Shabbat-O-Gram: Which Candidate Would Moses Pick? Love, Jewish Style

Shabbat-O-Gram 

Vote in the World Zionist Congress elections!

Hebrew School graduation and old confirmation pics have been moved to the school wing, to make way for our new elevator!

 

Enjoying the creations of our students' Tu B'Shevat Top Chef competition

Click here for the Temple Rock Album - photos by Aviva Maller.

Click here for our winter 2020 album, including photos from Tu B'shevat 

Shabbat Shalom 

OK, so it's my birthday.  I'm only mentioning it because this morning Judy Aronin (whose birthday was yesterday) gave me an all time best birthday present.

A Red Sox Afikoman bag! The best thing to get me through what looks like will be a crummyseason!

As I sit back and relax this holiday weekend, Rabbi Gerry Ginsburg will be co-leading with Cantorial Soloist Katie Kaplan on Friday night and Cantor Debbie Katchko-Gray on Shabbat morning.  Join us (them) for this, and over the coming weeks, for our cantorial candidates' guest appearances.  It means a lot for you to take in interest in this process that is so important to our future.  Also note that morning minyan on Monday's holiday will be at 9 AM.

Some recommended holiday weekend reading...

- "To bigotry no sanction..." George Washington's letter to the Jews of Newport (1780) Here's some background on that famous missive.

- Alexander Vindman's Synagogue is Accepting Letters of Support Following His Ouster (JTA)

This story really made me proud to be a Jew - that a congregation would both 1) take care of one of their own in a time of great need, and 2) stand up for what is right at a time when taking a stand has become increasingly uncomfortable. There should be no controversy here.  Vindman did what is right, for all the right reasons. The smear campaign against him should only cause more people to stand up for him, and as we can see, at least one synagogue, his own, unequivocally has. To which I add another. Lt. Col Vindman, if you are ever in the area, you are welcome here any time as an honored guest. The only issue I have with this article is that the shul is fundraising off of this, which doesn't smell right, even if it is at the family's request.

- The Jewish Nightmare of Bernie vs. Trump (Yossi Klein-Halevi, Times of Israel).  While I don't agree entirely with him, Yossi gets us thinking about this choice from the perspective of a right-of-center American immigrant in Israel.

- Ganz Maintains Lead in Latest Israeli Polls (Ha'aretz)  A consequential Israeli election is just a couple of weeks away, the panel of judges has been selected for the Netanyahu corruption trial (including some notable toughies), and Israelis are, by and large, yawning.

-  Interfaith Group Renames Itself - Bluish, Jew-ish, and Jew-theran (Forward) 

We've had a longstanding relationship with InterfaithFamily, having participated recently in a pilot project called the Interfaith Inclusion Initiative (IILI). This week they re-branded

 themselves and launched a new website: "18 Doors."  See their brief video introduction below, and here's a link to their new site. 

18Doors: Unlocking Jewish

- Is Bernie vs. Bloomberg Good for the Jews? (Jonathan Tilove, Austin Statesman); also, New Hampshire Just ushered in a Bernie vs. Bloomberg Title Fight (The Intelligencer: New York Magazine) and  Is 2020 Really the Year for the First Jewish President? (JTA)  Something must be in the zeitgeist this week.  As Allison Kaplan Sommer wrote Jan. 27 in Haaretz: "For some American Jews, (this match) evokes two uncles feuding across a Friday night dinner table." Bloomberg and Sanders "embody two very different classic modern Jewish archetypes: the rumpled socialist and the buttoned-down capitalist," she wrote. Or, as the trolls will translate it, Trotsky vs. Rothschild.

Could make for interesting seders this year.  Are we ready for this?

Embracing Auschwitz:

Forging a Vibrant, Life-Affirming Judaism

that Takes the Holocaust Seriously 

Now Available on Amazon!

I'm happy to announce that as of this week, my new book is now available for pre-order on Amazon. Here is the link to the Amazon page. The early response has been very positive. You can read the advance praise here, including this:

"Starting with a jarring book title, Joshua Hammerman captures our imagination and re-pivots our approach to dealing with the horrors of the Holocaust. As a gifted journalist and spiritual leader, he makes his case with a clear voice and open heart, showing us that we can fulfill the biblical mandate to 'choose life' by doing so with new forms of joy and sanctity. Hammerman's brave new vision challenges us and demands our attention."

-Gary Rosenblatt, Editor At Large, The Jewish Week

The Moses Primary

כא  וְאַתָּה תֶחֱזֶה מִכָּל-הָעָם אַנְשֵׁי-חַיִל יִרְאֵי אֱלֹהִים, אַנְשֵׁי אֱמֶת--שֹׂנְאֵי בָצַע; וְשַׂמְתָּ עֲלֵהֶם, שָׂרֵי אֲלָפִים שָׂרֵי מֵאוֹת, שָׂרֵי חֲמִשִּׁים, וְשָׂרֵי עֲשָׂרֹת.

Ex.18:21 Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating unjust gain; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.

With the primary season at last upon us, people naturally are asking who among the Democrats running the Torah would pick to contest Trump for the presidency.  Well, in this week's portion Moses makes his choice.  And it's.... (drumroll, please)...well, everyone.

You see, Moses' father in law Jethro (not the guy from "Beverly Hillbillies") suggests to Moses that he delegate some of his leadership responsibilities, so that he won't continue to be overwhelmed by the many cases being brought to him by the rank and file.  The criteria they establish for choosing these new leaders is illustrative. If you take a look at this page of commentaries from the portion, you will see that one of the qualifiers is that the nominees be "capable people," ("Anshei Hayil," in Hebrew). 

What does that expression mean? 

Well, pick a commentator and you get a current candidate.  Rashi says, "Rich men," who are beholden to no one.  He would clearly be a Bloomberg supporter. Rashbam focuses on the quality of fearlessness, one we can certainly ascribe to Joe Biden, who has never backed down from a fight.  Ibn Ezra looks for physical endurance - think of Klobuchar in that blizzard.  Nachmanides is looking for wisdom and honesty, which frankly, means he is possibly thinking about writing in Larry David, but these qualities could define any number of candidates, including Buttigieg, whose birth chart reveals that he is "wise beyond his years." And then there's the next line in the Torah, the next qualification, "who spurns ill-gotten gain," which Ibn Ezra immediately defines in one word: "money."  So he would be the Sanders or Warren delegate. 

All of which goes to show us that political eligibility is in the eye of the beholder. And Moses will probably wait until at least Super Tuesday before deciding.  

Love, Jewish Style

 

Touching photo of Rabbi Vicki and Harold Axe in the

Stamford Advocate this week. Read the article

A few years ago, I wrote this about love in a High Holiday sermon - words appropriate for Valentine's Day.  Some of these thoughts came back to me this week, as in our "Beyond Dispute" class we studied the famous Ben Azzai - Akiva debate (presented below).

Reb Shlomo Carlebach said, "If we had two hearts like we have two arms and two legs, then one heart could be used for love and the other one for hate. Since I have but one heart, then I don't have the luxury of hating anyone."

For ours is a religion of Love. Ours is a God of Love.

There's an argument in the Talmud between Rabbi Akiva and Shimon Ben Azzai, over which is the most basic principle of the Torah. Akiva says, "Love your neighbor as yourself." He was a big fan of love. He LOVED love. He's the guy who put the Song of Songs into the Bible, and his late-blooming romance with his wife Rachel is maybe the greatest Jewish love story of all time.

But Ben Azzai trumped him by saying, "No, even more important than 'Love your Neighbor' is the verse from Genesis that states, "On the day that God made human beings, they were made in the likeness of God, male and female God created them."

Rabbi Arthur Green, whose book "Radical Judaism" is must reading for any post-modern Jew - and we'll be teaching it here this year - thinks Ben Azzai was on to something important. It's not enough simply to love your neighbor. Anyone can love a neighbor. Azzai says that's not enough! We have to love everyone. Not just the person who lives next door. Not just a fellow Jew. Every human being is in God's image. True, some are harder to love than others. Some are nearly impossible.

And we all know who they are!

Some days you can love them, and some days you can't. Even if you can't love them, you have to treat them with dignity. 

The Sh'ma is our most important prayer and the prayer that commands us to love - V'ahavta - "You shall love the Lord your God." So, one may ask, how can you command love?

Well, it's not really a command, as professor Reuven Kimelman has pointed out. Read properly, "V'ahavta is a response. An instinctive reaction projecting love out into the world. Projecting back what we have received."

In both the morning and evening liturgies, the Sh'ma is immediately preceded by a prayer about love. In the morning, that prayer is Ahava Rabbah - "A Great Love," a transcendent love, an UNCONDITIONAL love. The word for love, "Ahava," appears in various forms no fewer than six times in that single prayer, including the first, middle and last words. Love, love, love, love, love, love. Six times! Like a mantra.

We are loved by an unconditional love - a boundless love, as we say at night, Ahavat Olam. When you've been loved in that way, when the world has loved you in that way, the only way to respond is to give love in return.

V'ahavta - We will love. Not we MUST but we will. We will love because we've been loved. Even at times of enormous suffering, we've been touched by an Ahavah Rabbah. We will love because our God is a God of love, our Torah a Torah of love; every ounce of breath that comes from us is a breath that was given to us in love.

This is the journey we all need to take, the journey from receiving to giving, the journey to unconditional love. Let us make the passage from Ahava Rabba to Ahavat Olam, from a great love, to the greatest love of all, the love of all with whom we share this earth.

It is easy to be cynical. It is easy to be suspicious. It is easy to throw up our arms and disengage.

It is easy to hate. But IF WE HATE - THE HATERS WILL HAVE WON. They will have turned us into them.

No, they don't all hate us. And in the end, it doesn't really matter who hates us and why. All that matters is that we love. Why?

Because we have been loved.

Two Special Interfaith programs this coming week:

1) The first event in the Sharing Sacred Spaces Initiative

THURS., FEBRUARY 20, 2020 6:30-8:30 PM Guru Tegh Bahadur Foundation 633 West Avenue, Norwalk CT 06850 203.857.4460 ● www.gtbf.org  Everyone is welcome! Join us, and find out all about the Sikh faith. Our turn to host will come in June.

2) Religious Voices and the Climate Emergency

  

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman (and reserve now for our 2020 Eastern Europe trip!)

Shabbat-O-Gram for January 29 - The Moses Caucus and the Old Jewish Guy

Shabbat Shalom

Join us tonight as we welcome Shulem Deen, who will speak about his riveting and heartbreaking book, National Jewish Book Award winner, "All Who Go Do Not Return." 

Katie Kaplan will be co-leading the service with me tonight at 7:30, in Cantor Fishman's absence.

Tomorrow we will discuss the portion Yitro and the Ten Commandments, with some of our Hebrew School students joining us, in another of our successful "Shabbat School" weekends.

If you missed my photo essays from Israel last week, they've been revised and are now both featured on the Times of Israel site:  Jerusalem After Dark and The Scribbles on the Wall.  Check them both out (and if you like 'em, share 'em!).  You'll get a real feel for what I experienced on my recent visit to Israel.

Speaking of visits... our website for this summer's Jewish Heritage Tour of Central Europe is now live and we are taking reservations. Click here to check out the itinerary and other details.  You know, even the Pope will be joining us...sort of.  He'll be in Krakow (and Auschwitz) about a week after our visit this summer.   I've heard from more than enough people to warrant moving forward, so now is the time to put down deposits. Please know that if the trip is cancelled because of low registration, the deposits will be refunded in full. (If the trip is a "go" and you pull out for other reasons, the cancellation policy is explained on the site).  We are exploring air options - and there are several good ones - but flights should not be booked until we are 100% good to go.  So now is the time to sign up - and tell your friends.  Reservations will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.  As a little teaser, take this virtual journey of the brand new Polin Museum in Warsaw, which we'll be visiting. The museum traces the fascinating history of Polish Jewry.

 

Relationships

This Sunday, our temple leadership will be engaged in a retreat about engagement; our focus will be on nurturing relationships.  We've been reading Ron Wolfson's thought provoking book, "Relational Judaism," and we'll be discussing its treasure trove of ideas, all with the goal of weaving deeper connections between one another, and between ourselves and our families, community, our Jewish traditions and God.  

Check out this article, which lays out Wolfson's thesis in great detail.

Ultimately, in order to grow our community - and to ensure our own spiritual growth - we need to encounter one another with honesty, selfless love and humility.  At a time when surveys show that  younger people leaving religion in droves (see chart below), we need to demonstrate to them - and to everyone - how indispensable it can be to develop deep connections with your religious community.

 

It is my hope that as we all move forward, we will work together to develop relationships that can in turn foster the qualities of menschlichkeit revealed in this chart below (click here for a clear version of it).

 

The Progeny Page

Our TBE family includes some remarkable young people doing some remarkable things.  I highlight two of them today:

Josh Pickel, one of our teens, is on his way to movie immortality - and we can help him get there!  Part of his new zombie film, "E-19 Virus" was actually filmed at Beth El (no actual viruses were harmed in the making of this movie) and if you click hereand check the end of the trailer, you will see that Steve Lander, TBE and I are mentioned!  (I'd like to thank the Academy...).  You can order tickets to the one-night-only Connecticut premiere on Feb. 18.  The movie is also being shown at AMC Theaters in Los Angeles & Sacramento. Los Angeles is "SOLD OUT" and Sacramento is close to being sold out, and Connecticut is on the way.  If the film sells out in all 3 locations, AMC will add 6 additional theaters nationwide. If those 6 theaters sell out then they will add 12 additional and if that sells out it GOES NATIONWIDE to all AMC Theaters.   So here's our chance to help lift Josh to stardom. 

Alex Weinberg, a TBE college student, sends a more sobering request.  Here it is, below:

"My name is Alex Weinberg and last year I had the privilege of studying in Israel at Yeshivat Maale Gilboa. While I have begun my freshman year in college, my Israeli friends have gone on to join the army, risking their lives for the Jewish State. One friend, Eldar, is currently in the Nachal brigade, 50th Battalion, 9th Company. He and the rest of his unit are raising money to buy socks, coats, and other essentials. If you would like to take part in this fundraising, please be in touch with him atEldar27p@gmail.com."  

Thank you to Alex, for letting us know about this worthy cause.

 

The Moses Caucus and the Old Jewish Guy

So, with the caucus and primary season at last upon us, we naturally are asking, who would the Torah pick for President?  Well, in fact, in this week's portion Moses makes his choice.  And it's.... (drumroll, please)...Trump!  Oh, and Sanders! Oh, and everyone in between....

We actually discussed this at our "Hot Topics for Cold Months" class last Tuesday, which drew a large and extremely diverse group of learners, something that I really appreciated. 

In this week's portion, Moses' father in law Yitro (Jethro, but not the guy from the Beverly Hillbillies) suggests to Moses that he delegate some of his leadership responsibilities, so that he won't continue to be overwhelmed by the many cases being brought to him by the rank and file.  The criteria they establish for choosing these new leaders is illustrative. If you take a look at this page of commentaries from the portion, you will see that one of the qualifiers is that the nominees be "capable men," ("Anshei Hayil," in Hebrew).  What does that expression mean? 

Well, pick a commentator and you get a current candidate.  Rashi says, "Rich men," who are beholden to no one.  He would clearly be a Trump or Bloomberg supporter. Rashbam focuses on the quality of fearlessness.  Ibn Ezra looks for physical endurance, and one might say that Hillary has been around the political bock enough times to qualify.  Nachmanides is looking for wisdom and honesty, which frankly, means he is possibly thinking about writing in Larry David.  But then there's the next line in the Torah, the next qualification, "who spurns ill gotten gain," which Ibn Ezra immediately defines in one word: "money."  So he would be the Sanders delegate. 

All of which goes to show us that political eligibility is in the eye of the beholder.   We'll see how the people of Iowa choose on Monday.

Two other points to make:

1)     The Torah is very committed to the idea that our leaders should be incorruptibly independent, owing nothing to anyone.  Peruse our packet from the Hot Topics classand you will see that the Talmud - and the Reform and Conservative movements - come down squarely Campaign Finance Reform and against the "Citizens United" decision.  See the Rabbinical Assembly's resolution.

 

2)     A word about the Old Jewish Guy. I may or may not support Bernie Sanders politically, but I LOVE the two unspoken messages coming out of his campaign: IT'S OK TO BE JEWISH AND IT'S COOL TO BE OLD.   

Sanders is overtly Jewish in precisely the opposite way Joe Lieberman was.  His Jewishness pours forth in an ethnic tribal sense, and Lieberman's was expressed in terms of religious observance. Both are legitimate.  The fact that Jewish identity been not been seen as a political detriment in either case is both highly significant - and profoundly reassuring.  They love us!  They really love us!

 

But it's the "old" part - that's the real revelation.  I'm not just talking about the fact that he is older - so was Ronald Reagan and so are other current candidates - or that if elected he would become  the oldest president.  What's telling is that he doesn't feel a need to hide it and in fact seems very comfortable beneath his Ben Gurion bushel of gray.  And despite his visible senior-ness, or maybe even because of that, he is a rock star on campuses and is adored in almost Obama-like fashion by millennials and younger siblings.

This is really important, I think, and a reversion to an era long before old people were derided as irrelevant, out of touch, or worse (anyone recall  "Where's the Beef?" - and John McCain wandering about the debate stage?), back to a time when the Torah could state, "Rise before the aged," and the mitzvah of honoring the elderly drew more than lip service at retirement dinners.  

I've seen it in the rabbinate and so many other professions, where wisdom and experience have been cast aside as congregations and corporations have sought to grow ever younger.  Even when I was a young rabbi, reaping the benefits of these distorted priorities, I questioned the logic of idolizing youth.  As I've grown and grayed, I've seen a dismaying acceleration of this trend, to the point where, from what I hear,  prestigious synagogues that once waited for candidates to turn 50 before even considering them for top rabbinic positions, now immediately filter out those who dwell in the valley of the shadow of 38.

But now we've ushered in the era of grandpa-chic, and Bernie is a rock star on campus. Maybe the kids themselves are telling us to "chill" about aging.  It's not unusual for young people to emulate the ways of their grandparents' generation - hence the return to electric typewriters, vinyl and Brooklyn.  I also understand that there may well be an unfair double standard when it comes to women.  But for an Old Jewish Guy to be rockin' like Bernie is, it's got to be reassuring for people of all ages and hairy hues.

And kids, GET OFF MY LAWN!

 

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman

Moses and Jethro: Models of Leadership

It's bad enough for this Patriots fan that this week's portion begins with JET - but Jethro, Moses' father in law, teaches Moses quite a bit about leadership. Click here for a parsha packet I put together a couple of years ago on the topic, complete with some traditional commentaries and contemporary models of leadership. You'll also find a checklist on how to be an effective leader of dogs.