I remember growing up watching The Jetsons. It was a cartoon about a middle-class family living in the year 2062 in Orbit City, with all the promised conveniences of science fiction: a job where one literally pushed a button for a living, flying cars, robots… and the only problems that happened were human-made, primarily about relationships with family, the boss, the occasional silly alien. 2062 doesn’t seem so far away, but the vision of a better world seems really far away. I remember back in the 1980’s reading fantastic books about space travel and world peace and praying that future would catch up to us. What we have in 2022 is a little closer to a dystopian Mad Max than it is to the ideal that Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek hoped for. But even though things might seem bleak, we have paths forward.

The Jewish People are all too familiar with praying for a better tomorrow, only to be met with challenge after challenge. But the entirety of the Torah and our prayers tell us to face challenges each day knowing that we have the potential to make a paradise on earth. Even though every week we pray that “Bayom hahu yihyeh Adonai Ekhad u’sh’mo ekhad—On that day, God shall be One, and God’s name shall be One,” we are also taught that this vision isn’t something that can happen overnight, even though we are told constantly to work for it. In Pirkei Avot 2:16, we read: “It is not your responsibility to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.” The Torah, the Mishnah, the Talmud… it all teaches that if we just work hard enough, we should be able to make Eden here on Earth. But how long do we have to work until we actually see real results?

How many of us are losing patience? Our people—and in fact many peoples around the world—have our share of pain, suffering, and loss. Many have joined the fight against injustice, bigotry, and hate, only to have the pendulum swing one more time back to where it started. How many times do we have to debate, vote, lobby, fundraise, participate in the public square, before things “stick”?

Even our own Temple community is a microcosm of tsuris: We have been dealing with Covid, trying to keep our Temple Family together, doing our best in a crazy economy, only to be met with a hurricane, and now we find ourselves like our ancestors: Wandering Jews. Do we deserve this? Absolutely not. Are we doing something about it? Absolutely. Just ask our Temple Leadership. Better yet, don’t. They know better than anyone about the difficult questions that need answering and the steps needed to be taken. 

We are tired. We are resigned. We want to have hope, but also to see it bear fruit. But this is nothing new, as we can see in the Torah.

We read this week from Parshat Vayakhel. In last week’s Torah Portion, Moses had come down from Mount Sinai, bearing the two tablets of the Ten Commandments, ready to charge the People Israel with the building of the Tabernacle. Exodus 35 begins thus:

Moses then convoked the whole Israelite community and said to them: These are the things that THE ETERNAL has commanded you to do: On six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a sabbath of complete rest, holy to THE ETERNAL; whoever does any work on it shall be put to death. You shall kindle no fire throughout your settlements on the sabbath day.

Moses said further to the whole community of Israelites: This is what THE ETERNAL has commanded: Take from among you gifts to THE ETERNAL; everyone whose heart is so moved shall bring them—gifts for THE ETERNAL: gold, silver, and copper; blue, purple, and crimson yarns, fine linen… [Ex. 35:1-10]

And so on. Notice that before Moses charges the Israelites with the daunting task at hand—that of building the Tabernacle so that God might dwell among them—he first and foremost tells them they can do work for six days, but on the seventh day, they must observe a day of complete and total rest. Moses really lays it out: Should anyone do work on the Sabbath, they shall be put to death. Only after reminding the Israelites that they must observe the Sabbath that he began to give instructions of the gifts needed to construct the Tabernacle. 

Seder, or Order, for Jews, is extremely important. Here, the punishment is laid out first before any building instructions are given because Moses assumes the Israelites will want to hurry up and get the job done. They just escaped Egypt and want their God to dwell among them, right here and right now. But Moses says, “Sure, okay, but before we get started, remember: Patience. You will need to rest.” No matter how hard we work or try, we won’t be as successful unless we take a break. According to Or HaChaim:

There is also a lesson here that the success of the work performed during the six days of the week depends on the observance of the seventh day as a holy day. The reason is that the Sabbath is the soul of the world.

And let’s talk about taking a break. So many of us don’t give ourselves one. Yes, there is the temporal break one takes observing Shabbat—a 24 hour period where we can rest body, heart, and spirit and find refreshment and wisdom—but what about giving ourselves slack? We always seem to be working under the watchful eye of a parent, a partner or spouse, a boss, society, and we are made to feel “less than.” In part, that is from the others’ often unreasonable impositions, but there’s the other part, where we ourselves think we should be better, smarter, earning more, doing more, being more… In Pirkei Avot, Rabbi Tarfon said, “The day is short, and the work is plentiful, and the laborers are indolent, and the reward is great, and the master of the house is insistent.” Even in our own wisdom literature, we are told to, as the group Daft Punk put it, “Work it harder, make it better, Do it faster, makes us stronger, More than ever, hour after hour, Work is never over.”

This is not only unsustainable, it dismisses the essence of what the Sabbath Day is and means.

Yes, we are charged by our moral core to make a world better for ourselves, our loved ones, and society; Yes, we are driven by want and need to work harder for an easier life. But as we read in the Torah this week: Before we do any work, no matter how important—even building the Tabernacle—we ought to give ourselves a break.

This includes doing the work well. There is a huge difference between doing something perfectly and doing something as well as we can. Too many of us are caught up in doing something perfectly that when we fall even shy of perfection, we feel as if we have let the world down. We have not. We have tried, thoughtfully, sincerely, and with intention. That is much better than striving for a Utopia and feeling like a failure because it hasn’t arrived yet. I’ve got news for you: We’ve been trying for millennia to perfect the world. It will never be perfect.

But we still have to build the Tabernacle. We still have to work on our Temple Community. We still have to fight the good fight, ensuring peace in the world. We still have to engage in political discourse. We just have to remember to take a break, be kind to ourselves, allow us the leeway to strive towards perfection without being perfect.

On this Shabbat, let us take a break: Let us really soak in this day of rest, allowing us to recharge, reflect, and renew ourselves. Let us give ourselves a break: Let us be proud of our efforts, accept our shortcomings, and recognize that the world does not sit upon our shoulders alone. And let us have a break from the news, from unnecessary debate, from the outside world, and allow ourselves to find the still, small voice inside us, embracing that warm voice, telling us we have done well this week, as best we could. Come Sunday, we’ll try again. And again. And again.

Kein y’hi ratzon, may this be God’s will. Amen.

Parshat Vayigash – Sermon for December 25, 2020

Identifying as American Jews, there is probably no other time during the year that we feel like a religious minority than the Christmas season. Whether it’s the Christmas lights that appear on neighborhood houses, music heard in shopping malls starting around Thanksgiving (at least before Covid), or hearing “Merry Christmas” at check-out, it is no secret that virtually the Western world is made up of a majority of people who celebrate and embrace Christmas as a religious or cultural holiday with great enthusiasm. Despite living in a country founded on a bedrock principle of the separation of Church and State, with over 65% of those in the United States identify as Christian, compared to around 2% who identify as Jewish, there has not been a time in our country’s history without some overt observance of Christmas.

Jewish identity has been inextricably linked to identifying as a minority. In fact, this week’s Torah portion of Vayigash gives us the origin story for our minority status. Leading up to this week’s reading, you may recall that Joseph, one of the sons of the patriarch, Jacob, had become second in command of Egypt, only subordinate to Pharaoh. He became so after interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams, predicting years of great harvests, followed by years of famine. When the famine hit, the entirety of the incipient Jewish family, living in Canaan at the time, traveled to Egypt in order to find food and sustenance. At the dramatic height of this week’s Torah portion, with his brothers before him, unknowing that it is Joseph they are pleading with, we read from Genesis 45:1-5:

Joseph could no longer control himself before all his attendants, and he cried out, “Have everyone withdraw from me!” So there was no one else about when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. His sobs were so loud that the Egyptians could hear, and so the news reached Pharaoh’s palace. Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father still well?” But his brothers could not answer him, so dumbfounded were they on account of him. Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come forward to me.” And when they came forward, he said, “I am your brother Joseph, he whom you sold into Egypt. Now, do not be distressed or reproach yourselves because you sold me hither; it was to save life that God sent me ahead of you.

Genesis 45:1-5

“It was to save life that God sent me ahead of you.” From first glance, it looks like Joseph is saying that the circuitous path which landed Joseph his station in Egypt, and further brought the rest of his family into Egypt was to save their immediate lives from starvation and inevitable death. However, there are many rabbis who suggest that there is a deeper meaning to the phrase, “it was to save life that God sent me ahead of you.” 

The subsequent events of the Torah tell of the Hebrews, now settled in the land of Egypt, prospered and lived well among the Egyptians, and their numbers grew. The book of Exodus continues the story by almost immediately telling us that, starting at Exodus 1:8: “A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, ‘Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us. Let us deal shrewdly with them, so that they may not increase; otherwise in the event of war they may join our enemies in fighting against us and rise from the ground.’” We then have the story of the Passover, the Jewish departure from Egypt, and eventual following Moses through the desert to Mount Sinai where the Jews are given the Torah.

When Joseph says, “it was to save life that God sent me ahead of you,” the implication is that the direct object “you” refers to all of us: Without the common experience and legend of being treated as the “other,” and conversely, without the common revelation of the redeeming power of the Divine, we would not have the firm identity that would sustain us, nor the strongly held values that makes us empathetic towards the stranger. One of the greatest commandments of the Torah is from Leviticus 19:18: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” for which the justification is from Exodus 23:9: “You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt.” None of this could have happened while living as a majority population in the land of Canaan. Thanks to Joseph and his family entering and dwelling in Egypt, we developed the identity we embrace today: Ours is a religion that understands the stranger because we were and continue to be a minority wherever we find ourselves in the world.

In modernity, our Judasim has evolved and changed some of its attitudes towards this minority identity. Without getting into its history or reasoning, Jews in the United States have enjoyed to a great degree a flexibility in embracing our dominant American culture. To illustrate the point through the lens of Christmas, some signs of Jewish aculturation are the elevation of the significance of Hanukkah to Christmas, the exchange of presents at this season, hanging Hanukkah lights, some putting a Hanukkah Bush in their homes in lieu of a Christmas tree… These are all signs of the “success” of America as a “melting pot.” If you’ve heard the metaphor before, you might be surprised to learn that the term came into popular use from a play written in 1908 by Jewish author, Israel Zangwill, who envisioned a society where all could live free from cultural divide or prejudice.

Just to talk about the Chrismas season some more, there have been many Jews who have contributed to the “most wonderful time of the year” by penning some of the more iconic Christmas tunes that we’ve been humming for the past few weeks:

The light-hearted and somewhat irreverent songs, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” “A Holly, Jolly Christmas,” and “Silver and Gold” were all written by Johnny Marks, an affluent Jew from Mount Vernon, New York. There are several sources that suggest that Rudolph, co-written by another Jewish writer, Robert Louis May, represents the feelings of some Jews towards the stereotype of the Jew with a large nose!

“The Christmas Song” which begins, “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…” was penned by Mel Tormé, who was born to Polish Jewish immigrant parents. Joan Javits and Phil Springer, both Jewish composers, gave us the slightly racy song, “Santa Baby,” while two other Jewish writers, George Wyle and Eddie Pola, wrote the classic, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” Ray Evans and Jay Livingston wrote a piece originally called “Tinkle Bells,” but was quickly changed to “Silver Bells,” and has since become a classic. Felix Bernard co-wrote “Walkin’ in a Winter Wonderland” with his colleague, Richard B. Smith, who was not Jewish.

And of course, this list would not be complete without a work written by Russian born Israel Beilin, whose name changed to Baline and then finally to Irving Berlin, who wrote the timeless song, “White Christmas.”

Why have so many Jewish writers contributed to the canon of classic Christmas songs? Writer for the website Kveller, Maddy Albert, wrote recently:

…there are a few theories about why Jews threw their weight behind Christmas songs. As singer and pianist Michael Feinstein, known as the “Ambassador of the Great American Songbook,” told Religion News Service, Jews flocked to the music industry early in the 20th century — when most of the American Christmas classics were written — because it was one of the rare industries in which Jews didn’t face rampant antisemitism. Rabbi Kenneth Kanter, an expert in Jews and pop culture at Hebrew Union College, added that this embrace of Christmas music was a type of assimilation to America’s dominant Christian culture as well as a form of patriotism for Jewish composers. “These songs made Christmas a kind of national celebration, almost a patriotic celebration,” he said.

For much of Jewish spiritual history, Jews, isolated from assimilation and dominant cultural influences, were by and large cloistered away from cultural Christian influences. Today, more than at any time in Jewish experience, we are more than simply exposed to world cultures and religions—we are very much enmeshed with them. The Reform movement itself was created in the United States as a response to the desire to aculturate, to become both fully American and authentically Jewish, embracing the universal values of our relgion while casting aside the trappings of our practices that kept us separate and apart in society. Of course, there are influences both outside and inside our community that keep us identifiably separated, but our Reform ideology fully embraces the idea of reforming our religious expressions so that we might integrate into society instead of separating from it.

This wasn’t clear to me as a child, even growing up at a Reform synagogue in New Jersey. I felt the overwhelming presence of Christmas around this season, and I recall how uncomfortable it made me feel: Excluded and reminded that I was not a part of the majority. Choir performances filled with Christmas songs both irreverent and religious in my public school only underscored that sense. As I’ve gotten older and understood the beauty of our Reform movement in its ability to grow and progress with society, I’ve come to appreciate other religions and cultures in ways that no longer feel like a threat to my Jewish identity. 

Today, the Christmas season can be a reminder to us that because we are different, we are adding something to our society ensuring it isn’t monolithic. Our Judiasm itself allows for people from disparate backgrounds, cultures, races, genders, sexual orientations, genders, can gather together and struggle to find meaning and purpose in life. At the same time, we can stand alongside Christians, Muslims, Hinus, Sikhs, people of varied religions and people without faith traditions, appreciate the diversity in our country and how that diversity can make for a better world. Without differences of opinions, viewpoints, values and goals, we can easily find ourselves living in a stagnant world which never challenges the status quo nor strives to improve the fate of all life.

So we can share this Chirstmas Day with Shabbat, look the Sabbath candles glowing before us as a reminder of the light we wish to bring into the world, and look at the Christmas lights in our neighborhood and see them as a sign of those around us who, too, are looking to bring more light into a darkened world. May the Earth know soon and in our days, the light of friendship and fellowship, and may we all know true peace—where all can celebrate differences and still call ourselves one human family.

Kein y’hi ratzon—May this be God’s will. Amen.

Coronavirus. Who knew it was the 11th plague? If you are leading a seder this year and need a hagaddah to lead a seder over Zoom, Google Hangouts or whatever, here’s one I designed a few years back. Want to show some appreciation? Make a donation to the charity of your choosing and let me know about it. Have a happy Passover and stay safe!