstances. Is there a Deus ex Machina – an artificial power forcing the characters of the narrative in one direction?
Maybe, in the largest scheme of things, we are part of a picture we cannot see, though Joseph seemed to know that one day his people would return to Canaan and commanded his people to take his bones back to Canaan. But Joseph’s story with its twists and turns, ups and downs, reminds us that we are each on our own journeys through life and we do have the choice of how to confront each situation we encounter. At the moment when Joseph finally has power over the brothers, as he dreamt at the beginning of the story, he gives it all away. He says to them, Ani Yosef ahichem, I am Joseph, your brother. This is such a poignant moment when he just wants to be their brother again and return to the embrace of his family. In this pivotal verse, we are told Joseph steps up to his brothers – Vayigash – to reveal his full self and offer his vulnerability to them.
This famous plea, Ani Yosef ahichem is to know that despite the evil done to him, he has been able to make something of himself and build a life of meaning, of service and now accompanied by a wife and children. As Joseph says to his brothers, you intended to do me harm but God intended it for good. I, says Joseph, am the one who made it happen this way and seek reconciliation with you. This was the intent of Pope John 23rd who greeted a group of rabbis in 1958 with the same words, I am Joseph your brother! Pope John’s birth name was Giusieppe/ Joseph but his aim was to reconcile the Catholic and Jewish siblings with the second Vatican Council and a new Covenant between Catholics and Jews known as Nostra Aetarte.
We can change history and alter the course of events. Nothing in our life span is inevitable and we have every opportunity to make our fortune and be agents of our destiny. Joseph never thought, at each downturn along the way, that his story was over. There was more for him to do in the world and the greatest was yet to come. The midrash tells us that when he went back to bury his father in Canaan, he went to the pit, in Hebrew Bor where he had been thrown and he offered a blessing- Barukh hamakom sh’asah Ii nes b’makom hazeh: Praised be God who made for me a miracle in this place..
My late father would have put it another way in one of his favorite sayings, Gam zu l’tova; This can be for the good too. So after 50 years of adult Jewish life, I have learned that we may be part of a larger story but all we can see is our own path and be true to it. To keep faith with our dreams and walk with our loved ones on this sometimes rugged journey. We will hopefully be of service to others, loving and loved, responsible and caring. We should know our own story and yet not sink into our pits of despondency but rather keep dreaming of the next highpoint along the way.
Barukh hamakom sh’asah Ii nes b’makom hazeh: Praised be God who has made a miracle for me in this place.
The Prophetic Instinct in Judaism
October 27, 2023
Rabbi Dr Michael J Shire
There came a time in the Jewish past, around 3000 years ago, that a group of people were recorded for their visionary speeches and their revolutionary activities and some of them for their wonder workings and miracles. They became known as the Prophets of Israel or in Hebrew ‘Neviim’. The Hebrew word Navi means one appointed by God. Many of them, however, reluctantly took on the role but in the end the Navi was a passionate advocate for God’s teaching becoming a radical in his or her society, answerable to no one except the Divine Moral Authority. Abraham Joshua Heschel who wrote his PhD on the Hebrew Prophets of old said, ‘The Prophet is not a mouthpiece, but a person; not an instrument but a partner of God.
They were male and female, single and married, named individuals, rich and poor, educated and simple folk but they all had one thing in common – they were infused with speaking God’s word to the people and not just any people, but particularly those in power, Generals, Landowners, Kings and Queens.
From Moses to Samuel and then onto the 15 literary prophets, they produced some of the world’s most sublime ethical teachings with poetic power spanning 900 years.
Isaiah comforts the people when they are in desperate straits and encompassed on all sides by enemies:
For this to Me is like the waters of Noah:
As I swore that the waters of Noah
Nevermore would flood the earth,
So I swear that I will not
Be angry with you or rebuke you.
For the mountains may move
And the hills be shaken,
But my loyalty shall never move from you,
Nor My covenant of friendship be shaken
—said GOD, who takes you back in love. (Isaiah 54)
Whereas Jeremiah admonishes the People when they are faithless to God and abandon the Mosaic Laws and Commandments:
I had resolved to adopt you as My child, and I gave you a desirable land—the fairest heritage of all the nations; and I thought you would surely call Me “Father,” and never cease to be loyal to Me. Instead, you have broken faith with Me, as a woman breaks faith with a paramour, O House of Israel—declares GOD. Hark! On the bare heights is heard
The suppliant weeping of the people of Israel,
For they have gone a crooked way,
Ignoring the ETERNAL their God.
Turn back, O rebellious children,
I will heal your afflictions!
“Here we are, we come to You,
For You, O ETERNAL One, are our God!
(Jeremiah 3)
The Prophets provided a voice of both warning and comfort to an embattled and dispirited people encouraging them to trust in the destiny of moral rightness and faithful commitment to God’s Covenant. They encountered the ridicule and persecution of those in power who resisted all attempts to share their power and privilege with others. They always had God’s mission in mind for all the people
Here was a series of men and women who believed they were called to a special task in speaking God’s word and who served as the moral and spiritual leaders of their time. They acted as critics of the evils of society, rooted out corruption among those in power, and provided healing and comfort in times of despair and hardship. Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote of them saying; the Prophet’s eye is directed towards the here and now; his society and its conduct are his motivations. Yet his ear in inclined to God.’
And [God] has said:
“It is too little that you should be My servant
In that I raise up the tribes of Jacob
And restore the survivors of Israel:
I will also make you a light of nations,
That My salvation may reach the ends of the earth.”
(Isaiah 49)
Their sentiments came to be known as Prophetic Judaism that was shaped by their ethical pronouncements and call for justice over ritual and right behaviour over Jewish laws. Martin Buber wrote, ‘We must ask ourselves why it was precisely in Israel that the normative principle voiced its great protest in the words of the Prophets?. In answer we must point to that religious realism, peculiar to Israel, which has no room for a truth remaining abstract. With every truth, is bound up a demand which Israel are called upon to fulfill on earth. This is where the prophetic instinct comes from:
“Why, when we fasted, did You not see?
When we starved our bodies, did You pay no heed?”
Because on your fast day
You see to your business
And oppress all your laborers!
Is such the fast I desire,
A day for people to starve their bodies?
Is it bowing the head like a bulrush
And lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Do you call that a fast,
A day when GOD is favorable?
No, this is the fast I desire:
To unlock fetters of wickedness,
And untie the cords of the yoke
To let the oppressed go free;
To break off every yoke.
It is to share your bread with the hungry,
And to take the wretched poor into your home;
When you see the naked, to clothe them,
And not to ignore your own kin.
(Isaiah 57)
We keep these words close to us for each week on Shabbat morning, after the Torah has been read, the tradition includes the Haftarah which is not ‘half a torah’ but rather a Hebrew word meaning additional reading or 2nd reading. This second reading comes from the writings of the Prophets and was selected not in literary order like the reading of the Torah but rather by themes connected to the Torah reading. So for instance, this week’s Torah portion is Lech Lecha – the first mention of Abraham in the Torah and the Haftarah is Isaiah 40 which speaks of the trials of the servants of God making a connection between Abraham being a servant of God and his many trials.
What does it mean to be a Prophet. On first glance, you might think it is about foretelling the future but actually that is a misunderstanding of the role of the Hebrew Prophet. The Greek word ‘Prophetes’ actually means ‘to speak forth’ and this is the active role that the Hebrew Prophets felt compelled to speak out and speak forth their sense of justice and right:
So the Prophet Nathan comes to King David and relates the case of the two farmers; one who had many flocks and sheep and one who had only one ewe lamb. When it came time to make a feast, the rich farmer reluctant to use his flocks, stole the ewe lamb from the poor farmer and sacrificed it for the feast. King David flew into a rage, the Hebrew actually says ‘v’yihar af David b’ish meod’ literally his nose exploded at the injustice of it. He demands Nathan bring the rich farmer before him. Nathan then exclaims; Atah Ha’ish – You are that man! You had everything a King could want, yet you lusted after Bathsheva and sent her husband away to fight in your army and be killed so that you could take her for yourself. Nathan excoriates David until David in remorse proclaims, Hatati L’Adonai _ I have sinned before God.
That is why the book of Jonah is so paradoxical because in the light of all the other prophets, Jonah actually runs away from God’s call and does his best to avoid the pain of being God’s prophet. After all, he could have said, look what happened to all the other prophets – Jeremiah imprisoned and blinded, Samuel ignored by the people in appointing a king, Elijah escapes on a magic chariot and is never seen again except at our seders. No wonder Jonah doesn’t want the job. Moses didn’t want the job either, he was slow of speech, no one would listen to him but there is a burning bush to persuade him.
They are a powerful form of moral voice in ancient Israel and so why we may ask are they not around anymore? They existed and were recorded and then it all came to an end. As a form of moral leadership, they were a thorn in the side of the authorities but they were respected for their support for the poor, the orphan and the widow and for not compromising on the teachings that Moses had laid down centuries before. So Prophetic Judaism wanes and Rabbinic Judaism, the set of laws and practices enshrined in Divine law rises to take its place and instead of Prophets, the moral leadership shifts to Rabbis and Teachers.
But did Prophetic Judaism actually come to an end? Maimonides the medieval philosopher thought Prophetic Judaism was still alive and well, identifying the Prophet as no different from any other person. They were people who listened carefully and watched acutely, realizing the consequence of actions before anyone else and speaking truth to power. Maimonides suggested that they could identify the corrupt patterns and unjust structures in a society that lead to injustice and inequality. They highlighted policies dependent on the ego of a ruler rather than for fairness for all. Anyone could have the potential to do that, suggested Maimonides, but there were brave and idiosyncratic people who stuck their head over the parapet to stand up for what they thought was right and needed to be made right.
A few years ago, I was asked to write a book about the Hebrew Prophets using illuminations from medieval documents in the Bodleian library at the University of Oxford, a place many of us now know well. I decided to incorporate those individuals throughout Jewish history that have continued to speak forth, who have not been afraid to rise against the tide of injustice and inequality in society. And who often did so at risk to themselves and their families. Activists such as Henrietta Szold, Lily Montagu and Stephen S Wise who dedicated themselves wholeheartedly to social and ethical improvement in society demanding the poor, the laborer, the vulnerable have their voice heard. Each brought a religious spiritual zeal to their vocation and acted outside the established religious community for universal gains. Others such as Janucz Korczak and Rabbi Leo Baeck exemplified the noblest quality of humanity. At the darkest hour they stood up against oppression and persecution and offered hope demonstrating that goodness could flourish if only people would choose life over obedience.
I wonder who are our Jewish Prophets today and what they would say? What would they say about what we are doing to our planet and about our elected officials and those who govern on our behalf? What would they say about poverty, racial justice and human rights? What would they say about violence and destruction and of course what would they say about war and terrorism, a scourge of our generation.
I am sure you have your Prophets – maybe they are writers or journalists, or politicians, or songwriters and poets or playwrights or business gurus or even rabbis! I don’t know what makes a prophet and as is said in the gospel, ‘you cannot be a prophet in your own land’, but I think we need their voices once again to be heard. The voices that call us to account, challenge us to do the right thing and remind us of the eternal values of the human and Jewish vision –
Thus [God] will judge among the nations
And arbitrate for the many peoples,
And they shall beat their swords into plowshares
And their spears into pruning hooks:
Nation shall not take up
Sword against nation;
They shall never again know war.
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
The leopard lie down with the kid;
The calf, the beast of prey, and the fatling together,
With a little child to herd them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
Their young shall lie down together;
And the lion, like the ox, shall eat straw.
In all of My sacred mount
Nothing evil or vile shall be done;
For the land shall be filled with devotion to GOD
As water covers the sea.
(Isaiah 11)
They were male and female, single and married, named individuals, rich and poor, educated and simple folk but they all had one thing in common – they were infused with speaking God’s word to the people and not just any people, but particularly those in power, Generals, Landowners, Kings and Queens.
From Moses to Samuel and then onto the 15 literary prophets, they produced some of the world’s most sublime ethical teachings with poetic power spanning 900 years.
Isaiah comforts the people when they are in desperate straits and encompassed on all sides by enemies:
For this to Me is like the waters of Noah:
As I swore that the waters of Noah
Nevermore would flood the earth,
So I swear that I will not
Be angry with you or rebuke you.
For the mountains may move
And the hills be shaken,
But my loyalty shall never move from you,
Nor My covenant of friendship be shaken
—said GOD, who takes you back in love. (Isaiah 54)
Whereas Jeremiah admonishes the People when they are faithless to God and abandon the Mosaic Laws and Commandments:
I had resolved to adopt you as My child, and I gave you a desirable land—the fairest heritage of all the nations; and I thought you would surely call Me “Father,” and never cease to be loyal to Me. Instead, you have broken faith with Me, as a woman breaks faith with a paramour, O House of Israel—declares GOD. Hark! On the bare heights is heard
The suppliant weeping of the people of Israel,
For they have gone a crooked way,
Ignoring the ETERNAL their God.
Turn back, O rebellious children,
I will heal your afflictions!
“Here we are, we come to You,
For You, O ETERNAL One, are our God!
(Jeremiah 3)
The Prophets provided a voice of both warning and comfort to an embattled and dispirited people encouraging them to trust in the destiny of moral rightness and faithful commitment to God’s Covenant. They encountered the ridicule and persecution of those in power who resisted all attempts to share their power and privilege with others. They always had God’s mission in mind for all the people
Here was a series of men and women who believed they were called to a special task in speaking God’s word and who served as the moral and spiritual leaders of their time. They acted as critics of the evils of society, rooted out corruption among those in power, and provided healing and comfort in times of despair and hardship. Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote of them saying; the Prophet’s eye is directed towards the here and now; his society and its conduct are his motivations. Yet his ear in inclined to God.’
And [God] has said:
“It is too little that you should be My servant
In that I raise up the tribes of Jacob
And restore the survivors of Israel:
I will also make you a light of nations,
That My salvation may reach the ends of the earth.”
(Isaiah 49)
Their sentiments came to be known as Prophetic Judaism that was shaped by their ethical pronouncements and call for justice over ritual and right behaviour over Jewish laws. Martin Buber wrote, ‘We must ask ourselves why it was precisely in Israel that the normative principle voiced its great protest in the words of the Prophets?. In answer we must point to that religious realism, peculiar to Israel, which has no room for a truth remaining abstract. With every truth, is bound up a demand which Israel are called upon to fulfill on earth. This is where the prophetic instinct comes from:
“Why, when we fasted, did You not see?
When we starved our bodies, did You pay no heed?”
Because on your fast day
You see to your business
And oppress all your laborers!
Is such the fast I desire,
A day for people to starve their bodies?
Is it bowing the head like a bulrush
And lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Do you call that a fast,
A day when GOD is favorable?
No, this is the fast I desire:
To unlock fetters of wickedness,
And untie the cords of the yoke
To let the oppressed go free;
To break off every yoke.
It is to share your bread with the hungry,
And to take the wretched poor into your home;
When you see the naked, to clothe them,
And not to ignore your own kin.
(Isaiah 57)
We keep these words close to us for each week on Shabbat morning, after the Torah has been read, the tradition includes the Haftarah which is not ‘half a torah’ but rather a Hebrew word meaning additional reading or 2nd reading. This second reading comes from the writings of the Prophets and was selected not in literary order like the reading of the Torah but rather by themes connected to the Torah reading. So for instance, this week’s Torah portion is Lech Lecha – the first mention of Abraham in the Torah and the Haftarah is Isaiah 40 which speaks of the trials of the servants of God making a connection between Abraham being a servant of God and his many trials.
What does it mean to be a Prophet. On first glance, you might think it is about foretelling the future but actually that is a misunderstanding of the role of the Hebrew Prophet. The Greek word ‘Prophetes’ actually means ‘to speak forth’ and this is the active role that the Hebrew Prophets felt compelled to speak out and speak forth their sense of justice and right:
So the Prophet Nathan comes to King David and relates the case of the two farmers; one who had many flocks and sheep and one who had only one ewe lamb. When it came time to make a feast, the rich farmer reluctant to use his flocks, stole the ewe lamb from the poor farmer and sacrificed it for the feast. King David flew into a rage, the Hebrew actually says ‘v’yihar af David b’ish meod’ literally his nose exploded at the injustice of it. He demands Nathan bring the rich farmer before him. Nathan then exclaims; Atah Ha’ish – You are that man! You had everything a King could want, yet you lusted after Bathsheva and sent her husband away to fight in your army and be killed so that you could take her for yourself. Nathan excoriates David until David in remorse proclaims, Hatati L’Adonai _ I have sinned before God.
That is why the book of Jonah is so paradoxical because in the light of all the other prophets, Jonah actually runs away from God’s call and does his best to avoid the pain of being God’s prophet. After all, he could have said, look what happened to all the other prophets – Jeremiah imprisoned and blinded, Samuel ignored by the people in appointing a king, Elijah escapes on a magic chariot and is never seen again except at our seders. No wonder Jonah doesn’t want the job. Moses didn’t want the job either, he was slow of speech, no one would listen to him but there is a burning bush to persuade him.
They are a powerful form of moral voice in ancient Israel and so why we may ask are they not around anymore? They existed and were recorded and then it all came to an end. As a form of moral leadership, they were a thorn in the side of the authorities but they were respected for their support for the poor, the orphan and the widow and for not compromising on the teachings that Moses had laid down centuries before. So Prophetic Judaism wanes and Rabbinic Judaism, the set of laws and practices enshrined in Divine law rises to take its place and instead of Prophets, the moral leadership shifts to Rabbis and Teachers.
But did Prophetic Judaism actually come to an end? Maimonides the medieval philosopher thought Prophetic Judaism was still alive and well, identifying the Prophet as no different from any other person. They were people who listened carefully and watched acutely, realizing the consequence of actions before anyone else and speaking truth to power. Maimonides suggested that they could identify the corrupt patterns and unjust structures in a society that lead to injustice and inequality. They highlighted policies dependent on the ego of a ruler rather than for fairness for all. Anyone could have the potential to do that, suggested Maimonides, but there were brave and idiosyncratic people who stuck their head over the parapet to stand up for what they thought was right and needed to be made right.
A few years ago, I was asked to write a book about the Hebrew Prophets using illuminations from medieval documents in the Bodleian library at the University of Oxford, a place many of us now know well. I decided to incorporate those individuals throughout Jewish history that have continued to speak forth, who have not been afraid to rise against the tide of injustice and inequality in society. And who often did so at risk to themselves and their families. Activists such as Henrietta Szold, Lily Montagu and Stephen S Wise who dedicated themselves wholeheartedly to social and ethical improvement in society demanding the poor, the laborer, the vulnerable have their voice heard. Each brought a religious spiritual zeal to their vocation and acted outside the established religious community for universal gains. Others such as Janucz Korczak and Rabbi Leo Baeck exemplified the noblest quality of humanity. At the darkest hour they stood up against oppression and persecution and offered hope demonstrating that goodness could flourish if only people would choose life over obedience.
I wonder who are our Jewish Prophets today and what they would say? What would they say about what we are doing to our planet and about our elected officials and those who govern on our behalf? What would they say about poverty, racial justice and human rights? What would they say about violence and destruction and of course what would they say about war and terrorism, a scourge of our generation.
I am sure you have your Prophets – maybe they are writers or journalists, or politicians, or songwriters and poets or playwrights or business gurus or even rabbis! I don’t know what makes a prophet and as is said in the gospel, ‘you cannot be a prophet in your own land’, but I think we need their voices once again to be heard. The voices that call us to account, challenge us to do the right thing and remind us of the eternal values of the human and Jewish vision –
Thus [God] will judge among the nations
And arbitrate for the many peoples,
And they shall beat their swords into plowshares
And their spears into pruning hooks:
Nation shall not take up
Sword against nation;
They shall never again know war.
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
The leopard lie down with the kid;
The calf, the beast of prey, and the fatling together,
With a little child to herd them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
Their young shall lie down together;
And the lion, like the ox, shall eat straw.
In all of My sacred mount
Nothing evil or vile shall be done;
For the land shall be filled with devotion to GOD
As water covers the sea.
(Isaiah 11)
Dedication of the new Aron HaKadosh
Holy Ark at Central Reform Temple
Rosh Hashanah 2024/5784
Rabbi Dr Michael J Shire
As I place the scrolls of the Torah into our newly commissioned Aron HaKodesh – Holy Ark for Central Reform Temple, we dedicate this ark for the first time at the beginning of a new year of hope and promise. This festival of Rosh Hashanah brings with it joy and celebration in the midst of family and community and so too our new ark symbolizes the joy we feel in being part of this unique community; one in which two congregations, Christian and Jewish, pray under one roof to one God. As God directs in the book of Exodus (25:8),” Asu li mikdash v’shochanti b’tocham – Make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them”. Through the diligent and creative work of members of our community and with it’s fabricator, we have created a new home for our Torah scrolls under the illuminated Hebrew inscription, Brit Olam– Eternal Covenant representing our enduring relationship with the Divine. As God says in Genesis (9:12) “This is the sign that I set for the covenant between Me and you, and every living creature with you, for Eternity. It is the promise, the assurance that this Eternal Covenant will be sustained and that the teachings of the Torah within, are a sure and tested way to live out that promise and fulfill God’s expectations of us as Jews, as peoples of faith, as human beings and as one of the myriad forms of life on this diverse planet.
As we pray, we will gaze upon the ner tamid – the Eternal light radiating from three sides and the imaginative design of the doors and we will be reminded that we are but a small part of this vast creation and yet we still hear God’s commanding voice within us as a “kol damama daka - a still, small voice” (I Kings 19:11). ‘We will know before whom we stand’ calling us to respond to the prophet Micah’s call (6:8) to “Do Justice, Favour Compassion and Walk humbly with your God”.
We thank God for enabling us to dedicate this new ark for our Service of the Heart;
Blessed are You, Eternal, our God, Creator of the Universe, for giving us life, sustaining us and enabling us to reach this day. Amen
As we pray, we will gaze upon the ner tamid – the Eternal light radiating from three sides and the imaginative design of the doors and we will be reminded that we are but a small part of this vast creation and yet we still hear God’s commanding voice within us as a “kol damama daka - a still, small voice” (I Kings 19:11). ‘We will know before whom we stand’ calling us to respond to the prophet Micah’s call (6:8) to “Do Justice, Favour Compassion and Walk humbly with your God”.
We thank God for enabling us to dedicate this new ark for our Service of the Heart;
Blessed are You, Eternal, our God, Creator of the Universe, for giving us life, sustaining us and enabling us to reach this day. Amen
From Ageing to Sageing
May 12, 2023
Rabbi Dr Michael J Shire
In the book of Leviticus, we read, ‘Mipne Seva, Takum v’hadarta p’mei zaken’’- You shall rise before the seva -the Elder [Literally the one with white hair] and show deference to the zaken– the Old [literally the wise leader].; (Leviticus 19:32). What does it mean to be an elder, a sage who offers their experience, their judgment, and their wisdom for the welfare of others. Most of us have grown up with a deep seated fear of old age: Our youth oriented culture that looks for perfect bodies and lifestyles focuses on the physical diminishment associated with old age. This means wrinkled skin, sight and hearing and mobility challe’nges and chronic conditions are represented as the fruit of long life experience rather than wisdom, serenity, balanced judgment and self knowledge.
But our culture’s limited one sided view of aging is undergoing a profound change as medical and scientific advancements has enabled our lifespan to increase to such a degree that the elderly now represent the fastest growing segment of the population. Whereas the Bible proposed an ideal lifespan of three score and ten, we now know 90 is the new 70! Someone born today can expect their life expectancy to be in the 100s. It has taken individuals pushing the medical envelope to reframe the thinking of doctors. My father in law in his late ‘80s, perfectly healthy and independently living had to literally beg his doctors to give him an internal heart pump which kept him alive for a further two years and see his grandchildren become Bar and Batmitzvah. My mother, as you know, at 102 recently had a heart valve replacement procedure. Google says that the oldest heart valve replacement in the world was for a 90 year old. Google is now wrong! My mother’s doctors had to decide if the benefits would outweigh the risks and the potential longevity. They decided in favour and they pushed medical science one more step towards a new understanding of ageing.
We have generally accepted the view of aging that includes the inevertible decline of nature, but this is being reconsidered. Rather than seeing decline as an outcome of age, researchers are seeing decline as a product of the ways in which elders have been treated. Having a sedentary lifestyle, being cared solely by others, only taking low risks in lifestyle and being offered medication to prevent any and every possibility is the approach that determines decline is natural in old age. In his book, From Ageing to Sageing, Rabbi Schachter – Shalomi, reminds us that the ancient world held onto a vision of ageing that implied physical vigor, intellectual growth and visionary work as we read about in the stories of Abraham and Sarah or Moses, Miriam, Naomi and others. Our tradition chooses to depict the sages as elders with an understanding that this is a strength and an opportunity. Naomi is the widow who has to re-invent her life after her husband and two sons die. She calls herself ‘mara’ – bitter. She has to rely on her loyal daughter-in-law Ruth to support her emotionally and economically. But she makes a choice to generate a new life for herself actively building a new family with Boaz and Ruth’s children. The end of the book of Ruth indicates that it is Naomi, the elderly grandmother who brings up her grandchild Obed. In Obed’s old age, he sees his grandson David crowned the King of Israel. As grandchildren, we carry the legacy of our grandparents’ love and nurturing, not so much when they were young but rather when we knew them in their old age.
Erik Erikson, the psychologist described the lifecycle as having six stages of growth. The last one, the one we inhabit in old age, he said was a tension between generativity and stagnation. That is, we can choose to see this stage as generating new opportunities, new learning, new growth or we will face stagnation and decline. This is true of spiritual growth too. James Fowler, a religious psychologist, in his book Stages of Faith suggested that elders deepening their understanding of meaning making are the ones who more readily understand the common values expressed in all faiths and the common humanity of all peoples. As these elders deeply value their own religious identities, symbols, stories and rituals of their own tradition, they come to respect and honour the deeply held faith of others and learn from this enlarged consciousness of making meaning and finding purpose in life. I think this is so true here in our shared community of Jew and Christian unafraid of each other and eager to learn the wisdom of the Other.
This generativity allows older people to become spiritually radiant, physically vital and socially responsible elders of the tribe. Elders express their wisdom in dedicated service to the community. They endow their lives with meaning and avoid thinking of themselves as burdens on anyone else. This process which Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi calls ‘spiritual eldering’ transforms the downwards concept of aging to turn upward in expanded consciousness. Frank Lloyd Wright was 70 when he designed Falling Water, perhaps the most famous house in America. He was 92 when his dream of a whole new architecture was realized in the building of the Guggenheim museum in Manhattan. Others like Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Maria Montessori, Florence Nightingale all culminated their life’s work with powerful energy well into their old age when their expanded consciousness fed wisdom back into society for improvement and advancement. They serve as pathfinders offering hope and guidance to those who are searching for models of a fulfilled human potential.
So how can we become such elders as we move on in our own lives. In the book, Wise Ageing by Rabbi Rachel Cowan and Dr Linda Thal, they offer a pathway for us all to consider in our path from ageing to sageing.
We can start with telling our story. Reflecting on our life experience, sharing that experience in writing or orally is a very important foundation for self-learning and transmitting to others. Passing on those family stories, family photographs, life maps is so vital in knowing and living our life story. But what about our regrets in life? For those of us who carry burdensome stories, this is the time to let go of regrets if we are to be free and fresh elders. Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav, the famous Hasidic rebbe who was also an amateur pyschologist, understood the double sided difficulty of teshuva – of turning away from past hurts to a new liberated consciousness. On the one hand, he assured his disciples that change is possible at any time in life, but he also acknowledged how difficult this can be, to actually do it. What he offered was that the very obstacle that makes it so difficult for us to change is the actual pathway to that change. Confronting our envious nature in old age can only come about when we resolve the jealousy with a sibling that we have held life-long. Coming to terms with our irritation at being let down by others will only truly change when we understand how we did not live up to our own true potential in early years. This takes work on our behalf and yet is so fundamental to becoming the elder that seeks resolution to our life story.
Secondly, elders are wisdom keepers who have an ongoing responsibility for stewardship. Stewarding our families, our neighbours, our communities, all the while safeguarding our health and the health of our ailing planet with which we are interdependent. Jewish legend emphasizes this stewardship in the tale of Honi Ha’meagel – Honi, the circle maker who saw a man planting a carob tree. Honi asks the man, ‘how many years will it take for this tree to bear fruit? 70 years, says the man. ‘Is it clear to you that you will live another 70 years? Asks Honi. The man famously replies; ‘just as I just live in this world that is full of carob trees and just as my ancestors planted for me, so I will plant for my children and their children’.
Finally provide mentoring and healing for others. Bring compassion and empathy to your family, your community. Leave the judgement and the criticism to the younger frustrated young things. Be open to curiosity, to heartfelt questions and longing.
The teaching of sageing is quite simple; tell your story, steward the world and be open to the wonder of all around you. Learn to accept with compassion what life brings. Experience yourself as part of something so much bigger than ourselves and find the prayers, the melodies, the poetry and the silence that expresses your awe and gratitude. Build a community of people that responds to need and reach out to serve the world. For we are told in Psalm 92 ; Tzadik ka‘tamar yifrach’ -the righteous shall flourish like the palm tree, they shall thrive like a seed in Lebanon. They shall bear fruit even in old age. They shall ever be fragrant and fresh’.
May we live like the Palm and the Cedar bearing the fruit of wisdom, fresh with the liveness of being present to each moment and each step along life’s path. May we each discover that pathway that helps shape our remaining years with wisdom, resilience and renewed spirit.
Rabbi Michael Shire
Acknowledgement to Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi’s ‘From Ageing to Sageing’.
But our culture’s limited one sided view of aging is undergoing a profound change as medical and scientific advancements has enabled our lifespan to increase to such a degree that the elderly now represent the fastest growing segment of the population. Whereas the Bible proposed an ideal lifespan of three score and ten, we now know 90 is the new 70! Someone born today can expect their life expectancy to be in the 100s. It has taken individuals pushing the medical envelope to reframe the thinking of doctors. My father in law in his late ‘80s, perfectly healthy and independently living had to literally beg his doctors to give him an internal heart pump which kept him alive for a further two years and see his grandchildren become Bar and Batmitzvah. My mother, as you know, at 102 recently had a heart valve replacement procedure. Google says that the oldest heart valve replacement in the world was for a 90 year old. Google is now wrong! My mother’s doctors had to decide if the benefits would outweigh the risks and the potential longevity. They decided in favour and they pushed medical science one more step towards a new understanding of ageing.
We have generally accepted the view of aging that includes the inevertible decline of nature, but this is being reconsidered. Rather than seeing decline as an outcome of age, researchers are seeing decline as a product of the ways in which elders have been treated. Having a sedentary lifestyle, being cared solely by others, only taking low risks in lifestyle and being offered medication to prevent any and every possibility is the approach that determines decline is natural in old age. In his book, From Ageing to Sageing, Rabbi Schachter – Shalomi, reminds us that the ancient world held onto a vision of ageing that implied physical vigor, intellectual growth and visionary work as we read about in the stories of Abraham and Sarah or Moses, Miriam, Naomi and others. Our tradition chooses to depict the sages as elders with an understanding that this is a strength and an opportunity. Naomi is the widow who has to re-invent her life after her husband and two sons die. She calls herself ‘mara’ – bitter. She has to rely on her loyal daughter-in-law Ruth to support her emotionally and economically. But she makes a choice to generate a new life for herself actively building a new family with Boaz and Ruth’s children. The end of the book of Ruth indicates that it is Naomi, the elderly grandmother who brings up her grandchild Obed. In Obed’s old age, he sees his grandson David crowned the King of Israel. As grandchildren, we carry the legacy of our grandparents’ love and nurturing, not so much when they were young but rather when we knew them in their old age.
Erik Erikson, the psychologist described the lifecycle as having six stages of growth. The last one, the one we inhabit in old age, he said was a tension between generativity and stagnation. That is, we can choose to see this stage as generating new opportunities, new learning, new growth or we will face stagnation and decline. This is true of spiritual growth too. James Fowler, a religious psychologist, in his book Stages of Faith suggested that elders deepening their understanding of meaning making are the ones who more readily understand the common values expressed in all faiths and the common humanity of all peoples. As these elders deeply value their own religious identities, symbols, stories and rituals of their own tradition, they come to respect and honour the deeply held faith of others and learn from this enlarged consciousness of making meaning and finding purpose in life. I think this is so true here in our shared community of Jew and Christian unafraid of each other and eager to learn the wisdom of the Other.
This generativity allows older people to become spiritually radiant, physically vital and socially responsible elders of the tribe. Elders express their wisdom in dedicated service to the community. They endow their lives with meaning and avoid thinking of themselves as burdens on anyone else. This process which Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi calls ‘spiritual eldering’ transforms the downwards concept of aging to turn upward in expanded consciousness. Frank Lloyd Wright was 70 when he designed Falling Water, perhaps the most famous house in America. He was 92 when his dream of a whole new architecture was realized in the building of the Guggenheim museum in Manhattan. Others like Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Maria Montessori, Florence Nightingale all culminated their life’s work with powerful energy well into their old age when their expanded consciousness fed wisdom back into society for improvement and advancement. They serve as pathfinders offering hope and guidance to those who are searching for models of a fulfilled human potential.
So how can we become such elders as we move on in our own lives. In the book, Wise Ageing by Rabbi Rachel Cowan and Dr Linda Thal, they offer a pathway for us all to consider in our path from ageing to sageing.
We can start with telling our story. Reflecting on our life experience, sharing that experience in writing or orally is a very important foundation for self-learning and transmitting to others. Passing on those family stories, family photographs, life maps is so vital in knowing and living our life story. But what about our regrets in life? For those of us who carry burdensome stories, this is the time to let go of regrets if we are to be free and fresh elders. Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav, the famous Hasidic rebbe who was also an amateur pyschologist, understood the double sided difficulty of teshuva – of turning away from past hurts to a new liberated consciousness. On the one hand, he assured his disciples that change is possible at any time in life, but he also acknowledged how difficult this can be, to actually do it. What he offered was that the very obstacle that makes it so difficult for us to change is the actual pathway to that change. Confronting our envious nature in old age can only come about when we resolve the jealousy with a sibling that we have held life-long. Coming to terms with our irritation at being let down by others will only truly change when we understand how we did not live up to our own true potential in early years. This takes work on our behalf and yet is so fundamental to becoming the elder that seeks resolution to our life story.
Secondly, elders are wisdom keepers who have an ongoing responsibility for stewardship. Stewarding our families, our neighbours, our communities, all the while safeguarding our health and the health of our ailing planet with which we are interdependent. Jewish legend emphasizes this stewardship in the tale of Honi Ha’meagel – Honi, the circle maker who saw a man planting a carob tree. Honi asks the man, ‘how many years will it take for this tree to bear fruit? 70 years, says the man. ‘Is it clear to you that you will live another 70 years? Asks Honi. The man famously replies; ‘just as I just live in this world that is full of carob trees and just as my ancestors planted for me, so I will plant for my children and their children’.
Finally provide mentoring and healing for others. Bring compassion and empathy to your family, your community. Leave the judgement and the criticism to the younger frustrated young things. Be open to curiosity, to heartfelt questions and longing.
The teaching of sageing is quite simple; tell your story, steward the world and be open to the wonder of all around you. Learn to accept with compassion what life brings. Experience yourself as part of something so much bigger than ourselves and find the prayers, the melodies, the poetry and the silence that expresses your awe and gratitude. Build a community of people that responds to need and reach out to serve the world. For we are told in Psalm 92 ; Tzadik ka‘tamar yifrach’ -the righteous shall flourish like the palm tree, they shall thrive like a seed in Lebanon. They shall bear fruit even in old age. They shall ever be fragrant and fresh’.
May we live like the Palm and the Cedar bearing the fruit of wisdom, fresh with the liveness of being present to each moment and each step along life’s path. May we each discover that pathway that helps shape our remaining years with wisdom, resilience and renewed spirit.
Rabbi Michael Shire
Acknowledgement to Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi’s ‘From Ageing to Sageing’.
Installation Service
April 30, 2023
Rabbi Dr Michael J Shire
Given in response to Rabbi Marcia Plumb's address...
Thankyou Marcia. People always want to know what to call the husband of a rabbi. The wife of a male rabbi has traditionally been known as a rebbetzin. It is said that the husband of a female rabbi is just known as lucky!! And that is certainly the case today! People don’t know this, and please don’t tell anyone, but the only one thing that a rabbi is actually required for in Jewish practice is…to make another rabbi. Anyone can conduct a prayer service or perform a wedding or funeral in Judaism. However, the act of s’micha, ordination can only be conducted by a rabbi and I was lucky enough that Marcia was the one who ordained me at Leo Baeck College over 25 years ago.
It has been a real gift to have this installation weekend and so many have made this a such a special occasion that it has been a real blessing. Thank you to Rabbi Devon for bringing me to CRT and installing me so movingly today. Thank you to all my new friends at CRT and Emmanuel, Thank you to all our local clergy and to my colleagues and students from Hebrew College who have joined us today and my predecessor Rabbi Howard Kosovske. I know my mother, sister, brother-in-law and dear friends are watching us from England and elsewhere and my son in Scotland. And my late father feels very present as he too combined being shul president and president of a Jewish Christian interfaith organization and he brought hope and healing to all who knew him.
People had no idea what a rabbinic installation was, and I was the brunt of many jokes including, ‘He’s not a piece of art!’ or ‘how many light bulbs does it take to install a rabbi’ or ‘is this your coronation’? So, definitely not a Coronation – we shall leave that to Charles and Camilla next weekend. Thank goodness the dates didn’t clash, or they would have had to move it!
It is most appropriate that Marcia, the rabbi of Congregation Mishkan Tefila and the clergy of Emmanuel Church be here together, for in April1865, it was the first rector of Emmanuel Church and the first Rabbi of Congregation Mishkan Tefila that publicly eulogized Abraham Lincoln in Boston following his assassination. Both Jewish and Christian communities were bereft at the loss of their common leader in a land that has provided freedom of worship to all and safety and security to all religious minorities. As we read in the passages about leadership, it is no small challenge to choose to become a leader and yet when leadership is called for, none of us can excuse ourselves. We read in the Mishnah, the 2nd century code of Jewish practice, in a section of ethical sayings of the Rabbinic Sages; pirke avot; you are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it. Stepping up to be a leader is an act of response to that call. It suggests that we respond to those things that need repair and for which we may ask ‘what is the work that is ours to do?
I have been teaching and preparing students for a life of service to the Jewish Community for these past three decades and that has been the most enriching and satisfying career and vocation. Yet now I am being called myself to respond to this rapidly changing world and step up to respond directly and yes, perhaps step down from the ivory tower to meet the people on Newbury St. This street outside, that has the wealthiest goods and products for sale and yet Jackie and others literally sleep on our doorstep all year round.
What is that will make us all feel the need to respond, or indeed the ability to respond; to be response-able. Judaism teaches the imperative of ethical responsibility as a prime feature of our faith; Tzedek Tzedek Tirdorf says Moses in Deuteronomy as he establishes the principles of our faith ‘Justice Justice shall you pursue’. We can rightly celebrate Judaism’s commitment to the ethical imperative and especially Reform Judaism’s emphasis on this essence of our faith. Rabbi Leo Baeck, the leader of German Jewry during the Shoah/The Holocaust and my grandparents’ rabbi commented on the Torah portion of Kedoshim/ The Holiness Code that we read yesterday in Synagogue in our lectionary reading. When the core teaching of the Torah from Leviticus 19 is recited as Love your neighbour as yourself – ve’ahavta re'cha camocha’, it is truncated. The sentence is not complete until we also add the final two words – Ani Adonai – I am the Eternal One. For Baeck points out that every principle of Torah is followed by “I am the Eternal Your God”. The very nature of God is bound up with the command to act, to do, resulting in the ethics of responsibility. The Good and the Holy are interconnected and mutually dependent. The Good reflects our response to our fellow human beings and the Holy, our response to God and the response that God searches for in us.
The Prophets of Israel warned against a split between the Holy and the Good. Unless the Holy leads us out to the Good and the Good leads us inward to the Holy, faith dries up and our response -ability is truncated. In six days, we are told God creates and declares it Good. On the seventh day, God ceases that work and declares it Holy. We need to connect to the Good and the Holy in our lives in order that unity of purpose and unification of self is our life’s work and vocation and our Godly play. It is what fellow Godly player, Dr Rebecca Nye means when she talks of teachers cultivating the Relational Consciousness of their students. As Professor Larry Hoffman said to me when I told him I was coming to Central Reform Temple, ‘Wow! Those are serious thinking Jews; help them find their inner selves in order to change their outer world’.
This sense of responsibility entails a number of relationships. We cannot be leaders on our own. Our relationships are Vertical and horizontal as we spend time in worship and acts of justice; our Relationships draw upon the wisdom of our traditions in the past and ensure they speak to us in the present. Our Relationships are deeply rooted in our Peoplehood and open to our partners in faith whether they be within our families or within our congregations. Our Relationships are expressed in word in English, Hebrew and Aramaic and the variety of traditional and contemporary Jewish music that we hear today. At the end of this service, we shall sing one of the most popular of all Jewish hymns from the 15th Century, Adon Olam – God of All, set to a British Sephardi melody from the famous Bevis Marks Synagogue that transfixed me as a child and has accompanied me across the waters for its debut in Boston today. Thankyou Amy, Andrew, DJ and Louise for your beautiful voices and music that takes us to that inner place.
I am excited about this coming together of all my sparks of passion in this act of leadership; history of this land, connections to the European Jewish experience and Jewish learning from all lands, teaching our Jewish wisdom texts and our pathways for religious experience, our interfaith work that is both face to face here in our sanctuaries and side by side on our street outside.
In the meditation, that my daughter Anya and Jill read and that I wrote over 40 years ago for the rabbinic installation of a dear friend, I allude to Jacob’s wrestling with another being in the middle of the night. Here is the Biblical image of response and leadership. Is this a struggle or an embrace? Is it injurying by wounding and yet also healing by challenging and growing? Does it empty us and yet also replenish us? All of these are the components of leadership and responsibility as we learn to grow together. Let blessing spread over this dawning for God has imparted wisdom to those who strive for the sake of heaven, l’shem shamayim. As Jacob finally says in the grasp of the Embrace, I will not let you go, until you have blessed me.
Shabbat Service
February 24, 2023
Rabbi Dr Michael J Shire
Calling In / Calling Out
My son, Micah recently spent his spring break with his fellow students in the city of York in Northern England. I told them to spend some time at Clifford’s Tower, an outcrop of rock with a fortress on top just outside the city walls. In 1190, 150 local Jews took refuge there from a mob who had been incited to attack them by a noble who was deep in debt and refused to repay his loan to his Jewish bankers. The Jews were so afraid that eventually they decided to take their own lives rather than fall into the hands of the mob who subsequently burned the tower and everyone in it, dead or alive. All this information is given at the site and Micah’s non-Jewish friends were horrified to read of the worst Antisemitic pogrom in medieval England and expressed their sympathy to him, knowing that he is Jewish. However, Micah told me that he shrugged them off, saying, don’t worry about it. It happens all the time to us? He may have been half joking, but it is that kind of Jewish humour that masks the difficult and challenging issue of Antisemitism that is growing again in our midst. The recent data collected suggests that Antisemitic incidents have increased 48% in Massachusetts since 2021 and this includes everything from daubings of swastikas in cemeteries, synagogues and schools including at Newton North, Multiple College and University antisemitic incidents and events, desecration of the Boston Holocaust Memorial twice over a weekend in 2021 and then again last week. Slurs and defamation uttered in the streets and all the way up to the stabbing of Rabbi Noginski in Brighton in 2021 right outside the Jewish Day School on Washington St.
I have to say that I did not want to talk about this – I have never spoken about Antisemitism before and I am uncomfortable doing so. I believed that being integrated in a Western cultured civilization would put an end to so called ‘oldest hatred’ ; an irrational and enduring hatred against Jews. So way do we want to speak about it now? What can we possibly achieve by speaking about Antisemitism and acting to counter it? First of all, what to call it? The German philosopher Wilhelm Marr who did hate Jews invented the term Antisemitism in order to sanitize German society from the Jew hatred that he and others promoted. We have adopted the word sometimes with a hyphen, sometimes with a capital A but Rachel Fish, our local expert on the subject suggests we should use the term Jew Hatred because it says what it actually is, and from research she conducted, young people seem to think that they should be anti-racist, anti-Islamaphobic and anti-semitic!! After all, what is a semite anyway? It’s a confusing term when what we mean is to call out those for whom hatred of Jews is a collective and racist prejudice for no other reason than that we are Jews.
It is so ingrained and so unconscious for many that it continues to flourish in the ignorance and falsehoods of those who can spread this hatred quite easily with all the ease that other hatreds are spread. We are not the only one who suffer this way but there is something peculiar about antisemitism in our society - we are not considered a persecuted or oppressed minority when people attack Jews. We do not get the allies, that others do, to protect and stand up for us. We are considered a powerful, strong community, passing as white who do not need the support or protection of a coalition of minorities. So on the one hand, we are seen to enjoy the privilege of the powerful and yet also they see us as ‘other’ ‘different’ ‘disloyal’. And this of course is not new. When Haman went to King Ahaseureus in Persia 2500 years ago, that is exactly what he said, ‘There is a certain people scattered and dispersed among the peoples of your lands. They are set apart and do not obey your laws. Let an edict be drawn up for their destruction and I will pay you 10,000 talents of silver to carry this out. The King replied to Haman – The money and the People are yours to do with as you see fit. It took Esther, the Queen, passing as WASP Persian to risk her life and stand up to be counted, in order to save Persian Jewry, establishing the festival of Purim which we will celebrate in great jollity and mirth in two weeks time.
Dara Horn’s new book with its provocative title, People love Dead Jews, suggests that laughing off antisemitism as well as venerating the memory of its victims distracts us from the work that we need to actually do in persuading people that they should love live Jews and Judaism’s contribution to our Civilization. She quotes Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice which we are reading in the book group this month, as a satire on this double standard of hating Shylock for his Jewish greed while emphasizing with his humanism in the ‘If you prick us, do we not bleed’ speech. I don’t want to concentrate on the hatred that others may feel or think they feel to live a Judaism that is defensive, insecure and inward looking. I want the Judaism I teach and espouse to be one of joy and celebration; one that provides meaning to the ups and downs of life’s journey and enables us to thrive as responsible human beings individually and in the communities we inhabit.
In our current times, when calling out those who consciously or unconsciously express racist or prejudiced views and attitudes is frequent, it is troubling that Antisemitism is not regarded with the same disdain and disapproval. It still can be socially acceptable in polite circles. I would not call Whoopi Goldberg an Antisemite but why is it that she, of all people, sincerely believes the Holocaust was not about race when 6 million Jews were killed precisely because the Nazis saw us as a race to be exterminated. The Nuremburg Laws were racial purity laws. Each minority is oppressed in its own way and it is not a zero sum game. Racism against Black People and its roots in American slavery does not negate the vulnerability of Jews or deny that there are those who simply hate the very idea of the Jew in our society. Why couldn’t she even say that?
Whereas we have seen hatred of Jews from the far right and White Supremacy buoyed during the Trump years shockingly in
Charlottesville and other places, we have also seen Jew Hatred from the far left who equate all Jews with the tragedies of the Middle East. What is most disturbing now is that Antisemitism is tinged with both sorts of prejudice. We are all rich and powerful, taking control of the finances of the world while at the same time denying Palestinians their rightful destiny and creating an Apartheid State open only to other Jews. There is so much to say about this contemporary Antisemitic trope and how we have become the scapegoat for so many of the issues that anger people. One of my colleagues visited a university in California on the day that the authorities found that the walls had been daubed with swastikas and the words ‘Zionism is racism’. My colleague asked his hosts who they think had done this, ‘was it people outside the university who had come in to do this or was it students from inside the university despoiling their own home and fellow students’? He was given the answer that whoever had done it, had carefully deposited all of the spray paint cans in the recycling bins on campus! Contemporary crusaders of all issues, continue to view Jews as collectively responsible for the ills they wish to eliminate.
So, what is it we can do to in this heated climate as preventative ways to build the safe, secure and yet outward looking Jewish experience that we want?. Taking local experts Rachel Fish, Dara Horn and CJP’s recent pronouncements work into account, I have come up with the following:
- Call In and Call Out; Calling In is to engage in real conversation with people who express anti- Jewish attitudes including ones that imply all Jews are responsible for Israel’s actions. That is antisemitic by definition. This is best done with friends and family to whom you can converse quietly, listening to each other with open curiosity rather than closed judgement and hearing where the hurt or offence lies. That was how Whoopi Goldberg, Mark Ruffalo and others got to change their mind and heart.
- Calling Out is standing up to express what you believe is wrong when you witness it. This is often done in public, on social media or social situations. You know it when you feel it and when you call it out, it changes the atmosphere. However, later you wont regret that you made a stand and helped prevent prejudice being spread. When my mother’s third age group suggested that the Jews were stealing all the water in the Jordan river, she bravely pronounced, ‘That is not true. Give us your evidence’. There was an awkward silence and the person involved responded, you are right, I don’t really know, I just read it somewhere.
- Enjoy our Judaism and spread its joy and delight wherever we go. That is the best way to celebrate the fact that we love our Jewish identities and are prepared to share its benefits and opportunities with all peoples.
- We need to build our allies. We are a minority and we are vulnerable like other minorities. So our work on anti-racism and ensuring Black Lives Matter and acknowledging the native lands on which we now prosper and the support for refugees from war torn lands or walking and marching to eradicate homelessness on our streets is a crucial part of our responsibility but also as building alliances for all vulnerable minorities including our own when we need them.
- Finally and it has to be said, we need to keep safe. To ensure the security of those participating in Jewish life whether it be in schools or synagogues. Being vigilant and cautious but not to the detriment of opening our doors to all who wish to join us. There is a balance to be had and so far I think it is working well except perhaps for the one student who arrived at the door last Rosh Hashanah without any ID and went home before we could do the necessary checks!
We cannot live our lives in the shadows in this land that was the first to offer Jews liberty and freedom of worship. We can rightfully worry about our vulnerability as a minority and the increased danger that the current times present. In the end, however let us live joyfully as Jews and allies of Jews, celebrating our 4000 year old renewable tradition and its wisdom and take responsibility for all those, like us, who cannot remain silent when evil in whatever form raises it’s ugly head. And some humour won’t go amiss as we will see on Purim. After all, they did come for us, we have survived, now let’s eat!!
Sunday Morning Service Emmanuel Church
December 18, 2022
Rabbi Dr Michael J Shire
Lit Up
The new rabbi turns up at his new congregation and before long he is embroiled in a huge dispute between different members of the congregation. There is an important ritual that needs to be performed and the community is divided on the right way of doing it according to the congregational custom. Half of them say, this is how we have always done it, it’s our tradition, we want to do it as we have always done. The other half of the congregation say, no that is not how we have done it, this is our tradition, we wouldn’t want to change anything. The new rabbi is perplexed. What should he or she do? He comes up with a great solution. We shall go and ask the old rabbi what is the congregation’s tradition for this custom. The whole community comes before the old rabbi – the new rabbi explains the dilemma that half the community think they know the tradition, the other half think they know the tradition. Who is right? They wait with baited breath as the old rabbi considers the issue. Finally, he turns to the new rabbi and says they are both right. It’s our tradition to always argue about it!
If this sounds familiar to us today, we can go back into antiquity to hear a familiar story. For in the Talmud, the rabbinic source of Jewish law, an account is given of two sages who disagreed as to the lighting of the Chanukah menorah. The Lighting is of course a remembrance of the struggle that the Jews in the land of Israel had with Hellenist invaders in the 1st century before the Common Era, one of the earliest recorded accounts of a fight for religious freedom. The Maccabees rose up against their Hellenist occupiers and for three years fought a bitter battle for control of the land and the Temple in Jerusalem. The few Maccabees defeated the many and as they rededicated the Temple - in Hebrew Hanukat Habayit - for worship again, legend tells us there was only enough sacred oil for the everlasting light for one day, but through a miracle – in Hebrew, nes, it lasted for eight days. The Maccabees inaugurated an eight day festival but by the time of the rabbis writing the Talmud 500 years later, it seems to have fallen into obscurity and they don’t know anymore the ritual of lighting the Chanukah menorah.
There is a dispute between the sage Hillel and his contemporary nemesis Shammai. Shammai declares that the correct way to light the Chanukah menorah is to start with 8 lights and each night to reduce one light so that there none left at the end. Shammai looks to the decreasing numbers of days ahead – 8, then 7, then 6. The lights reduce as the days of the festival decrease. Shammai’s reasoning is that light pushes out the darkness and so each day the light diminishes the darkness until is eliminated and no more lights need be lit. We may think of Shammai’s approach as acting with all our energy and force of will to dispel the darkness in our world until it is all gone and the light is not needed anymore. It’s an idealistic and romantic view of the world and the people in it.
Hillel however takes the opposite view. Hillel states that we should light one light on the first day and increase with an added light each day until we light eight lights on the last night of Chanukah. For Hillel, the days are increasing ahead, first one, then two all the way to eight. The lights increase as the days increase. Hillel’s position is that we are not trying to eliminate the darkness, we are trying to increase the light. This is a position of hope and faith in a fractured and complex world. As Abraham Joshua Heschel famously said, "Don’t curse the darkness, light a candle".
Rather than seek to eliminate the dark, we may want rather to engage with it. Too often we pose darkness as the thing to avoid, to be fearful of, to eradicate. But in our age of breaking down polarities, there is much in darkness that can be embraced. We think of darkness as despair, solitude, evil but we also know that all life is created in darkness, that the depths of the ocean and the night sky hold great power to inspire and move us. In the deep darkness of the soil, the seed waits to germinate until it reaches the light to flower and blossom. Hillel understood that the very act of being involved in creating something new demands that we ourselves say, ‘Let there be Light’ and so we bring light out of the darkness.
As you most probably know, despite the love of argument in the Talmud where two Jews can really have three opinions, Hillel’s position won out and tonight on the first night of Chanukah this year, we will light one candle for the first night of Chanukah.
There was however one part of the ritual of lighting that the Rabbis agreed on. The fact that the Chanukah menorah should be lit in a window so that the lights would be displayed outside the home and at a time when there were still people in the marketplace about to go home from work. This concept of displaying the miracle, in Hebrew we call it ‘pirsumei nes’, is to remind ourselves that increasing the light is not just for our homes but it is for our neighborhoods, our streets, our marketplaces. It is to bear witness to injustices that are present on our streets, in our society and to shed the increasing light of hopefulness upon them.
Lighting lights on Chanukah or Christmas is to be a testimony of our commitment to increase the light.
There is a Jewish story told of the Hasidic community in Ukraine in the 18th century in places today which literally have no light and no warmth in this midwinter. It was the first night of Chanukah, and the grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, Rebbe Baruch of Mezhibuzh lit the menorah and sang Chanukah songs with his Chassidim, his students. Suddenly, the candle flickered, as though dancing or struggling, and then the flame disappeared. The candle had not gone out-- there was no smoke. The light had just vanished. All of the students despaired and worried, ‘Should we relight the menorah?’ But the Rebbe insisted that they continue singing. Later that evening, a traveler came to the Rebbe and his Chassidim and said that he had been lost in the dangerous woods trying to get back in time to light the menorah. Suddenly, a single flame appeared in the darkness and guided him home, protecting him until he arrived at the Rebbe’s Chanukah table. After the traveler finished his story, the Rebbe and his Chassidim turned and looked at the menorah to find that the flame that had vanished was now burning brightly, as though it had never disappeared.
We may never know what the miracle of increasing the light actually is. For Walt Whitman, “he knew of nothing else but miracles”;
“To wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles”
There is one further discussion in the Talmud about the lighting of the lights for the menorah. It suggests that each household light one light to place on the menorah. However as if to suggest that it is everyone’s individual responsibility to spread the light, the Talmud invites those who want to enhance the ritual of lighting to have their own separate Chanukah menorah to light.
This concept of Ner ish u-beito – A Light for each person in a household is in the words of my colleague R. Adina Allen both a democratization and an activation of the light-giving capacity within each of us. Chanukah is a time for each of us to connect to the light within and, one candle at a time, to bring that light into the world. It is an opportunity for us to support others in kindling their unique flame, and for learning to appreciate the ways different lights glow. And it is a time for noticing what is possible when millions of little sparks are all lit up across the world.
And so we will each light one candle tonight – a small act of resistance for we do not know, as the Maccabees did not know how long our hope, our democratic way of life, our societies religious tolerance, a woman’s right to choose, even our legal same sex relationships will endure in the growing darkness. How long will war rage in Ukraine and climate change go unchecked? But we do light in the hope that the miracle is still present, that each light increases the vision of a just and equitable society, increases the numbers in the marketplace who see truth and become their own kindlers of light – ner mi ner – from light to light.
Rabbi Mendel Weinbach, a contemporary rabbi, teaches that the dispute between Hillel and Shammai belies a symbolic struggle over the strategic approach to resisting oppression: Do we focus on the destruction of these dark forces or harness the power of truth to bring illumination and dissipate the darkness? Weinbach tells us to look closely at the nature of a flame. It has two very distinct properties: it can burn down, and it can light up. Chanukah is an opportunity to notice the light, the darkness and the shadows in between. It is an invitation to bear witness to oppression and destruction and a time to rekindle the flames of hope and celebrate the power of resistance.
Tragically in our times again Chanukah reminds us that we need to act against growing antisemitism, just as we will fight against other forms of racism, bigotry, homophobia and hate. We do so together because of the poignant words of Pastor Martin Niemoller inscribed on the Boston Holocaust Memorial
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
But we cannot just live in that darkness and that is why I and we are here. For we celebrate an age old Jewish culture, a reimagination of Jewish life, and the creation of a proud, purposeful, and joyful Jewish community that chooses intentionally to overturn the dark past by being in Covenant relationship with Emanuel Church. There can be no more powerful way of truly increasing the light, spreading its glow and handing the light from one to another than by sustaining and developing this sacred relationship between us.
In times of darkness, Chanukah invites each of us to rededicate ourselves – hanukat habayit- to the pursuit of our shared purpose and to notice and appreciate the effect that our light can have when shared. We are here to increase the light in each other’s souls and in our neighbourhood and in our city and most importantly within our own faiths. So thanks to each of you for the light you shine. May we all be blessed in this act of resistance and in this act of creating a new world.
If this sounds familiar to us today, we can go back into antiquity to hear a familiar story. For in the Talmud, the rabbinic source of Jewish law, an account is given of two sages who disagreed as to the lighting of the Chanukah menorah. The Lighting is of course a remembrance of the struggle that the Jews in the land of Israel had with Hellenist invaders in the 1st century before the Common Era, one of the earliest recorded accounts of a fight for religious freedom. The Maccabees rose up against their Hellenist occupiers and for three years fought a bitter battle for control of the land and the Temple in Jerusalem. The few Maccabees defeated the many and as they rededicated the Temple - in Hebrew Hanukat Habayit - for worship again, legend tells us there was only enough sacred oil for the everlasting light for one day, but through a miracle – in Hebrew, nes, it lasted for eight days. The Maccabees inaugurated an eight day festival but by the time of the rabbis writing the Talmud 500 years later, it seems to have fallen into obscurity and they don’t know anymore the ritual of lighting the Chanukah menorah.
There is a dispute between the sage Hillel and his contemporary nemesis Shammai. Shammai declares that the correct way to light the Chanukah menorah is to start with 8 lights and each night to reduce one light so that there none left at the end. Shammai looks to the decreasing numbers of days ahead – 8, then 7, then 6. The lights reduce as the days of the festival decrease. Shammai’s reasoning is that light pushes out the darkness and so each day the light diminishes the darkness until is eliminated and no more lights need be lit. We may think of Shammai’s approach as acting with all our energy and force of will to dispel the darkness in our world until it is all gone and the light is not needed anymore. It’s an idealistic and romantic view of the world and the people in it.
Hillel however takes the opposite view. Hillel states that we should light one light on the first day and increase with an added light each day until we light eight lights on the last night of Chanukah. For Hillel, the days are increasing ahead, first one, then two all the way to eight. The lights increase as the days increase. Hillel’s position is that we are not trying to eliminate the darkness, we are trying to increase the light. This is a position of hope and faith in a fractured and complex world. As Abraham Joshua Heschel famously said, "Don’t curse the darkness, light a candle".
Rather than seek to eliminate the dark, we may want rather to engage with it. Too often we pose darkness as the thing to avoid, to be fearful of, to eradicate. But in our age of breaking down polarities, there is much in darkness that can be embraced. We think of darkness as despair, solitude, evil but we also know that all life is created in darkness, that the depths of the ocean and the night sky hold great power to inspire and move us. In the deep darkness of the soil, the seed waits to germinate until it reaches the light to flower and blossom. Hillel understood that the very act of being involved in creating something new demands that we ourselves say, ‘Let there be Light’ and so we bring light out of the darkness.
As you most probably know, despite the love of argument in the Talmud where two Jews can really have three opinions, Hillel’s position won out and tonight on the first night of Chanukah this year, we will light one candle for the first night of Chanukah.
There was however one part of the ritual of lighting that the Rabbis agreed on. The fact that the Chanukah menorah should be lit in a window so that the lights would be displayed outside the home and at a time when there were still people in the marketplace about to go home from work. This concept of displaying the miracle, in Hebrew we call it ‘pirsumei nes’, is to remind ourselves that increasing the light is not just for our homes but it is for our neighborhoods, our streets, our marketplaces. It is to bear witness to injustices that are present on our streets, in our society and to shed the increasing light of hopefulness upon them.
Lighting lights on Chanukah or Christmas is to be a testimony of our commitment to increase the light.
There is a Jewish story told of the Hasidic community in Ukraine in the 18th century in places today which literally have no light and no warmth in this midwinter. It was the first night of Chanukah, and the grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, Rebbe Baruch of Mezhibuzh lit the menorah and sang Chanukah songs with his Chassidim, his students. Suddenly, the candle flickered, as though dancing or struggling, and then the flame disappeared. The candle had not gone out-- there was no smoke. The light had just vanished. All of the students despaired and worried, ‘Should we relight the menorah?’ But the Rebbe insisted that they continue singing. Later that evening, a traveler came to the Rebbe and his Chassidim and said that he had been lost in the dangerous woods trying to get back in time to light the menorah. Suddenly, a single flame appeared in the darkness and guided him home, protecting him until he arrived at the Rebbe’s Chanukah table. After the traveler finished his story, the Rebbe and his Chassidim turned and looked at the menorah to find that the flame that had vanished was now burning brightly, as though it had never disappeared.
We may never know what the miracle of increasing the light actually is. For Walt Whitman, “he knew of nothing else but miracles”;
“To wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles”
There is one further discussion in the Talmud about the lighting of the lights for the menorah. It suggests that each household light one light to place on the menorah. However as if to suggest that it is everyone’s individual responsibility to spread the light, the Talmud invites those who want to enhance the ritual of lighting to have their own separate Chanukah menorah to light.
This concept of Ner ish u-beito – A Light for each person in a household is in the words of my colleague R. Adina Allen both a democratization and an activation of the light-giving capacity within each of us. Chanukah is a time for each of us to connect to the light within and, one candle at a time, to bring that light into the world. It is an opportunity for us to support others in kindling their unique flame, and for learning to appreciate the ways different lights glow. And it is a time for noticing what is possible when millions of little sparks are all lit up across the world.
And so we will each light one candle tonight – a small act of resistance for we do not know, as the Maccabees did not know how long our hope, our democratic way of life, our societies religious tolerance, a woman’s right to choose, even our legal same sex relationships will endure in the growing darkness. How long will war rage in Ukraine and climate change go unchecked? But we do light in the hope that the miracle is still present, that each light increases the vision of a just and equitable society, increases the numbers in the marketplace who see truth and become their own kindlers of light – ner mi ner – from light to light.
Rabbi Mendel Weinbach, a contemporary rabbi, teaches that the dispute between Hillel and Shammai belies a symbolic struggle over the strategic approach to resisting oppression: Do we focus on the destruction of these dark forces or harness the power of truth to bring illumination and dissipate the darkness? Weinbach tells us to look closely at the nature of a flame. It has two very distinct properties: it can burn down, and it can light up. Chanukah is an opportunity to notice the light, the darkness and the shadows in between. It is an invitation to bear witness to oppression and destruction and a time to rekindle the flames of hope and celebrate the power of resistance.
Tragically in our times again Chanukah reminds us that we need to act against growing antisemitism, just as we will fight against other forms of racism, bigotry, homophobia and hate. We do so together because of the poignant words of Pastor Martin Niemoller inscribed on the Boston Holocaust Memorial
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
But we cannot just live in that darkness and that is why I and we are here. For we celebrate an age old Jewish culture, a reimagination of Jewish life, and the creation of a proud, purposeful, and joyful Jewish community that chooses intentionally to overturn the dark past by being in Covenant relationship with Emanuel Church. There can be no more powerful way of truly increasing the light, spreading its glow and handing the light from one to another than by sustaining and developing this sacred relationship between us.
In times of darkness, Chanukah invites each of us to rededicate ourselves – hanukat habayit- to the pursuit of our shared purpose and to notice and appreciate the effect that our light can have when shared. We are here to increase the light in each other’s souls and in our neighbourhood and in our city and most importantly within our own faiths. So thanks to each of you for the light you shine. May we all be blessed in this act of resistance and in this act of creating a new world.
Shabbat Service Central Reform Temple
November 18, 2022 New Members Shabbat
Rabbi Dr Michael J Shire
The Third Place!
In her recent book The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker, reminds us that purpose is at the heart of any community gathering. When that community gathers, it is for a purpose and everything should be designed to fulfill that purpose; whether it is a birthday party, thanksgiving dinner, zoom family gathering – each gathering has its intention, and it is most successful when the goal for the gathering is planned and implemented. However, that goal may change over time and this was certainly the case with the establishment of the ancient synagogue.
In Rabbinic literature, the synagogue has three names that reflects it’s functions: House of Prayer (Beit Tefila), House of Study (Beit Midrash), House of Community (Beit Knesset). It was the final name, Beit Knesset that caught on and that is now the Hebrew word for synagogue. The early 1st century synagogue was most definitely a Beit Knesset as it welcomed visitors and travelers to stay the night and provided meals. Archeological evidence from the Galilee and Jerusalem supports this early view of the synagogue as primarily a hostelry with bedrooms and kitchens. It seems the idea of study later developed as the reading of the Torah became popular away from the central cult of the Temple in Jerusalem. It was only after the destruction of the Temple in 70CE that there was a move to use the synagogue for prayer since sacrifice was no longer available and would never ever return. One of early Mishnah passages, Pirke Avot – Saying of the Sages gives a rather biased view of Divine transmission omitting mention of the Temple and the priests and emphasizing the role of the rabbis and Torah study in the new institution of the synagogue:
Moses received the Torah at Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly. They said three things: Be patient in [the administration of] justice, raise many disciples and make a fence round the Torah.
In the same Mishnah text, we have the line: On three things the world stands; Al Hatorah – on study, Al Haavoda – on prayer and Al Gemilut Hasadim – on kindness and generosity to others. It could have been the mission statement of the early synagogue. Since that time, synagogues have fulfilled those three roles – prayer, study and community and we here at CRT provide prayer and study regularly. Yet we cannot “provide community”. That has to come from each one of us welcoming our guests (Knesset literally means in Hebrew; ‘access’), supporting our friends and modelling the atmosphere that provides warmth, relationship and fellowship. Over the past year and indeed since I joined you in July, a number of friendly faces have joined us at Shabbat services and they have all been impressed with the welcome and friendliness of our community. So in the spirit of the 1stcentury synagogue, we are delighted to acknowledge our new friends at this New Members’ Shabbat service. It is wonderful to see the turn out for this event of hospitality and care for others.
In the Torah portion, we read of Abraham’s hospitality when we are told he ran out of his tent in the middle of the day to greet three strangers who come out of the desert tired and weary. Together with Sarah, a meal is prepared and hospitality is given. The rabbis even go so far as to say Abraham’s tent was open on all sides so that he could catch wayfarers and invite them in to provide hospitality and sustanance.
Synagogues and churches that promote community are in the words of sociologist Ray Olderberg, ‘a third place’ complementing the first two places of home and work. What is a third place? It is where you go when you are not at home or work and where you find your source of fellowship, do your soulwork and fill up your humanity once again. Oldenburg writes:
“Your third place should come with a sense of ease and offer respite from the world without removing you from it altogether.” It invites us to open ourselves up to external experiences, and it asks us to examine our values and how we hold them in the presence of strangers.
I worked for a while at Temple Rodef Shalom in Virginia. The synagogue which is a modern building is laid out so that the library is at the intersection of two main corridors. The rabbis wanted to encourage members to come and sit and read or talk or do their own work next to the library before or after services, on Sunday mornings, before events etc. So they put chairs down the corridors to encourage people to come and sit and enjoy the synagogue as a meeting place. So they were disappointed when no one used the chairs and people commented it felt like a waiting room in a hospital or bus station. Then they thought about the features of peoples’ third place; that is their coffee shop, their local library, their local bar or club. They came up with the idea of putting coffee tables in front of the chairs. No longer it felt awkward as if waiting in a corridor. Now there was somewhere to dump the stuff you were carrying, put down your coffee cup, perch on it to talk to a friend. Suddenly it became a Third place as people were crowding in to put their laptops on the tables and work in the corridors or read their newspapers or browse books from the library. Kids would do their homework, parents would chat and schmooze waiting to pick up. It got so popular that the synagogue organized a Starbucks franchise to open up on Sunday mornings!
But if you can go to the Parish Café or Tatte to find your third place, why come here?
A Hasidic tale tells of a child who would often wander in the woods. His father, a bit concerned of dangers that might lurk in the forest, questioned him about this. “I have noticed that each day you spend many hours in the woods. I'm wondering why you go there”. “I go there to find God”, the boy answered. “It is very good that you are searching for God my son, but don't you know that God is the same everywhere?” Yes the boy replied, but I am not.
Here is a place where we can be in solitude without being lonely, where we can be in fellowship without being in conformity, where we can hope for a better future without forsaking our past, where we can be a Jew, a Christian, a seeker without also being fully a member of the human race.
As we will sing shortly, finding our third place is a lot like ‘The Road Home’
Tell me, where is the road
I can call my own
That I left, that I lost
So long ago
All these years I have wandered
Oh, when will I know
There's a way, there's a road
That will lead me home
Our Third Place finds others of like mind and heart and will who express their Judaism liberally – finding our inner self and changing our outer world. It is full of beautiful music, meaningful prayers that are understood and affirmed and the stimulation of learning and thinking about contemporary Judaism and our shared humanity. And good food! It is a place to celebrate our joys and share our oys, where we find comfort and solace in the trials and tribulations of life and death. It is also a place of gifts. Gifts of the heart and soul that are shared in those who step up to support the community, gifts of love and compassion from those who reach out to support others and gifts of talent and expertise in those who enable what we do service to service, event to event, zoom to zoom, song to beautiful song.
Let us cherish this good place in our lives, commit to sustain and increase it and provide the warmth and kindness that will enrich it for all. When God commanded Moses to build a Mishkan – a sanctuary, God said ‘Make me a sanctuary and I will dwell among the People’. It doesn’t say God dwelt in the sanctuary but rather God will dwell among the People. For it is the people who make the sanctuary in which God’s spirit can repose. Here is God’s sanctuary, let us rejoice with us all!
In Rabbinic literature, the synagogue has three names that reflects it’s functions: House of Prayer (Beit Tefila), House of Study (Beit Midrash), House of Community (Beit Knesset). It was the final name, Beit Knesset that caught on and that is now the Hebrew word for synagogue. The early 1st century synagogue was most definitely a Beit Knesset as it welcomed visitors and travelers to stay the night and provided meals. Archeological evidence from the Galilee and Jerusalem supports this early view of the synagogue as primarily a hostelry with bedrooms and kitchens. It seems the idea of study later developed as the reading of the Torah became popular away from the central cult of the Temple in Jerusalem. It was only after the destruction of the Temple in 70CE that there was a move to use the synagogue for prayer since sacrifice was no longer available and would never ever return. One of early Mishnah passages, Pirke Avot – Saying of the Sages gives a rather biased view of Divine transmission omitting mention of the Temple and the priests and emphasizing the role of the rabbis and Torah study in the new institution of the synagogue:
Moses received the Torah at Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly. They said three things: Be patient in [the administration of] justice, raise many disciples and make a fence round the Torah.
In the same Mishnah text, we have the line: On three things the world stands; Al Hatorah – on study, Al Haavoda – on prayer and Al Gemilut Hasadim – on kindness and generosity to others. It could have been the mission statement of the early synagogue. Since that time, synagogues have fulfilled those three roles – prayer, study and community and we here at CRT provide prayer and study regularly. Yet we cannot “provide community”. That has to come from each one of us welcoming our guests (Knesset literally means in Hebrew; ‘access’), supporting our friends and modelling the atmosphere that provides warmth, relationship and fellowship. Over the past year and indeed since I joined you in July, a number of friendly faces have joined us at Shabbat services and they have all been impressed with the welcome and friendliness of our community. So in the spirit of the 1stcentury synagogue, we are delighted to acknowledge our new friends at this New Members’ Shabbat service. It is wonderful to see the turn out for this event of hospitality and care for others.
In the Torah portion, we read of Abraham’s hospitality when we are told he ran out of his tent in the middle of the day to greet three strangers who come out of the desert tired and weary. Together with Sarah, a meal is prepared and hospitality is given. The rabbis even go so far as to say Abraham’s tent was open on all sides so that he could catch wayfarers and invite them in to provide hospitality and sustanance.
Synagogues and churches that promote community are in the words of sociologist Ray Olderberg, ‘a third place’ complementing the first two places of home and work. What is a third place? It is where you go when you are not at home or work and where you find your source of fellowship, do your soulwork and fill up your humanity once again. Oldenburg writes:
“Your third place should come with a sense of ease and offer respite from the world without removing you from it altogether.” It invites us to open ourselves up to external experiences, and it asks us to examine our values and how we hold them in the presence of strangers.
I worked for a while at Temple Rodef Shalom in Virginia. The synagogue which is a modern building is laid out so that the library is at the intersection of two main corridors. The rabbis wanted to encourage members to come and sit and read or talk or do their own work next to the library before or after services, on Sunday mornings, before events etc. So they put chairs down the corridors to encourage people to come and sit and enjoy the synagogue as a meeting place. So they were disappointed when no one used the chairs and people commented it felt like a waiting room in a hospital or bus station. Then they thought about the features of peoples’ third place; that is their coffee shop, their local library, their local bar or club. They came up with the idea of putting coffee tables in front of the chairs. No longer it felt awkward as if waiting in a corridor. Now there was somewhere to dump the stuff you were carrying, put down your coffee cup, perch on it to talk to a friend. Suddenly it became a Third place as people were crowding in to put their laptops on the tables and work in the corridors or read their newspapers or browse books from the library. Kids would do their homework, parents would chat and schmooze waiting to pick up. It got so popular that the synagogue organized a Starbucks franchise to open up on Sunday mornings!
But if you can go to the Parish Café or Tatte to find your third place, why come here?
A Hasidic tale tells of a child who would often wander in the woods. His father, a bit concerned of dangers that might lurk in the forest, questioned him about this. “I have noticed that each day you spend many hours in the woods. I'm wondering why you go there”. “I go there to find God”, the boy answered. “It is very good that you are searching for God my son, but don't you know that God is the same everywhere?” Yes the boy replied, but I am not.
Here is a place where we can be in solitude without being lonely, where we can be in fellowship without being in conformity, where we can hope for a better future without forsaking our past, where we can be a Jew, a Christian, a seeker without also being fully a member of the human race.
As we will sing shortly, finding our third place is a lot like ‘The Road Home’
Tell me, where is the road
I can call my own
That I left, that I lost
So long ago
All these years I have wandered
Oh, when will I know
There's a way, there's a road
That will lead me home
Our Third Place finds others of like mind and heart and will who express their Judaism liberally – finding our inner self and changing our outer world. It is full of beautiful music, meaningful prayers that are understood and affirmed and the stimulation of learning and thinking about contemporary Judaism and our shared humanity. And good food! It is a place to celebrate our joys and share our oys, where we find comfort and solace in the trials and tribulations of life and death. It is also a place of gifts. Gifts of the heart and soul that are shared in those who step up to support the community, gifts of love and compassion from those who reach out to support others and gifts of talent and expertise in those who enable what we do service to service, event to event, zoom to zoom, song to beautiful song.
Let us cherish this good place in our lives, commit to sustain and increase it and provide the warmth and kindness that will enrich it for all. When God commanded Moses to build a Mishkan – a sanctuary, God said ‘Make me a sanctuary and I will dwell among the People’. It doesn’t say God dwelt in the sanctuary but rather God will dwell among the People. For it is the people who make the sanctuary in which God’s spirit can repose. Here is God’s sanctuary, let us rejoice with us all!
Shabbat Service Central Reform Temple
September 9, 2022
Rabbi Dr Michael J Shire
Heal Me Now!
It has become common practice in Synagogues to recite the healing prayer that we shared tonight but it wasn’t always part of the Jewish service. The Torah and Talmud emphasize our obligation to care for the sick and ailing. Abraham is often cited as the exemplar as he runs towards the three strangers who emerge out of the desert thirsty and hungry. His reward is to find out that they are in fact angels come to announce the birth of Isaac. It became a tenant of Jewish values that visiting the sick – Bikur Holim – was an obligatory Jewish practice. However this was in the main to provide physical comfort and care through bringing food and looking after the needs of the sick. Prayers for healing weren’t introduced until the time of the first prayerbook in the 10th century. A prayer for healing was introduced into the daily intermediate blessings of the Amidah – part of the 18 weekday benedictions – the Shemone Esreh. It read:
Heal us God and we shall be healed. Save us and we shall be saved; for it is you we praise. Send relief and healing for all our diseases, our sufferings and our wounds. Blessed are you God who heals the sick – Barukh Atah Adonai Rofe Haholim.
This prayer recited daily but not on Shabbat, since we don’t make requests of God on God’s day of rest, is primarily about the People as a whole and not about individuals. It also equates healing with being saved and ascribes all healing to God and only God. This was more of a medieval mindset that viewed sickness as a flaw that needed the human being to do better if she or he was to be saved by God’s healing powers. The idea that God could heal individuals of course goes back to Moses’ plaintive cry in the Torah when his sister Miriam contracts leprosy. He cries out in what must be the first spontaneous prayer in the Torah, O God, heal her now! El na ref a na la! There may have been plenty of times we have cried out in anxiety and fear over the sickness of a loved one saying in effect, O God, heal them now! Jewish rituals often respond to a human need and a fixed prayer for healing is no exception. So if we don’t think illness is a visitation from God for our sins and that we understand healing is not just down to God, what is it we are actually praying for?
The insertion of the Mi Sh’berach prayer for healing in our services suggests that we need a way to acknowledge our fears and frights over sickness of loved ones and that we know that healing is a complex process involving body and mind as well as reliance on those who are trained as medical and mental practitioners. The British Reform prayerbook introduces the healing prayer this way:
In sickness, I turn to you O God and seek your help. You create the healing powers that flow in the bloodstream of every living creature. You are the source of the knowledge and skill of doctors and nurses and of the dedication it prompts them to give of their best. From you comes the comforting care of my loved ones and the tranquility of spirit which I and they need at this time of distress.
Our understanding of health has changed over the centuries. Whereas health was considered to be a condition of human perfection with all limbs, organs and nerves working to peak condition, we now consider those without limbs or organs or nerve endings to live perfectly healthy lives. Health is no longer a condition of bodily perfection but rather it is a dynamic process of thriving. Whatever your condition, or capability or indeed mental capacity, you may be very healthy if you are thriving. So, the modern definition of health is ‘to thrive despite adversity’. To continue to lead a meaningful life, to be optimistic even with your limitations, to be hopeful with positive energy is to thrive. And we can all thrive despite our back pain, our diminished hearing or leg brace with wobbly knee. The same may be said for those with Down’s syndrome or on an autistic spectrum or indeed chronically depressed; to be healthy is to thrive despite adversity.
We also know now that the body and mind are interlinked and that physical healing is connected to our strength of will and our openness to possibilities. We know that we can support our own healing as much as Doctors and Nurses can do for us. It is therefore so important that our prayers for healing including ourselves for we all need to sustain our positive energy and resilience in the face of any adversity of body or mind we may face.
So our services offers us the opportunity to bring to mind those who are ill of mind or body and name them. More traditional synagogues will invite congregants upto the pulpit to whisper them in the rabbis’ ear. We however share them aloud with each other so as to find support from each other’s care and concern.
The story is told in the Talmud of Rabbi Yohanan who went to visit his friend Rabbi Hiyya who was ill. Rabbi Yohanan laid his hands upon him and healed him. But then Rabbi Yohanan fell ill himself and Rabbi Hiyya went to visit him. Rabbi Hiyya asked Rabbi Yohanan how he could heal others but not himself? Rabbi Yohanan answered, "Prisoners cannot release themselves from their own confinement."
Prayers for healing enable each of us to help others deal with the reality of their situation. For we may not all heal or heal completely. A friend of mine once told me that she loved the prayer for healing. She prayed it every week for her partner. Her partner had MS however and would never get better. He would never be cured and no amount of praying would change that. She said that she prayed for the strength and compassion to continue to look after her partner. She prayed that her partner would continue to see beauty in the world and to find life worth living.
Healing can mean wholeness, reconciliation, acceptance. It may mean an appreciation of the blessings we do have, despite the physical or mental illness we endure. Healing also refers to reconciliation between loved ones and overcoming pain of conflict. It can mean recovering after grief or loss. If we are caregivers, the prayer for healing brings us renewed compassion and patience for our sacred work. If we are doctors or nurses, the prayer may help us feel strengthened hope and fulfilment in the service and expertise we give to others. As a community, the prayer for healing can remind us that we are all seeking to thrive together, and we can lean on each other for support.
Mi Sh-Berach - May it be Your will, O God and God of our fathers and mothers, to send a complete and speedy healing, a healing of body and a healing of spirit to all who are ill among us.
Heal us God and we shall be healed. Save us and we shall be saved; for it is you we praise. Send relief and healing for all our diseases, our sufferings and our wounds. Blessed are you God who heals the sick – Barukh Atah Adonai Rofe Haholim.
This prayer recited daily but not on Shabbat, since we don’t make requests of God on God’s day of rest, is primarily about the People as a whole and not about individuals. It also equates healing with being saved and ascribes all healing to God and only God. This was more of a medieval mindset that viewed sickness as a flaw that needed the human being to do better if she or he was to be saved by God’s healing powers. The idea that God could heal individuals of course goes back to Moses’ plaintive cry in the Torah when his sister Miriam contracts leprosy. He cries out in what must be the first spontaneous prayer in the Torah, O God, heal her now! El na ref a na la! There may have been plenty of times we have cried out in anxiety and fear over the sickness of a loved one saying in effect, O God, heal them now! Jewish rituals often respond to a human need and a fixed prayer for healing is no exception. So if we don’t think illness is a visitation from God for our sins and that we understand healing is not just down to God, what is it we are actually praying for?
The insertion of the Mi Sh’berach prayer for healing in our services suggests that we need a way to acknowledge our fears and frights over sickness of loved ones and that we know that healing is a complex process involving body and mind as well as reliance on those who are trained as medical and mental practitioners. The British Reform prayerbook introduces the healing prayer this way:
In sickness, I turn to you O God and seek your help. You create the healing powers that flow in the bloodstream of every living creature. You are the source of the knowledge and skill of doctors and nurses and of the dedication it prompts them to give of their best. From you comes the comforting care of my loved ones and the tranquility of spirit which I and they need at this time of distress.
Our understanding of health has changed over the centuries. Whereas health was considered to be a condition of human perfection with all limbs, organs and nerves working to peak condition, we now consider those without limbs or organs or nerve endings to live perfectly healthy lives. Health is no longer a condition of bodily perfection but rather it is a dynamic process of thriving. Whatever your condition, or capability or indeed mental capacity, you may be very healthy if you are thriving. So, the modern definition of health is ‘to thrive despite adversity’. To continue to lead a meaningful life, to be optimistic even with your limitations, to be hopeful with positive energy is to thrive. And we can all thrive despite our back pain, our diminished hearing or leg brace with wobbly knee. The same may be said for those with Down’s syndrome or on an autistic spectrum or indeed chronically depressed; to be healthy is to thrive despite adversity.
We also know now that the body and mind are interlinked and that physical healing is connected to our strength of will and our openness to possibilities. We know that we can support our own healing as much as Doctors and Nurses can do for us. It is therefore so important that our prayers for healing including ourselves for we all need to sustain our positive energy and resilience in the face of any adversity of body or mind we may face.
So our services offers us the opportunity to bring to mind those who are ill of mind or body and name them. More traditional synagogues will invite congregants upto the pulpit to whisper them in the rabbis’ ear. We however share them aloud with each other so as to find support from each other’s care and concern.
The story is told in the Talmud of Rabbi Yohanan who went to visit his friend Rabbi Hiyya who was ill. Rabbi Yohanan laid his hands upon him and healed him. But then Rabbi Yohanan fell ill himself and Rabbi Hiyya went to visit him. Rabbi Hiyya asked Rabbi Yohanan how he could heal others but not himself? Rabbi Yohanan answered, "Prisoners cannot release themselves from their own confinement."
Prayers for healing enable each of us to help others deal with the reality of their situation. For we may not all heal or heal completely. A friend of mine once told me that she loved the prayer for healing. She prayed it every week for her partner. Her partner had MS however and would never get better. He would never be cured and no amount of praying would change that. She said that she prayed for the strength and compassion to continue to look after her partner. She prayed that her partner would continue to see beauty in the world and to find life worth living.
Healing can mean wholeness, reconciliation, acceptance. It may mean an appreciation of the blessings we do have, despite the physical or mental illness we endure. Healing also refers to reconciliation between loved ones and overcoming pain of conflict. It can mean recovering after grief or loss. If we are caregivers, the prayer for healing brings us renewed compassion and patience for our sacred work. If we are doctors or nurses, the prayer may help us feel strengthened hope and fulfilment in the service and expertise we give to others. As a community, the prayer for healing can remind us that we are all seeking to thrive together, and we can lean on each other for support.
Mi Sh-Berach - May it be Your will, O God and God of our fathers and mothers, to send a complete and speedy healing, a healing of body and a healing of spirit to all who are ill among us.
Shabbat Service Central Reform Temple
August 12, 2022
Rabbi Dr Michael J Shire
Rest Assured*
Rabbi Elimelech and Rabbi Zusha loved the feel of the holiness of Shabbat every week, from its beginning to its end. Rabbi Elimelech said to Rabbi Zusha: “Brother, we should put this Shabbat feeling to the test to see if it’s a genuine feeling that comes from God. Because if it’s not, then our worship of God is also not genuine.”
“Brother,” Zusha replied, “What should we do about it? How can we put Shabbat to the test?” Elimelech replied, “We should hold a Shabbat dinner, authentic in every detail, on a weekday, and we should sit among our friends and talk Torah. If we feel the sanctity of Shabbat, we will know that our way is not one of truth. But if we feel nothing, that will prove that our way is true.”
They did just that. On a weekday they held a Shabbat dinner, dressed in their best clothes and sat with other their friends to discuss Torah. They immediately had the same feeling of the holiness of Shabbat that they would feel on a real Shabbat. The next time they met, Rabbi Elimelech said: “So, brother, we failed the test, what are we going to do?” Rabbi Zusha suggested that they to consult with their rebbe, the Magid of Mezrich. They went together and shared their concern with him. The Maggid told them: “If you made a Shabbat dinner and put on Shabbat clothes then it’s only natural that you felt the holiness of Shabbat. You didn’t fail the test, you in fact proved that Shabbat feelings have the power to spread the light of the holiness of Shabbat whenever we need them. It is people that make the day holy not just the things we do to make Shabbat, so you have no reason at all to be worried.” You did not fail but rather you succeeded.
This Hasidic story retold by Martin Buber seems deceptively simplistic but at its core is the fundamental philosophical speculation of how we control our own time and control of the world around us.
Perhaps the single most practical thing Judaism has offered to the world, is the distinction between the working week and a day of rest. This concept of Shabbat first conceptualized in the Hebrew Bible has been applied by every Civilization through the ages to provide a cessation in the unceasing drive to have, to own and to obtain more! For as Abraham Joshua Heschel stated in his Classic work, ‘The Sabbath’, Shabbat is rather a time to be, to become, to be open to wonder. As we all struggle with the boundaries of work and rest, blurring that distinction has only been exacerbated by the devices and machines we are addicted to, what a gift Shabbat can be to all of us. To cut back on consumerism, to take a break from addictive behaviours, to give the natural world some breathing space and rekindle attention to relationships in our lives. Shabbat is a much needed universal gift to all people. It was in fact immigrant Jewish workers in 1908 in a New England mill that first demanded and won a five day working week.
But before we give Shabbat away to everyone else, we need to understand and honour it’s meaning in our own community. That has been difficult because so many of us were taught the notion of a coercive Sabbath – one where we were required to give up everyday things and activities. The Talmud cites 39 types of activity to cease on Shabbat. A new book by Professor Nehemia Polen entitled ‘Stop, Look, Listen’ offers a different perspective on the notion of a day of rest. Polen argues that Shabbat is far from restful – there is so much to prepare, perform and do as prescribed by Jewish custom. So rather than thinking of it as a day of rest, Polen suggests we honour this Jewish gift of Sabbath by overcoming anxiety and tension; to stop, look and listen and allow Shabbos to let you rest assured . How can we make a Sabbath of Peace for ourselves?
Shabbat is a time for the hear and now, not the far away. It is coming home from a journey and sinking into that favorite sofa or armchair. It is looking with fresh eyes at everything around us and listening anew to those we love, to beautiful sounds of music or birdsong and to our own inner voice.
Shabbat is introduced to us in the Torah one month after the Exodus from Egypt. The Matza that was baked on leaving is running out and there is little food in the wilderness. So God sends Manna from heaven to sustain the people. We are told that on the 6th day they are to collect a double portion which is to last over the Sabbath. This is why Jews traditionally have two challot on their Shabbat table. The preparing, settling in, finding nourishment are the original sources for the meaning of Shabbat. Shabbat is not simply rest but rather awareness and attention to what really matters in your life and how to recover its meaning and purpose at week’s end. To rest assured.
Shabbat is a clearing of space and time that opens the heart to blessing and holiness, to transcendent presence. It’s purpose is to enhance dispositions of joy, gratitude, hospitality, generosity, kindness, acceptance, appreciation, optimism and hope. Don’t worry about the Do’s and Don’t’s of traditional practices. Think rather of the feelings that Shabbat engenders as Rabbis Elimelech and Zusha discovered can appear with the correct spiritual intention. There is an incredible lightness of being as we yield to an inwardness for the sake of higher pursuits and transcendent values.
Shabbat is a gift, a unique Jewish gift though we have shared it with the world. Whether we sit here in our sanctuary, or at home, we can make the best use of this gift by stopping for these moments of peace, looking at something or someone as if for the first time and I find it helpful to look up once in a while particularly if outside, and then listening to our inner voice, dreams and wonderings.
Favour us, O lord, with happiness and peace
And hear our Sabbath prayer. Amen
*Acknowledgement to Rabbi Nehemia Polen for this concept in his book ‘Stop, Look, Listen; Celebrating Shabbos through a Spiritual Lens’, Maggid Books, 2022.
“Brother,” Zusha replied, “What should we do about it? How can we put Shabbat to the test?” Elimelech replied, “We should hold a Shabbat dinner, authentic in every detail, on a weekday, and we should sit among our friends and talk Torah. If we feel the sanctity of Shabbat, we will know that our way is not one of truth. But if we feel nothing, that will prove that our way is true.”
They did just that. On a weekday they held a Shabbat dinner, dressed in their best clothes and sat with other their friends to discuss Torah. They immediately had the same feeling of the holiness of Shabbat that they would feel on a real Shabbat. The next time they met, Rabbi Elimelech said: “So, brother, we failed the test, what are we going to do?” Rabbi Zusha suggested that they to consult with their rebbe, the Magid of Mezrich. They went together and shared their concern with him. The Maggid told them: “If you made a Shabbat dinner and put on Shabbat clothes then it’s only natural that you felt the holiness of Shabbat. You didn’t fail the test, you in fact proved that Shabbat feelings have the power to spread the light of the holiness of Shabbat whenever we need them. It is people that make the day holy not just the things we do to make Shabbat, so you have no reason at all to be worried.” You did not fail but rather you succeeded.
This Hasidic story retold by Martin Buber seems deceptively simplistic but at its core is the fundamental philosophical speculation of how we control our own time and control of the world around us.
Perhaps the single most practical thing Judaism has offered to the world, is the distinction between the working week and a day of rest. This concept of Shabbat first conceptualized in the Hebrew Bible has been applied by every Civilization through the ages to provide a cessation in the unceasing drive to have, to own and to obtain more! For as Abraham Joshua Heschel stated in his Classic work, ‘The Sabbath’, Shabbat is rather a time to be, to become, to be open to wonder. As we all struggle with the boundaries of work and rest, blurring that distinction has only been exacerbated by the devices and machines we are addicted to, what a gift Shabbat can be to all of us. To cut back on consumerism, to take a break from addictive behaviours, to give the natural world some breathing space and rekindle attention to relationships in our lives. Shabbat is a much needed universal gift to all people. It was in fact immigrant Jewish workers in 1908 in a New England mill that first demanded and won a five day working week.
But before we give Shabbat away to everyone else, we need to understand and honour it’s meaning in our own community. That has been difficult because so many of us were taught the notion of a coercive Sabbath – one where we were required to give up everyday things and activities. The Talmud cites 39 types of activity to cease on Shabbat. A new book by Professor Nehemia Polen entitled ‘Stop, Look, Listen’ offers a different perspective on the notion of a day of rest. Polen argues that Shabbat is far from restful – there is so much to prepare, perform and do as prescribed by Jewish custom. So rather than thinking of it as a day of rest, Polen suggests we honour this Jewish gift of Sabbath by overcoming anxiety and tension; to stop, look and listen and allow Shabbos to let you rest assured . How can we make a Sabbath of Peace for ourselves?
Shabbat is a time for the hear and now, not the far away. It is coming home from a journey and sinking into that favorite sofa or armchair. It is looking with fresh eyes at everything around us and listening anew to those we love, to beautiful sounds of music or birdsong and to our own inner voice.
Shabbat is introduced to us in the Torah one month after the Exodus from Egypt. The Matza that was baked on leaving is running out and there is little food in the wilderness. So God sends Manna from heaven to sustain the people. We are told that on the 6th day they are to collect a double portion which is to last over the Sabbath. This is why Jews traditionally have two challot on their Shabbat table. The preparing, settling in, finding nourishment are the original sources for the meaning of Shabbat. Shabbat is not simply rest but rather awareness and attention to what really matters in your life and how to recover its meaning and purpose at week’s end. To rest assured.
Shabbat is a clearing of space and time that opens the heart to blessing and holiness, to transcendent presence. It’s purpose is to enhance dispositions of joy, gratitude, hospitality, generosity, kindness, acceptance, appreciation, optimism and hope. Don’t worry about the Do’s and Don’t’s of traditional practices. Think rather of the feelings that Shabbat engenders as Rabbis Elimelech and Zusha discovered can appear with the correct spiritual intention. There is an incredible lightness of being as we yield to an inwardness for the sake of higher pursuits and transcendent values.
Shabbat is a gift, a unique Jewish gift though we have shared it with the world. Whether we sit here in our sanctuary, or at home, we can make the best use of this gift by stopping for these moments of peace, looking at something or someone as if for the first time and I find it helpful to look up once in a while particularly if outside, and then listening to our inner voice, dreams and wonderings.
Favour us, O lord, with happiness and peace
And hear our Sabbath prayer. Amen
*Acknowledgement to Rabbi Nehemia Polen for this concept in his book ‘Stop, Look, Listen; Celebrating Shabbos through a Spiritual Lens’, Maggid Books, 2022.
Shabbat Service Central Reform Temple
July 22, 2022
Rabbi Dr Michael J Shire
To Build and to be Built Up
As some of you may know, I have just returned from Israel as part of a Rabbinic Leadership Seminar at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. 150 rabbis of all shades – Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Renewal and Reform gathering together to deliberate on the nature of Liberal Zionism and its connection to Judaism.
I have been travelling and visiting Israel for 50 years. My parents took me on my first family visit at Pesach 1973 which was of course just months before the Yom Kippur war that year. I went back on my own every few years after that working the land, digging the archaeological treasures and studying at the Hebrew University. It was a time to build and to be built up by those experiences; livnot u’l’hibanot. For me coming from cold England, it was experiencing for the first time a country in the Tropics. There was a actually a hamsin – a hot sand storm raging as we got off the plane and walked to the terminal in the old Lod Airport. To enter the ancient streets of Jerusalem, Acco, Caesarea with the Bible in mind was particularly exciting heightened by having read those famous novels of the ‘70s – James Michener’s the Source and Leon Uris, Exodus. It was also seeing a country in development, where absorption of immigrants was a huge task as the population kept doubling every decade with housing, roads, agriculture and making the desert bloom. Most especially it was meeting cousins for the first time, of whom our shared grandparents had all left Germany in 1938 and never seen each other again, let alone their children or grandchildren. These were sweet encounters of adults and children speaking different languages but celebrating Pesach together at a kibbutz seder with all of the agricultural and biblical significance heightened and understanding what a festival of freedom meant to Jews who had escaped Europe to find a home in a sovereign Jewish state. It really seemed to bring to life the words of our prayerbook – Ki M’tzion tetze Torah u’dvar Adonai Yerushalayim – For out of Zion shall come forth Torah and the word of God from Jerusalem.
However the innocence of that teen experience belies the current realities of today’s Zionism and the geopolitical reality that we all need to address for everyone – Jews and Palestinians in that shared land. One on the one hand we are the generation blessed to live in a time when there is a Jewish State after 2000 years. On the other hand, it is upto us to ensure that State represents the Judaism that we have struggled to maintain over those 2000 years.
Our seminar addressed this very theme: To what question is Israel now an answer to? The questions that early Zionism sought an answer to were; how to keep Jews safe and and how to give Jews sovereign power over their own destiny. In many ways that Zionist project has been successful and largely answered these two questions in less than a 100 years. For those who witnessed the birth of the State, the ingathering of the refugees from Europe and Arab countries and those who share in the memory of the fragility of keeping it alive, this is quite remarkable. I do so wish we could sit back and enjoy it as it is.
But there are now other questions for which Israel has to become an answer. This is now the work of a Liberal Zionism and is probably the most crucial challenge of 21st century Judaism.
There is the question of the moral use of the sovereign power that Israel now holds. This is perhaps the most troubling aspect of our aspirations for Zionism. To be a Sovereign People was not to rule over others and indeed take away their rights and historic claims to the land. During our Covid shutdown I read the historical account of 1948 as told by historian Benny Morris. There is much to know and relearn about the ways in which the Zionist project succeeded and how we got to the Middle East conflict today. Much like our rethinking here of the birth of European occupation on the American Continent with the 1619 project, enslavement of people of colour and genocide of native Americans, Zionists have to come to terms with the impact of the success of our Sovereign power and find an answer to those moral questions.
There is the question of the position of the Jewish people vis a vis the State. Engagement with Israel is one of the most active projects of the organized Jewish community – From birthright trips to family visits and next year for Israel’s 75th anniversary, CJP has organized trips for hundreds of Jews from Boston to visit. Whether these engagement projects with Israel are having the impact they want is still in doubt? Last year’s public letter from students in all of the American rabbinic schools criticizing Israel’s actions reflects the growing dissatisfaction from future American leaders with Israeli government policy and the 50 year military occupation of conquered territory. We have yet to answer the question of the relationship of the worldwide Jewish People with the State.
There is the question of the place of diversity of Jewish practice and belief in the Jewish state. While I was there, Zoe, the granddaughter of our colleague Cantor Louise Treitman was interrupted in her Batmitzvah ceremony at the Kotel – the Western Wall by a nasty group of haredi – ultra Orthodox followers tearing up siddurim and loudly disturbing poor Zoe’s Torah reading. The Rabbanut in Israel wields ungodly power over the lives of people being born, marrying, getting divorced and dying. This is a real scandal of the State that needs to be dismantled from the arrangement that David Ben Gurion set up in 1948. Yet, last Shabbat I was in Caesarea overlooking the cobalt blue Mediterranean with hundreds of secular Israelis who had turned up for a Kabbalat Shabbat service on the beach organized by the local Reform synagogue. With a woman rabbi and a lively band playing, the sun set over the Med as everyone turned towards the West as we sang Lecha Dodi!
Then there is the major question of two peoples living in one land. Up to now those on the left have advocated for a two state solution which has gone nowhere under the current leadership on all sides. However, there is now emerging from the grass roots, a new concept of confederation much like the European Union where commerce, free movement of labour, monetary policy can all be governed by an Abrahamic Union of Jews and Palestinians. Former Israeli President Rivlin spoke of 4 tribes now occupying this land; secular Jewish Zionists, religious Zionists, Palestinian Arabs and ultraorthodox Jews and they are all now mixed up together. As I heard it from ordinary people in all of these groups, physical borders delineating peoples is an outdated form of Nationalism. Identities and cultural differences can be distinguished by different kinds of divisions in one geographic entity, as long as, as a Palestinian told me, there is dignity for all and the opportunity to put bread on the table for all. I visited one such attempt at confederation in an area South of Jerusalem where an Israeli town, an ultra orthodox Jewish settlement and a Palestinian village are cooperating together for the first time, economically, socially, commercially and in terms of their mutual security. It was truly an inspiring concept and interestingly they all hold equal disdain for their respective governments and authorities. This bottom up approach seems to hold some hope for a growing coexistence, much like it did in Northern Ireland as Catholic and Protestant mothers and wives forced the political reconciliation that has held for 30 years. Is this an answer to the question of two peoples living together in one land for as a settler rabbi expressed it; the land does not belong to us, we all belong to the land.
Finally, there is the question of the Jewish dream. It was Herzl who famously declared ‘if you will it, it is no dream’ - Im tirzu – ayn zo agada. Within 50 years of that statement, a Jewish State was born with a revived language and literature and renaissance of Jewish culture and Israeli know how and technology in a Start-up Nation. But for the young teenager now growing Jewishly what is there left to build and to be built up by? What is the Jewish dream today that will inspire and create new vistas and have answers to both our Jewish and Universal values for all Peoples. How will we bring holiness from this narrow strip of land bridging Europe, Asia and Africa that has been the answer to questions of Jews, Christians and Muslims over thousands of years. Could this be a place where humanity can dream a better world together and turn those dreams into reality. Can an Abrahamic Union be an answer to that question? We pray for the day when Torah will truly come forth from Zion and the words of God from Jerusalem.
I have been travelling and visiting Israel for 50 years. My parents took me on my first family visit at Pesach 1973 which was of course just months before the Yom Kippur war that year. I went back on my own every few years after that working the land, digging the archaeological treasures and studying at the Hebrew University. It was a time to build and to be built up by those experiences; livnot u’l’hibanot. For me coming from cold England, it was experiencing for the first time a country in the Tropics. There was a actually a hamsin – a hot sand storm raging as we got off the plane and walked to the terminal in the old Lod Airport. To enter the ancient streets of Jerusalem, Acco, Caesarea with the Bible in mind was particularly exciting heightened by having read those famous novels of the ‘70s – James Michener’s the Source and Leon Uris, Exodus. It was also seeing a country in development, where absorption of immigrants was a huge task as the population kept doubling every decade with housing, roads, agriculture and making the desert bloom. Most especially it was meeting cousins for the first time, of whom our shared grandparents had all left Germany in 1938 and never seen each other again, let alone their children or grandchildren. These were sweet encounters of adults and children speaking different languages but celebrating Pesach together at a kibbutz seder with all of the agricultural and biblical significance heightened and understanding what a festival of freedom meant to Jews who had escaped Europe to find a home in a sovereign Jewish state. It really seemed to bring to life the words of our prayerbook – Ki M’tzion tetze Torah u’dvar Adonai Yerushalayim – For out of Zion shall come forth Torah and the word of God from Jerusalem.
However the innocence of that teen experience belies the current realities of today’s Zionism and the geopolitical reality that we all need to address for everyone – Jews and Palestinians in that shared land. One on the one hand we are the generation blessed to live in a time when there is a Jewish State after 2000 years. On the other hand, it is upto us to ensure that State represents the Judaism that we have struggled to maintain over those 2000 years.
Our seminar addressed this very theme: To what question is Israel now an answer to? The questions that early Zionism sought an answer to were; how to keep Jews safe and and how to give Jews sovereign power over their own destiny. In many ways that Zionist project has been successful and largely answered these two questions in less than a 100 years. For those who witnessed the birth of the State, the ingathering of the refugees from Europe and Arab countries and those who share in the memory of the fragility of keeping it alive, this is quite remarkable. I do so wish we could sit back and enjoy it as it is.
But there are now other questions for which Israel has to become an answer. This is now the work of a Liberal Zionism and is probably the most crucial challenge of 21st century Judaism.
There is the question of the moral use of the sovereign power that Israel now holds. This is perhaps the most troubling aspect of our aspirations for Zionism. To be a Sovereign People was not to rule over others and indeed take away their rights and historic claims to the land. During our Covid shutdown I read the historical account of 1948 as told by historian Benny Morris. There is much to know and relearn about the ways in which the Zionist project succeeded and how we got to the Middle East conflict today. Much like our rethinking here of the birth of European occupation on the American Continent with the 1619 project, enslavement of people of colour and genocide of native Americans, Zionists have to come to terms with the impact of the success of our Sovereign power and find an answer to those moral questions.
There is the question of the position of the Jewish people vis a vis the State. Engagement with Israel is one of the most active projects of the organized Jewish community – From birthright trips to family visits and next year for Israel’s 75th anniversary, CJP has organized trips for hundreds of Jews from Boston to visit. Whether these engagement projects with Israel are having the impact they want is still in doubt? Last year’s public letter from students in all of the American rabbinic schools criticizing Israel’s actions reflects the growing dissatisfaction from future American leaders with Israeli government policy and the 50 year military occupation of conquered territory. We have yet to answer the question of the relationship of the worldwide Jewish People with the State.
There is the question of the place of diversity of Jewish practice and belief in the Jewish state. While I was there, Zoe, the granddaughter of our colleague Cantor Louise Treitman was interrupted in her Batmitzvah ceremony at the Kotel – the Western Wall by a nasty group of haredi – ultra Orthodox followers tearing up siddurim and loudly disturbing poor Zoe’s Torah reading. The Rabbanut in Israel wields ungodly power over the lives of people being born, marrying, getting divorced and dying. This is a real scandal of the State that needs to be dismantled from the arrangement that David Ben Gurion set up in 1948. Yet, last Shabbat I was in Caesarea overlooking the cobalt blue Mediterranean with hundreds of secular Israelis who had turned up for a Kabbalat Shabbat service on the beach organized by the local Reform synagogue. With a woman rabbi and a lively band playing, the sun set over the Med as everyone turned towards the West as we sang Lecha Dodi!
Then there is the major question of two peoples living in one land. Up to now those on the left have advocated for a two state solution which has gone nowhere under the current leadership on all sides. However, there is now emerging from the grass roots, a new concept of confederation much like the European Union where commerce, free movement of labour, monetary policy can all be governed by an Abrahamic Union of Jews and Palestinians. Former Israeli President Rivlin spoke of 4 tribes now occupying this land; secular Jewish Zionists, religious Zionists, Palestinian Arabs and ultraorthodox Jews and they are all now mixed up together. As I heard it from ordinary people in all of these groups, physical borders delineating peoples is an outdated form of Nationalism. Identities and cultural differences can be distinguished by different kinds of divisions in one geographic entity, as long as, as a Palestinian told me, there is dignity for all and the opportunity to put bread on the table for all. I visited one such attempt at confederation in an area South of Jerusalem where an Israeli town, an ultra orthodox Jewish settlement and a Palestinian village are cooperating together for the first time, economically, socially, commercially and in terms of their mutual security. It was truly an inspiring concept and interestingly they all hold equal disdain for their respective governments and authorities. This bottom up approach seems to hold some hope for a growing coexistence, much like it did in Northern Ireland as Catholic and Protestant mothers and wives forced the political reconciliation that has held for 30 years. Is this an answer to the question of two peoples living together in one land for as a settler rabbi expressed it; the land does not belong to us, we all belong to the land.
Finally, there is the question of the Jewish dream. It was Herzl who famously declared ‘if you will it, it is no dream’ - Im tirzu – ayn zo agada. Within 50 years of that statement, a Jewish State was born with a revived language and literature and renaissance of Jewish culture and Israeli know how and technology in a Start-up Nation. But for the young teenager now growing Jewishly what is there left to build and to be built up by? What is the Jewish dream today that will inspire and create new vistas and have answers to both our Jewish and Universal values for all Peoples. How will we bring holiness from this narrow strip of land bridging Europe, Asia and Africa that has been the answer to questions of Jews, Christians and Muslims over thousands of years. Could this be a place where humanity can dream a better world together and turn those dreams into reality. Can an Abrahamic Union be an answer to that question? We pray for the day when Torah will truly come forth from Zion and the words of God from Jerusalem.
Inaugural Service Central Reform Temple
July 1, 2022
Rabbi Dr Michael J Shire
Holiness is Becoming
I'm delighted to be with you on this first of July and my inaugural service at Central Reform Temple. The 1st of July is an appropriate moment for a new transition. However it happens to also fall on the Torah portion of Korach in the book of Numbers. Korach, the rebel, who tries to undermine the leader of the community, Moses, and inspires an insurrection, which fails dramatically when God opens up the ground to swallow up Korach and his followers. I hope this is not symbolic for our new beginning together! But there is a message here in the Torah for all of us. Korah complains to Moses that he is setting himself up above the ordinary people and quoting the book of Leviticus, which is of course the Torah that Moses has shared with the people, suggests that all the people are holy, not just Moses and Aaron. For Leviticus 19 states, K’edoshim tiyu – You shall be holy for I your God am holy. This Korach suggests that all the people have been given a holy task and that Moses should not aggrandize himself above them.
Korah however has misunderstood an important component of Leviticus 19. It does not say, all the people are holy. Rather it says K’doshim tiyu – You shall be holy… It is rather a call to become holy though action, belief and character. Korah thought, after Sinai and revelation, the work was done and now the people could revel in their freedom and liberty. But he, like others in our contemporary society, should have understood that in Leviticus 19 God says they are not special by virtue of being part of this holy community, it's not that they're special because they were born a certain way, it's not that they're special because they align themselves with the Torah but rather it is a call to become something special. it's a call to do better, to find a way to make everyday special, every relationship special, every sacred encounter exceptional. It takes work and effort to do the holy work that is required.
There is a cartoon pinned on my colleague’s door at Hebrew College. The top panel depicts a rabbi exhorting his congregation with the words, who wants change? In the congregation, everyone’s hand is up enthusiastically! In the bottom panel, the rabbi is asking, ‘Who wants to change’? Everyone in the congregation is looking sheepishly away!
K’doshim Tiyu seems to me to be a wonderful way to begin this very special relationship between Rabbi and congregation. I have always thought of a congregation having three pillars; Beit Midrash, Beit Tefila, Beit Knesset – House of Learning, House of Prayer and a House of Fellowship. In fact, my first errand after receiving Devon and Dick’s call to become your rabbi was to go to Staples and find a note book with tabs. That way, I can keep notes under each Bayit -each house or pillar of the congregational work. As a teacher I love the work of the Beit Midrash – the house of learning. Together we can uncover the wisdom of a 2500 year old literary tradition with all of its interpretations and hidden meanings still to be uncovered. The work of the Beit Tefila – the house of prayer will take place here in this sacred space drawing upon ancient and contemporary liturgy but perhaps most importantly the service of our heart. I look to Andrew and our wonderful singers to enhance our worship with their beautiful music and voices that “ascend the brightest heaven of invention”! The Beit Knesset – the house of fellowship is the heart of our community. One that I hope will always be a place of fellowship and support for all who enter and I look forward to becoming part of it.
What I quickly learned was that there are actually more than just three pillars of this community. Rev Pam brought me upto speed on what I am calling a Beit Shituf – A House of Partnership and Sacred Covenant and Jill introduced me to the work of the Emanuel Center and what I will call the Beit Tikkun – the House of repair and restoration of human dignity. I was fortunate that Staples’ notebooks have multiple tabs!!
I know how the community that has been built here over many years through different leaders and rabbinic spiritual guides particularly recently through the sterling work of Rabbi Howard Kosofsky. How important it has been for these friendships to be nurtured, developed, supported and enhanced during these difficult two plus years. Members of the congregation and particularly the Board of Trustees have spent themselves in the service of this Beit Knesset over these last two years and they deserve our appreciation and gratitude so that we can be here today to continue the good work.
But we cannot rest on our laurels. Kedoshim Tiyu! Benjamin Zander, The Boston based orchestra conductor tells the famous story of the rabbi’s gift in his book, The Art of Possibility. This is the story of the monastery that has fallen on hard times and no longer attracts visitors to pray or monks to work in the monastery gardens. The Abbot unsure of what to do, goes to the local rabbi to seek some advice but the rabbi has none to give. However as the Abbot is about to leave, the rabbi offers a gift of wisdom and suggests that one of the monks might very well be the messiah. Returning to the monastery and relaying the wisdom of the rabbi to his community, the monks begin to wonder, which one of us could very well be the messiah and they treat each other with greater generosity and kindness. Word spreads that the monastery is a warm and appreciative community, caring for each other with extraordinary gentleness and empathy. Visitors come again to stay and learn, new monks are eager to join and the community is rebuilt and restored to greater heights than before. As we build on the strengths of the past, we will continue to develop our capacities of support, empathy, kindness and responsibility for others.
Building Sacred community is our work to do together and we have three great teachings of the Hebrew Bible that have so inspired Western Civilization to guide us. That we are all created in the image of God – b’zelem elohim, is an obligation to respect and celebrate our diversity; of colour, of gender, of sexuality, of faith. To love our neigbour as ourself – ve’ahavta l’reacha camocha is to reach out beyond ourselves with empathy and kindness and that tzedek tzedek tirdorf – to go out and pursue justice so that all can receive the blessings of life, health and dignity in an uncompleted world. We have seen this past week how we cannot take these three principles for granted. We will have to continue to work for justice for women’s reproductive health, for the health of our planet, for the democratic principles that have developed and expanded liberty for the past 250 years in this country. We follow these principles in conjunction with our sacred partners at Emmanuel Church and know that we are interdependent with all faiths to bring about a more just society here and everywhere. As we try and navigate our way in a changing world tossed by the storms domestically and internationally, we need to keep anchored to these fundamental principles and values of our age old faith. So like Moses and Aaron in this week’s parasha, we will not be cowered by those who believe only they hold absolute truth. Rather we will take up the fight and resist their insurrection against our democratic and Torah values.
So as we go on this new journey together and receive the blessings of this sacred community, let us renew our commitment to work for holiness together so that we can hold firm to our values, enact them for the repair of the world around us and treat each other and those we love and know with extra kindness and love. After all, one of us might just be the messiah!
The Jewish ideal is a sacred community.
The successful beginning then, is not to find God in an instant, or even a day or a month or a year.
Sacred community begins with a modest but firm commitment to the project of our generation.
To transcend ethnicity and seek out the Holy in such things as the ways we speak, the blessings we say, the truths we discover and the homes we have or seek to find.
Sacred Community is not just what we want. It is what we need.
and it beckons us now more than ever to return, to find it.
Korah however has misunderstood an important component of Leviticus 19. It does not say, all the people are holy. Rather it says K’doshim tiyu – You shall be holy… It is rather a call to become holy though action, belief and character. Korah thought, after Sinai and revelation, the work was done and now the people could revel in their freedom and liberty. But he, like others in our contemporary society, should have understood that in Leviticus 19 God says they are not special by virtue of being part of this holy community, it's not that they're special because they were born a certain way, it's not that they're special because they align themselves with the Torah but rather it is a call to become something special. it's a call to do better, to find a way to make everyday special, every relationship special, every sacred encounter exceptional. It takes work and effort to do the holy work that is required.
There is a cartoon pinned on my colleague’s door at Hebrew College. The top panel depicts a rabbi exhorting his congregation with the words, who wants change? In the congregation, everyone’s hand is up enthusiastically! In the bottom panel, the rabbi is asking, ‘Who wants to change’? Everyone in the congregation is looking sheepishly away!
K’doshim Tiyu seems to me to be a wonderful way to begin this very special relationship between Rabbi and congregation. I have always thought of a congregation having three pillars; Beit Midrash, Beit Tefila, Beit Knesset – House of Learning, House of Prayer and a House of Fellowship. In fact, my first errand after receiving Devon and Dick’s call to become your rabbi was to go to Staples and find a note book with tabs. That way, I can keep notes under each Bayit -each house or pillar of the congregational work. As a teacher I love the work of the Beit Midrash – the house of learning. Together we can uncover the wisdom of a 2500 year old literary tradition with all of its interpretations and hidden meanings still to be uncovered. The work of the Beit Tefila – the house of prayer will take place here in this sacred space drawing upon ancient and contemporary liturgy but perhaps most importantly the service of our heart. I look to Andrew and our wonderful singers to enhance our worship with their beautiful music and voices that “ascend the brightest heaven of invention”! The Beit Knesset – the house of fellowship is the heart of our community. One that I hope will always be a place of fellowship and support for all who enter and I look forward to becoming part of it.
What I quickly learned was that there are actually more than just three pillars of this community. Rev Pam brought me upto speed on what I am calling a Beit Shituf – A House of Partnership and Sacred Covenant and Jill introduced me to the work of the Emanuel Center and what I will call the Beit Tikkun – the House of repair and restoration of human dignity. I was fortunate that Staples’ notebooks have multiple tabs!!
I know how the community that has been built here over many years through different leaders and rabbinic spiritual guides particularly recently through the sterling work of Rabbi Howard Kosofsky. How important it has been for these friendships to be nurtured, developed, supported and enhanced during these difficult two plus years. Members of the congregation and particularly the Board of Trustees have spent themselves in the service of this Beit Knesset over these last two years and they deserve our appreciation and gratitude so that we can be here today to continue the good work.
But we cannot rest on our laurels. Kedoshim Tiyu! Benjamin Zander, The Boston based orchestra conductor tells the famous story of the rabbi’s gift in his book, The Art of Possibility. This is the story of the monastery that has fallen on hard times and no longer attracts visitors to pray or monks to work in the monastery gardens. The Abbot unsure of what to do, goes to the local rabbi to seek some advice but the rabbi has none to give. However as the Abbot is about to leave, the rabbi offers a gift of wisdom and suggests that one of the monks might very well be the messiah. Returning to the monastery and relaying the wisdom of the rabbi to his community, the monks begin to wonder, which one of us could very well be the messiah and they treat each other with greater generosity and kindness. Word spreads that the monastery is a warm and appreciative community, caring for each other with extraordinary gentleness and empathy. Visitors come again to stay and learn, new monks are eager to join and the community is rebuilt and restored to greater heights than before. As we build on the strengths of the past, we will continue to develop our capacities of support, empathy, kindness and responsibility for others.
Building Sacred community is our work to do together and we have three great teachings of the Hebrew Bible that have so inspired Western Civilization to guide us. That we are all created in the image of God – b’zelem elohim, is an obligation to respect and celebrate our diversity; of colour, of gender, of sexuality, of faith. To love our neigbour as ourself – ve’ahavta l’reacha camocha is to reach out beyond ourselves with empathy and kindness and that tzedek tzedek tirdorf – to go out and pursue justice so that all can receive the blessings of life, health and dignity in an uncompleted world. We have seen this past week how we cannot take these three principles for granted. We will have to continue to work for justice for women’s reproductive health, for the health of our planet, for the democratic principles that have developed and expanded liberty for the past 250 years in this country. We follow these principles in conjunction with our sacred partners at Emmanuel Church and know that we are interdependent with all faiths to bring about a more just society here and everywhere. As we try and navigate our way in a changing world tossed by the storms domestically and internationally, we need to keep anchored to these fundamental principles and values of our age old faith. So like Moses and Aaron in this week’s parasha, we will not be cowered by those who believe only they hold absolute truth. Rather we will take up the fight and resist their insurrection against our democratic and Torah values.
So as we go on this new journey together and receive the blessings of this sacred community, let us renew our commitment to work for holiness together so that we can hold firm to our values, enact them for the repair of the world around us and treat each other and those we love and know with extra kindness and love. After all, one of us might just be the messiah!
The Jewish ideal is a sacred community.
The successful beginning then, is not to find God in an instant, or even a day or a month or a year.
Sacred community begins with a modest but firm commitment to the project of our generation.
To transcend ethnicity and seek out the Holy in such things as the ways we speak, the blessings we say, the truths we discover and the homes we have or seek to find.
Sacred Community is not just what we want. It is what we need.
and it beckons us now more than ever to return, to find it.
