Better Late Than Never - Parashat Shofetim 5771

The following is the text of the dvar torah I gave this past Shabbat at Congregation Bnai Jeshurun in New York City.  Its written to be heard, so might read a little weird - but the ideas are there.  Enjoy!

It is Elul, the time leading up to the Yamim Noraim, the HHD.  We are tasked with Teshuvah, with a return to our inner selves, with the mission to seek out who we really have been in this past year, and to judge ourselves - before Yom Kippur, when God and only God is judge.  But Judgement is a complicated word.  It stirs up emotions.  It makes us uncomfortable.  We use it in so many ways.  When I first think about judgement, it is personal, it is about how I make decisions, about who I am and how I act.  But it is also about others.  It is about how we approach those around us, and how they approach us.  We act, and when others see what we do or hear what we say, they judge us.  Its human nature I think, its just how we are wired to behave.  Of course, that does not mean we have to like it… I cant tell you how many times someone else has told me I did something wrong and I have said “don’t judge me.”  But deep down I always know the truth, that I have no right to say that.  No right because I judge others constantly, no right because we are all judging each other all the time.  And in any case, its not really what I mean.  When I say “don’t judge me” what I really mean is “judge me fairly” “consider my position, my experience” “listen to me before deciding about me.”  I know that it is by my judgement that I am judged, and I want others to understand where that judgement came from. 

Click to read more ...

A Blessing and a Curse

There is a challenge to us all found in this week’s parasha - Re’eh - it is there right from the start.  Put up or shut up, says God. 

“Behold, this day I set before you a blessing and a curse.” (Devarim 11:26)

We have a choice, says God - chose the right path or the wrong one.  This is the reality of freedom, the idea that we constantly make decisions and that those decisions have consequences.  I have been thinking a great deal about this idea in the wake of this past week’s terror attacks near Eilat.  

Each and every moment of life we make decisions, and no matter how much we like to blame others for forcing us to make them - it is us in the end who acts, who does the deed.  Those who snuck into Israel with the intention to kill as many as possible almost certainly blame Israel for causing their actions - but they pulled the triggers.  They chose the curse. 

And those who decided to respond in kind by ordering bombs dropped, those who fired across the border, those who drop their quest for a new social order, they chose too.  And they also chose the curse. 

Click to read more ...

Refocusing the Conversation

http://jewschool.com/2011/06/20/26447/guest-post-refocusing-the-conversation/

by
Jonah Geffen, Rabbinical Student
Kelly Cohen, Jewish Educator

We are trapped in a discourse that has no logical end. It has been asserted that the knowledge and life experience of the current generation of Rabbinical students with regard to Israel is cause for great concern and fear. The deans and Presidents of Rabbinical schools have responded to the contrary, stating that though perhaps more willing to “wrestle” with Israel, these students are wise and committed. And yet, this entire conversation remains shallow and paternalistic. The debate has been devoted strictly to the students, their teachers and the methods by which they are chosen and taught. We believe this discourse to be fundamentally flawed. We note with dismay that this conversation about Diaspora Jews and our relationship to Israel has left out Israel, its choices and actions.

Click to read more ...

It is Sunday night May 8th, and I am in Jerusalem.  Sunset marks the beginning of Yom Hazikaron, the day this state has set aside to remember all those who have been killed - soldiers and victims of terror - since the state came into being.  It is a day devoted to suffering, to a collective experience, to feeling pain and sorrow.

Its just now hitting me that Yom Hazikaron is here.  I havent given it enough attention I guess, life pushing forward as it does.  But right now, my thoughts are with all those who lost their lives because of this conflict.  With those souls lost to anger and violence, drawn into the unnatural state of war.  With those who were not actively fighting, those who died simply by living in a conflict zone.

I lost a cousin recently who I barely knew.  He was in the Army because that what young Israelis do, and died by accident.  A casualty of being placed in a situation where one is constantly surrounded by things designed to kill.  His family, like so many others here mourns twice a year here.  Once for his Yartzheit, and once more today.

Today I join a nation in mourning, and pray that next Yom Hazikaron the number of those who have lost their lives to this conflict is the same as it is today.  I pray that this suffering brings with it healing, that this collective day of Shiva brings with it the comfort that sitting in mourning with family can bring.  And that comfort begins to allow us to move forward, to rise up from the dust of mourning and face the rest of our lives with courage and compassion.  I pray that we are able to experience this pain of ours, so profound, and steel ourselves with the determination to end suffering - all suffering.

הִתְנַעֲרִי מֵעָפָר קוּמִי

If only my problems would just dissapear...

HaRav Ovadia Yosef is no stranger to saying thing that cause many of us to cringe.  The latest: 

“Abu Mazen and all these evil people should perish from this world,” Rabbi Ovadia was quoted as saying during his weekly sermon at a synagogue near his Jerusalem home. “God should strike them with a plague, them and these Palestinians.” 

I read these words and feel for this man.  A man who’s brain is like a computer program.  He has memorized pretty much every important Jewish text of the last 2500 years.  And believe it or not, on many issues where other Haredi Rabbis like him have ruled in confusingly harsh ways, he has proven moderate (again, in a certain context).  And yet, he speaks about an entire people and wishes for their wholesale destruction.  He wishes upon them what many for thousands of years have wished upon our people.  He wishes upon them what the Nazis almost succeeded in doing. 

But I want to dig a little deeper here.  Because it seems to me his words are an example of a universal human truth.  We all look at our lives, look at our problems, at those people, places, ideas, etc. that are causing us anguish - and wish that they would just dissapear.  We allow ourselves to become stuck in one place spinning our wheels, because the cause of all our problems is one thing.  

Click to read more ...