Tag: Sukkot

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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.

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Festivals Sermons

Fantasy Ushpizin: The Seven Guests I Would Love to Have in My Sukkah This Year – Sukkot 5781

Do you remember how, when you were very young, your mother could make everything better? She had magical powers. When you got hurt playing with other kids down the block; when you had a stomach ache; when you saw a really scary movie and couldn’t sleep; when you were devastated by a horrible grade or being teased or when the president encouraged a white nationalist group to “stand by,” (OK, so just kidding about that last one), your mother would give you a hug and make it all go away.

America needs a mom right now. 

One of the traditions of Sukkot is that of Ushpizin, the custom of inviting our tribal ancestors to come dwell with us in the sukkah at evening meals. The custom is a kabbalistic one, apparently derived from a statement in the Zohar:

Zohar 3:103b:8

תָּא חֲזֵי, בְּשַׁעֲתָא דְּבַר נָשׁ יָתִיב בְּמָדוֹרָא דָּא, צִלָּא דִּמְהֵימְנוּתָא, שְׁכִינְתָּא פַּרְסָא גַּדְפָהָא עָלֵיהּ מִלְּעֵילָּא, וְאַבְרָהָם וַחֲמִשָּׁה צַדִּיקַיָּיא אָחֳרָנִין שַׁוְיָין מָדוֹרֵיהוֹן עִמֵּיהּ

“Come and see: When one sits in this dwelling, the shade of faith, Shekhinah spreads Her wings over him from above, Abraham and five other righteous heroes come to dwell with him!”

Maybe the Shekhinah, God’s presence, is the mother who is going to spread her wings over all of us as we dine in our sukkot this year. Wouldn’t that be nice? 

The Aramaic term “ushpizin,” you may have heard me say in the past, is a Hebraicization of the Medieval Greek word hospition, meaning an inn, also connected to the Latin root hospes, which is the source of our English words hospitality, host, and hospital. The custom is that each night of Sukkot, for seven nights, we welcome Sarah and Avraham, Rivqah and Yitzhaq, etc. (You can see the whole egalitarian list in Siddur Lev Shalem, pp. 424-5)

OK, so the Zohar did not include the women, only men. But we know better.

But it is also an interesting exercise, as we are inviting towering figures from the Tanakh into our sukkot, to also ask ourselves, if we could invite any person into the sukkah as a guest, whom would we invite?

And to keep this focused, I have picked Jewish values for each of the seven nights, so each of the ushpizin will represent a certain value. The values are: Hemlah / compassion, nedivut / generosity, redifat shalom / seeking peace, anavah / humility, adivut / civility, manhigut / leadership, and Talmud Torah / learning the wisdom of the Jewish bookshelf.

And since we are all nervous this year about having guests (or being guests) in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, the idea of spiritual guests rather than physical guests is a welcome practice! 

Caveat: it would be impossible for me to come up with a list of names about whom all would agree. Most likely someone on this list will be objectionable because of something in their history: something unsavory they did, but as with the Biblical characters of the classical ushpizin, the people we admire from more recent history are complex and sometimes in the wrong, and that does not necessarily detract from their accomplishments or the values they lived.

And for sure, I know that you could come up with a better list than I can. But that’s what makes this exercise so much fun! 

  1. Hemlah / Compassion – German Chancellor Angela Merkel

Chancellor Merkel is our ushpizah for compassion. Back in 2015, a month or so after I moved to Pittsburgh, there was a huge migrant crisis in Europe, people flowing through Turkey, primarily from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. As you may recall, European nations responded differently. While Hungary’s autocratic prime minister Viktor Orban threw up fences and confined thousands of refugees to a Budapest train station, Merkel and her government took in over a million people. They resettled them, arranged housing and job training and language instruction. This was a stunning act of unparalleled compassion and generosity. While there was of course a political backlash and no shortage of cultural issues surrounding the resettlement, the overarching message was clear: asylum seekers are people, and we have to be responsible for our fellow human beings.

  1. Nedivut / Generosity – Bill and Melinda Gates

Say what you will about the founder of Microsoft, but it is undeniable that Bill Gates is generous. The foundation that he and his wife created invests nearly $5 billion per year in international programs that focus on poverty, hunger, and public health, among other things. Now, if Bill and Melinda were actually in my sukkah, I of course would use it as an opportunity to vent about why he let Windows push out DOS, which was just fine with me. But among the people in their tax bracket, they have been a model of generosity. And all the more so in the time of this pandemic, when the resources and leadership regarding public health and vaccines that the Gates Foundation supplies are more important than ever.

  1. Redifat shalom / pursuit of peace – Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin  

Rabin was a soldier, a man of war who commanded forces in Israel’s War of Independence in 1948-49. And yet, over the course of his life, he became a man of peace. Yes, it was the Norwegians who coordinated the Oslo Accords. But in order to make peace actually happen, Rabin and Shimon Peres had to agree to talks with the PLO, then clearly understood to be the mortal enemy of Israel. When Rabin found himself shaking the hand of Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn, he could not even believe such a thing had happened. 

Wherever you stand on the Oslo process and its tragic failure, there is no question that Rabin taught us all an essential message: you cannot make peace without talking to your enemy.

  1. Anavah / Humility – Rosa Parks

Yes, what Rosa Parks did on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955 by not relinquishing her seat was an act of defiance, but her action was a humble one. Three months after the brutal murder of Emmett Till, Ms. Parks, a seamstress for a local department store, exerted her will not by marching, not with a bullhorn, but by sitting down, one of the more humble human activities. Her action led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott a few days later, a seminal moment in the nascent civil rights movement. Ms. Parks later described what she did, somewhat ironically as, “an opportunity to take a stand,” a proud description of a humble moment.

  1. Adivut / Civility – President Abraham Lincoln

So you think the United States is divided today? When Abraham Lincoln accepted the Illinois Republican Party’s nomination for Senate in 1858, he began by paraphrasing the assertion from the Christian Bible: “A house divided against itself, cannot stand.” Through the deep division that led to and continued after the bloody Civil War, Lincoln stood eloquently and steadfastly for the abolitionist cause. As president, he emancipated the enslaved people in this nation, and as the war drew to a close, he stated in his Second Inaugural Address: 

“Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully.” 

To understand one’s enemy as a human being, something that the Torah exhorts us to do in multiple ways, is a challenge that we all have; Lincoln (for whom, by the way, there is a street named in Tel Aviv), rose to that challenge with grace, even as he sent Union troops to quash the Confederacy.

  1. Manhigut / leadership –  Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand

Not even a month after the brutal massacre by a white supremacist at a Christchurch mosque, Prime Minister Ardern managed to compel the New Zealand parliament ban most semi-automatic weapons. She is only the second head of state to give birth in office, and her successful management of the coronavirus pandemic embarrasses the rest of the developed world: 19 New Zealanders have died, out of a population of 5 million. By comparison, the per capita rate of death in the United States is 165 times higher. I would say that Ms. Ardern has been a model leader.

  1. Talmud Torah – Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

Rabbi Steinsaltz passed away in August, and there has been no other contemporary rabbi whose authority and knowledge is as respected across the Jewish world. His father, although descended from the first Slonimer rabbi, was a Communist Zionist and had no interest in religion; young Adin Steinsaltz not only excelled in secular studies, but also became a ba’al teshuvah, and ultimately accomplished what may be the most important Jewish task of the current age: popularizing the study of Talmud by translating it into contemporary Hebrew and English. He wrote many other books for popular consumption, and was at one point the head of a (failed) effort to re-establish the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem.

***
That is my list; I strongly encourage you to play this “fantasy ushpizin” game with your family as you gather in your own sukkah this year. America may not have a mom to give us a hug, but we do have the Shekhinah, and perhaps these illustrious guests will bring us all some comfort.

Mo’adim lesimhah! Haggim uzmanim lesasson!

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Pittsburgh, PA, first day of Sukkot 5781, 10/3/2020.)

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Festivals Sermons

Happiness? Or Meaning? (Turn! Turn! Turn!) – Shabbat Hol Hamo’ed Sukkot 5780

Sukkot is acknowledged throughout Jewish tradition as the happiest festival of the year. We referred to it today in Shaharit / the morning service as “Zeman simhateinu,” the time of our joy. The Torah reading from this morning included the commandment, usmahtem lifnei Adonai, you shall rejoice before God on this holiday.

And what’s the best-known Sukkot song?

וְשָׂמַחְתָּ֖ בְּחַגֶּ֑ךָ… וְהָיִ֖יתָ אַ֥ךְ שָׂמֵֽחַ׃

Vesamahta behaggekha… vehayyita akh sameah.

You shall rejoice in your festival, and you shall have nothing but joy. (Devarim / Deuteronomy 16:14-15)

But what does it mean to rejoice? To be happy? And is happiness a goal unto itself, or should we rather seek “meaning”? And what does “meaning” mean, anyway?

When I was a sophomore at Cornell, the folk singer Pete Seeger played on campus. I have always loved folk music, and Seeger’s performances (he was already quite advanced in years then) were special because of the way he incorporated the audience, urging them to sing with him as he accompanied on the banjo.

One of Pete Seeger’s best-known songs goes like this (sing with me):

To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time for every purpose under heaven
A time to be born, a time to die 
A time to plant, a time to reap 
A time to laugh, a time to weep 
A time to kill, a time to heal

Of course, it was popularized by the Byrds. But Seeger wrote the music.

Not the lyrics, however. It is almost a direct quote of the opening verses of Chapter 3 of the King James translation of Ecclesiastes, known in Hebrew as Qohelet, some of which we read earlier. This particular passage, to which scholars refer as “the Catalogue of Times,” is a reminder that while every event in life occurs in its proper time, we have no control over these times; the “when” is solely in the hands of God. Since they are paired as opposites, one way of reading this is that neither happy times nor sad ones are to be expected. Reality is such that sometimes we are happy, sometimes we are sad, and much of the time we are neither.

Qohelet, ostensibly written by an ancient king of that name, is among the more-challenging books of the Tanakh, theologically-speaking. It puts itself forward as a book of philosophy (e.g. 1:14: “I observed all the happenings beneath the sun, and I found that all is futile and pursuit of wind.”), but, somewhat like the book of Job, leaves us with a very unsatisfying conclusion. To Qohelet, effectively everything that we pursue – wealth, wisdom, food and drink, labor, and so forth – is vanity and emptiness. Nothing will bring you lasting satisfaction. Qohelet’s conclusion is, therefore, merely to enjoy the things that you have when you have them, fear God and perform the mitzvot. That’s it.

Not very satisfying, right? Perhaps, though, there is an important message here. After all, there must be a reason that we read this book during Sukkot, the most joyous festival of the year. So what’s the reason? One possibility is that Qohelet points to the transience of human life, which is also suggested by the fragile, temporary sukkot in which we are commanded to live for the week. Another is that fall is the season that most suggests mortality, a feature of our lives that the Catalogue of Times clearly invokes.

Here is another thought: in the wake of Yom Kippur, after beating our chests and seeking return and forgiveness and afflicting our souls and so forth, it may be our intent to seek happiness, albeit perhaps from a new perspective. Qohelet is a reminder that happiness is not an end unto itself, but rather ebbs and flows with the randomness of our lives.

Speaking of ebb and flow, allow me to return for a moment to Cornell University of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Despite a physical chemistry lecture that occasionally made me consider javelin catching as a career, those were great days. The academic ferment of that particular ivory tower provided a rich backdrop for developing strong social bonds and discovering who I was as a person. I had good friends and good times. It makes me think of the well-known song, “Those Were the Days” (Mary Hopkins, 1968, although based on a Russian folk tune).

We tend to speak of the “good old days.” Maybe those were they; there is a time for every purpose under heaven.

But perhaps reality is not so simple; we do tend to see the past through etrog-scented glasses (or something like that). The gypsy-punk band Gogol Bordello recorded a philosophically-minded song titled “Ultimate,” which decries the existence of such days. On the contrary, the song suggests that to refer to the “good old days” is in fact an insult to both the present and future:

There were never any good old days,
They are today, they are tomorrow
It’s a stupid thing we say
Cursing tomorrow with sorrow.

Qohelet, I think, would agree with Gogol Bordello. There were no “good old days,” says Qohelet. Ve-ein kol hadash tahat hashamesh. And there is nothing new under the sun (Eccl. 1:9).

Maybe my university days were the good old days, or maybe these days are just as good, and 5780 will be even better. Only God knows, and about that I’m not even so sure.

One thing, however, is certain: happiness is fleeting, while “meaning” is enduring. Rather than seek happiness, we should seek meaning. That is a message that is difficult for a college student to understand, but it is a message that we can glean from Jewish tradition.

An article in The Atlantic from a few years back cited a study published in the Journal of Positive Psychology that

asked nearly 400 Americans aged 18 to 78 whether they thought their lives were meaningful and/or happy. Examining their self-reported attitudes toward meaning, happiness, and many other variables — like stress levels, spending patterns, and having children — over a month-long period, the researchers found that a meaningful life and happy life overlap in certain ways, but are ultimately very different. Leading a happy life, the psychologists found, is associated with being a “taker” while leading a meaningful life corresponds with being a “giver.”

This is a fascinating revelation. Perhaps Qohelet’s suggestion to fear God and fulfill the mitzvot is an ancient attempt to steer us away from seeking happiness in favor of meaning. You might make the case that a certain portion of the mitzvot are about giving, not taking: giving your time and yourself over to holy pursuits. It’s not what we reap in this world, to borrow Qohelet’s language, but rather what we sow.

And that may in fact be one message of Sukkot. Why does the Torah command us to live in a shack in the backyard for a week? To remember that it is not our possessions that are important and valuable; that meaning may be sought in the simplest environment. That living in a sturdy, well-appointed home, when compared to a shaky, non-climate-controlled sukkah, might seem more like taking than giving.

The article goes on to say:

Meaning is not only about transcending the self, but also about transcending the present moment — which is perhaps the most important finding of the study, according to the researchers. While happiness is an emotion felt in the here and now, it ultimately fades away, just as all emotions do; positive affect and feelings of pleasure are fleeting. The amount of time people report feeling good or bad correlates with happiness but not at all with meaning.

Meaning, on the other hand, is enduring. It connects the past to the present to the future. “Thinking beyond the present moment, into the past or future, was a sign of the relatively meaningful but unhappy life,” the researchers write. “Happiness is not generally found in contemplating the past or future.” That is, people who thought more about the present were happier, but people who spent more time thinking about the future or about past struggles and sufferings felt more meaning in their lives, though they were less happy.”

In other words, happiness is in the moment. Those university days were joyful for what they were, but the real satisfaction of living comes from the fullness of life’s experiences: the glorious and the miserable, the bountiful and the meager, the cacaphonous and the silent, and the entire palette of humanity in between. The researchers agree that “What sets human beings apart from animals is not the pursuit of happiness, which occurs all across the natural world, but the pursuit of meaning, which is unique to humans.”

To everything there is a season, and we all need the carefree periods in our lives in which to pursue the momentary happiness that sustains youth. But we also need, at some point, to reach deeper, to seek out those things which bring us meaning, to give as much as we have taken, and maybe more. The good old days are indeed today and tomorrow.

So it is as much comforting your screaming child in the middle of the night as it is to see her standing under the huppah, as much receiving a wonderful promotion as losing a parent that makes life meaningful and rich. These are the things that make us human, and this is the takeaway from Sukkot.

As we celebrate the transience of life on this joyous festival, we would do well not only to fulfill the mitzvah de’oraita (commandment from the Torah) of being happy in the wake of Yom Kippur, but also to reflect on the discomfort that comes with being removed from your house for a week. Spend some time in the sukkah, with the bugs and the rain and the cool fall breeze. It’s the human thing to do, and will help make these days as good as the good old days.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Pittsburgh, PA, Shabbat Hol Hamo’ed Sukkot, 10/19/2019.)

Categories
Festivals Sermons

Un-Defaulting the Default – Shabbat Hol Hamo’ed Sukkot 5779

A powerful public figure – a politician, a comedian, a big-shot producer, a judge – attracts our attention. Somebody, or perhaps several somebodies, usually people of whom we have never heard, publicly accuse this person of horrible things. These are deplorable, unimaginable things – actions that we really don’t want to picture the people who lead us doing. And these allegations are splayed across our screens, coming out of our radios, shouting at us from print headlines, such that we cannot avoid them. Our children ask us: Why? What? How? We struggle to answer.

This detestable ritual has long played itself out in the American public square. It’s not new, although it is happening much more frequently. And nearly every time, the accused is a man, and the accusers are women.

I cried this week. I cried in particular yesterday when I heard this, a female protester addressing a male senator of the United States:

I was sexually assaulted and nobody believed me… and you’re telling all women that they don’t matter, that they should just stay quiet because if they tell you what happened to them you are going to ignore them. That’s what happened to me, and that’s what you are telling all women in America, that they don’t matter. They should just keep it to themselves because if they have told the truth you’re just going to help that man to power anyway.

I struggled greatly this week to balance the joy of Sukkot with our collective national anxiety. Sukkot is the most joyous festival of the year (even as we remind ourselves of our vulnerability by living in temporary shacks). It’s referred to rabbinically as “hehag” – i.e. THE festival. The pre-eminent festival. The one that will still be observed even after the mashiah / messiah arrives.

And yet, Rabbi Jeremy Markiz and I were trying to make sense of the news on Thursday. And he gave me a useful framing of our current predicament.

Sukkot is a festival of invitation, one in which we invite holy guests into our sukkah. This ceremony, known as Ushpizin, is derived from the Zohar; it’s a mystical custom that welcomes guests from the Tanakh / Hebrew Bible into the sukkah to dine with us each night.

The challenge facing our nation at this precise moment, said Rabbi Jeremy, is one of invitation. It is only relatively recently that women have been welcomed into certain quarters of society – voting rights, some professions, positions of power, and so forth.

sarah verivqa

And yet, even when women are invited, are they actually allowed in on the same terms as men? Is the invitation extended to men somehow more forgiving? Are we hearing women’s voices the same way we hear those of men? And who is actually doing the inviting, anyway?

Let’s consider the Jewish world.

Rabbi Regina Jonas (1902-1944) was the first woman ordained as a rabbi in 1935, her semikhah (ordination) granted by Rabbi Max Dienemann, the head of the German Liberal Rabbis’ Association. Following Rabbi Jonas, the next woman to be ordained was Rabbi Sally Priesand in 1972, ordained by Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, and the first woman ordained as a Conservative rabbi was Rabbi Amy Eilberg, in 1985.

220px-ReginaJonas
Rabbi Regina Jonas

So let’s run the numbers here for a moment: let’s say that rabbinic Judaism, that is, what we call Judaism, has been around since the redaction of the Mishnah, roughly the end of the 2nd century CE. So from the year 200 until the year 1935, the only rabbis were men. That’s more than seventeen centuries. The first bat mitzvah was in 1922 (Judith Kaplan, the daughter of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan). While the practice of mixed seating was common in liberal American synagogues from the first half of the 20th century, counting women in a minyan did not become widely practiced until the 1970s.

Yes, the Talmud, written entirely by men and concluded by the 5th century, did not seek to include women. Despite the towering presence of Rabbi Meir’s wife Beruriah in the pages of the gemara, she of great learning and quick wit, the overarching theme in the Talmud is that free, adult Jewish males are the highest form of person. All others are in lesser categories, obligated to fewer mitzvot, and excluded from some of the central rituals and activities of Jewish tradition. And that is the way things remained until the late 20th century, even in the most liberal quarters of the Jewish world.

I was not too far into my journey to the rabbinate when I realized that female rabbis and cantors were judged by a totally different standard. A married cantorial classmate was regularly hit on by male congregants at a student pulpit. A rabbinical classmate was told that her outfits were unacceptable. Though they could not state it explicitly, some congregations made it clear that they were not interested in female applicants for clergy positions. And that was, by the way, a full 20 years after Amy Eilberg was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

And maybe you heard about my colleague Rabbi Keren Gorban’s tale, delivered at Temple Sinai over the High Holidays, about her being targeted by a teacher and mentor at Hebrew Union College, the Reform seminary.

So even though it has been almost a century since men invited women into the same rituals and positions of authority that they have enjoyed for two millennia, we have still failed to see them as equals; perhaps they have not truly, honestly been invited.

There is of course nothing new here; men have done horrible things to women as long as people have walked this Earth. Several women that I have known, including some very close to me, have told me about being raped. It’s impossible to know exactly how many incidents of sexual violence take place in this country, since estimates suggest that at least 60% of them go unreported, but one common figure I have seen quoted is that 1 in 3 women will be victims of sexual violence in their lifetime (see, for example, http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf).

Is it a good thing that we are hearing more such stories, particularly the high-profile ones come to our attention? Unquestionably yes. As uncomfortable as it is for all of us to hear, we have to acknowledge that there is a serious problem in human society – that some people can and do abuse dynamics of power, both power of position as well as physical power, and inflict intense pain and suffering on others.

How on Earth can we expect to change that dynamic if we do not hear these stories? How can we teach our boys not to accept the old, lascivious standard of “boys will be boys”? How can we invite all in equally? How can we create a new “normal,” one that represents a step forward as a species, wherein every boy or man will understand that power is not to be abused? Wherein we will no longer laugh away the sexist remark, the demeaning gesture, the dismissive rolling of the eyes?

To be sure, society is changing, gradually. We are moving to a position in which the male-centered default of old is being abrogated. I am sure that you have heard that there are many more female candidates for public office running this year than in past years. Thank God, we have three women on the Supreme Court, but of course we can do better.

Sukkot is about un-defaulting the default. We take ourselves out of our climate-controlled, comfortable homes; we spend the week living (or “living”) in a temporary shack that, if we’re lucky, has electric lighting, but not much of a roof. It’s meant to be a reminder that all of what we have is temporary. Don’t forget where you came from, where you’re going, and before Whom you will be required to give an accounting (Pirqei Avot 3:1). It reminds us not only of our own vulnerability, that no matter how much we try to insulate or cloister ourselves, we can always be stripped of our stuff, but also of the imperfection of this world, of how much work there is to be done to right the wrongs and feed the hungry and roof the roofless.

How much more so, then, in this season of joy, to remember that we still have a long way to go before a woman is invited in, with equal force and equal attitude to the man who is already there.

Some of you may recall that two years ago on Sukkot, I spoke about the egalitarian Ushpizin found in our siddur. (If you want to check it out, it’s on p. 424). While the medieval kabbalistic tradition highlighted Avraham, Yitzhaq, Ya’aqov, Yosef, Moshe, Aharon, and David, our Conservative siddur lists seven women whom we invite in as well: Sarah, Rivqah, Rahel, Leah, Miriam,  Devorah, and Ruth. And so we invite them, women and men as equals to join us in the sukkah.

rahel veleah

It’s an esoteric custom, not well known in the non-Orthodox Jewish world. But it’s essential today – just as we invoke the Imahot / matriarchs every time we say an Amidah here at Beth Shalom, just as we count women as equals under halakhah / Jewish law, just as we call a bride and groom to the Torah before their wedding, just as we celebrate bat mitzvah and bar mitzvah with no distinction between them, just as we welcome girl babies into the world with a ceremony that parallels the boys (with just one small omission…), we must continue to invite women into the sukkah, into the synagogue, and into all spheres of society as equals. We have to listen to and elevate their voices. And we as a society need to do some serious teshuvah regarding the realities of sexual violence. We need to un-default the default. That is the lesson of this Sukkot.

Shabbat shalom. Mo’adim lesimhah, haggim uzmanim lesasson.

 

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Shabbat morning, 9/29/2018.)

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Sermons

The Divinity of Vulnerability – Bereshit 5778

The holidays are over; we have concluded three weeks of introspection, of asking for forgiveness from God and each other, of celebrating and building and dancing and eating and praying and so forth.

You might be inclined to think that the High Holiday season ended yesterday, when we paraded the Torah and danced and sang with abandon. A better case could be made that they actually ended on Wednesday morning, on Hoshanah Rabbah, when we marched seven times around the chapel with our lulavim and etrogim, and then beat willow branches on the floor until the leaves came off, chanting three times, “Qol mevasser, mevasser ve-omer,” “A voice proclaims, proclaims and says.”

‫הושענא רבה - נוסח חבאן (בי"כ מפעי, מושב ברקת, תשס"א ...

Says what? A curious statement, indeed. The piyyut, the liturgical poem that features these lines in the siddur / prayerbook is incomplete; there is no direct object to the two verbs, mevasser (proclaims) and omer (says).

The line seems to reference a passage in Isaiah (52:7) heralding redemption.* But why did the author of this poem in the siddur, El’azar ben Qillir, the 6th-7th century CE Palestinian payyetan, leave off what it is that the voice is announcing?**

Well, I’m going to propose an answer: that the mysterious voice is God’s (OK, not such a stretch), the still, small voice (I Kings 19:12) that will guide us as we move forward into the new year, and yet reminds us of the vulnerability that we emphasize on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It is this vulnerability, after all, in which you may find the Divine spark that makes us at once profoundly human and yet Godly. And the origin of this vulnerability is to be found in Parashat Bereshit, which we read today.

The fourth most-viewed TED Talk of all time (videos of short, inspirational lectures, usually by people who are not celebrities) features the “researcher-storyteller” Dr. Brené Brown, and is titled, “The Power of Vulnerability.” Has anybody here seen it? Dr. Brown is a professor in the social work school at the University of Houston. Some of her research has been devoted to recording and analyzing people’s stories of shame and vulnerability.

She speaks of her own fear of being vulnerable, and how, while she is trying to manage this fear, her research reveals that it is, in fact, embracing being open and vulnerable that makes us feel worthy, that makes us live, as she says, “wholeheartedly.”

Among the wisdom revealed by her research, we find the following gems:

  • Our essential goal is connection. The ability to feel connected is what gives us purpose and meaning in our lives.
  • Shame is the fear of disconnection.
  • People who have a strong sense of love and belonging feel that they are worthy of love and belonging, and the way to achieve this is to expose your vulnerability, to embrace it, to allow your true self to be seen.

Dr. Brown’s point is that we as a society tend to misunderstand the importance of vulnerability. None of us is perfect; that we leave for God. But it is, in fact, our vulnerability that makes us strong; it is our vulnerability that makes us attractive to others, the willingness to pursue love, careers, parenting, and other types of human relationships despite our fears of failure and rejection.

And that is one of the primary messages of Bereshit – that we are not perfect. We are not immortal. Rather, we are human. We are fundamentally flawed.*** When we lose Eden, we learn the extent of our vulnerability. What does God say to Adam as he and Eve are being shooed out of the Garden? We read this a little while ago:

אֲרוּרָה הָאֲדָמָה, בַּעֲבוּרֶךָ, בְּעִצָּבוֹן תֹּאכְלֶנָּה, כֹּל יְמֵי חַיֶּיךָ

Cursed be the ground because of you;

By toil shall you eat of it

All the days of your life…

By the sweat of your brow

Shall you get bread to eat,

Until you return to the ground —

For from it you were taken. (Gen. 3:17-19)

Henceforward, says God, human life will be difficult. Nothing will be provided for us; we must work hard to eat, to live, to love. And we will try and fail, try and fail again. We will try to plant wheat, and thorns and thistles will grow instead. We will reach out to others for love and be rejected. We will work hard at making senior partner, only to be passed over.

This is, of course, from the second Creation story, the more human of the two, Gen. 2:4b ff. The first story (Gen. 1:1 – 2:4a) is about order: six days of God admiring God’s own perfect work, and then resting. Shabbat is today that aftertaste of perfection, a little hint of the Garden of Eden here in Pittsburgh and everywhere else for 25 hours every week.

But the other six days are days of toil and suffering. And that is what makes us human. We are subject to the elements, to the economy, to the vagaries of human relationships, to political forces, and so on. We are vulnerable.

But wait a minute. Didn’t God make us this way? Is not our tendency to feel shame also Divine?

When Adam and Eve eat fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they suddenly realize that they are not wearing clothes. And what happens? They feel ashamed. They feel vulnerable. Recognizing this new emotion in the creatures God has created, the Qadosh Barukh Hu asks them (Gen. 3:11), “Mi higid lekha ki eirom atah?” “Who told you that you were naked?”

Rashi glosses this verse as follows: “Me-ayin lekha lada’at mah boshet yesh be-omed arom? Ha-min ha-etz?!” “From where did you learn what shame there is in standing naked? From the tree?!”

That’s when they start pointing fingers, blaming each other and the serpent to alleviate their shame. (Dr. Brown: “blame” is defined in the relevant academic literature as, “a way to discharge pain and discomfort.”)

Of course it was not from the tree. Shame was also created by God in those first six days of ostensibly “perfect” Creation.

So when Adam and Eve lose paradise, and are told that they are on their own, that fundamental vulnerability comes from God. It is Divine. It is the essential piece of humanity, the finishing flourish, if you will, of Creation.

So what is the voice proclaiming at the end of the holiday season? Embrace that God-given vulnerability. That is what the Yamim Nora’im, the High Holidays, are all about: we are frail, we need help. And carry that sense of frailty into the rest of the year. Live with it, because it will make you more wholehearted.

Dr. Brené Brown concludes her talk by pointing out that the way that we deal with our vulnerability is by trying to numb it through addictive behaviors. “We are the most in-debt, obese, addicted, and medicated adult cohort in US history,” she says.

But the problem with this is that you cannot selectively numb particular emotions, and so we have also numbed our ability to experience joy, gratitude, and happiness, and this has led to a whole host of other social ills. We are increasingly isolated, increasingly certain and inflexible in our beliefs, increasingly willing to assign blame rather than accept who we are.

She offers that what we need to be teaching our children is, it’s OK to be imperfect. It’s OK to be flawed and wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging. I would append to this the idea that God created us that way, way back in Bereshit / Genesis.

During Sukkot, we “invite” key figures in Jewish folklore to come and sit with us in our sukkah, in a ceremony known as Ushpizin. We call on Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, David, Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, Rachel, Miriam, Deborah, and Ruth to honor us with their presence. But we often forget that these characters were human, and hence imperfect. Abraham twice identified his wife Sarah as his sister, because he was afraid of being killed. Sarah laughed when promised a son late in life. Moses was ashamed of what may have been a stutter. Aaron made the Molten Calf, for crying out loud! And David, the great King David, slept with his neighbor’s wife and then had her husband killed in battle, because he was ashamed. These were flawed people!

Love and I love on Pinterest

But they lived with their vulnerabilities. They are on display for all to see in the stories of the Tanakh. And we too must embrace our own insecurities, and raise our children to accept their shortcomings. Nobody’s perfect, my friends. Qol mevasser, mevasser ve-omer. Remember the still, small voice, calling out from the New Year. The imperfection within us is Divine; now get out there and be proudly vulnerable.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Shabbat morning, 10/14/2017.)

* Isaiah 52:7, a verse that we read over the summer in the Fourth Haftarah of Consolation:

מַה-נָּאווּ עַל-הֶהָרִים רַגְלֵי מְבַשֵּׂר, מַשְׁמִיעַ שָׁלוֹם מְבַשֵּׂר טוֹב–מַשְׁמִיעַ יְשׁוּעָה; אֹמֵר לְצִיּוֹן, מָלַךְ אֱ-לֹהָיִךְ

How welcome on the mountain

Are the footsteps of the herald

Announcing happiness,

Heralding good fortune,

Announcing victory,

Telling Zion, “Your God is King!”

** Yes, if you study the words of the piyyut / liturgical poem carefully, you will find that it speaks of “various prophetic descriptions of apocalyptic events in the end of days,” (Reuven Hammer, Or Hadash: A Commentary on Siddur Sim Shalom for Shabbat and Festivals, p. 211). But the repeated lines at the beginning and the end are incomplete, and we repeat them five times.

*** Please note that while some Christian denominations point to this episode as the source of “original sin,” Judaism reads the first few chapters of Bereshit / Genesis differently. God did not create humans to be immortal, and the first humans were not perfect. In other words, the expulsion from the Garden was inevitable, like the classic arc of tragedy.

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Festivals Sermons

Remaining Human – Shabbat Hol Hamo’ed Sukkot 5777

One of the major themes I presented during my series of High Holiday sermons is that the point of fulfilling mitzvot, of “doing Jewish,” if you will, is to connect those holy opportunities with our lives, to bring meaning to who we are and how we live today.

Along those lines, what does building and “dwelling” in the sukkah teach us? That life is uncertain. That even after the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, the Ten Days of Return, after having been through the process of repairing our relationships with each other and with God, that we are still vulnerable. That although we might be inclined to look around ourselves and say, “Hey, this isn’t so bad. I’ve got another year in front of me. 5777 is looking pretty good,” that we should not forget that things could change. The story is not yet over.

In my mind, I always strongly associate Sukkot with the sights / sounds / smells of fall: trees aflame in color, winds to herald the winter chill, the scent of dead leaves and damp sod. Sukkot is the end of the holiday cycle, and it suggest frailty. Everything comes to an end, chants the latter half of Tishrei. And yet, it’s a joyous time – zeman simhateinu, the season of our joy, as it is called in our liturgy. This is hehag, THE festival.

I recently read an opinion piece from the Wall Street Journal by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, in which he reminds us of the need to remember to sanctify life as we sail into the future.

This is not the future of the Jetsons or Star Trek, but rather the future in which artificial intelligence eventually puts everybody out of work. Consider the fact that right here in Pittsburgh, even as we speak, there are driver-less cars prowling the hilly streets for the ride-sharing service Uber. It is only a matter of time before millions of people who drive for a living – cabbies and truckers and bus drivers and railway engineers – will be unnecessary and hence lose their jobs. It will not end there.

https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.borgenmagazine.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F05%2FBig_Data_Development1.jpg&f=1

Rabbi Sacks points to a trio of futurist authors, who suggest not only that we will soon enough have automated surgeons and teachers and journalists and attorneys, but that the future will belong not to those who can capture our hearts, but those who control our data. “Google, Amazon and Facebook,” he says, “already know us better than we know ourselves. People will eventually turn to them for advice not only on what to buy but on what to be. Humans will have become strings of genomes, little more than super-algorithms.”  Think, The Matrix. The system will only get out of us what it needs based on our numbers.

The antidote to this particularly dire vision is our ongoing commitment to recalling the sanctity of human life. We can never be reduced to numbers if we are reminded of our fundamental humanity.

Although the coming technological change is unprecedented in its scope, there is no question that Judaism has managed such change historically. I spoke on Yom Kippur about Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai’s choosing Yavneh over Jerusalem, that is, learning Torah over sacrificing animals. RYBZ chose to move forward, to choose Torah – words – over the barbaric practice of offering rams and sheep up to God on a fiery altar. In addition to progressing from the Bronze Age to the Information Age, we have managed expulsions and slaughters, dispersions and forced conversions. We have survived assimilation and secularism. We made it through the disco years and decades of questionable taste.

We know how to handle change.

But the future will require the acknowledgment that no matter how much Big Data knows about us and can convince us to behave this way or that, that we continue to learn and teach, to seek holiness in our relationships with each other, to elevate ourselves through our traditions. The futurists, says Rabbi Sacks, point to a new form of idol-worship for today, and citing a verse from Psalms, he says:

“Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human’s hands.” When technology becomes idolatry it ceases to be life-enhancing and becomes soul-destroying. The moment humans value things, however intelligent, over people, they embark on the road to ruin.

So what does this have to do with Sukkot, Rabbi?

This is why this festival is so essential. Actually, let me expand to the entire month of Tishrei. Rabbi Sacks wrote about the essential concern of Rosh Hashanah as being the creation of humans in the image of God. It is this Godliness, with which our humanity is imbued, that leads us to seek forgiveness from each other during the first half of the month of Tishrei, and to celebrate with each other, even as we are reminded of our essential vulnerability, in the second half.

Sukkot is tactile. It’s not a heady holiday like Yom Kippur. It involves building, and marching around with greenery, and slapping willow branches against the ground with all your might in climactic ecstasy with the conclusion of this festival (join us tomorrow morning for Hoshana Rabbah if you want to find out what THAT’s all about). And then we conclude with singing and dancing with the Torah in joyous abandon. This is a physical journey much more so than an emotional one.

One of the pleasures of Sukkot is sukkah-hopping – going to friends’ sukkot to hang around, to schmooze, to eat, to spend quality time with each other. A good friend of mine, a former congregant in New York, is convinced that Sukkot is the secret weapon in the Jewish arsenal of re-engaging disaffected American Jews. He has a grand scheme to put free, easy-to-build sukkot in the hands of people who would otherwise not buy one, with the only condition that they use it during the holiday. This festival brings people together, he reasons. It is joyous and fun and builds community and connection. If more Jews participated in the mitzvah of leshev basukkah, he figures, then we have a better shot at rebuilding our connection to Judaism.

He has asked to remain anonymous, but he donated four such sukkot to this community this year, and so there were four more families celebrating in their own sukkot in Pittsburgh in 5777. Maybe next year we’ll get even a few more.

The Slonimer Rebbe taught that Yom Kippur appeals to the middah (attribute) of yir’ah, of fear of God, but the middah for Sukkot is ahavah, love. The two balance each other out, and so the month of Tishrei includes equal measures of yir’ah and ahavah. But let’s face it: in simply counting the number of people in the room, far more Jews are motivated by yir’ah to show up on Yom Kippur. Couldn’t we use a little more ahavah in Jewish life?

Our goal as Jews is to avoid living in the dystopian future of The Matrix; we cannot become subjects to our technology. We have to continue to be human, to live in the here and now, to worship only the God of Abraham and Sarah. Ritual binds us to reality, and qal vahomer, all the more so on Sukkot, when the rituals are all so physical.  These holy opportunities are all the ways that we maintain our connections to the physicality of Creation, to God, and to each other. This is how we maintain our humanity, the sacredness of life in all of its loving, fearful, vulnerable glory.

So while the future may be filled with robots and data, and may be more and more dehumanizing, the antidote might be found by peering through the sekhakh (the greenery on the roof of the sukkah) in order to see the stars, while we dine and socialize in those frail booths, and feel the ahavah, the love of this holiday. Hag sameah!
~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Shabbat morning, 10/21/2016.)

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Festivals Sermons

Opening the Doors – Shabbat Hol Hamo’ed Sukkot 5776

Over the last year, the Forward newspaper ran a series of articles by Abigail Pogrebin about Jewish holidays entitled, “18 Holidays: One Wondering Jew.” Ms. Pogrebin committed to observing traditionally the full year of holidays, from Rosh Hashanah through Tish’ah Be’Av. Although she is Jewish, she had never done so, and she supplemented her observance by speaking with a number of rabbis and Jewish leaders and scholars of all sorts. It was a very thoughtful project, and a pleasure to read.

I must confess that I read her attempts to get to the bottom of Jewish holiday observance with a certain smugness – after all, this is the life that I lead, and these are the thoughts that I had as I took upon myself later in life to be a traditionally-observant Jew. I’ve had these conversations with myself and others. I’ve struggled with the line between appreciating the holidays and feeling overwhelmed by them (particularly in the month of Tishrei, which is stacked with many festive days). Even though I grew up in an observant home, my awareness and observance of the halakhic details of these days is much higher than it was in childhood – we barely knew of the existence of Shavuot, for example, and Tish’ah Be’Av, as far as I knew, only happened at Jewish summer camp.

Her conclusion to the series appeared a few weeks ago, and what I found to be most fascinating about it were her responses to a question which, she claimed, she has been asked over and over: “Did it change you?”

Did this year of six fast days, thirteen yamim tovim / festival days, nine hol hamo’ed / intermediate non-yom-tov festival days, twelve or so minor-holiday days, forty-nine days of counting the Omer, eleven Rosh Hodesh / new month days, three weeks of summer grieving for the destruction of the Temple, and a whopping fifty Shabbatot improve her life? Did these observances grant her more awareness, make her feel more grateful?

Here are her answers to that question:

Yes, because the mindfulness it incited — an unexpected wakefulness — made me look harder at every priority, every relationship, time itself.

No, because I still get restless in long services.

Yes, because I now see the point of rituals I used to think were pointless.

No, because I still don’t see the point of many rituals.

In short, it was a mixed bag. Ms. Pogrebin expresses relief for having survived (!), and states candidly for the record that she will never do it again. She also confesses that she was not able to fully carry out some Shabbat and Yom Tov principles – she did not succeed in turning off her phone, for example (something to which I very much look forward on holidays) – and in some cases used her journalistic distance to avoid immersing herself entirely in the experience of some holidays.But she also clearly states that there is significant value in our tradition, that some things which had never been clear were now sensible and rewarding.

Her project points to a particular set of challenges that Judaism poses for the contemporary person, challenges that must be addressed, moving forward:

  1. Why do we do all the things that we do?
  2. What is the value in performing these rituals and customs?
  3. Who has time for all these holidays?
  4. And, if I have successfully come up with the justification, the time, and the inclination to dig deeper into Jewish life, where do I start?

These are questions that we must answer as a community. If we don’t, we have no future.

Here is a brief story about tradition, which you may have heard before: Mrs. Goldberg is preparing a brisket for Rosh Hashanah. Her young daughter is watching, and she notices that before she puts it in the oven, she cuts off both ends of the brisket, what looks like perfectly good meat, and she throws them away.

“Why do you do that, Ima?” asks young Hannale.

“That’s the way my mother did it,” reports Mrs. Goldberg. “Let’s ask her.”

They call the grandmother and ask. “That’s the way my mother did it,” says Bubbe. “Let’s ask her.”

They call the great-grandmother and ask the same question. “Why did you cut off the ends of the brisket?” She answers, “Because my pan was too small.”

(BTW, this is such a well-known story with so many variants that it has its own snopes.com entry!)

***

As Abigail Pogrebin states, most of us do not observe the holidays the way that she did over the past year. And most of us do not know why we do what we do. But many of us grew up in homes in which certain things were done, but we were not sure why. But we did them because, well, that’s just the way we do things.

We like preserving things. There is a general principle in rabbinic Judaism: Minhag avoteinu beyadeinu. Our ancestors’ customs are in our hands.

But times, as we know, have changed. Nothing may be taken for granted any more. The transmission of the brisket recipe, let alone many more essential Jewish rituals, have been left behind. The cycle of expecting our children to make the same choices that we have has broken down in the ocean of infinite choice set before each of us. At the last United Synagogue convention, two years ago, Rabbi Ed Feinstein described America as “choice on steroids.” Given that, we will have to rebuild our notions of what it means to be Jewish.

Ms. Pogrebin describes the value of observing the holidays traditionally as follows:

Something intensifies. Like when my eye doctor gives me option “1 or 2” when he sets my eyeglass prescription, I suddenly saw option 2. The Jewish schedule heightened the stakes somehow -— reminding me repeatedly how precarious life is; how impatient our tradition is with complacency; how obligated we are to aid those with less; how lucky we are to have so much food, so much history, so much family.

I was honestly, maybe saccharinely, moved by mundanity itself — and its simplest joys — more than ever before. The small stuff got sweeter — in my normal, non-religious life: The way my daughter and son talk to each other when they don’t know I can hear them. The way something tastes after a fast. The sight of a delivery guy loaded with bags on his bicycle. My baby sitter’s loss of her brother in Trinidad. The ease of having my college friends at one table. I marked more. Paid attention. Lingered longer.

And yet, her conclusions suggest that the bar is too high. She sees the value in following the cycle of holidays, and yet she is unable to fulfill all the expectations. She is open to it, but still will not jump in. If not her, then who?

You might make the case that the holiday season is about being open:

  • Open to tradition
  • Open to God
  • Open to community
  • Open to forgiveness; but mostly
  • Open to others

Sukkot, of all holidays, suggests these things the most. On these days, we invite others into our tents; it is about celebration tinged with the lingering sense of repentance and forgiveness. It is about looking back over the holiday cycle and forward into the coming year. Openness. Wistfulness. Frailty. Joy.

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We have to open more doors, so that more Jews will enter, so that more will find the same benefits that Abigail Pogrebin discovered: the heightened joys, the greater appreciation, the increased awareness of the need to see beyond one’s own nose. There is a real, tangible value to being invested in Jewish life.

There were a lot of people here on the first two days of Sukkot. Many of us in this community understand Sukkot; we understand how the holidays frame our lives with joy and gratitude, love and appreciation, structure and comfort in difficult times and so forth. We know and appreciate the spiral of our lives as we move upward in time, bolstered by the holy moments of the Jewish year as they come around for each successive mahzor, cycle.

And yet, most of American Jewry does not know very much Hebrew; most of us do not keep kashrut / the dietary boundaries; most of us do not keep Shabbat or festivals in any traditional way; most of us are not marrying fellow Jews.

These are realities of today’s Jewish world. How are all of those non-engaged Jews ever going to drink from the wells of Jewish tradition, to appreciate its value?

We cannot pretend that people who are not committed to living a halakhic lifestyle are simply going to show up at 7:30 on Wednesday morning and start davening Pesuqei Dezimrah. We have to invite them in through other doors. We have to start small. If we want to widen our circle, if we want more people to join us, we have to lead them to an entry point and encourage them to stick at least a toe in. Otherwise, we’re merely cutting the ends off of the brisket for no apparent reason.

We’ll be talking more about this as the year goes on, in various forums.

But meanwhile, for those of us who are here, who have those happy holiday memories, who have those strong bonds with Judaism and Jewish life that keep pulling us in, let’s continue to revel in the power of the holiday cycle. Let’s continue to let those holy moments change us, to inspire us to learn and re-evaluate, and to draw on that inspiration to welcome others in.

We have to create memories for others, and create relationships with those who are not here.

We need these days. The Jewish world needs these days. Open up those doors.

Mo’adim lesimhah, haggim uzmanim lesasson!

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Shabbat morning, 10/3/2015.)

Categories
Festivals Sermons

Living Inside the Box – Sukkot 5776

A few years back, the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic became the first American journalist to interview Fidel Castro in a long time.  At one point, Goldberg asked El Comandante if his battle with cancer had changed his opinion on the existence of God.  I suppose that Goldberg was thinking of the old maxim, “There are no atheists in foxholes,” and supposing that even a hardened communist might begin to think about greater spiritual things in the context of serious illness. Castro replied, “Sorry, I’m still a dialectical materialist.”

In a radio interview about his talk with Castro, Goldberg assured listeners that if Castro were doing a standup routine for a Marxist audience, that would be simply hysterical.  Frankly, I’m not sure that I get it, as I must admit that I am not up on my communist jargon.

However, the story reminded me of something that I always used to tell the students in my Bar/Bat Mitzvah Workshop (back in Great Neck) when we arrived to the unit on theology: what you believe now may not apply next year, or in ten years, or in 50.  Our understanding of God, our interaction with the Divine changes as we change.  So you always have to stay open to new ideas, new evidence, and new theological approaches.

An ideologue like Castro may never depart his atheistic moorings.  But those of us who occasionally step into a house of worship, however we feel about it, will surely develop in our relationship with the Qadosh Barukh Hu.  And that development can go many different directions, as long as we remain open.

That brings me to Sukkot.  The primary goal of this festival, I am sure, is to challenge our theology, to make us revisit our understanding of and relationship with God, and I am going to give you four pieces of evidence to support this claim, four themes of Sukkot:  Joy, service to God, the well, and the rituals of Sukkot.

1. Joy.  Simhah.  It is the most joyous festival of the year (Deut. 16:15: Vehayita akh sameah – you shall be overwhelmingly joyful), and the only one that will be celebrated after the mashiah comes, at least according to one tradition.

It is at times of great emotion that we are most open to theology, and look for deeper meanings. The cold, rational exterior of the everyday routine keeps us focused on the business of going about life: work, family, shopping, paying bills, and so forth.  During these times, God seldom penetrates our consciousness.

But at times of great joy, like holidays, weddings, benei mitzvah, beritot milah, and so forth, when family gathers to celebrate, we are likely to reflect on what we are thankful for, and the source of good things.  Likewise, at sad times, surrounding illness, death, or other types of loss, we tend to look to God or tradition for answers.

As such, Sukkot seems like a perfect time for spiritual reflection – gratitude for what we have, anticipation for the future, relief for having sought teshuvah / repentance on Yom Kippur.

2. Service to God.  This was the time of the heaviest sacrifice schedule in the Temple.  Far more than any other holiday, there were a total of 98 lambs and 70 bulls offered on the altar over the course of the seven days of the festival.  All of this sacrifice was surely thanksgiving for the harvest, the most joyous time of the year in any agrarian society.  But it also suggests that the spiritual pathways to God are especially open on this festival, that God is most receptive to us, and we to God.

As Jews, we sanctify time; I mentioned this on Yom Kippur.  The spiritual pathways that were open to our ancestors at this time must still be available, because even though we do not sacrifice animals like they did, we still sanctify this festival with prayer and rituals and joyous celebration. This is a week of abundant holiness.

3. The well.  At the end of the first day of Sukkot, the biggest party of the Israelite year was thrown.  It was called Simhat Beit Hashoevah, the celebration of drawing water from a certain well in Jerusalem, and is identified the Mishnah, Tractate Sukkah, where it says (5:1) that anybody who has not witnessed this ceremony has never seen true simhah, true rejoicing in his whole life.

This custom is long gone, of course, perhaps because we do not know where that well is, or what the purpose of the ceremony was.  But learning about it conjures up some kind of magical, mystical image of unabandoned celebration of a holy, essential act.  There are synagogues and other Jewish communities who have revived a form of this party today, generally by hosting musical events.

When I was in rabbinical school at JTS, I had a philosophy class on the newer modes of spirituality, and how they differ from the traditional Western concept of “religion.”  We discussed two major types of seekers today, the mountain climbers and the well-diggers.  Mountain climbers look outside for spiritual nourishment; they climb up to see what they can see.  Well-diggers look inside; they mine themselves for enlightenment.  In our canon, Moshe was a mountain-climber; Avraham was a well-digger. If Shavuot is the festival of mountain climbers, then Sukkot is the holiday for well-diggers.

Perhaps the celebration of the well suggests something particularly deep (ha ha!) about the nature of this festival.  At the same time that we receive great pleasure from the harvest, which is about material success, we are also celebrating having emerged from Yom Kippur cleansed of sin and rejuvenated, and we therefore must remember to also mine our own personal depths for the non-material elements of God’s favor.

The well ceremony is thus a kind of metaphor for our own internal wrangling with God.

4. Rituals.  Sukkot today is laden with curious rituals, some of which seem to be drawn from non-Israelite customs – waving four species around, living in temporary dwellings, beating willow branches against the ground, parading around asking to be saved.

Let’s check out the Torah’s reasoning for living in sukkot during this week (Lev. 23:42-43):

בַּסֻּכֹּת תֵּשְׁבוּ, שִׁבְעַת יָמִים; כָּל-הָאֶזְרָח, בְּיִשְׂרָאֵל, יֵשְׁבוּ, בַּסֻּכֹּת. לְמַעַן, יֵדְעוּ דֹרֹתֵיכֶם, כִּי בַסֻּכּוֹת הוֹשַׁבְתִּי אֶת-בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, בְּהוֹצִיאִי אוֹתָם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם

You shall live in sukkot (temporary structures) seven days; all citizens in Israel shall live in sukkot, in order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in sukkot when I brought them out of the land of Egypt.

The commentators suggest that it is incumbent upon all of us to live in the Sukkah as much as possible, and that the Torah specifies “citizens” to make clear that it is for rich and poor alike, that nobody should feel like doing so is beneath them.

We “live” in the Sukkah to bring us back to the wilderness for just a moment.  And, as we all know, the wilderness is the place for visions of God: the burning bush, receiving the Torah on Mt. Sinai, Jacob’s angelic dreams, Ezekiel’s chariot and valley of dry bones, and so on. The Sukkah is a place to be open to communication from God.

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The commentator Rashbam says that this is precisely the time of the year, when the harvest has been gathered and we’re feeling flush, that we should vacate our homes and property to live in a simple hut.  Even though most of us are not farmers, the sukkah still reminds us that it is not through our own hands that we have obtained all of our material goods.

* * *

I have a colleague who posted a story on Ravnet (the email list for Conservative rabbis) about how he was approached after services on Rosh Hashanah by a congregant who told him that the services were not “spiritual.”  The rabbi fretted over this for a while, as I would do, and then discussed the matter with his wife, as I would also do.

The rabbi’s wife said, in essence, relax.  There are no spiritual services, only spiritual people.  A true partnership in congregational Judaism is when the clergy opens the door, and the laity walks through.  We can only meet you halfway; you must seek God as well.

And sometimes you need to shake up your surroundings a bit to, reconsider, rethink, and be inspired, to get our of your material house and into your spiritual hut.  You could call this concept, somewhat ironically, “living inside the box.”

Just about everyone except Fidel Castro has the potential for theological growth.  So leave your comfort zone for Sukkot.  Here is a multi-pronged approach to theological openness for the coming week:

  • Spend some time in a sukkah, and keep yourself open to new inspiration
  • Eat there with your family and friends, or alone – and take a moment to think about the blessing of food and nourishment.  Perhaps discuss what it took for the food to reach your table.
  • Read in the sukkah.  Take your favorite anthology of poetry or a book of Jewish short stories or a siddur.
  • Meditate on the themes of joy, service to God, and the spiritual well.
  • Sit alone in the sukkah and close your eyes and just “be.”

In this season of heightened spiritual energy you might get lucky and discover an open well that you had not noticed before.

Hag sameah!

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

First Day of Sukkot, 5776