Author: admin

Shanah Tovah to all of you in our JCP Community here in New York and in our broader Jewish community. We have learned so much in these past months about human resilience, quiet acts of monumental heroism, and an overwhelming desire to remain connected to each other in the most trying of times.

The challenges before us on this particular New Year are both unique to this year and also have the feeling of being greater than us, greater than one generation, greater than any single moment in time.

As we begin these High Holy Days, let’s do so in the spirit of peace and reconciliation; in the quietude of reflection and in the urgent insistence on taking action to build a better world.

With gratitude to our leadership for their stalwart and inspiring generosity; and with enormous pride in our teachers and staff and new rabbi who have brought us through to this moment, I wish you all a Sweet New Year of good health, prosperity, and peace.

And now, some thoughts on this Rosh Hashanah to help us focus on the big picture of a very big day, the start of a ten day journey of reflection toward a new path forward for ourselves, our families, our community and our world.

* * * * * * *

During my first year of rabbinical school, alone in the library late one afternoon, I met Rabbi Bernie Zlotowitz, of blessed memory, who was ensconced in his own meditation and study of a variety of texts. We started chatting. He asked what I was going to do for my first High Holy Days sermon and I admitted no small amount of trepidation. Why did you get into this racket? he asked. To teach, I said. So teach, he said.

Good advice. Do what you know. Do what you feel best about. Do it well. And do it over and over again.

Bernie went to retrieve an article he had written and published in an academic journal. He wanted to make the claim that the scriptural readings for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur were chosen by the rabbis to structure a polemical argument in relationship to Christianity, which by the Middle Ages, when much of the ritual for the holy days was codified and printed, was the dominant system under which most Jews lived.

The notion of faith systems colliding with each other, borrowing from each other, and regrettably and tragically going to war against each other is a story as old as the hills. Not to mention at times a story that is inexcusably embarrassing in its lack of regard for practicing the love and peace all faiths are meant to practice.

Under the best circumstances, of course, argumentation and disagreement are carried out “for the sake of Heaven,” that is to say for the purposes of unifying our understanding of the Divine around a shared purpose, like peace, justice or compassion. Every faith system demands its adherents to practice these ideas through concrete action. And while we may have many paths from which to choose, we can be confident enough in our own identities to debate finer points in the broader marketplace of ideas. Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Atheists and Agnostics surely share a belief in peace, justice and compassion. We just tell different stories for how we get there. Like Google Maps, I guess, there are different routes to the same place. Arrival times altered by a mere minute or two, but in the context of Eternity, does it really matter?

Thus, Rabban Gamliel, an early sage in the Greco-Roman period, decreed that at the Passover Seder one must explain to the table the meaning of “Pesach, Matzah and Maror” by holding up each to the table and teaching very directly and very clearly what they are: The Pesach is the lamb our ancestors sacrificed when they left Egypt; the Matzah is the bread of haste, baked quickly to facilitate our Exodus; and the Maror is the bitter herb of the slave labor under which we suffered. This educational act is so fundamental to Jewish understanding that small children learn these ideas right alongside songs about hammers and work and frogs and shaking angry fingers at imagined pharaohs in Jewish classrooms around the world each year.

By one small tilt of the lens one can see that Rabban Gamliel is saying what these objects are NOT: Here, the lamb is not Jesus, the “lamb of God”; the Matzah is not a wafering offering of the Eucharist; and the Maror is not his bitter suffering on the cross for the world. They are our stories, our symbols. And while they may have other meanings for others, memory requires that they maintain their force by an eternal bind to our sacred history.

This is what scholars refer to as polemical literature. It is meant to convey a certain argument; even censor out some ways of thinking while codifying others. And I think this is most fundamentally done because our personal stories matter; our individual experiences of the world are unique to our existence and the ability and dignity to tell them is what makes us feel, well, special.

So one can imagine that Rabban Gamliel is concerned that a nascent Christianity is going to appropriate symbols of Judaism for its new narrative and so he builds a rhetorical fence as if to say that these three things are still what they are. We use them to tell our story our way and that matters because the story we share also says that each of us are “made in the Divine Image,” each unique, no one inherently better than the other. Each of us is radically individual while bound together with others, a family perhaps, a whole, with shared origins, texts, songs, language, music, food, geography, calendar, history and values.

Back in the library Bernie made his point. Consider the writings for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, he said. Same thing. Sarah, miracle birth; Abraham, sacrifice of Isaac; Jonah in the belly of the whale for three days before being “resurrected” back onto the land.

It was a clever argument and, in the context of learning for pure learning’s sake, it’s a great lesson to address in interfaith dialogues. It’s a good time.

Roots have always fascinated me. The act of excavating our minds and our stories to uncover lost truths remains one of the most exciting aspects of being alive. And I dare say that the structure of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is also an invitation into the invaluable experience of going to our origin stories year in and year out precisely at a moment where we celebrate not just the New Year, but the Creation of the Universe in all its beauty, wonder and awe; the diversity of its life forms; and our own responsibility to cherish, to care for, to tend to this world we inhabit.

But what is interesting is that our readings for Rosh Hashanah are not about the Creation but rather are about the origins of Abraham and Sarah’s Jewish family.

Prior to meeting these first Jews, God creates the universe. And with a specific order in mind. Light. Darkness. Good. Evil. Every plant, every animal for land, air and ocean. God then creates free will, choice and human agency.

And to be clear, none of the first several characters in the Biblical narrative are Jews. They are forms, memes even, in order to illustrate a unified vision for what the human actually is. Adam and Eve eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, introducing morality. They are expelled from the garden, demonstrating that there are consequences to our actions. Cain and Abel introduce rivalry, anger, envy, spite and murder. Noah, so very human, runs away from the call to serve. He hides, like we often do. And the Tower of Babel argues that there are limits to the human project. We will only ever get so high. Or, as God would eventually say to Moses, “No one shall see my face and live.”

And so in this way, I’d like to suggest that what precedes the story of Abraham and Sarah in Genesis is a kind of pre-historical origin story which celebrates what unites all of humankind. And with Abraham and Sarah on the scene, we are invited into “our” story; to our particular and peculiar ways of doing things that make us Jews unique among the other families of the earth.

“On Rosh Hashanah it is written; on Yom Kippur it is sealed.” Our deeds are recorded. Our deeds are addressed in the Heavenly Court. Our fate is sealed. Who will live and who will die? Who will be written into the Book of Life for another year?

Terrifying way to start a year, isn’t it? I guess it helps explain why we are among the smaller religions on the planet.

But consider for a moment the following structure:

Rosh Hashanah is a time for making our accounting first from the place of origins. We all come from somewhere. Good families, bad families. Healthy families, dysfunctional families. Families that carry wounds and traumas and triumphs and successes lightly or as a heavy load but a multitude of experiences nevertheless. Abraham and Sarah’s struggle with pregnancy; Hagar’s relative ease in giving birth to Ishmael; Ishmael’s mistreatment of Isaac and Sarah’s defensive move to banish Hagar and Ishmael. This could not have been an easy home to inhabit. Or immediately following this episode, Abraham answers a call from God to sacrifice Isaac. Father and son say very little to one another and if we read the text closely, they never speak again, though Abraham arranges Isaac to marry Rebekah and Isaac and Ishmael are reunited at their father Abraham’s funeral.

There is conflict and pain and hurt and there is time, and healing and even reconciliation. That’s how families operate. Love can cause pain, even lasting pain; but love can, in the end, redeem. Sacrifice hurts; sacrifice requires choice and consequence; but the work required in any act of sacrifice has a co-equal reaction perhaps best summarized by the phrase, “No pain, no gain.”

To get to justice, to get to peace, to get to compassion, one must work, work, and work some more.

It’s a hard message but it’s true. And in many ways for many people, those first lessons are wrought in the warmth of the fire of family life. For while it is surely true that each of us “comes from somewhere,” it is also true that each of us is going somewhere, too.

On Rosh Hashanah we are entering holy time, sacred space, familiar and familial narratives that tell us who we are right now but also push us to strive for a continual unfolding of who we are yet to become. Our family stories are not who we are but they are the shared place from which we came. Going back to the beginning of the year is not so much an act of wiping the slate clean as it is a return to a familiar place with a new beginning.

What have I learned in the last year? How have I grown? How have I not? And what wisdom will I move forward with in the New Year ahead?

In the last half year of obsessive hand-washing, sanitizing and mask wearing, it certainly is a temptation to want to wipe the slate clean, isn’t it? Vote him in. Vote him out. Start over. Reset.

Nope.

We Jews, as well as anyone, know the power of memory, the deep roots of the past, and the moral responsibility to remember and never forget. And just as Rosh Hashanah is meant to be the day the universe came into existence, Rosh Hashanah is also a Yom Hazikaron — a day of remembrance.

Whether it is the alarming news that a dangerously high percentage of young Americans lack a serious understanding of the Holocaust; or the mind-bending and potentially history altering peace treaties between Israel and a growing number of Arab nations; we Jews know that memory of what once was can always guide us toward a path illuminated by the aspirations of what can be.

And as Americans at this critical juncture in our history, we can tell this story, too. Memory matters. It matters when we “say their names”; it matters when women in forced detention get involuntary hysterectomies and we are aware as Americans and Jews of having been subjected to human experimentation; it matters when we see that this pandemic doesn’t care about your faith or gender or the color of your skin but it does attack those most vulnerable among us, like “the poor, the stranger, the widow and the orphans” of Scripture whom we are commanded to care for because we, in our history, were once so vulnerable when we were slaves in Egypt. For an empathic world, for a just world, for a world at peace, history and memory are the necessary signposts, to guide us along the way.

History and memory are our hope. And just as Abraham and Sarah were challenged, in building their family, to be a light unto the nations, so too might we American Jews offer a vision forward for a nation so brutally torn over partisan politics, racial injustice, anti-Semitism, regional conflict, class warfare. Oh, to wipe the slate clean indeed.

But unfortunately, that is not an option. Old habits are not the only things that die hard. So too does memory; acquired from experience or learned from books, we take the past into us in various ways and then, like new seeds, plant new life, nurture and grow it.

One scholar, David Roskies, makes the case that the rabbinic approach to history is to implode it, “to cut it down to a manageable size.” And in so doing, to emphasize the collective over the individual, the family over the self, the nation over rank divisions.

There is much wisdom here. Honoring and respecting what was — in our families or in the broader collective — as the new possible emerges. But simultaneously never forgetting, even that which is most painful, in order to develop and sequence into the future a DNA of justice, freedom and compassion for every human being on earth.

So around our tables, on Zoom and with loved ones, we celebrate on Rosh Hashanah the awe and wonder and messiness and craziness of what it means to be a Jewish family, however that is defined. We see ourselves in its mirror for a flash while knowing with full hearts that the Source of Living Water, the flow of life is ever-changing, never the same, forever new.

On Rosh Hashanah we remember not to forget where we come from; and on Yom Kippur, in ten days, we declare as solitary and unique individuals in the collective prayers of the whole, that we have chosen a new direction, a new way, predicated on the old, that insists on the redeeming values of love and peace.

Gmar Hatimah Tovah.

May you be written and sealed into the Book of Life for another year of well-being, blessing, good health and peace.

It’s been quite a year so far, and we’re only a few days in.

Last Friday evening, as we welcomed in the year 5781, we learned of the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, perhaps the most prominent, certainly the most iconic, Jew in American public life.

Her death is monumental, both because of her legacy as a jurist and a trailblazer, and also because of the weight that a vacant Supreme Court seat adds to this election, already the most consequential of a lifetime.

In this week’s Torah portion, Ha’azinu, we lose another significant leader, perhaps the most notable of all time: Moses. At this point, as the Torah closes, we find him near the end of his journey. He has led the people out from slavery in Egypt, guided them as they received the Torah from God, and encouraged them as they wandered through the desert for forty years. Now he stands upon Mount Nebo, gazing beyond the Jordan River into the Promised Land, the long-awaited destination to which he has led his people for so long. But God tells him that he will not make it across the river. He will die on this mountaintop. He will never arrive at his destination, and the Israelites will have to continue on their journey without him leading the way.

Why do leaders disappear when it feels like we need them the most?

Perhaps it is not a coincidence that we read about the death of Moses as we prepare for Yom Kippur. In this Torah portion, we learn that Moses can’t be our leader forever. On Yom Kippur, we prepare ourselves to take on the banner of authority that he left behind. We reflect on our capacity to forgive, our ability to make principled choices, and our desire to do the right thing. We take up the mantle of moral leadership, perhaps the same one that Moses left to all of us, the Jewish people, upon his death.

As we reflect upon what it means for each of us to live up to the aspirations bequeathed by our leaders — and demanded of us by our tradition — during Yom Kippur, I hope you will join us for our engaging, reflective, and meaningful services. They will begin tonight with Shabbat on Instagram Live at 6 pm. Then, on Sunday night, we will begin Yom Kippur with Kol Nidre, followed by services all day on Monday. In the Torah, Yom Kippur is called a Shabbat Shabbaton, a “Sabbath of Sabbaths,” a day of complete reflection, rest and, hopefully, renewal. I hope you will spend it with us.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah — May you be sealed in the Book of Life for a good year.

Have you ever heard the expression, “Two Jews, three opinions?” When I first heard it, someone even chimed in, “At LEAST three!”

The reality is that life resonates with each of us differently. These different perspectives of the world inform our opinions as well as our learning styles, tastes, and experiences. Luckily for us, the Jewish holiday beginning tonight, most commonly known as Sukkot, goes by three different names throughout the Torah, each offering a different perspective on our observance of this holiday. As Sukkot shows us, having two Jews with three opinions, or one holiday with three names, can bring us together in our diversity. Having multiple perspectives ultimately makes us a stronger, more multifaceted community.

Our most common name, Sukkot, is shorthand for Chag HaSukkot (Leviticus 23:34), which means The Festival of Booths. Our first association with these booths is the Sukkah itself: an outdoor structure made from organic material where we eat, sometimes sleep, and hang out for a week. This name offers a historical connection to the holiday, as these “booths” are a way to commemorate the Israelites’ precarious journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. The first Torah portion we read for Sukkot teaches: “You shall live in booths for 7 days… in order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I, Adonai your God” (Leviticus 23:42-43). We build these sukkot to remember how our ancestors lived in the desert. They were constantly on the go, and these booths were fragile, impermanent structures that provided them with critical shelter in the brutal desert climate. The commandment to sit in the sukkah is an invitation for us to put ourselves in their shoes, and experience those simultaneous conditions of vulnerability and gratitude. For those of us who connect to history, Chag HaSukkot offers us a historical window into our tradition as we celebrate this Sukkot.

The next name we have for this holiday comes from a verse from the Book of Deuteronomy that declares that we must rejoice in this festival (Deuteronomy 16:14). It’s called Zman Simchateinu — literally meaning “The Time of Our Joy.” Just five days after the heavy soul-searching of Yom Kippur, it is our time to rejoice! For those of us who seek spiritual connections to our holidays, an 18th-century Lithuanian rabbi called the Vilna Gaon wrote that this festival is “Zman Simchateinu” because it marks the first time God’s presence returned to the Israelites after they committed the sin of worshipping the Golden Calf. We spent last Sunday night and Monday together on YouTube reciting the liturgy to atone for our sins of the past year, naming specific transgressions, and asking God to hear us. Now, just a few days later, we spiritually mark the moment God’s presence returned to the Israelites with pure joy. As Rabbi Deena taught in the tradition of Rabbi Andy on Yom Kippur morning, “We are commanded as Jews to find joy in life. Says the Psalmist, ‘Serve God with joy and gladness, come before God with song in your hearts.’” Zman Simchateinu is one of these very moments where we can serve God with our joy and gladness.

We find a different name for our holiday in the Book of Exodus. In a set of instructions about observing our appointed pilgrimage festivals, this time of year is designated Chag HaAsif, the Festival of the Harvest (Exodus 23:15-16). While we might not all be actively tending fields today, Chag HaAsif provides a way of connecting to our Earth. Even in Biblical times, Chag HaAsif didn’t mark a specific crop’s harvest. Rather, it marked the moment in the season when people finished the hard work of cutting, reaping, winnowing, and sheafing their grain crops and hoped a rainy winter would yield good production in the spring. We still acknowledge this moment in our prayers — Sukkot is when we stop praying for dew and start praying for rain in the Amidah. We are still dependent on these natural cycles, even if we are further removed from the harvesting process than we once were as a people. For those of us who seek ways to connect with the Earth, Chag HaAsif gives us an opportunity to do just that. With this framework, we can be mindful of the seasonal shifts and admire that we are living on the same planet with the same cycles as those who came before us.

For just one holiday, we have three different names, messages, and points of entry into our sukkah. Chag HaSukkot, The Festival of Booths, reminds us historically of the Israelites living in these makeshift booths, and gives us an opportunity to apply historical lessons to contemporary times. Zman Simchateinu, The Time of Our Joy, presents us with a spiritual high after the hard soul-work of Yom Kippur, and commands us to rejoice together. And Chag HaAsif, The Festival of the Harvest, connects us to the Earth, the Earth’s natural cycles, and the agricultural rhythms that dictated the lives of our ancestors. Whether we connect historically, spiritually, ecologically, or some combination of the three, Sukkot has a name for us.

As we inevitably enter the sukkah with different perspectives from one another, our holiday gives us a symbol to show how, when we bring each of our unique life experiences, we are stronger together. We have a custom to shake the lulav and etrog, four kinds of plants that we recite a blessing over and shake in our sukkah. According to a Midrash (Vayikra Rabbah 30:12), each of the four species — date palm, myrtle, willow, and etrog — represent a different kind of Jew. Despite these differences, the custom is to hold all four kinds of plants close together when we shake them. This way, we know that we are all in this together regardless of which opinion we hold, what life experiences we bring, or which name for Sukkot resonates with us most. May we all celebrate Sukkot together as a community — from our homes or from the JCP Sukkah on Duane Street — as we mark our history, rejoice, and transition to fall.

I hope you will join myself and Rabbi Deena tonight on Zoom at 6 pm for a festive Shabbat sing-a-long, filled with the songs and prayers that we are learning in the Hebrew School Project! It will be a wonderful way to begin this Time of Rejoicing.

Laid out before me on Friday nights were my father’s photographs and other tsotchkes from his service in the Second World War. Black and white images, neatly scattered and arrayed, each bearing a story of some kind that my dad artfully recorded in his own brilliant mind as well as in his singular script on the backs of these snapshots. Dad served in the 980th Engineering Maintenance Corps, repairing jeeps and tanks, mostly, and provided support for the other men and women who landed in Europe before him. He fought with his company commanders because he was smart and tenacious and hell, for all I know, was already deeply traumatized about what he may have been hearing about Hitler’s plans to exterminate Jews. His mother (my grandma) had fled Kopyl, Minsk in 1903. When news began to emerge during the war that their entire village (and nearly 1 million Jews throughout Belarus) had been murdered by Nazis and their collaborators, the devastation was so great that neither my father nor grandmother ever mentioned it. Dad was seventeen when he was drafted; nineteen when he shipped overseas; and twenty-two when he returned back home on the GI Bill to finish his degree at the University of Wisconsin. I suppose what one might say is that time pushed him forward into the ever-evolving present. Few of his generation chose to look back.

But I do — for him and for me.

One particular picture stands out for me among the many — dad standing in an army camp in Italy with two friends, Samson Cassabo and Stipano LaRocca. They were Italian American, clearly first generation themselves, who were in the U.S. army fighting in Italy. Imagine that. Of course, they were anti-fascists as well, as were most Americans (Charles Lindbergh and his America Firsters notwithstanding.)

When I asked my dad about that, fighting alongside Italians against Italians he said simply, “We are all Americans, son.” And he didn’t need to say much more than that. Those were clearly delineated principles back then.

The war shattered my father’s faith. On a number of occasions during my childhood, I yearned for a Hebrew school education, for more Jewish rituals in the home, and he was having nothing of it. “If there is a Holocaust, then there is no God” was fairly axiomatic for him but I know now, as a student of history, how prevalent that view was for many American Jews of his generation. It was enough to become an American, to enjoy its freedoms and advantages, and to leave behind the kind of — in his mind — primitive expressions of belief that were either untrue, would get you in trouble, or both.

But now all these years later, with Dad being gone since 1983 of a heart attack and me, the age he was when he died, going through the pictures, still. I puzzle over their meaning. I share them. I am the keeper of the flame.

And tonight, at sundown, when Shabbat and Shemini Atzeret arrive to close out the Sukkot festival, I will light a Yizkor candle for Dad, as I have done each year for twenty-eight years. And for his parents, which he never did; and for my mother, a Jew-by-choice; and for my teacher George L. Mosse, who died without children so why shouldn’t his students say Kaddish in his name a few times a year?

But this year Yizkor feels different. With news yesterday of a Michigan militia being caught by the FBI in its kidnapping plot against Governor Gretchen Whitmer and the broader militia movement’s threats to American democracy and the electoral process, I can’t help but think of the lessons imparted to me from my father. A son of refugees. A son of immigrants. Who fought alongside other Americans from all walks of life in order to vanquish the most evil leader of the twentieth century.

This was a basic tenet of what it meant to be a citizen. You served your country because your country gave you freedom. Today, that “freedom” surely remains unrealized for an inexcusably large number of Americans. The point being that we who have inherited such freedom are obligated to ensure that all can share in the bounty of democracy and individual freedom.

There was a model in place for my father’s generation that we have lost as Americans and as Jews: we no longer expect something of each other for each other. Or, put differently, drafted into a unit of young men from all over the nation, from every imaginable background and faith tradition, and being asked to sacrifice a precious few years of your youth for something greater is one of the most noble ideas we have in our quivers for battling over the future of our own nation. A shared purpose, a shared narrative, a shared set of ideas, pointing in a direction.

Over the years, what I discovered in piecing together my father’s narrative was not only his story, but the generational narratives of American Jews who lived through one of the most mind-boggling centuries of Jewish history — mass migration; Holocaust; establishment of Israel; Six Day War — representing a sequence of events that historians and psychologists and sociologists are still grappling with. It will be a long time before we fully understand what has gone on these past hundred years.

As the sage Ben Bag Bag said of Torah study, “Turn it and turn it, for everything is in it. Reflect on it and grow old and gray with it. Don’t turn from it, for nothing is better than it.”

O’ America! You throw so much away. You discard. You waste! But what we inherit is precious, unique and uncommonly beautiful. Even the images, fading from black and white into sepia and grey, bear testimony to a life of values and meaning and despite differences, a unity of purpose.

But as Jews, it is vitally important to remember that just as Sukkot is a festival that reminds us of the fragility of freedom, of the ongoing pursuit of justice, of the need for shelter and bounty for all people, then our work is never done. Like learning, we need to keep turning the project of building a better world “over and over again.”

For our divided country; for our divided world; I pray for a Yizkor of love and recognition of the potential for good in all people. I pray for the strength to do battle with those who will limit the right for all people to be truly free. And I pray for a renewed sense of obligation to the other, to our neighbors, to the whole that derives its measure from the individuality of its many parts.

Please join Rabbi Deena and myself for Yizkor services tomorrow, Saturday, October 10 at 1:15 pm via Zoom here (Meeting ID: 893 7184 5794; Passcode: YIZKOR). To receive the digital prayer book in advance, please RSVP (you can still join without an RSVP).

In these trying times, may the lights of Shabbat and Shemini Atzeret radiate peace, from your homes, to the city, to the country and to the world around us.

Jewish communities, from biblical times to the present day, have often been deeply focused on counting our numbers. This week’s Torah portion, Parashat Bamidbar, is the second-longest in the entire Torah. Its contents? A long account of a divinely-mandated census. The idea behind the census is that Moses and the rest of the leadership of the Israelites need to know how many people comprise their newly free nation. Earlier in the Torah (Exodus 30:12), we learn that, because each Israelite was required to give a sum of money for the upkeep of the Tabernacle, the leadership was able to count how many people were in their society by counting the donations… perhaps a biblical equivalent of an Annual Benefit? (We at JCP held our own virtual Benefit yesterday, but our Online Auction is live through Monday at noon).

Although God instructed Moses and Aaron to take the census in this Torah portion, other biblical leaders are punished by God when they decide to do the same. According to the Book of I Chronicles, King David, looking to assess the power of his kingdom, was convinced by the Satan (which in Judaism is understood to be an inciting spirit) to “number the people of Israel.” As a punishment for taking this census, God sends a plague that kills 700,000 people (I Chronicles 21:1, 14). This account has led to superstition and hesitancy in the Jewish community around participating in the secular census, and even around counting the number of people in a room. I know many traditional grandparents who refuse to say how many grandchildren they have; assigning them a number would bring bad luck.

In modern times, too, there is a fascination with knowing our numbers. For instance, the Pew Research Center on Jewish Americans in 2020, and a similar report published in 2013, presents every statistic and graph under the sun in order to determine just about every trend and pattern imaginable: how many Jews identify with a particular denomination or particular political party? How many find synagogue spiritually meaningful? How many eat Jewish foods and share other aspects of Jewish culture with people who aren’t Jewish? The list of questions goes on. And anecdotally, I have often seen that when a rabbi meets a new colleague, one of the first questions asked is: “How many members are in your congregation?” The assumption is: the bigger the better. The more members you have in your community, the greater your rabbinic reputation.

Though the causes of the upheaval in Israel are incredibly complicated and nuanced, one of the main reasons for the tragic violence we are seeing this week comes down to a race for greater numbers. How many Jewish Israelis live in East Jerusalem, (in villages like Sheikh Jarrah, which is at the heart of the most recent controversy) versus how many Palestinians live there will likely determine who ultimately gets to control the Holy City. But this question of demography has been at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades, with many wondering what will happen if Jews are no longer a majority in the Jewish State.

These questions about demographics, though, are not unique to Israel; they exist in the United States as well. The 2020 Census was wrapped up in the political question of whether to count undocumented immigrants. And the results, recently published, will have enormous implications for upcoming elections, as Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina, Texas, and Oregon will each gain seats in the House of Representatives, while California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia will each lose a seat.

Whenever we count a population — be it of a synagogue, a neighborhood, or a nation — perhaps the first step should be to determine why we are engaging in this project. Are we counting our people to achieve utilitarian and political ends or bragging rights? Or are we counting them for sacred purposes, in order to provide resources and ensure proper representation? The ideal end goal should be to ensure that everyone counts.

An inability to form a government; a restless population; an ongoing, unresolved national, religious and territorial conflict spanning generations; a presidential administration in transition; and provocations expressed by extremism of all kinds; it’s a tragic, horrifying and dangerous perfect storm for violence between Israelis and Palestinians. Yet again.

Our hearts break, yet again, for our brothers and sisters in Israel who have been killed, gravely injured, traumatized and terrorized by falling lethal rockets from Gaza. Unquestionably, Israel has the right and must exercise that right to defend itself and deter further attacks against its citizens and its borders.

As Jews and as humans, our hearts break again for the loss of innocent Palestinian lives as well. Images of Israelis and Palestinians living in radical fear at the borders and the interior must remain intolerable to us; must demand of us compassion, action, justice and the tireless pursuit of peace. The right to live in safety and self-determination is why Israel was created in the first place. We must demand of everyone involved hope and not fear.

Now more than ever we need leaders who can build the will to create and sustain a cease fire. Now more than ever we need leaders who recognize the pain and suffering unnecessarily inflicted upon innocent lives when war’s destructive weapons are deployed. Now more than ever we need to recognize that there is very little that is black and white in politics and that ultimately, territorial and existential conflict such as this is resolved through dialogue and bold leadership, not violence.

Us versus Them will not resolve this entrenched battle between Israelis and Palestinians. Destabilizing division, hatred and violence have woven a dangerous, destructive path.

We need Together, as impossible as it is to imagine right now, in order for justice and peace to prevail for all the inhabitants of the land.

For the past fifteen months, my study group has been immersed in a daily examination of sacred Jewish texts, traversing the ancient and contemporary for a glimpse into the wisdom of Jewish civilization. When faced with war again in Israel, it may be tempting to quote Proverbs and sigh in anguish that “there is nothing new under the sun.” But the greater commanding voice which roars from our texts reminds us that the human was created in the image of the Divine; and that the animation of God on earth is expressed through the pursuit of love, justice and peace.

This is our work; this is our mission; this must be our flame of undying hope.

“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” (Leviticus 25:10). This familiar line appears in two very different contexts. The original is in this week’s Torah portion in the book of Leviticus, marking a moment known as the “Jubilee Year,” a year of celebration and freedom from servitude at the end of a 50 year cycle. The second place this line appears is in the city of Philadelphia, engraved in the side of the Liberty Bell. Although the words are the same, the line takes on different meanings in their two different contexts, thousands of years and miles apart from each other.

Despite the universal-sounding message of the verse on its own, Torah commentators over generations help clarify to whom “all the inhabitants thereof” really refers. French medieval commentator Rashi notes that “all the inhabitants” is intended specifically for Hebrew servants, both those who have served beyond their 6-year terms, and those still in the midst of that contract (Rashi on Leviticus 25:10). At the same time in Spain, commentator Ibn Ezra agrees that this proclamation is for Israelites and Israelites alone (Ibn Ezra on Leviticus 25:10). In the next generation of medieval commentators, French rabbi Chizkuni doubles down on the particular audience of this verse, and adds that this proclamation is inapplicable beyond the biblical land of Israel because it is designed for the “inhabitants” of that specific land (Chizkuni on Leviticus 25:10). To summarize each of these Torah commentaries together, “all the inhabitants thereof” exclusively refers to Hebrew servants living in the biblical land of Israel, and no one else.

Traveling from biblical Israel to Pennsylvania in 1751, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” took on new meaning in a totally new environment. The bell into which this verse is inscribed wasn’t even known as the Liberty Bell yet. It was the bell of the Pennsylvania Assembly, which would ring out to gather lawmakers for discussion and townspeople to hear the news. In these early days, “all the inhabitants thereof” likely meant the inhabitants of Pennsylvania, whose state charter promised religious and political independence from England. In 1835, the bell entered its next phase as abolitionist publication The Anti-Slavery Record named it the “Liberty Bell” based on its inscription. In the following years, the Liberty Bell became a symbol of aspiration for the Abolitionist Movement because “all the inhabitants thereof” in its American context excluded enslaved Black people from its message. The Liberty Bell similarly became a symbol for the Women’s Suffrage Movement because, again, the universal freedom proclaimed in its inscription did not extend to everyone.

As illustrated by both biblical and American context, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” wasn’t always intended for everyone. The expansion of who “all the inhabitants” refers to over time, however, teaches us a tremendous lesson, from biblical Israel, to colonial Pennsylvania, abolition, women’s suffrage, and beyond: In their original contexts, not all Jewish or American ideals are meant for all people. That can be a painful reality to face. However, I believe it is our job as Jews and Americans to identify what from our particular traditions fulfills and inspires us, and work to apply it to “all the inhabitants thereof” who could share in our benefit. Starting with liberty, I hope we participate in the progression of Jewish and American history and continue to expand it to all who are yet to be included in this transformative vision for freedom and equality.

What a terribly broken hearted way to enter Shabbat. To awake this morning with the tragic news from Israel: dozens of Jewish worshippers killed in an avalanche of humanity at a spiritual celebration in Meron for the festival of Lag B’Omer. A nightmarish, ghoulish, suffocating event — a human disaster in the service of God — ought to humble us all. Living as we do in our age with the malignancy of death staring us in the face, whether it be gun violence, racist and anti-Semitic attacks against innocent victims, or the incomprehensible destruction of war; this tragedy in Israel was an example of what can happen when our fellow Jews, our fellow human beings, are cut down in joy, in celebration, in love for and in service to our God.

To die in service to God is a perversion of the natural order. Judaism teaches that above all else, we are to sanctify life. Further, the tradition also teaches that only in the most extreme circumstances should a Jew willingly give up his or her own life in devotion to God.

In Meron, at the grave of the early rabbinic sage Shimon bar Yochai, pilgrims gather each year to celebrate Lag B’Omer. “Lag” in Jewish numerology is the number 33. It has been 33 days since Passover began. Jewish tradition teaches that during the 49 days between Passover, our liberation from Egypt, and Shavuot, receiving the Torah on Mt. Sinai, we “count the omer,” or the spring grain that grows in the land of Israel during this time. Nature and ritual come together in a kind of spiritual-historical time to mark the wonder and bounty of the earth as well as the covenantal way in which we Jews mark our journey through life.

The Counting of the Omer is a time of introspection, serious reflection, preparation for the Gift of Torah. In ancient mytho-history, the 33rd day of the Omer was a two-fold date of importance. It marked the end of a period of plague and persecution of the ancient sages, in particular a rivalrous incident between Rabbi Akiva and his students; and it also marks the yahrzeit of Shimon bar Yohai, a monumental figure in early rabbinic history. Bar Yohai was a brilliant teacher, in possession of a rich and illustrious imagination, and he was also a fierce critic of the materialism and brute power of the Roman empire. He was once chased into exile by the Romans, forced to flee for his life and hide in a cave with his son for seven years. When he first emerged, he was so caught up in his righteousness, that anything or anyone he looked at was destroyed by fire. God told him to return to his cave. It seems that the Divine Voice demanded an obedience that was tempered, moderated, more embracing of life than the extreme expressions of devotion. He eventually emerged to understand that life could return to a kind of normalcy and the Talmud relates that when he came back to the world the second time, he was deeply moved by watching his fellow Jews prepare for Shabbat, sharing flowers and fresh myrtle to welcome the glory and splendor of the day of rest.

Bar Yohai is also, by legend, the author of Judaism’s most mystical tract, the Zohar, though scholars have long demonstrated that in fact the Zohar is of Medieval origin. But myth is a powerful tool and the passion with which believers flock to Bar Yohai’s grave is on full display each year in Meron.

That passion — so beautiful in its intent — has had an incomprehensibly tragic result in the senseless deaths we bear witness to today.

No one should die in service to God. With wrenched hearts we must face the fact that this was so; and also strengthen our efforts moving forward to ensure the safety of worshippers, lovers of the Divine Name, whenever and however they meet, with the intent of the loving expressions of peace and righteousness at the center of their beings.

When we experience death in Jewish life, we pray that the Divine brings comfort to the mourners; and we also pray that the memory of those we lost serve as a blessing. These words we use: “May God provide comfort to the mourners of Zion” and “May their memory be a blessing” are the animating life forces of how we transcend our grief in such moments.

The entire JCP community offers words of comfort, strength and love to the families of those lost in Meron on Lag B’Omer. May our people know only peace; and may our love for and worship of God be tempered by the humility of our service, rooted in the sanctification of life, always, now and forever.

We’ve all likely heard the term “scapegoat,” a person or group that is blamed for the wrongdoings, mistakes, or faults of others, usually for reasons of expediency.

But what do goats have to do with it?

The term “scapegoat” has its origins in this week’s double Torah portion, Acharei Mot-Kedoshim, in which we learn that a scapegoat is not an abstract concept, but a ritual involving, you guessed it, live goats.

The Torah portion describes the annual Yom Kippur ceremony that the High Priest would use to cleanse the people of their sins. First, he would take two identical goats and would, by lottery, designate one goat as a sacrifice to God, and one to be kept alive for later use as the scapegoat. After the sacrifice of the first goat, the High Priest would engage in the following ritual:

“He shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities and transgressions of the Israelites, whatever their sins, putting them on the head of the goat; and it shall be sent off to the wilderness…thus the goat shall carry on it all their iniquities to an inaccessible region” (Leviticus 16:21-22).

With all of their mistakes, sins, and wrongdoings transferred from the people to the goat, and the goat sent out to die in the wilderness, the people could enter the new year feeling relieved of the burden of guilt and shame from the previous one. To us, this ritual might seem oddly physical; sins can’t just be transferred from a person’s conscience to a goat. But for the Israelites, the scapegoat was a tool to help them leave behind the sins of the past and begin anew.

Since the days of the Bible, humans in all societies have engaged in this ritual of identifying and banishing a scapegoat… with one significant difference: scapegoat is no longer a goat, but a human being or a group of people blamed for the ills of society and sent to its margins.

Isabel Wilkerson, author of Caste: The Origins of our Discontents, claims societies based on caste systems, like ours in the United States, use the practice of scapegoating as a way to keep members of the lower caste outside of the sphere of concern of the upper castes. She writes:

“In a caste system, whether in the United States or in India or in World War II Germany, the lowest caste performed the unwitting role of diverting society’s attention from its structural ills and taking the blame for collective misfortune…the scapegoat unwittingly helps unify the favored castes to be seen as free of blemish as long as there is a visible disfavored group to absorb their sins.” When times are tough, it’s easier to blame an already marginalized group than to do the hard work of repairing the brokenness in society.

This desire to transfer our own sins and pain onto other beings is deeply ingrained into our consciousness. It feels good to transfer our burdens onto something, or someone, else. But what happens to those who bear the brunt? They end up being seen as expendable, destined to languish in the wilderness of our society.

How do we work to diminish this dangerous human tendency? The second Torah portion we read this week, Kedoshim, gives us a potential answer. In it, God instructs Moses to assemble kol adat b’nai Yisrael, the entire community of the people of Israel, to receive the Holiness Code, a list of instructions that will allow them to achieve a state of sanctity. The Holiness Code begins with the proclamation: “You all are Holy, for I, Adonai your God, am holy” (Leviticus 19:1).

This is a revolutionary idea, both in the ancient world and today, because it teaches that all people — not just those at the top of the social hierarchy — are inherently holy. This echoes the decision by God, made at the very beginning of the Torah, that humans will be created B’tzelem Elohim, in the image of the Divine. Therefore, in an ideal world, we would recognize that no human being can ever serve as a scapegoat; their inherent holiness won’t allow for it.

Perhaps this week’s conviction of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd is a sign that our society is finally understanding that Black Lives, too, are inherently holy; they are not to be scapegoated, but treated with equal justice under law. But can we imagine a society where that is already the assumption, where we didn’t have to be reminded of this fact through the tragic loss of life, and ordeal of national strife and discord? This is the aspiration set out in Torah.

May we help to build a world where, instead of seeking out a scapegoat and transferring our burdens to others, we take to heart this powerful teaching in the Torah, so that it is no longer a yearning, or even a cliché, but a reality by which we live.