Passover comes next week, that Jewish holiday whose essence is found not only in the table we set and the food we share, but in the way we tell the tale. That telling changes, over time, as much a reflection of our needs and our lives as that of any connection to the original events.

And so it is with the stories we tell of ourselves and our families. Is it the truth that comes out at last, or another invention, a yarn spun out of the fabric of our lives?

The first thing I saw, coming over to Len and June Abel’s house the other night, was a warm web and close connection with extended family. And practically the first thing I heard about Lenny Abel, in sitting down with that family, was the story of how his brothers tried to kill him.

Well, that’s not the way the family heard about this episode over the course of years. For almost a half a century the officially approved version went like this: Lenny was leaning against a window as a toddler, they always heard, when the screen fell out. It was only on his death bed that Eddie revealed that no, actually, he and his brother David had Lenny by both arms, were swinging him back and forth, and they let go at the wrong moment, whereupon Lenny swung right on out the window. A pushcart vendor of their acquaintance happened to be coming by at the exact moment, and rushed Lenny to the hospital.

Leonard Abel was born on September 9, 1926 – September 9, everyone knew, because on September 10 they would all get a reminder that his birthday was coming up in 355 days. He was, as we already heard, the youngest of three brothers, born to Joseph and Ida Abel. Ida was born here but Joe had come to this country in 1908 – he was a fireman in Russia, and then served in the Czarist army – a year and a day, a minimum amount of service so that officials would not come to exact retribution on one’s family… and then he packed his bags and left, first for Liverpool, and then to Boston.

In this country, Joseph was working in a grocery store when Ida’s mother approached him about a possible shidduch, a match made with her daughter. Joe indicated that he was amenable and receptive to the idea with the open-minded response “if she’ll vant, I’ll vant.”

Len and his older brothers went to school in Boston, but the Depression hit, and the family was pressed, and first David, and then Eddie found work in this area, government jobs in DC. By 1940, the rest of the family relocated here as well.

Lenny went to Roosevelt High School, sold newspapers, and continued to hang out with, and be inadvertently injured by, his older brothers. David and Eddie liked to play golf, and one day they had Lenny with them, off 16th Street near Carter Barron, when they sent him up ahead to see where a golf ball, when hit, would go. One of their shots ricocheted off a tree, bounced in several directions, and came to an end right in Lenny’s mouth. I’m only speculating here, but when World War II came, and Lenny enlisted, I wonder if he thought that the army might be safer.

He was young, though, 17 when he signed up, so they army considered him too young to be shipped overseas. That, and the fact that his own talents and inclinations may have pointed in a different direction. It is true that, when he was told to load a mortar, he did so upside down. And as a squad leader of 20 men, younger and less experienced than he was, he was to take them from point A to point B, but he got everyone lost, two hours for what should have been a several minute trip. Which reminded the family of his short career packaging goods in a market… three days, until he was permanently relocated, having placed a gallon of milk on top of a dozen eggs.

No, Len Abel’s aptitude lay elsewhere. When Ed was attending GW, but he was missing a test in order to get married and go on a honeymoon, he, well, he had Lenny show up and take the test for him. Len got an A on the test for Ed, who managed to bring the grade down to a C by the end of the semester. So it was no surprise that the army wound up sending Len off for an education, first to the University of Maine, for a degree in engineering (civil engineering, as everyone in the family pointed out since, as June helpfully added at this point, the man couldn’t really manage to turn on a light bulb), and then, after the war, on the GI Bill, to Law School at GW. Heading to Maine instead of Europe may well have saved his life; in his class, he was one of only four who survived the war.

In 1948, June went to a party with a date, when the hostess decided that she did not want to continue the party, declared the evening over, and went out herself… taking June’s date with her. Len Abel was at the party, and felt so sorry for June that he came forward, asked her to go with him, and took her to the Hot Shoppes on Gallatin Street. He must have been happy that evening, since he danced around, jumped down a set of steps, found the exact spot with oil on the bottom of the steps, and fell down. He called June the next day, and she innocently asked why he was calling. Apparently, his response was to tell her: “I thought you’d like to know that I broke my leg.” June went to see him, and would later learn that Ida, after meeting her for the first time, said, “He’s going to marry that girl.”

Len and June began dating… he took her to a fraternity picnic in Rock Creek Park, at Pearce Mill, while his leg was still broken and, as Doug told me on Tuesday night, “my father has been devoted to my mother ever since.” Len asked June to marry him in the living room of her parents’ house; he didn’t give her a ring but a stone, so that she could pick out her own setting. They were married over 61 years ago, in 1950, at Washington Hebrew Congregation.

Before the wedding, and while they were engaged, however, in a tough economy Len had a hard time finding a job, and he said something in his future father-in-law’s hearing about going back into the military. June’s father, on hearing this, decided that he needed help at work. “I need an associate,” he said to Lenny; “you’re going to the Ben Franklin School to study accounting.” Years later Lenny would teach at the school he attended; the more immediate effect, though, was that this decision served as the first step towards a partnership that lasted over 40 years, at what became the Rockville-based accounting firm of Kershenbaum, Abel, Kernus and Wychulis.

Accounting, though, as you know, was not Lenny’s only professional endeavor. Over 40 years ago now, deciding that he wanted more or was spinning his wheels a bit, he was told that Central National Bank was having a big problem, that it needs help, and that he was good at this – fixing banks – or at least, that he would be. Whoever said that to Lenny was right. He was good at fixing banks, and founding them. He took over Central, became Chairman of the Board, reshaped it, watched as it became Citizen’s Bank of Maryland and then SunTrust Banks. Many of the people he worked with there remain close family friends to this day, even if they have moved on to other places. He was chairman of the board of Allegiance Banc Corporation until their acquisition by F&M National, and then BB&T Corporation. And in 1998, he founded and served as Chairman of the Board of Eagle Bank, although June says that she chose the name.

Julie and Seth, who are the Abels’ godchildren, had two business stories to share. Julie went to work with him once when she was young, and she got to make hot cocoa, and he took her to lunch at Duke Ziebart’s, where they say “at Uncle Lenny’s table,” and she was amazed how, in the heart of the business world, all these people kept coming up and greeting them, everyone knew who he was.

Julie also recounts that, when her daughter was in Kindergarten and their class was learning about money, Lenny arranged for them to take a field trip to Eagle Bank, and had them all sit at the Board table, told them that they were the Board for the day, and charged them with deciding whether the employees deserved a raise. The kindergarteners debated and deliberated and finally decided that they should. They had been introduced to the world of money using the smallest possible coinage, so that day everyone at Eagle Bank got a raise of one penny. Lenny also took the young students into the vault on that field trip; apparently that was the first and also the very last field trip of kindergarteners to Eagle Bank.

Doug was born in 1955, when the family was living in Silver Spring. He remembers planting peanut butter once, as a young boy, because he wanted to grow peanuts. Magically, inexplicably, somehow… well, there were peanuts there, the very next day, right where he had planted that peanut butter.

Lenny did try to groom Doug for the banking industry; he got him a job as a teller at a branch of Central Bank in Wheaton one summer. Doug promptly agreed to cash a stolen check; it was a $900 check for which the customer requested $600 back in cash, and Doug didn’t see why a Sears' Card wasn’t a good enough ID. They let him finish the summer, he said, but they put him somewhere in back.

The Len Abel I knew had a dry sense of humor, a twinkle in his eye, and a razor sharp wit. He would look at things you would not think could be turned into toys, and promptly give them new uses as projectiles, or objects of amusement: a fork, salt, cream on a table. On a cruise in Alaska once he flipped a sugar cube through the air… right into the face of a woman at another table. June remained calm, but claims one of her favorite pieces of jewelry was part of the repentance for that act. One of Len’s nieces said to me that “Aunt June kept him on a short leash…but he would always escape.”

What I did not know was that Len Abel was a poet. He had a fondness for haiku. When June was in college and Lenny and June were dating, she had a term paper due on the topic of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven.” She wrote the paper, but Len rewrote the whole thing in poetry. She got an A on the content, and an F on form, since she had not gotten permission to do that in advance.

Len Abel loved baseball and Jeopardy, the Redskins and the Red Sox, Starbucks and Crossword puzzles, mini-golf and 20 Questions, Scrabble, and small children. Brad remembers mini-golf at Cape May, $1 on the table for the first hole in one, $2 for the second, and so on. Apparently he tried to introduce American baseball to sub-Saharan Africa, using a stick and whatever evidence there was nearby of zebras having been in the area.

His goal in life seems to have been to make people laugh at something you would not have expected to laugh at – in one memorable line I am including at the urging of the family, “if your pants were dry he wasn’t done!” Lenny was innovative in his techniques of child care – June got home once while Len was babysitting for his godson Seth, and found Seth on top of the refrigerator and… well, let’s just say that solo babysitting was not in the immediate future after that.

Anyone who has been in the Abel home knows, just with one immediate look around, that Len and June loved to travel. There is a story behind their travels, though. In the early 1970’s they had made plans with their next door neighbors, a Greek American family, that when their sons were older they would go to Greece together. The wife of the family next door was not feeling well one Sunday, and when June got back from a trip downtown she learned that her friend had died. Monday morning she called a travel agent. And Len and June never stopped travelling ever since: from the North Pole to Antarctica, five times to Africa, twice to Israel, to China… they have been to every continent.

Among the institutions that Len and June Abel founded… is the one we are in right now, right here. Temple Shalom began when a group of families had an issue with another area synagogue; Lenny personally arranged for the financial package without which this congregation could not have come into being. Their generosity continued over time and even during my time here, but it is my hope and prayer that the family got even a partial measure out of this connection as what they put into it.

One thing I do know, and I can see for myself: there were friendships formed here that carry on, even now. The Jason family, newly relocated to the Washington area, saw an ad in the Washington Post, announcing that a new congregation was forming, and they showed up for a New Year’s Eve party, just a few months after the synagogue was founded. Someone remembers that first building that we used, having to stomp your feet on the wooden boards as you entered, and you could hear the mice scrambling out of the way upstairs.

At that party, the Abels and Jasons found each other, asked each other if they knew anyone else, and sat together. Lenny was a bit… well, he celebrated the secular new year in a traditional American manner, and Larry Jason… if a friendship could survive that introduction it could survive anything.

Len Abel’s family said that he taught every generation the same important values: how to play marbles with grapes, how to fling sugar, how high you can make a cloth napkin stand up, and other tricks with utensils.

The playful part was always there. But Doug adds one more comment. That his father really was a teacher… in the best possible way. For Doug said: “my father never told, he showed.”

There is more, still, that I could add, my own sense of a mensch of a man, gracious and caring, a keen mind and a kind heart. When he offered advice I found it on target and wise in the ways of the world. But we should end, for now, I think, with words of his sister-in-law, the other June Abel… So many years ago, separated from his family, facing an uncertain future, Len Abel left where he was, because he wanted to be with his brothers. For all his travels since that day when he left Boston… for all he has seen and been through… Len Abel is… with his brothers again. Somewhere. Even now.

To June. To Doug and Roberta, and Brad and Marta. To June, Martin and Linda, and Marilyn. To Shannon and Paul, and Jarred. To Bobby and Diane, Joe and Serena. To Julie and Seth. To any other family members or step-family members I have left out, and to all of us… may Len’s wit and antics, may the twinkle in his eye and the devotion of his heart be with you at the tables you set, in the food you serve in the days to come. May we continue to tell and to share the stories of his life. May his presence be with us still, and may we hear his voice as we add to our own stories. Zecher tzadik livracha, may the memory of this special man be a blessing, to all who knew him, to all who loved him.

On October 28, 1701, William Penn signed the Charter of Privileges, the original constitution of Pennsylvania, written when the Keystone State was still a British province. 50 years later, in honor of the golden anniversary of the charter’s signing, the Province of Pennsylvania commissioned the London firm of Lester and Pack to make a commemorative bell that would be placed in the steeple of the Pennsylvania seat of government, later called the State House, and known to all of us as Independence Hall. To find the right inscription for the bell the jubilee planners turned to the Book of Leviticus, Chapter 25, verse 10, which begins: v’ki’dash’tem eit shanat ha’cha’mi’shim Shanah, “You shall sanctify the fiftieth year.” The next clause in this verse is uk’ra’tem d’ror ba’a’retz l’chol yosh’veh’ha, the English of which is the engraved words themselves, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”

This jubilee celebration bell first cracked around 1752, long before the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the start of our revolution. It was then recast by John Pass and John Stow. The crack was gone. Through the following decades, the bell saw plenty of action drawing attention to a wide variety of important events. Then in the 1830s, this very bell became a symbol of anti-slavery societies who gave it the name by which it has been known ever since: the Liberty Bell. At some point during 1835, as the clapper struck the bell’s mouth, a fracture appeared, the famous crack in the Liberty Bell with which we are all familiar.

The clause on the Liberty Bell from Leviticus 25:10: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” also appears in this Shabbat’s Torah portion, B’har. It seemsbeshert, meant to be, that this portion with this clause is assigned to the Shabbat when I have the distinct privilege of speaking with you about why I think it so necessary to serve this nation as a Jewish Chaplain in the United States armed forces.

Now I said necessary, I did not say why I thought it was a good idea to serve as a Jewish chaplain, or why I thought it was an honorable thing to do, or use any other words to convey my view of such service. It is all those things indeed, but, first and foremost, I believed, when I volunteered in 1968, I believed it was necessary to do so. And, I believe it still today.

It is unseemly that the Army, Air Force, and Navy Chaplain Corps have to beg rabbis to become Jewish chaplains. The reverse should be true: in America―the military chaplaincies should be placed in the position of having more excellent rabbis under the age of forty seeking admission than could possibly be taken. I am here tonight to tell you why!

Never…never…never…in the history of the Jewish people, from ancient times to this very moment, never have Jews found as much freedom as we experience in the United States of America. Not in Europe, not in South America, not in Asia, not in Africa, not in Australia, not in the Middle East…not anywhere as much as here.

Rather, we know painfully well what struggles, limitations, and far too often what horrific persecutions, assaults, expulsions, pogroms, even genocides were visited upon us one time or another nearly everywhere else.

To me, this history matters and I must tell you that as a Reform Jew and a Reform rabbi, there are privileges I have in America that I would not even be granted in the blessed, modern State of Israel.

Should rabbis and the rest of American Jewry reflect on our past and present and take deeply into account the difference America makes? You bet we should, and we should never lose sight of it. Does that mean we should not criticize the policies of the politicians in power at any given time? Of course not. Does that mean we should never try to change realities in America, including bad laws, when we believe such changes are good for this nation and its people? Of course not. Does that mean we should give a pass to any expression of anti-Semitism or any other form of bigotry? Of course not. To do so would be to diminish the promise of America and contradict the whole idea of that Liberty Bell and the inscription from Torah upon it.

In 1985, I went to prison for twelve days for peacefully protesting in front of the Soviet Embassy in Washington, DC. It was against the law to do so. That law was created in 1938 to protect the Nazi German Embassy from protests. And let me tell you how the Navy reacted to my incarceration…One month after my release from the Federal Correctional Center in Petersburg, VA, I was promoted to full commander.

Jews should fully engage in every privilege of citizenship here, including the right to engage when necessary in peaceful civil disobedience. We should not be shy. But, we should know our history and flock to engage in service to America, especially because of what we have learned from thousands of years of other experiences. We know the difference living here makes!

I was born in November 1945 on the day my father was discharged from the United States Navy. 1945 was also the year my family in America learned that one afternoon during the Second World War, our family remaining behind in Odessa, had been taken from their homes, stripped, tied to a stake and burned to death. Those family members included my grandfather’s sister Rose and 32 others. Why were they murdered? They were Jews. They were Jews. I have photos of Rose. I have letters she wrote to my grandfather, her brother. But it would never be possible for me to meet her. Never.

My grandfather came here from Odessa in 1905 after a particularly vicious pogrom. Cossacks rode into Jewish neighborhoods putting men to the sword, raping women, burning synagogues and homes. It was an official act of persecution orchestrated by the mayor and conducted to help convince Jews to stop being Jews.

My grandfather had a temper. He did not take kindly to what had happened. Neither did some of his friends. Soon after the pogrom, they waited on a rooftop across from City Hall. When the Mayor of Odessa emerged, they fired their rifles and killed him. Then they got out of Dodge. When my grandfather arrived here, he did something he never would have done for Tsar Nicholas II—my grandfather joined the army, the United States Army. This was a country for which he would fight to the death, if need be, to protect. For years thereafter he tried to convince his sister Rose to follow him here. She was never quite ready to do so. Then one day it was too late.

So let me say it again, Jews should flock to engage in service to America. And it surely should not be the case that the Army, Air Force, and Navy Chaplain Corps should have to go begging for young, qualified rabbis. In October 2003, I became the only Navy chaplain in history brought out of retirement and sent to a war zone. Knowing my attitude about service, the Navy Chief of Chaplains called me in September and simply asked: “Bruce, do your uniforms still fit?” When I answered “Yes,” he responded with a single word, “Bye.” Why did he want me, a retired Navy chaplain to head for the Iraqi theater in October 2003? Because he, a devout Christian, recognized that young Jewish personnel in a war zone should have a rabbi with them at least during the High Holy Days and Sukkot. And I must tell you that for me the hard part was not going. That was as easy as breathing. The hard part was leaving the troops behind, Jews and non-Jews, when the period my orders covered ended.

Why, it should be asked, why were there not more than enough Jewish chaplains already in the active duty and ready reserve pool to provide the coverage well before it became necessary to tap a retiree? The lessons of Jewish history matter. The lessons of the Jewish experience in America matter. The ideal of national service matters.

Do we not think our Jewish sons and daughters serving throughout the armed forces should have access to rabbis? Do we not want the men and women of all faiths going through our nation’s service academies to meet a rabbi or two during their training? Do we not think it is a good thing for senior NCOs and Officers of both operational and shore commands to better understand Jews and Judaism through interaction with competent Jewish chaplains? Do we not think Jewish chaplains are vitally important ambassadors to all members of the US Armed forces wherever they deploy? Do we not want rabbis who understand the military community, its culture, rules, mission, and personnel? Is it not healthier for the country and the Jewish community in America to have an abundance of Jews, including rabbis, fully integrated into our military realm? Has not history taught us this is so?

Let me close my comments on this Armed Forces Shabbat with just a few reflections about military service that are true for all personnel including chaplains. I begin with the term “shipmate.” Many of you here understand its depth as well or better than I. Shipmate is that 24/7, 365, amid all circumstances and conditions, no matter the danger, camaraderie that few outside the military ever know.

You who served grasp how humbling it is, what a privilege it is to answer up when your country calls, to step forward even before being asked, to put on the uniform and embrace the commitment.

And each veteran here knows what such service demands of our families, and the gratitude that reaches into the deep silent places of our hearts for their willingness to abide by our chosen way of life.

You who have served or serve now, understand as well or better than I that we may leave the service, but the service never leaves us. It abides within, it permeates our identities, it changes our lives forever, and we would not have it any other way.

There is much about life in uniform that flat out does not translate to the civilian world. But much does. On this Armed Forces Shabbat at this historic synagogue in the area that is home to the largest naval presence on the planet, I hope it is clear to you why this rabbi found it not just a good idea, not just something noble or nice or loyal, but necessary, absolutely necessary to wear the uniform and serve this nation as a military chaplain, as a Jewish chaplain.

And on this night, let us be most mindful, that military service permits everyone else not engaged in it, to pursue life as we choose.

As a Jew, as a rabbi, as a retired naval officer, and Jewish chaplain, as an American, I stand before you to confirm what we all must surely perceive of military service and let there be no doubt about it―military service safeguards the promise on the bell, a promise still advancing towards its sacred fulfillment: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all the inhabitants thereof.”

Amen.

Rabbi Bruce E. Kahn, D. D. - CAPT, CHC, USNR (Ret)

Delivered at Ohef Sholom Temple’s 15th Annual Armed Forces Shabbat in Norfolk VA.

Many of you know that since becoming Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Shalom, much of my time has been devoted to the promotion and enforcement of civil rights through my work with the Equal Rights Center (ERC), which I helped start in 1983 and also served more recently as its executive director. Currently, I am a member of the ERC board of directors.

Yes, the struggle for civil rights isn’t over. I know, we have an African American in the White House, although Donald Trump is hell bent on getting Barack Obama removed by proving he was not born in the United States. And yes, there are three Jews on the US Supreme Court. So much progress to celebrate, why in some grinch-like way would I want to steal this apparent victory and still sound the call to arms to oppose illegal discrimination? Can’t I take yes for an answer?

There are the obvious reasons. For example, since Barack Obama’s inauguration, hundreds of additional hate groups have taken root in the United States, which now boasts more than 1000 such organizations. And, as we see in Arizona and elsewhere, some of these folks mean business and how the Internet is exploited to help them.

And then there remains a constant flow of that all too familiar bigotry acted out against folks based on race, national origin, religion, gender, age and so on. Here is an example: A suit was just filed through a national but DC based law firm against Choice Hotels International. What happened?

Two women invited some friends to their hotel room to visit. The manager kicked them all out and said that the hotel has a no party policy and that no more than five people may be in the room at any one time. All the folks kicked out were black. They refused to leave. The police were called and investigated, only to discover a large group of white teenagers having a party in another room on the same floor and doing so unbothered by management. The police also found that there was no hotel policy banning parties in rooms. The police left. The manager still refused to let the two black women back into their room and threatened to spray them with mace.

I know. Disappointing. And why would Choice Hotels International fight such a suit? A lawyer told me once that such decisions have nothing to do with what is morally right and wrong, just with something called cost benefit analysis. You serve the bottom line...period. I have never been able to accept that reality, and I don’t think I ever will.

But tonight I want to discuss a huge legally protected group of citizens against whom illegal discrimination is directed more often than against any other group or class. And I want to enlist your vigilance and cooperation in stopping it. Of course I am talking about the more than 60 million Americans who comprise the class called people with disabilities.

How prevalent is this form of discrimination? It is everywhere. Almost every restaurant, most stores, most government buildings and the offices within, modes of transportation.

A recent ERC series of tests revealed that 60% of the time taxis in DC refuse customers who are blind and have service animals with them. And then there are the problems with METROACCESS!

And folks, this form of discrimination is so widespread that even hospitals are guilty of it. If you have disabilities, especially a mobility disability, or if you have a friend or loved one who does, you know exactly what I mean.

Tonight I am asking you to start taking notice and to do something about it when you see it: let the Equal Rights Center know.

The ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, went into effect in 1990. So, how can it be that 21 years later all this discrimination against people with disabilities exists? Insufficient education and outreach, insufficient motivation to comply, insufficient investigations, insufficient enforcement action provides at least a partial explanation. But I promise you we can turn it around and I believe the extraordinary record of the Equal Rights Center in recent years, should provide lots of encouragement to us all to participate in making a difference, just by being more aware of what you witness and sending word of what is wrong through a quick phone call or e-mail to the Equal Rights Center.

In 2005, the number one crisis facing people with disabilities in the United States was finding accessible housing. The laws to make sure adequate accessible housing would be available went into effect in 1991. The laws just weren’t followed. Where? Everywhere! Everywhere. In Montgomery County, permitting officials would simply approve design and construction plans and occupancy permits without checking if the requirements for accessibility had ever been met. This same farce played out all over the country.

2005, the Equal Rights Center effort, with astounding legal support from the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs and the help provided the Committee by firms throughout the area, has resulted in the retrofitting of hundreds of thousands of units coast to coast and the proper design and construction of untold numbers of new units. Great successes indeed, but the fight is a long way from being over.

I must tell you, at this very hour the largest developer in the country, Equity Residential, remains one of the worst violators of fair housing requirements for people with disabilities. It is painful for me to say that Equity Residential is owned by Sam Zell of Chicago, a Jew.

I guess he never was in Temple to hear the portion Kedoshim, which will be read this year on April 30. In this famous, beloved parsha appear the words: “You shall not insult the deaf, or place a stumbling block before the blind.” It is not Jewish to act punitively towards people with disabilities. Sam Zell, we Jews are supposed to live what we pray! And I hope you discover soon that your brutally harmful cost benefit analyses in this matter turn out to be very wrong. Shame on you Sam Zell. Shame!

Just last week an announcement was made that the Subway Restaurant chain is now the largest in the world, significantly larger than McDonald’s. Well, for most of its history Subway pretty much disregarded the provisions in the ADA. The Equal Rights Center stepped in to stop that. An excellent settlement was reached. What makes it excellent? Last month I had lunch with a young man who uses a wheelchair. We got together at the Subway Restaurant on Main Street in Annapolis. He told me he could never go in there before a ramp was installed that leads from the entrance all the way to the service line and even to the now accessible doors leading into the accessible bathroom. That is excellence.

And I don’t know if you saw in the paper just a few months ago, news about the CVS decision to make over 7,000 of its drugstores accessible. That too resulted from Equal Rights Center action.

Some other places familiar to you that the ERC had to convince to pay attention to the ADA are MetroAccess, Hilton Hotels, the Washington Hospital Center, and Eye Care Centers of America. I could go on and on. I just want you to know that with your help this progress will advance ever more rapidly.

Let me share with you one brief story that really tells the tale for me. To this day, I still have trouble believing it, even though I was centrally involved.

A few years after I became the Executive Director of the Equal Rights Center, our Disability Rights Manager came to me and said that a sandwich shop in Dupont Circle that our staff frequents, had locked the door to one of its three entrances, the one accessible to users of wheelchairs. The Disability Rights manager told me she called the restaurant and mentioned the ADA and its rules about reasonable accommodation, and requested the door be unlocked. The answer was no. She then sent a demand letter. Same response.

I should note that around the same time two other Dupont Circle restaurants that had been accessible decided not to be. One of them, after changing ownership, actually removed a ramp and put in steps.

I decided to go to this first sandwich shop just across the Circle from our offices and find out what was going on. I spoke with Charlie, the manager of the place. He explained that the decision had been made to set up a tall stand displaying bags of potato chips and the best place for the stand was just inside the only accessible entrance to the restaurant. To protect the bags of potato chips from potential thieves, the decision was made to lock that door and keep it locked. Charlie wanted me to understand that potato chips trump the right of people with mobility disabilities to enter the restaurant. Potato chips trump civil rights. Ladies and gentlemen, I was unconvinced. I put my arm around Charlie and held him close and whispered in his ear, “Please Charlie, don’t make us sue you. It will be a slam dunk. Unlock the door!” He did so.

And please don’t get me started telling you about the four year battle the Equal Rights Center had to wage to get the DC Government to make the Wilson Building -- DC’s City Hall -- accessible! That was a truly disgusting display of bigotry and arrogance for which no defense, not even cost benefit analysis, applies. And the person most responsible for that ongoing abuse was the Attorney General for the District of Columbia during the Fenty administration: Peter Nickels. If you know him, please send my regards and tell him what I said. His entire time in office he assailed many of those civil rights he was sworn to protect.

Being able to find a place to live, or get a taxi, or receive treatment in a hospital, or get access to a bathroom, or use a pharmacy, or go to a bank, or being able to enter and use safely your city hall is a legal right that people with disabilities constantly find violated. Even when it comes to buying clothes, they are frequently blocked. Have you ever noticed the signature feature of Hollister Stores? It is a high step right placed right at each store’s entrance!

The ERC is on the case and expects to get Hollister and its parent company, Abercrombie and Fitch, to change their discriminatory practice in the near future.

Being able to access all these different types of places and services should not be withheld from any group of citizens not even to protect a bag of potato chips, certainly not in 2011 in the USA!!! My Lord, what are we fighting about?

What do you think would be the public’s response were these same places that choose to remain inaccessible to people with disabilities put out signs such as though I remember seeing as a boy: ‘No Coloreds, Jews or Dogs Allowed’? How long would these establishments get away with that?

Is accessibility really something we should have to continue to fight about? God Almighty how can this be so?

I hope you will help. I will put in the Shofar how to alert the Equal Rights Center of your encounters with inaccessibility, or civil rights violations of any kind.

I tell you tonight I am still looking forward to the day when everyone will agree that not even protecting bags of potato chips trumps civil rights. Kein yhi ratson... So may it be. Amen.

Equal Rights Center
11 Dupont Circle NW
Suite 450
Washington, DC 20036
www.equalrightscenter.org
202.234.3062

Disability Rights Program Manager: Robyn Powell
rpowell@equalrightscenter.org
202.370.3210

A few weeks ago I came for one of my visits to the Beeman home… and Ed wanted to talk. He was upstairs, in a chair in a den, and it was one of the good days. After a moment, it became apparent that this was a pretty serious conversation, so I borrowed a pad, sat back, and started writing. Much of what follows, then – not all, but much of it – are Ed’s words, and his reflections, not about a single trip… but the journey of his own life.

He opened with the quote of a Yiddish play, I think, called Livitzky at the Wedding.. Three things a man accomplishes, he said. He is born, he takes a bride, and he dies.

A man is born. Well, actually, this first part Ed did not tell me; I learned this yesterday instead, but, as Jean said… Ed was one of the few people who was born at home, and died at home. He was, actually, rather dramatically, born on the kitchen table of the family home outside of Boston, in Roxbury, a place Ed called the home of the “unwashed and unafraid.” He was born on May 1, 1923, the oldest of three children of Benjamin and Bella Beeman. Ben was trained as an accountant, but worked as a pawnbroker, at a shop he acquired in Roxbury Crossing. Ed said that he used to work in the shop, and became friendly with the priest from Mission Hill who dropped in. He asked Ed if he knew how to make holy water, and was told that the way to do so was… to boil the…heck… out of it.

Eventually the family grew to include his sister Helen and his brother Sidney. Apparently Ed was studious from an early age, and Sidney was athletic, so that when Sidney would be outside playing ball one of their parents would say: “Sidney, why can’t you be more like your brother, and finish studying.” But Ed would hear: “Ed, why can’t you be more like your brother, and get outside!” But that wasn’t totally fair: Ed did love the outdoors… He told Cindy that if he hadn’t gone to medical school he would have wanted to have been an oceanographer… he loved the sea, loved sailing, loved to fish. [In fact, that love of the sea and sailing, the fact that he passed it on… Judy said that this might have been responsible for her ending up with her husband. To that degree, then, the lesson to learn is that anything we teach our children… anything we share… may have ramifications and implications that we can never foresee, and which remain with us forever.]

Ed spoke of his “modest” academic accomplishments, graduating cum laude from Harvard, and magna cum laude from Boston University’s Medical School. It was high school, however, which he said provided the greatest academic challenge of his life: Boston Latin, the oldest high school in the country, and the motivating factor in the formation of another institution… Harvard College, apparently, was founded in 1635 for the purpose of matriculating the graduates of Boston Latin School.

This particular graduate of Boston Latin, however, took a circuitous path to Harvard. At the time the high school would only send out two transcripts, and Ed had decided that he did not want to take the College Boards; he was going to apply only to colleges that did not require them. So he applied to Tufts and Bowdoin, and was, well, rejected from both.

Not knowing quite what to do next, he looked through the mail at home and saw the bulletin from Washington Square College, at New York University. If I have this quote down correctly, apparently he said something like: “Oh, well, I’ve got nothing else to do,” so he applied there. After some parental pressure on the Boston Latin school to send out one more transcript, at age 16, he headed off to an amazing experience in New York City, although he remained convinced that the best part of New York was, in fact, the train back to Boston.

Ed roomed with another high school classmate, in a squalid apartment, and all there was to do was study. He landed straight A’s, but when, boarding that train back permanently, he did transfer to Harvard, they counted those A’s only as the lowest passing grade… 3 C’s and a D, despite what they really had been… and still he graduated with distinction! Dean’s List, student honor’s society, Sigma Si – just not Phi Beta Kappa, because of those early grades.

And then, despite such a record… Ed came face to face with the anti-Semitism of his era… the Jewish quota for medical and other professional schools. He applied to 31 med schools… and was rejected by 29. He made the waiting list only at B.U. and Tufts, and, finally, when Ed, encouraged by his father, went in to have a personal conversation with the dean at B.U., he noticed a Sigma Si key, asked about it, had a pleasant conversation about a coincidentally shared fraternity, and then was told “Well, I think we have a place for you in next year’s class.” [Many, many years later… at a Harvard reunion, Ed found himself sitting next to a friend who had been admitted to Tufts Medical School, and then gone on to become prominent in the administration and admissions department there. Ed said that he asked his, in light of his position, if he could do him a big favor, and his friend got nervous, until Ed said: “Listen, if you have any clout at all, can you please tell them to take me off the waiting list.”]

After Medical School, Ed had an internship at University Hospital connected with Massachusetts Memorial, and became acquainted with an assistant resident who knew of his interest in infectious diseases. Residencies were hard to come by at a time when many slots were taken by those returning from the service, but this friend knew of something at NIH, so Ed came to Washington for a couple of years, from 1948-1952.

It was here that Ed met Jean Saperstein. Jean said that one of her best friends had a friend who also worked at NIH, and these two friends wanted to fix Ed and Jean up. Both Ed and Jean have now told me – separately – that they always wondered what it meant about their relationship that the two who fixed them up both wound up in mental institutions, but they seem to have been in their right minds with this match. They all went out as a foursome at first, and then Ed used to take Jean, every Sunday, to the free concerts at the National Gallery of Art. They would often end up at the Hot Shoppes on the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and East West Highway. And Ed did tell me that “it was love at first sight… and I’ve been loving her ever since.” He knew it was a good sign when Jean’s mother started feeding him… but more on Jean’s mother’s cooking in a moment.

When Ed told his family about Jean they thought she must not be Jewish, because she was Reform. It is true that Jean’s parents did not have a traditional upbringing at all… her mother had come from Morgantown, West Virginia, where all the miner’s children dropped out of school after 4th grade, so in order to get any education at all her mother wound up at a convent. When Ed’s parents came to meet Jean and her family for the first time, Jean’s mother made them her best dish… her famous Virginia ham. Turns out, they requested it again, every time they returned for subsequent visits.

The wedding was also in the grand tradition of the Washington Hebrew Congregation of the time… The presiding rabbi refused Ed’s polite request to honor his family’s wishes by wearing a kippah, and the esteemed clergyman told them that if they wanted something broken, they could smash all the glass they wanted to in the hotel after the ceremony.

Jean said: “I was attracted to his intellect, his kindness, and thoughtfulness. He was just a nice person.” She said that one day, on their way somewhere else, Ed pulled into a parking spot outside the Old Post office on Wisconsin Avenue, and said to her: “There’s been something I’ve been meaning to ask you for a long time.” And that is where he proposed.

Much of Ed’s research and many of his scientific accomplishments took place during those years at NIH, but he and Jean soon headed off to Minnesota, where he began a residency in internal medicine at the Mayo Clinic, with a certified subspecialty – one of the first in the country – in infectious disease. He would later call the gatherings of his colleagues in his chosen subspecialty the Puss Club.

Barbara had been born here, but Judy and Cindy were born in Minnesota… and Robert after the family’s return here. After the Mayo Clinic Ed spent one rather unhappy year at a clinic in Detroit – he characterized the place he worked that year as “a combination of a salt mine, a snake pit and a brothel” – and then he and Jean returned to Washington, permanently. He opened a practice in Silver Spring, which he maintained from 1957 until his retirement in December of 1993. The climate for the practice of medicine was easier here than in Boston, where hospital affiliations were doled out only to graduates of Boston schools, and only after years of paying dues. There was a house on Oakmont Avenue – with peeling paint and no air conditioning -- and then Tulsa Lane. Barbara remembers her father’s black bag, and the house calls he would make. Cindy, who later went to work with him, remembers the variety of his patients all over the city, how he went out in the middle of the night, and how, if someone was having a hard time, even financially, it was never an issue.

Ed worked very, very hard… leaving the house in the early hours of the pre-dawn morning, and not getting home until after dinner – and then he would be up in his study, reading, working, staying up to date on the latest medical journals. And he had a distinguished career – he was chief of medicine at Holy Cross and was on duty when George Wallace was shot at a rally nearby, and brought in. He was able to identify the outbreak of Salmonella at a local Wendy’s, originating in tainted lettuce. And then there was the famous psittacosis diagnosis… the occasion, when an Orthodox man came in with a disease almost always associated with the eating of undercooked pork… Ed cleared his name and the suspicion of his neighbors alike, I suppose, by tracing the source to a worker at a local plant who was unknowingly violating health and ritual rules alike by processing his own personal meat in the grinder after hours.

Ed published numerous articles on virology and on the Coxsackie A Virus throughout his career – as well as a special paper on Stanley Nehmer’s tumor. And Ed continued his intellectually active, scientifically meaningful work even after retirement. He became a docent at the Army Medical Museum at Walter Reed; he continued to go to grand rounds every week at Holy Cross and Suburban, and he never stopped learning. He loved being on the staff at the history office at NIH; he laughed about the fact that they actually put him on payroll for a while… and while he was there he wrote and published two important works, two medical biographies… the first about an amazing scientist, Dr. Robert Huetner, one of the greatest epidemiologists the country has ever produced…and the second about Dr. Charles Armstrong, also an outstanding virologist who spent much of his career with the United States Public Health Service.

Ed and Jean were members of Temple Emanuel upon their return from Minnesota and Michigan, and fell in with a group of friends, some of whom were the founders of Emanuel, who became disenchanted and left to form what would become this congregation. Jean says that they left strictly to stay with their new friends. Jean then found, and arranged to rent for only the cost that would cover the tax due on the property, a little house on the corner of Bradley Boulevard and Wisconsin Avenue, where a fire station now stands. There, in the very earliest days of Temple Shalom, Ed Beeman was the “rabbi” and John Lewis the “cantor” of the new congregation. Barbara remembers the ladies bringing the food. Cindy remembers the creaky floors.

Ed Beeman was a caring, loving father. The girls remember heart-shaped boxes of candy on Valentine’s Day, going to the beach, learning to love sailing and fishing. Robert remembers growing up in a household of books, and his father’s love of history, as well as riding to Sunday school listening to WGMS… how he couldn’t stand it at the time, but how he now finds classical music soothing. Cindy remembers her father getting up during the Ed Sullivan Show, and laughing as he danced right along with the dance numbers on TV. Ed loved pirate movies, and if you’d reach for something during a meal he’d say: “Move or you’re going to draw back a bloody stump!” Ed would come back from his travels with 100,000 pictures, and make everyone watch slides for hours, mostly of buildings with no people – I actually remember several such pictures he brought to me – he’d be so excited about the historical significance of a place he had seen. He remembered Europe by culinary moments as well: “On Tuesday we ate such and such, so that meant we were in this town.” When Ed dropped Cindy off at college, he instructed her carefully. “Promise me something,” he said. “That you’ll make me a father-in-law before you make me a grandfather!”

Eventually Ed became both, a father-in-law and a grandfather. He was welcoming in one role, and proud in the other. And, in the end, what a tribute it is to Ed and Jean… that all four of his children… married… and stayed married.

Ed Beeman was a presence of warmth, wisdom, and wit. He was always ready with a literary reference, a sense of depth. And, of course, the ubiquitous phrase… “as a matter of fact.”

Eliyahu. Ed Beeman’s Hebrew name… is Eliyahu Aharon. Today, we perform a pivot in time, we Jews. We turn from Purim, and we begin to face Pesach, Passover. At Passover there is a custom… an additional setting, an untouched cup… an extra seat at the table. It is Elijah’s cup, a taste, and a place set aside.

For me, it is not only this Pesach. Every time I study in the Chapel downstairs, every Shabbat Morning Worship and Study service, every Thursday class session I will look slightly to my left. And there, for me, is Elijah’s chair, Ed Beeman’s place, where wisdom sat, where Ed should be.

And maybe, if we are good enough, and lucky enough, and receptive enough… maybe there will be a sense…of a warmth that remains, a wit in whose memory we delight, a wisdom that can teach us still.

Zecher tzadik livracha; may the memory of this special man be a blessing to all who knew him, to all who loved him.

Imagine the scene: Jacob dies, but even before the trip back to Long Island or New Jersey or Old Canaan to the designated family section of the cemetery, before the burial Joseph's brothers huddle together to plot a strategy of their own. Fearing wrathful retribution for childhood rivalries seemingly set aside, revenge held in abeyance while yet their father lived, Jacob1s other sons conspire in the arena of tall tales and white lies: they will tell Joseph, they decide, that their father had left word, a posthumous proscription, for Joseph to forgive the brothers.

All is well in the tale we tell, but imagine a different twist. An intrepid interloper, an ancient exposer of secrets with a fetish for freedom of information, snoops and tells. Before the brothers even have a chance to present a case to their elevated sibling, leaked cables appear in the Goshen Gazette and the Cairo Daily News: "Foreign Infiltrators Conspire to Mislead Prime Minister," the headlines scream. "Leaked Cables Reveal Brothers' Pitiful Plan. And instead of reconciliation and harmony, popular Egyptian outrage leads the politician Joseph to cut off family ties. No solidarity, no moving forward with the family story, no Exodus, no parted sea, no Sinai, no Torah, no Judaism.

Flash forward, to a scene in an American university, just a few years ago. There, a course in Jewish mysticism is being offered, the esoteric tradition called Kabbalah, by a professor named Fox so seemingly pompous that his students refer to him affectionately as F-x. Before the class begins the professor looks at the students, a mixture of male and female, graduate and undergraduate students, Jews and gentiles. "I presume," he intones,"that you are all male, married, over 40-years old, Orthodox in practice, and that you know the Torah and Talmud by heart! Having said that" and here, he pounds the table for emphasis, having just recited the traditional Jewish prerequisites for delving into this slippery and perspective-altering subject matter, "having said that, let's begin."

Our tradition teaches that there are certain topics that require preparation, orientation, grounding in classic texts and communal connections before plunging in. Our tradition teaches that in a complicated world, context counts.

But the very concept that some people know some things that other do not, that there is any legitimacy to an overarching framework formulated by someone else into which facts can be fit, the notion that raw data needs time to grow, be sifted and sorted, thoughtfully and privately before being brought out in the light of day... that concept itself is apparently profoundly offensive to some people in our post-modern world.

We live at a time when time does not stop: 24/7 news cycles mean information is always available, the page is always refreshed, the past is passed over in the blink of an eye. We have grown accustomed to instant gratification, to phones that are smarter than we are -- who hasn't been at a perfectly pleasant dinner table when one person has mentioned a topic or expressed uncertainty about something, and someone else has whipped out their cell and called up Google fact check on the spot. You've seen it. I've done it. The truth is out there.

Ill never forget one of my first realizations of how much the world had changed because everyone has instant access to information, communication, and their own private arbiters of opinion. It was a minor incident, but a striking one for me, and it took place on our Confirmation class trip to New York City in 2002. The bus was heading into the city, but there was a lot of traffic, and while the driver, Andy, Scott and I are staring ahead of the bus, unbeknownst to us, a half dozen of the kids whipped out their cell phones and called home. "Lincoln Tunnel blocked; what do we do?" In came the answers -- at least five contradictory and equally strongly argued parental opinions, in real time from 200 miles away.

Let's raise the stakes on a similar scenario. I remember reports from our local Jewish Day School's senior year semester in Israel, at the height of the second intifada. Phone calls back and forth went like this: either kids called their folks to say they were okay in the face of something their parents had not and probably would not have heard about, or parents woke their kids up to ask if they were okay because they heard, here, about something their kids never noticed. The communication took place in such real time that organizers of trips and programs had no time to put their heads together and give even a moment of thought to how they would present what had happened, how they would convey what they were doing to adjust their plans.

And so questions. Is "spin" automatically a four-letter word? Do we have a right to borders and boundaries, to taking a breath, to having a place to process and sift and think through what we are going to do, without constant exposure? Is there a value in trying out an idea, in exploring an opinion, or does everything have to be instantly ready for prime time? What do we do, how do we evaluate the imagery of light? Is the protective shield of privacy a shady respite from a too-glaring sun, or a looming menace, a heart of darkness?

My friends, I believe that there is something wrong in a Wikileaks World. But it is hard to say exactly what is wrong, or how much, or where the line is.

There is, of course, another side to the story. We have lived through governments that lie, and conspiracies to control public opinion, break into opponents, offices, abuse power and manipulate the media. Just today I heard word, through an email from Rabbi Kahn, about government suppression of information regarding the hunt for former Nazis. Sunshine laws are not just for prurient interest; they were passed for a reason, and to address real abuses.

But like the sports commentator watching a play unfold and dramatically intoning that -- he could go all the way -- how far do we want openness to go? Is there not some limit to what we just have to know? I am not a lawyer, or an expert on national security, so whether what is going on is illegal or rises to the level of treason is certainly beyond me.

What I do know, though, is that there is a difference between being smart and being wise. Being smart may involve knowing things, being up to speed on what's going on, finding all the facts and hoarding them like some obsessive collector. But wisdom requires discretion, discernment, and distinction. It involves knowing what to reveal, and when. It involves an understanding… of context.

We have just finished the celebration of a minor but well-known holiday. Chanukah purports to be the celebration of a single jar of oil that lasted for eight days. Historians, however, dispute the details; theologians claims there is more to it than this, and rabbis -- or at least this one -- insist on spoiling the story for adults and older students.

Why the age distinction? Because we know, or at least we believe... that there is such a thing as developmental stages of understanding, that there are age-appropriate images, and that a certain concrete expression of ideas is more suited to younger children.

But who are we to judge such a thing? Isn't that arrogant, to be arbiters of information? Shouldn't we just put it all out there, and not pre-judge who can handle which version of a story?

In my ideal world, I see shades of grey, and nuance and shadow. I believe it is appropriate to consider...; what is considered appropriate. I see a mixture of sun and shade, of openness and privacy. And I believe that a certain kind of growth comes from exploration, from trying out ideas and opinions we are not yet sure of, of sharing that exploration with others in a context in which we feel safe and comfortable, before proclaiming everything in public.

And I also believe that people are… well, human. That for all of us there are outbursts of emotion that we would not want to “own” in public.

The best example I can think of in this regard is my own reaction to a heinous crime, or a terrorist attack. The very first thoughts in my head -- which do occasionally make it into words, which come out of my mouth -- are not necessarily in full accordance with judicial procedures or political realities or contextual restraints I actually want to see upheld. I wouldn't want -- I wouldn't dare, and I wouldn't -- endorse -- a public pronouncement... of some of those instantaneous emotional gut reactions.

Maybe you remember the Woody Allen line about peering into the soul of the student sitting next to him in a Metaphysics exam... many people do want to see that inner instinct, that first emotional reaction, to judge the fullness of a person.

Do you remember the presidential debate between Michael Dukakis and George H.W. Bush? Do you remember that awful question asked at the outset? "If your wife, Kitty, were raped and murdered".... I actually believe that Michael Dukakis may have lost the election solely on the basis of the flat, robot-like response he gave...; to that emotional opening.

Here is how I would have answered. "Bernie, what a horrible question. I understand you want to get at whether our high talk stands up when things get personal, but let's leave our families out of this. If you want to know how I would react as a man, I would react as any husband would: I would want to find and hurt the person who did this with my own hands. In the long run, though, how we treat criminals is about our values as a society, and it is a better thing for everyone that we live in a world of law and not frontier justice and emotionally charged matters like personal revenge..."; And then I would have given the content of the answer he gave.

I know showing instant emotion would have served Dukakis better at that moment. So I get what is going on, inside the people who are vying to be our leaders. And I get it, that unchecked privacy leads to abuse.

What I don't get, and I don't want, is a world in which there is no privacy at all.

Or, let's put it this way: how come so many of the people who are exposing all these secret... get to be anonymous themselves? Is this tangle really about principle, or about power?

Maybe Wikileaks is really a stand in... for a new brand of theology. Maybe all they want us all to remember... is that even when we think we are alone... there is always someone watching. With words from the morning liturgy, "l'olam y'hei adam y'rai shamayim baseiter u'va'galu'i; at all times let us revere God inwardly, as well as outwardly."

But when only God is watching, really, that's between us and God. And frankly, given the secrets God keeps... I think even God understands a little bit about shadow and shade, the meeting place of darkness and light.

At the beginning of this parasha, this week's Torah portion, unique among the portions of the entire Torah... there is no space. There is no gap. The rabbis called this, then, a "closed" portion; they make a great deal -- really, through quite a stretch -- of the fact that our eyes are therefore "closed" during what is happening in this portion.

But there is a gap after the portion. It is a large gap, the end of the book of Bereishit, of Genesis, before the beginning of Shemot, of Exodus. And in this whole question of space, its absence at the outset, its abundance at the end, I am reminded that to tell a tale is not just about what happens on stage. It is also about what goes on off stage, the implied, the hidden, the out-of-sight. A story is not just about what unfolds explicitly; it is also about the assumptions we bring, and the changes that go on over the course of the story. It is about what is said with words, and about what is in between the lines.

Not everything can be told. Growth takes place in the gaps. And it is the written word together with the hidden hand, the darkness dancing with the light, both, together, that bring us the full story. In the wholeness of who you are, there is a place for sharing, and there is a place for secrets. The dark truth and, yes, perhaps, occasionally, even the white lie. Elu v'elu, these and these... We need both.

Shabbat Shalom.

Whether it was from summer winds or winter storms, do you remember how you felt… when the lights went out? It happens so much here, any season of the year -- sometimes it seems all it takes is a bit of breeze -- that surely you have your own stories. And certainly you remember what it feels like, to be without electricity.

Let’s picture the scene, in the middle of an extended outage. Files on the computer: there for a later day if we were lucky and saved them, lost forever if not. Landline phones might work, but some of us gave those up – and eventually the cell phone runs out of juice. No internet. No phone. How do we stay in touch? No movies to watch or electronic games to play; what do we do with our time?

Let’s assume it’s winter. The roads are impassable. The plows are delayed; side streets come last. The radio runs out of batteries. Soon other worries: what do we do with the food? What do we do to stay warm at night?

But then, something starts to happen. One house has a gas range, or someone manages to tunnel onto the deck and get at the grill. Coffee and hot chocolate appear and are passed around. Another house has extra shovels, and extra hands. Driveways are cleared together, and pathways to each others’ homes. Someone has wood, and a working fireplace. Our eyes adjust to the candles at night. Expertise and rations alike are pooled, and a new spirit takes over, as well as a new appreciation for the ease of our ordinary lives. We move from frustration and isolation… to a remembrance of things past, connection of a different kind. And we remember that what we have lost is only electricity. We support each other and we realize that it is a misnomer to assert… that just because the lights go out, we are out of power.

Atem nitzavim hayom kulchem lifnei Adonai Eloheichem; rosheichem, shivteichem, zikneichem, v’shotreichem – kol ish Yisrael… tapchem, n’sheichem, v’gercha asher b’kerev machanecha, meichoteiv eitzecha ad so’eiv meymecha… You stand here this day, all of you, before the Eternal your God – your tribal heads, your elders and officials, all the men of Israel, and children and women, even the stranger within your camp, from the chopper of wood to the drawer of water…”

I spoke last week, and last night, of a collective spirit, a sense of unity and coming together. Again, in the Torah portion Reform Jews read on the morning of Yom Kippur, is this sense that the shared experience of a sacred past generates a “reading in,” creates a bond of common destiny.

As you have seen on logos and letterheads, at this congregation our “motto,” our two-line summary of our core mission, is this: “Temple Shalom: Making Connections: Through Community, Learning and Prayer.”

The reality is, though, that… not everyone feels that way. Not everyone feels that way about Judaism. And not everyone feels that way… about their spiritual community.

People struggle and find fault with synagogues for reasons as varied and diverse as they are drawn to them in the first place, but the statement I sometimes hear that challenges me the most is this: “I just don’t feel connected.”

My friends, this morning I want to explore with you what belonging and connection might mean for us, here and now, in this community. And I want to do this in somewhat more practical terms than the abstract approaches of my previous remarks.

One comment before I get more specific. It is a potentially obvious observation that feeling a bond with others around you… it doesn’t happen by magic. It is not universal, and sometimes it is not even easy. No community can just make it happen “for you.” Neither a sense of spirituality at services nor feeling connected to a community work like going to a full-service gas station, where you drive in and are simply filled up. It takes… effort.

This is kind of sad, in a way. Many of us remember how quick, how easy it was to make friends at college. The intensity of common living naturally led not just to a communal spirit, but also to lasting connections, at least, I imagine, for most of us. Now we are pulled in so many directions, many different modalities of identification in our lives: families and neighborhoods, school communities and professional ones, hobbies and interests. An intentional community takes work and effort, and for that to emerge anywhere… it is not automatic.

For those who do want more of a sense of connection, a deeper bond, an engaged communal life, even, indeed, for those of you open to the challenge of spiritual growth and life-long learning, here… here are some things we do, and some things I think we can do, to bring about that community we can be, that experience we occasionally find when we are at…our very best.

The first form of connection… comes in how we care for one another. I am grateful to my predecessor, our Rabbi Emeritus, Rabbi Bruce Kahn, and the many members of this community who were instrumental in the creation of our Mitzvah Corps. I realize, at the same time, that not all of our newer members know about Mitzvah Corps, what it was set up for, what it does, and can yet do. Originally envisioned as an extension of the reach of the Senior Rabbi, Mitzvah Corps is there to address and assist with the pastoral and practical needs of congregants. Its functions include bringing meals to those recovering from an illness, arranging rides for those who need help shopping or to get to an important appointment, providing resources for those who need to arrange for aides in the home. It is Mitzvah Corps which sends capable and caring congregants to lead shivah minyan services in the homes of those who have lost a loved one on those evenings when the clergy have conflicting duties and are not able to be there. Ranking among the highest commandments of our tradition, and not the task of professionals alone: that we should visit the sick, comfort the mourner, care for the needy.

But to meet your needs we need your involvement – not only in knowing that Mitzvah Corps is there, being able to articulate your own needs, but also in viewing yourself as part of this outreach, and being available to be there for others. Ably led by Wilma Braun and Beryl Tretter, Mitzvah Corps should, in theory, include in its ranks… every single member of the congregation.

We need more volunteers to make meals, provide rides, and be available for the variety of needs that arise. We also plan on returning to the original vision of Mitzvah Corps, and training congregants to make home and hospital visits; the first of these opportunities will take place on Tuesday night, November 9, from 7:00-9:00 pm. I invite you to step into this challenging and rewarding role, and – whether it is for visits or to help in other ways – to be in touch with Wilma, Beryl or me to let us know of your availability.

A second form of connection can come… in working for a common cause. Being there for others involves not only personal care, but also making the world more fair, working towards Tikkun Olam. Our congregation has a long history of involvement in both social action – addressing the needs of those around us, and social justice – dealing with root causes of deep problems. We need each other: to cook casseroles once a month for SOME – So Others Might Eat, to serve at Shepherd’s Table, to work in the community on Mitzvah Day, to bring bags – as many of us did today – for the Manna Food Bank. We carry forth our banner and work on a range of issues including poverty, gun control, hunger and homelessness, interreligious dialogue, global warming and environmental consciousness, sex education and reproductive rights, women’s equality and same-sex marriage, Darfur and African relief, human rights and humane values everywhere. This coming month, on October 8, we continue our conversation on core values, with a Tikkun Olam Pot Luck Shabbat Dinner prior to services, inviting our entire community to explore the direction and discuss the issues which move us the most, which we should focus on in the future. Please come, so that the work we do is, indeed, a shared mission, and grows out of a communal vision.

A third form of connection comes… in deep, meaningful shared experience. There is nothing that promotes togetherness more -- it almost forces the point – than spending two weeks on a bus together. Four Temple Shalom trips to Israel in the past eight years… for a mid-sized congregation of relatively moderate means… I am as proud of that as any other aspect of what we do. Other than working with those exploring Judaism there may be nothing I do that is more important to deepen Jewish life and strengthen Jewish identity than bringing those to Israel who have never been there before. Our “master plan” in this regard has been to offer such a trip every two years, and so we would go again in the summer of 2012. But we have heard that there is already interest in a trip next summer; please see me about this soon because, if this works well for enough people we might be able to arrange this. And there is also some discussion about a mid-winter, off-season Israel 201 type-trip, open to all but designed especially for those who have already been.

Finally, connection can come… from groups we create… intentionally, and with the primary goal of fostering bonds that will deepen and enrich our lives. We have a number of chavurot already within the congregation, small fellowship circles of those with common interests or who came here at a similar time, who celebrate holidays together and share in each other’s life-cycle events. But there is room –- especially in Washington where so many people move here from out of town, whose extended families are far away -- there is room for more such groups. Ideally I would like to see chavurot that emerge organically, organized by and out of families with children in a particular grade, to cite just one example. I hope that we are able to help, to facilitate such groups and foster such connections among our families.

[These are just a few of the ways we are, or can be, there for each other. There are other community building opportunities here, of course: our downstairs Shabbat morning worship and study service, our Wednesday morning minyan, our auxiliaries and Rennaisance Group.]

How can we feel more connected? What we know from recent research about religious communities is that congregations which mean the most in the lives of those who participate in them are not those that make no demands and have no expectations of their members. They are not those that offer only comfort – but never challenge, that sanctify what “is” but never push for what might or even “ought” to be. No, the spiritual communities that are on the firmest foundation today… are those who have real expectations of each other, where there is a sense that being there matters, where membership is considered not a commodity but a covenant.

One of the most important components of a covenant… is that it is mutual. It is a two-way street. Beyond all the items I have mentioned, then, are the energy and ideas which will come from you, new ventures of depth and meaning we have not even dreamed of.

Several years ago I heard a phrase which summed up, so well, this vision of an active, engaged congregation. I first heard the phrase in Hebrew, and I loved it, so I went looking for the source in the Torah, in the Talmud, to no avail. Finally someone told me that the words were actually originally in… um… Chinese…and that the source… well, it wasn’t the ancient rabbis at all. It was Chairman Mao, in the Little Red Book. But the phrase, the phrase is one I think if especially appropriate for a place where excitement flows in all directions, from all who are stakeholders in our spiritual lives. What I heard in Hebrew first – I have no idea how this sounds in Mandarin is this: “Vayifrach elef p’rachim. Let a thousand flowers bloom.”

In the esoteric tradition of Jewish mysticism known as the Kabbalah, we learn that there is a hidden but intimate connection between heaven and earth, between the physical world of our lives and some metaphysical reality underneath the surface of the ordinary and the every day.

During the Days of Awe this year, I have asked what it means to be alright, whether such a state is completely internal, and what others can do to help. I have explored with you the balance between the “me” and the “we,” the individual and the communal, even citing President Kennedy’s exhortation to service and the question of what we get out of the experience of being there for other people. I have spoken about an expanding circle of inclusion. What I have been trying to convey, in all of this, is that I, too, believe that there is a connection between heart and soul, between what we bring and what we take, between what we give – which is known to us -- and what we get, which is often amorphous, and mysterious, and, sometimes, only evident over the course and flow of time. With the mystics I assert, at last, the power that can flow… from personal intent… to cosmic impact.

An optimist, we are told, is one who believes that this is the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist… a pessimist is one who agrees.

My friends, we will get… the community we create. Let us, then, greet each other as we would want to be greeted, treat each other as we would want to be treated. That is the power that we bring, the warmth of our being and the light of our lives that never goes out.

Feeling connected comes from somewhere deep inside. It is not, ultimately, created by a committee, produced by a program, made manifest by any particular event. What I have outlined here is an invitation, an opportunity… it is something that may till the soil, prepare the ground. What grows from it… the power to make that happen… that depends… on each one of us.

Atem Nitzvavim hayom kulchem lifnei Adonai Eloheichem… We stand this day, all of us, before the Eternal our God, bound to God, and bound to one another, to enter into a covenant for all seasons… connected to society and the sacred alike… if we but see ourselves as part of the picture… if we but read ourselves in.

L’shanah Tovah.

It is Yom Kippur, so, naturally we are thinking about food. Imagine a restaurant, some trendy ethnic eatery with exotic and different tasting food, as a group of Jewish patrons finish their dinner. Relieved but exhausted, the waitress approaches them with the following query: “Was anything alright?”

By reputation, we are, we Jews, both analytical… and articulate. This means we like to pick things apart, to think about them, to examine things from every angle… and that we need to share our thoughts with others. There is an alternative, of course, another option we might have chosen. We can keep those thoughts to ourselves. Perhaps there are times that would be a better move. But it’s not the one we often choose. (There is a type of tea I think of as especially Jewish. It is the one called “Constant Comment.”)

The combination of critical faculties and sufficient…comfort to feel free to share our opinions means that we sometimes… complain. And among the items we comment and complain about… are each other. You know the saying “two Jews, three opinions.” And you also know the story of the first Jew on the moon, who builds there two synagogues, one he prays in… and the other he wouldn’t set foot in.

So we are observant – at least regarding one another. And we share. Do you remember Woody Allen’s remark about how he got kicked out of college for cheating on his metaphysics exam? He did this, he said, by looking into the soul of the person sitting next to him.

This night, though… this night is somehow set apart from all that. This night sets a different tone. Maybe because of our impulse to label and sub-divide and splinter ourselves, maybe because it is so difficult to judge ourselves when we are too busy looking at others, or maybe, simply, because there are so many more of us here than at any other time of year, on Yom Kippur we are called towards a different level of togetherness. The words are strange, compelling, unique to this night. As the sun sets, in a hush of expectation, we recite:

B’yishiva shel ma’alah, u’v’yishiva she mata, al da’at haMakom, v’al da’at hakahal, anu matirin l’hitpaleil im ha’avaryanim.

We render these words in a particular way in our Machzor, we Reform Jews. The sanitized, interpretive translation in Gates of Repentance reads: “In the sight of God and of the congregation, no matter how far some of us may have transgressed by departing from our people and our heritage, we pray as one, on this Night of Repentance.”

Such a translation focuses on one aspect of the experience – the fact that this occasion brings together those of a wide-variety of practice and identification. Perhaps there are some of you here tonight who don’t actually make it every single Shabbat. One or two. And these welcoming words, this affirmation of an open door for wandering souls, this English is a nice sentiment. But it is hardly an accurate translation.

This is what the Hebrew means, and what we miss in our own Machzor:

In the heavenly court, and in the earthly one, with the permission of the Almighty and the permission of the community, we are permitted to pray with sinners.

There is a debate – of course – about the exact origin of these words. Many believe this is a formula to welcome back into the congregation – even for one night -- the Conversos, the Marranos… those of Spanish or Portuguese origin who converted to Christianity under duress, and tried to maintain their Jewish identity in secret after that. There is even a theory that the word “avaryanim, transgressors,” was meant to be “Ibaryanim, Iberians!” These words would be a formal welcome, then, to those who felt forced by circumstances – and an injunction to those who remained loyal to open their doors and their hearts, a ritual of reconciliation between those who stayed and those who strayed.

But is this really some kind of quasi-legal formula? This is a strange prayer in the first place – what, we need a court’s permission to pray with those who have committed a sin? Wouldn’t that be, um… all of us? Maybe the words are simply a spiritual lesson: why would God bother to accept us, if we exclude and make divisions amongst ourselves?

Whatever their origin, I hear these words as a powerful prayer of hope and inclusion. And I hear in them two lessons, one which I am sure was intended, and the other which is something of a stretch, which serves as a more expansive vision in my mind.

The first lesson I hear in these words is that of Jewish unity.

We come together this night as at no other time. And herein lies a lesson in itself. For here we are, diverse in attitude and opinion, personal practice and self-proclaimed identity. The defining characteristic of this Jewish night is not belief or doctrine but the fact that it is a Jewish act, and thus the ties that bind can be characterized best as a core affirmation of commonality.

There is so much that pulls us apart, we Jews. And we should remain engaged – indeed, we should express ourselves with depth and vigor on behalf of the values we believe in, and our understanding of Judaism. But this night I issue a renewed plea, that in the midst of internal Jewish conflict we also remember that we are all in this together.

Internal Jewish conflict. Tisha B’Av, in Jerusalem. The ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, the single saddest day on the Jewish calendar. Like Yom Kippur, it is a day of fasting, but there the purpose is not the purification of the soul but the preservation of memory. On this day, in 586 BCE the First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians. On the same day, we are told, in 70 CE, the Second Temple met the same fate, this time at the hands of the Romans. On this day, in 1492, deliberately heaping misery upon well-known woe, the edict of expulsion against the Jews in Spain went into effect. And on this day, this July, we sat with the Conservative movement in Israel at Robinson’s Arch, along the southern section of the Western Wall. To chant Eicha as the sun sank low, to hear Lamentations for lost Jerusalem while sitting in front of the very tossed and tumbled stones, literally the building blocks of the Temple that had been overturned, what a sense of history and destiny. To hear the words at the very place they were describing… it was something else.

I remembered, that night, what our tradition offers as an explanation for why we suffered such a loss. It was about… internal Jewish conflict. There is a tale in the Talmud which teaches that the Temple was destroyed because of a Kamza and a Bar Kamza:

A certain man had a friend Kamza and an enemy Bar Kamza. He once hosted a party, and he said to his servant, “Go and bring Kamza to my party!” The servant went, but he brought Bar Kamza back instead. When the host found Bar Kamza there he said: “You! You go around gossiping and telling tales about me! What are you doing here? Get out!” But Bar Kamza replied: “Look, I’m, already here. Let me stay! I’ll pay you back for whatever I eat and drink.” But the host refused. Bar Kamza countered: “Let me give you half the cost of the party!” “No,” the host replied. Finally Bar Kamza said: “Look, I’ll pay for the whole party!” [This must have been quite the social event. The man really wanted to be there!] But the host still refused, and he took Bar Kamza by the hand… and he threw him out.

Hurt, ashamed, embarrassed, Bar Kamza said to himself]: “Since all these important Rabbis were sitting there and did not stop him, this must mean that they agreed with his action. [That it is ok to treat someone this way. If that’s what they are like,] I will go and inform against them, to the Romans. So Bar Kamza went to the Emperor and said: “The Jews are rebelling against you!” The skeptical Roman responded: “How can I tell?” Bar Kamza said “Send them an offering and see whether they will accept it, and sacrifice it [on the altar].”

So the Emperor sent Bar Kamza to the rabbis in the Temple with a fine calf. But en route, Bar Kamza made a blemish on the animal… in a place which Jews would consider the animal unfit for an offering, but the Romans would not. The Rabbis were inclined to offer it anyway, so as not to offend the Government. But Rabbi Zechariah ben Abkulas said: “What? If we do this, people will say that blemished animals are offered on the altar!” So they refused [the offering, knowing that this would be seen as an insult, and used as a pretext to persecution. They knew what the consequences would be.]

To save lives and knowing what would happen if the message got back, the rabbis] then proposed to kill Bar Kamza, so that he should not go and inform against them. But Rabbi Zechariah ben Abkulas argued the narrow point of the law, and said to them, “Is one who makes a blemish on consecrated animals to be put to death?”

Rabbi Jochanan thereupon remarked: Through the scrupulousness of Rabbi Zechariah ben Abkulas, our House has been destroyed, our Temple burnt and we ourselves exiled from our land.

(Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Gittin, 55b-56a)

The implication, of course, is that the rabbis should have been less strict… and accepted a less-than-ritually perfect animal. It is also clear, by the way, that the final editor of this passage viewed the killing of a traitor in this situation as a justifiable act of self-defense.

This is all very strange. It is, of course, a retroactive reading, a spiritual spin on past events; it is much more homily than history. There are so many bizarre things about this story: like some random Jew with his nose bent out of joint gets to go kvetch to the leader of the not-so-free world? Like this is really the reason the Romans responded to a rebellion?

But the power of the story persists. Because, after all, just how far removed is this tale of pettiness and punctiliousness, backstabbing and betrayal from the reality around us today? How often do we feel insulted, and how often do we hurt the feelings of others? How do we act on our pain, and how does this impact the people around us? And how broken are we, into our different pieces of a people?

Why, after all, were my family, many Reform colleagues, and the Conservative movement at Robinson’s Arch for Tisha B’Av in the first place, and not at the packed main section of the Kotel? Because the Wall itself had been captured all over again, this time by a small segment of the Jewish world, who impose their exclusive interpretation on the norms of everyone around them. Instead of standing as an abiding symbol of Jewish unity, the Wall has been transformed into a charedi enclave, an ultra-Orthodox synagogue.

Indeed, just days before, the leader of our Reform Movement’s Israel Religious Action Center, Anat Hoffman, had a Torah ripped out of her arms and was arrested for disturbing the status quo – all while remaining in an area supposedly designated for non-Orthodox observance. Over the course of the days that followed, a legislative proposal that would have placed all matters of conversion in Israel into the hands of the ultra-Orthodox Chief Rabbinate came to the attention of Jews around the world. The day of reckoning on this so-called conversion bill was postponed, for now, but for many of us this is a core question of Jewish identity, of reading us out, of throwing us out of a party which we have every right to attend.

In the midst of behavior which boggles the imagination, in the face of rhetoric so hot it burns the face, it is so easy to say: “these are not my people.” Wedge issues work precisely in the way they drive us apart, and make it almost impossible to see what we have in common. What can we share with those whose values and world-view are so vastly different from our own?

We could spend all of Yom Kippur asserting our side of the story, seeking our rights, riling ourselves up. The issues are important and the competing visions of Jewish values compelling enough that it deserves our attention.

But I don’t want to dwell on the divisions. Because… we have walked this road together, we and they. Somehow it is still the case that we share the same fate with Jews with whom we argue even about breaking bread. Fight against them we must, against the Ovadia Yosefs who publicly pronounce a plague on Palestinians that they should all just vanish from the earth, against the medieval mystics who attribute any misfortune to faded writing on a piece of parchment inside a mezuzah, against the charedi militants who place God’s law above the Supreme Court and the word of their rabbis above the rule of law, against the messianic monsters let loose by the fanatic fringe of the settler movement. Fight for what we believe in, but never forget that this is a family fight, that it is hard because we are connected, that their words hurt because we expect something better.

Personally… I cannot even… imagine… what it is like to be ultra-Orthodox. It is almost impossible to see the common thread between their Judaism, and mine. But that thread… is there. Somewhere. I still believe that I share something in common with a Jew whose dress I would never don, whose shoes I could not imagine filling… but who is part of my past, present around us now, and who will undoubtedly still be standing and staring daggers at us the day after tomorrow. B’yishiva shel ma’alah, u’v’yishiva shel mateh… This night… and maybe only on this night… let us imagine standing together as Jews, despite all our differences.

But I hear in these words we recite… a second lesson as well. Is it possible that this call to unity… is not just about a people, but about all people? Could this formula contain a prescription not only about Jewish inclusion, but about a connection with all of humanity?

What if… what if the word “avaryanim” does not mean sinner? What if it comes from the very similar word, avar, meaning something which is across the way, over and against us. What if it means that on this night, and in this vision, we are to come together… with the “other.”

These past weeks have seen religious intolerance on parade all over the world. Fanatics in Florida are matched by crazy crowds in Kabul; rumors have bred riots; people have died in anticipation of something that might have happened but did not. The memory of 9/11 is marred by shouting and stabbing on the streets of New York, and no one seems to care that the core claim about a “mosque” “at” Ground Zero is simply wrong. Islam is parodied, painted with far too broad a brush, slandered by people who have never read anything about Islam written by a Muslim – much as Judaism has so often been subject to scorn based on the appraisal of outsiders whose hostility was matched only by their ignorance. And in all the argument about one particular imam, everyone seems to forget that whether or how much we agree. with his world-view is not the point, that freedom of speech and religion are spelled out precisely to protect. that with which we disagree and are uncomfortable. Speech and practice with which we already agree… doesn’t need protection.

But on this night which is ultimately about the possibility of repair, and restoration, on this sacred occasion with its hint of hope for those who work for change… I am heartened as well. For there are, tucked in the corners of the conflagration, visions of goodness and decency that touch the heart. Witness the work and statements of interfaith conferences around the country, places where the foundation of trust has been laid by years of working together and coming to know one another. Witness the stories often buried underneath the headlines, of Jewish religious leaders standing with Christian and Muslim groups, all representing the better angels of our nature, the impulse to come together rather than tear apart. Dawn will come again, and good things can emerge – new alliances, deeper understandings, genuine friendships – out of the darkness of this time.

Let us remember that, in our tradition, the creation myth itself is redolent with images of dignity and equality “ Vayivra Elohim et ha’adam b’tzalmo; b’tzelem Elohim bara otam; zachar u’nekeivah bara otam, and God created human beings in the divine image; in the divine image God created us, male and female God created them.” The lesson is clear. These words come to us chronologically prior and, I would argue, even in thematic precedence to any of the particular laws of our people: we are made in the image of the highest we can imagine, of infinite worth, all of us, male and female, black and white and yellow and brown, gay and straight, short and tall, thin and… less thin, Muslim, Christian and Jew. We are all ethnic. We are all exotic.

The Talmud asks, why were human beings created from a single person? Why are we all descendants of one being, Adam first, and only then Adam and Eve? So that no one can say: my lineage is greater than yours. Unity, dignity, equality… these are bedrock principles, foundations of our faith.

Comment and complain, criticize and analyze: this is part of what we do. We look around and judge, others and ourselves.

But this is a time to put all that aside. This is a day, at least, when we look more inside than out. And what we discover, I hope, is not the ways in which we are better or worse, but the ways in which we are caught up and connected -- in fate, in nature and in kind – with all Jews, and all human beings.

Anu matirin… anu muchrachim… We are permitted – we are required – to come together… L’hitpalel im ha’avaryanim. Not to pray with sinners but to unify the sinful and soulful sides of ourselves. We look inside and we look around and we realize, in awe and wonder, that we are, in common humanity, the same.

Let that be the lesson upon which we live our lives – as Jews and as menschen, as good and decent human beings. And at the end of the meal of our life, the heavenly waitress will not even have to ask. Because she will already know… that everything was alright.

L’shanah Tovah.

An awe-struck Chasid tells the following story about his wonder-working, community-conscious but somewhat stern master. Once, there was an important fund-drive, something the whole town needed, clearly a question of the common good. All the townsfolk contributed, even those who were known for being somewhat reluctant to part with their funds. All, that is, except for Meir. What to do? Meir was not contributing. He was the only holdout in town, the only one.

Thereupon rebbe and chasid pay a personal visit to the home of said Meir The rebbe pleads on behalf of the project and yet – incredibly, impossibly – he is turned down! In frustration, in a moment of passion, the rebbe pronounced a curse upon the home, that it should shake and break and fall down! The chasid recounts that he spoke up to his master. “But Rebbe,” he said, “there are children in the home! Is Meir’s family to blame?” The rebbe thought about this for a moment, then quickly commanded that the house should not fall down. “And do you know what happened?” the chasid asked in wonder. “After the rebbe pronounced that the house should not fall down… it didn’t!”

My friends, I want to speak with you this morning about the delicate dance between giving and getting, about the role of individuals and the web of community. I want to focus on the balancing act between our inclination to see to our own satisfaction, and the obligation to look beyond ourselves.

There are two anniversaries to mark this Rosh Hashanah, two centennial celebrations in Jewish history and life. Each of these events had a distinct impact on the shape and content of Jewish identity ever after.

The first occasion took place 200 years ago, in the short-lived French vassal-state known as the Kingdom of Westphalia, in territory before and after generally considered to be part of Germany. There, on July 17, 1810 in the town of Seesen, a businessman and communal leader named Israel Jacobson, acting largely on his own initiative, invited local dignitaries to the dedication of a Chapel in the well-respected Jewish school he ran. There, to astonishment and generally positive acclaim, the service that day featured order and decorum, readings recited in unison, a hidden choir singing part of the service in German, an organ, and a sermon delivered in the vernacular. To accommodate the sensibilities of modern families there might even have been mixed seating! The prayer experience was geared towards the perceived preferences and spiritual fulfillment of those in attendance, a uniquely self-conscious combination of Jewish content and contemporary context. Its innovation, in other words, was in service to the needs of the individual worshippers who were present, not alone about the heavy hand of the past. On that day, 200 years ago, Reform Judaism was born.

Years later, and a world away, other young Jews came together for a different purpose. Sweating in a swamp, swatting mosquitoes and fighting malaria, devoting their lives to an endeavor for which they had little formal training, through some combination of necessity and ideology these visionaries launched one of the boldest social experiments in history. We read in their diaries and journals that “on the 25th of Tishrei, 5671 (October 28, 1910), we, ten men and two women comrades, came to Um Juni, and received the inventory from the `pioneering group'. We proceeded to establish an independent settlement of Hebrew workers on national land. A cooperative, community without exploiters or exploited - a commune." On that day, 100 years ago, a collective settlement and a communal movement were born. Deganya Aleph, the first Kibbutz, set to celebrate its own centennial… one month from now.

Both Reform Judaism and the kibbutz movement have evolved over the years, of course, looking today quite different than they did. But as an oversimplification it is safe to say that those founding moments gave voice to ideals which affect us to this day. From 200 years ago in the halls of Europe and 100 years ago on the shores of the Galilee – the first the ideal of individuality, the fulfillment of the self; the second a vision of the common good, the collective, the people as a whole.

A lesson I first learned this past summer, a teaching of Micah Goodman, a professor of Jewish thought at the Hebrew University and a senior fellow at the Hartman Institute. The lesson comes from a close look at a strange story in the book of Samuel, and the carefully crafted recalibration of the same story several centuries later in the book of Chronicles.

On the surface, it is a tale about a census and a plague, punishment and reconciliation. In the initial version, as it appears in Samuel, King David orders a counting of the people. David’s counselors and advisors raise objections, including the fact that such a counting served no obvious purpose other than the monarch’s megalomaniacal need to know over whom he reigned – almost as if he was counting his toys. But David insisted, and the act is carried out.

But then, suddenly, “vayakh lev David oto; David’s heart smote him.” He had a heart attack? A guilty conscience? He is, in any event, in pain. He regrets what he has done, acknowledges his sin, and comes before the prophet Gad, who gives David a choice of three punishments, one of which would strike the land, another of which would strike the people, and the final one would hit David and his family personally, forcing them to flee before their enemies.

David makes his fateful choice: let the plague afflict the people: “Niplah-na b’yad Adonai…u’v’yad Adam lo ‘epoleh; let us now full into the hand of the Eternal… let me not fall into the hand of man.” Fearing for himself, he opts for a collective punishment.

The plague comes, and 70,000 people die. (From a narrative point of view if you were not supposed to count the people in the first place, a plague is, of course, a brilliant response. It has the effect of making the whole effort pointless; the numbers you just so carefully compiled are rendered immediately obsolete.)

After disease and death work their way throughout the countryside, the plague seems about to reach Jerusalem when David finally speaks up, finds the avenging angel of the Eternal by the threshing floor of Arauna the Jebusite, and pleads for the people, instead of for himself: “I have sinned, but these sheep, what have they done? Let Your hand, I pray You, be against me and my father’s house.”

I confess that I was not that familiar with this story before studying it with Micah Goodman this summer. What I found the most interesting, the most instructive, was the subtly different way in which the story was retold, centuries later, by the writers of Chronicles. Here we see the genius of Jewish storytelling at work, the ability to re-interpret, re-invent, re-tell, re-form and re-construct the ancient tales to have them speak to a later audience.

The book of Samuel was much closer in time to the days of David, and therefore to the events it purports to tell. By the time Chronicles was written these storied names were iconic figures of a heroic past, the lessons of whose lives – as the stories of George Washington in American folklore – were available for reshaping to suit the needs of a later time.

So what does Chronicles change? So little that it is easy to miss, but so much that the whole character of David is recast in more positive ways.

In Chronicles, first of all, it is the rarely-mentioned Satan who moves David to initiate the census, absolving the king of primary responsibility for an act of which God evidently disapproves.

Then, in Chronicles, we do not read “Vayakh lev David oto, and David’s heart was struck,” but, rather, “vayakh et Yisrael, and God smote Israel.”Here, it is not David who is in pain, but the people.

Finally, Chronicles changes a single letter. We do not read, here, “niplah-na b’yad Adonai, let us fall into the hand of God,” but, instead, Chronicles has David say: “ep’lah-na; let me fall.”

The change is small but the impact profound. Who was the David of Samuel? A willful monarch, focused on his own needs, using the people for his own ends – then transferring punishment for his misdeed and the alleviation of his pain unto them. Only later, when he finally takes their suffering upon himself… only then does the plague break. David then purchases the site where God showed mercy, that threshing-floor where the plague broke. He bought the place and sanctified it, erecting there an altar to the Eternal. (Keep an eye on that altar. We are coming back to it in a moment.)

In the Chronicles revision, simply by adding a word, substituting another, and switching a single letter… a very different David emerges. Here, David is seduced into the census; he does not initiate it himself. Here, it is the people who are in pain, rather than him. And here, he offers at the outset to suffer on behalf of the collective.

God, however, as it turns out, and in Micah Goodman’s words from this summer, “God does not need David to die for the people. God needs David to want to die for the people.”

Both versions of the story agree on the ending however. They both end with the purchase of a farm, and the building of an altar. Obviously there is a power of place going on here.

But what was that place, where even in the first story David finally learned the lesson of self-sacrifice? In our tradition, that threshing-floor of Araunah is none other than… Mount Moriah. The place where Abraham is said to have offered up Isaac as a sacrifice, in the Torah portion we read this morning of Rosh Hashanah.

And if you think about it, the Akedah is the same story… and, as it turns out, it is the same story at the same place. It is, again, in Goodman’s words, “the sacrifice that did not happen,” the fact that Abraham was willing to offer his son, not that he did so.

That place where Abraham held his breath and put his dreams on the line, where David had to be willing to give it all up… that place is also the same place… the very spot… upon which David’s son, a generation later… will bring the ark, and build the Temple. It is the site of the Second Temple as well, built by Ezra, expanded by Herod, where the remnant of the retaining structure now goes by the name of the “Kotel,” the Western Wall. It is the single holiest site in Judaism.

The Holy of Holies, built on such a foundation? What is the message here? What is the take-away?

It is this: that maybe religion, sanctity, holiness is not about – or not only about – expressing yourself. Maybe it is, in good part – and this is my final quote from Micah Goodman’s lesson – maybe it is about “getting over yourself.”

The same story, at the same place: sanctity enters this world… in our willingness to sacrifice – not others for our needs, but ourselves, for theirs. Holiness flows from our willingness to give, to bear burdens, to be there for others.

What a great reminder! Especially for our lives as modern Americans, so caught up in self-expression and finding our inner voice and personal fulfillment. Religion, service, holiness… it’s not about assertion and accretion and satisfaction and feeling good! No, it’s about obligation and duty and sacrifice, the yielding of the will, the sense of something beyond, and above ourselves. “There is a God. You’re not it.”

But. But. What about you, and what about me? Why are we here? To gain, or to serve? Is it for ourselves, or for each other? And can it really be all one, without the other?

This is not an academic exercise. It has real world implications. We witness around us in this country right now an angry argument about attitudes towards government, a war of words that is nothing more, and nothing less, than a debate about perceptions of individual freedom in contrast to some sense of the collective and the communal. In May one Jewish social justice advocate dared to use the phrase “the common good.” This is what a well-known right-wing commentator had to say in response:

This leads to death camps. A Jew, of all people, should know that. This is exactly the kind of talk that led to the death camps in Germany. Put humankind and the common good first. Once you get into the common good, it's over. And this is the perversion that every minister, pastor, priest, bishop -- every single person in America, every rabbi should be at the pulpit saying the same thing -- get away from anyone who talks about the common good. Because the common good -- if you put that first, and you reject the individual -- you are headed for the death camps.

Offensive words, and extremist rhetoric. And what would these self-proclaimed defenders of freedom have us do, go all the way back to the other side? Should we say that everyone, aggressively pursuing their own self-interest with no external constraint or regulation, is the only appropriate model for society?

I do not believe that the communal and the individual are automatically in opposition to one another, nor do I believe that when this tension exists, it is automatically a bad thing. I have cited, on previous occasions, the Jewish wisdom embedded in… um… Star Trek. Here I refer to the movie in which Spock was saved, but the main characters agonize aloud about how to balance “the good of the one against the good of the many.” Can we not find a place where the two meet, overlap, support one another?

I believe in the “me” and the “we,” the David of Samuel and the David of Chronicles, the vision of Westphalia and the values of Deganya. This is not a zero sum game. It is not a question of the individual versus the community, but, with Buber, of I and Thou.

A generation ago a young and first-ever Catholic American president uttered the words: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

What a powerful call to service and sacrifice. But I wonder how these words would be received if they were said today. Why shouldn’t I ask what my country can do for me?

Let’s admit it. We examine, all the time, what we are getting out of an experience. What’s in it for us? And maybe it’s even partly true… that for too many centuries sacrifice for some greater good was, indeed, a palliative excuse offered up to postpone individual satisfaction. There has to be some sense of the self as well. Not all one, and not all the other. Healthy holiness is found in the balance.

My friends, I hope you “get something” out of being here, and being part of this community. This is a theme to which I expect to return on the morning of Yom Kippur. But let us not forget that helping others get something out of being here… is also important. I hope that “we” are there for you. But we are at our best when we remember that the people around us need our love, and support, and involvement, and energy… just as much as we want theirs. There is a sign hanging in the home of friends of ours which reads: “We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.”

And you know… you know in your own lives, I am sure, we know in our experience… when it all comes together. Maybe it is a moment caring for a friend, bringing a meal, visiting a hospital. You know that moment when you do something to help… and you realize… that you got out of the encounter… at least as much as you gAave. And maybe even more.

A man I once knew was fond of talking about a Chinese meal that changed his life. At the end of the meal, he cracked open the cookie, read the words, and then kept the paper with him in his wallet, as his own personal philosophy… for the rest of his life. The words read: “If you continually give, you will continually receive.”

Two anniversaries come together this Rosh Hashanah. One is about “me” and the other about “we.” One is about fulfillment, and the other about service. They are the two foundations of the Temple we build, and they have to function together because we know -- although the quote comes from a different context -- that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Samuel and Chronicles. Westphalia and Deganya. Me, and we. Let us celebrate them both.

L’shanah Tovah.

My friends, picture with me, if you will, a strange scene of angels and divine beings gathered before the Heavenly Throne. An anxious buzz fills the air, as everyone begins to take their place.

Two figures, though… two figures who feature prominently in what turns out to be an annual gathering require some explanation, before our story can begin. The first is Satan, and the second is the Messiah.

Now, in Jewish lore and legend, we can say with some confidence that Satan appears rather rarely – although as it happens I may mention him in passing tomorrow morning. And it is probably safe to say that this figure functions, at least, in a metaphorical way: he is the one who argues against humankind, tries to lead us astray. He is an external projection of what we otherwise know as the yetzer ha’ra, our inclination to get into trouble. He is a central character of my story, but I am equally confident that I made him up.

The other figure is taken more literally by some in our midst. Never meant to be a divine figure, per se, in Jewish tradition the Messiah is a descendant of King David who will lead us back to power and independence in our land. Progressive Jews have, for over a century now, looked towards a Messianic Age rather than believing in an actual personal, literal individual Messiah. I share the skepticism about a personal Messiah. Except, perhaps, in the role the Messiah plays in this story, defending us all, and arguing on our behalf.

Let’s listen, now, and see what we may learn:

Satan stands still before the Divine Throne, the Eternal Prosecutor, addressing his remarks to the Ruler of Rulers. In all the heavenly court, the angels fall silent, hushed... trembling with thoughts of the outcome of the case.

"Dear God, and distinguished angels of the jury," Satan says, "the facts speak for themselves. You angels! You said it best, before that fateful sixth day. Do not create humankind, you advised the Holy One. The angel Truth said: do not create humankind, for they will all be liars and cheats. Peace gave the same advice, for people will be quarrelsome, and full of strife. Even the disciples of Rabbi Shammai said this, and I say it to you again: It would have been better if humankind hadneverbeen created. It is the Days of Awe. The books are open. The choice is yours! Correct the mistake! I urge you -- find humanity guilty!"

The Messiah, the Advocate Who Is Yet to Come, rose quietly and looked around. His flaming red hair was like anger... but the eyes were blue and sad. The Messiah looked briefly at Satan. "I can quote Talmud as well as you can," he said softly, "and with better motives."

The Messiah coughed, then faced the jury. "It is true," he said, "that on a previous Rosh Hashanah -- the first Rosh Hashanah, which was the sixth day of creation -- there was a debate about the creation of human beings. And it is true that on another Rosh Hashanah, a bare majority of rabbis surveyed agreed with Shammai that it would have been better if human beings had not been created. But, thank God, this heavenly body never has reached a similar conclusion.

"Remember, too, I implore you, what the disciples of Rabbi Hillel said in that discussion. Now that human beings have been created, let them examine their deeds closely, and always try to do better."

The Messiah walked towards the jury, stopped, and stared straight at them.

"Every year you have given them that chance to keep growing. Do so again this year. I hold out before you my vision, a better future, a time when I will go to them. Keep that hope alive as well."

From somewhere, an unseen source, not really on the Divine Throne but from everywhere at once, the word of God filled the court. It wasn't a voice, really, but a presence, a feeling inside every angel and being in the room. "May the jury confer."

The angels conferred. A moment later, Raphael, the messenger, rose. "I am sorry, Holy One. We tried. But the verdict, for now, is the same as last year. We are evenly divided."

Satan exploded. "Is there not one year that you can decide the result on Rosh Hashanah? Either way, just decide it early? Are there not some years when humanity is so good or, better yet, so evil... that we don't have to wait around until Yom Kippur for the verdict?”

The presence stirred again. Satan felt a rebuke. "You serve Me well as a prosecutor, Satan. But control your impatience." And then, directed once more at the entire room: "Convene again in ten days." And all was still.

And so, my friends, is the story every year. Our fate, the fate of our community, the fate of our world… is in the hands… of a hung jury. Our tradition tells us that the period in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is a precious reprieve. Aseret Y’mai HaTeshuvah. Ten Days of Repentance. Ten Days to Change our Lives. Ten Days to Save the World.

What will you do, during this space of time? How will you act, and what will you change? What will you do, so that on Yom Kippur you have a better chance, we have a better chance… the world has a better chance… for a better year to come?

Shanah Tovah,, and my best wishes for a happy, healthy year of 5771. We come together this night at a time fraught with expectations; the Middle East is on tenterhooks as tentative peace talks begin once again, tension builds around what to build at Ground Zero, and domestic discourse seems as vicious and mean-spirited as that of any time that I can recall.

My friends, we will tackle some of these topical concerns in the days to come, and more specifically on Yom Kippur. Tonight I have a simpler but I hope still helpful subject to explore. For me, this is a night of questions.

A young comic I know often begins her review of the sacred calendar with the following observation. “Why are they called the High Holy Days? Because,” she says, “people come together on Rosh Hashanah, look at each other and say: ‘Hi, how are you? What’s it been, a year?’”

You pass a person in the street, a casual acquaintance, even a total stranger with whom you make eye contact. “Hey, how ya’ doin’?” Is that really a question? Do you really want to answer? Do they really want to know?

Words often fail, in the face of life and death. You greet someone after a funeral, or you see them in the days or weeks after a loss. “How are you?” The words just come out, an instant instinct. There are so many wrong things to say at such a time, even from the most well-meaning among us. You know, we’ve been to funerals before, we’ve been with people when times are tough, you’d think we’d know better, but there just aren’t words that are just right. “How you doing?” Really, how are they supposed to be? What are they supposed to say? Does every encounter require the baring of the soul, the deepest intimacy of our lives?

Sometimes, though… Sometimes you do want to know. And sometimes. Sometimes you do want to share.

Sharing from the heart. And asking the deepest questions of our lives. We hope, perhaps, that it is part of what coming here is about. At least that’s the way it is supposed to be. A synagogue, a spiritual community can be the place you turn to for answers to what Garrison Keillor calls “life’s persistent questions.” Things like why do we work, and what are we working for? What are my priorities, and how can I best use the time I have? How we can uncover the sacred and special in the midst of the ordinary and everyday? What is our role and how we can act in our families and our friendships? Questions like how we balance the demands of a particular people against personal interests and inclinations and the values we want to express through a connection with humanity as a whole. Or what are we supposed to do to mend and heal a broken world? Or whether the vowel underneath the Hebrew letter zayinin the word zochreinu is a kametz katan, pronounced as an “o,” or just a regular kametz?

Are these, though, the kind of deep questions you ask, in the middle of a service? Is this what the Jews in the pews are thinking?

Perhaps not. A recent survey of synagogue-goers revealed three of the most prevalent questions people ask of themselves during Jewish worship. Those questions are: “What page are we on?” “How do I keep the kippah from falling off my kid’s head? And: “When will this be over?” Not sure if that last one meant just the sermon, or the whole service. Probably both.

My friend Rabbi Jonathan Hecht, one of the “cohort” of colleagues in the Rabbinical Leadership Initiative of the Shalom Hartman Institute with whom I studied this past summer reframed these questions for his own congregation: “What page are we on?” Rabbi Hecht observed, is not about a book, but about life. It is about location, and direction, and purpose. It is an existential question, not an informational one. “How do I keep that kippah on?” is not about what is in our hair but about those in our care, not about a clip for a cloth but about a chain of tradition. It is about continuity and change. It is not about behavior over the course of a couple of hours, but about choices made for the next couple of generations. Will this “take?” Will it “stick?” Will our children remain Jewish? And “when will this be over?” That, too, is not about the service that we are in, but the service that we give. It is not about someone else’s speech as it is about our own story. Mortality, not brevity, is the ultimate point of reference of what is, at its core, a profound and important question.

All of these questions, perhaps, can be rolled into one, which I found myself asking in an unexpected way this past summer. We were sweltering in a heat wave in Israel, it is true, but, so, too, were those who remained here, suffering from above average temperatures of your own. Signs of global warming, or a localized phenomenon from which it is impossible to generalize, who knows?

But for those in Washington and at Temple Shalom this summer, it wasn’t just the heat. There we were, in the middle of the Middle East, with our email alarms going off like crazy. I’ve never gotten so many Alert: Montgomery warnings in one month. We were perfectly fine in Israel. But here? Storms and Earthquakes and Fires and Floods! Even a hostage standoff last week, around the corner from here. In an almost welcome reversal, from a place where people who have not been are sometimes too afraid to travel, we called home repeatedly and asked the same question of those remaining here: “are you alright?”

A word, for a moment, about the fire in our own building. We owe our thanks to staff and strangers, to neighbors and friends. It was a neighbor, walking through our parking lot late on a Friday night, who heard something amiss, and called 9-11. This neighbor’s name is Brian McDonald, and while it is possible the fire would have remained in the one room, I still believe it is equally possible that his action saved the rest of our building. It was our shammas, our neighbor Lenny Raskin and his wife Marcia who greeted the fire trucks, let them in the building, and helped watch out for us, as he has so very many times before. It was Susan Zemsky who managed the details from the outset, getting here in record time, staying all night until everything was secure, and who continues to handle the enormously large load of paperwork and inquiries and dealing with insurance and restoration companies alike. Past presidents Marilyn Ripin and Andrea Mark were present for much of this time; our former Educator JoHanna Potts was on the scene for services the following morning and helped in the communication with the congregation. Carl Tretter, whose preferred service to our congregation I assume comes in the form of the beautiful music he offers during this sacred season rather than in dealing with crises, nevertheless has spent countless hours here with Susan and on his own from the moment of the first call. And Mike Gurevich, sitting with me at our farewell dinner at a restaurant in Jerusalem when we first got word of the fire, helped manage details of dealing with the building as he does so often and well.

It is still too early to say what the reconstruction of the Youth Lounge will look like. I am strongly recommending an approach that includes flexible use for the space, including something we need more of, and the footprint of the building often mitigates against, which is additional social space. Time will tell and we will move forward, but for now, just: thank you, to all those who rose to the occasion, who gave above and beyond, who worked day and night, who really showed what coming together in a crisis is all about.

As the new year dawns, though, it occurs to me that the question we asked so much this summer serve well as a theme for the turning of time, a framework with which to begin this High Holy Day season. It contains within it assumptions about purpose, and about legacy, and about the finitude of life.

“Are you alright?” Just that. It’s not a complicated analysis of Biblical texts, rabbinic reinterpretation, medieval mysticism, philosophy or commentary. It’s a simple question. “Are you alright?”

To begin to respond, the first thing is to figure out… what being “alright” means to us. What page are we on? What do we mean by the words? Is it a momentary thing, a matter of safety and security? Is it about health, our bodies, our physical being? Does it depend on circumstance, or on others? Or is this state of equilibrium something that should be… in our own hands?

Maybe you have… everything you want, or, at least, everything you need. If you are alright… are you aware of it? Are you grateful, and able to celebrate? What does it feel like? To have the presence, and the ability, to “count our blessings” is a great gift indeed.

Or do you know what it would look like, but you aren’t there yet? To paraphrase Rabbi Harold Kushner, is all you’ve ever wanted really enough?

If you are not alright, why not? A material lack, a corporeal deficiency… or a yearning of the soul? What stands in the way between how you are, and who you want to be? What would it take to get there? Is it possible… that it is in your hands?

If the reason you are not alright is external, if it is because of circumstances… then the hardest question I can ask you is this: do you really want to surrender that much control? Do you want to yield to the world the power to define how you are, and how you see yourself? Alternatively, if you are not alright, and it is out of your hands… what can help, and who?

My prayer for us all is that this is an easy question to answer, or at least one which is easy to act upon. This year may we all take steps in that direction, towards healing and hope, towards being better. And my friends, let us commit ourselves anew – in the face of this simple but still pressing personal query – let us promise… to be there for each other.

A night of questions. Where are we, and where are we going? Does what we do matter, and will it last? How long do we have? How are you, and, are you alright?

L’shanah Tovah.

My friends, these are sad and difficult words for me to write, and hard to stand and deliver. Sometimes people have more of an impact on your life than you do on theirs… and sometimes you don’t even realize how important a presence someone was… how much they influenced you…until, suddenly, there are no more dinners left to schedule, no more “see you this summer,” no more deep discussions and intense arguments or logistical arrangements to make. No taking him up… on Shabbat hospitality offered to my family… for just a few weeks from now.

With the death on May 4 of Rabbi David J. Forman, ten days shy of his 66th birthday, I have lost a friend and teacher, who touched my life at many moments, from high school to college, to graduate school and my early career, even and at a new level, in the past several years, and here, in Washington, at this congregation, as well as in Israel. Our Reform movement has lost an original and impassioned voice for justice and equality for all. Israel has lost one of its fiercest defenders and patriotic critics, all in the same man. Our world has lost a moral giant almost uniquely capable of balancing particularistic commitments with universal rights.

Ordained in 1972, David finished his studies with an already impressive record of standing up for liberty and equality and peace. He joined the Freedom Riders in 1964, at age 19, founded the Cincinnati Council for Soviet Jewry in 1970, and served as the vice chairman of Seminarians for Peace and an active member of Clergy and Laity Against the War in Vietnam in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. Upon becoming a rabbi, he also became an Israeli.

It is fitting, in a way, that it is Tenth Grade Graduation on this night when we reflect of the life and legacy of Rabbi Forman. For in the first telling of his career, the “day job” he held for much of his working life, he served full time and more on behalf of the youth of our movement. I first met him on my first trip to Israel, in 1977, when he was the director of NFTY in Israel, where he developed a unique educational approach to teaching layers of Jewish history by visiting the same sites multiple times, instead of cramming all of the history of a particular place into the heads of first time visitors just because that was when you happened to be there. I am not doing justice in this description to how powerfully effective this method of running Israel trips was, because there is so much more to say, but there was a time when NFTY brought more young people to Israel than all other non-Orthodox Israel youth trips combined, and David Forman was a large part of the reason for that.

I met Rabbi Forman again – and worked closely with him for the first time, during my junior year of college, which I spent at the Hebrew University. Then, he suggested to four of us that we move out of the dorms for spring semester, into an apartment, and serve as a kind of Reform bayit, a “house” available to provide home hospitality to a variety of different traveling Reform youth from all over the world.

Rabbi Forman also ran the Israeli office of what was then called the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, where he and a number of other transplanted Americans led the fight, internally, for religious pluralism in Israel. He served as Chairman of Interns for Peace, an Israeli NGO bringing young Jews from abroad into Israeli Arab villages, from 1984 to 1986. And in 1988 he founded Rabbis for Human Rights, the first and still only religious organization in Israel in which rabbis of all denominations of Judaism sit and work together, on behalf of a shared Jewish vision, the value of justice and equality and dignity for all. It has served as the single greatest countervailing voice against the rightward drift of religious extremism found in too much of the yeshiva worlds, a shining example for all the world to see that Judaism teaches ethics, compassion and fairness, rather than the narrow, violent and self-serving parochialism promoted by the settler rabbis and their expansionist followers.

Just listing David’s biography is impressive enough. But as so many have done, on websites and at his funeral in Israel – including his father-in-law, Rabbi Joshua Haberman, of Washington Hebrew Congregation – the best way to get a glimpse of who this man was is to share stories.

The first thing I want to share comes from a simple phrase, two-words dropped into the middle of a sentence. David Forman met with our synagogue trip to Israel the last two times we were there – as well as speaking here at least three times that I can recall. That first meeting, downstairs in a conference room at the Inbal Hotel, with a faint echo of the Boston accent of his youth, he used the phrase “we Israelis.” Speaking in American English, to a group of American Reform Jews… this phrase sent chills down my spine. Here is a man steeped in the struggles and moral conflicts of the country of his birth, and everything it went through in the 1960’s… but there was something… powerful… about the words. “We Israelis.” It is… the life choice he made. And one that he made with the full weight of all of its implications for those of us who remain behind. Never shy of controversy, one of David’s very first books was called Israel on Broadway: America Off Broadway. A mouthful of a title, a bit polemical, his thesis is nevertheless clear from the words themselves. Israel is “where it is at” in Jewish life. The Diaspora remains what it has been – dispersion, a diversion, a distraction. Certainly a deviation from the original plan and purpose of our people. A bit pedantic, a bit more heavy-handed than his later writing, and a bit unfair to Jewish creativity and energy in this country, still, in my view… he’s… not… all…wrong. At the very least I believe it is an obligation and a religious responsibility for American Jews to come face-to-face with this kind of red-meat Zionism… some in our midst have never really encountered it before. Ignoring such a viewpoint – not encountering it or dismissing it too quickly -- is to lose out on half of the Jewish conversation of the modern world, to protect our own assumptions at the expense of facing well-thought out and deeply important perspectives which are very different from our own. You can’t know what it means to be a Jew in the world today without at least stepping into the vantage point of what Israel means, to us and to Israelis themselves. Hearing such a view will challenge our identity, provoke some kind of reaction… and facing up to it will, I believe, only deepen our Jewish lives, wherever we choose to live. Two words, from a native-son of Boston. “We Israelis.”

On that visit Rabbi Forman shared with us two personal experiences in facing the conflict with the Arab world. One story was about an ambulance, and the other about a tank. The first took place when he was on reserve duty in the West Bank, the second while serving in the first war in Lebanon. On reserve duty, one of his jobs was to stop and inspect Palestinian ambulances. The job is almost indefensible, morally problematic, seemingly inhuman. Everyone knows that when ambulances are stopped, lives are put at risk. As I think I said before in sharing his story, babies get born in the wrong places, heart attack victims do not make it to the hospital in time, people in need die who should not have had to die.

And yet, Rabbi Forman said – a man who has repeatedly criticized and profoundly challenged his own Israeli government many times for its inhumane, immoral and simply undignified treatment of its minority population – and yet, on average one ambulance out of 20 – 5% or so of the total number he stopped to check – was smuggling bombs and explosives rather than patients. What do you do in such a world? How do you act against such an enemy? Condemnations of Israel come in based on criterion and expectations of just conduct in war and universal respect for symbols of medicine and neutrality that are simply exploited as weakness by a foe which does not share the same moral universe as the critics. Stopping ambulances at checkpoints is unspeakably horrible. And absolutely required.

In Lebanon, in the early 1980s. Ten tanks on a mission, with a rendezvous point at a river several kilometers ahead. Every single one of the tanks, in its forward motion, encountered Lebanese hiding behind trees or other obstacles to their line of vision. Every one. There is a choice here. You simply don’t know who these Lebanese are. They could be civilians, hiding for their lives. Or they could be armed combatants. That year, we had on our trip with us a recent graduate of West Point. Rabbi Forman asked him what the American rules of engagement were in such a situation. Whatever the answer for Americans might be, whatever you can imagine our country’s military doctrine to be – not one of the Israeli tanks opened fire. They all held their fire, to wait and see. Nine of the ten tanks made it to the rendezvous point. It is clear that opening fire would have made it ten out of ten. What, Rabbi Forman asked us… what do you say to the parents… of the soldiers in that tenth tank?

On our trip to Israel two years ago, Rabbi Forman gave us a tour of the security fence. He was to have done so again this summer. Remember – this is a man who has protested against the route of the fence, lamented its existence, made a point of meeting the Arab families whose villages the fence goes through. But his tour had us stop first at one of the bus stops which had been blown up, to see the memorial there – pictures and poems and candles and wreaths… memories for the young ones, who never made it home that day. And by the time we got to the vantage point over this ugly, horrible snaking monstrosity of a fence… listening to him speak with us… David’s words were so powerful, so nuanced yet so passionate, that our right-wing bus driver, and our left-wing tour guide found themselves nodding at the same time…and then looked at each other as if they had been tricked. Such was the tight-rope walked, the balancing act mastered by this man who spoke from a deep, deep place of personal commitment to the Jewish people, who put his life and his family’s lives on the line in the choices he made – and who also spoke to the very highest and holiest of Jewish values.

When I first received a copy of David Forman’s latest book, I read its title and first few pages with a sense of dread and foreboding. The book is called Over My Dead Body: Some Grave Questions for God. It is a quite well-done review of ultimate questions, using a frightening conceit – the premise is the author, picturing himself on his death bed, reviewing the kind of questions we might ask ourselves if we had time to reflect in the midst of such dire straights.

But for personal reasons, David and I have talked about his health in recent years, and I knew that this was no idle speculation. He had a liver disease – either primary biliary cirrhosis, or primary sclerosing cholangitis, conditions that are often mistaken for one another. I know others who have or even were thought to have the same condition. In theory and for some time it is manageable. Unless and until, that is, it is not. David Forman’s condition took a rapid and sudden turn for the worse, and recently I received a cancellation notice for his appearance here this coming November… he was headed, instead, to Dallas, to await a liver transplant. Finding the organ was not the issue, though. After his arrival in Dallas, his condition never stabilized enough to go ahead with the transplant.

The last chapter of his last book is called The End of the Beginning. He writes:

In Israel, at the funeral, Rabbi Haberman wrote of his son-in-law: “I would not be surprised to hear that David is already organizing a protest march up in heaven, against the injustice and unfairness of the prosperity of the wicked, and the suffering of the righteous.”

Many in our movement, I am proud to say, many in our Reform movement and in our world, have raised their voices against injustice and stood up to power on behalf of the weak, the oppressed, the disenfranchised and downtrodden who could not speak up for themselves. Many have raised their voices, but no voice did so as clearly and as well as this man.

For me, there is one image that comes to my mind when I think of Israel without David Forman. It is this: that we are left… with a thundering silence.

May his readers, his students, his colleagues and his friends… may all of us take up his call, in our own work in the world. And may we somehow hear his voice again, echoing out of the deepest places… in our own soul.

Zecher tzadik livracha – may his memory be a blessing.

Last night we hosted here in the Sanctuary one of the leading Biblical scholars in the world, a man who himself recently moved to Jerusalem. It was a remarkable evening, as James Kugel addressed the age-old question of "why are the holidays early this year?" and proved to some consternation that even things we think of as central features of Judaism - such as Rosh Hashanah as a new year and time of judgment - are probably post-Biblical innovations.

As Pesach approaches, with its famous Four Questions, Kugel is known, amongst other things, for outlining Four Assumptions we make, that take an ancient anthology of texts and turn them into what we know of now as the Bible. One of his "assumptions" is that the words written so long ago were meant to apply for all time. We don't actually know if this was true, in terms of original intent. In some cases, clearly it was not. But what makes a scroll into Scripture is the idea that its message resonates even now. It is the assumption of ongoing meaningful-ness that lifts these words into the realm of the sacred and the spiritual.

This night, in the midst of so many newspaper columns and talk-show hosts focusing on events in Israel, centering on the status of an ancient and still growing city, I will turn to two of my favorite Hasidic masters in the art of the psycho-spiritual reading of the Torah. That approach is one which asserts that the words in the weekly portions before us are not about "them," and "then," but about "us," and "now," that what makes the Torah holy is the tale it tells not of history, but of our story, of what goes on in our lives…and our souls.

We begin at the beginning of Leviticus, the first word, in fact, as we look not at content but context: the scribal tradition - the Masora - of writing a single letter in a slightly smaller way. The opening word of Leviticus - the one that gives the work its Hebrew name - is Vayikra. The word means "And He called," meaning, presumably, that God called to Moses. And, according to a Masoretic mandate passed down through the ages, the final letter of the word vayikra, the aleph at the end, is written in a smaller size than the other letters.

We are never given the reasons for these occasional scribal variations. We just inherit the tradition, and are left to wonder, and to come up with reasons of our own.

Here, then, enters the first of the two Chasidic commentaries I will turn to tonight. Rabbi Simcha Bunem of Przysucha writes that "even though Moses attained the highest level, he never became impressed with himself because of it. He regarded himself with a humble spirit. Like a person who stands on top of a high mountain, to whom it does not occur to magnify himself because of his high position… Moses knew that his exaltation was an account of God… Even though God summoned him and brought him up to the heights, despite all this he remained modest and humble - a small aleph."

What a lesson to take, from a simple change in the font!

Inspired by Simcha Bunem, I have my own take on the tiny aleph. It is this: that here we have, in the diminution of the aleph, a reminder of how thin is the difference between two words: vayikra and vayikar. Vayikra means "to be called," intentionally, directionally, for a purpose. Stretching the Hebrew a bit, vayikar would have meant "it occurred, it took place, it happened."

A world away and in different words, Robert Kaplan, in the most recent issue of Atlantic, makes much of a very similar distinction. Kaplan refers to Sir Isaiah Berlin's 1953 lecture on "Historical Inevitability," in which Berlin "condemns as immoral and cowardly the belief that vast impersonal forces such as geography, environment, and ethnic characteristics determine the direction of world politics." Berlin - and Kaplan - argue against the view that "nations" and "civilizations" are more concrete than the individuals who embody them, or that "tradition" and "history" are "wiser than we." Kaplan goes on to contrast a defeatist kind of determinism against an idealism based on individual moral responsibility. In our hands, Kaplan argues, is the power to shape history, to shake off the past, to take charge and change course and, I suppose, take hold of our own destiny.

Kaplan uses this approach to analyze United States military policy in the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, in ways that I find both interesting and not entirely convincing. The basic distinction, though, between action and reaction, responsibility and inevitability, between vayikra and vayikar I find of great use, especially as I look at the week that was in Washington, and Jerusalem. Two capital cities, if you will, the capital that is our American home, and the capital of our Jewish heart.

I speak, now, not just of the superficial but still serious question regarding the timing of the announcement of new housing construction in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in East Jerusalem: was this a deliberate message, or a badly-managed mistake? Was the timing choice or chance? Was it on purpose, or did it just happen?

No, while I want to know the answer to that, still, there is, I think, a deeper issue here. It is the larger question of how to balance the forces of history and ethnicity that propel us towards suspicion and confrontation, with the possibility to act, to choose, to decide to bring about a different kind of future.

Before leaving the world of realpolitik, before ascending to the heights of idealism and abstraction, though, I do have a few comments on the diplomatic contretemps itself. These comments may be somewhat more political than spiritual, but I believe the message - and the perspective - is important.

Remember, of course, that we have the power… we choose how to frame these issues. Few people would argue that the timing of the announcement was not very bad, that Israel's actions last week were unproductive, unwise and embarrassing to the United States. And I am not among those American Jews who think that every American criticism of the Israeli government means either hidden antisemitism or the end of the world as we know it.

But. As uneasy with the current Israeli government as I am, even understanding and partially sharing our own government's sense of frustration and anger about delays and diversions as I do, still there seems something disproportionate and distasteful in the response./p>

Three things to consider. First, that during the very same time period - either during or moments after Vice President Biden's visit, the Palestinian Authority, in their own current capital of Ramallah, dedicated a square in honor and unveiled a statue of Dalal Mughrabi. Who was she? She was a terrorist who, in 1978, captured a bus, tortured and terrorized her victims, and killed 38 Israelis in cold-blood. Men, women, children… Where is the American condemnation of this? If it's there, and I missed it, where's the press coverage? Because 1600 homes, whether you agree with the construction or not… homes can always be taken down. Territory can change hands, apartments are not permanent, borders can change. But 38 lives cannot be brought back. Where's the condemnation and the anger over that?

Secondly, also at the same time, over the course of the past week, the Hurva synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem was rededicated. It was, before 1948, the single most important functioning synagogue in Israel. It was simply destroyed by our current friends and allies, the Jordanians. No Jews were allowed into the Old City at all under Jordanian rule, and no Jewish places of worship were left untouched. Now the Hurva synagogue has been rebuilt, to the best replication that memory and scattered photographs can provide, and I am very much looking forward to seeing it this summer. But on the occasion of its rededication, Hamas and Fatah alike outdid one another in lies and fabrication, claiming that "the Jews" were now going to destroy the Al-Aksa mosque - which is half a kilometer away, expel all the Arabs from Jerusalem - even King Abdullah made that claim - and they called for a day of rage and a gathering at the Mosque, which in the past has served as a precursor to an intifadah. All of this is deliberate and cynical misuse of religious symbolism for political purposes; a low-level State Department communiqué urged calm, but no press reports had the Secretary of State berating President Abbas for 45 minutes on the phone.

Finally, a bit further away, over the past week or so in Nigeria, hundreds - maybe thousands - of Christians - again, men, women and children - were slaughtered by Muslim neighbors in the northern city of Kos. These were hundreds of actual and deliberate deaths, not accidental or tragic by-products of no-win defensive maneuvers. Where are the riots in Europe? Where are the protestors stopping traffic and chanting slogans and pounding on cars outside the Nigerian embassy? Where are the university boycotts, and deligitimization campaigns. On any given week there are things in the world far, far, far worse than the actions Israel takes. Even when we disagree with, are angered by or even disgusted by the actions of Israel's government, let's keep that in mind as well.

And yet…and yet. Are we to remain flotsam simply floating on the tide of history, buffeted by forces outside our control, and beyond our ability to affect? Yes, the accusations against us are wildly exaggerated, and yes, our enemies are real, and do not wish us well. But there are things we can do, and hope they will work. And if they do not work, at least we will know that we tried. We tried again and again, did everything we could, maybe we have to wait until such a utopian time comes when the rest of the world joins us, and says "dayyeinu."

And now the second Chasidic teaching, a lesson, from the S'fat Emet, Yehudah Aryeh Leib of Ger. The second verse of Leviticus reads: "Adam ki yakriv mikem korban L'Adonai; when a person from among you brings a sacrifice to God…." The S'fat Emet writes: "this means that a person needs to offer to God his or her innermost strength and desire. And this is the meaning of the teaching in Pirkei Avot: 'Make your will nothing in the presence of God's will.' It is as if your own will becomes the sacrifice. And somehow, through this offering, you are able to bring all your deeds close to God. Now we understand the meaning of 'from among you,' as implying that this is all accomplished by means of submerging yourself into the larger totality of the Jewish people."

The sacrifice… is one of our will, and our desire. It is to a larger cause, the cause of our people.

But what could be more in service of the totality of the Jewish people… than our survival as a people? [And Israel's survival as a Jewish state depends on a political solution to this conflict.] And what could be a larger sacrifice… than a compromise even in the place where sacrifices once were offered? A surrender about something so central to Judaism, no. But a creative compromise whose provisions have yet to be imagined, yes.

My friends, these are words I never thought I would say. No Israeli government has yet said them. I might be wrong; the stakes are high; I reserve the right to change my mind about what I am about to say. But when even Ariel Sharon once said that the time has come to share this land, somehow, some way, something is going to have to be done… to share part of Jerusalem as well.

I don't want to see that happen. I don't know how it would be possible. God forbid the city is ever divided again as once it was. [This neighborhood in question, undoubtedly, will remain part of Israel even after any accord is reached. It should not be considered nor treated as a settlement.] And no solution is even remotely possible without continued full access to all holy sites by members of all and any faith - a situation that has happened only under Israeli rule, never under any other power.

But someone needs to say the words out loud, unpleasant as it may be. There is no solution to this conflict… without a compromise of some sort, in some part of Jerusalem.

Other things are complete non-starters. Palestinian refugees returning to their homes inside Israel is simply not happening, and anyway, why should Israel have to host so many Arab refugees… while a future Palestine expects to have no Jews at all inside its borders?

And other issues can be resolved. Water sharing can be arranged, and desalinization will someday provide a different kind of solution anyway. Borders can be adjusted; clearly some of the settlements will be kept, even as some other land is given away in compensation.

But Jerusalem… We can't just wait, work everything else out, and talk about Jerusalem last, hoping that peace and neighborly feelings will have some magical momentum of their own. That will just undo any other progress that is made.

The problem with those apartments? It's not just a question of timing. Even though the Palestinians do things that are far worse, and they are not called on the carpet for them, still, right now, if there is any chance of negotiation… right now, at this moment, in this atmosphere they should not be built at all.

I consider Jerusalem…a part of my heart and my soul. I have lived there for two years. I will be travelling there, now, seven times in the next three years. When I come back to the city after an absence I feel… I truly feel as if I am coming home.

What is the sacrifice we will have to make, that will bring us closer? Which piece of land will it take, to bring about a land of peace?

Is it possible? Can we do it? Can we make that choice? Or is it, simply… too much to ask? Beyond dayyeinu. Will we just muddle on, and wait to see, what history brings, and what happens not by us, but to us?

In just a little over a week, we gather at our tables for a Passover Seder. There, at the end, past the wine stains and bleating goat, past Chad Gadya and Adir Hu, is the line we return to, year after year: "L'shanah Ha'Ba'ah B'iyerushalayim. Next year in Jerusalem."

What kind of year will it be? To some degree - and more, perhaps, than we realize most of the time - to some degree that is in our hands, and up to us.

There is but the smallest difference, between acting with purpose, and being acted upon. When we remember that, we always have a choice, it is only, then we discover that not everything in our lives is left to chance.

The difference is razor-thin. The aleph is silent and small. But it makes… all the difference in the world.

Shabbat Shalom

The year is 2017. The date is January 20. A late entry into the recent presidential race caught the nation by surprise; the new occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is not the first woman, nor the first Alaskan, nor the first Indian-American, but the first American Jew to hold that position. The inauguration proceeds pretty much according to past pattern and expectation, except that the transition team is busy installing… extra sets of dishes in the White House kitchen.

But there, on the reviewing stands, behind the newly-elected president, sits a woman in a fashionable hat. The mother of the president, in a seat of honor, she taps the shoulders of the dignified and neatly-uniformed man next to her, who turns out to be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Do you see that man putting his hand in the air?" she says, pointing towards her son. The chairman gives her a puzzled look, and nods. "Well," she says proudly… "his sister is a doctor!"

My friends, with all the Jewish physicians in the world, with all the penchant for the profession so prominently displayed in the hopes and dreams of so many Jewish parents, it might come as a surprise to learn that the mandate to heal, the impulse to treat symptoms and cure sickness and fight disease… was actually the source of theological controversy at one point in Jewish history.

Now, you might have heard about some religious groups who still to this day believe that medical intervention contravenes the will of God. Our struggle with the same issue was resolved early in our history at least. But there was a time when we faced the same issue.

It is, I suppose, a question that was bound to come up. For if God is the cause of all events, according to classical theology, if a Supreme Being is in charge and in control and therefore the source of sickness, the cause and the reason why anyone falls ill in the first place — on what basis do we act against this? Chutzpah! Who are we, to change what God has wrought?

Let me state clearly, then, as I have throughout these High Holy Days and through all of my teaching, all of my career, that I do not share the theology behind the question, that I do not, personally, believe that God micromanages the universe, that God is the cause of every leaf that falls, every wind that stirs, every bacterium that is inhaled. My view, my vision of God is very different than that. But if I did share the classical view of God as responsible for health and sickness alike, for each one of us, I would have to admit, wondering whether we have the right to heal… would be a pretty good question.

We know, of course, that there is such a right in Jewish tradition. It is even a mitzvah. A commandment. An obligation. But, if so: what is the foundation of the commandment.

One basis for the obligation to heal comes to us from a seemingly unrelated aspect of Jewish law. The rabbis of the Talmud root the commandment in the verse from Leviticus which we will read later today, in the afternoon service: "lo ta'amod al dam rayecha; you shall not stand idly by as your neighbor bleeds."

Another answer came from Nachmanides, the Ramban, in the 14th century, who saw medical treatment as a simple and specific application of the general rule, which we will also hear this afternoon: "v'ahavta l'rayecha kamocha; you shall love your neighbor as yourself."

But neither of these approaches solves the theological problem: if God caused the illness in the first place, by what right do we intervene?

And so it is left to the great philosopher Maimonides, the Rambam, himself a physician, to comment on a verse in Deuteronomy, and read into it a philosophical basis for the instinctive, the humane impulse we display when we reach out, to help and to heal. The verse deals with…the restoration of property: "Lo tireh et shor achicha o et sayo nidachim, v'hitalamta meihem… hasheiv tashiveim l'achiycha. You shall not see your neighbor's ox or sheep wandering around lost, and ignore it; you shall surely return it to your neighbor. V'im lo karov achiycha eilecha… And if your neighbor does not live nearby…v'lo y'da'to…or you do not know who the owner is… va'asafto el toch beitecha, v'haya imach ad d'rosh achiycha oto… you shall gather it in to your household, and it shall remain with you until your neighbor inquires after it… v'hasheivoto lo… and you shall restore it to him."

Restoring health… is analogous… to returning lost property! We are even commanded… to go out of our way, to bear expense, to make an effort to do so.

We are obligated to do whatever we can… to return things to how they were. To make it the way it was. Restoration. Reparation. Return.

And the language at the heart of the commandment: hashev tashiveim. Hasheivoto lo… The same root, the same word… as the central task of this season. Shuv! Teshuvah. Response. Repent. Return. Restore.

We are, as you are all aware, in the midst of a heated debate about Health Care reform in this country. Even before his remarks to the Joint Session of Congress, President Obama reached out to religious leaders. I was among almost a thousand rabbis of all movements of Judaism to participate in a late-August conference call, solely on the topic of Health Care. His request to us: to remember… that when a politician calls on a nation to sacrifice for a greater good, or a communal need, critics and cynics swarm and question every motive, every comment. But for religious leaders: to point out a moral path, a higher call, to help us be better attuned to the presence of pain, the pull of need… that is our job. That is what we are here for. That is what we are supposed to do.

I was reminded, then, of a great lesson: it is not a matter of choosing between the physical and the spiritual. It is not a matter of needing to defend why we would tackle a seemingly secular subject on this seriously sacred occasion. Rabbi Israel Salanter, the founder of the Musar Movement, the ethical emphasis that emerged as a corrective to overly ritual punctiliousness in the yeshivah world of Eastern Europe in the 19th century… Rabbi Salanter taught: the physical needs of others… are my our spiritual needs.

Health Care is a moral issue, and a spiritual one. The fact that we are the only advanced industrialized nation without a sufficiently shared sense of the common good is an outright ethical failure on our part. Fixing this broken system is indeed a Jewish obligation. Caring for the needs of those in the society in which we live, it is part of who are are, what we are about. Jewish tradition demands and commands: it mandates our involvement, with the motive, with the goal… of returning to health and strength… every person who can be helped.

The website jewsforhealthcarereform.org a project of our Reform movement's Religious Action Center, is a good starting place for involvement; attending our Tikkun Olam Forum this afternoon, which will address health care among other topics, is another one.

What the tradition does not do, however, what it cannot do… is tell us which particular plan or what specific policy is the best way of achieving the more general goal. If your motive is to maximize the effectiveness of health care and work towards the best possible system for the greatest number of people, then you are fulfilling the mitzvah, the commandment of our tradition. If your goal is to care for the community, then arguments about the best method of meeting this goal are not only appropriate… they are disputes "l'shem shamayim, for the sake of heaven." God does not endorse one plan over another, nor need we invoke God to tell us the distance between Montana and Maine [just to take two states totally at random, without any connection to the Senators that come from there].

God calls us to care, and to act… to return and restore… to make things the way they were as best we can for those we live with… and to work out the details amongst ourselves.

Putting things back the way they were. But, with Thomas Wolfe, it's a complicated business. For, indeed, is it possible? Can we ever go home again?

The tradition begins by speaking about property. About things. And so I open, now, with a materialistic tale to tell. Two Septembers ago my family did something which changed our lives. We purchased a Prius. I was so happy with the car. It handled well, it looked kind of cute, it got 45 miles a gallon! You can go all the way to New York on a single tank of gas!

And then, when it was just eight days old, it was in an accident. Its very own automotive circumcision. It wasn't our fault, no one was hurt, it's just an object, and I should have focused on all of those things right away. But on this day of inner scrutiny and utter honesty I confess that I did not react all that well. Like the red balloon from my childhood I mentioned last night, and with just as much maturity, I suppose, I had become attached to a thing, and projected more emotion onto it than I had realized.

And so off we went, to find a friendly, family body shop. To restore, to repair, to put it back together. "As good as new," the saying goes.

But it's not. The knowledge of the damage lingered, for a time, even when invisible on the surface.

On an object, I got over it.

But how much the more is it true… when the damage done is in us. Invisible, unseen, below the surface… but present nonetheless. With all the hurt, the pain, the sorrow we experience. And with all the damage we do, to the other people in our lives.

What is visible? And what damage do we never notice, because it happens slowly, and over time?

Like cars, the universe itself experiences a state of entropy. It diminishes, it suffers, it changes from its pristine state with erosion over the eons. My own children, seeing those scratches two years ago, came up with the following bit of wisdom: if this had happened bit by bit it would not have been so upsetting. Cars and bodies and hearts alike have scrapes and bumps and bruises. It's just the way they are.

Still we long for the way things used to be. What is that all about? There was a tee-shirt I saw once, long ago. "Nostalgia," the tee-shirt read, "isn't what it used to be."

Even covering up the pain is not enough.

Sometimes we cannot go back at all. And we have to move on. For better, or for worse.

Loss of innocence. Loss of youth. Ultimately, the loss of a loved one. There are things we cannot repair. Things we cannot return. Ways in which we cannot go back, to the way it was at all.

Two images, one of sadness, the other of hope.

During Yom Kippur, later this afternoon, we will observe the tradition of Yizkor. It is a time of reflection, recollection, remembrance. There are those who shaped us, brought us into this world and brought us up in it, who gave of themselves and are no more. There are those who came into our lives, shining lights, fiery flames, passionate loves or enduring friendships, gone, gone, beyond the touch… beyond repair, beyond our reach… living still only in the minds and hearts of those around them. There is the loss that cannot be brought back. We look backwards but must, in the end, look away, lest we, too, dissolve into the pillar of tears. We cannot bring them back. We just… can't… fix… it all.

And yet, and yet. Another image, from another occasion.

The foot comes down, the people cheer, the couple kiss.

And on the floor is a shattered glass that can never be put back the way it was Never repaired. Never restored. Never returned.

A symbol, to me, not of its traditional meaning, but of the fact that, no matter what happens, the couple standing under the chuppah, cannot go back to being the people they were, before they walked down that aisle. They cannot go back. Their home lies ahead. They face the future.

And the assembled guests join in hope and prayer…

That the best is yet to be.

Early last month, somewhere in the suburbs of Tel Aviv, crowds gathered to watch what I am told was quite a spectacle. Madonna, in person - I'm sorry, maybe we should call her by her "other name," "Esther" - Madonna performed a "Kabbalistic concert."

Don't ask. Really, I don't know what a "Kabbalistic concert" is. Nor do I see any benefit in red strings, or in drinking Kabbalah water.

What I do know, though, is that one of the concepts most important to Reform Jews, which we say we care the most about… has its roots in the Kabbalah, in the Jewish mystical tradition. It is the notion of… Tikkun Olam. Healing the universe. Mending, restoring… repairing the world.

Here, then, is the Kabbalistic view of creation, the tradition that gives us the concept we value so much.

In the beginning God was everything, and everything was God. Oneness and unity permeated the whole, so that there was no separation, no distinction or definition, no-thingness at all.

But there was no room for any "thing" else. Nothing separate or apart. Nothing that stood on its own.

And so, to make room for everything that is, God engaged in a tzimtzum. [That's not the stuff you eat in traditional Ashkenazic homes on Shabbat. That's tzimmis. Totally different.] Tzimtzum. The word means "withdrawal." Contractions, to give birth to the universe.

Into the emptiness flowed God's light, to create the material world. But the light was so intense, so powerful that, even in its diluted form, it could not be held, in the vessels meant to contain it.

So the vessels shattered, and the light of the divine energy was trapped, inside shards, husks, remnants of the vessels which, now, represent hardness and harshness, evil and resistance to God.

The light yearns to break free, to return to its source. The cosmos itself aches in pain at its broken state.

So what's a Jew to do? The role, the task, the very purpose of our being, according to this mystical approach… is to be partners with God, in fixing what went wrong. In healing the world.

Originally this had very little to do with social justice, as we understand it now. In its original context, the task of the Jew was clear and vital. Every time a Jew performs a mitzvah — any mitzvah, ethical or ritual, every time a Jew lights candles on Friday night, keeps kosher, honors parents… every time a mitzvah is performed, one of the k'lipot, the shards, the husks breaks apart, and a spark of the divine is reunited with its source.

But every time a Jew commits an averah, a sin, every piece of pork, every Shabbat unmarked and unobserved…then another spark is trapped, another piece of God's light is cut off from its journey home.

My friends, we don't need to take the imagery literally - nor do we have to accept an exclusively Orthodox definition of what is a mitzvah and what is an averah — to realize what a powerful spiritual model Tikkun Olam can be. Even without red strings and incantations, we can see our role as helping to heal the world. To salve the hurt, and ease the pain. Here we hear, from this we know that God weeps with the crying child, God aches with the pangs of the hungry, God yearns with the wandering and homeless and helpless in our midst..

Our task, our role, our holy calling: to return and repair and restore. To set the light free, and let it seek its source. To bring about healing, and wholeness, and love.

Tikkun Olam. We are all physicians. It is up to each one of us, to repair the world, to bring it— backwards or forwards - not just to the way it was. But the way it should be.

It is 1964. I am three years old. One of my earliest memories is of a long drive on a hot day, to a crowded and exciting place far away.

I only remember a few things from the 1964 World's Fair, but what I can recall is as clear as if it happened yesterday. Some unseen mechanism allowed my parents to place me behind the wheel of our rusty Rambler station wagon, let me drive the car, get a feel for being "in control." "It's A Small World" made such an impression that years later I burst into tears of nostalgic delight on seeing it again, and hearing that insipid song, on visiting Disney Land.

And I remember one big red balloon my parents gave me. I loved that balloon. It was beautiful. It was the best balloon in the world.

But then, on the ride home, as my mother was asleep in the front seat, with the window open, my balloon was whipped in the wind.. and bobbed and bounced right on out that open window.

I was inconsolable. I cried the whole ride home. For years, when I was angry with my mother, I would bring up the balloon I loved, that she let get away.

Since my mother is gone, now, and my father is here with us tonight, it's probably appropriate to mention that I got over the balloon incident. But I remember the feeling. It was hope and wonder and delight... followed by a crushing sense of loss and disappointment.

What I could not have known as a toddler was that on that trip, my parents, and others, were remembering the Flushing Meadow of their own past. For them, in that place, just over the edge of time, still stood the fair of their youth.

The 1939 World's Fair. I'm told that it is very hard for anyone who was not there to appreciate just how wondrous it really was. We take for granted, now, we actually expect the ongoing, ever-changing marvels of technology, the cathedrals of capitalism where products are enshrined and the future worshiped with a fervor once reserved for the past. Epcott and MGM, Universal and Disney are there whenever we want. So one of the first of such fairs, the one Time magazine called "the greatest show of all time" is hard to imagine.

But a book by David Gelertner, called 1939, paints us a picture. The Fair's theme was "Building the World of Tomorrow." The scent of hot dogs and auto exhaust mingled in the air; the Trylon and Perisphere were the focus of every eye as people waited in line for the Futurama, built of floating chairs inside the General Motors building. An ingenious sound system delivered a confidence-filled narration of a tour of the envisioned America... of 1960. So many things were there... television -- big future expected for that one! Exotic opportunities -- the chance to make a long distance call! Color photos. A robot at the Westinghouse building. A fax machine transmitted data... at 18 minutes a page. Florescent lighting. FM radio. And cars. Cars and highways, the superhighways and supersonic jets of the future, envisioned much as they did develop, the cloverleafs and multi-lanes and rapid roads that were to criss-cross and connect all of America. At the end, the narrator again: "All eyes to the future."

It was a future bright with promise, brimming with excitement: the Depression over; gathering clouds across the sea portents of a storm too far away to feel. The vision was purely utopian: transportation and communication would wrap the world in a web of connection, prosperity would return; the future was simply, plainly good.

In that brief and narrow gap of time, the fair filled those who saw it with luminous optimism, with a sense of power and potential and rightness in the world. With the psalmist, "hayinnu k'cholmim, we were like ones in a dream."

And then the dream shattered, the spell was broken. We awoke to discover that nightmares walked in the light of day. And the world was changed forever.

The Fair and the War are long past, now. Seventy years ago. But the pattern repeats itself anew. Indeed, all our lives are like this: flashes of wonder, of child-like delight, of connection and concentration and focus in which everything seems to flow together, and everything is right with the world. And then it is gone. Over. We are alone and in pain. Down from the mountain. Disappointed. Crushed by the weight of the world.

Because we know what that first feeling is like, we yearn for the mountain again. Because we know what we are missing, we feel broken and want to be healed.

We move in a cycle of satisfaction and shattering, and struggle to string the pieces back together, to recapture the feelings we once had. Much of the time... maybe even most of the time... we spend wondering how to get there from here?

To return to our dreams, to deal with disappointment, to rekindle that life-flame we once knew. How do we get there from here? First: by being open to hope.

Personally, I am glad to be here with you on this Yom Kippur eve. At some level, I am always happy... to get past Rosh Hashanah.

For us, it was fifteen years ago, on the day before Rosh Hashanah, when Julie had her first miscarriage. The second came the following summer. We are so very lucky, then, with the children who came a few years after that. So blessed. They are miracles still, a wonder beyond words.

Those particular pains and struggles are so far behind us now it is often hard to remember. We forget, in the midst of juggling schedules, and trying to deal with Washington traffic. And I know, of course, that the yearning, the wanting, the incompleteness we felt is minor compared to what others go through. Still, I recall: infertility is a mourning that knows no name, has no outlet. It is a sadness given no sanction in our tradition--we don't say Kaddish, there are no ceremonies, no rituals, no ways to mark the loss.

These memories are triggered for me not just by the timing… but by the content of the holiday itself. It's that Haftarah portion from last week. Do you remember? Hannah's poignant plea for children, the sheer power of her pain? "As she was praying before the Eternal, Eli watched her mouth. Now Hannah was praying in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice could not be heard. So Eli thought she was drunk. And Hannah wept..." Hannah=s tears tear at my heart, and it all comes back. All the anxiety, the wanting and waiting, the wondering what would go right in the world.

And yet, and yet... there is more in these portions than just pain. There is a happy ending, eventually. There is hope here as well.

Hope. I am aware that if we were not living now, at this time, in this era, we might not have been able to have children of our own. New technology, treatments, surgical techniques open up new possibilities. Not everyone even needs the most advanced technology. But so many have benefited from the very cutting edge of this field. And friends of ours, and certainly friends of yours, have received a blessing beyond description, through the gift of adoption.

For us, in the early 90's, the struggle was for children. For others, it was for life itself. I think of those who are here today... only because of the insights and breakthroughs of modern medicine: every infection cured by antibiotics, every child on insulin, every airport security gate that beeps from a pacemaker. Every AIDS patient who greets a new dawn because of a cocktail of treatments unavailable just a couple of years ago. With them, I know a hint of hope. With you, I know what it is like to be both optimistic and sad.

Why sad? This kind of hope is real. But it is result-oriented. It is external. It is an accident of time. The sadness is for others, for those who did not live now, and did not live. Mozart, we just learned, apparently passed away… from strep throat. [I heard this on NPR, I think, so it must be true.] All of us know people who died of something totally treatable today. They did not deserve their fate. I can't believe that it's part of some Master Plan. No, it is an accident that that was then, and this is now.

But there is a deeper kind of hope as well. It is, as my friend and colleague Rabbi Don Rossoff puts it, not the hope that is for us, but the hope that is in us. It is the kind of hope that leads us to ask, not "why me?" but "what now?"

The healing we seek will not always mean a cure. Sometimes, yes, and we wish for that, of course. But in English, the word "heal" is related to the word "whole." And in Hebrew, the word "shleymah, wholeness," is related to the word "shalom." Part of healing is to be whole. To feel complete. To be at peace.

To recapture that feeling we once had, we don't have to have everything we want. One can live in the lap of luxury and feel broken; one can live with pain and still feel whole.

What we hope for is the acceptance of ourselves and others. Which is, after all, the central struggle in our lives. Whether we are sick or not.

There is something else that I learn from the Scriptural selections for these days. It is that my problems are shared. They are even, almost, common. We are all in it together.

How do we get there from here? The second step: be open to each other.

Long-suffering sports fans know…. I wrote these words long before this afternoon… [*when the Redskins just lost to the Lions, giving Detroit its first win in 20-games]… Long suffering sports fans know the phenomenon, when games get more crowded as a team finally begins to win. Where were they all before, they wonder, all these fair-weather friends? Easy to be there, on sunny days. Harder, though, to be open and present… when times are tough.

A friend is in the hospital. But he is sure to be tired. She needs rest. You don't know what to say. You don't know what to do.

Look, there is such a thing as too much. Mendel went to visit his friend Hershel, and stayed with him for three hours. To which the tired patient responded, on the visitor's eventual departure: "Mendel," Hershel said, "no matter how sick I am when you come to see me, I always feel better when you leave."

And no one is perfect about doing this. I know that I am not. It's harder, now, than ever: worries of co-infection, truncated hospital stays, distances too great to drive. But assuming we are talking about patients in a hospital, the danger of being overtaxed is far less than the danger of not being paid attention to at all. What's the most important thing we can do? Go. Be There. And try to touch your friend. Not with words. With your hand.

I'm not talking about the laying on of hands here. And in this era of swine flu and multi-resistant staph infections, a world in which the French question the double-cheek kiss, where germs are found even in the sand on ocean beaches, who knows what will become of the basic instinct to reach out, and touch one another. We carry on, perhaps, but with Purell in the pocket, hand wipes at every turn.

But let us remember that a touch is not merely a matter of hygiene, nor an optional add-on to human interaction. There is something deep and profound in a physical approach to healing. There is power in a touch, a bond, a "being-with," the simple connection of caring between human beings.

Martin Buber said that all real life was meeting, the true encounter of one soul with another. Hard to describe but you know, you know it when it happens. Robert Heinlein made up a word for it: he called it grokking another person. In those rare moments when you feel understood and embraced and accepted for who you are… what a healing moment that can be.

How can we get there from here? Finally, by being open to God.

Like you, I've heard stories of experiments done in recent years, places in which certain patients had people pray for them, and others did not. The claim was that those who had people praying for them did better than those who did not - whether the patients knew people were praying for them or not!

Like you, I have heard of such studies. And like many of you, I am skeptical. I don't know. I just don't know that God works that way.

But I do know that when we say the Shema with people in a hospital room, people cry. Not always, but often. More often than not.

And I know that those are good tears.

Reform Judaism was founded on principles of strict rationality, and so we banished from our services all petitionary prayers calling for God's intervention in the course of natural events, anything that might smack of the overly supernatural. And yet, those prayers are back now, and I know that the Mishebeirach, the traditional words set to music, first by Debbie Friedman and now, as well, by our own Cantor Lisa Levine, somehow these words, this prayer, is the single most powerful change in the service we have made in recent years.

One night a woman had a dream. She dreamed she was walking along the beach with God. Across the sky flashed scenes from her life. For each scene she noticed two sets of footprints in the sand. One belonged to her and the other to God. Then the most recent scene of her life flashed before her. She looked back more carefully, and noticed that many times along the path of her life, there was only one set of footprints, not two.. And she noticed that this happened at the very lowest and saddest times of her life.

This really bothered her, and she questioned God. "God, you said that you would walk all the way with me. I don't understand why, when I needed you the most, you would leave me."

God replied: "My child! I love you and would never leave you. When you see only one set of footprints, it is then... it is then that I carried you on my shoulders."

How we get there from here? Healing is an expanding balloon of hope. It is the hope we find in ourselves, the hope we bring to each other, and the hope we find in the One who gives... not life, but the potential of life and the possibility of meaning. And love.

Life is not a fair. Too often, life is not fair at all.

The great Jewish sage William Shatner called the future "the undiscovered country." And long ago, the matriarch Sarah, on hearing the promise of news she had wanted... Sarah laughed. I am not sure why Sarah laughed. But I know that that laugh is linked to the core of her being, that it comes from that feeling she had known many years ago, and had thought was lost forever.

This night, this season, each one of us enters this sanctuary with a different need. May we find some of what we seek in this place. And here, alone and with each other, alone and with God, may we come to know healing. And wholeness. And peace.

L'shanah Tovah.

It was the question you either dreaded or dreamed of, on the first day back at school. Do you remember that annual autumnal exercise of recounting what you did during summer vacation? Where'd you go, what'd you see, who were you with? Chore or cherished memory to share the fading remnants of a freedom fast slipping away, nevertheless it seems that so many of the insights of fall, indeed, of this High Holy Day season begin with the words "this past summer." Perhaps it is because getting away, or changing the flow of the day, offers not only different experiences, but also altered reflections on the reality of our most-of-the-time lives. That time away from the everyday may be brief and short in length, but it is often deep, and long in intensity.

This past summer, we had one wonderfully weird evening in Wellfleet. I'm not sure I can relate this well without naming names, but it struck me so powerfully that I'm going to try. Sitting for dinner at the summer home of a friend of ours, a member of this congregation with whose permission I tell this story, we were reflecting on events back home, and he mentioned someone we both knew. "I haven't been in touch with him lately," I replied, but I mentioned someone else, a man who has impressed me, and I knew had worked closely with our friend. I may have said I'd be happy to get to know him better, or something like that, and our host raised his eyebrow, smiled, and said: "How about in a half hour? He's getting a few people together just down the road."

So off we go, to a bonfire on a beach, and we find this man I had met maybe two or three times before. In addition to other positions, he teaches at a local law school, the one my wife attended. So when Julie met him they spoke about the school, its expanded facilities, its current conditions. Julie admitted that she didn't know many of the new people, but shared one name, that of her favorite professor. The man on the beach smiles and says: "Don't move. Stay right here. She'll be here in ten minutes."

My friends, I'm well aware that this may be one of those you-had-to-be-there moments. I'm not sure I can do justice, here and now, to the astonishment I felt that night. It's not as if we mentioned dozens of people in conversation. No, two names. That was it. Just two names came out of our lips. Neither of whom we had any clue was anywhere within 500 miles of where we were that night. And both… both of them materialize in person, within a matter of minutes.

Had we caught on quickly enough, had we recognized the magic moment for what it was, we both would have said "Barack Obama!" Alas, the moment passed. Turns out he was a few miles down the road, and a ferry ride away, a few days later.

The British author Doris Lessing once wrote: "coincidences are God's way of remaining anonymous."

I don't… I don't know what to make of a night like that. I don't necessarily believe that it was somehow all meant to be in a pre-planned, predetermined way. Unromantic as this may sound, and with apologies to my life-partner, my wife, who is here, I am what you might call a b'shert-skeptic, "b'shert" being the Yiddish term for "it was meant to be" and often used to refer to your life-partner.

But maybe there is a kind of karma out there, even if it was not somehow all set up in advance. There are moments that just feel meaningful, times when we take the random pearls and raw oysters of experience, and string them into beads of beauty. We craft coherence out of the "stuff" of life.

If so, what is real, and what is artifice? What is natural, and what the byproduct or dreamt-up offspring of the children of the mind? Where, indeed, is the boundary between "image" and "is"?

Years ago Julie and I had a subscription series of what we thought were fantastic seats to the Miami Ballet. They were in the second row. Close up. A great view.

Too good, as it turned out. We could see the stage, and we could see the lights. And we could see the dancers sweat. A reminder, at a moment when the suspension of disbelief would have probably been preferable: those are real people, right there in front of us.

Real people, behind the roles we play, the masks we wear. Do you remember watching a movie or a play, the first time you realized that the actors were real, with their own lives? Or that an actor and actress kissing each other on stage or screen were often married… but not to each other.

Maybe our modern technology pushes the question even further. I remember, growing up, my fascination with Dungeons and Dragons, a role-playing game in which each participant took on a character with strengths, weaknesses and individual attributes. Or Zork, the first on-line interactive world, which opens with the information that "You are standing in an open field, west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here." Sitting at a keyboard, you typed in instructions, from opening the mailbox and reading its contents, to taking up a sword or a clove of garlic, and exploring the caves and streams, the glittering treasures and glowering monsters which lie below the house. [I never knew what to do with the clove of garlic. I ate it once, and got the message back: "You now have bad breath."]

Think about Fantasy Football. You get to create your own team, see how an entirely hypothetical roster does, based on statistical analyses alone. I heard… I even heard not to long ago that someone had put together an all Jewish fantasy major league baseball team. And that, well, it wasn't in last place. I think it ran well ahead of the Nationals, in any event.

Now the interaction between reality and fantasy grows thinner still. The first time I heard of "Second Life" I thought it was some born-again fundamentalist group. I was wrong. It's not that at all. It is an incredibly complex online world, inhabited by avatars of your own invention, which can own land, buy clothes, hear concerts, hold meetings, listen to university classes, and interact with each other. There are tours of real museums, clubs for a variety of interests, even a model of the Western Wall, and a functioning synagogue or two in what only appears at first glance to be an imaginary experience. I understand that Second Life may be passé already, but I… frankly I just heard of it for the first time fairly recently. I heard of it when I read in a Jewish magazine that some ultra-Orthodox Jews are creating scantily clad avatars and doing all kinds of things in Second Life between their characters and cooperative co-inhabitants of this alternate time-tempting soul-draining society, things which would be, well… well beyond the bounds of modesty, and not within the norms of halacha, of Jewish law, in the real world.

So I ask the obvious question: can you be held accountable, for something your alter-ego does? Where are the boundaries of play, and fantasy, and art? Is it not, somehow, really you lurking there, whatever the outward mask, as long as you are pulling the strings, typing the keys, controlling the movement, thinking the thoughts? Is all this exploration a harmless outlet for human foibles and anti-social tendencies, or a more real-than reality, true-to-who-you-are no-one watching window on the soul?

Imagine, though, and perhaps more to the point: if we can reinvent and project an image of ourselves so profoundly out into the metaverse, the cyberspace around us… if we can conjure up a character through the force of will and the power of the mind, what might we do within ourselves? If we can do this, what else might we do?

Think about it. With such creative power, such a flair for crafting and creating meaning… with a persona open before us to shape like clay in a potter's hands… can we not use this power of reinvention… as a new chance, and a fresh start, in our actual day to day lives? Can we not bring such energy and focus to the time we spend in what was recently called the "reality-based community?"

A story. A United States Army Chaplain during the Vietnam War reached a soldier just before the young man died on the battlefield. It was evident from the wounds that the man did not have much time left. As he held the man's hand, the chaplain tried to console the soldier as best he could. "Son," he said, "is there anything I can do for you?" "Not really," the wounded soldier replied. "Sir, what I need now is someone who can undo some things for me."

Young or old, wounded or whole, the moment comes when we stand before the mirror. What do we see, and what do we wish for? Last night, during the late service, I asked about your Jewish identity. Today, the question is not about community, but character. How are you, really? Where do you stand in your own eyes? Who are you, in comparison… with who you want to be?

Self-help books line the shelves of stores, with varying themes… and a similar promise. The path you want is in your hands! Learn optimism, channel worry, grow to know the inner you! Some are about diet, and some exercise; some are about relationships and others about work, but so many… so many of them simply open us up… to the inner power… of the mental reframe. Imagine yourself whole, think differently, see yourself anew…and results will follow.

They're right. And they're valuable. But they're not the only books of wisdom out there to learn from. Nor the first ones.

"Ki teitzei lamilchamah al oyvecha," we read recently in the book of Deuteronomy, in one of the Torah portions of late summer, "when you go forth to war against your enemy, and Adonai your God delivers your enemy into your hand, and you capture your enemy…" These are the opening words of one of the most puzzling and… maybe, possibly… one of the most progressive laws in the Torah. It is the law of the captive woman, who, once taken, must be given a month in your home, to shave her hair, trim her nails, and have time to mourn her parents whom you have supposedly just slain… before you can forcibly marry her.

A distasteful business, all of it. Hard to deal with, difficult to fathom. Why is this in the Torah? What does this have to do with our lives? And how is this at all progressive? Well, it depends on the intent, and what the common practice in other places might have been at the time. A month to wait before forcibly marrying her? Consider it not merely a matter of compassion for the captive. It is also a cooling off period for the hot-blooded soldier, a disincentive, a reminder of responsibility and consequence, as well as opportunity and conquest

But we are not the first interpreters in Jewish history who have had some… trouble relating to this passage. Imagine the world-view of a late 16th, early 17th century medieval mystic, born in Prague and practicing in Poland, named Isaiah ben Abraham HaLevi Horowitz. Pushed from place to place, dealing with exile and persecution, homelessness and helplessness, this early Kabbalist probably could not have easily imagined a situation of Jews in power, and Jews triumphant. The physical force described in these words was as far away and alien to him as another planet.

But Rabbi Horowitz shared something with all religiously connected Jews before and after his time, no matter how liberal, or how traditional. Whether we take the words of the Torah literally or not, if we take them seriously then we share a pre-commitment to their spiritual meaningfulness, and potential usefulness. This means that these words must be able to speak to us, and live through us - whether the events therein actually happened in the way they are described, or not

With no military experience, with no physical analog of Jewish power in the world he knew, how did Abraham HaLevi Horowitz bring these words into his life? He re-imagined them. He spiritualized them altogether. He sent forth an internal avatar. He saw this as a psychic struggle, as a battle… against the evil impulse.

Here is Rabbi Horowitz' recasting of this passage, with my own commentary embedded within his words:

"When you go out to battle against your enemy" - this means when you challenge the evil impulse within you to battle. "And Adonai your God delivers the enemy into your hands" - this means that when we come to purify ourselves, when we struggle to do the right thing, Heaven helps us. The Holy One is there for us. The universe itself supports our struggle towards goodness and growth and God. And even more than that: "you take your enemy captive" - which means that the captive the evil impulse has captured by tricking you, you take it back. All the sins that are in your hand, you turn into merits, as our sages, may their memory be a blessing, have taught: "Great is teshuvah, repentance, for through it sins are transformed into merits."

Thus does this mystical reimagining of the words of the Torah… allow for a liberating reimagination… of the content of our character, and the deeds of our lives.

What we teach, what we come together for this season is the hope, the possibility, indeed, the promise… that in the loving embrace of one another and our God we are not trapped by the trippings of our past. We are not merely who we were. We are also defined, no matter how late the hour in our lives, by who we can still become.

The shofar calls, not merely an alarm, to wake us up from yesterday's dream. It is a call to the present, the great gift… of the new day, which begins… even now.

Go forth against the greatest of odds, the inner enemy that holds us back in habits of the past. Only you… can define… what holds, and what sets free. Only you can imagine… the person you are yet to be. A new act, a fresh start, a second life, a second chance… to be the authors of ourselves.

An article appeared on the front page of the Washington Post in late August. There, amidst ongoing coverage of escalation in Afghanistan, outrageous hysteria at Town Hall meetings, and the twists and turns of training camp, there, in print, was an internal existential struggle of the technological age laid bare for all to see. It seems that all over the country, perhaps, indeed, all over the world, young people and old alike are having trouble answering what must have seemed like such a simple question to those who asked it in the first place. People are sent into self-confrontation and spiritual angst in the face… of Facebook. For there, in filling out your profile for the first time, a new user of this social networking site is asked to fill in a question about… Religious Views.

A problematic enough question, even if there was a pull down menu and limited range of choices. Now, though, the monkey wrench in the works: Facebook allows you to free-lance. You can choose from pre-existing traditions. Or you can describe yourself. In your own words.

Gevalt! Imagine the floodgate of questioning and creativity that this unleashed!

One young man, quoted in the Post piece, had the following reaction. “It’s Facebook! The whole point is to keep it light and playful… But a question like that kind of makes you think.” [Gee!]

One option, of course, is to leave the question blank. Over 100 million of the 250 million Facebook users worldwide have done just that. Who knows how to interpret this? Blank is blank. No comment. It could mean anything from “none” to “none of your business!”

But of those who have filled it out, the outside-the-box thinking is rather impressive. Some put down, as their religion “whatever works for you!” Others pledge their allegiance and affirm their belief in “beer.” Others list things like “Jedi.”

For quite a few folks, the fact that people from different social circles and multiple chronological eras of their lives would all see this posting made them nervous. What would church friends she sees every Sunday think of something too offbeat, one woman wondered? On the other hand, though, what would friends from her college days think… of any religious belief listed at all?

Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur. The Days of Awe, the holiest of days. This is a season replete with imagery of that which is filled out, and written down.

In traditional imagery, it is God who writes, fate and fortune spun out in a Book of Life which tells the tale of every human being. Imagine, though, that it is not God the writer. Imagine it is you, sitting in front of the profile page. Religious beliefs, please? How would you fill out the form. Who are you, and what do you believe?

It seems to me that being willing to wear a tradition, to take on a label imposed by accidental association and muddied by active ambivalence… is particularly challenging for many Jews.

Did you ever notice the percentage of “public” Jewish figures who identify themselves as “of Jewish heritage” or having “Jewish roots” or who admit only that “my parents were Jewish?” While it may be the case that in many rabbi, priest and minister jokes the rabbi gets the punchline – and if it’s not the rabbi it’ll be the priest – still it seems to me that a step away from the clergy, when dealing with “real” people, in any series of characters or any discussion of how religious community might help with a sense of commitment and meaning, the iconic figures which emerge are the practicing Protestant, the doubting but connected Catholic – and the “average non-believing Jew.

Is it… is it that it is still not acceptable, that it would still not work to be Jewish and proud, to fit too comfortably in to one’s own skin? We are, after all, barely a single generation removed from the name-changers and face-hiders, those who tried to “pass” and hope no one would notice.

Maybe that’s not it, though, not in a world in which Michael Jackson had his own personal rabbinic advisor, and in which Madonna and Britney Spears run to us instead of away. Or, more likely: is it just not clear to too many of us, in this world of individual choices and self-definition, what reading oneself in to a communal identity and centuries-old inheritance is all about?

Jewish identity is certainly… complicated. Not just by the twists and turns of a tragic history, a price almost too much to bear, with a treasure often too hidden to appreciate. No, it is complicated in and of itself. I spoke last year, on Erev Rosh Hashanah, about folk and faith. How odd, indeed, for we are religious tradition that encourages questions, to the point of embracing skeptics, and welcoming the very numerous agnostics and atheists in our midst.

It is possible that no single aspect of Jewish life so mystifies our believing Christian neighbors or loved ones as this: we are, after all, not merely any religion. Judaism is the religion that gave to the world the idea of the one God. How… how can we… how is it possible to so downplay divinity, to say it is okay…to not believe? Or, rather, to believe… in ways which manifest themselves so vastly and very differently for each one of us.

The struggle, though, is built into our identity from the outset. Abraham argued, challenged, even took God to task when he thought God was not living up to God’s own standards. “Will not the Judge of all the earth judge justly?” And Jacob had an encounter in the night, which left him limping, and forever changed. A new name he had, as he greeted that distant dawn: Yisrael, Israel. The one who struggles… the one who wrestles with God. Sacred skeptics: that is who we have been. And why, perhaps, it is so hard for so many Jews… to just buck up, and answer straight. To fill out… a line on a form.

How odd of God, to choose the Jews, one not-so-friendly poet wrote. Why the Jews? Maybe our self-perception of why we were singled out… will be of some help in getting at the heart… of what we are all about.

But, of course, we are Jews, or we are part of Jewish families, and, as you know the saying, “two Jews, three opinions.” Indeed, in reflecting, ourselves, on this puzzling, possibly out-of-date concept of the Chosen People – a concept which I believe to be merely just another way of giving voice to the idea of destiny and vision, mission and identity -- in reflecting on the why-we-are who-we-are, we ourselves have given different answers, to the very same question.

One answer to the question of “why the Jews” is actually embarrassing, and I share it with some hesitation. The better-known, and less comfortable traditional answer, is found in the following story, a famous Midrash:

Before the Torah was offered to the Israelites, God gave a chance to all the other nations. God came to the children of Esau and asked them: `Will you accept the Torah?' They replied: “Well, that depends. Tell us what’s in it, and then we’ll decide.” God answered: `You shall not murder.' And the children of Esau responded: `But God: does it not say in your Torah that this is the inheritance which our father left to us, since Isaac said (in blessing Esau): `By your sword shall you live!' (Gen. 27:40). How, then, can we receive the Torah?’

This is ridiculous! This exchange is truly bizarre! The children of Esau quote the Torah’s not-very-complementary description of their nation back at God. If they knew that already, why would they have had to ask what was in the Torah in the first place. But the logical paradox seems to bother the writer of this Midrash not one bit. So the story goes on:

Then God came to the children of Ammon and of Moab, and said to them: `Will you receive the Torah?' They said: `What is written in it.' God answered: `You shall not commit adultery.' They answered: `But God, we all sprang from one adulterer, since it says `And the daughters of Lot became with child by their father.' [Gen. 19:36]. How then can we receive your law?'

Now this is getting really ugly. The insulting etymology is based on a nasty pun, based on the similarity between the word Moav – Moabite – and mei’av – “from the father.” The writer has just questioned – how do I put this in shul on a holiday? -- the parental legitimacy of an entire nearby nation. Good fences do not necessarily make good neighbors here.

Then God came to the children of Ishmael and said: `Will you receive the Torah?' They asked: `What is in it?' and God replied: `You shall not steal.' They replied: `But our father Ishmael was given this blessing, the prediction that he would `be a wild beast among men, that his hand will be against all men' (Gen. 16:12); how then, can we receive the law?'.

Finally God went to the Israelites, and asked if they would receive the Torah. Immediately they responded: `All that God has commanded, na’aseh v’nishmah, we will do and we will hearken.' (Exodus 24:7)
[Mechilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, on Ex. 20:2]

I have a problem with this Midrash. I would imagine that many of you do, too. It is… not exactly a story I am proud of.

Imagine with me for a moment, though, not only the obvious prejudices and debilitating stereotypes, but also the actual experience of the person who wrote these words. For this writer, what was the outside world like? It was filled with brutality, licentiousness, and greed. Not a positive experience at all. Who was the “other?” Essentially and internally foreign, even if, externally, physically just down the street, just around the corner.

Why did God give us the Torah? And why be Jewish? Because, in the light of this Midrash, alone among the nations, we responded to God with an open mind, and a willing heart. We chose this path… out of conviction, and faith.

In any event, however, a story in which Jews asked no questions is hardly credible. Unless you want to say… that this is why we’ve been asking so many questions, ever since!

And, more seriously, the whole story is a set up to begin with. It is meant to turn aside a hypothetical anticipated accusation of unfairness: why should Jews be rewarded for their close relationship with God? Wouldn’t anyone have chosen this path, and this communion? Well, maybe not… At least according to this story.

But what rewards have we reaped over the course of time? Indeed, is our light really so bright, our merit so distinctive over that of anyone else? Are we, truly, better than the other peoples? Listen to another Midrash, which answers the very same question, in a distinctly different way:

`And the Israelites took their places under the mountain.' (Exodus 19:17). [In this Midrash, the word “under,” meant as we use it in English as `at the foot of,' will in this Midrash be interpreted literally.] Rabbi Abdimi b. Hama b. Hasa said: `This teaches that the Holy One, Blessed be God, ripped Mount Sinai out of the ground, overturned it like an inverted cask, suspended it over the heads of the Israelites, saying: `If you accept the Torah, all is well; but if not... this place will be your burial site!' To this, Israel responded: `All that God has commanded, na’aseh v’nishmah, we will do and we will hearken.' Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Shabbat, 88a

Imagine, then, the sitz in leben, the life-experience of this writer. A cantankerous, argumentative, frustrating people we must be! Two Jews, three opinions! The only effective goad to action: a rap on the knuckles, or a clop on the head.

A people and a perspective emerge into history. Whatever the details, and however it happened, our tradition teaches that God chose us. I believe, instead, though, that it went more like this:

We filled out a form.

We sat down to write the story of our life.

And we chose God.

Two answers, tradition gives, to the very same question. Spiritual communion and loving acceptance of our own identity… or the mountain hanging over our heads. There have been both aplenty in our history, triumph and tragedy, coercion and conviction, insight and ostracism, sacred connections and bare survival. It is, all of it, a precious legacy, a story of centuries, 4000 years of devotion and sacrifice and commitment and discovery. L’dor va’dor, from generation to generation… a chain of tradition… with the next link yet to be forged, the next chapter, the next entry yet to be written. That link, that entry… is up to us.

And all of what has gone before… it is a backdrop, against the moment before us now. We struggle with our identity, and we wrestle with God. There is no pre-set template to cut and paste into our heart. I could share with you what being Jewish means to me, what my religious beliefs are. I can, I have, and at some point I will again. But ultimately it is not a question anyone else can answer for you. It is up to you.

The cursor keeps blinking, and the screen remains blank.

It is the dawn of a new year. Something, some inner call or family pull, some reason has drawn you here.

It is time to face the Facebook challenge.

What will you write?

What do you have to say for, and about yourself?

Five years ago, on the morning of September 11, 2001, I was supposed to be interviewed by Adam Zeren from Channel 8 news about a topic long since forgotten. Somewhere around 9AM Adam called me and, almost screaming, announced the interview was postponed, told me what was happening and directed that I turn on my television immediately! I did so.

My tears fell as the towers fell. Being a Navy Chaplain, I quickly went into general quarters or battle stations mode, put on my uniform and headed for the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, where I was sure the wounded would soon arrive. But there were few survivors. Around 1900, I headed home.

As I came through the door the phone rang. It was the office of the U.S. Navy Chief of Chaplains notifying me I was now on active duty and under orders to report immediately to the Navy Annex overlooking the Pentagon. To reach the Annex I had to drive past the crash site. My tears flowed again. If you served in the military you understand. The Pentagon was still aflame. My Pentagon. There it was with crumbled, burning, smoking walls and the remains of too many victims yet inside.

At the Chief’s office Casualty Assistance Calls Officer teams formed. Each team had three members: a representative of the missing service member’s command, an expert in military casualty procedures and a chaplain to provide pastoral care.

By the time all the teams were organized, assignments made and briefed, it was late in the evening. My team reached our first house around midnight. It was the home of an officer from the Navy Command Center. That was the spot where the plane hit full force. There was no official word yet whether this officer had survived the attack. The family prayed that perhaps he had stepped out for a minute and was alive somewhere inside, under the rubble awaiting rescue that would come quickly.

This young officer and his family were devout members of their faith group. He taught kindergarten in his church’s religious school. For many years he and his wife struggled to conceive. Finally, a daughter was born to them, the answer to their prayers. In September 2001 this beautiful, sweet child was six years old.

In the days before 9/11 this officer’s family was already severely stressed. His grandmother had suffered a stroke. She lived overseas. The officer’s mother left immediately to go care for her mom. That was September 9th. And just before that tragedy, the officer’s wife learned that her aunt and uncle had been murdered. The funeral was scheduled for September 14th. Now this! There was more to come. In the first three days following 9/11 two other uncles sustained heart attacks. A stroke, two heart attacks, two murders and the attack on the Pentagon! My casualty assistance calls team would spend a great deal of time at this officer’s home. We were there both day and night.

On September 11, the officer’s mother became desperate to return here from her mother’s home overseas. But no flights could land at American airports. A member of my CACO team got on his cell phone and called a Naval Air Reserve buddy. The result? A cargo plane was diverted from a mission in Eastern Europe, flown to pick up the terribly distressed mother and bring her to Andrews Air Force Base. It was a very proud moment for the team.

On September 18, in the middle of Rosh Hashanah morning services, the call came informing me that this officer’s DNA had been identified. He was now officially declared dead. I was to proceed immediately with the two other CACO team members to make the official notification. A postscript: in December 2001, the officer’s beautiful, young daughter, was one of two children of 9/11 victims chosen to light the National Christmas tree.

In the aftermath of 9/11 I served commands as well as individual families. One was the Naval Computer and Telecommunications Station, Washington, DC. NAVCOMTELSTA had three offices at the Pentagon. In one of them, fourteen personnel were assigned, most of them in their early twenties. They worked together, lived in the barracks together and socialized together. Of the fourteen, seven lived and seven died the morning of 9/11. Each sailor who survived spoke with me about what had happened and of his or her survivor’s guilt. Each one sought to work through with me what special mission God had in mind for him or for her going forward for the rest of one’s life. Each story would rivet you to your seats. There is no time now. Perhaps another day.

On October 11, 2001 the Pentagon held a memorial service, 30 days after the attack, in my mind marking the end of shloshim. The chiefs of chaplains for the Army, Navy and Air Force participated as did the President, the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a Muslim chaplain and me. I represented the Jewish community. I sat directly behind and within three feet of President and Mrs. Bush and General and Mrs. Myers. I can tell you how plainly visible was their deep down mourning for the fallen.

By December, 2001 the Navy sent me to the Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton California. All Marine chaplains are Navy chaplains assigned to Marine commands. I was ordered to a MAG, Marine Air Group 39. It contained four squadrons, a total of 9,000 Marines, most of whom were preparing for deployment to Afghanistan. On the way to Pendleton I memorized the base maps, the squadron missions and the names and faces of the senior people in each chain of command. There was no choice but to hit the ground running. There would be no time for getting adjusted. The pressure was intense.

My 9/11 related commitments continued over that first year and beyond. Even after retiring from the Navy in 2002, I got orders in October, 2003, to head for the Iraqi theatre. My presence was needed to cover Jewish personnel attached to Expeditionary Strike Group One, then protecting the Southern Pipe lines. My orders would keep me in theater for the High Holy Days and Sukkot., a short period of mostly unrelenting tension. How stunning, High Holy Day prayers in Babylonia!

Obviously 9/11 is a defining event in our nation’s history and in each of our lives. The 9/11 story of every person in this room is sacred and worthy of telling, hearing and recording. As citizens of the United States, we are all shipmates in a way. We shared the shock of the worst attack on our soil since the Civil War. As Jews, we endure an added level of horror when we consider that the hijackers and those who sent them want both America and Israel destroyed.

Our enemies hijacked our airplanes and the lives of thousands of innocent men, women and children on 9/11. They also hijacked our innocence, and they tried as well to hijack our sense of the glory and purpose of God and our faith. They failed to do so then, and they must always fail to do so. They are in the wrong. They are of the children of darkness. You and I must serve bravely and wisely and determinedly each day as members of the children of light, whether Jew, Christian, Muslim or of any other faith or none at all. Let the bearers of light respond faithfully to that challenge we encounter this Shabbat and again on Yom Kippur; an ancient challenge from which we must never walk away:

And God said: I call as witness against you this
day the heavens and the earth as I place before
you the blessed path to life and the cursed path
to death. Choose life! that you and your children
may live! (Deuteronomy 30:19)

It was 1980. Temple Shalom was searching for a rabbi. I applied. So did scores of colleagues, many with far more impressive credentials than my own. From day one I was never really sure why on earth you chose me. I can tell you that, at the time, your decision humbled me and it does so still today and especially tonight. Marking these twenty-five completed years together has much more to do with you than with me. The honor I feel has everything to do with your kindness and patience over so long a stretch of time; your readiness to finish working through the past and then to focus so deliberately and well on creating this synagogue’s future; to adopt together the highest of standards and then strive to soar beyond them. What a privilege to share in this adventure with you for twenty-one years as your rabbi and senior rabbi, and now for four and one-half years as rabbi emeritus.

In 1980 Toby and I had no idea whatever that we had come to our congregation for life. For life. This twenty-fifth anniversary observance celebrates only a point reached along what I pray will be a much longer way, perhaps, God willing, a history that will include another twenty-five years of closeness. Toby, Elana, Dena and I shall always be grateful for your giving us the opportunity to walk side by side with you. Bless you for tolerating me and all the mishegoss my passions led Shalom to engage. And I am filled with thanks to God. I am filled with thanks to the remarkable professionals and lay leaders with whom it was my great privilege to work, and with boundless gratitude to my family, especially to Toby. No one will ever know the real extent of her contributions to my rabbinate and whatever good my being here wrought. However much you attribute to her, I assure you, only begins to tell the real story of her merit.

In 2001 as I prepared to climb out of the saddle, several sermons were given reflecting on our experiences together and the meaning to me of my rabbinate at Shalom. During that span I lived as your rabbi 24/7/365. After stepping down and for the last four and one-half years I have lived a very different existence, laboring mostly outside these walls away from the duties that come with one’s more than full time service here. I began living my work life among you, in your world. That is what I wish to address this evening. This night is about you far more than it is about me. I want to convey what I think I have been learning about you and how it differs from what I thought before becoming your rabbi emeritus.

Away from here, suddenly, I faced choices that never before entered my mind. Worship, prayer, Jewish study emerged as options. Shall I attend here or try a service at another shul or daven with my siddur at home? Or, shall I take advantage of the endless cultural temptations so available in our metropolitan area? As I began to live in your world, I faced for the first time what you had always faced. It is now four and one-half years later -- so what have I discovered living in your world? I discovered I had been wrong.

I remember telling you (what chutzpah!) that, if you were only willing, it was not difficult to set aside a few hours a week for Jewish worship and study. I remember explaining why it should be simple to leave the office early on Fridays to go home for Shabbat dinner before coming to Temple. I described for you a host of other Jewish disciplines that you should embrace with consistency. There was nothing to it but to do it!

Well, I am here tonight to fess up and tell you how wrong I was. I just did not know. I did not grasp it. I was terribly incorrect in my estimation of the ease with which one could find the time and energy to engage daily and weekly Jewish growth. And I was even more inaccurate when it came to recognizing the importance, relevance of these Jewish activities. I feel badly about these mistakes. Your well being has always mattered most to me. I thought my calls to you were correct and would serve you well. I thought I was saying the right things in the right way. I believed what I told you. I was wrong.

Some of you might want me to stop here. But surely, you don’t believe I have changed that much.

As I began to walk in your shoes day after day, year after year, I learned that it is so much harder to decide for Judaism than I ever imagined previously. The hours and the energy required to decide for Judaism are tough indeed to come by, much tougher than I ever thought was the case during my years as senior rabbi. And as I walked in your shoes I also discovered something else. I learned it is also far more necessary to decide for Judaism than I ever understood before, far more valuable, far more replenishing to decide for Judaism, far more beneficial to one’s well being, one’s fulfillment and one’s salvation! I know now more than ever that it is far more self serving in every honorable way to decide for Judaism than to refrain from doing so. I never realized this as much living in the Temple as living outside it.

In your world, a world not filled with Jewish sources and Jewish worship and Jewish involvement, I run low on spiritual fuel far more readily. I get fewer minutes of peace to the prayer than in my pulpit rabbi’s life. What does that mean? It means I need to pray more not less. Prayer does indeed provide strength and insight. Now, it plays an even larger role in sustaining me. So does Jewish study. So does Jewish ritual and tikkun olam. After four and one-half years in your world I now know how Jewishly drained it is possible to become by the weekend. I now spell that two day period w-e-a-k-e-n-e-d. For weakened is the spiritual, moral and emotional state one may well have reached by the time Friday afternoon arrives. I stand before you tonight only relatively recently aware of how tough it is to find the time to refuel Jewishly in this other world, your world, now my world. I do get it. But what I also get is how bereft, how unacceptably diminished, how much more vulnerable life is when not refueling Jewishly and regularly!

In June 2004, I accepted a call from the board of the Equal Rights Center to take over that agency as its executive director, a post I have held for the past 18 months, after serving on the ERC board for over twenty years. Down to Dupont Circle I go each morning to work that I love, fighting discrimination and finding remedies for bigotry’s fragmentation of our community. The work fits in well with what I for so many years sought daily to accomplish here. I always saw with complete clarity the essential purpose of this congregation: Help our membership, as individuals and as a group, to move toward wholeness of being as Reform Jews. The essence of the Equal Rights Center is somewhat different, but only somewhat. Its purpose is to help the residents of Greater Washington move toward wholeness as members of the human race. And I utilize my Jewishness constantly as I go; I am empowered by it and endlessly challenged by it. It operates within me informing the decisions I make. The actions I take. In your world it is more important than ever to decide for Judaism and to do so without preaching.

You should know that I keep a copy of “Gates of Prayer” and the Tanakh and some other basic Jewish texts on the credenza behind my desk. How I need them! I need them for me to help me stay Jewishly connected away from the congregational rabbinate. For my faith is a blessing. It makes me better at everything I do. It works in your world, now my world. It really works!

And however tough it is to break away, I do leave the office early on Friday afternoons – not as early as I should, but early. I always observe Shabbat. Often a portion of that observance is spent here, either Friday night or Saturday morning, sometimes both. There is greater meaning and purpose now in reserving Shabbat for worship, study and family. Doing so is no longer required by my job description. It is required by facing the truth!

You bet I take off for the High Holy Days and the chagim: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Atzeret-Simchat Torah, Pesach, and Shavuot. I don’t do it to come here and lead services. I do it to serve the needs of my Jewish heart, my Jewish mind, my Jewish soul. (Yes, I believe in souls.) Never before, nev-er be-fore have the words in the texts of our faith meant more to me than in these years of living each day out there where you have always been. I keep them at the ready. Not to go proselytizing – although at mediations with corporate representatives I almost always advocate for the process and benefits of redemption. I need Jewish beliefs, thoughts, values, practices, being. They circulate through me to impact what I say and do outside the role of a full time congregational rabbi. Never did my being cry out for them more than now. I am more certain tonight than during all the years I regularly stood before you, that deciding for Judaism is a success breeding way to be, it is a life-saving way to be!

On page 100 of the gray “Gates of Prayer” Leviticus 19 is quoted: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” That is our mission out there. Serving holiness as Jews is our commission – and we are meant to get it done throughout the day, in our offices, in our classrooms, in any and all work spaces as well as at home. What does it mean to be holy? Are we excused from holiness when we are busy with seemingly secular pursuits? In this hour I know that the answer is that we are not excused! Bruce Kahn in his new world, in your world, is called to holiness as a Jew more than ever before. We all are! What do we all think this religion of ours is about? If it is not about how we live each day throughout the day then it is not about anything much at all.

Page 100 in the gray prayer book continues by clarifying what is meant by holiness: “As God is merciful and gracious so shall you be merciful and gracious.” Merciful and gracious, when? Where? How? To whom? The answers are clear. They are not easy to implement, but they are clear. There is more about holiness on this blessed page. “Let your neighbor’s property be as dear to you as your own.” That means the property and funds for which we bear responsibility at work and at home. “Let your neighbor’s honor be as dear to you as your own.” That means the folks who work for us or oppose us, even the less agreeable individuals we meet while riding METRO. Page 100 concludes, “You shall not oppress a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not rejoice when your enemy falls. You shall not hate another in your heart, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” When? Especially when we are most tempted not to do so. Where? Everywhere. How? That is what the Jewish experience and Jewish sources and Jewish prayer are here to help us ascertain. But first one has to decide for Judaism in that everyday world of ours.

Deciding for Judaism in your world, in my world, is far tougher than I ever thought from 1980 through 2001. It is far tougher to do and for more consequential. As one who now walks your path with you, I know better each day how critical it is to strive for holiness as God is holy, to fulfill our commission with excellence.

Deciding for Judaism is to expand our Jewish consciousness. Beyond question our faith is intended to be our way of life. Embracing it moves us toward wholeness. We need a plan for wholeness. The good news is that we have the plan. Out there as we pursue that plan we participate profoundly in “restoring the broken fragments of our world to wholeness,” for ourselves and for others. I know now how important it is to decide for Judaism. That is in large measure what makes this night different from all those other nights we spent together in this sanctuary. Now, after more than four years of living daily in your world, now my world, what is my message? I say to you as one of you: Decide for Judaism. Be Jews. More than ever, be Jews!

In this week’s Torah portion we read (Genesis 32:31): Va’yik’ra Ya’a’kov shem ha’ma’kom P’ni’el; ‘Kee ra’ee’tee Elohim pa’nim el pa’nim….’” “So Jacob named the place Peniel, meaning, ‘I have seen a divine being face to face…’” Thank you for these 25 years! In you I have seen God face to face.

Torah Commentary
The name of this story in Torah is the Akedah…the binding. It is derived from a clause in chapter 22 verse 9:  Va-ya-a-kod et Yitzchak b’no… “and he (Abraham) bound his son Isaac.” What are we to make of the presentation of Abraham here? Jewish writers through the ages, right to the latest and greatest commentary on Torah published by the Reform movement, often try to make Abraham’s preparedness to sacrifice his son an act of devotion. I quote: “Abraham’s act is represented as the ultimate sanctification of God in this world: the offering up of that which is dearest to him.” (“The Torah, A Modern Commentary, Revised Edition p. 141.) I think such praise misses the point of the Akedah.

Over the years, I have received more complaints from moms about this story of the binding of Isaac by his father Abraham than any other Torah story. Again and again many of you asked me to read some other verses instead, especially on the High Holy Days. I understand such opposition. I only wish enough of the world understood the passage of the binding of Isaac well enough to warrant its deletion from our service.

Many times I have heard this story referred to incorrectly as the sacrifice of Isaac. But Isaac is not sacrificed. That is the point! That is the point! And it is the point that the world has yet to grasp and accept.

We followers of the Hebrew faith, that eventually became Judaism, are not, are not, are not to sacrifice our young. This story would have us depart from the prevailing custom of sacrificing one’s children and believing that such unholy sacrifices are ordained by God.

We don’t offer such sacrifices! We were supposed to learn that lesson thousands of years ago. Yet here we are as though this story and its teaching had never before seen the light of day. We don’t grasp the point. See the examples: Wrongly waged war, the national debt, despoliation of the land, water and air, the teaching of bigotry and hate, the blossoming of gangs, apathy in the face of injustice, intentionally refraining from building levees to withstand category five hurricanes that are certain to strike. We also don’t deal very wisely with the plague of illicit drug use, or tobacco, or a host of other afflictions that take our children from us. Look at how many little ones still die of malnutrition and other preventable diseases the world over. There is enough food and medicine to keep them alive. We only lack the will. After all this time we just don’t yet understand the story of the Akedah.

So it must not yet be deleted from our Holy Day service. It must be studied and considered in the hope that it will yet be grasped and its lesson implemented. The yamim noraim, a time of confession, repentance, renewal, the celebration of creation and life and family and faith are just the right days on which to learn and accept the point of the Akedah. We are not there yet. We are not there. We are still binding our children for sacrifice. Our children are too precious to be offered in sacrifice. Our God does not want us to sacrifice them. We were supposed to stop it so long ago. We just don’t get it yet. We just don’t get it. And so we read……

You must have seen them on the Internet. You know, the clippings from church and synagogue bulletins that slipped past the watchful eyes of their respective editors. Recently, my friend sitting just over here, Mike Friedman sent me a batch of those botched announcements. At Temple Shalom we provide babysitting services on the High Holy Days. It seems another congregation does something similar and wrote about it this way: "For those of you who have children and don't know it, we have a nursery downstairs." And for obvious reasons, here is the bulletin line that really caught my eye: "Our retiring senior pastor will preach his farewell message this Sabbath. Afterwards, the choir will sing, "Break Forth Into Joy." Well, I am the senior rabbi, and this is indeed a service of farewell, and the choir is here. I guess I will find out soon enough, but for now it is time to speak of Shalom.

I can't remember exactly when "shalom" became my favorite word. It was long before I noticed in the placement newsletter of the Central Conference of American Rabbis that an opening existed at a temple named Shalom in Chevy Chase, Maryland. I grew up loving a lot about my Jewish ghetto experience in Baltimore, but I was always attracted strongly to the inspiring marvels of Washington, DC, and to the international flavor of the neighborhoods in Montgomery County. It was during my teenage years that the hope of someday living in this county, close to DC, first gained force. So, when I saw the listing for a temple named Shalom in Montgomery County, Maryland, my heart rejoiced. I applied for the position immediately after talking it over with Toby, and with Mrs. Lillian Lieberman, the widow of the rabbi under whose inspiring tutelage I was raised, Rabbi Morris Lieberman.

After sending in my application, several high powered rabbis of note let me know that coming from the pulpit of a small liturgically experimental congregation in Richmond, Virginia, would not qualify me for assuming the post at Temple Shalom of Chevy Chase. They said that a host of rabbis with superior credentials had thrown their hats in the ring and frankly, there was no chance that I would be selected. I should withdraw, they said, withdraw at once. I accepted that advice with the same regard that I have paid so many other statements directed at me over the years when folks told me something could not be done. If I failed it would not be for lack of trying.

So I went searching for as much information as I could gather about Temple Shalom and about its needs. The placement director, the famous Rabbi Stanley Dreyfus, explained that this was a congregation that had sustained serious wounds at the hands of its former rabbi. The congregation was in need of healing. Shalom means wholeness. As I said, it was at the time and is still my favorite word. It defines religion—the quest for wholeness. It is the hub of a synagogue's wheel of being. It describes my purpose in becoming a rabbi—to try to be a faithful servant of God who each day attempts to help people as individuals and in community move toward wholeness of being as Reform Jews.

There would be no withdrawal of my name from the list of rabbis wanting to come to Shalom. I would present myself as one seeking to help heal the wounds that existed here.

By May 1980 the selection was announced. One of the rabbinic leaders who had been telling me all along that I should remove my name from consideration for the post, then called to say he was convinced that the board of trustees here would never accept the recommendation of the search committee. It was not too late for me to save face and look for another position.

At the end of May everything was sealed. Shalom would become my rabbinic home. I did not realize then that this would be my rabbinic home for the rest of my life. And I certainly did not appreciate at the time the reason why. I was about to enter rabbis' heaven.

The location of this congregation had much to do with that assessment. The resources in and around the nation's capital, in many ways the center of the world, are plentiful, varied, and at the highest levels imaginable. But more than any of that, more by far, was the factor of you. Yes, I would try to bring shalom to the members of Temple Shalom, but even more so would my family and I derive wholeness of being through you. How does one say thank you for that?

With the Psalmist I proclaim this night: "You have gladdened me by Your deeds, O Lord; I shout for you at Your handiwork" (Psalm 92). I praise God for the great handiwork of the Temple called Shalom, placed within the Stanley Nehmer reconfigured boundaries of Chevy Chase, Maryland. I praise God for the creation of this congregational family. I praise God for you, each of you.

We have done much together. I discussed that on the High Holy Days. That list is entered into the official record of this congregation. It was all accomplished as a team: the programs, projects, policies, practices of substance that so often placed us on the cutting edge of synagogue development. Beyond such successes, reside higher still, the precious moments that wove our souls together.

The weaving together of souls is something that matters. It matters a bunch. That is what I am thinking about now as I look at each of you. Our souls are woven together and August 15th will not sever such ties.

I know what these ties mean to me and to Toby and to our two daughters who feel so privileged to have grown up in this place and among you. These ties define one's true wealth. Souls woven together that nourish and nurture a lasting love of permanent bonds. Souls woven together and continuing to create deep inside that sense of shalom, of God's choice blessing of well being and wholeness at the heart of life itself.

In 1980 you invited me into a rabbi's heaven. I am reminded of the famous line in Genesis attributed to Jacob who awakes from his epiphanic dream to exclaim: "Ah'chaein yesh Adoni ba'ma'kom ha'zeh; v'a'no'chi lo ya'da'ti." "God was in this place, and I, I did not know it." The passage continues, "mah no'rah ba'ma'kom ha'zeh", "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the abode of God." (Genesis 28:16-17.) In 1980, I did not grasp adequately the truth of these words in regard to this place. I love this place and I will love it forever. I love you. I will love you forever. Thank you, each and every one of you here this night, thank you for giving me the privilege of learning what it means to want to praise God as a result of our souls being woven together.

For ten years Karen Lowe and Helene Sacks have been the co-executive directors of Temple Shalom. For years before that they worked hard at the highest levels of lay leadership within this synagogue. Who can even begin to comprehend what that means about the weaving together of our three beings? Helene and Karen and I understand it well. We know how to weigh all we have gone through over the past 21 years. Steve and Jack and Toby have a good sense of this bond. Others can only guess. The words love and respect just don't get there. Too much has happened. We shared too much that would seem mundane except for the magic that was imbedded in our union. We connected to so much that was extraordinary that it still takes our breaths away. With all our strength and feeling, we shared and addressed a constant intensity of purpose day and night, even Saturday nights, for years. When we are together, God is in that place, and we are indeed blessed by God to have one another and we know it. I thank God and Karen and Helene that it is so.

To a rabbi, at the top of one's agenda resides building a love of Torah, avodah and Gimilut chasadim. We want most of all to generate commitment to Jewish learning and worship and the pursuit of social justice and acts of loving kindness. The other clergy with whom one engages in these pursuits become shipmates, as we say in the Navy, shipmates of the highest importance. These names shall forever warm my heart as they warm yours: Saul Rogolsky, our cantor emeritus and Sharon Steinberg. And my rabbinic shipmates at Shalom: Rabbi Barry Schwartz, the consummate rabbi, who will return here in November to install our -- yours and mine -- our new senior rabbi, Michael Feshbach. And then there is Daniel Swartz, who possesses one of the brightest and most lovably unusual rabbinic minds of all time. He also possesses a heart that is pure, devoted to a life of absolute kindness. Rabbi Gerry Serotta lives his Jewishness to a depth that goes far beyond what is suggested by the term modeling behavior. He is a tzaddik, one of the few really righteous souls in the world. He would deny it. But you and I know it is true. There may be someone on the planet who is better informed about Jewish music than is Chazzan Dr. Ramón Tasat. There may be someone who cares more about Jewish music and prayer than does he. I just do not have any idea who that other individual might be. To have had the opportunity to witness God's song through him has become one of the great privileges of my life.

JoHanna Potts is someone who always leaves me shaking my head. I do not do so to indicate approval or disapproval. She always leaves me shaking my head in awe. I am in awe of JoHanna Potts, our director of religious education and, as far as I am concerned, she is a rabbi par excellence. I usually exit from her presence just finding it difficult to believe that someone could be as remarkable as is she. But she is so. And she is here. And that is one of the nicest things God has ever done for this congregation. Savor her presence. Savor it.

Alli Wild Pettibone has worked as my partner in ministry for two and a half years. She endured two and a half years of the most intense daily contact with me that one can imagine. Not one time, not once, did we have a disagreement, a problem, a falling out—not once. What does that tell you of her abilities, patience, understanding, wisdom, intellect, compassion and devotion? We responded to endless requests for information, material, curricula, and letters of all sorts. But mostly what we did was pure ministry to help you move toward wholeness. Her empathy and energy and loveliness endeared her to you enormously and to me vastly still more.

Lois Simpson and Carol Kaplan and Debbie Kopp do not work here. Work is the wrong term. Lois was the first to make that abundantly clear a very long time ago. Their efforts each day represent nothing less than acts of divine service, most competently provided with a wonderful touch of humor and a goodness that makes of each one of them a necessary part of who and what we are. How grateful we all are that they are with us.

Both James Williams and Joseph Davis have worked at Shalom longer than have I. Darryl Davis came on the scene the same time I did. They are men of high character and enormous loyalty. The youth of Shalom idolize Joe Davis. He talks straight with them about good attitudes and right behavior. They respect his words as the true gifts they are. So do I. We are dear, dear friends.

Almost as many jokes have been told about rabbi's spouses as have been created about rabbis. Not when it comes to Toby. Why not? Toby lords nothing over anyone. Toby turns from praise and the spotlight. Toby is self-effacing and non-confrontational. Toby is giving. How giving? Shortly Julie Knoll will explain something of Toby's record here. It is impressive. Toby is giving indeed and extremely talented and able and aware and Jewishly knowing. But there is so much more to Toby than that.

She has responded to you constantly with grace and sincerity and affection and kindness every day of our twenty-one year journey in your midst. She has been just right, not once or twice, but always. How many calls, how many encounters with how many souls have taken place not because she sought any sense of importance, but because she was put in the spot of living as the wife of the senior rabbi of Shalom. To perfection she responded each and every time.

As senior rabbi I can tell you that the pressures and strains and stresses that go with trying to serve God and the Jewish people full time are not slight. In this calling the time demands are not favorable. The requirements are compelling and constant. It was normal for me to begin work at eight in the morning and to be home but two nights a week for dinner, one of those nights being Shabbat, when we finish our meal and then hurry off to Temple. To work the entire weekend and on holidays and Holy Days and during almost every vacation period was normal. Doing so over a long period of time is wearing. It is not an ideal life for a marriage to remain strong. Toby not only endured this reality, but after God Almighty, she was always and is still my greatest source of strength and help. Our daughters Elana and Dena will tell you that she is their greatest source of strength and help, too. I would have long ago faded from the scene were it not for her. If you think favorably about my rabbinate here, about our souls being woven together, don't thank me, thank Toby. Without her there would be no me.

Apart from Toby, Elana and Dena do get it, they understand. They know the family implications of what it means to be RKs, Rabbi's Kids, as the term is used among insiders. They are a group apart. Some RKs can handle it, some cannot. Elana and Dena could. It is late, very late, Elana and Dena and now Wayne, too. It is late in the day for me to be available to you as much as I always wanted to be. But the sun has not set. There is still time for us. How well you have done. It is your doing. Your excellence is your doing and your mom's with a little thrown in from me. You are superb people, superb women, superb Jews. You know so well what it means to be a daughter of the synagogue. You know the good of it, the troubling parts of it. We will have time now, and as that starts I want you to know how blessed I am by you. Somehow through it all, through all that goes into enduring life as an RK, each of you still loves your faith, your people, this special place, and even me. I love you more than life itself.

Ladies and gentlemen, my most beloved congregational family, I am ready to stand down now, and honored to accept the position of rabbi emeritus. I yield my place to Rabbi Michael Feshbach. He is becoming my rabbi, too. I am telling Michael a great deal about us and the Temple called Shalom in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He is so favorably impressed, but not as much as he will be once he experiences what it means to weave his soul together with your souls in the days, months, and years to come.

It was especially delightful for me to tell him about the next person to address us, our president, Julie Knoll. I looked Michael right in the eye and told him that he never met a synagogue president to surpass Julie's excellence, her exquisite combination of intellect, wisdom, integrity, efficiency, organization, acharai or follow me example setting. She makes so very clear what it means to live this life as a Jew and to revel in doing so.

To all the presidents of Shalom, to the founders, to the officers, trustees and committee chairpeople and those who assisted them, I offer the deepest thanks of my heart. You can have a synagogue without a rabbi, but no synagogue exists without a president and lay leaders. You all orchestrated so very much of the melody our praise of God produced over these past twenty-one years.

It is time to pipe me over the side as we say in my beloved Navy. I can hear the boatswain's pipe sounding and the voice coming over the 1 MC, the main loud speaker system, "Senior Rabbi, Temple Shalom, departing." It is time now to be there for my family, to be there for long suffering friends, and in ways different than ever before. It is time to go forward through this life with you, souls bonded, the weaving continuing, not the same as in the past, but continuing nonetheless. I celebrate that it is so.

I ask you now to turn in your announcement sheets to the words of Psalm 150. It is the concluding Psalm in Scripture. As I conclude my active duty rabbinate here I am moved to praise God for the privilege of serving our Creator with you. If you are moved to do so, please rise with me and join together in reading this final Psalm now.

Consider how we experienced Reform Judaism in 1980, 1970, 1960, 1950. Consider how we experience Reform Judaism today. What does that comparison tell us about what will be the nature of the Reform Jewish experience in 2010 or 2020 and beyond? It tells us a lot.

Let me begin with a ritual review. In 1950 very little Hebrew found its way into the service. Choirs gave performances as congregants sat passively and listened. We were to be uplifted by the complex harmonies and grandeur of their music. If any kipot or tallitot appeared they did so only on the heads and shoulders of rabbis and cantors and perhaps b’nei mitzvah boys. Few synagogues gave daughters the right to have a bat mitzvah. Girls did not participate in ritual as did boys, nor did women participate in leading the congregation as did men. Daily services were a feature of Orthodox and Conservative synagogue life. We did not want or welcome such practices. We remained very aware of how near or far we were in our religious habits from those with whom we sought to create some distance.

We were modern advocates of a religion of reason. We came from dorfs and sthetls and ruler-wielding Hebrew teachers. We left behind long services using words no one understood, featuring all sorts of physical moves with which we were not comfortable, and conducted in a setting of noise and seeming bedlam that lacked any appropriate regard for esthetics and meaning. We sought propriety and understanding, and we turned our gaze to the future believing it best not to look backwards from where we had already come.

As Reform Jews we advocated strongly for social justice and the creation of good interfaith relations. We did not wear our Judaism on our heads or between our eyes and many did not even show their identities on the doorposts of their homes. We were Jewish Americans, and we wanted to define what that meant and hold onto it. It made us comfortable and happy. It was fulfilling.

Is it not right for the practitioners of a faith to be happy and comfortable and fulfilled and inspired and well instructed in that faith and in the institutions in which that faith is practiced? Of course it is. It is right and good for the members of a Reform synagogue to be at home there, to be uplifted by the experience of one’s faith in one’s place of worship-—one’s place of study and assembly. It is right. It is good. It is necessary. That was true in 1950. It is true today. It will be so in 2050. Over the decades however, the content of what makes us happy, comfortable, fulfilled and inspired as Reform Jews has changed.

Let me digress for a moment. When a couple comes to me to discuss getting ready for marriage, one of the assignments is for that couple to study material from a history book titled The Lifetime of a Jew by Hayyim Schauss. I tell them to focus on the ninety pages from the chapters subtitled "Courtship and Marriage." I explain that the purpose of examining this history is not so that they will model their ceremony on the wedding plan enjoyed by Jews from the seventh century BCE in Jerusalem, or from the second century Jewish community of Babylonia, or from tenth century Germany, or from 18th century Poland. I tell them that whatever decisions they are about to make pertaining to the words and rituals that will comprise their marriage service must be based on knowledge and understanding of the Jewish past and present. Reform Jews do not make decisions about the conduct of their faith ignorant of how that faith has been lived from ancient days to the present.

If today’s brides and grooms are planning to give each other rings and if they plan for each to say to the other the very same words of commitment, they first need to understand how doing so evolved from a very different approach to marriage that developed in the Biblical period. The groom from those days would view an egalitarian ceremony in which bride and groom exchanged rings as having nothing to do with Jewish custom as he knew it. Three thousand years ago it was usual for a man to hand a woman, in front of witnesses, a coin worth at least one perutah (like a dollar). When she accepted the item, she was indicating that she accepted him as her husband. Centuries later the groom presented the bride with a ring rather than a coin. Later still a formula of commitment, spoken to the bride by the groom, entered the ceremony. Centuries later the bride gave a ring to the groom. And in our own time the bride does the very same things as the groom and says the very same words to him that he says to her. A native of seventh century BCE Jerusalem viewing a modern Reform Jewish wedding would not understand the link to the customs with which he was familiar. He would call it what we do today—un-Jewish. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I tell couples that the reason I want them to study the contents of this material on the history of Jewish wedding ceremonies is to grasp what a traditionally linked yet dynamic, evolving faith and way of life Judaism is. There is no such thing as the one Jewish ceremony that was done from Biblical days to the present. It evolved. I want them to grasp this reality fully. It is liberating to do so. But they also see that everything we do today emerged from what went before. We are called to act with reverence toward such awareness.

They must see that Judaism, including Reform Judaism, has always changed. The ability to do so is its genius. It has enabled us to continue while other groups long ago faded from the scene. Judaism continues to evolve as it meets the requirements of the people Israel. It adjusts to varieties in cultural experiences and historical pressures. That is how it should be, especially within the Reform world.

Reform Judaism was created with flexibility in mind. It preferred and sought it, made its very essence the preparedness to blend traditional practice with modern discoveries and sensibilities. It has done so in order to find the right path to Jewish expression. Right is not staying in the ancient past. Right is not abandoning the ancient past for some creative present and future detached from where we have been. Right means examining the Jewish past and present, and taking a serious, very deep look at ourselves, combining the two results and seeing where we emerged. What we did would have to be true and meaningful. What we did would have to be filled to overflowing with integrity and substance and purpose.

Reform Judaism was not constructed to be easy. It was constructed to be demanding and truthful and meaningful. As the wedding ceremony evolved, so would the rest of our worship experience and our religious practices and emphases. We are a tradition based, yet changing faith and people.

It is said that a lot of newcomers, with traditional leanings migrating into Reform, grew up in Conservative Judaism. That is certainly different from the original generation of Reform Jews. They came from Orthodox backgrounds. Is it not intuitively correct to say that anyone who is a member in good standing in a Reform congregation has as much right as anyone else to voice one’s opinion regarding what our practices will be? Is that not intuitively right and proper?

Does this love of tradition mostly come from Conservative reared newcomers to Reform? I do not think so. I can tell you, as one who has served Reform Judaism as a congregational rabbi for the past 25 years that children raised Reform are just as likely or even more likely to push for more traditional practices in their synagogues as are folks who recently left the more traditional settings to join Reform.

Thousands upon thousands of born and bred Reform Jews not only seek but they demand great familiarity with the power and the majesty and the depth of feeling and use of the symbols of their faith. They are not rooted as much in the Reform Jewish practices with which they were raised as they are rooted in Judaism and being Jewish. They know nothing of the reluctance to show who and what they are that inhibited earlier generations of American Reform Jews. They are not so much Jewish Americans as they are American Jews. They want their Judaism to make demands on them and to make them feel good and to connect them with their past and support them as they struggle with all the vicissitudes of existence to find their path to their future.

What we have witnessed over the past fifty years is not the abandonment of Reform Judaism, but its ongoing realization. It is flexible. It is evolving. It is meant to meet the requirements of its practitioners and is adapting accordingly.

That is why the use of Hebrew increases and will continue to increase. The Reform service 25 or 30 years from now will be overwhelmingly recited in Hebrew. By that time lots more worshippers will indeed know well what they are saying without benefit of an English translation on the page. Hebrew study will intensify among us and take hold as never before in the liberal ranks of Judaism. In addition, I believe that Reform synagogues will begin to establish kosher kitchens. And when it comes to conversion, all folks seeking to join our faith will decide to immerse themselves in the mikveh as part of the conversion rites. Someday, some larger Reform synagogues may install their own mikvaot. It is clear that, as time goes on, more and more Reform Jewish youth will attend day schools, and do so eagerly.

Let me emphasize that the family education programming toward which Reform religious schools now gravitate will enhance the participation of the Reform Jewish family in Jewish life as never before. Parents will move from planning most of their lives around secular endeavors and leaving the leftovers for Jewish experiences to planning secular lives around our Jewish needs. That is because morally, emotionally, spiritually, ritually—we will discover how much it matters to do so.

We will be smart enough and able enough to find the way to have our careers move ahead while also paying more and more attention to Judaism. With ever greater frequency we will inform our business and professional decisions with an awareness of Jewish values. The secular realm will shrink and nearly disappear as we become more complete Jews.

We will not lose our commitments to egalitarianism and creativity and embracing the truths that science and technology bring to our attention. We will embrace them. We will be thoroughly modern and simultaneously be thoroughly aware of tradition. We shall make ourselves competent to adapt tradition so that we might become thoroughly fulfilled, modern American Jews.

When it comes to eating habits, my sense is that vegetarianism will become a traditionally Jewish practice for many Reform Jews. Vegetarianism will have greater appeal than merely refraining from consuming pork products or shellfish.

Reform will remain flexible and it will continue to evolve, as it has done since its founding in Germany in 1810. People from that period looking at Reform Judaism in 2001 or 10 or 20 might be moved to say, as the biblical Jew would say of the double ring, egalitarian weddings of today: That is not our Judaism. That is not what we do. But it is.

What they will see as they look ahead will differ greatly from what they know. But the underlying principles and purposes will remain the same. A system that evolves to meet the needs of each generation cannot stand still. We were not created to stand still. That is not the good. The good is enhancing Jewish life and experience for Jews. The good is to use our faith to improve and redeem the world in which we live so that we and the rest of humanity will be strengthened and be well served and move toward wholeness.

More tradition will enter Reform Jewish rites in the decades to come. More Hebrew will be used. More creativity will arise as well and the two, tradition and creativity, will be well blended as Reform Judaism meets its future. Come along. It will be a most delightful ride. Participate and share in bringing about the future. Don’t leave it to others. Be a part of making these determinations and revel in doing so.

May we go from strength to ever greater strength. Kein yhi ratson. So may it be.

Amen.

For many years I have wanted to give this sermon. Each time I moved toward doing so, I retreated from the task. My fear was that it would backfire. Rather than open doors, people would see me as closing them. So I put off this talk, again and again. There is no time left to hesitate. Perhaps, I have waited too long already. I simply could not conclude my tenure as senior rabbi here without formally addressing our relationship with the non-Jewish spouses among us.

We have a great many interfaith couples in the Temple Shalom family. In some classes of our religious school, 75 percent or more of the students have one parent who is not Jewish. This represents a sea change from the demographic realities that prevailed when my rabbinate began in 1974. It is true that whether we have one non-Jewish parent among us, or whether we have two hundred of these souls or more, it is very important to do what is right by each.

I tried to imagine what I would want of this congregation were I a non-Jewish parent of a child in our school. In truth my ability to imagine this circumstance is very limited. Therefore, one proposal I wish to bring forth tonight is to call a meeting to chat with every non-Jewish adult in our Shalom family. My purpose is to establish a useful, productive dialogue.

I want to be sure I know what it is like to be in your position in this synagogue community. What are the difficulties? What are the pleasures? Where, from your perspective, are we doing what is right? Where are we falling down? What needs are met? Which ones are not?

I am certain that this dialogue will bring forth a wide range of responses. But perhaps enough of a consensus will arise for the leadership of Shalom, especially the rabbis, to gain in wisdom about you.

I know from those conversations I already had with many non-Jewish spouses that you are all hardly in the same place religiously. Among you are found those who are deeply committed to another faith, usually some denomination of Christianity. On the other hand, it is clear to me that some non-Jews here are looking for a faith but have a serious aversion to being proselytized in any way, shape or form. There is a trust gap. Some have been living as Jews for years. Others think of themselves as Jews already, but have never undergone any rites of conversion. And among our non-Jewish spouses will be found a few folks who bear rather strong opposition to the whole idea of organized religion, Judaism included.

Isaiah 56:7 states, "Your house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples." Let me repeat that. "Your house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples." I believe that. But, given the diverse views about Judaism and about the efficacy and merit of organized religion advocated within the various segments of the non-Jewish members of our Shalom family, just what exactly shall I and others do by way of carrying out this call from the book of Isaiah?

I often wonder how strange must seem the prayers and songs and rituals of this place to someone who previously had little or no exposure to Jewish life and practice. How off-putting must seem bowing before the Ark, trying to touch the sefer Torah as the scroll passes by, and then kissing whatever object one used to make contact with it. How hard must Hebrew seem, how difficult to pronounce those chuffs and chets and tsadis. How off the beaten track must it seem for one’s religious institution to have nothing to do with Christmas or Easter? How unfriendly it must seem to hear me speak against placing Christmas trees in homes where Jews live.

I often worry that our non-Jewish spouses may feel insulted by our sanctuary rules restricting their participation in some parts of the service. Although, let me state again that my rules governing the role of the non-Jew at services are meant to make folks feel included. That is why we invite non-Jewish spouses to sit on the bima, lead us in prayer, go to the Ark, open and close the doors, make speeches from our podia, join in our choir, participate in the hakafot, the Torah processions. These are not acts of exclusion. They are acts of inclusion.

Yet, it is true that restrictions apply when it comes to many of the rites involved in the Torah service: holding the Scroll, undressing and dressing it, leading the congregation in reciting the blessings, and, of course, when it comes to reading from Torah.

How shall we make our house "a house of prayer for all peoples" and still practicing Judaism? It is clear from the context of the Isaiah quote that the author had nothing other than the practice of Judaism in mind for that house. So what is meant by this verse?

I guess, at the very least, we Jews at Shalom must begin to respond to the Isaiah passage by never taking for granted you who are not Jews. In many instances, you already made a huge concession by being here in the first place. I have seen how often it is that a non-Jewish spouse takes the lead role in seeing to it that one’s children attend services, and religious school and every sort of Temple activity. In many families it is the spouse who is not Jewish who assumes primary responsibility for organizing and encouraging Jewish life at home.

Among those couples in which one member is a committed Christian, I marvel at your willingness to have your children raised as Jews. What a lot is asked of you to accept Brit Milah or Brit Simca Bat, the covenant of circumcision for your son, the entry into the covenant of your daughters? I wonder about how hard it is for you to help raise your children in a different faith from the one that gives so much meaning and definition to your existence.

Since arriving here, it remained my desire to join in creating a most welcoming environment for spouses not of the Jewish faith. But we must find the way to do that while also raising your children to be knowledgeable and committed Jews. There is nothing halfhearted about our desire to do so. We unabashedly seek that every youngster in our school should not only know about Judaism but also live ones life fully as a Jew. Were it otherwise we should shut our doors and disappear from the scene. Yet, Isaiah said, "Your house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples." What does it mean to do so?

In addition to making certain that every person feels welcome in this holy room and welcomed with open arms into our congregational family; we must address well the needs of each spouse not of the Jewish faith. We must be welcoming, without engaging in proselytizing practices. If Jews resent approaches taken by Christian missionaries to get Jews to give up their faith and become Christians, it can’t be correct for Jews to advance a proselytizing agenda. On the other hand how do we hold to this anti-proselytizing stance while also making sure that all non-Jews among us know that we would welcome them into our faith and peoplehood?

Perhaps rather than offering one answer to this tactically challenging question, many choices should be put forward.

1. If you are against organized religion and you made the biggest concession of your life when you accepted your Jewish spouse’s membership here, know that the leadership of this congregation appreciates your sacrifice. Know that we shall respect your position. But, should you want to gain a better understanding of the religion of your spouse and of your children, we urge you to communicate that desire to us that it might be addressed. We will not attempt to convert you. We will try to the best of our ability to answer your questions and to do so sensitively and only as fully as you desire.

2. If you have no such need and just don’t want anyone bothering you about Jewish learning and experience, I pray that we do not take one step in the wrong direction in regard to our approach to you. Yet, I also pray that should a need arise for comfort and support of any sort, that we offer it, and where desired, provide it.

3. If you are not Jewish and not actively affiliated with another faith group, and If you are inclined to go on an exploration of Judaism, but you possess no desire whatever to convert, just tell that to me or Rabbi Serotta or Rabbi Feshbach or Cantor Tasat or our director of religious education, JoHanna Potts. We shall see to it and help you to fulfill this goal.

4. If you are unaffiliated with any other faith group and you want to explore Judaism with an idea of possibly converting, know, of course, that the rabbis of this congregation welcome that exploration and shall be delighted to guide you all the way through the conversion process, should you make that choice. At the moment, I am working with twelve individuals who are exploring conversion.

5. There are two more groups of non-Jewish spouses I want to address: those who consider themselves to be already Jewish and those who are committed to another faith, such as a denomination within Christianity.

Let me read a few words from a parents’ prayer:

O God we give thanks to You for the gift of our child, who has entered the Covenant of Abraham and Sarah. Keep our baby from harm. Teach us to raise our child with care and affection, with wisdom and understanding. May our baby become a faithful child of our people and a blessing to the world, as one of Your faithful servants. So may it be. Amen.

Dor l'Dor

Mitzvah Corps

Youth Groups

Leadership

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• Second, the machine works on its own and the law says that a discerning, knowledgeable man must supervise the baking, making decisions as the baking takes place. Automation may lead to mistakes.
• .Third, the people consuming this possibly imperfect matzo will not know what they are eating. To prevent the contamination of the supply, the mechanically produced matzos must be banned from entering the market place.
• Fourth, the matzo is moistened with lukewarm water. A passage in the Talmud (Maseket Pesachim 36b) states that this practice is not acceptable. It could lead to leavening.
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