Shuvah and Tshuvah-You can always make a U Turn

 

Shuvah and Tshuvah-You can always make a U Turn

2020

Kol Nidre

            I never was enthralled at the idea of having a bumper sticker on my car. Afterall, why would I want to mess up the clean look of the bumper, especially if I just got my car through the car wash? I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve, so why would I put my thoughts out there for the whole world. But it’s a free country, which is great, people can say what they like, as long as they don’t incite to hatred and violence.

            But when we are stuck in traffic, we can’t help but read what’s on other people’s minds. Politics, today for sure, some, just vote for types, but some, aggressive, with images of weapons. Then, it seems, the most popular for sale are those that are basically, dirty jokes, but there are a few that a useable for a Kol Nidre, like:

Fueled by Recycled Dinosaurs

If I passed you on the right, you’re in the wrong lane.

I used to be cool      

I’m retired-go around me!

One bumper sticker did catch my attention, as a Rabbi, because we are always looking for good material:

            “If you are heading in the wrong direction, God allows you to make a U-turn."

            I couldn't have thought of a better slogan for this season, because if I take the word" Teshuvah", the slogan word of this season, the word U-turn is probably the best translation for it.

            Can we really make a u-turn in life? If I do it on the street, I may get a ticket? Can I make a u-turn if life, and not only not get a ticket, but be praised for it?

            There is an old quip, recorded by one of Rashi’s grandsons in the tosafot--There is a statement in the Talmud" Everything is in the hands of heaven--hakol biyday shamayim- hutz meyirat shamayim-except for the fear of heaven" The commentator adds--Everything is in the hands of heaven, except for hot and cold.

            The commentary then continues—you can open the window if it’s hot, you can light a fire if it’s cold.

            What great philosophy is this?

            That whatever happens to us, fortune, wealth, health, success--all that may be in the hands of heaven, all that may be beyond us, yet there is one thing we can do--If it is too hot, we can open a window, and if it is too cold, we can light a fire.

            It is profound. We go through life complaining about everything, and none of it, we claim, none of it is our doing.  

            Oh No! The sage tried to tell us—it’s not just the simple task of opening a window or lighting a fire, changing the thermostat. It is a metaphor for all of life itself. You can open a window in life, you can light a fire in your hearts, and you can make a U-turn in life.

            Life is hard, and we are sometime tempted to throw up our hands and say, in the Yiddish, es ist bashert--it is fated- it had to be- and thereby, we give up. The word Mazel is a reference to that--what happens to us is the result of mazel, --we translate as luck, but it means a constellation of stars, simply a term borrowed from astrology. It goes back to the belief that all that befalls us has been dictated by the stars long before we were born.

            Even the Talmud says" Hakol taluy bemazal- afilu sefer torah baheichal--All depends on the stars, on fortune, even the Torah scroll in the ark.! How can that be? When you have a well-established synagogue, there are many scrolls, and some scrolls just have all the luck------they get read while others are ignored.

            This is a great idea--I never have to take the blame for anything. It's all my mazel.

            Modern intellectual theory, what we have all learned in high school and college, has thrown out the word “mazal”, or “fate”. It has replaced it with the word “determinism”. Words of four or more syllables always sound more sophisticated.

 

            Hakol taluy baDNA--Everything depends on our DNA. This is the newest fashion--our behavior is determined by our genetic composition--patient or irritable, quick or slow, honest or dishonest, it is all a matter of genetic makeup. It's not my fault. I was born that way.

             Then, we have the excuse of hakol taluy bakalkalah-- everything is in the hands of socio- economics. It is not my fault.

            I was born into the wrong ethnic group—I was born black, I was born white, I was born brown—or the economic grouping—I was born in the 99%, or the newest one, I was born in the 1% and so never learned life.

            We say, Hakol taluy ba psychologiah-- everything depends on psychology, on environment and upbringing.

            The newest thing today is to blame your family. My family was dysfunctional, it’s not my fault. My mother didn't understand me as an infant, my father made me dependent, they both gave me the wrong genes. They were too protective; they didn’t protect me enough. They were too coddling; they were too strict. Too warm, so they choked, or too cold, so they froze. All that we are, all that we have been, we throw off on our past, on everything around us--just not on ourselves.

            What is the Jewish answer?

            At this season, we have the famous prayer unetaneh tokef

-- It too begins with that theme, a sad one, that we await our fate passively--mi yihyeh umi uyamut. It is very painful and poignant, Life, death, health, illness, wealth, poverty--all of these are none of our doing. It is biydey shamayim-up to heaven.

            Then we drop to the conclusion: utshuvah utefilah utsedakah maavirin et roah hagezerah

            “Repentance, prayer, and acts of righteousness avert the evil decree. “

            We can't change the laws of physics or medicine, but we can change the world around us, we can change ourselves, we can make our choices. Whatever may happen, come what may, we can change its impact, it import, its lasting effects on us.

            Ultimately, our Rabbis narrowed down the list of what is predetermined: Hakol –everything-- taluy bashamayim,- hutz me yirat shamayim--everything, in deed may be determined outside of us, but one thing, the most crucial,--only we determine--yirat shamayim--our moral and ethical, as well as spiritual values, that which ultimately define us a human beings, upon which we shape our actions- only we can control that.

            On this one fundamental question of human existence—God the Almighty- is powerless.

            An acquaintance of mine just sent me a list of sayings from the Chasidic master, Menahem Mendel of Kotzk, the Kotzker. He was known as a defender of the truth even if it challenged his faith.

Here is one that goes directly to my point.

“The essence of sin is not the sin itself. It is that a person believes that it is not in his or her power to change-that is greatest sin of all.”

            To refuse that power to change-that is the root of all sin.          

When we recognize that we shape the events around us more than the events shapes us, for good or for bad, we are the freest of the free--that choice is ours, and ours alone to make. Not our astrological signs, not our genes, nor our social class, nor our childhood can force us to make our ultimate choices. In that we find our freedom.

Now, we go one step further, and ask, to what purpose is that freedom, the freedom to choose good or evil, life or death.

Some 85 years ago, my father, Rabbi Dr William Weinberg, then still a student in rabbinical school, sat in a Nazi prison in Berlin on trumped up charges. Upon his release, he wrote a series of essays, in a Swiss Jewish newspaper placing Judaism in opposition to the intellectual trends of his day. The grounds of this essay still hold for us today. So here are some selections from his essay, The Courage of the Spirit.”.

“By all trends within our cultural system it has been an accepted thesis for decades  that all events occur independently of human will.  Little and rarely does anything result from conscious thought.  Like the apparition that vanishes at the toll of the bell to call in a new day, so all the values and ideals of mankind melt away, overpowered with unpitying might by the merciless hand of economic, biological, and historical Ananke, fate.

This was his response to that challenge:

Judaism's theory of history is activist, the Jewish ethos is a willful ethos, the Jewish religion is outspokenly a religion of will.

 

        More so, it is the spirit, the ideal, which drives history in its development, despite recurring setbacks, to even higher forms: to an ethical humane elevating of human society.  We do not deny the law of reality, which researchers have made clear, but over and above this, there is a law of the ideal; over and above the factual, there is the truth.

No, humanity is not the disturbed dream of some sleeping deity and no mad chaos wildly swirled about by a happenstance. God created the world according to plan.

He ends the essay with this quote from an ancient Jewish philosophy of history,

 "Man is called upon to be God's co-worker in the act of creation. (Mechilta, Ex. 18:13). “

            When we recognize that we have the power of the U-Turn, the power to grasp the reins of our lives, when we recognize that we are not victims of everyone and everything else, we find our freedom. When we use that freedom in shaping a better world around us, we then have found our destiny and purpose.

            May we feel that inner freedom to overcome the burden of events that we feel weigh on us so that this Yom , this Day, truly becomes on of “ Kippur”, of atonement, of “ at-one-ment”,  of cleansing, and of new ness.

Amen

A Tsadik in Pelts-Getting Wrapped Up in our Self-Righteousness

 

 

A Tsadik in Pelts--Getting Wrapped Up in our Self-Righteousness

Rosh HaShanah  2020

 Rabbi Norbert Weinberg

 

How many of you here still can speak or understand mama loshen, Yiddish?

Bear with me, then ,as I give a lesson on Yiddish language and fur coats. 

Lately, fur coats have had bad publicity. While we all love to keep warm , and the fur is smooth to the   touch, it does bother  us to think of the tsaar baaley chayim- the pain of living creatures that is involved in the making of furs.

           However, for my purpose of illustration, I want us to step back in time, over a century ago, before central heating, and before synthetics were available, to a time when a fur coat was a truly desirable and necessary garment any where north of sunny California.

           Then, in those days, it was good to be wrapped up in furs, and Jews wore furs, and dealt in furs, as well. To be wrapped in a fur was good, except, it turns out, one type of fur-wearer.

           There was a phrase for one particular fur-coat wearer--a Tsadik in Pelts.

A righteous man wrapped in  pelts, furs. This was intended as an insult. Now, keep in mind that this was before the time of PETA and all the to-do about cruelty to animals. So what could be so wrong with a righteous man who had a fur coats. Yet a Tsadik in pelts--a saint in furs-is the Yiddish nickname for a hypocrite. It's a play on words. A Tsadik  is not just a righteous man--it is also another name for  the Hebrew letter, Tzadi. The last letter in the word pelts, fur, is the letter tzadi, also called tzadik. But if you remember your aleph bet from Hebrew school days, when the letter tsadi comes at the end of  a word, it written different --it is twisted and stretched out of shape till you can't recognize it.

            The nickname  for this kind of letter at the end of a word is, in Yiddish, shlechter,  bad or wicked, because the tsadi has been stretched out, distorted, dragged down at the end, like the tsadik at the end of the word, pelts. The Tsadik in pelts is therefore , a shlechter tzadik, a wicked letter tsadik. To follow the metaphor, then, a tsadik in pelts is one who passes himself off as a righteous man, and yet, is in truth, a fraud, a hypocrite, twisted and bent out of shape.

The great Hasidic master, Rebbe Menahem Mendel of Kotzk, was a man whose  sole  passion in life was to find out the truth. He had no patience for pretense or falsity of any sort. He gave the following definition of a saint in furs:

What is the difference between a saint, tsadik, and a  saint all wrapped up in furs, a tsadik in pelts?       

On a cold winters day, when everyone else is freezing in beis medresh, the chapel and house of study, in walks the tsadik in his fur coat;he is warm and comfortable, because he is all wrapped up. He can begin to pray and study. But everyone else is still freezing cold.

On that same cold day, when everyone is freezing, in walks a real saint. He turns on the furnace, and now, everybody , including himself is warm, and all can begin to worship and study.

            Thus it is with the hypocrite who publicly wraps himself in his virtues, said the Rebbe. The biggest tallit, the largest sukkah, the loudest voice at worship---he lets everyone know how good and righteous he is, and he  warms his own soul, but no one else's.

The true tsadik needs  no trappings. Instead, he does his good deeds, lends a hand, opens his purse, gives a good word--in short he warms everyone's soul, as well as his own.

It is at this time of the year,our Yamim Noraim, as we come before God  to make a clean slate, of our past and to look to a better year as Jews and as decent human beings, that we wish to see ourselves as tsadikim, as righteous. We come to the synagogue with our personal  baggage of worries and troubles, we examine ourselves, we pray for ourselves. We  are introspective and, by the close of the day, as the shofar is sounded at Neilah, we have some sense of spiritual uplift, of having cleaned our souls. We can go out with a warm glow that will hold us in good  stead until the next   Rosh Hashanah rolls around.

But in so doing, we remain, a tsadik in pelts, in we remain a saint wrapped up in our own self-goodness, and we thereby have done nothing to fulfill our obligations to those around us. We are far from truly being righteous.

There is nothing new in this idea. 25 centuries ago, the prophet Isaiah observed the same problem. We will read of it in the Haftarah for Yom Kippur morning. His people come to him with the complaint--"We are such  good Jew's, they exclaim--see how we are fasting, tormenting ourselves, we are dressed in sackcloth as a sign of our  piety.

So why is it, prophet, that God doesn't answer us? Why is everything so bad for us?

                                   To this he replies, "Do you think: this is God's idea of a fast? Rather loosen the bonds of injustice, let the oppressed go free, feed the hungry, house the homeless, clothe the naked. . .           Then shall your light shine in the darkness and your gloom shall be as the noon-day'

            In short, to paraphrase the prophet's idea-- it is not what we do, each of us individually, in front of God or our neighbors that counts, but what we do for each other in front of God that counts.           

                            The entire Mahzor, the liturgy of this day hammers in the plural. We must be good to each other and for each other, and we are all mutually responsible for what happens.

                     Why do we recite our confessional tonight in the plural. 'We have sinned, we have betrayed,"? Said the Ari, the father of Jewish mysticism, Rabbi Isaac Luria," All Israel is one body and every Jew is a member of that body. Hence, there is mutual responsibility among all members." In this same sense, going back to an earlier day, the ancient sages warned us " When the community is  in trouble , do not sit back and be merry, do not sit back and say, I will eat, drink and "shalom alay nafshi"-- peace be unto me, myself , alone."

                             How do we go about, shed our fur coats, and instead, light the fires for others?

                             In a normal year, in normal times, when the economy is functioning, and the streets are quiet, we tend not to think too much of others’ pressing needs. Now, however, we recognize that our great national prosperity, while it has achieved much, still has failed so many.

                             It all comes up to the surface, now, that we have a pandemic that has come close to being pan-demonic; some have real fears, some have imagined fears, and some pretend to be blind to the fears, so we have, on the one hand, an almost total shutdown of our economy, and on the other, people partying and then bringing home the bug to old grandma and grandpa..

                             We were just short of the kind of match to trigger a fire when we had the spate killing of blacks at the hands of police, and with  the very legitimate protest, there are elements of both far  left and right that seek to edge us closer to  civil strife. So now, we have racial tension adding to our malaise.

                             There are opposing elements in political theory and sociology that set us on course for more social unrest.

                             There is the revolution of rising expectations. It is the trigger for unrest when those at the bottom have begun to move up but begin to lose patience with the slow pace of social change, and then find their way suddenly blocked.

                             In contrast, there is the fall of the petite bourgeosie, the small business owner, the middle and lower level managers, the people who had, in their own way, some measure of comfort and stability in their lives. American capitalism had kept them afloat ahead of their counterparts in most of the world-but, in times of social change, and especially economic distress, they feel themselves with the ground falling form under their feet.

                             One social strata expecting to move up, but finding its way blocked, another social strata suddenly fearing it is on its way down. So race is one aspect, economic stress, another aspect.

In tough times, people feel hateful. Frustration leads to aggression, as psychologists tell us, and it comes out in many ways- in physical violence of neighbor against neighbor, or domestic violence, or the social aggression of the Twitter and Instagram world that is the modern refuge of bitter people..

 

                              Now, to this volatile mix, we add a general social malaise that saps the inner strength of our fellows. It comes out of our national passion to be our own free and socially unfettered spirits, and no one so embodied it as my generation. So I quote, from Rolling Stone Magazine recently, this the journal of note of my fellow hippies and yippies (I date myself).

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/covid-19-end-of-american-era-wade-davis-1038206/

“More than any other country, the United States in the post-war era lionized the individual . . .  mobility and personal freedom came at the expense of common purpose. . . . the family as an institution lost its grounding. By the 1960s, 40 percent of marriages were ending in divorce. Only six percent of American homes had grandparents living beneath the same roof as grandchildren; elders were abandoned to retirement homes.”

That sounds suspiciously like the gripes of right-wing Christian ministers, who have been warning about the dissolution of the family for decades—but this comes from the left, not the right.

He goes on to say that we have no meaningful communications with others on a daily basis, that we consume two-thirds of the world’s antidepressant drugs. With it, we have “the collapse of the working-class family. . . responsible in part for an opioid crisis . . . the leading cause of death for Americans under 50.”

This is a big burden- a much bigger burden than just defunding police.

Can I have my fur coat again? I think I want to wrap myself up in it and protect myself from everyone else.

 

So, how am I going to light the fires for the rest?

 

Elections can only do so much. Marching protests may feel good, but they also fade in impact, and continued unrest merely feeds the fears of most voters. That’s how my generation blew it all in 1968 and again in 1972. For those of you whose memory extends more than a few decades ago, I can only agree with an old Beatles song:

You say you want a revolution// Well, you know// We all want to change the world

But when you talk about destruction//Don't you know that you can count me out ( Beatles Revolution 1)

 

So what can we do?

 

I am going to admit- I don’t have any magic solutions. I don’t have the power to cause the sun and the moon to stand still, like Joshua.

 

So, it is all small steps that we can take.

We can get the economy going again. Go to stores, eat out, go shopping, buy American made goods, if you can find them, so that more people can begin working. I am going to say, what Rabbis are not expected to say, but “Spend.” Yes, Spend. Get people back working. Perhaps, spend your money, where possible, in minority communities.

 

Yes, give, but seek to find charities that get people up on their feet, like Jewish Free Loan . I don’t want to disparage endowments to the arts or universities,( we should all be so wealthy) but your next door neighbor, or downtown neighbor, could put it to better use.

 

Give of your time, if you can safely get out, and volunteer. Find some place where your hand can make a difference for someone. Many of you here are retirees- there are many organizations that can use you to act as “ grandparents” to children. There is no lack of openings for good helpers, especially as life gets back to normal.

           

We are not going to save all of America, but maybe we can save the small corner around us. If each of us could find a way to make one person’s life just a little better, then we are no longer the “ shlechter Tzadik, the bad Tadik, the tsadik in peltz, and instead, we become true tzadikim.

If frustration leads to aggression, maybe an act of Gemilut Hasadim, a deed of goodness and kindness, can turn it around

    

                 I want to conclude with words of reassurance by Rabbi Tarfon, who, 1800 years ago, must have felt the same challenge on himself and on his colleagues.

" Hayom Katzar ve hamelakhah merubah-- The day is short, and the labor is long. The laborers are lazy, but the reward is great, and the boss is insistent!

Lo alekhah hamelakhah ligmor. You do not have to complete the task-- v  lo atah ben horin lbatel mimeno-- but you also not free to quit the task."

                 If we wish to be truly righteous in the eyes of God, then we have to throw off our furs, our concern about ourselves, and light many fires to keep all of us warm.

                                    

Slow Down , You Move Too Fast ( inspiration for a time of lockdowns)

 

Slow Down , You Move Too Fast

or

How to Make Lemonade out of Life’s Lemons

Erev Rosh Hashanah, 2020- 5781

 

Maaseh she haya—That’s how Jewish stories begin—A tale of something that once was. So I will start with a Maaseh shehaya

Long ago, in Lithuania, there was a Jew who had to do considerable traveling in order to earn his living.

One cold winter day, he arrived at certain town, late at night, and took lodging in the local inn. He had spent a hectic, tiresome day, and moreover, was bitten by the coId.

After gobbIing a warm meal,he went quickly to his room, for a few hours sleep to prepare himself for the next days trecking. While trying to fall asleep, he heard a melodious voice from the room. next door. The voice seemed to be chanting some passage from the Talmud.

Early  the next morning, as the business man awoke, he was surprised to hear the same voice he had heard the night before, still vigorous, fresh, and melodic.

    This neighbor, the man concluded must be some great Talmid Hakham, a scholar of the Jewish lore.  Indeed, he wasn't  mistaken, for his neighbor was none other than the Villner Gaon, the Genius, Rabbi Elijah, of Vilna,the greatest intellect of his day.

The rnerchant hurried  tnrough  his morning prayers and breakfast before he could build up the courage to knock  at the door of the adjoining room 

Face to face with the Gaon, he asked him,"Rabbi, tell me, will I have a share in the world to come, in heaven?"
On hearing this question the scholar replied,"Tell me, my son,  do you have a share in this world?"

 Where upon., the man replied," Rabbi, I'll be frank. No, I don't. I'm on the go from
morning to night.  Yesterday, I was out in  the cold the whole day, going from customer to customer.  I came here late at night, rushed through my meal, and fell in to bed, and now  I have to rush out again  for the same routine. I'm so much on the go, that I don't  have anytime for this world's pleasures. 

"Well then,"answered Rabbi Elijah," How can you expect a share in the world to come. You work and labor so hard for this world, and aren't  able to enjoy any of this life; how can you possibly expect to enjoy a share in the world to come  towards which you certainly haven't had time to work."

        The Rabbi's advice is true at all times, whether in good or bad.  When times are good, we are scarmbling to get more. When times are bad, we are scrambling to hold on. We went through the most frightening recession since the depression just a decade ago and now, we are in a lockdown plus a recession, and emotionally, we are all in a depression, or at best, a blue funk. If we are healthy, we worry about being sick; if we are sick, we worry about being sicker. If we are  working, we worry about keeping our jobs. If we are out of a job, we worry about losing our homes ; if we are in business, we worry about keeping the cash register opened; if we are retired and have our pensions, then we worry about our retirement accounts and about our family and friends who are floundering.

           Now, over the last several months, we have, for the most part, been stuck, sitting quiet, not being able to go anywhere; even if we could go out, there has not been much to go out to. Many of us aren’t working physically or aren’t working at all. If we are fortunate to be working, we usually are sitting in our sloppy torn jeans and t-shirt, men, unshaven, women, hair unkempt. We are on an unwanted vacation- or rather staycation!

           We are well aware, that our leisure happens while others have been stricken ill, often fatally, by a string of molecules that is a tenth of a thousandth of a millimeter long. I don’t want to sound like a foolish Pollyanna, who says it’s all for the good, in the long run. Too many have suffered unemployment, loss of income, loss of security, loss of even sanity. People are on edge, and it expresses itself in our streets and in our homes.

           However, if I may, it is time to make lemonade out of a lemon, and God willing, when we come through this, come out the better for it.

     Think of Rabbi Elijah’s advice. Let us take the chance to enjoy a share of this world and win the next world as a bonus. If the pandemic forces us to hunker down, and then slow down, let us make the most of it!

Change, very dynamic and turbulent change, is a fact of our contemporary world for the past several centuries. We have all been living in a Faustian Devils’ Bargain that is the modern world. Yes, our hustle and bustle has been an essential part of our existence for centuries now now, and modern is no longer modern, but standard.

This is the tale, from  the German poet Goethe.  Dr. Faust, makes a deal with the devil—Dr. Faust  can gain endless knowledge, wisdom, and power,  he can trample on everything in his way to knowledge and control, as long he doesn’t succumb to one desire, to stop for a moment and wish "Linger a while! so fair thou art!" 

Now we are forced to linger a while. What terrible world wars couldn’t do, a tiny virus has done, The most prosperous era in human history, in which billions have been lifted out of poverty, has come with one great fear, that if we linger, for a moment, we might lose it all. Well, we might as well enjoy the lingering, since now, we have no option.

           Do you remember Alice in Wonderland?  What does the Queen tell Alice:” Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

           Don’t we all feel that!

  Phew! We have an excuse to stop running.

Now- you see the wisdom of the words of the Gaon, Elijah? Instead of running, we must, from time to time, come to a complete stop.

Mah She hayah, hu she yihyeh- That which was, is that which will be again, in the words of Koheleth, Ecclesiastes. He was surely the first to describe the frustration that one feels when “ He’s got it all.” “ Hevel, havalim”- Vanity of vanities, or as the Hebrew really describes it, the faint breathe of a faint breathe. That is what he felt after he had acquired tremendous financial wealth.

So while our Torah recognized the inner lack of satisfaction gnawing at the heart of civilized existence, it also propounded the cure. First our Torah already knew of the benefits of recession, and even introduced a mandatory recession every 7 years, the Shmittah, the Sabbatical year. Every 7^th year, the land was allowed to go wild, debts were cancelled, and all land contracts reverted to the original owners—Ironically, bear and bull markets seem to operate on a similar cycle.

Even more so, The Torah even introduced a mandatory depression, that is, a recession, on the 7^th of 7years cycles, followed by a second recession, on the 50^th year 50 years—culminating on Yom Kippur—the Yovel, or the Jubilee.  It’s the original concept behind the words on our Liberty Bell in Philadelphia—that at the 50^th year, Ukrtatem dror baaretz-Proclaim Liberty throughout the Land—All finances come to a stop  and the entire economy must start up, all over again. Guess what—there is a theory in economics that says that we really do have shnat hayovel- jubilee years of depressions and rebounds, Kondratieff waves, that average 50 years!

Ask for it or not, we have our Jubilee year imposed on us, it seems , on all the world around, by a string of DNA molecules..

We are in the period of the Yamim Noraim, the Days of Awe, or period of reflection and of stepping back, for a few days, from the world.

           Rosh Hashanah recalls the origins of the universe.  We can think of God as the greatest striver, the greatest master builder, who scrambles through 8 billion years of creation in 6 days, and then decides,” Shavat vayinafash”—Rested and refreshed.”( as we chant in Veshamru”). Even the Kodosh barukh Hu  needs time off!

We understand that our Shabbat, and our Sacred Days, too, were all given with the injunction to cease from” melakhah” , from work. Not forever, not permanently, but in its time and place.

Sheshet Yamim, Six Days,” taaseh melakhtekha—“ Do your work, positively, be busy, be creative , be active, but : U vyom hashivii: on the 7^th  Day”, it is Shabbat La’donay” The Sabbath of the Lord. Stop. Let us consider now, that we are in the Jubilee Year, and while we don’t feel like Jubilation, for sure, we need to have this time for introspection, and for connection, as much as it is possible.

Soon, things will open up. We will live, despite the virus, we will need to get back to our scrambling and hustle and bustle. Frankly, many people need it to be able to just make it from day to day. But we need to still have a take-away from all of this.

  I go back to Koheleth, the Biblical ancestor of all Jewish kvetsches,” What profit has a man of all his labors under the sun.”  To this, a Hasidic Rebbe rejoined many centuries later:

“What kind of reward do you want? In addition to being alive, and seeing the sunshine upon you, to bring you joy of light and life!”

His thought is echoed in a poetic phrasing, of Britain’s great poets, W. H. Davies:

“What is life, if full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare,
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet; how they can dance.
A poor life is this, if full of care,
We have no time to stop and stare,”
  (W.H. Davies) 

The pandemic will end. As Jews, we believe that God has created all for a purpose, and if the creation throws terrible obstacles at us, we have it in ourselves to overcome them and move forward. So , we will move forward, but as we do so, Let’s think back to the advice of the great Rabbi Elijah—Let us be sure to enjoy what we have in this life, so we will be able to earn our eternity.

 May you all be sealed in the Book of Life , Long and Healthy, and Satisfying Life, of  Good, and Blessing. Amen.

 

The Jews of Yemen

 

This is the powerpoint presentaion on the Jews of Yemen

Who are The Jews- Our video presentations

 Who are the Jews ran as a series of services and discussions online for Hollywood Temple Beth El

These are the links to the You Tube recordings, which include selections form the Shabbat service utilizing music modes of each community:

Who Are the Jews  streamed on July 19, led  by me

The Jews of Iran streamed on August 8, discussion led by Dr. Nahid Pirnazar. The presentation by Dr. Pirnazar was removed for security concerns.

The Sephardic Jews of Greece , on August 16, discussion led bny Arthur Benveniste. Discussion begins at 1 hour, 30 minutes into the service.

Jews of the Maghreb-Northwest Africa , on August 22, discussion led by Joachim Benloulou .Discussion begins at 1 hour, 30 minutes into the service.

The Jews of Yemen, on August 29, discussion led by me .Discussion begins at 1 hour, 30 minutes into the service.

The Jews of Jamaica on September 12 with Ainsley Henriques. Discussion begins at 1 hour, 30 minutes into the service.

The Jews of Poland Today on October 17. The discussion with representatives of Beit Polska in Warsaw was not recorded for reasons of privacy laws in Poland.

Sephardic Jewish Music of Morocco on November 7 with Dr. Judith Cohen, of York University..Discussion begins at 1 hour, 30 minutes into the service.

The Crypto-Jews Coming Out after centuries November 14 -presentation with Arthur Benveniste on the Crypto-Jews. Discussion begins at 1 hour, 30 minutes into the service.

Who Are The Jews- Our series of discussions on diversity and underlying unity of the Jewish people

Who Are The Jews- Our series of discussions on diversity and underlying unity of the Jewish people Let's get rid of stereotypes-- which of these shown below are Jews?

Lauren Becall- a Berber woman-Men of the Caucasus- the Marx Brothers? All of the above. Our series of discussions online at Hollywood Temple Beth El began with an examination of the variety of historic Jewish communities and the underlying unity that recent DNA research indicates- a common thread going back 2500 years, despite a dispersal that spread over thousands of miles. It begins with this presentation: