Category: Festivals

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Festivals Sermons Yizkor

We Are Never Finished – Shavu’ot 5783 / Yizkor

As I get older, I find myself more willing to accept a complicated truth about human life: you are never finished. No long-term project, no personal mission, no ideal to be implemented is ever really complete. We are all works-in-progress, and all of our human endeavors are forever in progress. 

This is, I think, an essential piece of the human condition. Life is not a middle-school algebra problem, where there is always a simple answer awaiting the one who takes all the correct steps. Life is definitely not a series of 3-4-5 triangles. It is far more messy. We start new tasks or relationships with zeal and abandon them mid-stream. We change course. We fail at being the parent we hoped to be, or the spouse we thought we were, or the exemplary child we aspired to be.

Among the texts from the Jewish bookshelf to which I most frequently return is Pirqei Avot, the second-century collection of rabbinic wisdom which is included in the Mishnah, but which stands out among the other books in that six-order collection as being quite different from the rest. Almost all of the Mishnah is about laws: instructions to post-Temple Jews regarding how to live life and observe rabbinic Judaism now that there are no more sacrifices. When do we recite Shema in the evening? What types of activities are forbidden on Shabbat? May one eat an egg laid by a hen on a Yom Tov day?

But Pirqei Avot is about how to be a better person. It is about learning and teaching Torah, about being careful with your speech, and about the complexities surrounding judgment and governing. And at the end of the second chapter of Pirqei Avot comes the piece of wisdom to which I return more than anything else in our canon:

הוּא הָיָה אוֹמֵר, לֹא עָלֶיךָ הַמְּלָאכָה לִגְמֹר, וְלֹא אַתָּה בֶן חוֹרִין לִבָּטֵל מִמֶּנָּה 

Rabbi Tarfon used to say: It is not your obligation to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it.

This piece of wisdom has guided me through many challenging times. I think of it when I am pulling weeds from my garden, when I am exercising, when I am facing a particularly daunting pastoral situation, when I grieve, when I start a new project, and pretty much every day, as I face the piles of work on my desk that never seem to resolve themselves. It speaks to the challenges facing the State of Israel, and the challenges facing our nation, and of course those facing Congregation Beth Shalom.

Whenever I need to be reminded that the only way to tackle a seemingly-insurmountable project is to take a little at a time and keep moving forward, I think of this mishnah. And it helps.

I thought of this eternally-useful gem a little more than two weeks ago when I first became aware of the death of Justin Ehrenwerth, a young man who I had only met briefly, but was the beloved son and brother and uncle of members of Beth Shalom.

Justin was only 44, and his life was cut short by mental illness. But in those 44 years, Justin accomplished more than most of us do in a lifetime. He studied at Colby College, Oxford University, and Penn Law. He worked for John Kerry’s campaign for president, and then for Barack Obama’s campaign, and then in the Obama administration. He established and ran the government agency responsible for cleaning up the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. He became the president of The Water Institute, a New Orleans-based nonprofit dedicated to solving major environmental challenges. (Our member Jordan Fischbach, who was Beth Shalom’s Vice President for Synagogue Life until this past week, was one of Justin’s employees.) 

Justin was a national axe-throwing champion and a skilled harmonica player; a devoted son, brother, father and husband, and a loyal, dedicated friend who went out of his way to be there for others. Oh, and he also served on the Board of his synagogue in New Orleans.

Justin was also a person with plans. Jordan described him as being particularly mission-driven, which is something that many of us aspire to be, but (and I am speaking here for myself) actually is quite a challenging way to live. It requires discipline and energy that few of us are able to successfully muster. And all those who knew Justin recognized that energy; he was the kind of person who lit up a room when he entered. 

And this made his death all the more shocking. This young man, who had a lengthy resume of successes, who did so much good in this world and truly connected with so many people, was suffering quietly.

We laid Justin to rest last Wednesday at the Beth Shalom Cemetery, and during the hesped / eulogy, I said the following, based on a teaching I learned from my homiletics professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbi Gerald Zelizer:

The tale of the Jewish people is filled with great figures who died before they completed the projects of their lives. Moshe Rabbeinu, Our Teacher Moses, was only able to view the Promised Land from across the Jordan River. King David set his heart on building the Beit HaMiqdash, the Temple in Jerusalem, but could not do so. Our matriarch Rachel died in childbirth while on the road to Ephrat; she neither reached her destination nor knew her son Benjamin. The Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl died in 1903 at age 44, when he had only just set in motion the forces which would yield a Jewish state 45 years later. 

The number of years is not necessarily the measure of success. The successful life is not necessarily the long life. The seeds that we plant which bear fruit long after we are gone are arguably the better measure.

Our ambitions, our mission, our goals, our hopes, what we strive to be, that is what determines the success or failure of our life, and not its length. How honestly, how nobly, how totally and completely one lives, these are the true measures of who a person is.

***

When we reflect on the lives of all those whom we remember today for Yizkor, we may wish to recall that the true measure of their lives was not a number of years. It cannot be surmised from the hyphen between the dates on their memorial stones. Rather, we might want to recall how they lived, what they lived for, who they loved, and the values they strived to impart through their actions. That was who they were; those were the things that they accomplished on this Earth. And we should all be grateful for that. Even though Moshe Rabbeinu does not make it to Israel, he is still Moshe Rabbeinu. Even though Herzl will forever lie in Jerusalem, in the modern capitol of a state which he imagined but never saw, he will always be the one who made it happen.

And furthermore, we should also cut ourselves some slack. No matter how mission-driven we may fashion ourselves, no matter what goals we achieve or dreams we realize, no matter how dramatically we fail, we might place some hope in the fact that those to whom we give love and life may in fact help complete our work on Earth after we are gone.

All the moreso: לא עליך המלאכה לגמור. It is not up to you to finish the task, because really, you cannot. That is the nature of humanity.

Our tradition acknowledges that. That is one reason that we read the Torah through every year, even though every time we get to the end we see that Moshe once again fails to enter the Promised Land. We knew that was coming. And yet, Joshua, his anointed successor, makes it.

We have to be willing to live with the fact that every conversation dangles, that every argument continues in some way, that our lives are like an ongoing road trip in which we never quite reach our destination, with side roads and dead ends and occasionally getting lost. 

So what can we do? We can reach out more fully and completely in love to those who need us. We can try our best to move the needle in some small corner of the world. We can aim to fulfill the mitzvot, knowing that we will occasionally miss the mark. And we can try to give to our children and grandchildren the opportunity to not finish the task as well, but also not to neglect it either.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Pittsburgh, PA, second day of Shavu’ot 5783, 5/27/2023.)

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Festivals Sermons Yizkor

Allies in Faith – 8th Day Pesaḥ 5783 / Yizkor

Passover, like no other holiday, trades in memory, personal and national. Just about every seder* that I have ever attended relies on memories of past sedarim, of family gatherings, of special foods, some which we liked and some which we memorably did not; memories of your funny uncle who would take a sip out of Elijah’s cup when everybody was watching the door, of good times singing Eḥad Mi Yodea and Ḥad Gadya and Dayyenu, of the hunt for the afikoman and of course all the grandparents and aunts and uncles around the table, the people who are no longer with us. And certainly the remembrance that comes with Yizkor at the end of Pesaḥ puts a final flourish on the sense of personal memory that this holiday features.

And also perhaps like no other holiday, Pesaḥ trades on historical memories of our people. Yetzi’at Mitzrayim, the Exodus from Egypt, is not only the foundational moment of Benei Yisrael, the people of Israel, but is also an essential statement of who we are as a people. The family of Ya’aqov / Jacob descends into Egypt as a group of 70 people escaping famine, and emerges 430 years later as a great nation, ready to receive the Torah and inherit the Land of Israel which has been promised to them. 

But this family becomes a nation by experiencing slavery and subsequent redemption, ensuring from the outset that from generation to generation Jewish people would understand what it means to be a slave, to be oppressed and persecuted, to be subjugated by another and denied our own spiritual means. Pesaḥ is therefore emblematic of all the ways in which we continue to act on that arc of slavery and redemption, in which we seek to bring about redemption for ourselves and the world by highlighting the holiness of the others around us.

And we hear that story replayed over and over throughout Jewish history, with the Babylonian Exile and return in the 6th c. BCE; the Roman destruction and dispersion of the Jews from Israel in the 1st c. CE; the Inquisition, the pogroms, the Shoah / Holocaust, the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. 

Persecution and redemption. Displacement, dispersion, and return. These are the major themes of Jewish existence going all the way back to slavery in Egypt. That is why the memories of our people speak so powerfully; that is why the Pesaḥ seder is still one of the most-practiced Jewish observances, because it is so deeply laden with history. The Pesaḥ memory machine, every spring, serves up its products along with the matzah and maror.

As you may know, I grew up in a fairly non-Jewish place, in the rustic and handsome Berkshire hills of Western Massachusetts. My parents had to work hard to ensure that my brother and sister and I had a strong connection to our tradition, our community, our customs and rituals, that we would be deeply connected to that memory machine. Our Conservative synagogue was 17 miles away, a 30-minute car ride. The nearest kosher meat market was in Albany, NY, an hour by car over a mountain. My grandparents and many close relatives with whom we spent some holidays were three hours away in Boston. There was no Jewish day school nearby. 

Williamstown, Massachusetts. Yes, I grew up there.

Virtually all of my closest school friends were Christian, and many were active in their churches. I was often, if you will, the token Jew: the only one bringing matzah sandwiches on Pesaḥ or missing school on Rosh HaShanah. I was always in some sense an outsider. I did not share my personal and national memories with my friends and neighbors.

But one of the things I have come to understand in recent years is that what unites people of faith is far greater than what divides us. We, the Jews, have the potential to be allies with other like-minded Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Bahai, Druze, and so forth.

Consider what we share:

  • Commitment to a framework of holy behavior which elevates and enriches our lives and the lives of the other people around us
  • Cultivation of the values of respect, gratitude, compassion, charity, community, education, and justice
  • Rituals which create meaning for our lives, including regular prayer, holidays, and lifecycle events: birth, coming-of-age, marriage, and death and mourning
  • Understanding that the role of Divinity in our lives provides a template for interacting with others
  • A textual basis for all of the above

Now, of course there is tremendous variation in style and language and the range of values that we hold dear, and of course theology. As just one small example, Judaism tends to emphasize action, Christianity belief. And of course we differ on matters of religious law, and how we read and interpret our shared texts, rituals and foods and customs and so forth. 

But think of all of the potential power contained within all of those which we do share, and how, if people of faith work in concert with one another, we can truly build a better society and a better world.

At the congregational seder last Thursday night here at Beth Shalom, among the 85 attendees were five Christian guests, young adult members of the East Liberty Presbyterian Church who had requested to attend. I was certain that they were quite overwhelmed by the scene. 

But I was really somewhat anxious, given these non-Jewish attendees, about one standard passage of the haggadah, which comes deep into the seder, right as we open the door (ostensibly to invite in Elijah the Prophet). We say, 

שְׁפֹךְ חֲמָתְךָ אֶל־הַגּוֹיִם אֲשֶׁר לֹא יְדָעוּךָ וְעַל־מַמְלָכוֹת אֲשֶׁר בְּשִׁמְךָ לֹא קָרָאוּ. כִּי אָכַל אֶת־יַעֲקֹב וְאֶת־נָוֵהוּ הֵשַׁמּוּ. שְׁפָךְ־עֲלֵיהֶם זַעֲמֶךָ וַחֲרוֹן אַפְּךָ יַשִּׂיגֵם. תִּרְדֹף בְּאַף וְתַשְׁמִידֵם מִתַּחַת שְׁמֵי ה

Pour your wrath upon the nations that do not know You and upon the kingdoms that do not call upon Your Name! Since they have consumed Ya’aqov and laid waste his habitation (Psalms 79:6-7). Pour out Your fury upon them and the fierceness of Your anger shall reach them (Psalms 69:25)! You shall pursue them with anger and eradicate them from under the skies of the Lord (Lamentations 3:66).

Now, it is likely that our ancestors added these verses in the Middle Ages to cry out to God for revenge against their non-Jewish tormentors. It was a statement of defiance in the face of powerlessness, delivered when the door was open to show the gentile neighbors that they were not doing anything nefarious. Our national memory of these times is, to put it mildly, not good.

Our ancestors probably could not have foreseen a day when people of different faiths could be allies against the forces of chaos. That idea was simply not a part of Jewish memory for many centuries.

But that is where we are right now, and that is what I said on Thursday night in the presence of our Presbyterian guests. We should not read these lines as a deliberate insult to non-Jews; we should instead absolutely read them as a statement against those who malign religious faith and attack worshippers in synagogues, churches, mosques, temples and gurdwaras and children in religious schools of any sort.

I do not think that I am the only one here who sees that the chaos grows as our society, as the people around us, grow more distant from religious tradition. Without a framework of spirituality, we create a world without rules, without principles, without dedication to the holiness of the other. Truth becomes relative; we worship the idols of politics and money and power. A world without religious tradition becomes one in which each individual is their own highest authority, where there are no guideposts and no guardrails. 

The power of allyship across religious lines is extraordinarily important today. United, we are a serious force within our society, and not for the purposes of indoctrinating others into our religion, but rather for improving the condition of all people.

I mentioned in this space on the first day of Pesaḥ that the “swatting” hoaxes of last week, which have lamentably continued, are creating fear in our communities. Last week it was Central Catholic; Monday night it was students at Pitt. Our friend Rev. Canon Natalie Hall’s children were in lockdown, subject to very real fear. 

We, the allies in faith, can push back against the forces of chaos, like those who are maliciously causing these security messes. We may not entirely win; chaos has always been with us. But we can do the best we can to build bridges, to heal wounds, to discuss our memories and our history and yes, even our theology and how we read the Torah differently. And that will, I am absolutely certain, go a long way toward helping to cure this fractured world.

When we meet together and learn together and break bread together as allies, we will be prepared to navigate together the many challenges which now plague our society and world. True people of faith know that we accomplish more when build bridges instead of walls, and we must add the sense of allyship to contemporary Jewish memory.

Our grandparents, our parents, the people whom we remember today, came with their families to this country to escape the persecutions of the Old World, to flee the rigid social lines of Europe, where they had always been outsiders. Here we are free not only to practice our traditions, not only to be considered as equals to our non-Jewish neighbors, but also to work together with partners whom our ancestors could never have imagined. 

In their memory, together, we can build a better world. Thank God.

And, if you want an opportunity to learn Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible) in an interfaith setting, please join us for A Conversation Between Christians & Jews Toward Friendship & Discovery. The first session is this coming Sunday, April 23, 2023, and it will be an engaging series focused on building and strengthening connections while studying our shared texts.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Pittsburgh, PA, 8th Day of Pesaḥ, 4/13/2023.)

* The Passover seder (plural: sedarim) is a special dinner and storytelling ritual that is observed on the first two nights of Pesaḥ. It includes displaying and eating special foods and telling the story of the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt.

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Festivals Sermons

The Seder as a Model for Resilience – First Day Pesaḥ 5783

Last Wednesday, I was working out on an elliptical machine at the JCC when I received a text message. It was an EMERGENCY NOTIFICATION, in all caps, from the Jewish Federation Security Team. When I clicked on the included link, I landed at a page which screamed in red letters, “***This is a CRITICAL Notification***,” and explained that there was a BluePoint activation at Central Catholic, and that police were on the scene, and students were being evacuated to Rodef Shalom.

I figured that there was not much I could do, being there at the JCC in my workout clothes and all sweaty, so I went on with my workout. About a half-hour later, I received a notification that the event was a hoax, and as the day progressed, we all learned that a bunch of schools were targeted across Pennsylvania, and that they fell victim to a particular kind of terror attack known as “swatting.”

Of course, it was quite frightening for the students who were evacuated, or who were in lockdown in the building. The next day, I spoke to our friend Rev. Canon Natalie Hall, the rector at Church of the Redeemer on Forbes, and as it turns out, two of her kids were actually in locked-down classrooms. Her teenager was texting her from a closet, and as you can imagine, she was terrified. (A similar event happened at Beth Shalom a few years back when a 3-year-old accidentally hit the panic button and activated the system. Everybody in the building went into lockdown.)

I am grateful that we have systems that are designed to protect us. I am grateful that the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh has poured money into setting up these security systems; you should know that if you trigger one of the BluePoint alarm devices in the building, for Police, Medical, or Fire, not only do the emergency responders know where you are located within the building, but also everybody else who works in a Jewish institution knows that something is happening at Beth Shalom. I had no idea that we were also connected to the system at Central Catholic.

For the children who had to go into lockdown, what happened on Wednesday was completely real. They did not know, at least for a certain number of minutes, that this was a hoax. They were told that it was an active shooter. 

In our zeal to prevent terrorists from actually (God forbid) attacking people, some bad actors have discovered that they do not need to actually attack anybody (God forbid) to cause very real fear and harm. The police were tied up for hours. (Even so, somewhat ironically, I still managed to get a parking ticket, because I forgot to pay for parking at the JCC lot that morning.)

And unfortunately, it seems like fears are multiplying upon each other these days. Parents are afraid of what ideas their kids might encounter, or not encounter, in schools. Religious groups are afraid of growing secularism. Everybody’s afraid that they may be called out online if they say something that contradicts contemporary orthodoxies. Great anxiety now surrounds any type of election. We are all afraid of the water and the air and what might be in it. 

And, of course, here in Pittsburgh, some of us are quite anxious about the upcoming trial for the person who murdered 11 precious souls down the street from here on October 27, 2018. And not just for the details of the testimony, which, I am certain, will be quite unsettling. 

I am personally concerned that one unpleasant sight to which we may be treated will be people from extremist groups protesting the trial outside the courthouse. I hope those people do not show up, but as detestable as they are, they of course have the right to parade their hatred and anti-Semitism before us all, and they may just do that.

Fear, persecution, anxiety, terrorism, hatred, violence, genocide. Sadly, none of these things are new to Jewish life. We acknowledge the many ways we have suffered throughout our history at multiple points on the Jewish calendar, and Pesaḥ is a time that is especially heavy in this regard. The fear, and ultimate triumph, of our people is found all over the haggadah. Just a few examples:

  • In telling the story, the extended midrash on “Arami oved avi,” (“My father was a wandering Aramean,” Devarim / Deuteronomy 26:5-8) details the affliction, misery, and oppression which our ancestors suffered at the hands of the Egyptians. The midrash offers descriptions of the work as futile and the taskmasters as brutal oppressors who beat and terrorized and otherwise layered cruel punishments on our ancestors to maintain the level of fear and subjugation.
  • Elsewhere in the haggadah, we sing of the “ḥad gadya,” the single baby goat, who symbolizes the poor, enslaved Jews, and suffers at the hands of various, ever-larger and more dangerous predators until finally redeemed by the Qadosh Barukh Hu / Holy, Blessed One.
  • And then, of course, there is the moment when we “pour out our wrath” upon our oppressors, indulging in a rare, “Inglourious Basterds”-style fantasy of overpowering our tormentors, as we open our doors to beckon to Eliyahu haNavi, who will redeem us from all present and future harm.

For all the many centuries we have been telling this story, we have been subject to anti-Semitic persecution, and our current moment is no different. The Anti-Defamation League recently reported a significant jump in anti-Semitic incidents in 2022, nearly 3,700. That is a 36% increase over the year before, and a fourfold increase since 2014, when there were 912 incidents reported. 

And put in that context, the seder tells the story of Jewish resilience. We have continued doing what we do, even after the Romans laid waste to Jerusalem, after medieval blood libel accusations, after the Expulsion from Spain, after the Shoah. We keep telling the story of overcoming our oppressors. We keep welcoming in all those who are hungry. We keep singing about the poor baby goat who is redeemed by God.

Resilience is to keep doing what we are doing, and to not be afraid.

My double colleague, Rabbi/Cantor Lilly Kaufman, wrote a piece about fear and the Exodus story in which she pointed out that some fear is normal, but of course it is possible to be overwhelmed or even paralyzed by fear, and our tradition has some guidance for that. Next Wednesday morning, on the seventh day of Pesaḥ, we chant from the Torah about the dramatic escape of the Israelites from Pharaoh’s armies as they cross the Sea of Reeds on dry land. As the Egyptian armies draw near, the Israelites cry out in fear, “Was it for want of graves in Egypt that you brought us out to die in the wilderness?” (Shemot/Exodus 14:11). Moshe responds by saying, (vv. 13-14):

וַיֹּ֨אמֶר מֹשֶׁ֣ה אֶל־הָעָם֮ אַל־תִּירָ֒אוּ֒ הִֽתְיַצְּב֗וּ וּרְאוּ֙ אֶת־יְשׁוּעַ֣ת ה’ אֲשֶׁר־יַעֲשֶׂ֥ה לָכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם כִּ֗י אֲשֶׁ֨ר רְאִיתֶ֤ם אֶת־מִצְרַ֙יִם֙ הַיּ֔וֹם לֹ֥א תֹסִ֛פוּ לִרְאֹתָ֥ם ע֖וֹד עַד־עוֹלָֽם׃ה’ יִלָּחֵ֣ם לָכֶ֑ם וְאַתֶּ֖ם תַּחֲרִשֽׁוּן׃

… “Have no fear! Stand by, and witness the deliverance which God will work for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you will never see again. God will battle for you; you hold your peace!”

Rabbi Kaufman adds, 

Moses speaks about fear without . . . fear. This is perhaps the most important thing he does: he names the overwhelming feeling and confronts it directly and succinctly. He is supportive, confident, and empathic. He speaks not only about what God will do, but about how the Israelites will experience it. Moses promises that they will see God’s redemption, and he predicts a defining shift in how they will see Egypt from now on.

As we face whatever forms of ugly Jew-hatred come our way in the near future, we must acknowledge the fear, as Moshe does, and also look to the future when we will be redeemed from this fear. We have come so far, over so many centuries, and left so many haters in the rear-view mirror. And we have, all along, drawn strength from the framework of our tradition, drawn strength from each other as a community, and drawn strength from the Qadosh Barukh Hu.

Regarding the trial, let me suggest the following: if you are concerned about hearing or seeing unsettling details or extremist protestors or anything that will upset you, try to avoid watching TV news or reading those articles in the paper or online. I myself do not want to hear/see/read that stuff. But also know that, whatever happens, we as a community will of course do our best to keep everybody safe and to keep the haters at bay, to look out for each other and to keep on praying to God for our spiritual well-being.

But something that you might also do, particularly if you are gathered around the seder table tonight with family and friends, is to have a discussion about fear and resilience. Ask the question: “What are we afraid of right now, and what steps are we taking to overcome that fear?” Our tradition wants us to name the fear, to listen to the fear, to address the fear, and to understand that we will ultimately prevail.

Our traditions, our textual framework are there to help us navigate what has always been a frightening world for the Jews. Take these opportunities, on this ḥag ha-ḥerut, this festival of freedom, to demonstrate to each other that we shall overcome. אל תיראו. Al tira-u, said Moshe. Have no fear. 

חג שמח!

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Pittsburgh, PA, first day of Pesaḥ 5783, 4/6/2023. A version of this sermon appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on 4/9/2023.)

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Festivals Sermons Yizkor

Remembering the Small Print – Shemini Atzeret / Yizkor 5783

One of the things that this season does to me is to remind me to read the small print in the siddur, to pay attention to details that my eye is trained to ignore during much of the year.

Since most siddurim / prayerbooks are used for a variety of days – weekdays, Shabbat, holidays – they are designed to reflect the changes in our daily tefillah routine. During the holiday month of Tishrei in particular, there are changes almost every day, which require you to pay careful attention to the smaller print. 

If one goal of the Tishrei holidays is to make us all pay more attention, then for sure these subtle changes in our daily prayer are helpful. Even the extra le’eila which we say from Rosh HaShanah to Yom Kippur manages to keep me just a wee bit more focused for some time.

And that, of course is a good thing: tefillah / prayer should never be by rote. As we read in Pirqei Avot (2:13):

רַבִּי שִׁמְעוֹן אוֹמֵר, הֱוֵי זָהִיר בִּקְרִיאַת שְׁמַע וּבַתְּפִלָּה. וּכְשֶׁאַתָּה מִתְפַּלֵּל, אַל תַּעַשׂ תְּפִלָּתְךָ קֶבַע, אֶלָּא רַחֲמִים וְתַחֲנוּנִים לִפְנֵי הַמָּקוֹם בָּרוּךְ הוּא

Rabbi Shim’on said: Be careful with the reading of Shema and the Amidah, And when you pray, do not make your prayer something automatic, but a plea for compassion before God.

In tefillah, as in life, it’s the details that are important. While it is easy to think that the essential part of tefillah is the recitation of the words, the mishnah suggests that we have to actually be paying attention. True tefillah requires pouring our souls into the pages of the siddur, such that the yearning for compassion, the honest gratitude, the heartfelt praise and requests which are the building blocks of tefillah come from an honest place and can actually be felt by the davener. 

It is not the outward symbolism which matters; not the broad strokes of being in shul (synagogue) and standing in silence and reciting the words; rather, it is the internal details. It is the richness of the ancient Hebrew idiom and how it lands on our souls which drive honest prayer. It is, in fact, the small print, laden with the special features of the season, which matters most.

And when we recall beloved family members and friends who are no longer with us, on days of reciting Yizkor prayers, the details of their lives are the most essential items. 

What makes a person special and unique? It is not their appearance, or what car they drive or the color of their kippah. It is the intangible details: their deeds, their sayings, their values, their relationships. 

You might have heard recently about so-called “click chemistry,” because three biochemists just received the Nobel Prize for their work in the area. Click chemistry is a relatively new chemical process which allows us to build new molecules with particularly desirable functionality using small, organic building blocks, somewhat akin to molecular Lego pieces. 

Without getting too technical, the research of these Nobel laureates has made it possible to reliably build new molecules from these building blocks in a way that is cost-effective and has a high rate of success. The process will supplant older, more cumbersome and expensive methods of synthesizing such molecules. This will enable chemists to easily produce and test a whole new range of pharmaceuticals, polymers, proteins and other organic compounds. It is truly a remarkable breakthrough.

Now, the chemical engineer in me is inspired by this new molecular technology.

But I also find the idea of being able to assemble easily new molecules from building blocks appeals to me from, shall we say, a more homiletical perspective. As people, we are more than the sum of our parts; and yet we are constructed from the very same types of molecules that can be easily assembled through click chemistry.

We are, of course, exceedingly complex creatures. We are shaped by all of the forces around us: the people we meet, the books we read, the experiences we share with others, the love we receive and give, and all of the other tiny ways we fill our days and our lives. And all of these things, all of these minuscule moments and interactions are sifted through our basic structure, coloring all of the intricate pieces of our personalities.

With human personalities, of course, it is the details that matter. Our external features are not so different from one another; our internals are much more complicated. We have different strengths and creativities, different talents and hobbies and favorite foods and leisure activities. We are drawn to a range of entertainments and political pursuits, tastes in clothes and art and philosophy. We each have individual ways in which we express ourselves and fashion our lives.

A lazy search of the Internet led to somebody else’s back-of-the-envelope calculation of how many molecules there are in the human body, and that answer is perhaps on the order of 1027, or a one followed by 27 zeroes.

Much of that is water, but a good chunk of them are organic molecules, of the sort that are put together with the basic building blocks, the simplest Legos, of life. 

But that is what makes us human: the great complexity of the chemical system of which we are made. Our memories, our knowledge, our experiences, remembered and forgotten, are all encoded into that organic soup of tiny, encrypted chunks of living matter. The variation of these codes, which make up our genetic material, yield people who may indeed look quite similar, but are vastly different in behavior and thought. 

A friend recently reminded me that the events from our past which we remember are not necessarily those things which others remember about us. That is, the picture of our lives is far more complex than what we see. This also suggests that all of those details, all of those interactions which we can recall are probably less than half of the story of our lives.

That is what makes those who were special to us so memorable; why they take up so much of our brain space and emotional energy: the great complexity of our parents and grandparents, the mysteries of our siblings, the tender mercies of our spouses. 

Tomorrow morning, we start reading Parashat Bereshit, the beginning of the Torah once again. We return to Creation ex nihilo, when God begins to speak, and the whole world comes into existence, from a point of light to the full flowering of Earthly bounty. You may recall that at the end of each day, the Torah tells us that God saw that what He had created was good.

It’s almost dismissive in its simplicity. Of course the creation of the sun and moon and stars was good. Naturally the flowering plants and trees and birds and bees and alligators and capybaras were good. But they were also incredibly complicated. 

The creation of humans, male and female, on the sixth day is described as tov me-od, very good, something which might make us raise our eyebrows, given what we know about humanity.

Life, Creation, cannot be merely good or bad, but rather full of contradiction and complexity and an unfathomable myriad of details. The Torah (or, one might say, the Priestly author to whom scholars attribute the first chapter of Bereshit) seems to fail here in its terseness. It merely gives a social-media “like” when an encyclopedic excursus is called for.

And as we turn now to the service of Hazkarat Neshamot, the recalling of the souls, I hope that we can endeavor to remember not just the broad strokes of their lives, but also the details, all the ways in which they were special. 

We should remember the parts of their personality that they gave us: the empathy he showed an elderly neighbor when inviting him for a meal, the pride she took in tending to her garden, the loyalty he had to his barber, her attention to detail, like ensuring the brass banister was always polished to a shine. 

We should remember the ways in which they provided for us: the household economy, the food, the gatherings, in setting a beautiful table for the celebrations / semaḥot he arranged, all of the schlepping she did from school to game to recital and on and on.

We should remember the things that they said when we need to be uplifted: the words of encouragement and inspiration, the moment of shared joy when you got that acceptance letter and the tears during your bad breakup, the hugs and the kisses and sometimes the little push out the door that we needed. 

We should remember the values they taught us, the Jewish rituals they loved, how he would make his special haroset recipe, how she loved to sing and tell stories and family lore. We should remember those times around the seder table, or in the kitchen, or in the Sukkah, or in the synagogue.

My grandparents, Rose and Ed Bass, zikhronam livrakhah

And we should remember that, as much as we recall of those who are no longer with us, there was ever so much more about them than we could possibly ever have known. All those many, many details encoded into who they were; all of the small-print details which made them special to others and to all those who knew them.

In broad strokes, we all had parents, and people whom we have loved but are no longer with us. But it is the details of who they were which made them special and unique. And those are the things which we should recall at this time.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Pittsburgh, PA, morning of Shemini Atzeret, 10/17/2022.)

Categories
Festivals Sermons Yizkor

Consider Your Mortality – Shavu’ot Day 2 / Yizkor 5782

I heard a particularly inspiring story recently. It is the story of Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds, from Knoxville, Tennessee, who enlisted in the United States Army in 1941 and was sent to serve in Europe in the 106th Infantry Division. During the Battle of the Bulge in December, 1944, Sgt. Edmonds was taken by the Nazis as a prisoner of war, along with over 1,200 other American soldiers. As it turns out, Edmonds was the senior non-commissioned officer in the group, and was therefore the leader of the prisoners. The Battle of the Bulge, for those who do not know, was the Nazis’ last major offensive, and from the American perspective was the largest single battle in WWII, yielding 89,000 casualties, including 19,000 deaths over a period of about 6 weeks.

American troops during the Battle of the Bulge

Late in January of 1945, when the Nazis saw that they were losing the battle, the prison camp commandant instructed Sgt. Edmonds to order all the Jewish American soldiers to appear outside their barracks the following morning. The next day, all 1,275 American prisoners of war in the camp assembled outside the barracks.

The commandant was furious, and held a gun to Sgt. Edmonds’ head, demanding that he identify the Jews. Now, Jewish soldiers had been warned that if they were taken prisoner, they would likely be separated from the non-Jews and sent to death camps or slave labor camps, so they should destroy their dog tags if captured. Edmonds, knowing that if he identified the Jews, he would be signing the death warrant of up to 300 American Jews, responded by saying, “We are all Jews here.”

The Nazi commandant pushed him again to reveal the Jews, claiming that they could not all be Jewish. But Sgt. Edmonds knew that the Geneva Convention required that he give only name, rank, and serial number; religion was not a piece of information he would volunteer. He responded by saying, “If you are going to shoot, you are going to have to shoot all of us because we know who you are and you’ll be tried for war crimes when we win this war.” 

Roddie Edmonds was a humble man; he never told his family this story, but made a brief mention of it in his own diary. After he died in 1985, his son, a Baptist minister, discovered the entry, and managed to get in touch with a few of the Jewish survivors of the POW camp to uncover the whole story.

In 2015, Edmonds was posthumously honored by Yad Vashem as the fifth American, and only American serviceperson to be dubbed one of the Righteous Among the Nations, the title bestowed on non-Jews who rose above the Nazi horror, putting their lives at risk to save members of our tribe.

Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem

If you imagine yourself in Edmonds’ place for a moment, you have to wonder: Could I have been so brave? Could I have done the same thing? Would I have dared the Nazis to kill me to save a few of my comrades?

In that moment, he must have contemplated his own death. He must have thought, “I am ready to die to protect my Jewish fellow soldiers, who have put their own lives on the line for our nation. I will take this Nazi bullet if I have to, in order to save their lives and my own dignity.”

And of course, Sgt. Edmonds made the honorable choice.

How many of us have thought about our own death? I certainly have. Not in a bad way, mind you, but more from the practical perspective. If, God forbid, I were to be taken from this world tomorrow, how would life change for my family? What would my funeral look like? What would be my legacy on this Earth? Will somebody post something on my Facebook profile explaining that I will no longer be responding to direct messages? Will Judy find a new home for all of my suits?

Will my children remember me by reciting Yizkor prayers on the second day of Shavu’ot?

Bhutan

There is a Bhutanese folk saying that in order to be a happy person, you must contemplate your own death five times a day.

In order to enjoy the present, we have to remember that life is a finite gift. We only have so many days on this Earth, and it is up to us to use them as best we can. We only have so many opportunities to connect with others, to share our love with family and friends, to do good works in our community and for the world.

We only have so many opportunities to save a life.

We have to remember that we are going to die, so that we can appreciate the precious few years we have been given.

In a few minutes, we will recite one of the key passages of the Yizkor service, Psalm 16:8-9 (p. 331 in Lev Shalem):

שִׁוִּ֬יתִי ה’ לְנֶגְדִּ֣י תָמִ֑יד כִּ֥י מִֽ֝ימִינִ֗י בַּל־אֶמּֽוֹט׃ לָכֵ֤ן ׀ שָׂמַ֣ח לִ֭בִּי וַיָּ֣גֶל כְּבוֹדִ֑י אַף־בְּ֝שָׂרִ֗י יִשְׁכֹּ֥ן לָבֶֽטַח׃ 

God is always before me, at my right hand lest I fall.

Therefore I am glad, made happy, though I know that my flesh will lie in the ground forever.

We tend to think of Yizkor, more properly called Hazkarat Neshamot, remembering the souls, as recollection of those who have passed. But it is just as much a recollection of our own souls; a reminder to those of us who are alive that we can be happy now despite our mortality. Just like the Bhutanese, who derive their daily happiness from contemplating death, we, the Jews, understand that life is meant to be enjoyed, and that joy is heightened by its natural limit.

The quote from Psalms compels us to consider our mortality in a healthy way. And as we remember our parents and grandparents, spouses and siblings and children and aunts and uncles and cousins and dear friends whom we have lost, we have to remember the ways in which they used their time not only to give us life, but to make our lives better, to make our world better.

There has been, of late, a lot of public death and mourning in the news; three major mass shootings in three weeks, and a great deal of soul-searching and of course posturing about how to respond.

If I had one wish for our society, it would be that we value our precious few moments of our collective life so much that we do everything in our power to prevent others from taking it away. I will know that God truly is at my right hand if, when we as a nation stumble, we remember that our first task on this Earth is to do no harm, and indeed to stop others from harming if we can. 

And perhaps if we remember God’s presence, if we can center the imperative of, “Va-anaḥnu kore’im umishtaḥavim umodim,” that we bow, bend our knees in solidarity, and give thanks before the King of Kings, or Ruler of Rulers, and we recall our essential duty to conserve the life we have been graciously loaned from on high, we might as a society be able to pull ourselves out of the depths.

As we turn now to the service of Hazkarat Neshamot, of recalling those souls, I call on you now to reflect not only on those who gave you life, on those whom we remember, but also to take this opportunity to reflect on our own mortality, to remember our holy imperatives given to us by God, to remember the heroism of those who have saved lives, and of course to consider how we might save even more. 

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Pittsburgh, PA, second day of Shavu’ot, 6/6/2022.)

Categories
Festivals Sermons Yizkor

We Live For Them – Yizkor / 8th Day Pesaḥ 5782

I saw a particularly moving video this week. It captured an installation by the artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg that appeared on the National Mall in Washington, DC last fall. It included 143 square sections of ground in which a total of 620,000 small white flags had been planted, one flag for each of the 620,000 Americans who had died of Covid-19 as of September, 2021. (You may be aware that we are now approaching 1 million official deaths, although the actual toll is surely higher.)

The video showed people strolling through this huge field of flags, writing names of loved ones they lost and messages about them on the flags, reflecting on the immensity of grief, hugging each other and crying and trying to make sense of it all. It was quite painful and very moving. (It might have been coincidental that the installation opened to the public two days after Yom Kippur, and remained open until just after Shemini Atzeret, two days of the Jewish calendar on which we remember those whom we have lost with prayers of Yizkor, prayers of remembrance for those who are no longer with us. But maybe it was not a coincidence.)

For a long time to come, we will be trying to wrap our heads around these two years of grief and pain and loss and anxiety and sickness and death. We will continue to feel the after-effects – the economic fallout, the political consequences, the social ills – perhaps for decades.

But those whom we have lost will always be remembered. We, the Jews, are good at memory. We are especially good at navigating the moments of grief that we face; through mourning and bringing comfort; through the framework of our tradition, our liturgy, our ancient texts. 

And we remember those who gave us life by completing their work on Earth, by honoring their best qualities, making them our own.

***

My grandfather, my mother’s father, grew up in poor circumstances. His father abandoned him and his brothers, and his mother was sickly and not capable of caring for them, so my grandfather was taken in by a foster family. He worked a couple of different jobs in his life: at various points he drove a taxi, worked as a salesman, and during the Depression he had a candy store, which he lost (according to my grandmother) because he would give away freebies to every soul who came in with a sob story.

Despite the hardships he faced, my grandfather was a sweet man who never let his circumstances bring him down. And my mother reminds me occasionally that he always complimented my grandmother after dinner. She had not always been a great cook, but no matter the quality of the meal, my grandfather, without fail, had words of praise for his wife. 

It’s a small thing: consistent gratitude. Everyday thankfulness. A simple, “That was wonderful, dear! Thank you.” My grandfather knew that, although he did not have a lot, he certainly appreciated what he did have.

And it is a lesson that I carry with me, even though my grandfather passed away 16 years ago, even though the last years of his life were marked by dementia, during which he did not even recognize his own family. I try to uphold that consistent sense of being grateful for what I have.

Back in January I was at a rabbinic retreat, and learned about a so-called “story cycle” in the Talmud (Moed Qatan 28a) about ancient rabbis trying to avoid the Mal’akh haMavet, the Angel of Death. A story cycle is a collection of related stories which are collected in one place in the Talmud. Sometimes they are the same story retold multiple times with different details and elaborations in each version; sometimes they are only loosely connected with a shared theme.

Most of us probably think of the Mal’akh haMavet in the context of the Passover story, which we all reviewed a week ago for the first nights of Pesaḥ: for the tenth and final plague to which the Egyptians are subjected, the Mal’akh haMavet passes over the homes of the Israelites, on the way to take the first-born children of the Egyptians, including that of the Pharaoh himself. (That is, of course, where we get the name “Passover.”)

But the Mal’akh haMavet is a familiar character in rabbinic literature, appearing in many places. And in this story cycle, it is clear that he has a certain code: he cannot take the souls of people who are engaged in righteous acts. So, for example, Rav Ḥisda is so pious that the words of Torah never depart from his lips; he is constantly studying and reviewing and repeating our ancient holy texts. And so when the Mal’akh haMavet comes to take him, he is foiled by the continuous flow of holy words from Rav Ḥisda’s mouth. So the Mal’akh haMavet sits down on a cedar bench nearby, and the bench cracks, making a loud noise. Rav Ḥisda is momentarily distracted, pauses in his recitation of holy words, and so the Mal’akh haMavet takes his soul.

Other stories on the page make it clear that all the ancient rabbis for whom the Mal’akh haMavet comes are trying to avoid death. And even though one, Rav Naḥman, concedes that death is painless, nonetheless Rav Naḥman also adds that the living world is better, because, in his words, in the world-to-come, 

אֲמַר לֵיהּ: מַאן חֲשִׁיב, מַאן סְפִין, מַאן רְקִיעַ

Rav Naḥman said to Rava, “[In the world-to-come], who is important? Who is honorable? Who is complete?”

Put another way, we are all equal in death, and the world of the dead is unremarkable. Life is where it’s happening; all of the good stuff is here on Earth, not in the afterworld.

Now that is interesting, because some religious traditions, and even some Jews, think that the afterlife is the goal. That better living in “Olam haBa,” the world-to-come, is our goal here on Earth. That the reason we keep the mitzvot, the 613 holy opportunities of Jewish life, is so that we can merit a place in Olam haBa.

So one implicit message of this passage is, “not so much.”

Truth is, normative Judaism does not have a lot to say about Olam haBa. Yes, it is certainly mentioned as a desirable destination. But let’s face it folks: the bottom line of Jewish living, of the mitzvot and our rituals and our dietary guidelines and our holidays and our prayer and our values is to ensure that we act as holy people, that we elevate the holiness in all our relationships right here on Earth, in the world of the living. We learn Torah and act on its imperatives for Olam haZeh: this world. Not for Olam haBa, the world-to-come.

To paraphrase Rav Naḥman, it is in this world that we can be important, honorable, and complete. In this world we can attain these things by valuing what is truly important, by maintaining the honor of others, by helping to complete God’s work here on Earth.

And how do we do that, exactly?

We do it by remembering.

We remember our story. We tell it over and over to our children, just as we all did one week ago at the Pesaḥ seder.

We remember our ancestors, Avraham and Sarah, Rivqah and Yitzḥaq, Raḥel and Ya’aqov and Leah, and Moshe Rabbeinu and Miriam haNevi’ah (the prophetess) and Eliyahu haNavi and on and on. We remember their values and deeds, and we act on them.

And we remember our parents and grandparents and spouses and aunts and uncles and cousins and children and teachers and friends and neighbors. We remember what they taught us. We remember what they valued. We even remember when they failed us, because we learned from those failures as well.

Rosie and Eddie, in an undated romantic moment

You know why life is better than death? Because we carry all of those things with us, and we can act on them. We take the wisdom of those who came before us to help improve ourselves, to intensify the holiness in our marriages, to teach our children to be better people, to do good works for others.

We, the living, remember those who came before us so that we can carry out the good deeds of the dead. We live to maintain their honor. We live to complete them. To express gratitude; to praise others; to be friendly and personable and affectionate; to pick up others when they fall, and occasionally to right their wrongs.

To be alive is to remember, and to act on what has been handed to us.

And so we remember, and we live for them.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Pittsburgh, PA, Shabbat morning / eighth day of Pesaḥ, April 23, 2022.)

Categories
Festivals Sermons

The Most Imperfect Jewish Food – Shemini 5782

Do you like matzah? I do not. (There are many people who eat it year round – I have never understood this.)

There is a certain irony to the Passover season. Those of us who prepare for it in a traditional way are already working hard at cleaning and “kashering” (making kosher) our homes in preparation for the holiday, or at least working hard to gobble up all our mishloaḥ manot packages in time. In these weeks before Pesaḥ, the tradition is to seek a kind of impossible perfection in dutifully removing every microscopic bit of ḥametz, the five species of prohibited grains: wheat, oats, barley, rye, and spelt. 

Every surface must be scrubbed; every drawer emptied; old food products discarded. The gunk at the bottom of the fridge is banished. In Sephardic homes, where they eat rice, there is a custom of checking each individual grain of rice to make sure that there is no ḥametz hiding in the bag. We replace our dishes and silverware with those reserved just for the eight days of Pesaḥ. We sell the expensive stuff (whiskey and large stashes of unopened pasta, e.g.) to somebody who is not Jewish so that we do not own it during the holiday. And if all that is not enough, we search our homes on the night before, with a candle and a feather, to ensure no errant crumbs are hiding. And as we burn our last bits of ḥametz, completing the process of ḥametz eradication, we say an ancient Aramaic formula that declares any remaining hametz that we somehow missed null and void, like the dust of the Earth.

We seek perfection in the removal of ḥametz from our lives, a kind of ideal, flawless, ḥametz-less state.

And then something really strange happens. As soon as we perfect our lives in this regard, we eat the most imperfect bread-like substance in “celebration” of what is supposed to be a joyous holiday. 

Some of our ancient commentators try to explain this Torah-mandated complete removal of ḥametz from our lives as an attempt to rid ourselves of arrogance or the evil inclination. The Talmud tells us (BT Berakhot 17a) of a prayer offered by Rabbi Hamnuna:

רִבּוֹן הָעוֹלָמִים, גָּלוּי וְיָדוּעַ לְפָנֶיךָ שֶׁרְצוֹנֵנוּ לַעֲשׂוֹת רְצוֹנֶךָ, וּמִי מְעַכֵּב? — שְׂאוֹר שֶׁבָּעִיסָּה

Master of the Universe, it is revealed and known before You that our will is to perform Your will, and what prevents us? The yeast in the dough…

That’s a curious prayer, isn’t it? 

Rabbi Hamnuna’s point is that what prevents us from being the best people we can be, in holy relationship with God and the others around us, is the arrogance within us that puffs us up, makes us feel bigger than we are. That is the ḥametz in our hearts, the leavening of the soul.

Jews like this idea of physical-action-as-metaphor. A few other examples: We tear an article of clothing while in mourning, and wear it during shiv’ah to demonstrate physically how our insides are torn by the loss. We wear white on High Holidays and throw bread into running water to reflect our desire to be cleansed of sin. We eat cheesecake on Shavu’ot to remind us of the sweet, richness of Torah in our lives. At the seder table, we recline as we drink our four cups of wine, to enjoy the luxury of dining as people set free from slavery.

Likewise, our physical removal of ḥametz from our homes reflects our desire to uproot the arrogance in our souls.

The 18th-century Hasidic Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk cautioned against feeling too confident in our great talents at avoiding transgression. Don’t walk around feeling you are so perfect, he said, just because you have not sinned lately. Most likely, you have not been challenged appropriately to find the distasteful trait within yourself that leads you astray.

And that is exactly the message of the first night of Pesaḥ. We have dutifully expunged every crumb of arrogance, of puffed-up pride in ourselves, of leavened ego, and then at the seder we say the berakhah “al akhilat matzah” and take a first bite of matzah, at least a kezayit, the size of an olive. For many of us it will be the first matzah we have consumed in about 376 days (leap year!); for most of us, this moment is a major letdown.

You worked hard to get there. You scrubbed the floors and the counters, searched corners and cabinets, burned bread and leftover babka. You prepared food that is 100% ḥametz-free. 

And then, meh! For this we left the fleshpots of Egypt?

The Torah (Deut. 16:3) calls matzah “leḥem ‘oni.” The bread of poverty. Poor bread. We use that term in the haggadah, right up front in the Maggid section, when we say in Aramaic,

הָא לַחְמָא עַנְיָא דִּי אֲכָלוּ אַבְהָתָנָא בְאַרְעָא דְמִצְרָיִם

This is the bread of poverty which our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt.

This bread is meant to be imperfect. It is meant to remind us that, no matter how hard we might seek perfection, we are never going to achieve it. Humans are simply not intended to be perfect.

And, by the way, what is that matzah made from? Exactly the same stuff that we have been trying to get rid of for weeks. We often miss the even greater irony that matzah, according to halakhah / Jewish law, is the one form of those five grains that we can eat. Not allowed to rise, not allowed to get fluffy or tasty or glutinous; merely baked quickly, within 18 minutes of having contacted water. It is not just imperfect, not only flawed, but rather it is BY DESIGN unpalatable! You should not enjoy it! 

Ramban, AKA Naḥmanides, the 13th-century Spanish commentator, tells us that leḥem ‘oni cannot be fancy, rich bread that is otherwise unleavened, if there is such a thing. It has to be meager. It has to be tasteless.

So what’s the message? 

In the next three weeks, you should absolutely seek out and destroy the ḥametz in your life. Find the arrogance, the inclination to do wrong, the jealousy, the impatience with others, whatever it is that you are holding onto that is preventing you from being a holy person.

But know also that you will fail at this task, that no matter how hard you try, the results will be imperfect. You will be imperfect. We are fundamentally flawed beings. 

And yet, matzah is still bread. We move forward, imperfectly, with adequate nourishment, aware of the tasks ahead of us.

Some of you know that I have a thing for old Israeli tunes. There is something in the popular music of the British mandate period and the early decades of the Jewish state that is so emotionally powerful; it is filled with melodies and Hebrew lyrics that just tug at your heart-strings.

I was reminded of one of those old tunes this week, a song by the greatest Israeli pop composer of all time, Naomi Shemer. The song is החגיגה נגמרת / HaḤagigah Nigmeret, from 1976. It’s a song that was often sung at the end of festive evenings of the widespread Israeli pastime of שירה בציבור / shirah betzibbur, group singing. 

The song reminds us that, when the party is over, it is up to us to pick ourselves up and start again mibereshit, from the beginning. The refrain is as follows:

לקום מחר בבוקר עם שיר חדש בלב
לשיר אותו בכח, לשיר אותו בכאב
לשמוע חלילים ברוח החופשית
ולהתחיל מבראשית

Laqum maḥar baboqer, im shir ḥadash belev
Lashir oto bekhoaḥ, lashir oto bikh’ev
Lishmoa ḥalilim beruaḥ haḥofshit
Ulehatḥil mibereshit

To get up in the morning, with a new song in your heart
To sing it with strength, to sing it in pain
To hear flutes in the free wind
And to start over from the beginning.

There is no perfection; the battle for purity of our souls is endless. We just have to get up the next day and give it another shot.

After the cleaning and scrubbing of ḥametz from our lives, and after the subsequent disappointment by that infamous bread of poverty, and after the eight days of the holiday are over and the Pesaḥ dishes and pots and pans are put away, the next task is to try again. Your mission, imperfect from the outset, is to keep that spiritual ḥametz at bay; to face the world without arrogance, without holding onto what leads us astray.

That is the fundamental message of Pesaḥ.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Pittsburgh, PA, Shabbat morning, 3/26/2022.)

Categories
Festivals Sermons

What’s Wrong With Ecclesiastes (aka Qohelet)? – Shabbat Hol HaMoed Sukkot 5782

הֲבֵ֤ל הֲבָלִים֙ אָמַ֣ר קֹהֶ֔לֶת הֲבֵ֥ל הֲבָלִ֖ים הַכֹּ֥ל הָֽבֶל׃
מַה־יִּתְר֖וֹן לָֽאָדָ֑ם בְּכׇ֨ל־עֲמָל֔וֹ שֶֽׁיַּעֲמֹ֖ל תַּ֥חַת הַשָּֽׁמֶשׁ׃
דּ֤וֹר הֹלֵךְ֙ וְד֣וֹר בָּ֔א וְהָאָ֖רֶץ לְעוֹלָ֥ם עֹמָֽדֶת׃
וְזָרַ֥ח הַשֶּׁ֖מֶשׁ וּבָ֣א הַשָּׁ֑מֶשׁ וְאֶ֨ל־מְקוֹמ֔וֹ שׁוֹאֵ֛ף זוֹרֵ֥חַֽ ה֖וּא שָֽׁם׃
הוֹלֵךְ֙ אֶל־דָּר֔וֹם וְסוֹבֵ֖ב אֶל־צָפ֑וֹן סוֹבֵ֤ב ׀ סֹבֵב֙ הוֹלֵ֣ךְ הָר֔וּחַ וְעַל־סְבִיבֹתָ֖יו שָׁ֥ב הָרֽוּחַ׃
כׇּל־הַנְּחָלִים֙ הֹלְכִ֣ים אֶל־הַיָּ֔ם וְהַיָּ֖ם אֵינֶ֣נּוּ מָלֵ֑א אֶל־מְק֗וֹם שֶׁ֤הַנְּחָלִים֙ הֹֽלְכִ֔ים שָׁ֛ם הֵ֥ם שָׁבִ֖ים לָלָֽכֶת׃
כׇּל־הַדְּבָרִ֣ים יְגֵעִ֔ים לֹא־יוּכַ֥ל אִ֖ישׁ לְדַבֵּ֑ר לֹא־תִשְׂבַּ֥ע עַ֙יִן֙ לִרְא֔וֹת וְלֹא־תִמָּלֵ֥א אֹ֖זֶן מִשְּׁמֹֽעַ׃ מַה־שֶּֽׁהָיָה֙ ה֣וּא שֶׁיִּהְיֶ֔ה וּמַה־שֶּׁנַּֽעֲשָׂ֔ה ה֖וּא שֶׁיֵּעָשֶׂ֑ה וְאֵ֥ין כׇּל־חָדָ֖שׁ תַּ֥חַת הַשָּֽׁמֶשׁ׃

Utter futility!—said Qohelet— Utter futility! All is futile!
What real value is there for a person / In all the gains one makes beneath the sun?
One generation goes, another comes, But the earth remains the same forever.
The sun rises, and the sun sets— And glides back to where it rises.
Southward blowing, Turning northward, Ever turning blows the wind;
On its rounds the wind returns.
All streams flow into the sea, Yet the sea is never full;
To the place from which they flow / The streams flow back again.
All such things are wearisome: No man can ever state them;
The eye never has enough of seeing, Nor the ear enough of hearing.
Only that shall happen / Which has happened,
Only that occur / Which has occurred;
There is nothing new / Beneath the sun!

Qohelet / Ecclesiastes 1:2-9

***

What’s the problem with Qohelet?

First, while some might point to this passage and see nihilism, that is, the idea that everything is meaningless, that our actions do not matter, that there are no objective truths or morality or values, that is actually not Qohelet’s philosophy. 

Others have suggested that Qohelet is the original existentialist, meaning that our individual choices are solely ours, the responsibility and consequences thereof are solely ours, and the universe is more or less indifferent to them. This is also not an accurate description of Qohelet’s world view.

When Qohelet says, “Havel havalim, hakol havel,” Utter futility! All is futility, he is not saying that everything is meaningless. What he is saying, rather, is that our actions matter, but not in a way that we could possibly understand. And for sure, we will be called to account for our actions, but we may not ever know why, so we should be grateful for what we have and enjoy it, even as life continues to slip past unnoticed.

He is actually in good company with the anonymous author of the book of Iyyov / Job, who, when he finally challenges God, gets the most unsatisfying response ever. God’s retort to Job is effectively, “Be quiet! Who are you to tell Me what I can do or not do? Who are you to decide what is right and wrong?”

I have never been a “The-Lord-works-in-mysterious-ways” kind of rabbi, nor have I ever really sought any kind of consistent understanding of God. 

However, the approach of Qohelet and Iyyov, which further obscure the way that God works, is especially problematic. It flies in the face of the most prominent piece of practical theology in Jewish life: the framework of 613 mitzvot, the berit, the covenant we have with God, in which we keep those mitzvot, and God provides us with life and sustenance and joy and love and meaning. If our job, at least according to how we read the book of Deuteronomy, is to keep those mitzvot, then it cannot be that our actions are not at all related to our fates.

Right?

Didn’t we just get through Yom Kippur, pouring our hearts into our fervent prayer and pursuing teshuvah because, as Rambam tells us (Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Teshuvah 3:4), we are supposed to see our lives in this period as hanging in the balance? That we have a number of merits, that is, mitzvot completed properly in their time and place, in the “black” column that is exactly equal to the number of transgressions indicated in the “red” column? That all we need to do is one more mitzvah than sin during the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, the Ten Days of Repentance, to get a tiny nudge into the Book of Life?

That is why the ancient rabbis did not like Qohelet. There is actually a debate in the Talmud about whether or not Qohelet is actually a holy book (Mishnah Yadayim 3:5), compared to all the other books of the Tanakh.

But I am of the opinion that Qohelet is not only essential to Jewish life, it might actually be the most important work in the entire Tanakh.

Why? Because, while Qohelet might appear to contradict some other essential principles of Jewish life, he is also one voice out of many. And that is essential because we are not, and never have been, completely unified on any particular matter, including our understanding of how God functions. On the contrary: Qohelet provides a needed contrarian voice, one that subverts the “party line.” 

One of the traditions we have on Sukkot is that of Ushpizin, inviting ancient guests into our sukkah during our meals every evening. It is a kabbalistic tradition which draws on our understanding of the positive traits of our classical forebears, traits which we desire to emulate. Qohelet is not typically one of them. But consider this picture of some of those Biblical characters (although perhaps this is the wrong image, but I’m kind of picturing a Jewish version of da Vinci’s The Last Supper)*:

  • At the table we find Avraham, who is faithful enough to very nearly sacrifice his own son when God demands this. And yet he also challenges God, when God intends to destroy Sedom and ‘Amorah. 
  • And here is Sarah, who, though righteous and wise, laughs when she receives a divine message that she will have a child. 
  • Here is clever Rivkah, who carries out God’s word through deception. 
  • And here is hapless Isaac, who never takes the initiative and is always acted upon. 
  • And here is Moshe Rabbeinu, who receives the Torah on Mt. Sinai, has an anger management problem, and also argues with God not to destroy the Israelites following the Molten Calf episode. 
  • Here is Miriam, who finds water whenever the Israelites are wandering in the desert, and leads the women in song, but also engages in slander of her brother Moshe and is punished for it. 
  • Here is Devorah the Judge, who leads the troops in battle, 
  • And here is Yael, a brutal assassin masquerading as a gentle homemaker. 
  • Here is Yonah, who runs away from God but is given a second chance, and still doesn’t quite “get it.” 
  • And here is David Melekh Yisrael, who captures Jerusalem, but steals the wife of Uriah and then has him killed.

And over at the far end, Qohelet. Sitting there, wearing a beret and smoking a Gauloises while looking all smug, saying, Ein kol ḥadash taḥat hashemesh. There’s nothing new under the sun. We’ve seen this movie before. Don’t think you’re all so holy. Qohelet is really the only philosopher in the whole Tanakh. He does not care for dogma – he’s really all about the questions of why we do the things we do, a completely understandable Jewish activity.

And by the way, the JPS commentary tells me that Qohelet is likely not even a name, but rather a title, something like the town crier. The word is related to the Hebrew root q-h-l, meaning to gather or convoke, just like the titular word in Parashat Vayaqhel, in which Moshe convokes the Israelites for instruction on how to observe Shabbat. So this Qohelet, our Qohelet, is this figure that brings the Israelites together to discuss the transience of life and the futility of understanding God, as if in some ancient intellectual salon.

You see? Qohelet fits right in. He is as complicated as all the other human characters in the Jewish bookshelf. Why is he not in the regular list of Ushpizin invitees? Sure, so his philosophy is not necessarily what we want to hear, and contradicts in some sense the standard theology of the Torah. But when have you known the Jews to agree on anything, particularly God?

We need Qohelet because his voice is actually, sometimes, our voice. Maybe that is where we are today, with the sense of futility that occasionally marks our lives. No matter how good or bad our behavior, no matter our choices, we cannot deny that the sun will come up tomorrow, that some people will be born and some will die, that some of us will thrive and some will suffer. And no matter how pious or skeptical we are, we understand that we have no control.

I would like to think that just as there is a little Avraham, a little Moshe, a little Miriam and a little Yael in all of us, so too is there a generous portion of Qohelet. This town crier might just be crazy, but he might also be onto something: that as we go from holiday to holiday, from year to year, keeping mitzvot or missing the mark, expressing gratitude or asking for forgiveness or watching our children and grandchildren grow and learn and struggle and succeed, that we remember that this is how life goes, and we have to enjoy it if we can, while we can.

And I am grateful for his presence in my Tanakh.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Pittsburgh, PA, Shabbat morning, 9/25/2021.)

* Not all of these characters appear in all Ushpizin lists (and I don’t think Yonah appears in any). Nonetheless, they might all be included as potential Sukkot invitees.

Categories
Festivals Sermons Yizkor

Make Our Garden Grow – Shemini Atzeret 5782 / Yizkor

As I have shared with you on multiple occasions, I am an optimist. And yet, these 18 months of pandemic have tested my optimism severely.

At one point during the last eighteen months of pandemic-induced isolation — it was sometime last winter, during the coldest, darkest, most isolated period — I found myself looking for a good recording online of a song that I had once sung for a concert with my synagogue choir at Congregation Brith Shalom in Houston when I lived there in the late 1990s. The song was “Make Our Garden Grow,” the finale of Leonard Bernstein’s operetta, Candide, which was based on the novel of French writer and philosopher, Francois-Marie Arouet, best known by his pen name, Voltaire. I probably spent 45 minutes listening to various versions.

And I found myself crying. 

Crying from the pain of isolation, from the gnawing feeling of all of the missed opportunities for teaching, for celebrating together, for being unable to gather our community in person for all the things that we do. I was crying for what seemed at the time a lost world. 

And the song is just so darned beautiful. If you are unfamiliar with Candide, you might want to check it out:

And you know how some songs are just so appealing, so powerful that they give you the shivers, or that they make you cry? Well, I’m a sucker for a gorgeous song.

But even more so, what got me more than Bernstein’s music (the sextet, choir, and orchestra) was Voltaire’s message. Candide, published in 1759, was primarily a rejection of the philosophy of optimism, and in particular the school of thinking headed by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the German Christian polymath of the late 17th / early 18th century. Leibniz believed that we are living in the best of all possible worlds that God could have created. Voltaire clearly abhorred this philosophy, and set out to lampoon Leibnizian optimism by making Candide and his teacher, Dr. Pangloss, seem like utter fools for believing in it. As the book draws to a close, they realize the error of their ways. And so the operetta concludes thus:

Let dreamers dream
What worlds they please
Those Edens can’t be found.
The sweetest flowers,
The fairest trees
Are grown in solid ground.

We’re neither pure, nor wise, nor good
We’ll do the best we know.
We’ll build our house and chop our wood
And make our garden grow.
And make our garden grow!

“Let dreamers dream what worlds they please / those Edens can’t be found.”

The lyrics, written by American poet Richard Wilbur, include what might be a hidden nod to a well-known midrash about Creation: that God created and destroyed many worlds before creating this one. That is, the creation of the world that is described in Bereshit in the story which we will read tomorrow morning as we start the cycle of Torah once again is only the last one in a whole line of less-than-perfect worlds. (I do not think that Wilbur was Jewish, although of course Bernstein was.) 

A few chapters later in Parashat Noaḥ, God acknowledges that life on Earth has become corrupt, and destroys virtually all living things in the flood. The implicit message of the midrash and the subsequent flood story is that, although many worlds came before and God settled on this one, the world that we are in is clearly NOT perfect. We cannot be living in the best of all possible worlds, but God had effectively given up on trying to create that world.

Dr. Pangloss, and hence Leibniz, were absolutely wrong, in Voltaire’s opinion. And so when Candide and his friends sing these words at the end, they are confessing to the failure of optimism. We do not live in the best of all possible worlds, but we have this world, and it is up to us to live and do the best we can, given that reality. We should, therefore, build our house and chop our wood and make our garden grow, and not be deluded into thinking too optimistically about our lives. Life is ultimately about the hard work of taking it day by day, of not necessarily expecting the best possible outcome, but rather accepting the routine ups-and-downs.

Voltaire’s language even echoes that of Bereshit / Genesis 2:15, which tells us that God put humans in the Garden of Eden le’ovdah ulshomerah, to till it and to tend it, or in Latin, ut operaretur.

“I know also,” said Candide, “that we must cultivate our garden.”

“You are right,” said Pangloss, “for when man was first placed in the Garden of Eden, he was put there ut operaretur eum, that he might cultivate it; which shows that man was not born to be idle.”

“Let us work,” said Martin, “without disputing; it is the only way to render life tolerable.”

This conclusion is not far from that of Qohelet / Ecclesiastes, which we read on Shabbat morning. And I suppose that is why it was so cathartic when I played and replayed Bernstein’s musical take on Voltaire’s rejection of optimism.

The holidays of Tishrei run through a whole palette of emotions: from the foreboding and triumphant grandeur of Rosh HaShanah, to the gravitas and genuflection of Yom Kippur, to the pure family-centric joy of Sukkot, to the statement of vulnerability as we beat willow branches on the floor Hoshana Rabba, to the wild dancing and singing with abandon of Simhat Torah. Oh yeah, and then there’s Shemini Atzeret, whatever THAT’S about.

Well, actually, although the origin of Shemini Atzeret is as the eighth day of Sukkot, it is probably most associated today as a day of Yizkor, a day of remembrance of those whom we have lost. This is, of course, a Yom Tov day, a day of happiness and family meals (although eating in the sukkah is considered optional today), but the inclusion of Yizkor guarantees that this is a day of reflection, of perspective.

For Shemini Atzeret and Simḥat Torah, at the very end of a long and grueling holiday run, I often find myself feeling a lingering sense of eternity, of looking at this snapshot of our lives as we begin 5782, and thinking, where was I last year, spiritually speaking, and what does this year hold for me? And it makes sense that on this day of reflection, we might flip back in our minds to both the good and the not-so-good times. 

That is why tomorrow, just before Musaf, when I chant the Ḥatzi Qaddish, I will use melodies from throughout the Jewish year in a relatively obscure, yet interesting cantorial tradition known in Yiddish as the Yahres Kaddish, the Kaddish of the full year. It is a reminder not only of these holidays, but the entire spiral of the Jewish year, as we continue onward and upward, around and around as we grow and mature and learn and fail and succeed.

These are days on which we remember not only grief and loss, but also joy and happiness and celebration. And we also remember to keep in perspective what enables us to keep going around in that upward spiral, that sense of taking each day as it comes, trying to do the right thing for ourselves and each other, working and learning and playing and spending time with friends and family. Good things will happen in the coming year: people will get married; babies will be born; children will graduate from high school; there will be moments of joy. And so too will beloved family members die, and get divorced, and projects will fail and people will have financial hardships, and there will be bored moments and suffering and of course more disease and corruption and malfeasance.

And all those things are features of the jumble of our lives. As Qohelet / Ecclesiastes (1:9) tells us, “Ein kol ḥadash taḥat hashamesh.” There is nothing new under the sun. Put another way, Pirqei Avot (5:22) says, “Hafokh ba vahafekh ba dekhola ba.” Turn it over and over, because everything is in it. “It” of course, is the Torah, but Torah is likewise a reflection of the complex tapestry of our lives.

On this day of Yizkor, this day of remembrance, let us not forget that those whom we remember in these moments, who gave us life and nurtured us and gifted us their talents and wisdom and yes, sometimes even their flaws, are still a part of the weave of that tapestry.

And as we conclude this holiday season, we also remember that, in the words of Candide, we’re neither pure, nor wise, nor good, but we will do the best we know. We will try to be satisfied with sacrificing the perfect for the sake of the good enough. And that is perhaps the most valuable message we might take away from right now, as we add another year, another layer.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Pittsburgh, PA, Shemini Atzeret 5782, Tuesday morning, 9/28/2021.)

Categories
Festivals Sermons Yizkor

Once You Learn How to Die, You Learn How to Live – Shavuot / Yizkor 5781

Do we truly understand the value of life? The value of our lives? Do we really appreciate the gift we have been given, while we still have it?

One of the things that the pandemic has taught is just how frail we all are. Think about this for a moment: millions of people around the world taken too soon; young, healthy people suffering from virus effects long after regaining health, the so-called “Covid long-haulers;” the economic fallout – the jobs lost, the industries disrupted, the evictions and lives put on hold, and so forth. All of this due to a tiny piece of RNA wrapped in a protein shell. This microscopic thing, which can barely be called alive, has caused so much damage. It is hard to wrap your brain around. 

And the fallout that it has caused is primarily due to fear of death. We have spent 14 months staying away from people – from loved ones, from strangers in the supermarket, even passing people on sidewalks (I have found myself walking out into the road, perhaps unsafely so, many times) – out of respect, yes, but more essentially out of fear.

And with good reason, of course. 14 months later, nearly 600,000 of our fellow citizens are confirmed to have succumbed to that strand of RNA, and perhaps the figure is even closer to one million. Based on CDC statistics, this virus is about as deadly, per capita, as heart disease and cancer, and far more deadly than auto accidents and Americans with guns. Somehow, however, death seemed so much more close this year, so much more present. 

And we fear death.

A congregant who recently lost his grandfather (not due to COVID-19) asked me for suggestions on the topic of books that deal with death from a Jewish perspective. I came up with a few myself, but I also posed the question to fellow Conservative rabbis, and one suggested the 1997 memoir by Mitch Albom, Tuesdays With Morrie, a book that was on best-seller lists for four years. Probably some of you have read it. I never had, until I stumbled across a copy in one of the Beth Shalom libraries a few weeks back. I figured, maybe I should read this.

In case you do not know, the book is about Brandeis sociology professor Morrie Schwartz, with whom Albom had a close relationship while studying there as an undergraduate. Upon graduation, Albom wandered off into the world to seek his fortune, and did not stay in touch with Schwartz. Instead, he worked hard at building a career as a sports journalist, until one evening he was watching Nightline, and he saw his old professor and friend being interviewed by Ted Koppel (remember Ted Koppel?) about dying of a terminal disease. Morrie had ALS, and was at that point already unable to move his legs. Albom reconnected with him, and then went to visit him at his home outside of Boston over a series of 14 Tuesdays. During each of his visits, Morrie Schwartz unloaded wonderful bits of wisdom – about death, yes, but all the more so about life.

Although Albom is Jewish and so was Schwartz, the book is not really drawn from traditional Jewish ideas about death. While there is one brief moment in which Schwartz, a self-declared agnostic, looks heavenward and suggests that his life is in God’s hands (“I’m bargaining with Him up there now,” he says, p. 163), there is otherwise no reference to any of the things that Jews associate with death and mourning. Nonetheless, it is a very Jewish book, primarily because Morrie’s approach to dying of a terminal illness is to talk about it, to make Albom and the reader aware of their own mortality.

That is what we do. We are not only the people of the book; we are also the people of the schmooze. (Most of you know that I grew up in WASPy, stiff-upper-lip New England; I have never been much of a talker. Somehow, going to rabbinical school changed all that.)

You might make the case that Morrie’s essential argument is that we have no need to fear death, because we are all going to die. Death is an essential feature of life. During one of their early visits, Morrie offers one of his most impactful statements. “The truth is, Mitch, once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.” (p. 82) What he means by “learning how to die” is to be prepared for it, to be aware that it is coming. Once you have done that, you can appreciate life in a much more complete way.

I became aware just this weekend, through an article in the New York Times about a nun, that Catholics have a practice known as “memento mori,” Latin for “remembering death.” The idea is to “intentionally think about your own death every day, as a means of appreciating the present and focusing on the future.” Sister Theresa Alethia Noble of the Daughters of St. Paul convent in Boston has made it her mission to raise the profile of this somewhat obscure practice. Her argument is that we are too focused on the superficial and the inauthentic, the “bright and shiny” things that are constantly occupying space on our screens and in our consciousness.

The article notes that Buddhist mindfulness meditation tries to achieve the same thing, and Morrie Schwartz also invokes the Buddhists. 

But we, the Jews, have our own traditions that keep our mortality in front of us on a regular basis.

You may never have thought about this in these terms, but that is what we do every time we observe Yizkor, when we take a few moments to recall those whom we have lost. One of the traditional things we say during Yizkor are the words from Psalm 16: 

שִׁוִּ֬יתִי ה’ לְנֶגְדִּ֣י תָמִ֑יד כִּ֥י מִֽ֝ימִינִ֗י בַּל־אֶמּֽוֹט׃ לָכֵ֤ן ׀ שָׂמַ֣ח לִ֭בִּי וַיָּ֣גֶל כְּבוֹדִ֑י אַף־בְּ֝שָׂרִ֗י יִשְׁכֹּ֥ן לָבֶֽטַח׃  

Adonai is always before me, at my right hand, lest I fall. Therefore I am glad, made happy, though I know that my flesh will lie in the ground forever.

As ironic as this statement sounds – happiness and death in the same verse – it is absolutely the feeling one gets in reading Tuesdays with Morrie. Teacher and student are united in their joy of connecting and reconnecting, even though one will soon be gone. They enjoy food together; they exchange powerful hugs.

And every time we respond to one reciting the Mourner’s Qaddish, we are doing the same thing. The text of the Qaddish is not even about death, but even though it is an essential part of mourning, it promises life and joy in our praise of God. And every time we celebrate any life cycle event – berit milah, baby naming, bat/bar mitzvah, wedding, etc., we are reminded that life is a cycle – a cycle of joy and grief and loving and loss and thriving and languishing and beginning and ending. 

Why is a Jewish wedding ring a perfect, simple circle, with no stone? Because life is a circle, one in which we all experience all of those beginnings and endings every single day, as we wind our way around.

Elsewhere, Morrie adds, “The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.” (p. 52) As we turn around and around, the way we make our lives full, the way we fill in that circle, is by giving out love, and maybe getting some of it back.

Death is always there. We hear it intoned in our rituals. We bring comfort to those who are approaching death, and when they are gone we are there for those who mourn. We know that we can be happy today, because we also know that there is an endpoint. And we will be remembered by those to whom we gave love.

Perhaps one of the most striking lessons that Morrie Schwartz offers, and one which living a life committed to Judaism also gives us, is the following:

“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.” (p. 43)

Jewish lifecycle events, Jewish holidays, Jewish ritual and song and story and text and halakhah and customs, are primarily focused on connecting us to each other and offering us meaning. While we know where we are headed, we understand that the most important thing that we can do before we get there is to connect, and to re-connect, and to love. That is our purpose; that is what gives our lives meaning.

As we emerge from this pandemic, let us not only remember those whom we have lost, but let us also recommit ourselves to living better, to finding meaning, to engaging with the words of our tradition, to loving more.

That is how we may truly appreciate the gift of life.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Pittsburgh, PA, second day of Shavuot, 5/18/2021.)