Parashat Toldot - 23 Cheshvan 5772

Torah thought of the day.

Some of our family traditions are worth abandoning. Isaac fears for his life on account of Rebecca’s beauty, something that Abraham his father feared before him, and poses as Rebecca’s brother instead of her husband. While this turns out alright for Isaac, as it had profited his father before him, family traditions of bad behavior should be left behind, not perpetuated.

More on this as we examine traditions of deception in the rest of this week’s reading of Toldot, Genesis 25:19-28:9. See the full text here.

Sukkot & Simchat Torah for Kids

My colleague Cantor Mary Thomas and I address 1st graders on Sukkot about that holiday and Simchat Torah, enjoy:

Video

Learning in front of everyone

Here I am, attempting to learn and share what I learned on Yom Kippur:

[photo copywritten 2011 David E. Powers]

Jewish Ethics on the 'Ger'

Parashat Ki Teitzei 5771 - Saturday, September 10, 2011
On the occasion of the B’nei Mitzvah of Gil Gerber and Daniel Gershen

One might suspect, considering the closeness of your last names, that Daniel and Gil’s date had been determined by alphabetical order.

What I find most interesting about your names though, is how we can connect the letters in common - G-E-R - to the parashah that you just read, and to our Haftarah reading.

The Haftarah continues the cycle of consolation that lead us from the lowest point on the Jewish calendar - Tisha be-Av, the Ninth of Av, the worst day of Jewish history, in mid-summer - to arguably the highest point, our High Holy Day Season starting at the end of this month. All our Haftarah readings at this time remind us of our blessings after revisiting the stories of tragedy in our history. Today’s reading, from Isaiah Chapter 54, continues in that theme, and reminds us of the divine promise made to Noah to never destroy the world again. On this weekend of commemoration, we get to strike a hopeful chord.

As to the meaning of your names - the Hebrew word “Ger” refers to the stranger, the traveler between communities. In your parashah, in addition to all of the commandments that you read, we find on other instruction in this phrase in Deuteronomy 23:8: “You are not to oppress the Egyptian, for your were a stranger in their land.”

With all of the other wonderful messages you sent us about this week’s reading, here is one more - all of them are supported by this central ethic in Judaism. Do not oppress others because we have sympathy for the oppressed - we were oppressed before. More importantly, do not oppress others who once oppressed you either!

Both of you have not only read and led admirably today, you also gave of your time and efforts freely in your Tzedakah projects - working with survivors of domestic abuse and the families of our soldiers. You embraced this ethic, this notion that we should not only not oppress others, but that people in difficulty deserve our assistance. That the extension of not oppressing others can be found in working towards a world in which no one is oppressed, either by what we do, or what we allow to happen around us.

Whether by pursuing justice through good deeds, through learning, or through the leadership that you have shown us all today, we honor you both, Gil and Daniel.

Getting out of the way

Parashat Re-eh 5771 - Friday, August 26, 2011 - Posted a little late

Shabbat Shalom!

I am starting with two stories tonight - one about me, and one about Moses - please don’t get the impression that I am drawing any comparisons whatsoever.

Many of you know that I used to do a lot of cycling. Last year, while on a long training ride, coming down a very big hill in Tahoe, and going pretty fast, I approached an intersection where someone made a left turn in front of me. I wasn’t really cut off, but I began to get a little irritated. With my heritage as a recovering inhabitant of New York City, I almost offered a rude gesture in response to my near-inconvenience.

On that same ride I had been listening to some music on my phone, in this case a song by a band called Gogol Bordello. One line in that song is: “There is no us and them”. That line stood out as I realized that this person driving may have had other things on her or his mind. Perhaps they had an emergency, maybe they didn’t see me, and more importantly, if we are all in it together, if there is really “no us and them” then this event on the road wasn’t about me. I stopped the process of getting irritated, and had a better day because of it.

Moses had an anger problem. Way back in the book of Numbers, Moses faces a horde of grumbling and complaining and most importantly, thirsty, Israelites, and provides water for them from a rock. Instead of following God’s instructions and speaking to the rock, invoking God’s name, Moses strikes the rock with his staff to bring forth the water. Considering how annoying the Israelites have been, hitting something didn’t seem like a totally unreasonable reaction, and yet God uses this incident to refuse Moses entrance into Israel. That day, Moses may have thought it was all about him and his importance in front of the people, not about the people and their needs.

So Moses understands the importance of getting out of the way, of not being in the center, of identifying with the bigger picture that includes everyone. Moses spends the entirety of the Book of Deuteronomy sharing his version of the lessons we need to succeed without him.

This week we read from Deuteronomy, particularly Re-eh. Here’s a little section:

12:2 You are to demolish, yes, demolish, all the (sacred) places where the nations that you are dispossessing served their gods, on the high hills and on the mountains and beneath every luxuriant tree;
3 you are to wreck their slaughter-sites, you are to smash their standing-pillars, their Asherot/Sacred-poles you are to burn with fire, and the carved-images of their gods, you are to cut-to-shreds- so that you cause their name to perish from that place!

This is not the first time Moses rails against idolatry, and certainly won’t be the last time a prophet stands in front of the Israelites telling them to avoid idol worship, or abandon it.

Why does our Torah focus so much on this, and what can we do with it today?

Certainly few of us erect tree idols in our homes or back yards, so what can we learn from this?

Let’s expand our understanding of idolatry beyond the simplistic idea of bowing down to physical idols. The attachment of importance, too much or too little, to things and people inappropriately, seems like a good working definition of an idolatry for us to avoid.

Perhaps Moses struggled with this most - he placed too much importance on himself, his hurt feelings, and his abilities, and too little on being part of the group.

How many times do we take a suggestion, a friendly or constructive one, as criticism? Couldn’t it just be that our friends and family really want to help us out? What kind of difficulties might we avoid by seeing a comment as an offer to help, instead of a critique?

How important are our feelings, our sense of self, in the context of working in a team where we all aim to succeed, even if that team might be our closest family?

So the idolatry to avoid becomes self-importance. We often tell each other that we need “thicker skins” as a way of living with comments that may or may not be directed at us. When we take ourselves out of the way of the comment, we need not absorb it. We are no longer in the center.

Even better, let us see whatever the interaction may be as good for the group. When there is no us and them, or “no ‘I’ in team”, then we can pull back to a bigger picture and see ourselves as the beneficiaries of a comment meant to improve the whole, as opposed to the target of a criticism.

Let’s forget being thick skinned, and move towards seeing ourselves in a bigger picture.

Let’s get out of the way, leave an idolatrous treatment of our self behind.

May this Shabbat bring us opportunities to reflect on our place in the long view, allow us to better see the forest for the trees, and not mistake ourselves for the object of all things. In growing a little smaller, may our lives grow bigger.