Parashat Noah: Who can we believe in?

I’ve always wondered if Babies R’ Us and Pottery Barn Kids see the dark irony that I see in the Noah’s Ark theme that so often adorns the curtains and crib bumpers and baby blankets that they promote for baby décor and gifts. All of those happy animals crammed onto that fun wooden boat with a beautiful rainbow overhead, Noah standing there with the dove roosting on his finger, while the entire world’s population dies off in the flood waters beneath them.

Although our culture colors over this story with pastels and smiley faces, it doesn’t take much digging to discover the more shadowy aspects of the Noah story. You may be aware that according to the Torah, Noah was known as a “tzaddik” – a righteous person, pure in his generation. But you may not be as aware of this story from the end of Noah’s life:

After leaving the Ark and the rainbow, Noah plants a vineyard and makes wine. One day he gets drunk on his wine, and, according to the Torah, he “uncovers himself in his tent.” Noah’s youngest son Ham see his father’s nakedness and tells his other two brothers about it. These two brothers then take a cloth, and walking backwards so they don’t see Noah, they cover him. When Noah wakes up from his wine and learns that Ham had seen him naked, he curses his son and all those who will eventually descend from him.

This is episode is quite murky in its details, and like many Torah stories, we can read it in various ways. The surface meaning is that Ham committed a crime in exposing his father and shaming him. But when you look closely you can see that there is a political agenda in this reading. Ham is the progenitor of the Canaanite people, who later become the mortal enemies of the Israelites. Of course the Torah would plant this story in order to give a reason for why the Canaanites turned out so badly.

Another equally valid way to read this story is to notice the word used for Noah’s nakedness – “ervah.” This same word is used later in the book of Leviticus to label improper sexual relationships, such as incest. In this light, we might understand that Ham was either the victim of incest himself , at the hands of his father, or that he caught his father Noah engaging in a prohibited sexual act.

This reading shows Ham as taking a huge risk. He knows something is not quite right, and he knows that raising a question about his father’s moral purity could ruin the reputation of this tzaddik. His brothers, on the other hand, decide not to look directly at what took place, and they cover it up. In this reading of the text, we might see Ham’s curse as that of an ostracized, silenced whistle blower.  

Once we know this part of the Noah story, what we are left with is a residue of dissonance and ambivalence - an uncomfortable feeling about Noah. We are left with questions - Is Noah really a tzaddik? Is he a hero? Can we believe in him?

As we have seen much too often in our country lately, it is a huge risk for a person to blow the whistle on a powerful individual or institution when he or she sees something that is not quite right.

No one should ever be allowed to amass such power as the assistant coach of Penn State football Jerry Sandusky did. So much power that when custodians witnessed him sexually abusing young boys, they were so afraid for their jobs that they didn’t report it. So much power that when University officials first learned of it, they did nothing.

I grew up in central Pennsylvania – Penn State country. Although I knew nothing about sports, I knew who Joe Paterno was. Penn State football was a religion where I come from, and the “legendary” coach Joe Paterno was a god. I even remember our public school lunch menu regularly featuring Nittany Lion Franks.

My parents have close friends on the Penn State faculty who were deeply devastated by the news of Jerry Sandusky’s abuse of young boys that were part of his charity program for at-risk youth.

Institutions can amass so much power that the individuals associated with those institutions become untouchable. To use an image from another part of our Torah portion this week, the Tower of Babel story – the power and the money and the winnings build and build, until names like Joe Paterno and Jerry Sandusky are inscribed on the topmost bricks of a towering structure. For anyone to allow the news to get out about Sandusky’s criminal behavior was to risk that entire tower crumbling to the ground. And so it was covered up – for a long time. And many boys suffered as a result.

We see a similar story playing out right now with the cycling team, led by Lance Armstrong. This tzaddik who has raised millions of dollars for cancer research built a tower with his name on it too. His spectacular performances at the Tour de France captured our imagination – he too was a hero.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, in his tent, he was using intimidation, money, and manipulation to artificially boost his performance and the performance of his teammates through illegal doping. He threatened anyone who knew the truth who might be tempted to blow the whistle. That tower called “Armstrong” has come tumbling down as well.

And so, here we are, left with these fallen heroes, these murky stories, that uncomfortable feeling in the pits of our stomachs, wondering – Who can we believe in? Who can we ever allow our children to believe in? Even that smiling old Noah holding the dove – we even have questions about him.

First of all, I think that it is important to have heroes in our lives. We and our children all need role models, and we shouldn’t be afraid to follow the good examples we find out in the world.

But we also need to be honest with ourselves and our kids when these role models fail. This too is part of life. I think there is a reason why the Torah is not about perfect unfailing people. It is much more difficult to feel a connection to a person who is perfect. We can learn a lot about how to deal with our own challenges by seeing how a good role model handles his or her own failures.

But there is a different between an imperfect person and a hero who turns out to be engaging in serious criminal behavior. Here I think the Torah has some insight for us as well.

First of all, we should be wary of anyone who seems to promote an image of themselves as a pure, perfect tzaddik. That first line of our Torah portion, which calls Noah a righteous person in his generation – that line should be a red flag, calling for further investigation.  All too often, an image of perfection, of total purity or righteousness is a manufactured image. Underneath it lies a whole other story.

Even more importantly, our Torah portion introduces the concept of accountability. Before the Flood God had come to the disappointed realization that the devisings of humanity’s mind are evil from our youth. Human beings have this tendency within them to misbehave, and God understands that this would never change.  Given that, it is a wonder why God decided to keep us around after the Flood in the first place.

But after the Flood, God finds a solution,  inventing the concept of covenant. This covenant holds human beings accountable to God and to God’s laws. Now, when we spill innocent blood –when we cause suffering – we cannot hide. There will be consequences, and there will be justice.

In the context of covenant, there is now a way to test if someone truly merits being called a tzaddik or a hero. Does she see herself as above accountability? Does he see his power as protecting him from the consequences of his actions?

The person who possesses enough humility to understand that there is something out there that is larger than his own power, his own tower of winnings, his own ego. That person who understands the danger of her power and who will never use it to exploit or threaten or hurt others. That person is someone we can believe in.

Breishit: Reaching for knowledge

Breishit: Reaching for knowledge

Erev Shabbat, October 12, 2012

Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg

As far as I know, Malala Yousafzai is still alive. You may have heard about this 14-year old Pakistani girl who has devoted her life to advocating for girls in her remote region of Pakistan to have equal access to education[1]. Despite repeated death threats and intimidation by the Taliban, she refused to rest in her efforts, and she has even established a fund to help poor Pakistani girls go to school.

On Tuesday, masked gunmen approached her school bus and asked for her by name. Then they shot her in the head and neck. “Let this be a lesson,” a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Ehsanullah Ehsan, said afterward. He added that if she survives, the Taliban would again try to kill her.

Surgeons have successfully removed a bullet from Malala, and she was airlifted to a better-equipped hospital yesterday. She has a good chance of surviving, and, according to her father, if she does survive, she will continue going to school and campaigning for other girls to have the same opportunity. 

And even if, God forbid, she doesn’t survive, she has started a movement. Other young women in her region of Pakistan will carry her banner forward, because they understand the transformative power of education. In Malala’s words, “I want an access to the world of knowledge.” Especially for girls in developing countries, that world of knowledge is the key to health, economic growth, and empowerment for themselves and for entire communities.

Education for girls is so powerful that the Taliban see it as a threat. They know that once women are literate and are able to lift themselves and their families out of poverty, mothers and fathers are no longer so desperate as to hand their young men over to extremist madrassas and training programs. The Taliban know that to empower women is to transform their world in ways that do not fit their worldview, and in ways that diminish their power. And so they shoot this 14-year old girl.

  

This week we begin the Torah again with the story of Creation, which includes within it the story of Eve eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. God has told Adam and Eve that they must not touch the fruit of this tree. But Eve takes it and eats it and gives some to Adam, and he eats as well. One of her motives in taking the fruit is that it is “tov,” which can be translated as “good.” This word can also be understood as “healthful.” Another motive is that it is “nechmad l’haskil,” which can be translated “desirable for the insight or wisdom that it brings.”

Once Adam and Eve eat the fruit, their eyes are opened, and ultimately, God banishes them from the Garden of Eden because of it, forcing them to confront a world where one has to work hard to grow food and where there is suffering of all kinds.

Over the millennia, our tradition and others have interpreted this text in many ways. A familiar interpretation is that the eating of the fruit represents a sin, perhaps a sexual sin, and a fall from grace. We can easily read the text as saying that the first humans are punished for eating of the tree of knowledge.

But there are some clear alternatives to this interpretation. This story can be seen as an explanation of how human beings came to have free will and knowledge of right and wrong. It is a story of human beings desiring to have power over their own lives.

I don’t think that the story is here to say that we never should have eaten the fruit. If we never had eaten it, there wouldn’t be much more of a story to tell!  If we didn’t have the freedom and the knowledge to choose between right and wrong, if we didn’t have the capacity to make mistakes and learn from them, and to grow, what would the purpose be of a covenantal relationship with God, or a Torah to guide us in making choices? If we still lived in the Garden with all of our needs taken care of, our eyes veiled to reality, and with no hard choices to make, with no power to transform our world, what would give life meaning?

The Women’s Torah Commentary understands that in taking the fruit, the first woman takes the “first step toward . . . consciousness-raising.” “If the tree entails ‘knowing all things,’”, says the commentary,  “then the woman is bringer of civilization, not death.”

This is what Malala understands her role to be – to reach out and grasp the fruit of knowledge, and through this to raise consciousness in her society as to how they might improve their lives. The Taliban fear that she is bringing heretical Western ideas into their communities, when she is advocating opening peoples’ eyes, girls’ eyes, to the power of that fruit – it’s capacity to bring health and wholeness, wisdom and insight.

The NYTimes columnist Nicholas Kristof writes that this shooting incident represents a larger struggle around the globe over the question of “whether girls deserve human rights,” whether it is the right to an education or right to protect their own bodies and well-being.

In his article about Malala, Kristof also mentions the world-wide, and local problem of sex trafficking. In our own country, teenage victims of sex trafficking, many of whom are lured by pimps on Facebook and on the Internet, are too often arrested and treated like criminals by our police and by our schools. This is happening in our own back yard. I’m just beginning to learn that Route 95 in Connecticut is a trade route for such trafficking, and we will be holding a learning session about this issue on Human Rights Shabbat, in December.

Our Torah makes it very clear that girls – and all people – deserve to be treated humanely. We read that on the sixth day of Creation, “God created the human beings in the divine image, creating them in the image of God, creating them male and female.”[2] Our Rabbis in the Midrash imagine that God is like one who mints coins. God stamps God’s image on each and every human being that God creates. But what makes God different is that, even though God always uses the same stamp, each coin is absolutely unique. This is to teach us that all human beings are of inestimable and of equal value, and that each human being is absolutely unique.

Boys, girls, men, women, gay, transgender, black, white, old, young. We are each stamped with the image of God, we are all of equal and unquanitifiable value, and we are each unique.

Whether we live in the Lower CT River Valley or the Pakistani Swat Valley, we all deserve to have the spark of the divine protected and nurtured within us. Each comes into being with his or her own unique gifts, and each has the potential to reach for knowledge, to open his or her eyes, and to transform the world.

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[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/opinion/kristof-her-crime-was-loving-schools.html?_r=0

[2] Genesis 1:27

Are you the Jew you want to be?

A mini course with Rabbi Goldenberg on the Meaning and Structure of Jewish Prayer

Join Rabbi Goldenberg for  this six-week mini-course on Wednesday evenings from 7-8:30 p.m.:  November 7, 14, 28 & December 5, 12, and 19.

This class is for you if:

• You've been attending Jewish services for years but don't really understand what the prayers mean or why they are in the particular order they are in. . . 
• You are new to Jewish services (or not so new!) and want to be able to follow the service and understand the meaning of the prayers. . . 
• You want to feel more comfortable at services, with the prayerbook and with the choreography (why do we stand, sit, bow, stand on our toes??)
• You are looking for deeper spiritual meaning in your prayer life. . . 

No Hebrew knowledge is necessary for this class! If you can't make it to all 6 of the classes, you are still welcome to attend as many as you are able.

Please email or call Wendy in the office to sign up at 860-526-8920 or  bethshalom@snet.net

Save the Dates for another mini-course  - An Introduction to Torah Study. Wednesday evenings:  January 23, 30, February 6, 13, and 27th.

Yom Kippur Morning 5773/2012 Enfranchisement

Unetaneh tokef  k’dushat hayom – Let us proclaim the sacred power of this day.

This is the most sacred season on our Jewish calendar, and today is the holiest day of all. We stand before God, with our whole community, linked to Jews all over the world, fasting, praying, and asking for forgiveness.

This is a day set apart from all others, in which we and God renew the covenant –the brit – between us. Many of our ancestors sacrificed everything to make it possible for us to be here, worshipping according to our custom – in freedom.

At the very same time, we are in the midst of another sacred season. On our secular calendar, this is the season of citizenship. We stand up to be counted as Americans as we register to vote, as we participate in the national conversation about our country’s future, and as we ultimately exercise our citizenship by casting our ballots in November.

So many people who came before us made enormous sacrifices – some even gave up their lives – in the struggle for all citizens in this country – men and women, Black and White— to fully participate in our democracy. Many Jews were among those activists who rode buses to the South, to stand with their Black brothers and sisters, risking and sometimes suffering beatings, and even death to claim the right of all citizens to register and to vote.

Despite the negativity of the election campaigns swirling around us, I want to take a moment today to mark the holiness of this season of enfranchisement and to recognize how we must continue to safeguard it.

The word enfranchise in Old French comes from the particle en- (expressing a change of state) and the word franche which meant 'free', combining to mean “to change one’s status to free.” In modern parlance, the word has taken on two meanings. One, to free a slave. And the other, to give the right to vote to.

Both of these meanings surface in this morning’s Torah portion. As they are about to enter the Promised Land, after forty years of wandering in the desert, our ancestors, proud and free, station themselves before God. They have already been enfranchised once, as they crossed the split Red Sea from slavery to freedom.

Now they are experiencing the second meaning of enfranchisement. God establishes a partnership – a covenant - in which both God and the people are bound to each other through a system of law and obligation. They may not yet be voting specifically, but the people are empowered to choose, to act, and to build a community of common purpose.

Atem nitzavim hayom kulchem. . . You stand this day, all of you, before the Eternal your God – your tribal heads, your elders and your officials, men, women, children, even the stranger within your camp, from woodchopper to water drawer – to enter in the covenant of the Eternal your God, which the Eternal your God is concluding with you this day.. . . I make this covenant not with you alone, but both with those who are standing here with us this day. . . and with those who are not with us here this day. (Deut. 29: 9-14)

In this passage, we see the beginnings of the concept of citizenship. God’s vision of nationhood requires the participation, the presence, and the contributions of every citizen – from menial laborers to elite public officials. Strangers, men and women – everyone is needed, everyone is recognized.

There are people in this country who know what it was like to be excluded. In Selma, Alabama in the 1960’s, the struggle for enfranchisement was embodied by the simple act of hundreds of local blacks lining up at the County building to demand the right to register to vote. White county and city police beat and arrested them, by the thousands. We are all most familiar with the images of African American protesters, attempting to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River en route to Montgomery. Just short of the bridge, they found their way blocked by State troopers and local police who ordered them to turn around. When the protesters refused, the officers shot teargas and waded into the crowd, beating the nonviolent protesters with billy clubs and ultimately hospitalizing over fifty people. For African Americans who experienced that fight, going to vote is now almost a religious pilgrimage.

Unfortunately, the struggle for enfranchisement in this country continues today. Minorities, the poor, and the elderly do not face beatings or lynchings in their efforts to vote. Instead, they face more subtle forms of intimidation and voter suppression.

After the 2000 elections, a raft of new legislation was introduced at the state level, including dozens of voter-ID laws which are now on the books.  Those advocating for these new laws explained that it was needed to combat rampant voter fraud. However, several exhaustive studies have found that voter fraud is exceedingly rare in our country. Rather than reduce fraud, these laws have placed barriers in front of honest people attempting to exercise their rights as citizens.[i]

Marie Crittenden[ii], a 92 year-old woman from Tennessee, has been an active voter since 1948. So when Tennessee passed its new voter photo id law, she knew she would need to get one to continue exercising her right. But, she says, there were quite a few obstacles between her and that photo id, since she no longer could drive, and her married name didn’t match the name on her Birth Certificate.

Thankfully, her niece Janis was willing to drive her back and forth to the election commission several times after having her old ID and then her paperwork rejected. It took Janis’ skillful advocacy with election officials, arguing that this elderly woman was clearly not trying to scam the system, and that they should use common sense, to convince them to finally allow Marie to vote. Not all elderly citizens have a niece to do all of the legwork. Many many more out there would, and do, just give up and go home without voting at all.

A federal court recently struck down a Texas law that would have required voters to show government-issued photo identification before casting their ballots in November, ruling that the law would hurt turnout among minority voters and impose “strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor” by charging those voters who lack proper documentation fees to obtain election ID cards.[iii] In Pennsylvania, a high court also recently blocked aspects of a voter photo-ID law.

The real impact of these laws has little to do with fraud – they suppress the votes of the poor, minorities, and the elderly, many of whom would have to go to great lengths and pay what amounts to a poll tax to obtain the necessary ID.

These laws, as well as efforts by organizations to train their own poll watchers to go into minority neighborhoods and challenge voter registration records, aim to weaken this nation’s commitment to full enfranchisement – a commitment that was won through years of struggle and sacrifice.

Our Torah portion this morning continues, saying, “Surely this Instruction which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach. It is not in the heavens, that you should say, ‘Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us that we may observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?’ No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it.” (Deut. 30:11-14)

Full participation in the community – in the nation – should not be too baffling or beyond reach, whether for a WWII veteran who was turned away from the polls in Ohio during the primaries because his VA card has his photo but not his address[iv], to the working parent who needs access to the polls on the weekend, to the elderly person who needs a ride. Whatever it might mean for the results of an election, our covenantal obligation as a nation is to put the right to vote – the foundation of citizenship -  within the reach of all of our nation’s citizens. “For the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it.”

Even the stranger in our midst has access to the covenant, according to our text.

And in this country, there are many aspects of our national covenant that should be accessible to the “strangers” living among us. I’m especially thinking about the Dreamers – those young people who were brought to this country as children when their parents immigrated illegally.

Martha[v] is a young woman from east LA who was brought to this country from Mexico at age 6 by her parents, who are undocumented immigrants. In contrast to most of her peers in her poor, immigrant neighborhood, she graduated high school. Not only that, she did so with honors and was accepted at UCLA, thanks to the fact that California law allows children of illegal immigrants to attend public universities. Martha’s dream is to become an Ob/Gyn. A career in Medicine has always been her goal, as she sees herself as a public servant and a scientist.

For three years Martha commuted 2.5 hours each way to college, coming home most nights to do the housework and cooking, as her parents worked long hours at multiple jobs. On top of all of this, she worked full-time as a waitress to support herself. Often, when she just couldn’t deal with the commute, she would live “hobo style” on campus, sleeping in the library, storing her food in building lounge kitchens, and showering and keeping her clothes in the gym locker room.

When she was offered job in a lab, working for one of her UCLA professors, she realized she couldn’t take it, as she did not have a Social Security number.

Her dream of becoming a doctor keeps her motivated, but she also knows that once she graduates, her UCLA diploma will mean nothing. She is unlikely to be able to go to medical school, given her illegal status, and she still cannot work legally in this country, even with a college diploma.  To immigrate legally, she would need to return to Mexico, where she has no connections, where she hasn’t lived since she was a young child, and put her name on a waiting list that is 10-15 years long. If she could only be allowed to attend grad school and work here, this woman who is American in every way except for her immigration status, would only be adding to our nation’s strength.

At one point, Martha almost lost hope. Exhausted and depressed, she quit school with only one quarter to go. But eventually she returned and finished her degree. She is still holding out that someday, our country’s policy towards Dreamers like her will change. Even though the Dream Act, which would give young people like her a path to citizenship, has not yet passed Congress, there is still hope that it will continue to gain enough support to eventually pass.

In the meantime, President Obama recently issued an executive order to make it possible for young people who were brought to this country illegally as children, to apply for permission to legally work and study and serve in our military, for two years with the possibility to renew. This is a promising step. For now, Martha’s college diploma does not represent the end of a road, but the beginning of a future.

Martha and hundreds of thousands of young  men and women want to come out of the shadows and participate fully in this nation’s life – in our economy, in our intellectual community, in our defense.

There is more work to do to bring enfranchisement to these folks.  I urge you to get informed and involved in the efforts to pass the Dream Act. As a congregation we belong to an interfaith organization, United Action, that is working on this issue. If you are interested in getting involved, please let me know.

We see in these Dreamers the universal human impulse to participate fully in community – not only to enjoy the benefits of being a part of the community, but also to have the privilege of contributing.

We see this impulse amplified a thousand times over when we look at Syria and see the struggle of an entire population to enfranchise themselves – to take ownership of their country and their future. We see it in acts of resistance in the state of Israel, where ultra-Orthodox women are standing up to Jewish extremists attempting to impose strict gender segregation in the public realm. These women risk harassment by demanding to sit where they want on public buses and walk where they want on the streets. We see it in Jerusalem where women face the prospect of detention and arrest by wearing tallitot and carrying Torah scrolls to pray publicly at the Western Wall.

Our tradition recognizes as holy this impulse of all people to want to be a part of something greater – of all people to have full and equal access to the power of citizenship. It also celebrates the variety of ways in which people can contribute to the nation’s strength. If the woodchopper only makes minimum wage or needs food stamps to make ends meet, his importance as a citizen is not dismissed. The community recognizes that he contributes to the whole in other ways. The tribal heads and the elders may have different views on politics, but they still adhere to the same covenant and work towards the same sacred vision.

We can see how inclusion, enfranchisement and diversity enriches and strengthens us when we look at our own Jewish community. This synagogue, I hope, is a good example of how a community works hard to make it possible for all to participate and values everyone’s participation, regardless of the ability of an individual or family to pay full dues. The synagogue might be one of the last surviving types of communities in America where we have Democrats and Republicans working, eating, learning and praying together. I see all kinds of bumper stickers out there in the parking lot. And I do not see us tearing each other apart in here.

Thriving Jewish communities recognize that we do indeed need everyone. If my neighbor is unable to participate - then my experience is diminished. The same goes for my experience as a citizen. As Nelson Mandela once said, “to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”

Our people, standing at the edge of the Promised Land, are the first generation of Israelites in 400 years to know a life free from slavery. They have cast off their chains, and they have crossed the first river. But their freedom is not yet complete. Now it is time to cross the second river. In this crossing they commit to creating a community, in partnership with God, which will have the power to make others free.

We read in this morning’s haftarah from Isaiah, that only when we use our power as enfranchised people to make others free, then we are worthy of standing before God, on this holy day.

 The people complain that when they fast, God pays no heed. When they afflict themselves on this holy day, God takes no notice.

And Isaiah exhorts them,

“Because on your fast day you pursue your own affairs, while you oppress all your workers! . . . . Such a fast on this day will not help you to be heard on high.

Is this the fast I have chosen? A day of self-affliction? Is this what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Eternal?

Is not this the fast I have chosen: to unlock the shackles of injustice, to loosen the ropes of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free?

Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall quickly blossom. . . . Then, when you call, the Eternal One will answer; when you cry, God will say: Here I am.

(Isaiah 58)

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[i] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/10/the-ballot-cops/309085/

[ii] http://www.wrcbtv.com/story/16664815/92-year-old-tackled-voter-id-issues 

[iii] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/us/court-blocks-tough-voter-id-law-in-texas.html?_r=1

[iv] http://www.cleveland.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/03/portage_county_veteran_86_turn.html 

[v] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/329/nice-work-if-you-can-get-it?act=4#play

Kol Nidre 5773: Jumping in to the New Year, unexpectedly

Jonah son of Ammitai wakes up one morning. A new week has begun, and he is ready to get to work. Everything is planned for the hours and days ahead. He’s going to be so productive, his hand itching to etch off the first item on his stone tablet to-do list. He turns to his stone tablet inbox to get started.

Hmmm…in the sender line of his first stone message there is a name inscribed that he didn’t expect to see. God? A message from God?

Curious enough to risk the possibility of unleashing a tablet plague, he reads the message.

“Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim judgment upon it; for their wickedness has come before Me,” it says.

Nineveh – the capital city of our Israelite nation’s worst enemy! Are you kidding me?
He smashes the tablet on the floor. “Ugh. I can’t deal with this right now. It must be Spam.”

But instead of getting to work, he scans the travel obelisks looking for a good deal on a cruise. He has a couple of vacation days left to use up anyway.

Tarshish, he thinks to himself –perfect – it’s several days journey in the exact opposite direction from Nineveh. He should be able to put some distance between himself and God real quick if he can get on a boat from Jaffa tomorrow. And there are some great casinos there!

The moment Jonah boards the ship and it sets out from port, an enormous storm comes upon the sea. So violent is this storm that the ship is in danger of breaking up. While the crew and passengers are desperately throwing cargo overboard to make the boat lighter, Jonah finds his cabin down below and falls asleep.

The storm gets worse and worse, so that the crew casts lots, trying to identify who is responsible. The lot falls on Jonah. The captain finds Jonah and shakes him awake – “How can you be sleeping so soundly! Help us out here! How have you brought this misfortune upon us?”

Jonah then knows that the message really did come from God. God has caught up with him , and he cannot flee the truth of his situation. There is no way out of his mission.

All of his plans. All of his preparations – his expectations of what his life would be. – Gone! In the instant that God’s word came to him, everything changed.
This is real, and he is completely unprepared.

Ah yes, so many plans. So many expectations. We think we know what is important – we get wrapped up in our daily stresses, our egos, our preparations. And then, whammo!
She had only recently left a job she hated for a new one in which she was finally having success and satisfaction in her work. She is settling in, making friends with co-workers, setting goals for the year ahead. When one day, out of nowhere, she learns that the source of funding for her job has run out. Time to look for a new job – again!

Life is rolling along, and things feel good and solid. Somehow he has managed to hold on to his job through the recession, he is putting away money for retirement. The kids are married and he now has the sweetness of grandchildren in his life. He goes in for a routine physical exam. Something isn’t quite right, and he leaves with orders for some tests. The results come back : cancer.

I know that the night before our house fire in April, I was up late worrying out about something. For the life of me I can’t remember what it was that was keeping me from falling asleep. Whatever it was, I must have thought it was very important at the time. But at 4 ‘o-clock in the morning when we discovered the fire and had to get everyone out of the house – whatever it was that I was worrying about? Gone!

In one instant, everything can change. It happens so quickly sometimes, that our psyches defend us from the shock by buying us some time to catch up. We live in denial, we resist reality for a while. We go to sleep or delete the email or escape in the opposite direction. But eventually we see that the lot has fallen on us. The truth confronts us wherever we turn.

This is real, and you are completely unprepared.

Often known as the “Zen Rabbi,” Rabbi Alan Lew, of blessed memory, wrote a book with that title: This is real, and you are completely unprepared. His book describes the spiritual journey we make every year over the course of the High Holy Days.

In an interview,http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Judaism/2003/10/Time-Of-Spiritual-Emergency.aspx Lew says,

We spend most of our lives preparing like crazy--we prepare for our professional lives, we prepare for our health by doing exercise, we do self-improvement, we always anticipate tomorrow, but the mounting evidence is that what we anticipate almost never occurs tomorrow. We live life like a kind of Maginot line--the line of defense that the French built to ward off the Germans and they ended up coming from a completely different direction. Our life is like that--it comes at us from a different direction than we think it's going to. It circumvents all our defenses and leaves us feeling very unprepared.

When asked if the title of his book is meant to frighten people, Rabbi Lew replies:
I don't mind if I scare them a little. The title to me describes the essential transformation that is part of the holidays. The phrase "completely unprepared" . . . strikes a deep chord. It names something deep and pervasive in the human psyche.

Although we're not often in touch with this feeling, deep down we all feel unprepared. If we look at our lives honestly, [as we are called to do on Yom Kippur,] the events . . . that really make us who we are, are the events we didn't prepare for, or we couldn't prepare for, like a serious illness, the loss of a loved one, the failure of a relationship. . . . Or suddenly a child appears surprisingly, or we fall in love. These are the things that really shape our lives.

Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg, our scholar-in-residence a couple of years ago, shares about what it was like to visit her elderly mother in a nursing home as her dementia progressed. Towards the end, her mother only had a few words left in her vocabulary. Two of the words she used most frequently were: “unexpectedly!” and “temporarily.”

“Ma! You’re looking great today!”, Sheila would say.

“Unexpectedly!” was her mother’s response.

“It’s good to see you.”

“Temporarily…”

“Are you feeling better today?”

“Unexpectedly!”

“It’s time for lunch now. Are you hungry?”

“Temporarily.. .”

Remarkable how these two words were basically all she needed to describe her life. In fact, Rabbi Weinberg teaches, these two words probably describe a good portion of our lives. No matter how much we plan or prepare, our experiences, our thoughts, our feelings come upon us unexpectedly. And they are with us only temporarily.

Rabbi Lew was, and Rabbi Weinberg is a teacher of Jewish meditation and mindfulness. The practice of meditation brings awareness to the human reality of “unexpectedly” and “temporarily.” As you sit and focus on your breath you begin to notice that the breath comes unexpectedly, and it is only with us temporarily. The same with thoughts and feelings. They arise, they stay with us for a time, and then they depart.

Similarly, the rituals and prayers of our High Holy Days are meant to increase awareness to that core human experience. Unexpectedly, the sound of the shofar pierces my consciousness. Temporarily, I awaken to my own mortality. Unexpectedly, I awaken to something larger than myself.

According to Alan Lew, “The inevitable result of becoming more aware is that we realize we're not really prepared for our lives. The things that are significant in our lives are not the things we spend all of our energy defending against and trying to manipulate.”

“Yes,” I think. “This is true – I am not really prepared for my life.” “But then,” my anxious brain asks, “what do I do with this awareness? Now that I know that I am never going to be prepared, do I stop making plans altogether? Have we no choices? No power?”

Lew goes on to explain that awareness is “only half of the journey. The other half is that once we realize that our preparations and our attempts to manipulate life don't work, we also realize we can let them go, that we don't need them. That is a great relief and a great healing.”

At first Jonah thinks that he can manipulate his life by running away, by going to sleep. Yet, all along, a storm is brewing, not only in the sea, but more importantly, in his soul. At a certain point he make a powerful choice. He chooses to let go of his resistance to what must be, and he jumps with both feet, into the raging sea, into the unknown.

As soon as he lets go, the storm subsides, and God provides a huge fish to swallow him. There in that fish belly, Jonah lets go of the fact that Nineveh was not the direction he had prepared to go with his life. He accepts that he is not fully in control of his life, and that Nineveh is where he must go.

Relieved, he prays to God with gratitude :

In my trouble I called to the Lord,
And God answered me;
You cast me into the depths,
Into the heart of the sea,
The floods engulfed me;

I thought I was driven away
Out of Your sight:
The waters closed in over me,
The deep engulfed me.
Weeds twined around my head.
I sank to the base of the mountains;
The bars of the earth closed upon me forever.
Yet You brought my life up from the pit,
O Lord my God!
. . . .
They who cling to empty folly
Forsake their own welfare,
But I, with loud thanksgiving,
Will sacrifice to You;
What I have vowed I will perform.
Deliverance is the Lord’s!
(Book of Jonah, JPS Tanakh)

Jonah hasn’t even made it to Nineveh yet, to complete his mission, but his soul has already been on a journey – the same spiritual journey we are called to take over the course of these Days of Awe.

Again, in the words of Rabbi Lew:

The journey begins [seven weeks before Rosh Hashana,] at Tisha B’Av, the day we remember the destruction of the Temple. . . . Tisha B'Av is the day that we acknowledge our estrangement--from God, from each other, from ourselves. That's how you being a journey of reconciliation--by acknowledging your estrangement. Here we are at Tisha B'Av, sitting on the floor mourning this broken house (the Temple was called the house).

Months later, at the end of the journey, [after Yom Kippur,] we're sitting in another broken house, the [rickety] sukkah [that lets in the rain and the wind.] Only now, we're rejoicing.

At first we saw the fact that the house was broken was a great catastrophe. And now we see we don't need it.

We can sit outside with the stars in our hair and the wind in our face, and we're perfectly fine. And that's the real journey. It has two major parts--the first coming to the realization that we are completely unprepared, that we are in a state of urgent and desperate emergency. And then second realizing that it's alright.

She never thought she would be collecting unemployment, but here she is, depositing the check. She desperately needs the money, and she is thankful for the cushion it provides while she searches for a job. She hopes that it will only be temporary, but for now, she is relieved. It will be alright.

He never imagined he would have to live life without his constant companion, his wife of decades. But now she is gone. And here he is, getting together with friends once a week for breakfast, finding rides to synagogue, allowing his children to dote on him. He is rebuilding his life. He is okay, and, unexpectedly, even happy at times.

I was not planning on spending the bulk of this year living in a place not my home and rebuilding half of what was my home. A new dream kitchen was never our dream, and I can’t wait to get out of my rental house which still, on a humid day, smells like the previous tenants’ dogs. But we are alright.

In the moments when we can let go of what was supposed to have been, there is a sense of relief. The storms in our souls subside. We see more clearly that there is so much to be thankful for. Now there is room for peace, for equanimity and balance. This peacefulness can actually help us feel more prepared to accept and then let go of the next wave of the unexpected and the unknown.

I recently learned that the service that we do on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is taken almost word for word from the prayer service that went along with the public fast. Public fast was something practiced in ancient times for public emergencies, the kind of things you couldn't prepare for--drought, a ship lost at sea, a city under siege. It's a liturgy for a spiritual emergency, for an urgent desperate matter you can't prepare for. The shofar is like an ancient air raid siren--it was something that we blew at a really desperate, urgent time.

The emergency we are facing at this time of year is that a New Year is beginning, and we don’t really know what is coming. We desperately want to prepare and plan for this year ahead, but it is full of uncertainty. Who shall live and who shall die? What message will appear tomorrow morning, on my tablet? We cannot know. But what we do know is that in tomorrow morning’s Torah reading, we will hear God’s call to us, to choose life again.

And so we come together, we fast, we blow the shofar, we let go of the year that has passed. We hold hands, we close our eyes, and we jump into the New Year together, praying that it will be alright.

Erev Rosh Hashanah 5773 - Coming Home

Erev Rosh Hashanah 2012
Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg
Coming Home

A slave woman and her son cast out of their home with only a skin of water and some bread. They finished off both hours ago, and the mother, Hagar, desperately lays her son under a bush, not wanting to watch her child die. She sits a distance away, lifts up her voice, and weeps. God takes notice, and an angel calls to Hagar, asking, “What troubles you, Hagar?” The angel reassures her that God has heeded her cry and the cry of her boy and that Ishmael, our ancestor Abraham’s son, will survive and eventually become the leader of a great nation. Then God opens Hagar’s eyes, and she sees a well of water. She and her son both drink, and, the Torah tells us, God is with them. (Genesis 21)

אַחַת שָׁאַלְתִּי מֵאֵת־יְהֹוָה אוֹתָהּ אֲבַקֵּשׁ
שִׁבְתִּי בְּבֵית־יְהֹוָה כָּל־יְמֵי חַיַּי
לַחֲזוֹת בְּנֹעַם־יְהֹוָה וּלְבַקֵּר בְּהֵיכָלוֹ:

One thing I ask of the Holy One
only this do I seek:
To live in the house of God
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Holy One,
[to be at home] in God’s holy place.
(Psalm 27)

Hagar and Ishmael are exiled, but they are not abandoned. They are thrown out of their home, they are wandering in a dry, inhospitable desert, but even there, they discover that they are protected, loved and cared for. God takes notice of them.

Not only do Hagar and Ishmael have what they need to survive. They have a sense of purpose to their lives – Ishmael will become the father of a great nation. They know that they matter. Even in the harsh desert there is a well. They are at home in this harsh world.

Two generations later, our ancestor Jacob is also in exile. In his case, he is running away from home, where he has just caused major upheaval. He stole the first-born blessing of his father from his twin brother Esau, and Esau has threatened to kill him.

Jacob is on the road, and the sun has set. Alone and afraid, with only a stone for a pillow, he goes to sleep. He dreams of a staircase stretching from the earth towards heaven, and angels are going up and down it.


God is standing right next to him and promises Jacob that his descendants shall be like the dust of the earth and that all the families of the earth will bless themselves by him and his descendants. God tells him, “Remember – I am with you. I will protect you wherever you go.”

When Jacob wakes up from his dream he exclaims, “Surely God is present in this place, and I did not know it!” Shaken, he says, “Mah nora hamakom hazeh! How awesome is this place! This is none other than the abode of God, and that is the gateway to heaven.” Jacob names the place where he had the dream, “Beit El,” meaning, “the house of God.” (Genesis 28)

אַחַת שָׁאַלְתִּי מֵאֵת־יְהֹוָה אוֹתָהּ אֲבַקֵּשׁ
שִׁבְתִּי בְּבֵית־יְהֹוָה כָּל־יְמֵי חַיַּי
לַחֲזוֹת בְּנֹעַם־יְהֹוָה וּלְבַקֵּר בְּהֵיכָלוֹ:



We chant this Psalm during the month preceding Rosh Hashana, as we prepare ourselves for the journey of these holy days. We typically call this journey teshuvah, a turning back onto the path of the lives we intend to live, a turning towards God for forgiveness.

One thing I ask of the Holy One
only this do I seek:
To live in the house of God
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Holy One,
[to be at home] in God’s holy place.

That God might shelter me in His sukkah
on an evil day,
grant me the protection of His tent.

The Psalm expresses yearning for God’s forgiveness. But it doesn’t use the language of sin, punishment and repentance. Instead, we have this heartfelt request for just one thing only – to be allowed to sit in God’s house, to dwell in God’s holy Presence, to be sheltered and protected by God’s sukkah – God’s tent.

I wouldn’t interpret the text literally, as if God dwells in some specific, physical place. Rather, to live in the house of God and to gaze upon the beauty of the Holy One is a state of being. It is a feeling of being at home in the world, at home in my life. This, the Psalmist says, is the essence of teshuva and the purpose of this season. As we enter a New Year, we ask what it might mean for us all to truly come home.

Both of these stories – of Jacob and Hagar – illustrate the transformational experience of being forced into exile and coming home, not to a particular location, but to God. Both stories give us hope that when we feel estranged, shut out, cut off, lost, abandoned, fatigued or broken – whether due to traumatic circumstances beyond our control, as in the case of Hagar, or because of some tearing that we have caused, as in the case of Jacob - that there is a pathway back to wholeness and peace.


That path probably does not lead right back to our starting place, but it can potentially lead to a state of being, where I might feel, at least for a moment here and there, that I have found shelter from the harshness of my daily struggles. Just as Jacob has found a gateway to heaven in the middle of nowhere, we too can have moments of knowing that we are held in an embrace we cannot see, but which gives us the strength to face the challenges that confront us, whether it is my work or my lack of work, the raising of my children, or conflicts with family or friends, illness, uncertainty of all kinds, my own shortcomings.

Our tradition uses this motif of finding God in the wilderness over and over again. As Jews we are meant to see our lives as individuals and as a People as a constant cycling between being in exile from and returning to God. This motif is one way to capture the spiritual process of “teshuvah,” or “return.” Writing about this concept of teshuvah, Rabbi Lawrence Kushner posits that the world itself endures “because of the ever-present yearning and gesture of returning home to our Source. Through this return, all life is reunited with the Holy One of all Being.” (The Book of Words, Lawrence Kushner, p. 31-32)

Not only do all of us have within us an ever-present yearning to return to our Source. But God too yearns for our return. We hear this in Moses’ parting words to us, in the book of Deuteronomy, that when “you return to the Eternal your God. . . then the Holy One will restore your fortunes and take you back in love. God will bring you together again from all the peoples where He has scattered you. Even if your outcasts are at the ends of the world, from there God will gather you, from there God will fetch you.” (Deut. 30)

Yes – this is a Jewish idea. God will go to the ends of the earth in order to take us back in love.

According to Kabbalistic teaching, God’s love, or chesed, is constantly flowing into the universe. Our task is to figure out how to access that flow. Sometimes, all we need to do is open our eyes and notice the goodness that is right there in front of us, as Hagar opened her eyes and saw the well of water. In other cases, we need to open our hearts to others who have hurt us or whom we have hurt, removing the barriers to the flow of love between us through apology and forgiveness.

We can also serve as the vessels for God’s chesed in the world, helping the people in our own community or in the world who are experiencing their own physical or spiritual exile.

I experienced this kind of chesed when I and my family were forced to flee our home in Deep River in the wee hours of a cold April morning because of a serious electrical fire that started in our kitchen. Our neighbors Kim and Steve immediately took us in. And I’ll never forget our neighbors on the other side - Phyllis Haut wrapping my son in her huge sweater, and Tim Haut wrapping me in a huge hug. Then, warm clothing arrived from neighbors across the street whose names I don’t even know.

Within hours, we had a place to stay, at Carol LeWitt’s house, until we could find a more permanent refuge. Food and drink appeared miraculously and in such abundance that we are still defrosting and eating it five months later!! And once we found a temporary residence, more things materialized - dishes, pots & pans, cutlery, a toaster, a coffee pot – you name it.

Within minutes of our “exile,” our eyes were opened, and there was a well, overflowing with love. And it hasn’t stopped.

It has been a long haul, and we have several more months to go before we return to our house. But the love that so many people have given us - the compassion that all of you have shown us - is what has made it bearable and even meaningful. Your acts of chesed have helped me to remember that even though I feel displaced, I am at home in this world.

My family and I are not the only recipients of the Divine chesed that flows through this congregation.


This year we lovingly brought several members of our community, among them Leah Pear, Hy Fink, and George Glassman, to their final resting place. This year, so many of you brought food and attended shiva minyans to comfort your fellow community members, even those whom you hadn’t met before. This year, a number of folks put in hours of loving labor to help a struggling congregant prepare her house for sale. This year, this congregation turned out in large numbers to pitch in and celebrate holidays, B’nei Mitzvah, and Shabbat.

When I say that we are a community of “Chesed,” I do mean the extraordinary work of our Chesed committee, co-chaired by Marilyn White-Gottfried and Beth Brewer. And I mean more than that. All of the work we do, as staff and as volunteers, comes from a place of love. I see it every day, from what happens in our office, to the religious school, to the maintenance of the building, to Board meetings. Here, we can create a home to come home to.

In the story of Jacob’s dream, the word, “place,” or, “makom,” in Hebrew, appears six times. In the Midrash, the rabbis teach that this word “makom” is actually a name for God. On the road, in the middle of the night, Jacob finds the comfort and the faith to move into an uncertain future. He finds that aspect of God that is named, “makom.” That experience of knowing that the universe is a caring, hospitable place, and that he matters.

This place can simply be one where you come to be with other Jews, to reconnect with your roots, to learn some Torah, to send your kids to Religious School and get them Bar Mitzvahed. And that is all good stuff. But this place can be so much more. When we bring our love here; when we are open to the love that is offered, this beautiful synagogue building becomes a makom – a place where God dwells – a place where that flow of love is channeled and contained.

So too in the world outside these walls. When we bring our love to the world – when we are open to receive it, any place can be a makom. When we are fortunate enough to experience that makom, I venture to say that we are granted taste of the Messianic Age - a day when there finally will be relief from violence, respite from the overwhelming problems of poverty, hunger, and war – a day when the whole world will return to its Source and come under the shelter of God’s sukkah.

My prayer for this New Year, for all of us, is to know that when we are lost, when we are in exile from ourselves or from others, when we feel overwhelmed by the burdens of the world’s problems, that the flow of Divine love is accessible. There is a path back to the Source.

And when we hear the shofar tomorrow, we will know that it is indeed calling us home.

“Mah nora ha-makom ha-zeh.”
“How awesome is this place.”
(choir sings Mah Nora by Shefa Gold)