Parashat Yitro: We Will Do and We Will Hear

A few months ago I had the opportunity to have coffee with one of our religious school parents. I’d sent out a general invitation after the high holidays and this mom accepted. So we’re talking, getting to know one another better—she had been more active at one point when the kids were younger, a Shabbat regular, but had drifted away. In the course of our talking, she mentioned that when she goes on hikes, or runs, jogging with friends through the great outdoors, taking in God’s world, that is when she felt closer to God and to her Judaism. “It’s too bad” she said, “that we couldn’t make Shabbat like that.” 

“Well,” I replied, “why not?”

Her face lit up when I said that. Why couldn’t we make a Shabbat morning experience that was outdoors, that was a hike, that was communal and individual at the same time? 

She began to pepper me with questions about regulars, about mobility, publicity, all kinds of details. How would we make this work? 

At the time, I hadn’t the slightest idea. But I know a good idea when I hear one: if this mom felt this way, odds are others do too. And while there’s a lot of detail to work out, none of it is so onerous as to say ‘no’. In that moment, the right answer was yes. 

Now I don’t share this to toot my only horn. Well, maybe just a little. I share this because I think we often moments of inspiration the way this mom did. As one preacher put it, you share your vision with others and “They just looked at you skeptically and said something along the lines of , “Now that’s an interesting idea.” Which you rightly interpreted to mean, “That’ll never happen.”” That’s the response we expect.

 Frequently, we short-circuit our good ideas before we allow them to come to fruition, because of the details. We sweat the small stuff. We get inspired by some possibility—a new friendship, an idea at work—and the minute Shel Silverstein’s ‘whatifs’ enter our head, or we share that inspiration with others who then get to play the role of ‘whatif’, and we get discouraged. 

Sometimes, we need to push the details aside. Yes, there will be a time to work all of the nitty-gritty out, and yes, we may find the original idea evolving—the Shabbat hike will probably have stationary elements at the beginning and end so less mobile people can join us, for example—but sometimes the answer needs to be yes! Sometimes yes with trepidation (“I don’t know how to do that!”) and sometimes yes with enthusiasm (“this sounds amazing”) but yes nonetheless. 

This week Israel stands at the foot of Sinai, prepared to receive Torah—or rather, prepared for something. They only know they will finally get to meet their God. And when they’re told that they will be God’s people, they swear, “All that God has said we will do!” Later, Israel says something different. They say, “na’aseh v’nishmah”—we will do and we will hear. 

Note the order: We will do, THEN we will hear. Before comprehension, there is doing. Israel doesn’t ask about the nitty-gritty of each mitzvah. They don’t ask the how, or the why, or in what fashion. They say YES. So it is with us. Sometimes, we need to set aside the whatifs and simply say yes—affirm the sacredness and the integrity of the vision knowing somehow we’ll make the details work. As one preacher wrote, “How is never a problem for God.” Or to quote one management book: the answer to How is Yes.

So ask yourselves how you can find ways to say yes more, and worry about the details later. Who are you saying no to when you should be saying yes? Friends, family, colleagues, yourself?  As yourself how you can say, “na’aseh v’nishmah” I will do, then I will understand. Because, as I shared with the Federation’s leadership development group on Sunday, Sinai isn’t a one-time event; Sinai is all the time. Every moment of every day has the potential to be Sinai, to be the moment to say “Na’aseh v’nishmah”: I am inspired and I will commit. I will answer the call. I say yes. Entrances to holiness are everywhere, our siddur reminds us, and the possibility of ascent is all the time-- If only we say yes.  

Why am I Shaving My Head Part II: Explaining It To A Kid

"Hey, I'm only a few hundred dollars away from my goal!"

I said this to E (my 6 year old) a week and a half ago while driving him to the bus stop (yeah, I know. Shaddup). He was impressed by the numbers and the amounts being raised, and it seemed like a teachable moment.

Well, be careful what you wish for.

"Why do you have to shave your head?" My son asked in his saddest, most grumpy and petulant face (my son is the king of petulant).

"Well, I'm doing it to raise money. People are more likely to give for a stunt. And I can show kids with cancer, who lose their hair, that I care about them by looking like them."

"But why?"

Everyone who spends time with kids know that why doesn't mean why (though it leads to hilarious Louis CK routines).

"Are you upset because I'm shaving my head."

"Yeah. Why do you have to do it."

I thought of all the reasons I could give, each one good and logical and thoughtful and even rabbinic. And I looked at him in the rearview mirror, my only child, my precious one whom I love.

And I thought to myself: because I have you. I am blessed with a healthy child, one free of disease (im yirtzah HaShem--God Willing). I am blessed with a child who's greatest concern is keeping track of his Legos. I am blessed with a child who's alive. I don't know the pain of the weeping mother or the angry father.

And I said to him: because it's the least I could do. 

Parashat Bo: Hardness of Heart

There’s a story in Aaron Lansky’s book Outwitting History where Lansky, in his pursuit of Yiddish books, speaks with an old man in his apartment. The man speaks of how his generation is gone, there is no one to speak of literature or music with, and how lonely he is. He kvetches that there isn’t a person to talk to. Lansky knows there’s a woman of the same generation down the hall, who also knows Yiddish, and when he brings her up, the old man waves a finger in Lansky’s face and says “Her? Feh. Her, I don’t talk to!”

Does that sound familiar? Here is a man, desperate in loneliness, but because of something that happened in their past (we never learn what), these two souls will remain cut off from one another. Is it stubbornness? Is it trauma? Or are their hearts hardened to one another? And is it the same with us? When we refuse to converse with someone, to change our own perspective or listen to another, when we are so focused on our own needs and wants and cannot see the other, is it because of what experience has taught us? Or are our hearts hardened?

Twenty times in the book of Exodus we read that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, sometimes by God, and sometimes by Pharaoh himself, and we focus on the question of whether or not there is any free will in the story. And for many, that is the beginning and the end of the book of Exodus: do we have free will or not? But I think we ask the wrong question. The question should really be: do we exercise our free will or not? And too often, we don’t. We become paralyzed by previous choices, good and bad, by relationships and conversations gone sour, by our own biases and experiences. The Torah uses the term “kabed lev” to describe stubbornness, which literally means “a heavy heart”. How many people in our lives—how many of us—have heavy hearts, weighed down with by patterns of behavior that perhaps we don’t even like, and yet can’t shake? After all, Wednesday wasn’t just Wednesday, was it? How many of us made resolutions? How many of us will keep them; that is, change our behaviors, or at least learn to accept, really accept, our choices, lifting the weight off of our hearts?

Shlomo Carlebach, the great Jewish neo-hasidic musician, and himself a holocaust survivor, used to give concerts in Germany and Austria, even early in his career. When asked how he could perform in such hated countries that did such terrible things to Jews, he replied: “if I had two souls, perhaps I would devote one of them to hating the people who did so many terrible things. But I have only one soul.” So it is with us, we have one heart, one soul. Will we let it get hard, calcify, remain unchanging for all time? Or will we remain open and free, our hearts open, ourselves open to growth and renewal?

“Days are scrolls; write on them only what you want remembered,” wrote Bahya ibn Pakuda. What do we want to write in this New Year? That choice is ours, if only we open our hearts to it.

Parashat Bo: Cool

Exodus 12:1: “This month shall be for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you.”

“You know what’s cool, dad?” My son asks me every day, every hour.

Usually it’s some toy he’s seen (and of course wants), or something he’s read or watched.

Sometimes he tells me breathlessly, a mantra of cool

Rattled off at breakneck speed, overwhelming all of my senses

taking my breath away.

And then I realize that for him, everything in every moment is new.

There is no jadedness, no cynicism; the world is new every day, every moment.

Everything is cool: the dog

and the trees

and the stars

and the stick on the ground which looks like a slingshot

and the magic trick his best friend showed him

and the Legos he got for Chanukah

and Science

and the joke his grandfather taught him

and how he can make his hair into a Mohawk at bath time

and the new block from karate

and how he heard God’s Still Small Voice in services once when he listened really hard.

and it’s all so cool he needs to share it with every breath he has

And he shares it with me.

Chadesh Yameinu mikedem: Renew my days, O God, as they were

When I saw through boyish eyes, and everything was cool.  

Va'era: When Work Fails Us

Rabbi Yair Robinson

Congregation Beth Emeth

12/27/13

Parashat Va’era: When Work Fails Us

When I originally planned my sermon topics, this week’s was supposed to be titled “when words fail us”, a nice opportunity to talk about Moses’ language challenges as recounted in Parashat Va’era. But a misread note turned it into “When Work Fails Us”. Can’t say that I was thrilled by that, but the more I reflected on that idea, the more it seemed to actually make sense.

Think about it this way: Moses is called to his task by God, and reluctantly, he takes it up. He goes with Aaron his brother, talks to Israel, and they’re initially excited. Finally, someone is here to rescue us! But when Moses goes to Pharaoh, well, he’s Pharaoh. We know how the story turns out. And Israel, Moses complains, won’t listen any further; they close their hearts off, so oppressed by their bondage.

Often people read this text as either a failure of hope on the part of Israel, or a failure of effort on the part of Moses. Either they really aren’t listening, or he really is Mr. Mumbles. But I think in reading that way, as if Redemption was inevitable, as if the path to Sinai is perfectly linear, misses some great insight into how our lives really are.

Again and again we’re told in life, if we just work a little harder, if we just put more of ourselves or more effort into what we’re doing, if we just commit ourselves more fully to our chosen tasks, then everything will open up to us. And that’s how we live our lives. Look at the acres of shelving that house books on business, or parenthood, or education, or success. All of them tell the same story. But it’s simply not true. It’s not always a matter of working harder. It’s not enough to simply do the work, or devote ourselves to the effort. Someday someone will do the job better, or differently, or with more or less enthusiasm. It’s not about the work; it’s about the relationship, the connection. Why does Israel not listen? Moses doesn’t have the relationship with the Israelites yet; nor, frankly, does God. Both of them have to prove themselves to Israel, to assure them that yes, we will go out, we will go up. As Rabbi Noah Farkas teaches: connection comes before commitment. In fact, the rabbis ask the question, why doesn’t the Torah begin with the 10 commandments? Why have Genesis and the beginning of Exodus at all? Because, the rabbis say, Israel needed—and WE  needed, an introduction. Who is God to impose mitzvoth on Israel, on us? No, we need the relationship—this is the one who spoke and the world came to be, the one who made a covenant with our forebears, the one who redeemed us with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Only then, by establishing that fact, could Israel, or we, be able to accept Torah.

More than that, they have to believe it themselves. I’m sure God had no doubt, as if that could be said, but Moses? He had to believe in his task, in Israel’s worthiness, and in himself. At this point, he doesn’t believe any of it. He needs to feel it deep within his neshamah that in fact, Israel, who now doesn’t hear, will reply “na’aseh v’nishmah” –we will do and we will hear, when they get to Sinai. He has to believe that he, the stutterer, will be able to sing mi chamocha ba’elim Adonai at the shores of the sea. That strength only comes from building the relationships; between Israel and Moses, God and Israel, Moses and God, and Moses and his true self, the Prophetic vision of himself that he’s been avoiding.   Connection comes before commitment: Moses and Israel need that connection with who they could be before they can commit to that vision.

Is it any different with us? We can bust our tucheses, we can focus more, meditate, commit, make pledges and promises, we can make new year’s resolutions, and in the end, they don’t matter. Not because we’re liars and shirkers, not because we want to fail. Because we need to have the relationship first, we need the connection: with who we are now, with each other, and with who we want to be. AND, I would argue, with that sense of the sacred that calls us to live as fully, as truly, and meaningfully as we can.

The parasha ends this week with Pharaoh’s heart hardened and Israel still in Egypt. The work has been begun, but it’s not complete. So it is with us. The work is begun, the work is before us, the work of repairing the world, of building community, of education, of creating meaning, of healing those around us, but it’ll remain incomplete until we build the relationships within and without. Then we can say, we will do, because we can hear each other—but that’s for another week. Amen. 

Va'era: Show us a Sign

The Eternal said to Moses and Aaron: “when Pharaoh speaks to you and says, ‘produce your marvel…’”-Ex. 7:8

It seems like some folks always want proof.

Always want a sign

of your love

and devotion

and protection

and existence.

Even now, in this room, in this service

We’re waiting to hear You.

We’re waiting for a marvel, a portent, a wonder

A sign.

We’re waiting with breath baited and held--

And so we miss the signs, we miss the marvels:

The hand of a friend or stranger

Held out in support,

The kindest word expressed at just the right moment

When the spirit is crushed

The heart broken.

That brief exchange that means all the difference.

We keep asking for a sign, for a marvel

for your name

But the signs are all around us,

We are the signs

If we but open our hearts to each other

And you.

Parashat Shmot: Us vs. Them

Several weeks ago I posted an article on our facebook page about how Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of our URJ, which just met in our Biennial conference last week, went to the Linus sluchim, the annual gathering of CHABAD rabbis and community leaders, and how he met with rabbi krinsky, his peer at Lubuvitch. I posted the article, which was entirely neutral, with the comment: An interesting development. Feel free to share your thoughts!

At the time, there was a mix of reactions, from 'why bother?' to "well, it's nice they invited him" and everything in between. I was reminded of this article this week for two reasons. First, at the clergy meeting at biennial a number of my colleagues brought up this visit to the "Rebbes army" and there was more than a little anxiety in their voices. These Chabadniks were trying to take our people, undermine our initiatives, and negate our authenticity as Jews, performing scorched earth policies designed to maximize them and minimize anyone else. At least, that was the fear voiced in the questions.

The other was at least one Chabad response to Rick Jacobs' Biennial Keynote, which was, let us say, less than kind. Never mind the many, many Orthodox triumphalist responses to the Pew report denigrating Reform.

It seems to me that there are two fears at work on both sides. The fear that the other is more numerous, more powerful, and as a result may be out to get us. The other fear is that they may be right in their criticism.

This week we read (ex 1:19). We seem to spend an awful lot of time looking at each other in the Jewish world as threats, saying about one another 'rav lahem', they are too big. We can't compete. We are negated in their presence or at least we will be if we dont fight back.

And if you think this only happens between movements, come and see how even in synagogue life, different groups can see each other as competing for resources, money, space, time slots, the attention of the leadership and clergy, etc.

But here's the thing: It's not true. The portion doesn't begin with these words of threat: it begins by naming the sons of Israel, reminding us of the previous portion, where Joseph had found plenty for Egypt, and Jacob blesses each and every son. It's a reminder that there is enough blessing for EVERYONE. There is enough room for EVERYONE. No one movement or experience can define Judaism in Toto, and we may agree to disagree as only Jews can about how we engage in that Judaism meaningfully, but we are not enemies, any more than the tribe of Dan and the Tribe of Issschar are enemies. Sure, CHABAD things we dont care about mitzvot. As Rabbi Jacobs said, we just care differently, and since when is our pride of Reform predicated on their perception of us? And sure, we begrudge CHABAD on occasion. But let us recognize that they serve a need and we could learn a lot from how they create nonanxious, loving entree points to Jewish life. There is enough blessing for all of us. When the text says that Pharaoh does not know Joseph, what it means is he doesn't understand that Israel is not a threat, but a help and Egypt's prosperity is tied to Israel's. 

Honestly, I'm tired of having this conversation. What does it matter what others think of us? And what does it matter how others practice their Judaism? To quote Rabbi Jacobs in his biennial Keynote: "Our Judaism is for everyone. Our Judaism is inclusive, egalitarian, intellectually rigorous, joyful, passionate, spiritual, pluralistic, constantly evolving and relevant. Soul elevating spiritual practice, life-altering Torah study, courageous practice of tikkun olam, loving care for our community, especially the most vulnerable--that's what we are... " Like Rabbi Jacobs, I believe our Judaism is for everyone, and don't need to measure it against some traditionalist measuring stick, but I also recognize that we are stronger and better as a people for our diversity. 

 
In a couple of weeks Israel will go out of Egypt, and as Amichai Lau taught this week, it takes all Israel to go into freedom and accept Torah. All the Tribes, each of the tribes need eahc other. The same is true for our tribe. I am a proud Reform Jew, proud of our past and even more excited for our future. I am a child of this movement anf, without being Pollyanna, believe it's future is bright. But it won't be of we continue to see Jewish experience as us vs them. That doesn't mean compromising our values-on Israel, egalitarianism, social justice and a strong critical approach to text and tradition, in all meanings of that word. But just as the tide lifts all ships, we need each other, and need to see that there is enough blessing. For if we don't, then our redemption, our liberation, may be a lot farther off then just a few parshiot.