Rosh Hashanah 2015/5776 Empty-Nester Rabbi- Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg

This summer as we’ve been reading the book of Deuteronomy, I’ve been identifying with Moses, as he gives his last speech to the Israelites before they cross into the Promised Land, leaving him behind. He exhorts them to not forget all he has taught them and to remember their larger purpose as a People in covenant with God.

It may be presumptuous to imagine this as a Moses moment for me. But I would venture to say that I get where he is coming from. As we enter this last year for us together as rabbi and congregation, I too have an urge to exhort you to not forget all we have learned together, and to remember what your larger purpose is.

Another image has occurred to me these past couple weeks, as I’ve watched the overstuffed station wagons passing me on Rte 95 - that of a mother sending her children off to college. I’m anticipating being an empty-nest rabbi, watching from afar, rooting for you every step of the way. Before you fly away, I want to leave you with some last words of insight into who you already are and who I believe you can become.

In our Torah portions today and tomorrow, we have two stories of parents having to let their children go. This morning, Abraham puts a skin of water on Hagar’s shoulder, and sends her off with their son Ishmael, into the desert. And tomorrow, Abraham will take his son Isaac to the top of Mount Moriah, intending to offer him up as a sacrifice to God.

These are heart-wrenching stories of abandonment and near-sacrifice of children, and they are very disturbing. But over the years, perhaps because of my own experience of parenthood, and our experience of growing together as a congregation, I’ve come to see these stories in a new way.

These stories are surely not here to ask us to sacrifice or abandon our children. But they are here to evoke the raw, painful feelings of letting go. They are here to ask us what parenting is for in the first place. Parenting is not about holding on to our children so tightly that they can never grow up. It is about giving them all the love and guidance we can and then letting them go so that they can become who they are meant to be in the world.

But these stories are bigger than just parents and children – they are really about the covenantal relationship between God and the Jewish People. Isaac is the only heir to the covenant. By asking Abraham to sacrifice his son, God asks Abraham to put the future of the whole covenantal project at risk.

It’s a paradox – similar to parenting.  Abraham personally has to let go of control over the future of the covenant so that the covenant itself might be fulfilled. In order for the Jewish people to become who we are meant to be, God and Abraham both have to let go enough that they risk losing us altogether. These stories ask us to consider letting go of what is most precious to us – our children; our sacred tradition –so that this preciousness might manifest even more fully in the world and become what it is meant to be.

As a congregation, these stories teach us to risk who we are and how we sustain ourselves as a synagogue in order to keep Judaism and the Jewish People alive and vibrant in the future. We are taking such a risk this year. In order to lower barriers to involvement of families with younger children, we have made the fees for our kids’ learning programs a freewill gift – allowing families with kids in Kindergarten through 3^rd grade to decide how much they will pay for religious education for their kids.

This community should continue to take these kinds of meaningful risks - to see its mission as reaching beyond who is already here and beyond who you already think Jews are.

A congregant recently showed me a powerful video[1] of the actor Michael Douglas accepting the Genesis award in Israel. In his acceptance speech, which he delivers in front of an audience that includes Prime Minister Netanyahu, he speaks about how his father Kirk Douglas and his son Dylan both inspired him to embrace his Jewish identity, late in life. Michael Douglas is a patrilineal Jew – his mother was not Jewish, his father was, and so according to strict interpretation of Jewish law, he is not a Jew. But in the Reform movement, we consider anyone with one Jewish parent, who is raised as a Jew, to be Jewish. Douglas’ public affirmation of Jewish identity, passed down by the father, was actually a radical thing to do, especially in Israel, where the Orthodox rabbinate does not recognize patrilineal descent. And Douglas, who gets to determine where the prize money goes – announced that a portion of it would go to organizations that promote the welcoming of intermarried families into the Jewish community.

The future of the Jewish People, and of this community in particular, is going to rest in its willingness to open the doors as wide as possible and to go out there and find people who are unaffiliated, who marginally identify as Jews, who grew up with one Jewish parent or maybe even just one Jewish grandparent –and for sure, people who are intermarried – and invite them to investigate and cultivate their Jewishness and the Jewishness of their children. This community cannot afford to interpret the covenant in narrow terms – as only including those who were born into unambiguously Jewish families – as only including those who would naturally walk into a synagogue without an invitation. You must risk the terms of the covenant to fulfill the covenant.

By taking these kinds of risks, we keep Judaism from becoming stagnant – we keep it alive. And this brings me to the second story we read this morning – the Haftarah’s story of Hannah. This summer at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, I studied with Bible scholar Michah Goodman, who sees this morning’s Haftarah as a critique of institutional Judaism.

Hannah goes up to the Temple in Shiloh every year with her family, to offer sacrifices and enjoy a festive meal. She is barren and deeply yearns for children. One year, Hannah stands outside the Temple and weeps bitterly, praying for a son. Her lips move, but no sound can be heard. The High Priest Eli, who is in charge of the Temple, sees her and accuses her of being drunk. His instinct is to push her away. When she explains herself, he finally gets it, and her prayer ultimately is answered. But we all know that if we were to push someone like Hannah away from our doorstep, she probably would not come back and try again. She would be lost to us.

Later in the story of Eli, we learn that he and his sons are corrupt priests, skimming money off the top for themselves.

So, here we have the High Priest, who wears the breastplate with the names of the 12 tribes of Israel inscribed on it, as a constant reminder that he serves the whole People of Israel. And he walks outside the Temple and can’t recognize the spiritual needs of an actual Israelite standing right in front of him. He can’t see that her spirituality – spontaneous, creative, and outside the walls of the institution – is authentic. He is so focused on maintaining the institution, tending to the sacrifices, doing things the way they have always been done, and reaping the benefits of that, that he forgets whom he is supposed to serve and why the Temple exists in the first place.

According to Michah Goodman, this story is meant to reveal how easily religious institutions, especially those with fancy buildings! – can become self-serving, inward-looking, and stagnant. How easily we can forget that we have a larger mission beyond keeping the institution itself operating –and enjoying this community as it already is.

This synagogue is so vibrant and successful, and it will continue to be those things only if you don’t forget why you are here. You are here to help Jews know how to be Jews and to experience how Judaism can enrich their lives. You are here to meet people’s actual spiritual needs, to respond to where they are and to take them further –through Torah study, through prayer and music and other forms of spiritual practice, through celebrating Shabbat and holidays. You are here to make Judaism live and breathe – to get creative and let in new ideas. You are here to make Torah speak to your lives and make it touch the world – by taking on difficult issues and engaging each other in bold acts of social justice. You are here to care for one another – those whose names you know, and those whom you’ve only just met.  You are here to see the person standing outside, trying to connect, and to help them feel part of something larger.

So many religious institutions become all about themselves, all about their buildings, and all about what they have always done. You are an amazing community. You already know how to push the boundaries on what is possible. You already know how to keep changing and adapting. This gorgeous building is an asset. Don’t forget that these blessings are meant to be harnessed to bring Jews close to Judaism and to each other, to cultivate people’s souls and to heal the world.

So far this morning, I’ve brought you teachings from the Torah and from the Prophets. I can’t conclude until I’ve brought a Talmudic teaching I studied this summer that I believe has a message for this congregation as well.

In the Mishnah, the rabbis discuss, when building a town, whether it is necessary to build a wall around the town, with a gate with a bar, and a gatehouse. Rabban Gamliel argues that it is not always necessary to have these things, and therefore you can’t compel a resident to pay for it with their tax money. The next generation of sages take up the question in the Gemara. Some propose that these security measures are considered an improvement (which would imply that you should tax people for them). But others disagree, and tell a story to illustrate their point. They tell the story of a pious man who would converse with the prophet Elijah, and when this pious man suggested that building a wall and a locked gate around a town would be an improvement, Elijah refused to converse with him anymore.

A puzzling text. Thankfully, the Medieval commentator Rashi comes along and explains it. He says: these security measures are not considered an improvement and in fact are a loss to the town. Why? Because the wall, the locked gate and the gatehouse prevent the sound of the cries of the poor from reaching the town.

We are blessed to live in a privileged area. It is beautiful and wealthy, and white, and can seem far from the suffering and the cries of the poor. The Talmud is telling us, that it can be a detriment to our Jewish community when we shelter ourselves from the cry of those who are suffering.

In fact, there are people who are in need in our very congregation, in our bucolic little towns, in the prisons just down the road, and in the cities surrounding us. Elijah is telling us, it is harder to be a good Jew out here. We can collect tzedakah, do mitzvah projects and teach our kids about Tikkun Olam – and we must do that. But it takes a larger effort to move out of our safe, peaceful communities to the places where we can hear those cries. This effort must continue to be at the heart of this congregation that has in its name “Rodfe Zedek,” seekers of justice.

Eight years ago today, I stood here and gave my first Rosh Hashana sermon in this community. And I spoke about this beautiful ark, which has become a Jewish text for me over the years. I want to conclude this morning with one more commentary on it.

About 6 years ago, our family made a pilgrimage to Mass MOCA to see the LeWitt wall drawing retrospective. There is a segment of the exhibit with a wall drawing that looks a lot like this ark. We stood in front of it, and I remarked to our daughter Amina, who was about 4 years old at the time – “look Amina! Do you recognize that? It’s the same painting that we have on our ark at home in the synagogue!!” I was so excited for her to see the connection and couldn’t wait to hear her reaction. Which was…  “Ima, that is not the same as the painting in our synagogue.”  Boy was I confused! “What do you mean Amina? Of course it is!” And she said, “No Ima, it’s missing a color – it doesn’t have the grey!”  I had never noticed that this ark had a grey color in it. But Amina had noticed. This ark – this unique place – had already made a distinct impression on her.

This place has made a deep impression on me – and on my family. And we will be carrying so much with us across our river to wherever we are going next.

I believe and will say with all humility, never having met the man, that this community embodies what Sol LeWitt created in this piece. The covenant – the Jewish People –  the Torah - are really forms of conceptual art. The concept lives on long after the artist is gone, and it can be made manifest in every moment, and in every generation, and in every place that we dwell.

This community is a unique and colorful manifestation of the ancient concept of Judaism. Keep returning to that concept - and make it new, make it dance, make it live.

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[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZYpcTqnDNM&sns=em

Erev Rosh Hashanah 2015/5776 Libertina: Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg

Erev Rosh Hashanah 2015/5776

Libertina

Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg

I want to open my remarks tonight with a story, written by Ruth Calderon, an Israeli Talmud scholar and former member of Knesset, with whom I studied this summer. The piece is closely based on a surprising passage from the Talmud, and Calderon has embellished it and developed the characters much more extensively than the original passage[1]:

Rabbi Hiya bar Ashi lies on the stone floor, spread-eagled. He is praying.

It is market day, and his wife is out. He enjoys being alone in an empty house. Only this way does he find peace. It is strange, since the whole world lies open to him: the study house, the courtroom… She, his wife, is quiet and earnest, always in her corner between the stove and the oven, dressed in a kerchief and gown. Twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, she leaves home to go to the market.

“May the merciful one save me from the evil impulse!” he utters his usual prayer…. He seeks to ward off untoward thoughts. He prays with great fervor and concentration, until his heart pulses to the rhythm of his prayers.

One day his wife returned home early and unexpectedly. . . . When she left home [in the morning] he was standing in prayer, wrapped in his tefillin. Shortly thereafter, she realized she had forgotten the basket for fish and came back to retrieve it. . . . In any case, she returned at that very moment when he did not intend for anyone to see him. He thought he had the house all to himself when he cried: “Save me from the evil impulse! Saaaave meeee from the eevil impulse!”

She was shocked to discover her husband prostrated on the floor. . . “And to think,” she mused,” for several years he has not been intimate with me. What evil impulse could he possibly be so afraid of?” A sense of hurt and suspicion flared up inside her. Was there another woman?

She crept out of the room quietly and retreated to a side room. She stood in front of the mirror, passing her hand over the lines of her face. Her reflection was like the face of an elderly woman. Her kerchief was drawn tightly over her forehead, concealing her hair. Her eyes were sunken. Deep wrinkles lined both sides of her nose. . . . Each Friday evening she would hope for him to approach her bed, but each Friday evening she was once again disappointed.. . .

She fled outside, and walked distraught all the way to the market. The color fled from her pale cheeks, and her heart beat rapidly. She thought only of her pain and shame.

When she returned home, her face was restored to its natural color. She set a pot to boil on the stove, rinsed fruits and vegetables, preserved the leftover quinces, sliced cucumbers for pickling. All the while she concocted a plan.

On Thursday she set out for the market as usual, early in the morning. But instead of turning toward the western part of the market, where her fellow housewives made their way among the stalls, she continued on, as if in a daze. She headed in the direction of the caravans, toward the foreign vendors whose stalls lay beyond the bounds of a proper woman. These vendors came from afar and sold clothes, spices, and jewelry. . . Bangles jingled on their ankles.

She approached, and with clenched hands she counted out her coins. She handed over half the money reserved for fruit and all the money set aside for fish as well as the small sum she saved from week to week to buy a new cloth for the Sabbath table.

As if in a dream, she selected a dress, jewels, sandals, and a belt as well as a bundle of myrrh. She unfolded her sack and placed everything inside and then left without saying a word.

At an earlier hour than usual she set her steps toward home. Nothing felt normal. The world was awry. … . She hummed to herself until she came to the alley leading to their house. In a secluded corner she stepped into the revealing dress, fastened the belt, freed her long hair from its kerchief, tied a dangling jewel around her wrist and a bangle around her ankle. . .. She tied the bundle of myrrh around her neck. . .. After she finished dressing, she applied eye shadow to her eyelids with an unpracticed hand. When she approached the cistern in the yard, she saw the face of a different woman entirely reflected in the water: the face of Libertina [of Babylon,] she who instilled fear in all married women.

“I am Libertina, …” she whispered. “May the Merciful one save you.”

At that very moment Rabbi Hiyya bar Ashi was studying in the garden. A light breeze fluttered the branches of the pomegranate and olive trees. The Mishnah he was learning was difficult, and his mind was unfocused. Suddenly he looked up and saw the image of a woman – and what a woman she was! “What, who are you?” he asked, spellbound. “I am Libertina…,” she replied indulgently, enjoying the game. She was surprised to find that the rituals of courtship came naturally to her. She made her way toward him in the garden, at once close and distant, familiar and foreign.

(I’m going to skip a steamy scene here, but you can use your imagination!!)

When he caught his breath again, she ordered, …that he bring her a pomegranate from the top branch. He did not dare refuse her. His legs were covered in scratches from the tree branches, and when he climbed down, the branch beneath him broke, and he tumbled down after it. She took the fruit from his hand….

When he limped to the house, his wife was already lighting the oven. He was conscious of his torn clothing and the scratches on his arms. He worried that the scent of Libertina clung to his hair, which was still disheveled even after he combed through it with his fingers. His heart and soul felt undone too. There was no way to take back what he had done. He was consumed by guilt.

He looked over at the bench beside the oven, which seemed suddenly so inviting. …He cast a parting glance at . . . . the good woman who had borne him his children, who had once made his heart dance when he peered at her through the lattice from the man’s section of the synagogue. The fire in the oven burned high and red. . . He entered the oven and sat inside.

With her two strong arms, [she reached into the oven] pulled out his faint body, . . .. When he awoke, his legs were wrapped in rags, soaked in ointment.

She asked quietly “Why?”

For a moment he remained silent, and then he told her the whole story. . . . She listened calmly, and when he finished, she said, “It was I.”

He knew this was his opportunity for love, even redemption, but he averted his glance. “But in any case, my intention was to transgress,” he said.

She raised her arm as if to object, and her wrist jingled. She unfastened the jeweled bangle and placed it on the table before her.

Surprising - to find such a story in a 2000-year old rabbinic text.

And it’s so familiar.. . . Not a Hollywood story of boy meets girl, boy and girl overcome many obstacles to be together, boy marries girl. Here, the rabbis tell a mundane story of what happens many years after the wedding. After the excitement of courtship, after the birth of children. The husband and wife are now too familiar with each other. The passion has faded.

And yet, the story gives us hope. During the scene in the garden, we see that it is possible to breathe new life into what has grown old.

On Rosh Hashana, this is what we are prompted to consider. How have we grown old? Not necessarily in age, but in how we meet ourselves, each other and the world. Where are we stuck? What can we make new again?

In this story, Rav Hiyya is stuck doing what he thinks a pious man is expected to do. He devotes himself to repressing his passion, what he sees as an evil impulse, through obsessive prayer. And the Talmud critiques him for doing this – it shows how his piety has created distance between himself and his wife, whom he loves.

On the other hand, the wife, whose real name we will never know, takes a risk. She tests her own limits, and the limits that society places on her as a devoted, aging housewife. She heeds a wake-up call, when she witnesses her husband on the floor groveling in prayer. And for one afternoon, she takes leave of the expected. She doesn’t skimp her money to buy a Shabbat tablecloth or smelly fish. Instead she splurges on clothes for herself, and fragrant perfume. And by diving into the unknown, she pursues the possibility of bringing new energy to her worn-out life.

It is no coincidence that the couple’s passionate meeting takes place outside among fruit trees. In rabbinic literature, the orchard is a place of transformation – where boundaries can be tested, and where there is potential for new fruit.

I don’t think this story is advocating committing adultery. Instead, it provokes us to consider how we might transform ourselves by leaving the security and comfort of what is known, within the relationships and the life that we already inhabit. It wakes us up to consider where we are stuck. It also shows how the energy that we may perceive as an “evil impulse” can be channeled, breathing new life into deadness.

Libertina, in the Talmud, is the name of a famous prostitute from Babylon. But for the purpose of this story, “Libertina” is meant to be understood as, “the liberated one” – the one who is not stuck, and certainly not dead, neither in body or in spirit. Libertina comes to test others to liberate themselves.

Ultimately, this story is about fear. The fear of taking leave of where we are and of stepping into what could be – who we could be.

Rabbi Alan Lew z”l, writes about two different kinds of fear: pachad and yir’ah. Pachad is the fear of taking leave of what is holding us back. Yir’ah is the combination of fear and awe which we encounter in the act of leave-taking. Pachad is the fear of leaving the familiar – Egypt. Yir’ah is the fear of the unknown expanse that lies before us – the wilderness.

Pachad is what led the Israelites, as they were fleeing Egypt – Pharaoh’s army coming after them – to cry out and complain, “Weren’t there enough graves in Egypt that you had to take us out here to the desert to die? Isn’t this exactly what we were talking about in Egypt when we said ‘Let us be and we’ll serve the Egyptians, because it is better to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert’?”

Lew writes:

This is the critical moment, and extremely familiar to each of us. We are stuck. We are being pressed. Pharaoh’s army is coming after us and there’s nowhere to go but into the sea. One of our children is failing in school or in life or in both and we have no idea how to help them. The bills must be paid but we don’t have enough money in the bank to pay them. We love our spouse desperately but our marriage continues to deteriorate no matter what we do, or how hard we try to make things better. Our job is driving us into a deep depression and we just don’t feel that we can go on, but we don’t know how we would make ends meet— how we would support our family— without it. We have to do something and we have no idea what to do, so we panic.[2]

Rav Hiyya is driven by his pachad to walk into the oven, and flee from the opportunity to renew his connection with his wife. Whereas, as she stands at the stove, pickling the cucumbers and preserving the quinces, the wife is somehow able to work through her pachad, and then see clearly what she must do to revive the marriage.

Liberation, (or Libertina), emerges, after we stay still for a while with the pachad, until it subsides. Then we can see clearly, that the next step must be forward, into the sea. We take that step, trembling with yir’ah, with a new kind of fear that is really awe – awe at what is actually possible.

Lew teaches:

. . . I think there is an even deeper fear operating here . . . and that is the fear of our own power. We get used to living without power and without love. We come to believe that this is how our lives should be. We become comfortable within the confines of these limitations. They surround us like the walls of a womb. When our real strength begins to declare itself, when the intensity of love presents itself to us, we are torn out of this comfortable cocoon. This is a frightening experience, and if our courage fails us, we will choose to live without our full power, without passionate intensity. We will settle for something that feels safer and more comfortable. Better to settle for a life that seems easier to hold[3].

As we see in the story - when we adhere too closely to what we’ve grown to expect of ourselves – rather than choosing to become who we could be –we actually risk a kind of death. Not a literal death, but the death of our most precious relationships – and the death of our own spirit.

For the wife, the sight of her husband groveling on the floor is a wake-up call.

For R. Hiyya, the wake-up call is the impulse to take his own life.

On this Rosh Hashanah – and at any moment – each of us is invited to hear our own wake-up call.

Perhaps we hear it in the voice of a spouse – or the voice of a child or parent.

Perhaps we hear it in our own hearts – or in the sound of the shofar. 

In this New Year we are called to take leave of those places where we have become stuck, or stale, or dead.

In this New Year, we are called to take leave of the fear that keeps us from changing.

In this New Year, Libertina calls us to step forward, from the fear of what is known, into the awe and the power of the unknown.

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[1] Ruth Calderon, A Bride for One Night: Talmud Tales, The Jewish Publication Society: Philadelphia, 2014, pp. 39-43.

[2] Lew, Alan (2007-07-31). Be Still and Get Going: A Jewish Meditation Practice for Real Life (Kindle Locations 1507-1513). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.

[3] Ibid. Location 1775

Re’eh 2015 – Desire vs Joy Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg

Last night after a delicious dinner that Jim made us, I had a hankering for ice cream. It had already been a long week, and I felt like, I deserve a treat! I deserve to have some fun before the Board Meeting! So, Jim and I went to the Sweet Shoppe and got in line for ice cream. But by the time we got to the front of the line I realized that I was still really full from dinner. I still really wanted that ice cream – it is so rare to have this chance to spontaneously go out – and I had to really stop myself and breathe for a moment before being able to let go of the urge to order it any way.

Instead, Jim and I just sat outside on a bench with no ice cream and had a lovely conversation.  That simple joy of sitting on a bench with my husband on a summer evening is still with me, whereas the ice cream, if I had had it, would be long forgotten by now – or perhaps all I would have is a stomachache as a memory. 

I do have to admit, that when facing a choice like that, I don’t always make the right choice. But the consequences are pretty small.  This week’s Torah portion is about bigger choices – between the blessing and the curse.

God says – “See, this day I set before you blessing and curse: blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God…and curse, if you do not obey the commandments…and follow other gods whom you have not experienced.” (Deut. 11:26-28)

In the context of the Torah, God is warning the Israelites that they will be blessed if they stick with their God – whom they cannot see or touch or taste, and that they will be cursed if they stray after the shiny new gods they will encounter once they cross over into the Promised Land. These gods that the other peoples are worshiping in ways they hadn’t experienced.

So – what does this mean for us? We who aren’t really at a risk for straying off to worship idols?

I think this parasha is asking us to contemplate what brings blessings to our lives and what brings curses. For us, and for the Israelites as well, these idols represent the spiritual trap we can fall into of allowing ourselves to be controlled by our desires for what will make us feel good in the short term – that urge to choose immediate gratification  - over setting our sights on what will bring lasting joy and true blessing.

An indulgence I have been enjoying lately is the newly released 3^rd season of the Netflix series, “Orange is the New Black.” It’s about inmates in a women’s prison. (spoiler alert!) This week I saw the episode where an inmate named Daya, who is pregnant and unmarried, is agonizing over the choice of whether to give her baby up for adoption by a wealthy family or to keep the child and raise it in what is likely to be a life of poverty once she is released.

Daya’s own mother Aleida is actually in prison with her –Aleida who herself gave birth to Daya out of wedlock and raised her in poverty. Aleida is pushing Daya to give up the baby. She feels guilty for having raised Daya with nothing and believes that this is the reason why she turned to a life of crime and landed in prison. She wants Daya to give her child the chance that she couldn’t give to her.  

Daya reminds her mother of one of the happiest moments in her life - when her mother had some extra cash and took her to get her nails done for her 17th birthday – Aleida thinks that Daya remembers this moment because she finally had  the money to get a manicure and have some fun.

But Daya says to her mother “All I ever wanted was for you to spend time with me.”

In his book Notes on an Unhurried Journey, the author John Taylor writes:

“It is not difficult to bring fun into our lives, but it is a life-long task to find joy.”

“Fun can be bought. . . But the cycle of fun is short. There is a sadness in the air when the game is over. . . It really doesn’t take long for the new car to become only transportation or the clothes to become unfashionable. Fun arrives, contributes its brief sensation, and leaves.

“Joy, however, is something else. More than a product of money, it is a product of effort, time and sacrifice. Paradoxically, it is both sought after and waited for. It is the goal of labor and stillness. It abides at birth and death. Joy is pried from the great stones of existence. It is the result of long hours, hours which include both frustration and despair. Joy often arrives at the end of a long, exhaustive effort, and occasionally it surprises us in the midst of effort.

“Fun is escape which we all need; joy is fulfillment which we all seek. Fun is exciting, but joy is life. What a pity it would be if, in our quest for fun, we missed joy.”

I think it’s intentional that this parasha which begins with the choice of blessing over curse, ends with the commandments to celebrate the festivals.

Our people are instructed that three times a year, on the festivals of Shavuot, Passover and Shavuot, they are to converge at the Temple in Jerusalem. They are to come from wherever they are dispersed bringing gifts of thanks –the first fruits of their soil, grain, and first-born animals of their flocks. And they are commanded to rejoice together in this place.

Imagine working all year round to plant, tend and harvest crops. Imagine the anxiety of the farmer, depending on the rainfall for a good harvest; the hard physical labor of caring for animals and fields. While there may be moments of enjoyment and fun, life is mostly about  hard work, dedication, and  anxiety – not so different from our lives today….

  

And then when the work is done, and you have some first fruits or a first-born cow, you’re not allowed to hoard it and eat it by yourself. Instead, you are commanded to schlep it all the way to Jerusalem where you sacrifice part of it at the Temple, and you get to feast on the rest, with your family and your community.

The whole people of Israel gathers together to rejoice. Imagine the deep feeling of satisfaction, the sense of closeness with the community, and with God. Imagine how when the people gather, they take note of the new babies that have been born, and they remember those who were there last year to celebrate but who are now gone. Imagine the conversations during and after festive meals – the catching up and sharing of news, the story telling.

This is the cleaving to God and the commandments.

This is the choice to worship the God we cannot see.

This is the choice to forgo those new shiny gods of immediate gratification.

This is the blessing.

This is the joy.