A Blessing for the Westchester Reform Temple Community

We've just offered our Mi SheBeirach prayer for healing. But in fact, there are many different kinds of Mi SheBeirach prayers. Mi SheBeirach is a type of prayer, which requests a blessing for the person on whose behalf it is said. Most famously, there is the Mi SheBeirach prayer for a person who is sick -- but there also is a Mi SheBeirach for someone who's just had an aliyah to the Torah, a Mi SheBeirach for a wedding couple before they enter the chuppah, and also, there is a Mi SheBeirach prayer for a synagogue community, asking for blessing for congregation. And it is this final kind of Mi SheBeirach which we'd like to offer now.

Would the congregation please rise.

***

Mi she-beirach avoteinu v’imoteinu -- Avraham, Yitzchak, v’Yaakov, Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel, v’Leah -- Hu yivareich et ha-kahal ha-kodesh ha-zeh. 

 

May the One who blessed our ancestors -- Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah -- bless this sacred congregation of Westchester Reform Temple. 

God -- our ancestors had an insight, a glimmer of spiritual wisdom, which they passed down to their children, and their children’s children -- an insight which has, in turn, been passed down to us. Our ancestors taught: “Place these words which God has commanded you this day upon your heart. Teach them faithfully to your children. Inscribe them on the doorposts of our house, and on your gates.” 

God -- our ancestors recognized the sacred power of the doorpost: a place that is neither inside nor outside, a place that is in between, a place on the cusp -- the place of transition. Our Eternal God -- this holy congregation of Westchester Reform Temple stands now at the doorpost, in a moment of transition. Some of us are going out. Others among us are coming in. Still others, the majority, are not going any place in particular. But nevertheless, all of us -- whether we are in motion or standing still -- this entire community is in a moment of transition. 

A moment of transition can bring with it conflicting emotions. It is at once both a beginning and an ending. It is at once both exciting and unsettling. It is at once both full of new possibilities, and also, is full of loss.

Our ancestors recognized that in a moment such as this, when our hearts are pulled in so many different directions, we need something to ground us. And so, our ancestors instructed us to mount a mezuzah on every doorpost -- a powerful reminder of their belief that You, our loving God, go with us through all our moments of transition.

And so, we pray: mi shebeirach avoteinu v’imoteinu -- may the One who blessed our ancestors with wisdom go with us through this hour of change. Help us, our Eternal God, to navigate the complexities of transition. Help us make our goodbyes sincere and heartfelt. Help us open our arms and our hearts widely, to embrace all the unknowns that await us, full of potential. Help us to carry with us always the experiences we have shared -- the times we have celebrated together, mourned together, prayed together, learned together, witnessed together our children’s growth and change, recognized together the changes we’ve discovered in ourselves. Our God, in this moment of transition, help us feel Your loving presence, a presence that accompanies us everywhere -- and in so doing, help us hold fast to our belief that life, that greatest of all transitions, is worthwhile and beautiful.

Standing in this doorway, may we gently lift our hand up to our lips, softly place a kiss upon our finger, and with the wisdom of our ancestors, lovingly reach out and touch the doorframe -- that we may approach this hour of change full of sweetness, affection, and love.

Our God, help us make it so. And together, let us all say: Amen.

Temple Beth Shalom Passover Introduction Message

Dear Temple Beth Shalom, 

Hi! I’m Rabbi Daniel Reiser, and I am really excited to be joining your community this summer. Over the past several months, I have enjoyed meeting many TBS congregants, and I look forward to continuing to build relationships in the months and years that are to come. I also have really enjoyed getting to know Rabbi Schecter and Cantor Joseph, and am honored to be joining them as a clergy partner in this time of great transition for Temple Beth Shalom.

For the past six years, I have served as an associate rabbi at Westchester Reform Temple, in Scarsdale – and my wife, Leah, and I and our two kids have been living in White Plains. Our whole family is really excited to move to the Rivertowns area, and to become a part of the Temple Beth Shalom community.

This Friday and Saturday evening, Jews all over the world will gather around their dining room tables for seder. Sociologists say that the Passover seder is one of the most popular and widely observed customs in American Jewish life – and there’s a good reason why that’s the case. The seder is a combination of many of the best elements that Jewish life has to offer: we gather together with friends and family; our homes become a sacred space; we share a meal; we engage in good conversation; we ask questions; we tell stories – many of the elements that make Jewish life compelling and powerful, and cause seder night to be different from all other nights.

In the years that are to come, I look forward to sharing exactly these kinds of experiences with the Temple Beth Shalom community – not only around the seder table, but at all times of the year. I am excited to hear your stories, to explore together life’s big questions, to engage each other in meaningful conversation, to share in one another’s lives – and continue to build upon Temple Beth Shalom’s rich history as a community that is different from all other kinds of communities.

I am excited to do all of this and more together. I am looking forward to continuing to get to know one another soon – and until then, I wish you a chag sameach, a happy and a meaningful Passover. May it be different from all other nights.

Curiosity, Creativity, and Freedom

Please find the accompanying handout here.

Ukraine

My great-grandfather, Alexander Reiser, of blessed memory -- after whom my father is named -- was born in 1881 in the city Lviv in western Ukraine. According to an exhaustive family record, which traces our lineage all the way back to the 1700s, Alexander’s parents and grandparents were merchants in the lumber business. They traded and exported all across the Pale of Settlement wood that had been chopped down in the dense oak forests of western Ukraine.

Over the past few weeks and months, as the tension in Ukraine has escalated into all out war, my great-grandpa Alex has often been on mind. Even though I never met him, and even though I have never been there, I feel, on some deep level that I cannot fully explain, a connection to Ukraine -- and in particular to the city of Lviv.

Of course, there are many reasons to feel concerned about the war in Ukraine. Like so many others, I am appalled by Russia’s blatant disregard for the sovereignty of a neighboring nation. This unprovoked war represents not only a threat to Ukraine, not only a threat to the stability of Europe, not only a threat to NATO, but also, a threat to democracy and the rule of law.

Like so many others, I fear for the life of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, who has shown incredible leadership and bravery over these past few weeks -- and also fear for the lives of the Ukrainian fighters, whose resistance against the better-resourced Russian military has, at least so far, proven stronger than expected.

Like so many others, my heart breaks for the humanitarian crisis that has been unleashed -- with hundreds of innocent civilians killed, with estimates, as of Thursday evening, of more than a million people who have fled to neighboring countries, and a million more who are internally displaced, taking shelter in subway stations to avoid the bombardment of missiles. I urge the congregation to help provide humanitarian relief by donating toiletries, diapers, and first aid kits, which will be distributed through the AFYA foundation, and are being collected in bins outside the main entrance to WRT through this coming Wednesday.

But for us as Jews, our reasons for concern about the war in Ukraine are not only about geopolitics, not only about the humanitarian crisis -- but also, it is about our heritage. Even for those of us who do not trace our family’s lineage there -- as I do, with my great-grandpa Alex -- Ukraine matters deeply to the Jewish people.

On Wednesday, President Zelensky -- who is himself proudly Jewish -- recorded a video message addressed to the Jewish people of the world. In it, he reminded us that Russia’s attempt to erase Ukrainian history also, in part, erases Jewish history. Since the war began, missiles have fallen on the town of Uman, where the Hasidic master Rebbe Nachman of Breslov is buried -- and which has become a pilgrimage site for hundreds of thousands of Jews every year, who come to pray at the tomb of the revered rabbi. Missiles have also damaged the Babi Yar Memorial Center in Kiev -- a memorial site dedicated to the unthinkable massacre that was perpetrated there during the Holocaust, in which, over the course of just two days, 33,000 Ukrainian Jews were dragged from their homes, shot dead, and thrown into a mass grave in a nearby ravine.

All across Ukraine, there are numberless places that matter to the Jewish people: whether it’s the pilgrimage site of Uman, the ravine of Babi Yar, the vibrant synagogues and community centers that serve the approximately 150,000 Jews living in Ukraine today -- or, the dense oak forests outside of Lviv, where, a 150 years ago, my great-grandfather Alex’s family earned their living.

To be sure, Jewish history in Ukraine has been decidedly stormy: darkened first by the Khmelnytsky Massacre in the 1650s; followed by centuries of Tsarist restrictions about where Jews could and could not live, and what professions Jews could and could not enter; forced military conscription, including for children; countless pogroms committed by our neighbors; accusations of blood libel (the medieval myth that Jews use Christian blood in order to make matzah) charged against us even as late as the 20th century; the mass shootings of the Holocaust (of which Babi Yar is just the most well-known example), carried out by Germans, but often assisted by local Ukrainians; the repressions of the Soviet era. The list of Jewish tragedies in Ukraine goes on and on and on.

And yet, despite these many tragedies, Jewish history Ukraine is also incredibly rich. The number of Jewish luminaries who were born or lived in what is now Ukraine is staggering: the Baal Shem Tov, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, Sholom Aleichem, Shai Agnon, Ahad Ha’am, Chayim Nachman Bialik, Golda Meir, Natan Sharansky -- to name just the most well-known few. The Jews of Ukraine were impressively culturally productive. Together, they pioneered three major innovations in modern Jewish life -- without which, the Jewish world as we know it today would likely be unrecognizable: the Hasidic revolution, the flowering of Yiddish literature, and the Zionist movement.

What was it, we might ask, about the Jewish experience in Ukraine that, despite our people’s stormy history there, we nevertheless were able to be so culturally productive? Why is it that these three major innovations -- Hasidism, Yiddish literature, and Zionism -- all were born in Ukraine?

To help us answer this question, we need a crash course in modern Jewish history. It is a story that can be told in two contrasting parts: the Jewish experience in Western Europe (places like France, Germany, and Austria) contrasted with the Jewish experience in Eastern Europe (places like Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine).

Let us begin with Western Europe. For the Jews of Western Europe, the modern era begins with the French Revolution and its battlecry of liberté, égalité, fraternité -- or “liberty, equality, and brotherhood.” The centuries of inequality between the nobility and the peasants gave way to the ideals of the Enlightenment: the rights of citizenship, equal protection under the law, democracy. And as these ideals spread across Western Europe, the walls of the Jewish ghettos gradually came down. Our ancestors were emancipated and granted equal citizenship under the law.

But in exchange for their citizenship, the Jews of Western Europe were expected to participate in the majority culture of the nation. They needed to speak French, look French, and act French. Gone were the days in which one’s primary group association was with the Jewish community. Identifying as French, or German, or Austrian had to come first.

The Jews of Western Europe adapted accordingly. It was there that our own Reform Movement was born, out of a desire to make our worship services look and feel more like the Protestant services of our German neighbors -- with prayers in the vernacular, instrumental organ music, and mixed seating for women and men. It was there that modern Jewish philosophy flourished, with thinkers such as Moses Mendelssohn and Martin Buber -- mirroring the esteemed German intellectual tradition of Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche. For the Jews in Western Europe, emancipation created the need for them to fit in.

All of these developments stand in sharp contrast to the experience of the Jews in Eastern Europe. For them, the modern era begins not with the French Revolution and emancipation. Rather, for the Jews of Eastern Europe, the modern era begins with a historical moment that has resonances to today. It begins with the Russian annexation of Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine.

As the Russian Empire expanded westward, it newly found itself with control over many ethnic minorities: including Poles, Lithuanias, Ukrainians -- and Jews. In an effort to organize this jumble of groups, the Empire relied on the medieval institution of social estates -- categorizing people into different groups, each with its own a differing set of rights and responsibilities. Unlike the Jews in the West, who, after being emancipated, had to minimize their Jewish group identity, the Jews in the East were moved in exactly the opposite direction -- and were now politically defined specifically as a group.

And it is this difference between West and East -- this sense of collective Jewish identity -- that caused the Jews of Ukraine to be so impressively culturally productive. Although their collective identity was forced upon them as a political status, it nevertheless led to our three major innovations in modern Jewish life: the Hasidic revolution, the flowering of Yiddish literature, and the Zionist movement.

Let us consider each of them in order. First: the Hasidic revolution. In the 1700s, Jewish life in Eastern Europe was in disarray. Under the burden of heavy taxes, the community did not have enough money to properly fund the yeshivas where rabbis would train and study. As a result, both the scholarship and the leadership abilities of the rabbis began to suffer -- and the community began to grow disillusioned with them.

And it was into this leadership crisis that the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, was born. He developed revolutionary ideas about Jewish life. To him, it did not matter that the yeshivas were weak. He taught, instead, that prayer is more important than study, that the heart is more important than the mind, that joyful piety is more important than Talmudic erudition, that the simple Jewish commoner can be as close to God as the greatest learned sage. Unlike the religious Reformers in Western Europe, who had worked to make Judaism more closely resemble their Christian neighbors, the Baal Shem Tov in Ukraine worked to make Judaism more closely resemble the life of the everyday Jew. Hasidism attracted followers by the millions.

Second: the flowering of Yiddish literature. While the emancipated Jews in the West were learning to speak French and German, the unemancipated Jews in the East had no choice other than to more fully embrace their mother tongue -- the mamaloshen: Yiddish. They created a rich literary culture, teeming with Yiddish novels, short stories, poems, essays, newspapers, journals, stage plays, and songs -- with the Ukrainian port city of Odessa as its vibrant, beating heart.

Unlike the Jewish writers in the West, who composed serious, cerebral books of modern Jewish philosophy, the Yiddish writers in the East composed stories about the lives of everyday Jews: about Tevye the milkman and his daughters (written by the perhaps the most famous Ukrainian Jew, Sholom Aleichem), or a story about an incident of getting lost on the way to the train station, or about falling asleep in shul and accidentally missing the entirety of Rosh Hashanah. These were the stories of the people, written in the language of the people -- and they proved hugely popular.

Third: the Zionist movement. We tend to think of Theodore Herzl (who was from Western Europe) as the founder of the Zionist movement. But in fact, the vast majority of Zionist leaders and their followers came from Eastern Europe -- and many of them from Ukraine. Two of these Ukrainian Zionists were Leon Pinsker (who predated Herzl by 15 years, and to whom Herzl’s ideology is deeply indebted) and the Ukrainian Zionist Aham Ha’am.

Both Pinsker and Ahad Ha’am observed that the emancipation of Jews in the West had come with some negative side-effects. Pinsker pointed out that, even after they had been emancipated, Western Jews continued to face discrimination. True, they had been made citizens -- but they were second class citizens, at best. What’s more, the Jews had very little power over their own emancipation. They had to passively wait until the state decided that it was ready to emancipate them -- and they might be waiting for a very long time. In his influential pamphlet called Auto-Emancipation, Pinsker called upon the Jews of Eastern Europe to stop passively waiting, take matters into their own hands, and establish a Jewish national movement.

Ahad Ha’am, for his part, also saw the negative side-effects of emancipation -- but from a different angle. He pointed out that emancipation also led to assimilation. As an antidote to this problem, Ahad Ha’am created the idea of Cultural Zionism -- the notion that the Jews should re-establish a Hebrew civilization in the land of Israel, from which a rich Jewish culture and a thick sense of Jewish pride would flow outwards to the Diaspora.

All three of these innovations -- Hasidism, Yiddish literature, and Zionism -- were pioneered in Ukraine. All three of them reflect the political status of the Jews of Eastern Europe -- who, unlike their Western counterparts, were not emancipated until the 20th century. On account of this, all three innovations are expressions of collective Jewish identity: the feeling that to be Jewish is, first and foremost, to be part of a group -- Hasidism, as the religion of the people; Yiddish literature, as the language and stories of the people; and Zionism, as the national movement of the people.

This is why the Jews of Ukraine were so impressively culturally productive: they understood themselves as belonging to a people -- a sprawling extended family. 

***

In every nuclear family, in yours as well as mine, there are certain places that we hold dear: the town in which we were raised, the beaches on which we have vacationed, the park where we proposed to our spouse, the cemetery where our parent is buried. These places are full of memories. These places have shaped who we are.

Even though I have never been there, and even though I never met him -- the dense oak forests of Western Ukraine, in which my great-grandfather Alex’s family earned their living, shaped my family’s story. The place will always be a part of us, and we will always be a part of it.

And what is true for our nuclear families is also true for the sprawling extended family that is the Jewish people. Even for those of us who do not trace our lineage to Ukraine, still it is a place that we cherish. It is a place that shaped the Jewish story. It is a place that produced our culture.

We Jews will forever care about Ukraine -- for there, we have known that to be Jewish is to belong to a group. To be Jewish is to be a part of a family.

The People of the Book

While I was in rabbinical school, I served as a student intern at Temple Shaaray Tefila on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. During my time with the congregation, the senior rabbi of the synagogue was Rabbi Jonathan Stein -- who, by that point in his rabbinate, had enjoyed a long and distinguished career. All four walls of his large office were lined with built-in bookcases, and every bookcase was packed from floor to ceiling with books -- some of them in rows that were two books deep. There must have been thousands of books in that office. When congregants -- or, in my case, a young rabbinical student -- would come into Rabbi Stein’s office and look around in wonder at his impressive library, the distinguished rabbi, with his usual wit and humor, would gesture towards the books and say: “I’ve read every single title.” 

A few weeks ago, the Jewish Book Council announced the 2021 winners of the National Jewish Book Awards -- their annual prize for the most notable Jewish books from the past year. And in the weeks since the list of award-winners was published, like Rabbi Stein, I can proudly say: “I’ve read every single title.”

Don’t get me wrong. I haven’t read every book -- only the titles. And I must say, even just the titles fascinate me. Among the honorees are titles such as Beyond the Synagogue: Jewish Nostalgia as Religious Practice, a book that explores the deep religious meaning that American Jews have found in seemingly mundane experiences, like going to a deli. Another title is Becoming a Soulful Parent, a book that applies the tools of Jewish spirituality to the challenges of raising children. Another book is entitled An Account of a Minor and Ulti­mate­ly Even Neg­li­gi­ble Episode in the His­to­ry of a Very Famous Fam­i­ly, which is a novel that imagines a fictional visit by Ben-Zion Netanyahu (father of the former Israeli Prime Minister) to the campus of a small liberal arts college in the United States -- an encounter between Israeli Jewishness and American Jewishness. And of course, there was an award for the writer Dara Horn’s much acclaimed and much discussed book on anti-Semitism -- which, in addition to winning a National Jewish Book Award, would likely also win an award for the most provocative title of the year. The book is called People Love Dead Jews.

Browsing through the list of winners is like browsing through Rabbi Stein’s library. While it may be true that, at this point, “I’ve read every single title” (and no more than that), nevertheless, reading every title makes me want to read every book.

Throughout our history, the Jewish people have always been lovers of books. One of our most famous and proud nicknames is that we are “the People of the Book.” We Jews love to read, love to write, love to explore new ideas -- love to utilize the power of language to transform our minds, our souls, and our world.

It’s been said that when you enter any sacred space, like a church, a mosque, or a synagogue, you will find at the front and center of the room the image or symbol that that particular faith group holds most dear. For the Jewish people, the symbol that we hold most dear is not a shrine or an altar, not a statue of a person, not some dogmatic statement of faith, but rather, is a book -- our Torah scroll. We love this book so much that we treat it with the utmost reverence. We stand up when we are in its presence, as if it were an honored guest. We try never to let it touch the floor, as if it were too exalted for so lowly a stature. We cradle it in our arms, parade it around the room, and lovingly kiss our finger when we reach out to touch it, as if it were a baby entrusted to our care -- a precious child, our hope for the future.

Our nickname “the People of the Book” originally comes from the Islamic world. In the early Muslim caliphates, although Jews did not practice the majority religion, still, our ancestors were granted a special political status. On account of our shared reverence for the stories of the Bible, our Muslim neighbors treated our ancestors kindly and fairly: granting them, in Arabic, dhimmi status -- that is, the equal protection that Sharia law extends to non-Muslims who are, nevertheless, “People of the Book.”

And indeed, in places where Jews lived among a majority Muslim society, our ancestors thrived. In Baghdad, in Muslim Spain, in Iran, and in Egypt, we Jews enjoyed prolific Golden Eras -- many centuries of literary productivity, generating some of the greatest Jewish writers and books of all time. The philosopher Maimonides, the poet Yehuda HaLevi, the Jewish legal scholar Joseph Karo, the mystical book of the Zohar, and countless others were all written by Jews in Muslim lands. Perhaps our most famous book, the Babylonian Talmud -- which, unlike the Hebrew Bible, is not a book that we share with other faith traditions, but rather, is exclusively a part of the Jewish religious canon -- the Talmud was written in Iraq. For Jews in Muslim lands, the term “the People of the Book” signified more than just a protected political status. It was our shining legacy.

However, as you browse through the titles of the National Jewish Book Award winners, it quickly becomes clear that the term “the People of the Book” is at least partly inaccurate. Among the twenty titles that received awards, only one of them is explicitly about the book -- the Torah. The other nineteen award-winners are on all kinds of secular Jewish topics, representing many different genres of literature -- including biographies, academia, cookbooks, personal memoirs, history books, and illustrated children’s books. The vast majority are not explicitly religious.

I imagine that the same might be said about each of our own Jewish book collections at home. While we likely might have a copy of the Hebrew Bible, the prayer book, and the Passover Haggadah, it is also likely that alongside these religious books, we might have a novel by Philip Roth or Geraldine Brooks, books about Israel or the Holocaust, books about the Jewish contributions to Hollywood and Broadway, a book of Jewish jokes or familiar Yiddish phrases, or perhaps books that are indeed inspirational but are not explicitly religious in content, like the well-known Chicken Soup for the Jewish Soul. In our house, popular children’s books like Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins and Latkes, Latkes, Good to Eat are at least as beloved as the actual story of Chanukah. Judging either by the National Jewish Book Award winners or by our own personal libraries, we might reasonably say we Jews are not so much “the People of the Book,” but perhaps more accurately, “the People of the Books.”

Even “the Book” itself (the Hebrew Bible) is in fact not one single book, but rather, is a collection of books -- written at a variety of different times, in a variety of different places, by a variety of different authors, with a variety of different worldviews and motivations, spanning a variety of different genres. Some books of the bible may have been written as early as 1000 BCE; others, not until 200 BCE. Some were written in the Land of Israel; others, in faraway Persia. Some are books that are filled with religious piety; others are books of poetry (like the Book of Psalms), or a novella (like the Book of Ruth), or a collection of aphorisms, similar to Bartlett’s Quotations (like the Book of Proverbs). There is even a comedic farce (like the Book of Esther)!

What we now refer to as “the Book” is, in fact, a collection of books, spanning a variety of genres. If we look back into Jewish history, we will see that there has not always been perfect consensus as to which books should be included in the collection, and which books should be left out. There are many ancient Jewish books that did not make it into the Bible’s final cut: for instance, the Book of Jubilees, or the Book of Maccabees, or the Book of Ben Sira. Somewhere along the way, by some process that isn’t precisely understood by historians, our ancestors made a decision about which books to include in the Biblical canon and which to disregard -- sort of like an ancient version of today’s Jewish Book Council, deciding which books should be recognized with a National Jewish Book Award, and which should not.

There’s a famous debate that is recorded in the Mishnah, [1] in which the ancient Rabbis are arguing over whether certain books of the Bible possess the gravitas to truly be considered sacred. The debate centers around two books in particular: the Song of Songs, and the Book of Ecclesiastes. The Song of Songs, for its part, is a collection of ancient Hebrew love letters. It describes in vivid, sensual detail the courtship between two young lovers. In some passages, it could reasonably be described as erotica. It is hardly a wonder that the ancient Rabbis were divided over whether such a book ought to be considered sacred.

The other book that the Rabbis debate is the Book of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes, for its part, is a philosophical treatise that expresses a skeptical view of human existence. It argues that life is meaningless, that piety is useless, and that justice is merely an illusion. And yet, despite the seemingly secular and potentially subversive content of both the Song of Songs and the Book of Ecclesiastes, the ancient Rabbis ultimately decided that both of them were fit to be called sacred -- and today, we treat both books with the same reverence that we would afford any other part of the Hebrew Bible.

Let us consider, for a moment, what this debate among the ancient Rabbis was all about -- and why it matters for us today. On some level, the Rabbis were asking: What are the books that we should care about? What content should a Jewish person read and study in order to be considered a well-educated Jew? [2] Do the books need to be explicitly religious -- or is there a meaningful place for other kinds of Jewish writing? Put differently: Should we define ourselves narrowly as “the People of the Book,” or more broadly as “the People of the Books”?

If we are to take the broader definition -- that there is indeed a meaningful place not only for religious books, but also for other kinds of Jewish writing -- then a whole new set of questions emerges. For example: to what extent should a person who is well-read in secular Jewish texts be familiar with and conversant in the classical religious canon? Should there be some sort of “core curriculum” of, say, Hebrew bible, prayer book, and Talmud that is required before a person can branch out into more wide-ranging “elective” Jewish reading, like fiction, history, and memoir? Additionally, we might ask: What are the limits to the term “the People of the Book”? Is it sufficient for a Jew to be well-read in general -- say, as an avid-reader of The New Yorker, or in the best of contemporary non-fiction -- but have never picked up the Book of Genesis or the Passover Haggadah?

In short, the question we are asking is: What exactly do we mean when we say that we are “the People of the Book” -- and even more importantly, how should that nickname inform our Jewish lives?

I ask these questions this evening without offering any definitive answers -- and I would welcome the conversation that these questions might lead to. But for now, I’ll leave us with the following thought, attributed to the medieval Jewish sage Hai Gaon. Hai Gaon lived in what is present-day Iraq -- where, as a Jew in a majority Muslim culture, he was granted equal protection under the law as one of “the People of the Book.” Fittingly, although he wrote hundreds of published works, not a single one was a book. Rather, he is best known for having written many letters, which we continue to study to this day.

Hai Gaon wrote: “There are three things that a person should hold dear: a field, a friend, and a book.” A field allows a person to earn a living. A friend provides a person with companionship. “But a book is even better than a friend. For a book can provide companionship as well. And while a friend might desert you, a book will go with you anywhere. A book can reach across time and space, and express eternal ideas -- and in that way, a book can become transcendent.” 

And isn’t this part of what it means to be Jewish: to treat that which is transcendent as if it were our closest friend? Perhaps this is what we mean when we say that we are “the People of the Book” -- not just that we a people who loves to read and write, but more importantly, that we are a people who believe that even when we feel alone, even when we feel that all seems lost and senseless, we nevertheless can always reach for a book and find there waiting for us exactly the thing that we need: guidance, wisdom, inspiration, companionship, the lofty ideals that we most associate with God. For us, a book is like the divine: a loving friend, eternally present, just waiting to be opened.

_____

[1] Yadayim 3:5

[2] For more on this question, see: (1) Moment Magazine’s symposium The Five Books Project, and (2) Hannah Pressman’s essay in The New Jewish Canon (2020, ed. Kurtzer and Sufrin) on Telushkin, Hyman, and Ochs.

After Colleyville

What a week this has been.

Last Saturday morning, on Shabbat, while the members of Congregation Beth Israel of Colleyville, Texas, were celebrating a Bar Mitzvah service, a stranger, who had come into the synagogue from the cold, seemingly looking for some place in which to sit and warm himself with a hot cup of tea, suddenly pulled out a firearm in the middle of the service, and demanded, at gunpoint, that these Jews, whom he imagined to be the world’s puppet masters, secure the release of Aafia Siddiqui from federal prison -- holding the rabbi and three congregants hostage in their own sanctuary for more than eleven hours. It was a terrifying situation.

Late Saturday night, after the hostages eventually escaped unharmed, we all breathed a deep sigh of relief. But still, that night, I could not sleep. It all hit just a little too close to home. I could not stop thinking about the scene inside that sanctuary -- about the tension, the pressure, the fear. I could not stop thinking about the assailant, who reportedly asked the hostages how many kids each of them had, and shouted to the hostage negotiator outside the door: “Why are you going to leave seven children orphaned?” I could not stop thinking about the congregants of Beth Israel, who watched as their little shul, where they have eulogized their parents and given Hebrew names to their children, was broadcast on international television, surrounded by hundreds of FBI agents and SWAT teams. I could not stop thinking about the hostages’ families. Who had informed them of what was unfolding inside of the synagogue? Where were they throughout the ordeal, and who was with them? I could not stop thinking about the hostages themselves. What thoughts must have been racing through their head?

I share these painful images not as an act of voyeurism, but rather, because they haunt me. And I know that I am not alone in this feeling. For many of us, it has been all too easy this week to project ourselves into that terrifying situation -- to feel that it could have been us, to wonder how we would have reacted. Although the hostages escaped physically unharmed, the events of this past weekend have once again activated one of the Jewish people’s most deep-seated psychological traumas: our centuries-old fear for our safety in an all too often hostile world.

Earlier this week, a group of congregants gathered together and studied a passage from the biblical Book of Lamentations about being held hostage. Lamentations was written more than 2500 years ago -- so deeply rooted in history is our trauma. The passage from Lamentations argues that among all the possible crises that might befall a person, to be held hostage is among the worst -- because to be held hostage inflicts not only physical pain, but also psychological, emotional, and spiritual pain as well.

In the days since the hostages escaped, there has been much conversation in the Jewish world about how to protect our communities from physical pain. There will be continued security training for clergy and congregants; there will be increased funding for synagogues and other Jewish institutions to secure our campuses; there will be vital conversations about how to strike a proper balance between, on the one hand, welcoming strangers in from cold, and on the other hand, keeping our communities safe from strangers who would do us harm; there will be further efforts to educate our friends and neighbors about what anti-Semitism looks like, why it is sometimes hard to spot, and how best to combat it.

These conversations about how to keep our communities physically safe are critically important. And yet, as the passage from Lamentations reminds us, our physical safety is only part of the equation. If we are to effectively cope with our deep-seated trauma, then we must also be sure to invest in our emotional and spiritual wellbeing -- which is why we gather together on Shabbat. We need each other right now. We need to be together, to hold one another. We need a space into which we can bring our pain, our fear, our sadness, our anxiety. We need to consider not only how we will protect ourselves when the world outside feels vulnerable, but also, how we will uplift ourselves when the world inside feels vulnerable. As one congregant put it so eloquently this week: we may need to carefully guard the doors of the synagogue -- but the doors of the ark must continue to remain wide open, so that we can pour out our hearts. 

This Shabbat, we are invited to do exactly that. With the ark wide open behind me, and our hearts wide open as well, we kindle these lights for Shabbat…

The Woodcutter and the Carpenter

This evening, as Christians around the world are gathering to celebrate one of the most sacred days on their religious calendar, I find myself thinking about a particular historical figure. I wonder if you can guess who it is.

The person I’m thinking of was Jewish, and he lived about 2000 years ago in the land of Israel. He was a teacher, a preacher, and a sage -- a rabbi who inspired many students and raised up many disciples. He taught about the centrality of ethical behavior, and the importance of showing loving kindness to everyone you meet. He was famous for his open-mindedness, his patience, and his tolerance. And on account of all these qualities, he grew to become the most influential teacher of his generation.

If you thought that I was describing Jesus of Nazareth, whose birth Christians around the world are celebrating tonight, then you were not too far off. Indeed, this description does fit Jesus quite well. But in fact, the person I’m thinking about this Christmas Eve is not Jesus, but rather, is a different ancient teacher who also fits this description -- Jesus’s slightly older contemporary: the great Jewish sage, Rabbi Hillel. [1]

Although we might not immediately associate one with the other, there is much that Hillel and Jesus share in common. They lived in the same time and place, they practiced the same religion, and they preached a similar message.

Hillel was older than Jesus by two generations. At the time that Hillel died, Jesus would have been ten years old, and already fully initiated into the study of Torah. Hillel was the most influential rabbi of his generation, with an impressive network of disciples who all subscribed to his particular school of thought. It is hard to imagine that Jesus, as a young student of Torah, would not at the very least have heard of the revered older sage, Rabbi Hillel. It is entirely possible that Jesus might have been directly influenced by him.

Jesus, the Christian scriptures report, was a carpenter by trade. And Hillel, Jewish tradition teaches, earned his living as a woodcutter. There is something poetic about this unusual coincidence. Just as the carpenter builds upon the work of the woodcutter, so too, it seems entirely possible that Jesus may have built upon the work of his predecessor, Hillel.

And yet, despite the possible influence that Hillel may have had on Jesus, there is also a certain irony to how their story will eventually unfold. This evening, I’d like to explore that story -- the unusual tale of the woodcutter and the carpenter -- to see how they were alike, how they have been remembered so differently, and what that might mean for us.

Let us begin with what they share in common. Hillel is known for his pithy ethical maxims -- which, in substance and in style, are strikingly similar to what would become some of Jesus’s most well known teachings. Where Hillel said, “Do not judge your neighbor until you have stood in his place” (Avot 2:4), Jesus would later say, “Judge not, lest ye be judged” (Matthew 7:1). Where Hillel said “My humiliation is my exaltation” (Exodus Rabbah 45:5), Jesus would later say, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5).

There is a story in the Gospel of Mark (Mark 12:28-31) in which someone asks Jesus to give his opinion on what is the single most important commandment in the entire Torah. In classic rabbinic form, Jesus is unable to pick just one -- so he narrows it down to two: the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4), and the famous commandment from the Book of Leviticus, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18).

If you’ve studied a little Talmud, this story might sound vaguely familiar. In fact there are many [2] stories in the Talmud where different rabbis are asked to distill the essence of the Torah down to a single commandment. But Jesus’s answer is particularly reminiscent of a famous story [3] that is told about Hillel.

The story goes like this: Once, a young man who was not Jewish showed up unannounced at the house of study and demanded to speak with a rabbi. A certain rabbi came to the door. “What is it you want?” the rabbi asked. The young man replied: “Rabbi, I challenge you to a test! To prove whether you are indeed a wise and learned person, I challenge you to teach me the entirety of your Torah while I balance on one foot. And if you can accomplish such a feat, then I will convert to Judaism here on the spot.”

The rabbi immediately grew incensed at this outrageous request. How dare this young man suggest that the entirety of the Torah, the wisdom of which this rabbi had devoted countless years of his life to studying, could be summarized in mere minutes to a complete novice -- and meanwhile asking the rabbi to debase the sanctity of Torah study while the would-be convert simultaneously performed some frivolous acrobatic balancing act! And the rabbi angrily slammed the door in the young man’s face. 

Again, the young man knocked on the door -- and this time, it was Hillel who greeted him. Once again, the young man proposed his challenge: “To prove that you are learned, teach me the entirety of your Torah while I balance on one foot -- and if you can, I will convert to Judaism on the spot.”

And Hillel, with his characteristic patience and wisdom, quietly considered the young man’s challenge. After a few moments, he asked the young man to please balance himself on one foot, and then Hillel said: “That which is hateful unto you, do not do to your neighbor. The rest of the Torah is commentary. Now go and study it.”

This story bears a striking resemblance to Jesus in at least two ways. First of all, when asked to distill the entirety of the Torah down to its essence, Hillel and Jesus offer remarkably similar responses. They could have said nearly anything -- that the essence of the Torah is to observe Shabbat, or to keep kosher, or to remember that God redeemed the Israelites from Egypt. But instead, each of them offers a similar ethical teaching, that the essence of the Torah is to show concern for one’s neighbor -- with Jesus framing it in the positive, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and Hillel framing it in the negative: “That which is hateful unto you, do not do to your neighbor. The rest of the Torah is commentary. Now go and study it.”

But there is also a second way in which this story about Hillel and the convert bears a striking resemblance to Jesus. Jesus was well known for having welcomed so-called sinners into his ministry (Luke 15:2). Similarly, this story about Hillel (which, I should mention, is just one among many such stories about him in the Talmud) [4] depicts Hillel as someone who was willing to open his door wide to even the unlikeliest of students. Where the first rabbi slammed the door in the young man’s face, Hillel welcomed him in. Where the first rabbi saw only a scoundrel, Hillel recognized a seeker.

We see here a portrait of two renowned Jewish sages, Hillel and Jesus: one slightly older, the other slightly younger, both of whom were famous for their pithy ethical maxims, both of whom distilled the essence of Judaism down to concern for one’s neighbor, both of whom opened their doors wide to even the unlikeliest of students -- the woodcutter, and the carpenter.

But here is where their stories begin to diverge. Although in their lifetime, Hillel and Jesus shared much in common, after their death, history would remember them in wildly different ways.

It is important to note that Jesus never intended to establish a new religion. He lived his entire life as a fully committed Jew. The Christian scriptures report that Jesus and his closest disciples practiced every aspect of Jewish life: they kept kosher (Acts 10:14), they believed in circumcision (Acts 15:1), they regularly prayed at the Temple in Jerusalem (Acts 2:46 and 3:1). In his famous Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reminds his followers about the importance of practicing Judaism. He says: “I have not come to abolish the laws [of the Torah], but rather, to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17), and goes on to say that anyone who forsakes even the smallest detail of the Jewish tradition should not be counted as among his disciples.

It was not until after Jesus’s death that his followers began to take things in a different direction. Despite the protestation of many of Jesus’s most trusted disciples (Acts 15:1), the apostle Paul overturned Jesus’s insistence on following Jewish law (Galatians 2:21). And with that, Jesus’s loosely organized band of followers ceased to be merely a group of committed Jews, all of whom happened to feel devoted to one particularly charismatic rabbi -- and were instead newly transformed into a distinct religion unto themselves. Christianity was born.

There are many possible reasons why Paul might have decreed that Christians no longer needed to practice Judaism. On a purely practical level, it made Christianity more attractive. A would-be convert could join the new religion without having to take on the extra burden of keeping kosher or circumcision. And indeed, after Paul lowered the bar to entry, the ranks of Christianity swelled.

Paul’s religious revolution had a profound impact not only on Christianity, but also on Judaism. Over the centuries, our ancestors leaned into the religious practices that distinguished us from our Christian neighbors. They built a sense of group identity around the things that made us unique, the things that Paul had abandoned: things like keeping kosher, observing Shabbat, building a sukkah, or wearing a kippah.

Even today, we can still see the effects of Paul’s religious revolution. When you hear someone say, “I’m a bad Jew” (which, by the way, is a phrase that I do not endorse), what they usually mean is: I don’t keep kosher or I don’t observe Shabbat. Similarly, when you hear someone described as “very Jewish” (another phrase that I do not endorse), it usually means that that person does keep kosher, does observe Shabbat, does build a sukkah, or does wear a kippah.

But of course, the great irony is that none of these things that we label as “very Jewish” fit with Hillel’s definition of the essence of Judaism: “That which is hateful unto you, do not do to your neighbor.” By that measure, a person should be described as “very Jewish” not based on whether they keep kosher or wear a kippah, but rather, based on how they treat others. This is the great irony in the story of the woodcutter and the carpenter: Hillel likely influenced Jesus, but Jesus’s success likely marginalized Hillel.

This Shabbat, as Christians around the world are gathering to celebrate the legacy of the carpenter, I would encourage us Jews to try and reclaim the legacy of the woodcutter. We might ask ourselves, as Hillel famously did while his student balanced on one foot: what do we believe is the essence of Judaism? Should we lean into the religious rituals that make us uniquely Jewish? Or, should we focus our attention on the ethical values that we share with all humankind?

We remember Hillel for having prioritized ethics, saying: “That which is hateful unto you, do not do to your neighbor.” But let us not forget that he also added a second part to his answer, in which he affirmed the importance of Jewish rituals. He added: “The rest of the Torah is commentary. Now go and study it.”

Perhaps this is the true legacy of Hillel: that, unlike Jesus and his followers, Hillel held on to both -- ethics and Jewish rituals. Perhaps this is the most important lesson that Hillel ever taught: while his student stood upon one foot, Hillel taught us that the most important thing in life is learning how to balance.

_____

[1] This sermon is inspired by and draws upon Rabbi Joseph Telushkin’s incredible intellectual portrait of the sage, entitled Hillel: If Not Now When?

[2] See, for example, Jerusalem Talmud, Nedarim 9:4 -- “Rabbi Akiva says: the greatest principle in the Torah is ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ (Leviticus 19:18). Ben Azzai says: a more important principle is ‘This is the story of all humankind’ (Genesis 5:1).”

[3] Babylonian Talmud, 31a

[4] See also: the prospective Jew who challenged the validity of the Oral Torah (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a); and the prospective Jew who wanted to be High Priest (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a).