Parashat B'ha-alot'cha 2013 - Love at the Heart of Human Rights

On Wednesday night I had the pleasure of being a part of an event benefiting T’ruah: the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, and organization whose Board I have been co-chairing for the past two years. We work on human rights issues in North America including the issue of human trafficking and modern day slavery in our agricultural sector; the issues of torture and indefinite detention as a result of the War on Terror; and combating Islamophobia. And issues in Israel and the such as the status of African refugees seeking asylum in Israel from persecution in their home countries, Palestinian farmers in the West Bank seeking access to their olive groves, and Bedouins in the Negev who are struggling to continue to live on their ancestral land.

We were in a  fun downtown location for this event, and the emcee for the evening was actress Cynthia Nixon, whom some of you may remember as Miranda from the TV series Sex in the City. It was exciting to meet a celebrity and to mingle with other social justice and human rights minded Jews, many rabbis among them. But what stayed with me was the panel of folks we honored as human rights heroes.

Every year we honor two rabbis who are nominated by their communities as human rights heroes.  We also honor an individual with the Raphael Lemkin Award for Human Rights. Raphael Lemkin was a Jewish lawyer of Polish descent who escaped the Holocaust and made a life in the United States. He coined the term genocide and campaigned for the passage of international laws against the crime of genocide.

I want to share with you a bit about our honorees and what they said, because I found them all inspiring and energizing as someone who cares about putting Jewish values into action. I hope that what they shared will inspire you as well.

Our Raphael Lemkin Award this year went to an attorney, Thomas Wilner, who leads the international trade litigation and government relations practice of Shearman & Sterling LLP. He was involved in multiple Supreme Court cases related to the treatment of detainees at Guantanano, going back to 2004. These cases established and held that the Guantanamo detainees have a Constitutional right to habeas corpus as well as the right to unmonitored access to counsel.

When Thomas Wilner was asked why he says “yes” to this kind of work – he talked about the importance of universal ideas, principles and values. Back in the 1880’s, his great grandfather, a Jew living in Eastern Europe, somehow acquired a copy of the Declaration of Independence of the United States and of President Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. The values of equality and justice in these documents inspired him to do all that he could to move to America and make a life here for his family. He did make it to America, and a tradition of reading the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg address was passed down the generations to Thomas Wilner himself. While his parents didn’t raise him as an observant Jew, they also instilled in him the belief that to be Jewish is to pursue truth and justice. It is this combination of Jewish and American values that inspires his work. He spoke passionately about how it is ultimately a threat to our nation if we allow ourselves, in the name of national security, to compromise those principles upon which our country was founded.

One of our human rights heroes was Rabbi Susan Talve, the spiritual leader of Central Reform Congregation –750 family congregation in St. Louis. Hers is the only synagogue that chose to remain in downtown St. Louis and not move out to the suburbs. Rabbi Talve is involved in numerous social justice causes, among them a recent campaign for fast food workers to be allowed to unionize.

When Rabbi Talve was asked why she says “yes” to being active in her community she talked about identity and history. In the cab on the way to our event, she passed the NYC block where her grandfather had worked as a presser in a garment factory. And she spoke of how, when we witness the struggle of workers today to make a living wage, we can’t forget where we came from. Not long ago, we American Jews were struggling for the same things. This is a part of our identity, and it should move us to stand with today’s laborers who simply want to support their families and have access to things like affordable health care.

The final human rights hero was the one that moved me the most. His name is Rabbi Everett Gendler, and he is a retired pulpit rabbi who served congregations from Mexico City to Havana Cuba to Lowell Massachusetts in a pulpit career which began with his ordination in 1957!  From 1962 until 1968, he was active with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the civil right movement, and has been involved on behalf of nonviolence, human rights, and the environment. I learned from a colleague that back in the 1970’s he had one of the first congregations to be powered by solar energy, including a solar powered eternal light!!

Since retirement from regular commitments in 1995, he, with his wife, Mary, have traveled almost every year to India to help the Tibetan exile community develop an educational program on strategic nonviolent struggle, with the sanction of the Dalai Lama and coordinated by the Tibetan Government in Exile.

When Rabbi Gendler was asked what has motivated him to say yes to doing this work, he got very quiet and still. And he said, “love.” He said that when an issue of justice or human rights has arisen and he has felt a pull to get involved, he has always known that it was the right thing to do if he could sense that at the center of the work was love. Love for humanity and love, even for the people on the other side of the issue – the people you might imagine to be your enemy.

He said he was drawn to Dr. King because of the love he felt coming from him, and he knew it was right to get involved because Dr. King didn’t carry any hatred or ill will for those who he was struggling against – or as he said – for the “other.” Only love.

Similarly with the Dalai Lama – Gendler said yes to the Dalai Lama because of the love that he radiated and that it was clear that the Dalai Lama didn’t harbor any hatred towards the Chinese. This love which even includes the “other”  is what has assured Rabbi Gendler that he is saying “yes” to a project that is making manifest the truth that we are all created in the Divine Image.

In this week’s Torah portion, Miriam and Aaron speak out against their brother Moses, slandering him for having married a Cushite woman –a woman with black skin. Miriam and Aaron then go on to question Moses’ legitimacy as a leader and a prophet. Hearing this, God punishes Miriam by striking her with a white scaly skin disease all over her body. Seeing her so horribly disfigured and suffering, Moses cries out to God, “El na, r’fa na lah.” “Oh God, please heal her!”

Only moments before, Miriam was leading a rebellion against Moses and was speaking in racist and slanderous language about Moses’ wife.  And still, Moses acts out of love for his sister. His heart is moved when he witnesses her suffering, and he pleads with God to heal her.

What Martin Luther King and the Dalai Lama and Rabbi Gendler all teach us, is that in our struggles to make the world better, the most powerful tool of persuasion is love. The only way to heal the brokenness is through love – for the oppressor as well as the oppressed

There are many reasons and motivations for pursuing justice and goodness in the world as Jews and as Americans. We have our values and principles that we treasure and which hold up our society. We have our history and identity – we know the heart of the stranger, because we were those strangers and we remember.

But the most powerful motivator that underlies it all is love. Love for our country and what it stands for, love for and identification with our people and our people’s struggle, and love for all humanity out of the knowledge that we are all in the image of God. When we are able to act on this love, we are praying as Moses did, “Oh God, please heal her.” When we act on this love, we are making real in our earthly realm the longing that God has for our world, and all who dwell here, to be whole. 

Emor 2013 A response to the tragedies in Boston and West, TX: The fine line between sanctity and desecration, blessing and curse

Emor 2013 – The fine line between sanctity and desecration, blessing and curse

Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg

“livracha v’lo liklalah, l’sova, v’lo l’razon, l’chayyim v’lo l’mavet…

 for blessing, and not for curse; for sustenance, and not for destruction;

for life, and not for death.”

My family and I were in Boston to see the Marathon two weeks ago. We were in Newton, with my cousins, many miles from the finish line, and we only went for a couple of hours in the late morning. We brought a picnic and sat in the sun on the green grass, and it was beautiful. I found myself moved by the grace and the strength of the bodies of these runners. What an amazing thing to be right there, watching the best male and female marathon runners in the world glide by as if 26 miles was nothing to them. And then to see the packs of more “normal” people, but serious runners nonetheless, displaying enormous endurance, resilience and strength.

And then there were the costumes! Apparently runners who are raising money for charity will sometimes garner support by pledging to wear something outrageous if they raise a certain amount of money. So there were men and women (but mostly men) running in tutus, swan outfits, fairy wings, and superhero capes. We even spotted a hot dog costume! It was such a joyous celebration of life and vitality, of the capacity and the beauty of the human body.

We went back to my cousin’s house, energized and inspired what we had witnessed.  And then, several hours later, came the news of the bombings at the finish line. In that moment we saw so clearly how the human experience is one of standing on that terribly thin line between celebrating life and experiencing death and destruction.

Our Torah portion this week stands on that same that same line.

This week we read instructions regarding the sacred offerings the people bring to God through the priests at the Tabernacle. The people are instructed to be extra careful when they bring an offering to sacrifice to God that they may not make an offering of an animal that has a blemish, is flawed or has been maimed.  To do so would be an act of desecration – not of holiness.

Upon first hearing this law, we might find it problematic in its suggestion that God only accepts perfection. But that isn’t my sermon tonight.

This week I read this text differently. The message this week, I think, is to recognize that there is such a thing as a flawed and unacceptable offering to God. In those terrible bombings at the marathon, we saw how an offering or an action can be easily twisted from serving God and serving life to serving the opposite – serving death. These two young men, and unfortunately, many religious extremists across the globe, have been led to believe that killing innocent people and terrorizing entire communities and nations is a holy act – an offering to God.

What then, as a religious leader, can I say about what it means to be a person who participates in religious acts, a person who strives to live a spiritual or a religious life? To be a religious person is to participate in the sacred – it means striving to align our actions with what we believe serves God and serves a greater purpose. And it also means that we walk a thin line. Our Torah portion highlights how easily service to God can be distorted into service of something that is not holy.

The Torah instructs the priests to be scrupulous in making sure that everything offered on the altar is without blemish or defect – that it is offered with the correct intention - to serve God and life.

Then, later in the Torah portion, we read a story about a fight between two men in which one man commits blasphemy by pronouncing God’s ineffable name out loud as a curse. The blasphemer is ultimately stoned to death as punishment. God has revealed God’s very self to the people of Israel by making known God’s very intimate, personal name, YHVH. But there are boundaries around how we may use this name. If the name is not used intentionally, as a way to draw close to God and serve God, then the name loses its sanctity and God is diminished and distorted.

As I studied the parasha this week I was surprised by this notion - that God needs US to be careful about how we use God’s name and how we approach God. In a sense, just as God has made us fragile beings who walk a thin line between life and death, so too, God has made God’s self vulnerable by giving us ways to come close, and by revealing God’s name. Because a spiritual connection to something beyond us is available to us, that connection is inherently exposed to distortion and misuse, sometimes with tragic results.

“livracha v’lo liklalah, l’sova, v’lo l’razon, l’chayyim v’lo l’mavet…

for blessing, and not for curse

As people on a journey towards a spiritual life, this parasha calls us to ask ourselves -  Have I dedicated myself and my actions to something beyond myself?  Are my offerings to the world and to others offerings of life and of beauty – offerings with a greater purpose?

Of course, we know, and we have seen so clearly these past couple of weeks, that even if we do dedicate ourselves to life and to beauty and purpose, we are still vulnerable to destruction. Therefore, we are so much the more so required to celebrate the life we’ve got. In fact, in our Torah portion alongside all of this worry about the sacrifices, and the stoning to death of a blasphemer, we also have the commandments to celebrate the festivals of Sukkot, Pesach and Shavuot – these holidays which are meant to be seasons of outpouring of joy. And so, given this fine line we walk, we celebrate and give thanks as much as we possibly can, as we walk.

Two days later after the bombings at the Boston marathon, we learned of the explosion in the fertilizer plant in the town of West, Texas.

It’s not like I’ve spent a lot of time there. But any Reform rabbi who has worked in Dallas, Texas knows the town of West, because it is the only decent rest stop between Dallas and Greene Family Camp, the Reform Movement summer camp in Bruceville, TX. When I lived in Dallas, I stopped in West several times a year, on my way to and from camp or a retreat. We would stop at the Czech Stop to get warm kolaches – these delicious Czech pastries filled with jelly and sweet cheese.

Boston. . . West, TX . . . Two very different tragedies. One perpetrated by people whose intent was to kill. The other, a terrible accident, the cause of which remains to be seen.  But both, experiences of terrible pain and loss and grief – both, reminders to give thanks and celebrate life in the moment, because that is all we’ve got.

That day of the plant explosion, my Texas colleagues and I traded warm kolache memories on facebook, trying to hold on to the good stuff. And when I think back on that day in Boston, I try to hold on to the memories of joy, strength, endurance, the grace of those amazing runners, the tutus.

“livracha v’lo liklalah, l’sova, v’lo l’razon, l’chayyim v’lo l’mavet…

We pray these words every year as we make the transition from the winter rainy season to the summer dry season in the Land of Israel. We recognize that our very existence is dependent on that which is out of our control – how much or how little rain falls during the year to sustain us. And so we pray, given the fragility of life, that our efforts, our work, our  time on earth should be for blessing and not for curse; for sustenance, and not for destruction; for life, and not for death.

Torah discussion materials for home-based Shabbat dinners, January 11th, 2013

Discussing the Torah portion is a traditional activity to do around the Shabbat table. This should be a fun and meaningful aspect of the evening, and you don’t have to prepare much at all. It can be as long or as short as you make it. See instructions below, and then a summary of this week's Torah portion, a focus for study, and suggested discussion questions. Shabbat Shalom!

Instructions

The idea is for you or someone around your table to facilitate a discussion on this week’s Torah portion, using this guide. It would probably be a good exercise for between dinner and dessert. I’ve created these materials so that they should work for all ages. So if you have kids at your dinner, feel free to include them in the discussion.

You don’t need to do any preparation in advance besides printing out the materials and reading them through once if you have time. I suggest printing out several copies of the materials below so that everyone can have or share one.

Go around the table and have each person read a paragraph out loud of the background summary and the Focus. It should be relaxed and informal, so questions and comments along the way are great!

Use the questions at the bottom to spark a discussion, or just stick with the questions and comments that come naturally from the group.

Parashat Va-era: Exodus 6:2-9:35

SUMMARY:

In this week’s Torah portion, Moses, as God’s messenger, is in the midst of a monumental struggle with Pharaoh. God has sent Moses to tell Pharaoh to free the Israelite people from slavery, and Pharaoh refuses to let them go. Not only does Pharaoh refuse, but he makes the Israelites’ work harsher and more bitter, forcing them to go foraging for the straw to make their bricks, but forcing them to make the same number of bricks each day.

The Israelite people complain to Moses that ever since he confronted Pharaoh, their lives have only gotten worse. Moses is frustrated at Pharaoh’s stubbornness and at the fact that the people do not have faith in him or in God. God tells Moses to reassure the people that God will free them. Then God sends wave after wave of plagues upon Egypt. This parasha includes the plagues of blood, frogs, lice, wild animals, cattle disease, boils and hail.

FOCUS:

At the end of last week’s Torah portion, Moses is so frustrated that he asks God, “O Lord, why did You bring harm upon this people? Why did You send me? Ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has dealt worse with this people; and still You have not delivered Your people.”

God responds by telling Moses to relay the following message from God to Israelites: “I am the LORD. I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and through extraordinary chastisements. And I will take you to be My people, and I will be your God. . . .I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I will give it to you for a possession, I the LORD.”

But, the Torah tells us, “when Moses told this to the Israelites, they would not listen to Moses, their spirits crushed by cruel bondage.”

QUESTIONS TO EXPLORE

What do you think it means to have your “spirits crushed by cruel bondage”?

In the Hebrew, the phrase translated here as “spirits crushed” is “kotzer ruach,” or “shortness of spirit/breath.” What do you think it means to have “shortness of spirit” or “shortness of breath”?

Why do you think it is so hard for the Israelites to believe that God and Moses are going to free them? What is it about slavery that makes this so difficult for them to believe? Why don’t they just jump at the chance?

How do you think Moses or God might be able to give the Israelites some hope that they really might get free?

Where does hope come from?

Have you ever had an experience of being “kotzer ruach”, or can you think of people in today’s world who might be experiencing that?

How do we find hope when we face challenges and obstacles?

Parashat Vayiggash – Lessons from our ancestors in the aftermath of the shootings in Newtown, CT Delivered on Friday, December 21, 2012

After an event like the unimaginable shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary last week, there are so many questions. The most basic spiritual question, and the most difficult one to answer -  What is God’s role in these kinds of events where the worst thing possible happens to good people?

My offering this week are some perspectives from the Parasha on this question.

The first perspective comes from an encounter Jacob has with God on his way down to Egypt. Jacob has learned good news – amazing news –that his son Joseph is still alive and has risen up to be second in command to Pharaoh in Egypt. And he and his entire family is on its way to live in Egypt in order to survive the famine in the land of Israel.

But Jacob is afraid.

                    

Egypt is not the friendliest place – and he does not want to leave his home. He also may have heard the stories from his grandfather Abraham – that God had come to him in a night vision and warned that his people would be slaves in a foreign land for 400 years. He must have been wondering whether this was this the beginning of an era of great darkness and suffering for his people.

So, on his way down to Egypt, Jacob too has a night vision. God calls to him and says, “Fear not to go down to Egypt, for . . .  I Myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I Myself will also bring you back.”

One perspective - God is with us in these moments of darkness and suffering.

Rev. Kathy Peters in her prayer at the Chester vigil offered this view on inexplicable loss – that although we may never have answers as to why these awful things happen, one thing we can know is that God is with us through it all. Rabbi Harold Kushner in his book “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” explains that God cannot stop bad things from happening. But when we cry out in anger and distress and deep sadness, God is crying with us. God mourns with us and is outraged with us.

As we look back at the events in Newtown last week, we have a number of roles to play. One is to extend our compassion to those who are grieving and to show that we care. An email went out today to the congregation with information on how we are responding at Beth Shalom. We are gathering donations and will send them off as a group to the United Way of Western CT which is funding increased social services in Newtown. You can write your checks to CBSRZ with “Newtown” in the memo line, and we will make one big donation on behalf of all of us.

Also, next Friday night (tonight was too wet) we plan to have 26 luminaries lining the walkway to the synagogue entrance, in memory of the children and adults who were killed. Many communities will be setting out luminaries on Christmas Eve. And we will do it on Shabbat. Please let me or Beth Gottlieb know if you would like to help with this effort. In these ways we show that we are crying alongside our grieving neighbors.

Another perspective we get in this Torah portion asks whether we should be focusing on the past or the future in our response to terrible events.

As you may remember – Joseph comes to be second in command in Egypt and is in charge of rationing out the grain during the seven years of famine. The famine reaches into the land of Canaan, where his family resides. Joseph’s brothers come down to Egypt for grain and don’t recognize Joseph. At first he doesn’t reveal his identity to them, but this week he finally does reveal himself. And as he does so, in a very emotional scene, he forgives his brothers for their past behavior and reassures them that he doesn’t hold a grudge against them for selling him down to Egypt so many years ago.

Joseph says to his brothers,

“Now, do not be distressed or reproach yourselves because you sold me here; it was to save life that God sent me ahead of you. . . . God has sent me ahead of you to ensure your survival on earth, and to save your lives in an extraordinary deliverance. So, it was not you who sent me here, but God. . . .”

·         Here Joseph teaches us that we have a choice after experiencing suffering and tragedy in how we want to live our lives and how we want to understand our purpose. We can choose to find meaning, and to let the experience guide us towards something greater – towards a healing for not only ourselves, but for others.

·         Joseph sees the big picture. He may still feel his hurt – it would be hard not to. But instead of getting stuck in the past and taking revenge on his brothers or using his experience as an excuse to bitterly retreat from the world –he sees himself as an active partner in God’s plan to save as many lives as possible in the future.

Another role that we can play as a community is to respond to shooting is to allow our outrage and our hurt to motivate us to work to reduce gun violence in our country. Our Social Action Committee met last week and discussed strategies for taking action on the issue of gun control on a local and a national level. If you are interested in being involved in our efforts, please let Andy Schatz, the chair of our SAC know.

I imagine that most people who have survived or witnessed traumatic events find themselves responding in different ways at different times, depending on how we are feeling in the moment.

We see this in Jacob. There are times when he is able to see beyond his own suffering and understand that he has a larger role to play in the life of his family and his people. And there are times when he is overcome with bitterness at the hand that life has dealt him.

When Jacob arrives in Egypt, Joseph introduces his father to the Pharaoh.  When Pharaoh asks Jacob, “How many are the years of your life?” Jacob responds, “The years of my sojourn on earth are one hundred and thirty. Few and hard have been the years of my life, nor do they come up to the life spans of my fathers during their sojourns.”

And yet, the rabbis imagine in a midrash that on his way down to Egypt, Jacob does something quite amazing. He cuts down a tree and splits the wood to make the boards that will form the structure of the Mishkan – the Tabernacle. He cuts this wood that his future descendants, the Israelites, will use to build the movable sanctuary in the Sinai desert, after being rescued from 400 years of Egyptian slavery – and he bring these planks down with him to Egypt.

That Jacob cut these boards was testimony to his trust in God, and his dedication to the future. He understood his role in the world, seeing his life as a piece in the puzzle of redemption.

May we all have the strength within us to dedicate ourselves to the future like Jacob and Joseph. May we look through the haze of the tragedy and the pain of this past week and see clearly our role – to cut the boards now that may be built into a future of safety and compassion and peace for everyone’s children. May we help those who are still grieving in Newtown to know that we are with them, and through us, that God is with them. And may God’s tears and God’s outrage work through us to heal this hurting world.

Vayetze: From “against” to “next to,” and then perhaps to “with”

(Delivered on Friday November 23, 2012)

Most of you are probably aware that I have a sister – her name is Dahlia, she is an amazing person, and we love each other dearly.

 I also have another sister of sorts. Her name is Hunaida Sababa. She is a Palestinian Christian from the West Bank, near Bethlehem.  Her family hosted me for a month a long time ago, when there still was a peace process between the Israelis and Palestinians. We became quite close during that time, and I adore her.  Snce that time, we have barely kept in touch. I have probably seen her only 3 times in the 16 years since I lived with her.

But last week Hunaida posted a message on my Facebook page. It was a simple message – “How are you Rachel? My whole family misses you – I miss you!” That was all. And it was enough. Enough to understand that she loves me, that she cares, that her heart was breaking just like mine.

She did not mention the rockets from Gaza into Southern Israel and Tel-Aviv or the Israeli army’s bombing campaign over Gaza. Just – “I miss you. How are you?”

Of course she was thinking about those bombs and those rockets. I know that I am one of the few Jewish people she has a relationship with. I know she wrote out of true compassion towards me.

Our Torah portion this week is full of sibling relationships – and these relationships are full of tension.  I want to bring you three images of siblings– two from this week’s parasha and one from last week’s – which, gathered together, contain a message about how to digest and respond to the almost war that took place over the last many days, and the fragile cease-fire that is now in place.

The first image:

 Jacob is on the road at night, alone.

He has stolen his twin brother Esau’s blessing. Esau wants to kill him, and so Jacob flees.

This is the first time Jacob has ever been alone. He had always been with his brother, entangled with him, since conception. Since their nine months together in their mother Rebecca’s womb, they have struggled with each other.

Now Jacob has separated himself from his brother and from the struggle. A cease-fire is in place. They are not actively fighting each other for the moment.  And they will each flourish on their own, find wives, have children, build up their wealth.

 Separation is a good first step, but it is not enough. They still haven’t figured out how to be near each other. They have certainly not made peace with each other, and they won’t for twenty more years.

 All is quiet, yet tense and incomplete.

This week the heaviness in my heart lifted as the cease-fire between Hamas and Israel was announced. There was a sense of tempered relief. My friends and colleagues in the Southern Israeli cities of Ashkelon and Ashdod could emerge from their safe rooms and bomb shelters. At least for now, my cousins in Tel-Aviv are not living in fear of another siren and another rocket headed their direction. And it seems that my cousin Roy won’t get called up for reserve duty.

But the quiet is tense and fragile. Perhaps trust can be built back up? Perhaps things can change and evolve in the political sphere such that the ground can be prepared for a peace agreement? It is a BIG perhaps. A cease-fire is not enough to give me hope. And I don’t want to have to wait twenty more years, like Jacob and Esau did, for peace to come.

My husband shared with me what he learned during a tour of the state house in the region of Schleswig-Holstein an area of Germany where he lived for a year of high school. This region borders Denmark and at one time had actually BEEN Denmark. The official way of encapsulating the story of what happened between the Germans and the Danes after WWII is this:

“From against each other

to next to each other

to with each other.”

At least Jacob and Esau, Israel and the Palestinians, are holding back from killing each other. But who knows when the next bloodletting will begin. They have not yet moved from “against each other” to “next to each other”. And they are nowhere near “with each other.”

Jacob is on the road at night – alone.

The second image:

The full womb.

Jacob finds his way to his uncle Lavan’s household and marries Lavan’s two daughters, Leah and Rachel. Over the course of 14 years, 12 pregnancies yield 12 children for Jacob, with Leah, Rachel and their two respective maidservants.

After more than a week of watching the civilian death toll rise on both sides of the Gaza-Israel border. Children, men and women killed and injured. A pregnant woman in Gaza, among them. After all of this, it is disorienting to read about all of these pregnant bellies, all of these bouncing babies.

The full womb.

In the words of Amichai Lau-Levie, an Israeli-American Jewish educator and founder of the organization “Storahtelling”:

Eleven times in just one chapter, one womb after another fills with new life. Rachel the beautiful is the last to become pregnant, and her barren bitter rage as her sister pops ‘em out is reminiscent of the bitter barrenness of all great matriarchs before her. . . .

Rachel is jealous of Leah’s fertility and Leah is angry that Rachel is the one more loved [by their shared husband, Jacob]. But they, the mothers of the future nation somehow manage,. . .  to put away that rage for the sake of a united home where children can grow healthy and peace can nourish life. The Womb will Stop the War

Here again, we have rivalry between siblings – this time between Leah and Rachel. But for the sake of their children –for the sake of the nation and the future, Rachel and Leah find a way to move from hostility, to cease-fire, to peace – from “against” to “next to”, to “with”.

Our third image is actually another full womb. But this time it is Rebecca’s painfully swollen belly, as she, in last week’s Torah portion, carries those twin boys, Jacob and Esau. The Torah tells us that the babies struggled in her womb.

In Arabic and Hebrew the word for “womb” is the same –  “rehem”. In Aramaic this word means “love.” In Arabic and in Hebrew this word also mean “compassion.”

Amichai Lau-Levie writes:

Confused with the opposing forces in her swelling womb, [Rebecca] goes to challenge God for answers – how can one person hold such polar opposites as she was doing? The reply she gets echoes today: There are two within you, there will be struggle, and one will prevail. 

Later in the story it’s written that Rebecca loved Jacob and Isaac loved Esau. 

But I don’t buy it, [says Lau-Levie]. I don’t think the Bible is telling us the whole story here. The agenda of the editor is choosing a side, the winner. I’d rather not, [he says].

I think Rebecca, who carried both boys in her belly loved them both, each in her own way. And even if she favored Jacob’s claim to the blessing and the [birthright], Esau too came from within her, and was worthy of her care, compassion, love.. . .

I want to aspire to this version of Rebecca, proud and pregnant, Mother Earth. I aspire to hold within my soul the love for both opposing forces, and within my mind the care for all sides and battling brothers, no matter the rage.

The Womb will Stop the War

In next week’s Torah portion, the estranged brothers Jacob and Esau come together, after twenty years of tense separation. It seems that they reconcile. They fall on each others’ necks and weep and kiss. And Jacob says to his brother that to see his face, “is to see the face of God.”(Genesis 33:10)

They do not stay together though.  At the end of next week’s parasha, the brothers go their separate ways again. But this time they leave without that simmering tension. They leave more complete – they leave in peace.

They agree not to be against each other anymore – they can at least live next to each other in peace if not necessarily with each other in intimacy.

I have no fantasies about Israelis and Palestinians running to each other, weeping, falling on each others’ necks and kissing. I have no delusions of these two brothers weaving their lives together in some intimate idealistic way. At least, I haven’t had these dreams for the past twenty years.

What my Palestinian sister Hunaida and I still have is rachmanut -  compassion for each other, yes, perhaps even love. But we come from two different peoples with different dreams, different interests and different visions. I do not want to share a state with her.  I would rather show my passport on my way from the state of Israel to the state of Palestine to joyfully and safely visit her, so that my children might finally meet hers.

My hope right now for us is this: that we can continue to hold both our Israeli and our Palestinian brothers and sisters in the same womb of compassion. And that out of that compassion we might do all that we can to help both sides move forward from “against each other” to “next to each other” – from a fragile cease-fire to a lasting peace.

Shabbat before Thanksgiving 2012: Beware lest you think that pumpkin pie is the work of your hands!

A warm meal. A hot shower. Electric lights.

Just a couple of weeks ago, after the Hurricane, so many of us were joyfully grateful for these things. We received them as gifts. Many of us probably said, “Thank God!” when the electricity was restored.

When material and spiritual comforts are scarce, the quality of gratitude is so often right there, on the surface. We can’t help but feel thankful. We are aware that the abundance we live with most of the time can so easily be taken from us.

We read in the Torah, in the book of Deuteronomy:

For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with streams and springs and fountains issuing from plain and hill; a land of wheat and barley, of vines, figs and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey; a land where you may eat food without stint, where you will lack nothing; a land whose rocks are iron and from whose hills you can mine copper. When you have eaten your fill, give thanks to the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you.

Take care lest you forget the Lord your God . . . . When you have eaten your fill, and have built fine houses to live in, and your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold have increased, and everything you own has prospered, beware lest your heart grow haughty and you forget the Lord your God – who freed you from the land of Egypt, the house of bondage; who led you through the great and terrible wilderness with its seraph serpents and scorpions, a parched land with no water in it, who brought forth water for you from the flinty rock; who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers had never known. . .  – and you say to yourselves, “My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me.” Remember that it is the Lord your God who gives you the power to get wealth, in fulfillment of the covenant that he made on oath with your fathers, as is still the case.

Here, the Israelites are about to cross over from the desert, a land of scarcity where they had to rely on God to take care of them every moment – to the Promised Land, a place of abundance. Their material needs will be met easily, but in the land, they  will encounter a new spiritual challenge – to continue to be aware of God and the gifts that God is giving them at every moment.

More often than not, this is our challenge as well.

My teacher, Rabbi Jonathan Slater writes of this passage that:

This is not a prophecy so much as an observation of human behavior: awareness is sharp in the face of danger, yet dull in the midst of plenty. Why is it that we notice insufficiency, pain, obstruction, resistance, conflict and respond with clarity and energy, offering thanks when we experience relief? And yet, when all goes swimmingly we are less attentive to our lives, less likely to be grateful? And why, in the midst of wellbeing, are we resentful when we experience any diminution, any loss, any impediment to our continued happiness?

It may be partly biological: we are wired for self-preservation, and respond instinctively, automatically to danger. When we recover from times of stress and reaction, the body eases, the field of vision expands and we feel a sense of wellbeing and can say “thank God”. When we are not threatened by danger, when our lives are not (apparently) on the line, we apply ourselves to greater security, more food and shelter, and then even fame and fortune. Out of the habit of struggling for life, we are also out of the habit of saying “thank God”.

The Deuteronomy text warns us that when things are going well, and we have all that we need and more, our hearts grow haughty. Our ego grows so large that we forget that what we have is not due to the work of our own hands alone. We forget our times of struggle and scarcity and vulnerability, and we lose sight that all that we have, all that we have accomplished, is a gift from God.

Next week we will be sitting at Thanksgiving tables, laden with food, surrounded by family and friends. And since the holiday is called Thanksgiving, we will probably remember to give thanks to that which is greater than ourselves. I hope we will remember that that pumpkin pie is not the work of my hands alone.

But in days of abundance, especially on days that are not specially entitled, “Thanksgiving,” the Torah warns us: “Beware!” says the Torah, “lest your heart grow haughty and you forget the Lord your God!” The note of warning and fear of God in this passage may not sit so well with us - a sense that if we forget to recognize that all that we have is a divine gift, then something terrible will happen.

The Chasidic tradition gives us a more hopeful interpretation, I think. According to the Birkat Avraham, the fear of God that we are to nurture, is more like awakened attention. Attention to the impermanence of life, its transience and unpredictability. We are to sustain that awareness even when it is less perceptible – when life is good, and all seems secure. When we hold fast to that awareness, we will be prepared for the inevitable stumbles, accidents and losses that occur in a life. They will not appear as insults, inconsistent with our rightful due, but part of the whole of life, as much a part of God as the goodness we knew before. Life and sustenance are “given” to us by God as much as they are “taken away” by God. That is life; it is all grace, a gift given freely, impermanent and precious.

One way that we can nurture this awareness of our own vulnerability is to make it a practice to reach out to others who are suffering from scarcity, to pay attention to their stories, and to respond with our compassion and help.

 Once our electricity was restored after the storm I found myself naturally paying more attention to what was happening in Long Island, New Jersey and Staten Island. I was surprised at how intensely moved I was by the stories of folks who had lost everything, who were still without heat and water and electricity. My experience of scarcity was so recent and palpable that I felt a powerful impulse to reach out and help.  And I suppose I also felt moved out of gratitude for not having had to suffer as direct a hit from the Hurricane that so many others suffered.

Unfortunately, for me and for most of us I imagine, that impulse towards empathy and action fades, the farther we are away from the event in time and space. Perhaps, this is why we have community institutions like synagogues and Food pantries, to remind us. Please continue to give, especially money – and the Shoreline Pantry needs our donations more than ever. http://cbsrzrabbi.blogspot.com/2012/11/hurricane-sandy-relief-lets-be.htm

And, in light of the violence occurring in Israel and Gaza, give to Federation and/or NIF. 

https://secure-fedweb.jewishfederations.org/page/contribute/help-israel-now

http://www.nif.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1449%3Ain-a-time-of-war&catid=15%3Ageneral

Most of us are familiar with the words of the 23^rd Psalm which are attributed to King David. It opens with the words, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”  The Birkat Avraham has an interesting take on this Psalm – he teaches that King David would constantly contemplate: with all of the wealth of the kingdom it was still possible for him to die of starvation for want of everything. It was only because “The Lord is my shepherd” that therefore “I shall not want”. Without God’s help, he could not be sure that he, the King himself, would have what to eat. This fear of losing everything is in fact a quality of faith – a knowing that all depends on God that leads to reverence of God.

Psalm 23 continues “You have set a table before us in full view of our enemies, You have anointed my head with oil, My cup overflows.”

Every day, every moment, we can choose, as King David did, to notice that all that we have is in fact manna from heaven. That there is a force of love and generosity in the universe that makes my life possible. That every table at which I eat is in fact, a Thanksgiving table.

Hurricane Sandy Relief - Let’s be the neighbors we’d have needed, if we hadn’t been so lucky.

Supply Drive through Valley Shore Clergy Association

Houses of worship in our Valley-Shore region are collecting the following items to be turned over to the Red Cross.

Collection starts this Monday, November 12^th, and runs through Monday November 19^th.  You can drop off your goods at Essex Congregational Church or at St. John’s Episcopal Church of Essex.

Cleaning and Sanitary Supplies	Clothing	Toiletries	Baby/Infant Supplies	Other
Sanitizers	Jackets/coats	Shampoo	Diapers	Blankets
Sponges (new)	Sweaters/Sweatshirts	Soap	Wipes	Towels (in good shape)
Mops	Pants	Toothpaste	Formula	Batteries (all sizes)
Trash bags	Underwear (new)	Toothbrushes		Water
Rubber gloves	Hats/gloves
	Socks

Restock the Food Pantry and the Diaper Bank of Jewish Family Service of New Haven

Due to the increased need following Hurricane Sandy, the shelves of the JFS Food Pantry in New Haven are empty, and there is an acute need for baby diapers.

You can help in one of two ways:

·      If you it is convenient for you to bring food and diaper donations to the JCC in Woodbridge (360 Amity Road  Woodbridge, CT 06525 (203) 387-2522) At the JCC there is a collection area to drop off non- perishable items such as; soups, canned goods, tuna, vegetables, instant oatmeal, juices--juice boxes, cans, cold cereal, rice, pasta, and diapers. All items will be dispersed to JFS Food Pantry and The Diaper Bank.

OR

·      Make a financial contribution by writing a check to

Jewish Family Services (put Food Pantry in the memo line)

1440 Whalley Avenue,  New Haven, CT 06515

Donate to the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) Hurricane Relief Fund at www.urj.org/Sandy

The URJ’s Hurricane Relief Fund is providing: 

• Direct funding to congregants who are suffering short or long-term loss of food, shelter or clothing
• Direct funding to general and Jewish relief agencies in coordination with the Jewish Federations, NECHAMA – the Jewish Response to Disaster and others
• Direct funding to Reform congregations damaged by the storm to help them resume operations as quickly as possible

Since the fund was established Tuesday, October 30, the URJ has collected nearly $200,000 for Hurricane Relief from more than 1,600 donors. 

Donors may choose to give to a general relief fund or to a fund allocated specifically to West End Temple in Neponsit, Queens. (The URJ will be collecting funds on behalf of West End Temple until they have electricity and their online system is functional.) Funds may also be designated for Scholarships for Youth Impacted by Hurricane Sandy, which will remove some of the financial barriers that might keep displaced teens from attending NFTY or other Reform Movement events with their peers when they need them most.

The first distribution of general relief funds of $7,500 was sent yesterday to North Shore Synagogue in Syosset, Long Island, to provide three meals a day to displaced families.

If you wish to mail in your donation, please indicate the fund on your check and send to: 

Hurricane Relief Fund
Union for Reform Judaism
633 Third Ave.
New York, NY 10017

Volunteer in the NY or NJ Region through URJ partner NECHAMA – the Jewish Response to Disaster.

Sign up at http://rac.org/advocacy/specialresources/sandy/

The URJ is partnering with NECHAMA – the Jewish Response to Disaster to galvanize volunteers for on-the-ground clean-up and rebuilding efforts in affected areas of Northern New Jersey. The URJ is also working with JVOAD - Jewish Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters to maximize resources and ensure that efforts are not being duplicated. 

For more information, go to www.urj.org/Sandy