Chukat 5774

Title: The Heaven is My Throne
Artist: Paul Palnik
Year: 2006

This week we celebrate Shabbat Rosh Chodesh – when Shabbat and Rosh Chodesh, the New Month, happen together. When we have this combination, the haftarah of Rosh Chodesh supercedes that of Shabbat.

The opening words of the haftarah are dramatic: “הַשָּׁמַיִם כִּסְאִי וְהָאָרֶץ הֲדֹם רַגְלָי - The heaven is My throne, the earth My footstool.” The statement is one of God’s transcendence – that God reigns above our earth. But it is also one that recognizes God’s immanent presence in our world, that God still has a foot, still has investment in human affairs. 

Dr. Michael Fishbane teaches that we recite this on Rosh Chodesh because the haftarah mentions when all of Israel is gathered from the exile, that all flesh will worship God, “new moon after new moon” (Isaiah 66:23). The haftarah promotes the particular prophecy of the Jewish people along with universal redemption, that Rosh Chodesh in the future will be celebrated as God’s festival for the Jews and all humankind.

This week, I will be at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin for Shabbat. And at Ramah there is a beautiful illustration of this verse, seen on this page. Paul Palnik, the artist, creates a literal throne that rests on the earth. While the partial physical manifestation of God can seem heretical to many, the piece movingly represents God’s total omnipotence on the one hand, and God’s having footing on earth on the other.

I deeply appreciate that Ramah tries to bring to life Jewish themes and content through every media, including art, at camp. This neighborhood sends 60 campers to the Ramah Day camp in Wheeling and overnight camp in Wisconsin. I am so proud of that, and hope that those numbers will only continue to grow because at Ramah, our campers get a better of understanding of themes like that in this week’s haftarah.

So whether at Ramah or Anshe Emet, I hope that this piece creates food for thought for you as it does for me every time that I see it. I hope that you will consider what it means for God to on the one hand be distant in the heavens and on the other for God to be immanently close; that you will consider what it means for the Jewish nation to be redeemed while simultaneously working towards the redemption of the entire world.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi David Russo

Korach 5774

BRING BACK OUR BOYS

Last week three Yeshiva students were taken captive as they journeyed home to join their families for Shabbat. With every passing day the chances of finding Gilad Shaar, Naftali Frenkel, and Eyal Yifrach grow more distant.  While the State of Israel has every right to confront individual, group, or government who is suspected of involvement with this nefarious act, there is only so much that the IDF can do.  After the release of Gilad Shalit in exchange for more than 1,000 convicted Palestinians, no one will be surprised when the ransom demands are made public. 

How should the Government of Israel respond if and when that time comes?

Sadly, the problem of ransoming Jewish captives is not a new one for the Jewish community.  Knowing the value that Jews place on every individual, as well as the obligation we feel to help one another has emboldened captors over the centuries.   From a very early time our Rabbis asked if there is a price that is too high, or is the Jewish community obligated to pay whatever is asked in order to redeem the captives?  The Mishnah put it this way:

One does not ransom captives for more than their value because of Tikkun Olam (for the good order of the world, as a precaution for the general good) and one does not help captives escape because of Tikkun Olam.  (Gittin 4:6)

In other words, the needs and the safety of the community must come before the individual needs.  This was the debate during the time of Gilad Shalit’s release and one that Americans are debating, amongst others, in regards to recent exchange for Bowe Bergdahl.  Ultimately, Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Knesset will have to make this impossible decision for these three young men. 
What can we do at this moment?  The most important thing that we can do is to stand together in solidarity with our brothers who are being held, pray for their strength and the success of the IDF to find them.

1. For those who use Twitter send the Bring Back our Boys Tweet at #bringbackourboys
2. Attend the Emergency Vigil to call for the immediate release of abducted Israeli teens on Monday, June 23 at Noon, Thompson Center Plaza, 100 W. Randolph
3. Gather with your family and friends to offer a prayer for their release along with reading Psalm 121

Prayer for Safe Return of Kidnapped Israelis
The Rabbinical Assembly released the following prayer (along with this statement), written by Rabbi Tamar Elad Appelbaum and translated by Rabbi Peretz Rodman, for the safe return of the missing students.

God of Israel,
Beneficent sovereign of all Creation,
enable us now
to have true faith
and to pray and to call out to You
with plea after plea,
so that our cry might rise
to the very Gates of Mercy,
to Mercy itself.
And all reality shall be turned around
so that relief, rescue, and life
may be the lot of those young men,
Ya'akov Naftali ben Rahel (Frenkel),
Gil-ad Micha'el ben Bat-Galim (Shaar)
and Eyal ben Iris Teshura (Yifrach).
Act on their behalf, Lord,
take up their cause without delay,
and may You grant them life and
blessing forevermore. 
So may it be Your will, and let us say:
Amen.

Sh'lach 5774

The Knotty Problem of Obligation

The mitzvah of tzitzit (ritual fringes), discussed in the final passage of this week’s Torah portion, has traditionally been understood as a mitzvah observed by men and not women. The Talmud, however, reports that “Rav Yehudah would tie tzitzit on his wife’s garments” (Menahot 43a). A few lines below, the following dispute is recorded: “All people are obligated to wear tzitzit: Priests, Levites, Israelites, Converts, Women, and Slaves. Rabbi Shimon exempts the women…” The majority position, at least in this place, seems to believe that women as well as men are required to put tzitzit on their four-cornered garments.

The question of tallit, tefillin, and women’s participation in mitzvot has returned to the forefront of Jewish discourse this year, spurred by a series of essays last fall questioning the extent of the Conservative Movement’s commitment – in deed, and not just in word – to egalitarianism; the recent decision of two Modern Orthodox day schools in New York to allow some female students to wear tefillin; and, most recently, by the acceptance in April of Rabbi Pamela Barmash’s teshuvah (ruling on contemporary Jewish practice), which places equal obligation in all mitzvot upon women and men, as an official position of the Conservative Movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards.

There is not room here for a full consideration of Rabbi Barmash’s teshuvah and the many responses it has elicited from her colleagues, but for those who are interested I am preparing a longer treatment that I will post to my Facebook page (www.facebook.com/rabbiabe) shortly. For our purposes here, the key issue at the heart of the latest debate centers on the question of mitzvot and obligation: what do we understand ourselves to be doing when we perform a mitzvah? Is a mitzvah the “King’s decree” that the traditional sources describe? Are all mitzvot voluntary in our generation? Are we stuck choosing between an ever more anachronistic metaphor – most of us have never known a King or his decrees – and a framework of individual discretion that separates us from our ancestors?

I believe there is a third option, a way out. My teacher, Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, notes that the Aramaic word for mitzvah – tzavta – also means “connection.” In his recent book God of Becoming and Relationship, Rabbi Artson writes that “While most contemporary Jews don’t believe in a God who verbally issues commands, most do recognize that mitzvot connect them to the divine… What if we said what we truly believe, which actually makes sense of our patterns of practice? We affirm that mitzvot connect us to God; link us to Torah and the best of Jewish values; forge a relationship between our individual lives, families, and those of the Jewish people around the world and across the ages” (p.98).

In other words, what if mitzvot were obligations – just not obligations imposed upon us by an external, dominating authority. What would it mean, instead, to conceive of mitzvot as a set of obligations that we take upon ourselves as part of mutual relationships: between ourselves and the Divine, with other Jews in our community and around the world, and with the generations of Jews who have passed on and the generations yet to come.

For me, these are the most important questions raised by the current debate over the role of women in our communities.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Abe Friedman

Bemidbar 5774

Indirect Responsibility

This week’s parshah, Bemidbar, focuses much of its attention on the census of the Israelites and their organization into tribal camps. While we know that the Israelites spend forty years in the wilderness before they enter the Land of Israel, that comes later as a punishment for the spies who bring back a falsely discouraging report; at this point in the story, God and the Israelites fully expect that they will enter the Promised Land very soon and face the native inhabitants of Canaan. Commenting on the overall scene, Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno (Italy, 1480-1550) goes in a surprising direction:

“Take a census” (Num. 1:2), to arrange them so they will enter the Land immediately, “Each man by his standard” (2:2) without any battle; instead, the Nations will flee before the Israelites as in fact some of them did… but on account of the Spies’ sin the Seven Nations [of Canaan] continued to do evil for forty years, and it became necessary to exterminate them.

The midrash on which Sforno bases his comment (Lev. Rabbah 17.6) makes it clear that Joshua offered all the inhabitants of the Land a choice to leave peacefully, make peace with the Israelites, or fight – and a few nations took the peaceful options. We could easily look at this as telling us that the nations chose extermination when they went to war with Israel, and wash our hands of any responsibility for their fate. But Sforno reminds us that life is not so simple: “On account of the Spies’ sin the Seven Nations [of Canaan] continued to do evil for forty years, and it became necessary to exterminate them.” True, their evil led them to make an unfortunate choice, and their destruction ensued; but were it not for the spies’ sin and the forty-year delay, we imagine they would have made different choices.

We know from our own experience that the longer we persist in negative behavior, the harder it becomes to make good decisions in the future. Ideally, the Canaanite nations, faced with a choice of orderly departure, peaceful coexistence, or total war, would choose one of the first two options. Had the Israelites entered the land immediately, Sforno tells us, they could have assumed control of the land “without any battle” because the natives would have taken one of the peaceful choices. Only their habituation into evil behavior habits over the course of four decades led them to select war – and extinction – rather than peace. And the forty-year delay was caused not by any action on the Canaanites’ part, but by the Israelites’ sin in accepting the spies’ deceitful report. Ultimately, while the Seven Nations chose their own fate, for Sforno the Israelites also bear at least indirect responsibility for the ensuing bloodshed.

Volumes have been written about the Israelites’ forty years in the desert as punishment for the spies’ sin, and the consequences we bear for our actions. It is much harder for us to consider the consequences others must bear as a result of our mistakes. We are, quite naturally, more concerned with our own story; the Torah may include various characters from other Nations, but its central concern is with the story of the Israelites. The same is true for each of us: unless we stop to look carefully at the implications, we could easily move through life without much thought for our impact on other people. Nevertheless, Sforno reminds us, at the end of the day we are accountable – however indirectly – for the impact of our decisions.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Abe Friedman

Bechukotai 5774

A Lesson for Lag B'Omer

On the Second night of Passover we began the counting of the Omer which will conclude with the great festival of Shavuot.  These days of counting are no mere perfunctory act, but have a rich inner life which bring together the Jewish relationship with wider culture and also offers an important lesson to the Jewish people as to the proper approach to Torah.  The days of the counting of the Omer are regarding by our tradition as days of mourning.  Weddings do not traditionally take place and there is a special solemnity to this period.  Some people believe that the sense of mourning has its origins in the larger cultural milieu.  The days that lead to the harvest of the first fruits was a fearful time for every farming community so dependent on agriculture.  The fact this period of fear and trembling was transferred to the Jewish community should not be a great surprise.  What is noteworthy is how the Jewish community reinterpreted this challenging period.  While Jewish customs during this period often mirrored the larger society, the reasons that they gave for their actions was quite different.  It all hinges on the 33rd day of the counting of the Omer.

 Lag B'Omer which will be celebrated on Monday.

In the time of Rabbi Akiba the Talmud records a great plague consumed the lives of thousands of his students.  According to tradition the plague began on the first of the Omer and ended on the 33rd day.  Hence, the sense of celebration and the general lifting of the period of mourning for that one day.  This is why weddings are performed on that day across the Jewish world. According to some Jewish scholars the plague that the Talmud spoke of was a euphemism for the Bar Kochba Rebellion a revolution that Rabbi Akiba helped to foment.  However, the tradition has a very different way of understanding those dark days and offers us a lesson about Torah which has lasting significance. 

According to the Talmud, the reason for the plague had nothing to do with the war and everything to do with the relationship between the students.  According to the text, they did not respect each other.  They did not respect the interpretations of one another, and as a result there were great divisions among them.  As a result not only were they destroyed, but the Torah that they taught was lost forever. 

Respect for one another in the Jewish community is no less relevant today as it was in Rabbi Akiba's time.  The plague reminds us that the study of Torah must be understand as a collaborative exercise. We are all part of the revelation and therefore have equal roles in the dialogue with the text.  This is why the Rabbis developed the notion of Hevruta study where two (2) or more students sit together and learn a text.  Today's Jewish world is so divided, and the lack of respect between the different approach so pronounced one wonders how comfortable Rabbi Akibas students would have felt in 2014?

What a blessing it would be if Jews around the world took a few minutes on Lag B'Omer and reflected on the sorry state of respect in the Jewish world and the grave consequences when it is left un-addressed.  As we go forward to Shavuot and the opportunity to stand a one people at Sinai.  Let us be reminded that God's voice is not the only one that we should be listening to as we receive the Torah.  Rather, we should also be listening to the voices of those around us receiving the Torah at the same time.  It is only when we open ourselves to the full spectrum of Jewish voices that the full revelation can be heard.




Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Michael Siegel
Senior Rabbi

Behar 5774

Behar 5774

On the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia are inscribed these words from our parasha, Behar : "You shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all of the inhabitants." (Leviticus 25:10)

While early Americans may have regarded themselves as the spiritual descendants of the Israelites their concept of liberty was different from that of Jewish tradition.

In America liberty means the individual is sovereign and autonomous so long as the rightsof others do not suffer.

But in its Biblical context this verse refers to restoring equality between people - in particular the indentured slave or servant.  No more subjugation even of those who willingly sold themselves into servitude.

In actuality we are free to live our lives as we wish with certain caveats which means we are not completely free.  Or as Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson writes:

"No society is completely free.  Our dual birthright - as Jews and as Americans - encourages us to struggle to increase our freedoms so that a previous generation's aspirations advanced the next generation׳s rights."

The American call for liberty and the Biblical call for liberty complement each other and help us to chart the path of tikkun olam (perfecting God's world) as Jews and as Americans.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Matt Futterman
Senior Educator

Emor 5774

Emor 5774

In this week’s parasha, Emor, we read a phrase that seems to be commonplace in the Torah (Lev. 24:22):

מִשְׁפַּט אֶחָד יִהְיֶה לָכֶם, כַּגֵּר כָּאֶזְרָח יִהְיֶה:  כִּי אֲנִי ה' אֱלֹהֵיכֶם.

You shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger and the home-born, for I am the Lord your God.

While many of us are used to this phrase that appears at the end of the verse “I am the Lord your God”, we often wonder, why do these words keep repeating themselves? We know that God is commanding us to do this!

Rashi asks this question on this verse, and responds:

)כב) אני ה' אלוהיכם - אלוהי כולכם, כשם שאני מיחד שמי עליכם כך אני מייחד שמי על הגרים:

Rashi explains, that when the Torah says, “I am the Lord your God” in this verse, he is proclaiming that he is the God for every person. That just as God’s name is unique for the Israelites, so too is God’s name reserved for gerim, for the stranger in our midst. I would suggest that just as we become used to this refrain, “I am the Lord your God”, Rashi encourages to look deeper into the words, and seek out equality for every person in our community, because that is how God wants God’s presence to be made manifest in our world.

With this week’s parasha in mind, I would like to invite you to join me at ONE Northside’s first inaugural convention, which we are hosting at Anshe Emet. On Sunday, May 4^th, from 2:30 - 4:00 p.m., we will be hosting a full house of 1,200 people to celebrate what ONE Northside has already accomplished – preserving people’s rights to housing, supporting those with mental health issues in our community, and helping to resolve major issues of violence in our neighborhoods. We will be upholding this biblical imperative of ensuring that civil rights are provided equally – for the Jewish community, the resident, and the stranger in our midst.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi David Russo