Hillel’s Blog

            Our patriarchs and matriarchs were not perfect people.  Among the stories in this week’s Torah portion, Lech L’cha, one of them shows Abraham, and another shows Sarah, not at their best.

            The parasha begins with God telling Abraham to leave his homeland and go to a land which God will show him, that will be an inheritance for his descendants.  But even after Abraham and his family arrive in Canaan (later the Land of Israel), they don’t settle down; a famine is in the land, and they continue on to Egypt where food is expected to be more available.

            But Abraham is worried; he knows that Sarah is considered to be a beautiful woman, and he is a concerned that, if the Egyptians know they are husband and wife, they will kill him in order to take possession of Sarah so that she can become a consort to the Pharaoh.  So instead, he tells Sarah that they should represent themselves as brother and sister; Pharaoh may still take her, but Abraham’s life will be spared.

            This is all very well for Abraham; but it puts Sarah in a rather difficult position, to say the least.  In the end, God intervenes and informs Pharaoh that Sarah and Abraham are married, and Pharaoh, acting more righteously than Abraham (!), returns Sarah to Abraham, and expels them from Egypt.

            Abraham does the same thing again when they go to the land of Gerar!  Despite the fact that Abraham and Sarah really are half-siblings (see Gen. 20:12) as well as husband and wife, commentators have always been bothered both by Abraham’s dishonesty and lack of faith that he shows in these stories, and in his endangering of Sarah.  Although elsewhere he is called righteous, here he doesn’t seem so righteous to us.

            Sarah is never described as righteous, but she is our umpty-great grand-mother, and we would like to think well of her.  But in chapter 16, part of this week’s portion, she, too, does not come out looking very good.

            We are told when we are first introduced to Sarah, back at the end of Chapter 11, that she has no children.  She and Abraham are now past normal child-bearing age, and still have no children, even though God keeps promising them many descendants.  So, in what appears to be an accepted practice at the time, she tells Abraham he should take her maid Hagar as a surrogate mother, and Hagar promptly becomes pregnant. 

            The maid, succeeding at something that her mistress has never been able to do, starts ‘taking an attitude’ toward Sarah; and although Sarah was the one who suggested to Abraham that he impregnate Hagar, Sarah says her troubles are all his fault!

            Sarah in turn makes life miserable for Hagar, to the point that Hagar runs away.  An angel tells Hagar she should return, and that her son will be the father of a great nation, and she goes back to Sarah.  

            In a later Torah portion, Sarah forces Abraham to throw Hagar and her then-adolescent son Ishmael, out of the camp, and Abraham again does what Sarah asks.  With regard to Hagar, neither one of our spiritual ancestors looks terribly righteous!

            Despite these flaws, we still see Abraham and Sarah as out spiritual ancestors, not because they are flawed but because they are human!  Those of us who have grown up on cowboy movies (white hats vs. black hats) or war movies (American good guys vs. anyone with an accent as bad guy) have been made accustomed to expect clear delineations between good and evil; but, when we actually stop to think about it, we know the world is not black and white, but is made up of many shades of gray. 

            As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks put it in his most recent book Not In God’s Name:  Confronting Religious Violence, “It is this honest confrontation with complexity that makes Genesis so profound a religious text.  It refuses to simplify the human condition.”

            How much easier it would be if everything were clearly marked as good or bad, right or wrong.  Having lived in the world, we know better.  And having the Torah as our foundational text, with its realistic views of human nature, is a great blessing to us.  We are asked to learn from and emulate Abraham and Sarah and our other spiritual forebears, not because they were perfect, but because the were trying to understand a complex world, and how to live in it according to God’s teachings.

            From that we can definitely learn much!

            Our journey through the High Holy Day season has concluded, and we now take up the more prosaic journey through the year just begun, the year 5776 on our ancient calendar.

            Most rabbis and commentators track the High Holy Day season beginning with the month of Elul, leading up to the Ten Days of Repentance from Rosh Hashana to Yom Kippur.  The holidays of Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, although not officially part of the High Holy Days, come so closely on the heels of those Days that they feel a part of it.

            Rabbi Alan Lew, in his book This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, sees the start of this season three weeks earlier than Elul, at Tisha B’Av.  That observance commemorates the destructions of the First Temple by the Babylonians in 586 b.c.e., and of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 c.e. 

            As Lew puts it, the Temple, called Beyt HaMikdash in Hebrew, meaning House of Holiness – God’s House – in which we felt secure, crumbles around our ears on Tisha B’Av; after a journey through a renewal of our relationship with God during Elul and the Ten Days of Repentance, we end the season sitting in a flimsy house that isn’t a house – the sukkah – but feeling more secure than ever.  The lesson of this more than two month journey is that our security lies not in the physical structures that we build, but in the spiritual structure of our relationship, as individuals and as a people, with God (whatever that means to each one of us!).

            Now, as we resume our yearly journey, we take that lesson out into the world with us:  the world of work, of school, of marriages, parent-child relationships, friendships and casual interaction with those around us.  Almost as if to emphasize the contrast (havdalah) between the holy season just ended and the more prosaic time that comes after, Ḥeshvan, the month that follows Tishre and the High Holy Days, has no holidays or special observances, other than, of course, Shabbat.  It is the only month on the Hebrew calendar about which that is so. 

            Perhaps our tradition somehow (intentionally or serendipitously) gives us this quieter liturgical month so that we can rest from the many holidays of Tishre; or perhaps we can see this hiatus from holidays as an opportunity to take what we have learned from the High Holy Days, out into our ‘normal’ world and see if those lessons really do help us to live a better life, and to contribute to making a better world, as the prayers of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur seemed to promise. 

            In that light, perhaps this period can be seen as the true beginning of the new year; after all, every day, every moment, is a new beginning.  Today is the first day of the rest of our year; indeed, as the saying goes, of the rest of our lives!

            So for the final time as this holiday season comes to an end:  Shana Tova!  Let’s go out and make this a truly good year!

You stand this day, all of you, before the Lord your God –

your tribal heads, your elders and your officials,

all the men of Israel, your children, your wives, even the stranger within your camp,

from woodchopper to water drawer –

to enter into the covenant of the Lord your God.

Deut. 29:9-11

I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. 

Choose life – if you and your offspring would live –

by loving the Lord your God, heeding His commands, and holding fast to Him.

Deut. 30:19-20

            Even as we make our last-minute preparations for the High Holy Days, which begin on Sunday evening, the regular cycle of Shabbat Torah readings continues.

            The two passages above, one at the very beginning of this week’s portion, Nitzavim, and the other near its end, serve as brackets around the theme, not only of this portion, but also of Rosh Hashana:  our lives as Jews consist of being in covenant with God, and God’s teachings; all of us, even the resident stranger; and that covenant consists of choosing life!

            The first passage is, in its all-inclusiveness, revolutionary!  Covenant ceremonies in ancient times were generally between the god and the king, sometimes with the priests, but never extending beyond the men of a society – in other words, those in positions of power.

            In ancient Israel, however, those members of the society who were deemed of less power – women, children, the resident alien – were explicitly included!  This suggests a recognition that, if every member of a society is not included in the covenant, then the community as a whole will not be able to truly live up to the demands of being in covenant with the Essence of the universe.  Each individual has a role to play in the life – and fate – of the group.

            And in fact the command, or exhortation, to “choose life” is directed, not to the community as a whole, but to each individual.  We know this because the Hebrew word calling on us to choose life is in the singular – it is up to each individual to make that choice; and, again, the suggestion is that, if each individual does not make that choice, the community as a whole will not succeed.

            The command to “choose life” is not limited to any one question or issue:  its not specifically about abortion, for example.  It is about the individuals that make up the community, and the community as a whole, living in conscious covenant with God and God’s teachings.  Not doing so will lead to a much poorer spiritual life in the short run; and in the long run, it could mean that the society will not survive as a community!  It is God’s teachings and commandments that give us the wisdom, the skills, and the common dedication to a goal, that will enable us to sustain our community over long periods of time.

            On Sunday evening and Monday, as we reconsecrate ourselves to the sovereignty of God during our Rosh Hashana services, it might be helpful to recall these passages from Parashat Nitzavim:  may all of us choose to live – in covenant with God and with each other, that our community may – in the words of that well-known Jew, Mr. Spock – live long and prosper.

            L’shana tova tikatevu:  may be all be inscribed in God’s Book of Life for a year of peace, health and well-being in all things; that is to say, a year of true shalom.

            One of the recurring themes of the upcoming Rosh Hashana holiday liturgy is the enthroning of God as king/sovereign.  There is a whole section of the service titled Malchuyot, traditionally translated as ‘Kingship’, and more modernly as ‘Sovereignty.’  The central concept of the section is that, every year on the first day of the New Year, we re-coronate God as King/Sovereign over our lives, our world, our universe.

            We Americans are not used to ‘king’-talk.  This nation began as a rejection of the idea of a single person holding power over the wishes of the majority of the people.  From a colonial system based on sovereignty vested in an individual, our founders established a system in which sovereignty was vested in the people.  In theory, at least, our constitutional system vests sovereignty in the people.

            So what is a ‘sovereign’?  The sovereign is the entity (person or group) in whom supreme and ultimate authority to govern is vested.

            Based on our conversation in our Sunday Chat about God, it seems appropriate to recognize God as Sovereign.  One of the attributes of god-hood in general, as we discussed, is that God is – or gods were –  the central element in the lives of the people. 

            One of the ways we talked about for understanding the God concept, especially when we are trying to get past the many anthropomorphisms of the Bible, is that God can be, among other things, a label for that bundle of values and ideas by which our Jewish tradition encourages us to live our lives.

            And when we look at these two concepts – ethics and values important to how we live our lives, and enthroning of God at the center of our lives – then it makes perfect sense to combine them.  We can now understand the Malchuyot prayers of the Rosh Hashana liturgy as metaphor:  once again, we mindfully put our ethics and values at the very center of our lives.  We ‘enthrone’ them as the source of how we live our lives.

            This is a very good example of what  can become a general rule for our finding meanings in the Bible and the liturgy that we haven’t found before.  So much of it doesn’t work for us when we try to understand it literally.  But when we take it as metaphor, it can suddenly make a lot of sense, and bring new and powerful meanings to our lives.

            Thus, Rosh Hashana becomes one of the many tools that our tradition provides to us for waking up from our daily routines, and remembering that we are human being, created in the Divine Image, and partners with God in bringing order out of chaos, in completing the ongoing process of tikkun olam, fixing a broken world and completing Creation.

            Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt – how…he surprised you on the march when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear.  Therefore…you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!  Deut. 25:17-19

            I have always found the somewhat convoluted language of this passage at the end of this week’s Torah portion a bit amusing:  remember to forget Amalek!

            Who is Amalek?

            In Exodus 17, Amalek is a tribe of nomads in the Sinai desert, who attacked the Israelites, who have just been freed from four hundred years of slavery.  According to the tradition, the Amalekites did not confront the Israelites directly, which would have allowed young men of military age to defend the rest of the people; instead, they preyed upon the weak, the infirm and the aged who, because of their conditions, lagged behind the main body of the Israelites.  This went on until Moses instructed Joshua to gather a force of men to go after the Amalekites and defeat them.

            Because of the cowardly actions of the Amalekites, who were “undeterred by fear of God,” the name of this tribe was to be blotted out of history as not worthy of being remembered – a terrible fate to the biblical mind, to be forgotten forever.

            Of course, the name of Amalek was not blotted out of history, as witness its presence in our Bible!

            But this idea of blotting out the name of Amalek has an echo in our customs in, of all  places, the Jewish festival of Purim! 

            Purim is the story of Esther, the Jewish young woman who hides her identity when she is chosen out of all the beautiful women of Persia to be the queen.  When a new prime minister, by the name of Haman, is appointed, he manipulates the King into allowing him to kill all the Jews.  In order to save her people, Esther reveals her Jewish identity to the King, telling him that Haman is threatening her, too, when he threatens the Jews.

            So what does this have to do with Amalek, you ask?

            Well, in the Scroll of Esther (3:1), Haman is described as an Agagite, a descendant of one Agag.  Agag was the king of Amalek when King Saul was commanded to wipe out the Amalekites for what they did to the Israelites on their way out of Egypt centuries before (1 Sam. 15).  Saul leaves King Agag alive, but is then confronted by the Prophet Samuel for not obeying God and wiping out all the Amalekites.  Samuel kills Agag with Saul’s sword; but the damage seems to have been done:  Agag leaves descendants, one of whom will be Haman the Agagite of the Book of Esther.

            This is the origin of the custom of booing loudly when Haman’s name is mentioned during the reading of the Scroll of Esther, on Purim, in order to drown out his name.  We thus fulfill the commandment in this week’s Torah portion to wipe out the name of Amalek from history.

            Moral of story:  because Saul didn’t fulfill God’s command to wipe out the Amalekites, the Jewish People faced possible annihilation almost a thousand years later.

            The lesson for us:  we can’t know what the ultimate impact of even our least actions will be in the future.  We are therefore called on to live by God’s teachings, so that – at least hopefully – there is a better chance of a good result.

            So – don’t forget to remember to forget! 

            In less than three weeks, we will celebrate the New Year on the Hebrew calendar with the holiday of Rosh Hashana, followed ten days later by Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

            This month leading up to Rosh Hashana is called Elul.  There are no holidays during Elul; but the entire month has been connected by the tradition to those ten days that begin the new year.

            One of the names for the ten day period that begin with Rosh Hashana and end with Yom Kippur is Aseret Yamei HaT’shuva, the Ten Days of Repentance.  It is an annual exercise in self-improvement, looking back on the year that has just ended, and recognizing where we have ‘missed the mark’ in trying to live up to the potentials with which we have been endowed.

            In preparation for that exercise, during the month of Elul we are called upon to engage in a cheshbon nefesh, literally an accounting of the soul:  have we lived up to our obligation to do our best, in exchange for all that we have been given?

            Ideally, we should be engaging in such thoughts every day.  Some try to do so as part of their bedtime ritual, looking back on the day and judging how well they did.  The great advantage of such a practice is, of course, that the day’s events are still fresh in our minds.

            But let’s face it:  remembering to do that every night is difficult, and I would guess that few people remember to do so.  The Torah, therefore, sets aside one day a year for all of us to come together and support each other as we try to account for an entire year.

            By calling on us to begin our cheshbon nefesh, our accounting of the soul, during the entire month leading up to the Ten Days, the tradition gives us a total of forty days to prepare.

            The liturgy of Yom Kippur tells us that God forgives any sins we have committed only against God, just because we ask to be forgiven.  But the liturgy also teaches that, if a sin we have committed resulted in hurting or harming another person, God will not forgive that sin until we go to the person we have harmed and ask for their forgiveness. 

            This is probably the second most difficult task of our soul accounting.  I often think that the most difficult is when someone else has hurt us, and that person comes to us and asks us to forgive them.  Sometimes it is difficult to give up the feeling of being wronged, of blaming the other person and thinking of ourselves as victims, or as better than the person who sinned against us.         

            But one of the central ideas of our Jewish tradition is that we should try very hard to emulate God; and, as noted above, if God forgives when someone asks, we should be willing to do so as well.  It is an act of chesed, of mercy, to do so; and we will feel a whole lot better when we let go of our hurt and anger.  This will allow both the person who sinned, and the person who was sinned against, to experience spiritual growth, and to enter the new year with a clean slate, ready to more closely live up to the potential God has given us to be partners with God in tikkun olam, in fixing this seriously broken world in which we must live.

            It is Elul, time to begin our accounting of the soul, to seek and grant forgiveness, and to prepare for the new year that is about to begin. 

            I have often said that Judaism has something to say about everything.  From time to time, I will use this blog to set out my understanding of what Judaism has to say about an issue that is before us as Americans, as Jews, or just as human beings.  Although I certainly have my own opinions about these issues, I will do my best to present both sides of the issue from the Jewish tradition.

            The death penalty has been much in the news in recent weeks, from the Boston Marathan bombing case, to last week’s decision in the Holmes case in Aurora.

            So what does Judaism have to say about capital punishment?  Does/should a state have the right, or even duty, to put someone to death for a crime that person has committed?

            Some religious opponents of capital punishment begin by pointing to the Ten Commandments, which, in many English translations include:  “Do not kill.”  These opponents say that this should apply to the state as well as to individuals.  The problem with that argument is that the common English translation is wrong.  The original Hebrew is: Lo tirtzach, which clearly means “Do not murder.”  If it said “do not kill,” the Hebrew would have been:  Lo taharog.

            The difference between killing and murder is not just one of semantics.  Killing is a fact:  a life – in our discussion, a human life – is ended.  Murder is a legal conclusion that some killings are unlawful.  Some killings, such as in self-defense, are considered lawful.

            In fact, the Torah prescribes a death penalty thirty-six times, for violation of certain commandments, including murder, kidnapping, adultery, blasphemy, even working on Shabbat, or striking or cursing your father or mother.  The Torah even specifies different methods of execution for different crimes.  So, at least in principle, the Torah would appear to approve of the use of capital punishment.

            But as I learned many years ago in law school, making laws is an exercise in drawing lines.  Two hundred years ago in England, you could be executed by hanging for stealing a loaf of bread.  Today, the line on capital punishment has moved so far that, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), 19 states and many other countries (including the UK) have banned the death penalty completely; and other jurisdictions severely limit it to what are often called “special circumstances,” such as the killing of a police officer (seen as an attack on society as a whole).

            One of the reasons for this change is the fear of putting an innocent person to death.  Again according to the DPIC, more than 150 people, previously sentenced to death, have been exonerated of their crimes and freed from prison since 1973.

            This fear of putting an innocent person to death was a serious concern of the rabbis of our tradition.   They were so concerned, that they built up major procedural roadblocks against it.  They reminded themselves,  and us, a number  of times that even an accused or convicted criminal is created in the Divine Image, and we human beings must be absolutely certain of guilt before executing someone.

            The Torah itself, in Deuteronomy, requires that the death penalty be imposed only on the testimony of at least two eye-witnesses.  And in order to be certain that those eye-witnesses take their testimony very seriously, the Torah commands that they be the ones to carry out the execution, if the defendant is convicted on their testimony.  For obvious reasons, close relatives of both the victim and the accused could not be among the witnesses.

            The Talmud takes it even further:  in a capital case, again as a safety check, the testimony of the witnesses must fully corroborate each other.  And it isn’t even enough that the testimonies about the act itself match; the witnesses must also establish that the defendant was warned before the act that committing the crime could result in the death penalty, and the defendant must calmly indicate that he is aware of that, but chooses to commit the act anyway! 

            The court would also appoint special investigating judges, some to look for evidence of guilt, and others to look for evidence of innocence.  These investigators would then report their findings to the rest of the court.

            Perhaps the most unusual court rule was that, if the judges all voted unanimously to convict, then the defendant was not executed; there was a concern that, on a court of at least 23 judges, if not even one judge voted for acquittal, then perhaps there hadn’t been enough of an effort to find exculpatory evidence.

            And on days when the Sanhedrin, the supreme Jewish court in Jerusalem, would vote on capital cases, all of its members were required to fast, to emphasize the seriousness of what they were doing.

            Some rabbis of the Talmud so disliked capital punishment that they said that a Sanhedrin that condemned someone to death once in seven years would be considered a bloodthirsty court; others said a court that condemned someone to death even once in seventy years was a bloodthirsty court!  This was not a unanimous opinion: the Talmud does quote one rabbi as saying that such an attitude would have increased the number of murderers in Israel!  But this last rabbi was clearly in the minority.

            What effect has all this had in modern American Judaism?  The Reform Movement has been on record since 1959 as opposed to capital punishment; the Conservative Movement issued an opinion in 1960 saying “we regard all forms of capital punishment as barbaric and obsolete.”

            Orthodox opinions follow the above-cited procedural blocks against imposition of capital punishment from the Torah and Talmud.  They generally state that, since the Torah provides for capital punishment in so many cases, is isn’t immoral in and of itself; but the cases in which it could be safely and properly imposed are so rare as to be, for all intents and purposes, non-existent.

            In this and in other issues that I will be presenting in this blog, we don’t necessarily have to agree.  But I suggest that if we are taking our covenantal obligations seriously, we should at least be aware of what our sources and our traditions have to say, as we make up our own minds.  Some very wise people have struggled with these issues over the last four thousand years; there is no need for us to reinvent the wheel as we struggle with them today.

            This week’s Torah portion, Va’etchanan, is full of discussions about mitzvot (commandments), chukim (laws), and mishpatim (rules).  Many of the 613 commandments of the Jewish tradition are set forth here, and we are also urged to “do what is right in the eyes of God” if we don’t happen to remember the commandment that applies in a particular circumstance.

            The whole idea of being commanded is a problematic one for Reform Jews, and may be the issue that makes a Jew philosophically Reform.  Indeed, the first statement of principles of the American Reform Movement, the Pittsburgh Platform of 1885, specifically threw out the commandments having to do with “diet, priestly purity, and dress [which] originated in ages and under the influence of ideas entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state. They fail to impress the modern Jew with a spirit of priestly holiness; their observance in our days is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation.”

            The 1885 Platform, however, reaffirmed the commitment of Reform Judaism to “moral laws, and maintain only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives.”

            Reform Judaism has come a long way since then. Its most recent statement of principles, issued in 1999, has no division of categories of traditional mitzvot, or a blanket rejection of some of those categories, as did its 1885 ancestor.  In fact, the 1999 Platform states:  “We are committed to the ongoing study of the whole array of mitzvot (my emphasis),” but make a commitment to fulfill, not that whole array, but only “those that address us as individuals and as a community.”   It is still up to the individual Reform Jew to decide what mitzvot s/he will commit to; or to the community as to what mitzvot the community will follow.

            The current statement still avoids translating the Hebrew word mitzvah as ‘commandment,’ which is its literal translation.  One current translation, “sacred obligations,” comes close to that.  But I think another translation of mitzvot in the 1999 Platform, says it better: “the means by which we make our lives holy.”

            This tracks something that I have been doing for some years now, in translating the beginning of a brakha, a blessing, that ubiquitous short form of prayer that we are encouraged by the tradition to say whenever we want to recognize the specialness of a moment.

            Barukh Atah Adonai, Eloheynu Melekh ha’olam, asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav v’tsivanu….  That is the formulaic beginning of all blessings having to do with mitzvot.  The common translation of the first six Hebrew words is fine:  “Blessed (or praised) are You, Adonai, Our God, Sovereign of the universe…”  But the literal translation of the next four Hebrew words is problematic for some:  “Who has sanctified us by the commandments, and commanded us to…”

            To avoid that problem, I have been using the following paraphrase:  “…Who has given us opportunities for holiness in our lives, by calling on us to…”

            Reform Judaism, even in the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform, was willing to accept a sense of being commanded by the ethical mitzvot, but rejected what it deemed ritual  mitzvot.  Modern Reform Judaism invites each one of us to study all the mitzvot in the Torah, and to take into our daily lives those “sacred obligations” that we find “make our lives holy.”

            The key here is to study the traditions, in order to figure out which of them address us sufficiently to add a sense of sacredness, holiness, to our lives.  This is the essence of Judaism generally, and of the Reform Judaism  to which we as a congregation subscribe.

            As a new year on the Jewish calendar approaches, we will be announcing many opportunities for such study, for every age group in our community.  Jewish learning is a life-long commitment, as the principles of Reform Judaism affirm.

GRATUITOUS HATRED – HAVE WE LEARNED NOTHING

IN TWO THOUSAND YEARS?

            This past Saturday, July 25, coincided with the ninth day of the month of Av on the Hebrew calendar.  That date, known in Hebrew as Tisha B’Av, is traditionally a day of mourning, commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, the First by the Babylonians in the year 586 b.c.e; the Second by the Romans in the year 70 c.e.  (Because the tradition does not permit mourning on Shabbat, this year’s observance was held on Sunday.)

            The two foci of the traditional observance of this day are one of the two 24-hour fasts in our ritual year (no points for naming the other one, we should all know it!); and the reading of the biblical Book of Lamentations.  That book is a litany of truly awful images of suffering and loss, a one-day immersion in the horrors of Jewish history. 

            Along with the destruction of the two Temples, the rabbis of our tradition have managed to fold into this day of mourning a number of other tragedies in our past, including the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492.  The only such event that has been given its own day on our liturgical calendar is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day; according to some religious authorities, the Holocaust is still too fresh in our memory to not have its own day.

            There are many in Israel, and elsewhere, who have proposed that, since the re-establishment of a Jewish homeland in 1948, there is no more reason to observe this day of anguish.  Others believe that we must continue to remember what we have endured, because those experiences have made us who we are as a people.

            I agree with that last position.  But there is another reason as well:  the Talmud teaches that the Second Temple was destroyed because of sin’at ḥinam, gratuitous hatred (Tractate Yoma p. 9b).  This has been explained as the various Jewish factions in Jerusalem during the last Roman siege of the city and Temple being so intent on fighting with other Jewish factions over who was the better Jew, that they were not able to unite against the Romans.  There is good reason to believe that, even if they had been able to unite in defense of Jerusalem and the Temple, they would have lost to the Legions anyway.  But the teaching is nevertheless valid:  we waste so much time and energy on arguing who is a ‘better’ or a ‘real’ Jew that we could end up destroying ourselves in the end.

            And we seem to have not learned a thing as a people in the 2,000 years since the destruction of the Second Temple!

            Ya’ir Lapid is a centrist politician in Israel and a former journalist.  He put this lesson very well in a piece he wrote for an Israeli publication in honor of Tisha B’Av:

            The sad truth of the human race is that we love to hate. It gives us a feeling of power, it brings us closer to our peers, it saves us from the need to rethink our stances every day because who can be bothered.

            Instead, we look at the other side and say to ourselves that if they are so horribly disgusting then we must be right.

            This is why our ancestors, who were wiser than we are, gave us Tisha B’Av. They wanted to remind us that, if the Temple was destroyed because of baseless hatred, then once a year, on this day, we need to check all our hatreds anew. Are they justified? Are they not blinding us? Do we know how to look past them and see our brothers and sisters as fellow human beings?

            Hatred is free. Love is not.

            Love is bound up in courage, in leaving our comfort zone, in the ability to truly see the other.

            Hatred comes easily. Love with great difficulty. Why? Because it forces us to think again about those who are on the other side, who are different than we are, who we put in a box so we wouldn’t have to think about them.

            To hate someone else, we have to push them away.

            To love them, we have to bring ourselves closer.

            I didn’t have time to organize an observance of Tisha B’Av this year while getting settled here in Fort Collins; next year I hope to do so. 

            Although many in the Reform Movement see little importance in observing this day, I think it is worth getting together and learning from.  We can’t know who we are, and where we are going, unless we know where we came from.  

Welcome to my new blog Divrei Hillel (“Words of Hillel”)!

My thought in starting this blog is to have a forum for an exchange of ideas between me as the rabbi of Congregation Or Hadash, and you, members and friends of Or Hadash.  I emphasize that I would like this to be an exchange of ideas, because I very much hope that you will share your views and questions, with me and with each other.  

If I can keep up with the schedule, my hope is to post to this blog twice a week:  every Thursday, I will try to post some thoughts about the week’s Torah portion; and early in the week, on Sunday or Monday, I want to share with you my views as a rabbi, a ‘recovering’ attorney, a citizen of the United States and of Israel, and a caring human being, about events and issues going on in the world.  I may post more often, as the spirit moves me; and I may occasionally have to miss a regular posting, because, as we all know, life happens.  When that occurs, I will try to post a sentence or two letting you know that I didn’t just forget, and when you might expect the next posting.

I know that all our email in-boxes are bursting at the seams, so I don’t want to add to the glut by sending this blog to you as an email.  Whenever I post to the blog, a link to it will appear on the Or Hadash website, Facebook page, and weekly calendar email sent out by Lenny Abels, enabling you to go to the blog if you choose.  If you want an email letting you know of each new blog posting, there will also be a way to subscribe to the blog.

I hope you will read these postings, and, when the spirit moves you, comment on what I have written, or what other readers have posted in their comments.  Likewise, if there is a particular topic or question you would like me to address, you can post it as a comment to the blog, or, if you prefer, send it to me in an email at rabbi@templeorhadash.org.

Let’s get a conversation going about the things that matter to us as Jews, as Coloradoans, as Americans, and as caring human beings!

On August 30, in the first of my monthly Sunday Chats, I plan to address the idea of God in Jewish tradition, prayer and thought.  I know this is an area that is a difficult for many of us, which is why I want to open the discussion before the High Holy Days, which are so filled with God language.

In order to give you time to prepare for that discussion, I would like to recommend some books that might help you understand that there is a very wide range of beliefs about God that are all acceptable in our Jewish tradition:

The God I Believe In:  Conversations on Religion with 14 Leading Jewish Intellectuals, by Rabbi Joshua O. Haberman

Finding God:  Ten Jewish Responses, by Rifat Sonsino and Daniel B. Syme

A third book, not specifically Jewish but it may as well be, is worth looking at.  It is a very small book, but written with much humor and wisdom:

Stupid Ways, Smart Ways, To Think About God, by Michael Shevack and Jack Bemporad

There are many other books out there about Jewish views of God, and I promise to provide you with a list of a few of them.  But either one (or even both!) of these two books will, I believe, be a good place to start.

I hope to see you at the Sunday Chat on August 30, when we begin our conversation about God.  And I hope you will read, and comment on, what appears on this blog.

L’Shalom,
Rabbi Hillel