Liberal and Zionist Erev Rosh HaShanah 5771 Rabbi David Adelson East End Temple, New York
As many of you know, my family and I were in Israel for part of my sabbatical time earlier this summer. We had a wonderful time: the kids did great, I had time for some writing and reflection, and as much as ever, I was moved in ways I can’t fully describe to be in the Jewish homeland, speaking the language, eating the food, feeling like a witness a modern miracle of Jewish history.
We were also there for the flotilla incident, in which Turkish-sponsored activists sought to breach the blockade of Gaza, and nine activists were killed after they attacked Israeli naval commandos. I was horrified by the events themselves and the failures, military and diplomatic, that allowed them to happen. And I was horrified by the lack of nuance and context in so much of the world’s response to the incident. In the United States, the divide in opinions was sadly predictable. A staunchly defensive Jewish organizational establishment on one side and anti-Israel, left-wing commentators on the other. This split is a perfect -- and dispiriting -- example of how far we’ve come from the early days of Israel. If the image of Israel to most American Jews once was the brave, hard-working kibbutznik, today it is the soldiers who boarded the flotilla.
To a prior generation, the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel were the defining markers of American Jewish identity. But not so today. As Israel’s story has become less romantic and more complicated, it is natural that some evolution should occur. But that growing complexity alone does not explain why Israel fails to attract, and sometimes repels, a growing number of American Jews.
In the June issue of The New York Review of Books, Peter Beinert, a CUNY associate professor of journalism and political science, among many other things, offered a provocative perspective on why younger American Jews have grown less interested in Israel. His critique is important for any of us who do care about Israel, because it explains, perhaps, why the rest of us don’t.
Beinert says that in the pre-state and early statehood days of Israel, American Jews found natural expression for their liberal values in supporting the fledgling Jewish state. These were the days of the kibbutz movement, socialist-leaning governments, and a country that sought not only security but also social justice. Because American Jews were then, and remain, to the left of the American political mainstream, it was a natural fit, an extension of who we were. My father made aliya to Israel in 1951 and lived there for 8 years because in addition to all of his personal reasons, he believed in a Zionist Socialist mission. The youth movement he was a part of sought to create, through kibbutzim, not only a new country but a new type of human being, one who lives naturally as part of a collective. It was an ambitious extension of one of Torah’s most basic values: to love one’s neighbor as one’s self.
And of course, those times changed. The miraculous military victory of 1967 initiated the ongoing occupation of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The little socialist engine that could grew up into a robust capitalist economy increasingly similar to the U.S. in its widening gap between rich and poor. Compulsory military service became less plainly noble and more fraught with ethical doubt. The humanistic, universal values of Israel’s early days have given way to rising ultra-nationalism and ultra-Orthodox domination.
But Beinert does not blame American Jews’ growing disillusionment on the increasingly complex reality in Israel. Rather, he accuses the American Jewish organizational leadership of being unwilling to shift with the times. Young American Jews remain as liberal as ever. But unlike their elders, they are not traumatized by the Holocaust and do not remember the near annihilations of the War for Independence and the Six-Days War. They see Israel as an occupier, far more militarily powerful than its neighbors. They bristle at what they view as concern for Jews alone and disregard for others. And while Israel’s politics and world image grow ever more right-wing, groups like AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations grow more defensive of Israel. They demand unquestioning loyalty, Israel right or wrong. In Beinert’s words: “For several decades, the Jewish establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at Zionism’s door, and now, to their horror, they are finding that many young Jews have checked their Zionism instead.”
I should note that some researchers dispute Beinert’s assumption that young Jews are more detached from Israel than previous generations, even if still at high rates. But no one disputes that a significant portion of American Jews, especially the young generation, shows low interest in Israel. So whichever side you believe -- that young Jews are just predictably disinterested or that they are more disinterested now than ever -- it’s a problem.
And Beinert further warns that the polarization in the Jewish community threatens to grow until there is no longer room for any liberal Jews to care about and be involved with Israel. Beinert, who himself attends an Orthodox synagogue and sends his kids to Orthodox day-school, fears that in another generation the only American Jews who will care about Israel will be right-wing Orthodox, with the rest of us lost to Zionism forever.
As a left-leaning, peace-loving, justice-seeking ardent Zionist, I am pained by this prospect. I remain ever hopeful of seeing an Israeli government that takes the need for peaceful resolution with the Palestinians seriously, even as it defends the safety of its citizens. We will soon see how serious Bibi Netanyahu is in the current negotiations. I also want to see the mobilization of the Israeli population to defend their own civil rights from the constantly encroaching political power of the ultra-Orthodox. And I yearn to see the rights of all Israelis and residents of Israel, including women, Jews and non-Jews alike and every minority group, defended as vigorously as their physical safety.
But I also dream of an American Jewish community that exercises more options than loving Israel as it is or abandoning it as hopeless, or worse. Our lives are full of complex relationships: with family, friends, with all of the institutions we are a part of, and perhaps especially, with God. We derive so much meaning in our relationships from the commitment we demonstrate by our hard work, motivated by an underlying love. Loving others in their full complexity is what it means to be a mature, fulfilled, person. Our complex relationship with the people and state of Israel could be just as rich and meaningful, even though it is never simple.
The recent years have seen the emergence of some hopeful spots in the landscape of Jewish organizations. The creation of JStreet, a pro-Israel, pro-peace lobbying organization has gathered increasing funding, attention and support. And most especially, the New Israel Fund, the largest supporter of civil rights, religious pluralism and human rights groups in Israel, is undergoing a revitalization. It offers American Jews the opportunity to express some of the highest values of our people on behalf of all inhabitants of Israel. Values like the fair treatment of workers, upholding the widow and the orphan, knowing the experience of the stranger and seeing the image of God in the face of every person are made real by local efforts across the Israeli landscape. We do not have to check our Zionism at the door to be liberal. Whereas in prior generations we supported the pioneers of a fledgling Israel, current rights groups in Israel are the pioneers of today. I encourage everyone to check out the New Israel Fund’s website, learn about the many hopeful campaigns going on today, and also consider supporting the ones that move you most. (Full disclosure: the new CEO of the New Israel Fund is a dear friend of mine. I can vouch for his brilliance, and his effectiveness.) (I also met my wife at their annual fundraiser. But still.)
And there remains one, single, very best way to inform ourselves about the reality, diversity, and complexity of life in Israel and the real-life implications of all the politics. And that is to fulfill the mitzvah of visiting. A few years ago we took our first East End Temple trip in many years. It was, predictably, awesome. Honestly, I have never once heard of someone traveling to Israel and not returning changed, and inspired. I am dying to take another group. Please be in touch with me soon to let me know if you are interested. We plan to go in the spring or early summer. And for those of you with children between the ages of 18 and 26, you must, must make sure your kids go on a free birthright Israel trip.
Why should we all care about Israel? Because living as a majority group in our ancient home is the single greatest social experiment in our people’s history. And every Jew who visits Israel, and every Jew who lives there, knows that there is something very special about this place at this moment. Whatever our politics, few of us love unequivocally what goes on in Israel. But we cannot deny the transcendent power of the Jewish homeland and its people. I encourage all of us to cultivate a new and deeper dimension of our Jewish identity by engaging more fully in what goes on there, whether we love it, hate it, or are somewhere in between. When American and Israeli Jews of all types care enough, and act on that caring, we can fulfill the promise of this great experiment. In the words of Theodore Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, if you will it, it is no dream.
Wake Up
Wake Up Rosh Hashanah Morning 5771 Rabbi David Adelson East End Temple
What is the most annoying sound you can imagine? Is it nails on a blackboard? Car alarm? Screaming baby? I’m going with gnats or mosquitos buzzing in my ear. Whah. Even thinking about that high-pitched whine makes me shudder.
I want to share with you how I endured a recent confrontation with my insect nemeses. In July, I attended a spirituality retreat for rabbis. One beautiful New England morning, I was doing a walking meditation practice, slowly crossing a lush lawn, observing the trees and beautiful hillside nearby, trying to focus on my breathing. So I am walking, feeling the grass under my feet, and then I hear at first a soft little whine. And then two little whines together. And then, almost immediately, I am surrounded by them. So now I am not thinking about the grass, or my breathing, or anything, other than the high-pitched cloud that is my new reality.
And just as I reached the verge of losing it completely, I had a moment of realization. I thought: could my meditation teacher have somehow hired this swarm of gnats to help me learn something? Because those damn gnats hadn’t ruined my meditation. They had actually enhanced it.
One main reason for practicing meditation is to learn how to return to a calm, focused place when we get distracted. And of course, getting distracted is what we do all day, every day -- whether by people at work who frustrate us, our phones alerting us to something really important every 10 seconds, obsessing over something someone said to us this morning, or planning what we need to pick up on our way home. But the thing about being distracted is that when we are someplace else, we are not right here, right now, in the present. And to make the best decisions we can, based on what is really in front of us, we have to be present. So it turns out that a seemingly annoying distraction, like my swarm of gnats, can actually remind us to be present, right now. The distraction can be an alarm -- time to wake up.
In Judaism, our annual alarm is not the buzz of insects but the blast of the ram’s horn, the sound of the shofar. It is the call that captivates us, and keeps us from drifting off. Every year, we prepare for hearing the shofar with the quote from Maimonides: “Awake, awake, you slumberers from your sleep, inspect your actions and return…”
This is what the high holidays are about -- being awake, being aware, refocusing right here, right now. That refocusing is t'shuva, return. Distraction, return, distraction, return.
And we really, really need that call to wake up and return. Because all of us, almost all the time, are not focused on what is happening to us at the present moment -- what we see or taste or smell, what we feel in our bodies, what we feel in our emotions. Instead, we are usually someplace else -- reviewing what we did earlier today, or last week, or years ago. Or we are planning for later -- what we are going to cook for dinner, what we need to get done before tomorrow, how we are going to pay for something. These are all things we do need to think about, and there is nothing wrong with that. But without realizing it, we are often so distracted that we don’t even know what is real, right now. And without knowing what is real -- to our senses, in our bodies, in our emotions -- we can’t make the best decisions for our lives, with accurate information. Instead, we make our decisions based on old stories -- how we felt about something in the past -- or based on fear or hope for the future. Either way, we can miss what is real right now. And being present, right now, right here, is also the way to experience awe and wonder at all that is truly remarkable in the world, and in our lives. That wonder is the beginning of religion, the beginning of spirituality, the beginning of meaning. And regaining contact with that wonder can be the beginning of happiness.
We often feel that happiness is something that will come later, after things are different. Tell me if any of this resonates: I will be happy when I have just a bit more money, or have a different job, or if I find a partner, or find a different partner, or if I have children, or if I can get some time away from my children, or if I have a different apartment, or a different body. The list goes on. And of course we sometimes do endure terrible challenges and misfortunes, and those make it much harder to be happy. But even in the face of those challenges, we can still find an occasional moment of peace, and still feel pockets of happiness. And while we do need to make real changes in our lives, we can often be much happier right here, in this moment, with things just as they are. We can be present to another person and open to who they are, and without judgment, just feel love for them. Or we can stop and taste a peach, really taste the late-August, firm, soft, sweet, tangy peach from the farmer’s market, and not think about anything else. Regardless of what else is going on in our life, or in the world, for just a moment we are truly present, and perhaps even peaceful, perhaps even happy.
On Rosh HaShanah, we pray for life, we pray to be kept alive. But most of us don’t believe that the life we are praying for on the high holidays is literal long life, as if there is a God who decides that some of us will see old age and others will die soon. We know it doesn’t work that way. But the life we can pray for is to be more alive, more awake, in the time that we do have. That is the call of the shofar -- wake up, and to the best extent you can, remain awake through your life. Living is about quality, not quantity.
And in the High Holiday liturgy, we pray to do t'shuva, or return, in two ways. We try to reconnect with God, bein adam lamakom, and with other human beings, bein adam lachavero. As we know, that’s easier said than done, and there are plenty of obstacles to having a real connecting experience on the holidays. But focusing on living more awake, more aware, can help us transcend some of those obstacles and get to the spiritual heart of the matter.
Much of our liturgy describes a God we can’t relate to. So talking to that powerful, far-away God may be an exercise in frustration for many of us. But by focusing right here -- what does it feel like to be in these clothes, sitting on this seat, seeing these faces, asking these questions -- we may sense that all this is just the surface level of something deeper. We may not know much, or anything, about that deeper level. But whatever it is, that is what we call God. Our ancestors sensed that deeper level, and they created Torah, and our whole religion, to try to channel, describe and respond to it. And we have just as much access to that deeper level as any of our forebears did. Fortunately for us, those ancestors created mechanisms -- that is, all of Jewish practice -- to help remind us to be awake.
The second part of return on the holidays is about relations between ourselves and others -- bein adam lachavero. This is about how we interact with the people in our lives, with all of humanity, and with the whole world. This is the area of intimate relationships, and of social justice. It is about making each one of the choices we make in our lives, every day.
We have to be present to see clearly what is really going on, to make good choices. What does this look like? In a very simple example, let’s say you were bitten by a dog when you were young. Then, even in your adult life, you can respond to every dog you meet as a mortal threat. There may sometimes be a real danger, but not usually. The only way to tell the difference is by being present -- who is this particular dog, how is it behaving, etc. The same of course is true for emotional injuries we have received. Whether we’re talking about a diagnosable trauma, or just a normal painful event, we naturally react out of past experience, instead of what is really going on now. It is important to learn from the lessons of the past, but we don’t have to helplessly live them over and over.
The same is true for us as a Jewish people. The overwhelming trauma of the Holocaust affects so much of what we do, for the nation of Israel and all Jews of the world. Our ability to discern what constitutes a real mortal threat is compromised. Unless we can be fully awake to what is real, we have no choice but to respond to every threat as potentially fatal. And then we will never trust anyone, and cut off so much potential growth and experience and connection.
And this discernment is necessary in our pursuit of social justice as well. To make decisions about how to heal our broken world, starting with our own local community, we have to allow ourselves to see and feel and know what is truly going on. We have to listen to one another, and not assume answers ahead of time. That is why so much of our community organizing process is about meeting one-to-one, and in small groups, before we take on any action together.
How can we cultivate more awareness, more awakeness in our lives? How can the “buzzing” of all those distractions remind us that it is time to listen for something deeper? There are many ways, and different ones will work for each of us. Practicing meditation or yoga are two. The classic Jewish way is Shabbat; we stop and try to be present for one day a week, either in services or at home, in the ways that are right for us. Another Jewish way is by saying blessings before we eat. It is possible to be so much more present to a sandwich, and then really enjoy it, if we can stop for a moment first and focus. And at the Temple this year we are piloting a new mid-week service as a way to find time to stop and be present together. On most Wednesdays at 6:15pm., we will get together for just half an hour to pray, sing, learn and be silent together. The service will be led by me, the cantor, and our rabbinic intern Sara Luria, in different combinations. We hope many of us will give it a try and see if it helps us to be present -- or to pray for healing, to say kaddish, or fill other needs we have.
It definitely takes practice to learn to wake up and live more in the present. But this can be the way to more connection with God and with people, to being happier, to transforming our lives and transforming our world. There are no guarantees. But in a few moments, when we hear the shofar, let’s see if we can be fully awake. And then let’s imagine a whole life in which moment to moment to moment, we are more awake.
As you know, here at East End Temple, we like to try out new ways of doing things to keep it all fresh and current. So I was talking with Karen Feuer, the president of EET, about some ways we could do that here tonight. We thought we could get Ben Wisch to set his keyboard to rhumba. We briefly considered a snack cart in the aisles for all of Yom Kippur. And finally, we had the amazing idea to get a whole bunch of our members to come up and blow shofar together, and then we remembered, we did that already on Rosh Hashanah.
So instead, for the craziest idea we could think of: tomorrow morning, in my place, Karen will give a sermon on the Torah portion, and tonight, I am going to deliver the High Holy Day Appeal. Seriously. This is it.
Why are we all here tonight? I believe that on some level we all want to know, and to affirm, that we are a part of something larger than ourselves. Exactly what that something is may be different for each of us. We may be seeking a sense of spiritual connection - to God, or to an abiding sense of peace. We may wish to affirm a connection to East End Temple. We may seek a reminder that we are a part of the entire Jewish people, all over the world, gathered at this time. We may want to be reminded that we are a people of deep values. We may simply wish to see some of the faces of our friends and neighbors.
All of the ways we seek to know that our lives matter, that we are a part of something bigger, are aspects of the same thing. On a level so deep that we can’t possibly know all about it, we are indeed connected. That great web of connection is what our tradition calls “God.”
Every time we act on our sense of connection, we make that connection real. Our acts can be more personal, like taking time for exercise, meditation or Jewish ritual, or they can be social, like acting toward others with compassion, doing justice work, or coming to synagogue on Yom Kippur.
We are all a part of East End Temple community to make our feeling of connection a reality. And the East End Temple community that we are a part of is the one we make. The whole we are a part of is the sum of all of us - but it is also a greater whole than just us, when we act to make it real. We act with our presence, our compassion and our love, with our passion and our hard work. And that greater whole exists only when we also act with our resources, with our money.
I want to be very concrete and talk about the ways building a greater whole depends on funding. At the Temple, there are things we always have to pay for, the fixed costs like salaries, maintaining our building, and basic operations. Beyond those are the variables that we can either afford or not afford, and it is on those margins where we succeed -- or fail -- at being compassionate, connecting, and visionary.
Let me offer one scenario. The mother of a young son who is on the Aspergers’ spectrum contacts us, and is concerned about how her son will fit into our religious school environment. When we have the money to do so, we can hire the extra aide we need to support this boy so he can fully participate in religious school and Jewish life. He gets a fuller Jewish life. His mother feels the embrace of supportive community. And our whole community sees that when each of us is valued, we all have value. Together, we manifest the value that each person is created in the image of God.
Imagine also this scene. A newcomer joins us for services. He is in search of a worship experience, but hesitant because of memories of dull services from his childhood. He joins our Shabbat service, and is struck by the gorgeous, new music he hears, and moved by the whole community singing together. It feels comforting, uplifting, and current. He decides to come back again next week. When we have money, we can hire the extra musicians, and give them the extra practice time that it takes for our incredibly talented cantor to do what she is capable of: create truly inspiring, innovative worship. When we transcend doing the same old thing all the time, we make real the possibility for growth and vibrancy in each of our own lives, and in the life of our community.
And finally, let me paint a picture of an event that has become very familiar. A member who has been a part of our community for many years reaches out to me or Karen with the ashamed revelation that they or their partner are out of work and they can’t afford our membership fee. And another person who has been coming to services for a while confesses that they’d love to become a member of this exciting community, but they don’t have the money. At East End Temple, we have room for everyone. Every, every, every one. Especially in these economic times, it takes such a financial effort to accommodate every person who can’t make the dues right now. We have more people in our community experiencing financial straits than we have had in a long time. Every member of our community who comes forward to cover that shortfall makes belief in a greater whole real in the most tangible way. The Mishna teaches: kol yisrael arevin zeh b’zeh. Every member of the community is responsible for one another. All of you who cover our dues shortfall know this is not charity -- this is an affirmation that we need one another, we are part of each other, and we cannot leave anyone behind. In the words of the Shma that we say at every service - v’ahavta et Adonai elohecha, b’chol levavcha, b’chol nafshecha, u’v’chol me’odecha. You shall love the Eternal your God with all your heart, with all your spirit, and with all your “me’od,” with your resources, that make your heart and spirit concrete.
Each of these examples has actually happened. Each of these examples demonstrates how our community has already risen to live by our highest values, with the hard work and the generosity of so many of our members. And each of these examples, and so many more, are the challenges we need to rise to for our future.
Our leadership and staff share a vision of the vibrant, connected community we are trying to build. We are already growing more successful, fun and engaging in the education of children, more integrated in families learning together, more creative in ritual, more energetic in leadership development, and more committed to social justice. We are proud of what we’ve done and are poised to do so much more. Simply put, this is not your father’s shul. This is not the synagogue many of us may remember from our own youth. It is not the EET of 10 or even 5 years ago.
We worry about our finances and an annual budget deficit. We will need to keep growing in members to become more comfortably stable over time. In the meantime, we know the road to that growth in numbers is to continue growing in the vitality of what we do. If we fulfill our vision of infusing everything we do with meaning - that is how we will attract others. It is also how we will nourish ourselves.
And before you can effect change in the world you have to be spiritually healthy yourself. Supporting our Temple community is supporting our selves in our whole lives. Our Temple can be the first layer of knowing we are a part of a greater whole, that our actions matter, that we matter. Then, with that base, we are like an etz shatul al palgei mayim, a tree planted by the waters. Firmly rooted, we approach the world with confidence and compassion, knowing there are so many other opportunities in our lives to demonstrate that we are a part of something much greater.
I wanted to take on this new role tonight of asking for all of your financial commitment to the Temple because I believe that we are doing something real, and are on the verge of doing much more. I believe in what we are doing already and in our potential. I believe the funds we raise tonight will help us make our values real, and the sacrifice will be worth it.
I understand the financial stress many of us feel, believe me. It is not lightly that I ask you to stretch yourselves. But I do. I ask for your faith in our collective project, and your faith that we are indeed part of something potentially wonderful, something much greater than all of us. I ask you to punch the hole on your commitment cards and be more generous than you have before. With this affirming act we make real the connections that surround us and tie us to one another, that extend beyond us to all that is.
You shall love your Eternal God with all your heart, all your spirit, and with all you have.
