From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life

"Something like a plague has appeared upon my house." Leviticus 14:35. With these words, the troubled homeowner in ancient Israel gives voice to a truth that is universal. Homes, like human beings, are living things. Organic. Alive. Just like a human being can have healthy or not healthy practices, so too a home, and our home life, can have healthy or not healthy practices. Just like a human being can change it up and become more healthy, so too a home life can get better. Just like a human being can be overcome by illness and leave the world, some homes cannot survive their painful dysfunction. All of these truths are in our portion this week, parshat metzora. When the Talmud encountered the case of the leprous house, it insisted that we not take these passages literally. That we interpret the leprous house as a metaphor and ask: what are the forces that strengthen home life? What are the forces that undermine home life? Can a bad home life be made good? Is that even possible? Please read the attached short story from Elizabeth Strout, The End of the Civil War Days. Her story is a literary expression of the leprous house. It is also funny and risqué, and it raises the all-important question: can the patterns in our home life that are not serving us change? (I am sending the teaser early so that you will have the opportunity to read and enjoy this short and wonderful story.) Finally, with the Passover seders around the corner (April 15-16), we will consider passages from the Haggadah that invite us to be mindful of the patterns that work at creating the home life we want to create; and the patterns that need to change so that if a plague appears on our house, we can exercise some agency and make it go away.

It was the slap, and the rant, heard around the world. How many of you saw Will Smith strike Chris Rock, and then rant about it,  in real time? How many of you read about it, or saw a clip of it, after the Academy Awards? It was of course raw and shocking, unscripted drama that was by far the most dramatic thing that happened all evening. If it were just a celebrity thing, a famous actor slapping the face of a famous comedian, it would just be another moment of sensationalist news. But it’s not just a celebrity thing, it is very much a human thing. Because most of us, in our own quiet way, have been tempted to do our own version of what Will Smith did that night. Something ticked us off. Something got our blood boiling. Our temper went from zero to 100 in a nano second. And we were tempted to lose it. To give the other person a piece of our mind. And yet, when we lose self-control, we lose control.

Last Shabbat had a special name, Shabbat Parah, the Sabbath of the Cow. It is one of the special Shabbatot that tells us that Passover is coming. What does the Red Heifer of Numbers 19 have to do with Passover? This text is famously opaque. A red heifer, hyssop, scarlet, and cedar are burned up, their ashes mixed with pure water, and that solution has the power to purify somebody who has become impure by reason of contact with the dead when the solution is applied to them on days 3 and 7 after contact with the dead. Scholars have puzzled over this passage for thousands of years. They have come up with lots of explanations--which means no one explanation that compels and satisfies. Until two years ago. In the attached essay, written in 2020, before his last Pesach, in the shadow of his own advancing cancer, Rabbi Jonathan Sachs does something very rare in the world of Torah scholarship: an utterly new idea. When you read his essay, it is clear that he nails it. What he has to say is more wise and true than anything any other commentator has ever said about it. More wise and true than Maimonides, Nachmanides, the rabbis of the midrash. He says something that has never been said (or at least we have no record of anyone else saying it) before about the Red Heifer, and it goes to the heart of our deepest fears: our own mortality. If one wonders how many more Passovers do I have left? If one's anxiety about a finite number of Passovers disrupts our ability to enjoy this Passover, this text, as explained by Rabbi Sachs, provides a definite point of view. The best answer to fearing our mortality is living a life of faith. If we get Rabbi Sachs' teaching deeply, we will be able to enjoy this Passover, no matter how many more Passovers we have left.

In 1986, Professor Ray Scheindlin of the Jewish Theological Seminary authored a book with an evocative title: Wine, Women, & Death: Medieval Hebrew Poems on the Good Life.  The book featured the poetry of Jewish poets who lived during the Golden Age of Jewish Spain.  They lived the good life, with rich homes with gardens and pools and fountains. They wrote poetry about their good life, about their gardens and pools and fountains.  Most of these poets were secular.   And they were rooted in Judaism. At home in Spain. At home in Judaism. The Golden Age. But something happened to the Golden Age. It ended.

There is a rare cantillation mark called the shalshelet that occurs only four times in the entire Torah. The shalshelet goes up and down and is conspicuously drawn out, to evoke a deep hesitation. In Genesis 19:16, Lot hesitates before leaving Sodom with his family. He knows it is marked for destruction, but he is stuck. More than we know what we like, we like what we know. Sodom wasn’t perfect, but he hesitated leaving it. In Genesis 24:12, Abraham’s servant Eliezer hesitates before praying to God to help send an appropriate partner for Isaac. In Genesis 39:8, Joseph hesitates before refusing the advances of Potiphar’s wife, who tries to seduce him. In last Shabbat’s reading, in Leviticus 8:23, Moses hesitates before slaughtering the sacrificial animal that would ordain Aaron and his sons as the priests. In each case, the protagonist wrestles with an inner demon before doing the right thing. Angst, self-doubt, indecision precede deed. What do we learn from the shalshelet, and the wrestling of Lot, Eliezer, Joseph, and Moses with their demons, about how to handle the angst of our age?

Leadership under fire. President Volodymyr Zelensky and Regional Governor Vitaliy Kim are both inspiring the world with their peerless leadership under the fire of this war. The Times article about the death and dying in the port city of Mykolaiv, shelled every day by Russian forces, provides the context for Governor Kim’s nightly inspiring addresses. President Zelensky this week talked from the heart to the heart of Canadians and Americans in ways that inspire universal admiration. In the spirit of the oncoming holiday of Passover, here are four questions about leadership under fire.  One: what is the key ingredient to this leadership under fire? Is it the fire that creates the leadership that lands so dramatically? Or is it not about the historic context but the personalities of these two leaders?  Two: do we in America have charismatic leaders like President Zelensky and Governor Kim? Why or why not?  Three: how does their model of charismatic leadership under fire compare with our classic Torah model, which we read yesterday for the Purim Torah reading.  Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim. Moses said to Joshua, “Pick some men for us, and go out and do battle with Amalek. Tomorrow I will station myself on the top of the hill, with the rod of God in my hand.” Joshua did as Moses told him and fought with Amalek, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. Then, whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed; but whenever he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses’ hands grew heavy; so they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur, one on each side, supported his hands; thus his hands remained steady until the sun set. And Joshua overwhelmed the people of Amalek with the sword. (Exodus 17: 8-13)  Four: what can we, in our ordinary quiet lives, learn from leaders who display leadership under fire?

The eyes of the world are on Ukraine. Day after day for two weeks now and counting. How can the relentless shelling of civilian targets continue day after day, captured on all our screens in real time, and it keeps happening? What can the United States do about it?  What should the the United States do about it? Will the extreme sanction regime work? How does it end? What does it portend? Our Brotherhood had arranged to have our elected Representative, Jake Auchincloss, himself a marine who had served in Afghanistan, talk about his journey from the battlefield to Congress. But in light of the urgent international crisis in Ukraine, Representative Auchincloss will instead be talking about the issue on all of our minds: Ukraine. What a gift to have a new voice, and true wisdom, on this deep tragedy unfolding before our very eyes every day. May what we learn from Representative Auchincloss help us help.

This week, in honor of International Women's Day and the upcoming holiday of Purim, we will learn the stories of three women: Vashti, who encountered drunken debauchery, sexism, and injustice and responded with clarity and conviction. When King Achashverosh demanded that she dance naked in front of his friends, she sent back a one-word answer: no. That response resulted in her death and did not change the status quo in the least. Today, she is just a blip in the megillah. Zeresh, who encountered racism, egotistical mania, and dreams of domination. She did nothing. Goes along to get along. Her response resulted in her disappearance and maybe even made the situation worse. She features more prominently in the megillah, but we hiss when we hear her name. And then there was Esther. Her response was nuanced. Her agency limited, but effective. In the end, she saved the day, saved her life, and saved the Jewish world. What do these women’s stories have to teach us about facing today’s challenges?

Ever since the war started in Ukraine, I’ve been feeling things that don’t make sense. The space over my heart feels achy, almost bruised. My breathing is shallow, like the air around me is thick with worry and the oxygen can’t get through. My heart races and then goes quiet and then races again.  I’m desperate for information, doom-scrolling at all hours, reading every newspaper article I can find, as if my survival depends on what I learn. On a logical level, I know what I am feeling is not real. I live in Boston, thousands of miles from this war. I am safe. And yet, I can’t shake the feeling that this is how it starts, nor can I free myself from the inherited memory of how it ends.

Is Ukraine on its own? Or is the world with Ukraine? It is so confusing. The answer seems to be yes.  On the one hand, the world is with Ukraine. The Daily on March 2 told the fascinating story of how it came to be that the European Union passed unanimously the strongest, toughest, most stringent sanctions ever, including sanctions directed personally against Putin and his henchmen. The nations of the world are supplying Ukraine not only with moral support, and economic support, but also sophisticated weaponry to fight this war.  On the other hand, the people fighting and dying and fleeing are Ukrainians. They are in the trenches alone.  Reflecting on this reality, Danny Gordis, in an unusually evocative piece at this urgent time, writes:  "Israelis watch Ukraine, and we see ourselves. We see this week, and we see one possible future. We know with no uncertainty—we would be alone. We would be abandoned. If we or you ever thought otherwise, it’s time to stop the delusion. To see our possible future, all we have to do is look north at the present." In other words, if Israel were to be attacked God forbid in any of the scenarios that Danny Gordis lays out, it would be worse for Israel than for Ukraine. We would not have the moral support of the world. We would be alone on the battlefield, and much of the world would be against us. What light does Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the world’s reaction, shed on our beloved eretz Yisrael, and is this grim picture just what it is, or do we have any moves perhaps to make it any better?

Barbara Gaffin and Betsy Hecker spoke to our congregation about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Both have worked on the partnership between the Boston Jewish community, Combined Jewish Philanthropies, and the Ukrainian Jewish community for many years. They addressed the question on all of our minds: what can I do? How can I help? We are praying for peace every morning and every evening. May our prayers for peace inspire our deeds that help real people in Ukraine now.   What can we do now? Click below to find out!   https://www.templeemanuel.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/How-to-Help-Ukraine.pdf

February 26, 2022

How are we to understand the many stories we have all read about anger run amok in public places; about bad behavior on airplanes, at restaurants, at the bridges that connect Canada and the US blocked by angry Canadian truck drivers? This anger victimizes innocent people, the passengers and flight attendants on the plane, the waiters and fellow diners at the restaurant, drivers trying to cross the bridge who are stuck in traffic for hours on end.

February 19, 2022

Last shabbos, we gathered in the sanctuary to process the rising threat of antisemitism in our world. Officially, we were talking about the recently released report by Amnesty International which condemned Israel in very intense ways. In clearly antisemitic ways.  But we were also thinking about Colleyville, about swastikas carved into gym mats and painted on bathroom stalls here in Newton public schools. We were also thinking about the rise in hate crimes perpetrated against Jews, and about the increasingly vitriolic rhetoric against Israel worldwide.  We talked about strategies, about how we might fight these forces. Underlying our conversation, though, was a deep undercurrent of pain. How is it that even after the Holocaust, how is it the world does not see our plight? How is it the world does not see us? Does not see our context, does not see our story? How are we so invisible?