Shabbat-O-Gram for May 4

Shabbat-O-Gram

This Shabbat-O-Gram is sponsored by Marni Amsellem and David Amsellem, in honor of Nora's becoming Bat Mitzvah this Shabbat. 

 

From last week's Sisterhood Fashion Show. Click here for the all the photos. 

Thank you to Stephanie Zelazny for the photography

Mazal tov to Nora Amsellem, who becomes Bat Mitzvah this Shabbat morning.  Join us Friday night as well - and don't forget our Lag B'Omer Fire Festival this Sunday, along with our Men's Club Blood Drive.

The Band's Visit

This week, "The Band's Visit" received multiple Tony nominations and is seen as a favorite in several categories.  Last night, approximately 50 from TBE went to see it, as part of our new "Broadway Club," led by Cantor Fishman.  A great time was had by all.

See more photos from last night in our Spring Album - scroll down to the end.

Donna Wolff commented, "I loved this show! So poignant, sweet and heartwarming. Nice to see Arabs and Israelis be kind and human to each other. This how to welcome the stranger. Hope they win some Tony Awards."

Heidi Ganz, who helped to coordinate the event, called it "magical, entertaining, and beautiful!"  But even more than the show itself, "what everyone  was raving about was the warm feeling of togetherness!"   Cantor Fishman concurred, stating that what she loved even more than the show itself was "to look on the bus and restaurant and see people talking to each other."

Ironically, that is precisely what the show is about too.

I saw "The Band's Visit" last fall, right as it opened - and already was a big fan of the 2007 film on which the musical is based. But the addition of music makes the Broadway version even better.   It's the story of an Egyptian police band that gets sidetracked to a dead-end Israeli development town in the 1990s.  The acting is superb, the music spirited, the theme universal and the ambiance authentically Israeli.  

The overarching message is of overcoming difficulties in communication and developing authentic relationships. The premise of the show is a mix-up at the border that sends the band to Bet Hatikva, instead of Petach Tikva, "with a P."  English is the common ground where the Israelis and Egyptians meet, but it's also slippery ground for all of them, and the words never flow easily.  Audience members get to feel that first hand, as some of the dialogue is in Hebrew and Arabic, and goes untranslated.  BTW, understanding Hebrew - and Israeli culture - adds a whole new dimension to the experience of this play, and I assume that is the case with Arabic too.

In some ways, though, the communication issues are more acute among couples and families that have known each other for years in the town, who, in a literal sense, speak the same language, but really don't.   It's nice to see a show about Arabs and Israelis where not a word is spoken about territories, terrorism or anything remotely political.  

In the end, the languages that are truly universal are the ones that matter here the most: music and love.

Hebrew Expression of the Day: נסיגה לאחור

The expression means "backtrack," and we saw a number of examples of it this week, even a few that did not involve a certain former mayor of New York.

There was Mohammad Abbas, retracting one of the most blatantly anti-Semitic speeches ever given by a world leader.  There was Paul Ryan, reinstating the House Chaplain who had been unceremoniously dumped, for what appear to have been all the wrong reasons.  That one hit home for me.  Boy, people say synagogue politics can be brutal, but imagine having as your bosses 435 people serving in the most hyper-political, dysfunctional place around.  Kudos for Father Patrick J. Conroy for standing his ground and not allowing innuendo to trample upon his hard-earned reputation.

I hate it when my GPS inadvertently circles me back past my point of departure, but sometimes, once you've reached the destination, you realize that you were far better off at Square One. (Is it a mixed metaphor to use squares and circles in the same sentence?)  It's axiomatic that sometimes the best decisions are the ones never actualized.  But the corollary to that is true too.  Sometimes the best decision is the one where you walk back your prior decision.

Jews have another word for backtracking - it's called Teshuvah, and it's not just meant to happen around the High Holidays.  In fact, the High Holidays are discussed in this week's Torah portion of Emor, and we are half a year away!

It's the Torah's way of reminding us that it is never too late - or too soon - to back off false statements and come clean.  In order to move forward, it's perfectly fine to backtrack - as long as the goal is to, at long last, get it right.

Toyota, Auschwitz and Chelm

Here's another in my series of personal favorites from yesteryear, as we all celebrate 30 years together.  This article was written in 2010, just before I want to Poland for the first time.  One particular stop in our itinerary made me reflect on matters both ridiculous and sublime:

 

This week, I'll be joining the March of the Living, an annual pilgrimage from Poland to Israel. The experience of the Holocaust stands alone in Jewish history, a godless counterpoint to all things sacred. Alongside the majestic peaks of Sinai and Zion, our view now includes this man-made mountain of children's shoes, empty luggage and echoing shrieks, a clump of human refuse that dwarfs everything around it, taller than Sinai, more imposing than Zion, more insurmountable than Everest.

As I prepare to face the enormity of Auschwitz for the first time, it occurs to me that since the Shoah, rabbis have become like Toyota salesmen. What, after all, are we selling, but a product once revered, but now proven to be a grand farce? The myth has been summarily detonated, the brand exposed. Just as "Made in Japan" now has reverted to its original derogatory, postwar meaning (cheap, fake, laughable), "Made at Sinai" now feels like its"Made in Japan."

Oh, we rabbis have been trained well. We've developed numerous diversionary strategies to refocus the question("Where was God? Well, where was man?") or simply to foster a perpetual state of denial ("We can't know God's ways"). Some have chosen to relinquish some of God's omnipotence, others go much farther. But for the most part, we focus on beating home the message that Judaism still has an important function to serve, even if there's a gaping hole under the chassis. Some deny that the hole exists, clinging naively to pre-Auschwitz fantasies. It is astonishing how many otherwise intelligent, modern, skeptical Jews buy this theological nonsense, slickly packaged by various ultra-Orthodox groups. But most rabbis, while not denying the seriousness of the challenge, prefer to set the questions aside, suggesting that maybe the next generation will solve the problem.

Over the decades, there have been brilliant attempts to deal with this dilemma. Some, like Richard Rubenstein's existentialist "After Auschwitz," have been powerfully honest. Such radical theologies proliferated in the '60s, during the so-called "Death of God" era. Since then, God has survived quite nicely, thank you, but those bold theologies have yellowed with age. The question of Auschwitz remains as vivid as ever, but after 65 years, we seem to be tiring of asking it.

It makes me wonder: If Toyotas never get fixed, but for 65 years company propagandists spew forth the message that the cars are really safe, will we start believing in them again? Will the producers just wear us down until we tire of asking the questions? That strategy seems to have worked with other products. Some people actually think that cable news is really news. Some Jews believe that the same God who was silent in Auschwitz actually caused Iraqi Scuds to miss their targets in Tel Aviv. The madness has worn us down.

Perhaps the antidote to such madness is a different kind of madness.

The day after we march on Auschwitz, my group will stop off on the way to Warsaw in a quaint town called Chelm, for Jews the eternal capital of absurdity. Chelmites are mythical Jews from a real town, known for their propensity to take logic to its bizarre extreme.

Two men of Chelm went out for a walk, when suddenly it began to rain.

"Quick," said one. "Open your umbrella."

"It won't help," said his friend. "My umbrella is full of holes."

"Then why did you bring it?"

"I didn't think it would rain!"

  

A New York-based klezmer group named Golem wrote a song recently about a Chelmite who leaves on a journey to Warsaw, gets lost and ends up back in Chelm. "He's so stupid that he thinks he's actually in Warsaw," bandleader Annette Ezekiel told SPIN.com. "The moral is any place can be any place else - it doesn't matter where you are."

But for me, it will matter a lot. I'll be coming from Auschwitz, the darkest place in Jewish history, and then I'll be staying over in Chelm, the funniest. Chelm will be the place where I wash my hands after visiting this countrywide cemetery, a way station before I head to Jerusalem for the second part of the March.

  

Two points about Chelm. First, laughter provided a great outlet for those suffering from hunger, poverty and hatred, as the Jews of Poland did for so long. But rather than laugh at real people, the Jewish genius invented a mythical community to laugh at. Not only is that practical (as opposed to laughing at Poles, who might respond by killing you), it is far more ethical to make fun of fake people than real people.

Second, Chelm might hold the key to our getting beyond the theological quandaries of our age. If the commanding voice of Auschwitz has muffled the God of Sinai for the time being, maybe we need to pay more attention to the God of Chelm. The Yiddish aphorism, "Man plans, God laughs," just might be the most apt theological response to an age of absurdity. It's not that God is laughing at us; it's simply that God has taught us that laughter is the only way one can respond to a world of unfathomable evil and unspeakable tragedy, while clinging to life and dignity. Maintaining some semblance of sanity requires a modicum of insanity, an art we've been perfecting for centuries, ever since we figured out how a poor peasant living in rags could be transformed into royalty through the simple act of lighting candles, drinking wine and blessing hallah. The first Jewish kid, whose life was replete with tragedy, was nonetheless named laughter (Isaac). We've been re-living Isaac's story ever since.

Would you buy a used Toyota from this God? Perhaps not. But at least the divine gift of laughter gives us the courage to stare directly into that gaping hole in the chassis and laugh at the absurdity of it all, while gasping in amazement that, despite everything, we are alive.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman

Shabbat-O-Gram for March 9

Shabbat-O-Gram

 

 

Last week, as part of Greenwich High School's Diversity Week, I joined a panel that also included Muslim, Christian and Hindu clergy.  We engaged in a spirited dialogue with over a hundred students - it was wonderful!  But what was worth far more than all the words...was this picture.  Seeing us stand and hold hands together (which we did at the end) spoke volumes about the potential for us - and for their generation - to build a better world.

 

Mara and I also had the pleasure last Sunday of escorting our TBE teens to Manhattan, where we spent time at the Museum of the Jewish Heritage, then ate lunch at a kosher dairy restaurant and dessert in the Village at the very trendy (and also kosher) 

Cookie DŌ for dessert. When at the Heritage Museum, check out a brand new exhibit, where students interact with holograms of actual survivors.  It was both astonishing and a little spooky; through this technology, their stories will live forever - in their own words!

   

CHECK OUT ALL OUR Purim and late winter photos!

#BoycottRussia

Last week I wrote about Poland's new Holocaust Law and why, as troubling as it is, it should not provoke a travel boycott of that country.  I believe strongly that Jews need to visit those sacred grounds where our people were murdered.  If we want to boycott a nation, we should go right to the source of so much that is wrong with our world today and boycott Putin's Russia.  I can't for the life of me imagine visiting Russia right now, not that my few dollars will make that much of a difference in that massive kleptocracy.  Putin is pulling off the neat trick of simultaneously menacing American democracy and Israeli security (in Iran and Syria) - and getting away with it.   A version of my comments from last week's O-Gram appears in this week's Jewish Week.  

Meanwhile, Poland's president apologized today for a campaign of anti-Semitism in 1968.  That's progress, but I suppose he had little choice - it's hard to pin that one on the Nazis.  I do sense a desire on his part to walk back some of the more damaging implications of the Holocaust Law, like, for instance, that it could land 90-year-old survivors in jail, simply for telling the truth.  But I'm surprised that #boycottRussia has not yet become a thing.  Americans of
all political views - 72 percent in the latest polls -  unite in our outrage at foreign election meddling.  We are aghast at what Putin has done to our world.  It's never good to come together in hatred, but it is perfectly appropriate to unite to bring a perpetrator of evil to justice - and that the injustice not be allowed to happen again.  The least we can do is to not place more rubles in the coffers of the Kremlin. 

Shabbat Across Stamford

On Friday night, Shabbat Across Stamford will take place at the Stamford Athletic Club on Third St.  Registration begins at 4:30 and candle lighting will take place at 5:30, followed by two services, traditional and progressive.  We'll all get together after that for dinner and a chance to hear this generation's leading scholar of American Jewish History, Jonathan Sarna, who has spoken here before and is always erudite and on point.

For those who want to attend the service only, no registration is necessary.  Remember that we will not have a service at TBE tomorrow evening.  We will be reciting yahrzeit names at the progressive service on Friday and then back here the next day at our regular Shabbat morning service.

Parking information:

• At the Stamford Athletic Club: Spots are available in the outdoor parking lot and in the indoor garage behind the building.

• On 3^rd Street: Parking is allowed on both sides of the street. All posted parking rules are still in effect.

• At the Tully Center: The lower lot is available to park in on 3^rd Street. It is a short walk down the street to the Stamford Athletic Club.

Three years ago, when we first came together for a community-wide Shabbat, I wrote about it for a national audience, because what we were doing was so unique - and so difficult.   Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald, the original inspiration for the Shabbat Across America program, praised Stamford's effort, writing:

"I would like to commend the Stamford Jewish community for working together to create a beautiful, unified Shabbat Across America event, the creation of which was dramatically described by Rabbi Joshua Hammerman in his op-ed column, "A Shabbat Across the Bow." The Stamford community, which uniquely gathered all the religious denominations together under one roof, was one of several communities that participated this year in NJOP's new CommUNITY Shabbat Across America and Canada initiative. The other communities were in Staten Island, West Hartford, Conn., and Winnipeg, Canada. These special programs were only a small fraction of NJOP's recently concluded campaign, which featured over 40,000 participants at 565 partner locations throughout all 50 states (an NJOP first) and Washington D.C., six Canadian provinces, and abroad in four other countries. We also note that this year we welcomed our one-millionth Shabbat Across America and Canada participant experience.

Rabbi Hammerman deftly described the challenges faced when making sensitive, value-based, decisions that attempt to take everyone's individual practices and religious standards into consideration, which can only succeed when one recognizes the overarching virtue of Jewish unity."

You can see my original column here, where I describe the significant challenges we faced, and how we overcame them, for a higher purpose.

Three years later, we are now doing this for the fourth time.  I must confess that after last year's, I felt that Shabbat Across Stamford, while a worthy idea, was beginning to lose momentum, and that maybe we had made our point and it's time to move on to other projects.

But people in the community kept telling us that they wanted to see this again - and so here we are, and I'm glad we'll be back on Third Street tonight.  The venue is far from perfect, the logistics are challenging (e.g. the acoustics, with a special Shabbat-ready sound system), the costs are not trivial and there are other risks.  There always are, when it comes to family.  But I do know that when we start singing and eating and schmoozing and laughing together, none of that will matter. And I also know that Jonathan Sarna is the perfect speaker for an event like this.... If we can hear him ��

My thanks to the UJF professional leadership. The lay committee and my clergy partners for pulling this together.

 

Passover Preparations - Embracing the Stranger

With Purim behind us, it's time to focus on Passover, which will be here before you know it! 

Download the Rabbinical Assembly Passover Guide for 5778.

Also, if you need a Sale of Hametz Form, you can find it here.

Next Tuesday, March 13, we kick things off with our Women's Seder, and the following Thursday, March 22, our annual Interfaith Seder will once again be hosted by Grace Farms.  Then, the Chocolate Seder on March 23.  Due to lack of interest, we will not be doing a Congregational Second Night Seder this year.

-         Women's Seder, Tuesday, March 13

-         Interfaith Seder at Grace Farms Thursday, March 22

-         Chocolate Seder and Family Shabbat Dinner, Friday, March 23

 

At the Interfaith Seder, our theme this year will be "With Open Arms," with tie in to the famous injunction of Exodus, "Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt."  We'll be hearing from a remarkable young man, Stamford High School student Erwin Hernandez, from Guatemala, who was granted political asylum a year and a half ago.  His challenges were already daunting, but then came the accident - just down the street at Table 104, that cost him the use of his right leg.  Read his story.  You likely have already heard it.  Meanwhile, please invite your Jewish and non-Jewish friends to register for this Seder.  We want as diverse a group as possible - and space is limited.  

For those looking for related material to use at your Seder, HIAS has just come out with its Passover supplement.  

Here's an excerpt:

Centuries ago, only those who were free enjoyed the luxury of dipping their food to begin a meal. In celebration of our people's freedom, tonight, we, too, start our meal by dipping green vegetables. However, we also remember that our freedom came after tremendous struggle. And so, we dip our vegetables into salt water to recall the ominous waters that threatened to drown our Israelite ancestors as they fled persecution in Egypt, as well as the tears they shed on that harrowing journey to freedom. As we dip, we recognize that, today, there are more than 65 million people still making these treacherous journeys away from persecution and violence in their homelands. As we dip the karpas into salt water tonight, we bring to mind those who have risked and sometimes lost their lives in pursuit of safety and liberty.

I close with some inspiring words from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:

Shabbat Shalom

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman