Babels, Bagels of NY (Jewish Week)

 

The Wall and the Mall (Jewish Week)

The Jewish Week, 8/97

As an American patriot, I take great pride in how my behemoth nation has colonized the universe with its cultural assets. Pax Americana has now even reached Mars, having long-since overrun earthly Jerusalem. But as I set out on a recent visit to Israel, mindful of growing complaints of "Americanization" by my Israeli friends, I was anxious to find new evidence of the Great Satan's work. And indeed, I didn't have to look far to find the ugliest aspects of my complicated country -- at the Western Wall.

The Kotel I encountered last month was as stratified as a Greenwich country club, as immaculate as Disney World and as spiritless as a Republican Convention. This was not the Kotel I had first encountered as a teen twenty four years ago, on Tisha B'Av, when I was one weeper among the multitudes. The chanting of Lamentations that summer evening, the drone of a single coalescing murmur of anguished trope in and above the plaza, made for a communion of tear-swept flesh and stone. Beyond that what struck me was the curious asymmetry of the place: sprawling stones reaching both down and upward, touched by unkempt clumps of moss, topped by smaller bricks carved by dreams of another era, topped by, of all things, a field of TV antennae. Though mundane in normal use, these masses of wire seemed apt here, a reminder that the Kotel -- and God -- exist on the plane of normal human experience.

In ancient times, the Kotel was the Temple's outer, retaining wall, the place where all the people could gather, from the largest to the small, sheep and pigeons in hand, before arriving at the inner courtyards where degrees of separation set in. The Kotel has always been a festival of earthy democracy for the plain folk: the sweaty Herodian-era laborers who moved enormous slabs of rock, the late-Roman period artisan who scribbled joyous graffiti from Isaiah, the dying whispers of medieval pilgrims having reached their long-sought final destination, the teary paratroopers in '67, the final breath of my grandmother who never got there.

When I first came to Kotel that Tisha B'Av, I saw a white dove about halfway up, glowing in the light, perched on a nest of moss. I quivered with recognition of the Shechina, God's most manifest and loving presence, sent to that very spot to weep with Her people among the ruins. For centuries, that legend and that weeping bound motionless stones to a yearning nation.
Enter the Great Satan. Now the TV antennae are gone and the plaza is as clean and symmetrical as ever. Its aesthetic beauty is unquestioned, like the 18th hole at Augusta, but the sanitized Wall has lost its wail, like a Disneyfied Times Square. The plaza has also lost its democratic ardor, having become as foreigner-friendly as California. A decade ago, I had no problem bringing groups of congregants to the middle of the plaza, men and women together, for Friday evening services, after which we would approach the Wall as individuals to share in the euphoric cacophony of singing Yeshiva students, tourists, new immigrant, worn pilgrims and curious seekers and long-lost friends from the States. At the Wall, the Jewish body beat with one heart.

Now the stones have lost their heart and strangers beware. On Friday night, the hugs and singing have been replaced by a stony silence and a level of suspicion worthy of a Manhattan subway. My group could not pray together, else we risk a Shavuot-style garbage pelting. So we prayed on the newly-excavated steps facing the Southern Wall. When we reached the Kotel afterwards, no one embraced us. No one asked if we needed a place for Shabbat, as so many had years ago. Small cantons of Haredim prayed in pantomime; we kept our distance, hoping for a spiritual trickle-down effect.

About twenty feet from the Wall, an updated version of "West Side Story" was being played out. A dozen Reform Jews from Miami, all men, sang "Lecha Dodi" defiantly in a circle while Haredim stared and caucused, figuring out what to do with them. One slipped dangerously close to the group, bending over to investigate the Xeroxed prayer booklet, as if examining a lettuce for bugs. The Reform service concluded. Triumphantly, they had reclaimed their piece of the rock.

But this was a shallow victory: there was no singing and celebrating, no holding of hands, only the holding of turf. "Western Wall Story" has become a classic American Western, and Friday evening has become its High Noon.

And when I looked up, the dove was gone.

The Shechina has left the building.

And where has She gone? Why to the Mall, of course, where the people of Israel share a common
language and meet on an equal canvas, bearing first fruits and exchanging them for a sip of coffee and a snippet of intimate conversation. Everyone is there, sharing small talk at Sbarros on Jerusalem's Ben Yehuda Street, or folk dancing at Ben and Jerry's on Tel Aviv's beach front.

If this all reeks of American cultural imperialism, I beg to differ. While the Western Wall has become bad Disney, the Mall has made Burger King a touchstone to the Sacred. A kosher Kentucky Fried Chicken isn't about the Americanization of Israel, it's about the Judaization of Americanism -- at long last Colonel Sanders has discovered our secret recipe for the santification of life. At the new Jerusalem Mall there is equal access from every gate. Priests, Levites, women, the disabled, tourists: all are treated in like manner. A mall with honest shop owners, separate meat and dairy food courts and even a synagogue, is a mall that conveys the best of our value system to the next generation. Amidst the Hebrew Coca Cola bottles and Michael Jordan magazines there is a level of holiness, because they are bringing my children and their Israeli cousins together in a Jewish state speaking a Jewish language.

The Mall, democratic, serendipitous, wide-eyed, infused with Jewish values, just a little bit dirty and a whole lot Israeli; has become a place of pilgrimage and unity for the Jewish people -- just what the Temple's outer courtyard used to be. The Shechina now sits on a nest of astroturf atop the Hard Rock Cafe, weeping no longer, for Her people have returned.

But alas, how lonely sit the ancient stones of the Kotel. I weep for them.

The Wall and the Mall (Jewish Week)

 The Wall and the Mall

by Joshua Hammerman
Appeared in Jewish Week, 8/97

As an American patriot, I take great pride in how my behemoth nation has colonized the universe with its cultural assets. Pax Americana has now even reached Mars, having long-since overrun earthly Jerusalem. But as I set out on a recent visit to Israel, mindful of growing complaints of "Americanization" by my Israeli friends, I was anxious to find new evidence of the Great Satan's work. And indeed, I didn't have to look far to find the ugliest aspects of my complicated country -- at the Western Wall.

The Kotel I encountered last month was as stratified as a Greenwich country club, as immaculate as Disney World and as spiritless as a Republican Convention. This was not the Kotel I had first encountered as a teen twenty four years ago, on Tisha B'Av, when I was one weeper among the multitudes. The chanting of Lamentations that summer evening, the drone of a single coalescing murmur of anguished trope in and above the plaza, made for a communion of tear-swept flesh and stone. Beyond that what struck me was the curious asymmetry of the place: sprawling stones reaching both down and upward, touched by unkempt clumps of moss, topped by smaller bricks carved by dreams of another era, topped by, of all things, a field of TV antennae. Though mundane in normal use, these masses of wire seemed apt here, a reminder that the Kotel -- and God -- exist on the plane of normal human experience.

In ancient times, the Kotel was the Temple's outer, retaining wall, the place where all the people could gather, from the largest to the small, sheep and pigeons in hand, before arriving at the inner courtyards where degrees of separation set in. The Kotel has always been a festival of earthy democracy for the plain folk: the sweaty Herodian-era laborers who moved enormous slabs of rock, the late-Roman period artisan who scribbled joyous graffiti from Isaiah, the dying whispers of medieval pilgrims having reached their long-sought final destination, the teary paratroopers in '67, the final breath of my grandmother who never got there.

When I first came to Kotel that Tisha B'Av, I saw a white dove about halfway up, glowing in the light, perched on a nest of moss. I quivered with recognition of the Shechina, God's most manifest and loving presence, sent to that very spot to weep with Her people among the ruins. For centuries, that legend and that weeping bound motionless stones to a yearning nation.

Enter the Great Satan. Now the TV antennae are gone and the plaza is as clean and symmetrical as ever. Its aesthetic beauty is unquestioned, like the 18th hole at Augusta, but the sanitized Wall has lost its wail, like a Disneyfied Times Square. The plaza has also lost its democratic ardor, having become as foreigner-friendly as California. A decade ago, I had no problem bringing groups of congregants to the middle of the plaza, men and women together, for Friday evening services, after which we would approach the Wall as individuals to share in the euphoric cacophony of singing Yeshiva students, tourists, new immigrant, worn pilgrims and curious seekers and long-lost friends from the States. At the Wall, the Jewish body beat with one heart.

Now the stones have lost their heart and strangers beware. On Friday night, the hugs and singing have been replaced by a stony silence and a level of suspicion worthy of a Manhattan subway. My group could not pray together, else we risk a Shavuot-style garbage pelting. So we prayed on the newly-excavated steps facing the Southern Wall. When we reached the Kotel afterwards, no one embraced us. No one asked if we needed a place for Shabbat, as so many had years ago. Small cantons of Haredim prayed in pantomime; we kept our distance, hoping for a spiritual trickle-down effect.

About twenty feet from the Wall, an updated version of "West Side Story" was being played out. A dozen Reform Jews from Miami, all men, sang "Lecha Dodi" defiantly in a circle while Haredim stared and caucused, figuring out what to do with them. One slipped dangerously close to the group, bending over to investigate the Xeroxed prayer booklet, as if examining a lettuce for bugs. The Reform service concluded. Triumphantly, they had reclaimed their piece of the rock. But this was a shallow victory: there was no singing and celebrating, no holding of hands, only the holding of turf. "Western Wall Story" has become a classic American Western, and Friday evening has become its High Noon.

And when I looked up, the dove was gone.

The Shechina has left the building.

And where has She gone? Why to the Mall, of course, where the people of Israel share a common language and meet on an equal canvas, bearing first fruits and exchanging them for a sip of coffee and a snippet of intimate conversation. Everyone is there, sharing small talk at Sbarros on Jerusalem's Ben Yehuda Street, or folk dancing at Ben and Jerry's on Tel Aviv's beach front.

If this all reeks of American cultural imperialism, I beg to differ. While the Western Wall has become bad Disney, the Mall has made Burger King a touchstone to the Sacred. A kosher Kentucky Fried Chicken isn't about the Americanization of Israel, it's about the Judaization of Americanism -- at long last Colonel Sanders has discovered our secret recipe for the santification of life. At the new Jerusalem Mall there is equal access from every gate. Priests, Levites, women, the disabled, tourists: all are treated in like manner. A mall with honest shop owners, separate meat and dairy food courts and even a synagogue, is a mall that conveys the best of our value system to the next generation. Amidst the Hebrew Coca Cola bottles and Michael Jordan magazines there is a level of holiness, because they are bringing my children and their Israeli cousins together in a Jewish state speaking a Jewish language.

The Mall, democratic, serendipitous, wide-eyed, infused with Jewish values, just a little bit dirty and a whole lot Israeli; has become a place of pilgrimage and unity for the Jewish people -- just what the Temple's outer courtyard used to be. The Shechina now sits on a nest of astroturf atop the Hard Rock Cafe, weeping no longer, for Her people have returned.

But alas, how lonely sit the ancient stones of the Kotel. I weep for them.

The Jews' Jews (Jewish Week)

 

Who Knows One? (Jewish Week)

Who Knows One?

by Joshua Hammerman
Appeared in Jewish Week, 5/97

I am an orphan of Aquarius. I missed out on all the great protest rallies of the '60s and early '70s by a mere couple of years. I was the placid baby brother of a rebellious hippie sister (who is now frum and living in Ma'aleh Adumim, but that's another story). I was one of that in-between generation, an unripened boomer, one of those mini-Kissingers who used to shuttle between big sis and the big-bad over-40 folks, trying to keep the peace amidst the bellicose shouts of "No More War."

For me and my generation, the shuttling was a nice distraction from the Ultimate Truths that they all were facing. It was my sister's generation that had to go to Vietnam and die, and my parents who had to face the dire prospect of sacrificing either their patriotism or their children, or both.

So finally, a few weeks ago, I got to attend my first protest rally, at the last place I ever imagined it would be: an Israeli consulate, in Boston. There I joined about 200 of my Conservative rabbinic colleagues in an emotional plea for a united world Jewry, and opposing that devastating conversion bill in the Knesset.

It was a worthwhile cause, but a grim task, evoking none of the exhilaration my sister and her peers must have felt back in the '60s. They were going to change the world. We just wanted to catch the evening news. They shouted, "Hell no, we won't go!" We davened mincha. They got arrested. We posed for photos-ops. The whole thing was so awkward, every step tentative. Groping for a protest chant we, somewhat ironically, ended up singing selections from the Hasidic song festival. I hope our actions did some good, but I left the scene feeling that the act of lobbying had somehow sullied us. As rabbis, we were trained to bring people closer to God, not to take over student unions; but as Jews, we were expected to know how to lobby.

Have you noticed a dearth of bumper stickers lately? It's as if the world has run out of quick-grabbing causes. Certainly we Jews have given up on any semblance of idealism. Israel is secure and thriving, absorption is ongoing and there are virtually no Jews left in the world who are denied the freedom to live a Jewish life. On the 100th anniversary of Zionism, we speak of our great movement of national liberation primarily in the past tense. Last year Israel elected its first anti-ideological Prime Minister.

Here in America, we still recall the Holocaust with great anguish, but the slogan "Never Again" rings hollow: too trite, too Kahane-esque, too deniable after Bosnia and central Africa. Our primary concerns can't easily be put on a bumper sticker: "Continuity: Yes!" just doesn't cut it, not does "Marry Jewish," or "Pluralist and Proud."

There are still injustices in the world, to be sure, but nothing around which one could build a Jewish identity. Most attempts to challenge us on ideological grounds, either from the left or the right, have been met with apathy. "Tikkun" is drowning in verbiage and debt; "Commentary" in dust. The most prevalent bumper sticker-statements of the past few years have either resulted from internal family squabbles ("Don't give up the Golan!") or worse ("Shalom Haver"). The old U.J.A. slogan, "We Are One," has become a cruel joke. There's nothing left for a Jew to believe in.

Except God.

No, not THAT. There must be something else.

Jews have spend the better part of the last three millennia running from God, yet, drawn by an ever-so-slight gravitational pull, we keep on circling back. It might take as long as Hale-Bopp, but we always return to "Who Knows One?" Like mini-Jonahs we scurry from cause to cause, shuttling relentlessly to keep from having to ponder, each cause a distraction from Ultimate Truth, a diversion from our Ultimate Question: Who Knows One?

Two? I know two...Two tablets. Yeah. Let's talk about the constitutionality of putting the Ten Commandments in an Alabama courtroom. Two.

No, three. Three. Of course. Three patriarchs: Marx, Freud and Darwin. Each promised a truth that could deliver humanity -- and they screwed up our century and delivered us express-mail, right back to...

No, wait. Four. There's four. Of course. The matriarchs. Feminism. No, wait. Five. The books of Moses. But who really wrote them? Let's have a debate about Biblical criticism. No, six: the six million. They are why we should remain Jews. Or seven, or eight. Or 53: the intermarriage rate. What is the key to Jewish survival? Ecology or education? Abortion rights or AIPAC? We float. We grope. It can get very dark inside of a whale.

Finally, we are coming back to the source. As we plunge headlong toward the millennium, most Jews are doing what everyone else is doing: looking out for number One. The extraneous numbers are being tossed aside. The secularists are running for cover. At some point, even Alan Dershowitz will begin to understand that all things Jewish flow from a single transcendent stream and that Israel will have meaning for Jews only when it can enable us to tap into that stream. Currently, for the vast majority of Jews, including most Israelis, that flow has been blocked by a dam of Haredi corruption. Until that changes -- and that transformation must now become the top priority of every clear-headed Zionist and searching Jew -- Israel's gravitational pull on the Jewish soul will continue to dissipate.

So now that we are left in the room with nothing else but One, with all the bumper stickers shoved aside, what do we do? How do we approach the ineffable, this Ultimate blind date?

Nervously we reach into our pockets. In generations past we might have offered a cigarette, or maybe a paschal lamb. We've been stripped of all that. Stripped of pretense, false gods and empty ideologies, we have nothing to offer, nothing but our entirety. We are naked.

Hale-Bopp took over three thousand years to return to our skies, but the flair of its reentry into human consciousness is a solid example for our reentry into the direct, unadorned encounter with the Sacred. Bright, blazing and swift, we make our appearance, however fuzzy and confused we feel. Like the comet, it took us a long time to understand again that we are here for one purpose alone: to shine brightly and leave a trail of light in our wake.

Who knows One? We're beginning to now, because we've run out of alternatives. Abraham first asked that question just after Hale-Bopp's last appearance. Judaism's eternal shuttle has just completed it's first orbit.

Saturday Morning Fever (Jewish Week)

The Jewish Week, March 14, 1997

Tuesday the rabbi got sick. My two young children had come down with the flu the previous weekend, so I was not shocked when, two hours after a lunch I could barely touch, I was shivering in bed with a personal-best fever of 103.7. Four days later, with my temperature still soaring and a big bat mitzvah looming, I sweated over one question alone: When the big moment arrives, how close should I get to the girl?

Allow me to explain: I am a member of the world's second-oldest profession, a vocation that requires nearly as much on-the-job intimacy as that older one. Both stretch back to cultic origins and draw upon our innate craving to consummate bliss through human attachment. But now, for my congregation, the hired conduit was severed. What's worse, he was revealed to be demonstrably human. And worse still, the healer was contagious. In our microbially-beset culture, where every bout with illness has become a morality play, I discovered paranoia to be the most infectious disease of all.

My first response to this plight was self pity. I longed for those misty scenes of my childhood: the head-clearing essence of steamed Vicks in my bedroom, a hot bowl of stovecooked oatmeal on my breakfast tray, and me, propped up in my bed, glaring at the snowy black-and-white image of Captain Kangaroo on the nine-inch Hitachi imported from the kitchen just for this occasion. I longed for my parents' unquestioning caresses.

But I understood that gone are the days of guilt-free sickness. Now the world fears illness and chastises the ailing. "Dr. Mom" has become Inspector Mom. Because I was too sick to return most calls, I programmed my voice mail with a phlegmy greeting informing people of my affliction.

Big mistake.

Later that day, I listened to seven consecutive messages beginning with, "You mean you didn't take the flu shot?" As the days passed, the remarks kept coming, boring harder and deeper with each beep, like a dentist's punitive drill slamming down to bedrock for traces of forbidden salt water taffy. How could you? How dare you? To be sure, many also expressed get-well wishes, but while I was longing for the maternal caress, they were the ones acting as if the primordial Parent had let them down.

I understood their sense of betrayal and began to blame myself. Everything that a rabbi represents to people was being challenged by my illness: defiance of mortality; stability in life's wild ride; the illusion of control. The flu shot, though hardly foolproof, nurtures that same illusion, presenting people with an alternative to helplessness. It also provides a needed outlet for self-righteousness. Since the days of Job, humanity's greatest defense against the inexplicable, utterly terrifying ways of God has been to concoct a human cause, inflict blame and thereby manage the chaos. And when your spiritual leader is being punished for his sins, can anyone else possibly be safe?

Actually, I intended to take the shot, just never got around to it. I should have. As one who both preaches and practices greater intimacy in prayer, I spend more waking hours kissing and embracing people than do those of that more ancient profession. At the previous weekend's bar mitzvah, I probably infected 200 or 300 unsuspecting worshipers, who undoubtedly had gone on to spread the virus to thousands of others. But was I now supposed to recollect all my recent social encounters and inform each partner individually of my transgression? When every handshake becomes the moral equivalent of unprotected sex, are we heading quickly toward the elimination of all casual contact?

When I returned to services the following weekend, word had spread like, well, a virus. Circling the sanctuary with the Torah scroll, I felt increasingly isolated, as if quarantined like the lepers of Leviticus, or that boy in the bubble. From the start, kissing and shaking hands were out of the question; then vocal communication - no one wanted to be less than 20 feet downwind - then even eye contact became difficult. With people turning away in fear, how could I reach out and draw them in? If I could not be a conduit for connection, how could I serve them and help them serve God?

Then came the moment of truth. I always kiss the bat mitzvah girl on the cheek when I present her with her Bible. With my coughing a noticeable distraction, I imagined the hundreds present asking themselves, "Will he or won't he? Could this monster have the chutzpah to endanger this sweet-chanting flower, this tiny, beaming innocent just entering the prime of possibility - and just hours away from an awesome party?"

As I prayed for strength, I began to understand that in my preoccupation over the cure, I had failed to seize the opportunity to heal. Immunity might be a necessary for politicians and prostitutes, but for clergy it is our most dangerous pitfall. For us to succeed we must above all be flawed and vulnerable, reaching out from a defiled, squalid place that only real people can understand. That is how good leaders, from Mother Teresa to the Baal Shem Tov, have become hallowed healers. Others can take flu shots. A true healer must, like Moses after hearing of Miriam's leprous curse, cry out from among the afflicted, "El Na R'fa Na La!" "I beg of you, O God, heal her, I beseech!" Only such champions of the spirit can inoculate our communities from the isolation and cyber-sterility that threaten us all.

So, I took my prayer book and kissed it; and at my soft instruction she, looking far wiser than her years, took her new Bible and kissed it, and we stretched our arms so that my sacred words could touch hers and, through that textual caress, thereby purify that unholy space hovering between us, that exists within all of us.

Dancing Sheva (Jewish Week)

 Dancing Sheva  

by Joshua Hammerman
Appeared in Jewish Week, 2/97

The prevailing myth that goes around about rabbis is that we are incredibly overworked; constantly running to hospitals, nursing homes and federation meetings, all the while composing perfect sermons and returning calls and letters. People think we're obscenely busy, and they are wrong.

It's worse.

I realized that when I looked on my dashboard the other day and dangling there -- in the car that still needs its October emissions inspection, the inspection I recalled while paying October's bills sometime in early November -- was a partly-wound cassette entitled, "Time Management for Rabbis." I'd never found the time to listen to the whole thing.

Hillel said, "Don't say that when I have the time I will study Torah, for you will never have the time." Hillel was one '90s dude.

Before I can even begin to dream of the "leisure" Torah study that Hillel prescribes, I've got to prepare for Shabbat and for all the classes I teach. Alongside the Torah-work there is the pastoral work: visits, calls, responses to cries of pain both actual and anticipated. Imagine a doctor who not only has to care for the patients who come to see him, but must follow up on every single patient all the time. It's not quite that extreme, but there are always more calls to make and more that I wish I could make. If I don't follow-up often, I know that to a degree congregants feel that they are losing touch with much more than a mere care-giver. Like it or not, the rabbi's concern, and therefore the rabbi's time, is perceived as an indication of God's love.

And in the midst of all this there is my family, for whom prime time must be dedicated. At my eldest's bris I promised him that the family would always come first. I've kept that pledge reasonably well, though not without great anguish on everyone's part. There just isn't enough time to do all that I want to do.

Just as my world is beginning to spin out of control, I am stabilized by the realization that the spokes of my week radiate from a fixed center: Shabbat. Although Shabbat is the day when I work the hardest and am most governed by the clock (just ask the congregant who subtly taps his watch during late-running services), the day rejuvenates me by marking work's completion rather than its cessation. When the day is done and all the programming is behind me: a sumptuous meal, a great discussion, two namings, an ufruf and lots of intense community-building, I sense that all my frenetic jousting with time might actually have amounted to something. Shabbat breaks time down into palatable parts, each week becomes a chapter with a beginning and an end.

And just when I begin to feel as pressed as that retired football player who used to be seen running through airports (whatever became of him?), I find inspiration in, of all things, a sublime Hindu symbol, the Shiva Nataraja. Shiva is the King of Dance, often depicted in a state of absolute motion, with arms and legs contorted in all directions, yet with an unfathomable serenity on his face. With one leg he maintains complete balance while another flails, and his outstretched arms appear to be lifting up the world effortlessly. Like Shabbat, he is the center of all activity, the culmination of endeavor. In the words of religion scholar R.C. Zaehner, "he dances in the sheer joy of overflowing power -- he dances creation into existence."

Shiva reconciles all opposites: male and female, creation and destruction, human and divine. Dance can do that. Early this month, a Bat Mitzvah student who also loves to dance decided to choreograph all the prayers of the service to the steps of modern jazz, ballet and tap. As she pranced around in my office displaying the real leaps of rapture that should accompany the "Ashrei" prayer (which is all about joy), I saw a prayer that had been utterly boring to her suddenly come alive.

A few days later I brought my 3-year old to morning minyan. Midway through the Kedusha he abruptly left our row and began running circles in the aisle, singing out letters of the alef-bet. Embarrassed, I coaxed him back to his seat. Later he told my wife, "Daddy didn't want me to dance at temple today." It made me think of that Bat Mitzvah student and how we drain our kids of the passion, the pulp of prayer, and how only the lucky few survive to reclaim it when they are older.

It made me realize that we spend too much of our time sitting shiva and not enough dancing it.

OK, so the Dancing Shiva is a graven image. Minor technicality. Dancing wasn't patented by the Hindus; not even Zorba has a monopoly on it. We Jews, although historically long on verbosity and short on choreography, have had our great Lords of the Dance as well, including Miriam, David and a host of Hasidic masters, not to mention Tevye the Dairyman's various incarnations. A neo-Hasidic revival now is cutting across denominational boundaries because the joyous dance of the Baal Shem Tov is just what our hassled masses are looking for. So what if most of us shuckle with two left feet and can't even do the Macarena with abandon. We have been wallflowers for too long. It is through such movement that we can be released from time's shackles and begin to dance our way through airports, and through life.

The Alexandrer Rebbe said, "We read in Isaiah 55:12, 'For you shall go out with joy.' This means: If we are habitually joyful, we shall be released from every tribulation." So it's not the dancing that we do on the dance floor that matters. It's the dancing we do in our hearts.

I've come to understand that it is far preferable to be hyper-busy than to have nothing important to do. If we can accept that we'll always feel the crying need for more time and that death will ultimately keep us from finishing the job, we can begin to know the satisfaction of filling each instant to the brim.

I don't need to manage my time according to a preset plan. Every moment I am leaping along the spokes of my Shabbat-centered wheel, chaotic yet balanced, flailing yet serene. I have not one second of free time, yet I feel totally liberated. No need to pace myself, nor could I if I wanted to. I leap from spoke to spoke, day to day. There are seven days. In Hebrew, seven is sheva. To be a Jew is to be Dancing Sheva -- and to be a wallflower no more.

Still a Young Rabbi After All These Years (Jewish Week)

The Jewish Week, January 24, 1997

In a few weeks I'll be turning that magical age of 40. A dozen years ago I wrote an essay for the New York Times Magazine entitled, "A Young Rabbi," exploring the quandaries of ageism in my profession. So what's the scoop? Has "A Young Rabbi" finally grown up? Does rabbinic legitimacy begin at 40, or are rabbis still expected to have gray beards and the all-knowing countenance of one who is nearing the end of life's tumultuous journeys?

The passing of years has definitely changed some things. My college classmates are now partners in major law firms and multi-millionaire investment brokers, and most major league ball players were born after my bar mitzvah. Senators and judges can now call me "rabbi" without sneering, "this pip-squeak could be my grandson," and some in my community are telling me how hard it is to confide in "those young rabbis" as if I were not one of them.

Twelve years ago, I wrote: "My congregants ask themselves: `How can this rabbi be mature enough to comfort mourners when he hasn't known a lifetime of personal grief? How can he advise parents about their children, when he hasn't reared children of his own? How can he represent us before God when he hasn't been through our suffering, when he hasn't seen what we've seen? Can a rabbi who is not battle-scarred be truly a rabbi?'"

I added, "These anxieties have eased as the congregation has gotten to know me. But I'm not sure the congregants know that, if anything, I fear the consequences of too much experience. When I perform weddings, I want to sense the exhilaration I felt at my own. When I visit the sick or bereaved, I want to approach them, not as a trained professional, but as one who is in some way personally affected by their plight. I prepare for each funeral as if it were my first, for it was at my first that I was best able to share in the raw unadulterated grief that consumed the family."

Approaching 40, with many years of marriage, two young children and possibly half my life behind me, I now know all about the first steps of babyhood, the aging of parents and losses of close relatives. But there is always going to be something that I haven't experienced. I have yet to collect my first social security check and cuddle a grandchild. I haven't gotten divorced or been diagnosed with cancer. I haven't run the New York Marathon. I haven't eaten shrimp. I haven't died.

Further, as I age, I find myself more and more removed from those things I experienced long ago. I recently sent e-mail to my synagogue's college students, recalling the tension of finals period. But can I really recall what it was like to be an undergraduate 20 years ago? The simple fact of their getting e-mail from their rabbi underscores the radical changes that have taken place since I first unpacked my Smith Corona in my freshman dorm. I counsel singles and engaged couples all the time, but I can't even remember my last date prior to meeting my wife.

I can tell you all you need to know about nursery school, however. The people I can best commiserate with are, in fact, the same ones I was closest to years ago, because they are going through the same stages of life as I am. Always were. Always will be.

Incredibly, people often expect their rabbis to be utterly empathic about every stage of the life-cycle, at the same time. And indeed, there are Sundays when I will skip merrily from brit to wedding to shiva house -- and that's before lunch. There is always a tradeoff. Younger rabbis will have greater personal experience in some areas and older rabbis in others. But all should have the basic human understanding to handle any situation.

Although my children are younger, I probably know more about seventh graders than most parents of seventh graders. While I know less about the pains of arterial-sclerosis or Alzheimer's, an approachable rabbi should be able to sit at a hospital bedside and help a patient of any age, no matter what the rabbi's generation.

I no longer feel unadulterated grief at funerals, but not because I've become numbed to the pain of death. It's just that I've seen so many deaths that I've come to understand it to be a necessary stage of life, that without it we could never experience true happiness.

I still agree with what was "A Young Rabbi's" punch-line:

"It is sad that so many Jewish communities seem to insist that their rabbis shed their youthful innocence as quickly as possible. Once the rabbi loses his exuberance, even the most vibrant of communities becomes threatened with a similar stagnation. Perhaps early career burnout would be less of a problem if rabbis didn't feel compelled to spend the first half of their careers trying to look older and the last half trying to regain the vitality of lost youth."

Forty is prime-time in my profession, an age considered seasoned enough to command respect but young enough to ward off crustiness. Most large congregations looking for the "ideal" candidate look for one in my age range.

But I believe now, as I did then, that discrimination based on age is as wrong as that based on sex or income. Our sages understood that we should not look at the flask but at the contents within. It takes time to taste the wine, even if it turns out to be delicious grape juice. We mustn't rely on superficial impressions in selecting leaders. It is quite possible for a peach-fuzzy rabbi of 30 to be more mature and compassionate than a gray-beard of 80. Why should I be considered a better spiritual leader simply because I am 40, male and an ivy league graduate? Isn't measurement by those criteria the antithesis of what it means to be spiritual?

In many ways I am a better rabbi now, but mostly because ten years ago, my current congregation decided to take a chance and get to know a 30-year-old whippersnapper with lots of crazy ideas. I'm better because the relationship has deepened with time, not because I'm a decade older. The fine wine in the flask isn't me, it's me and them.

Twenty years from now, I fully intend to seek God as fervently, pursue and impart knowledge as passionately, be as open to change and amazed by each new experience as I was 12 years ago. With luck, I'll be as wise.

Dancing Sheva - Leaps Of Faith; The Dance of the Rabbi (Jewish Week)

The Jewish Week, December 13, 1996

The prevailing myth that goes around about rabbis is that we are incredibly overworked; constantly running to hospitals, nursing homes and federation meetings, all the while composing perfect sermons and returning calls and letters. People think we're obscenely busy, and they are wrong.

It's worse.

I realized that when I looked on my dashboard the other day and dangling there - in the car that still needs its October emissions inspection, the inspection I recalled while paying October's bills sometimes in early November - was a partly-wound cassette entitled, "Time Management for Rabbis." I'd never found the time to listen to the whole thing.

Hillel said, "Don't say that when I have the time I will study Torah, for you will never have the time." Hillel was one '90s dude.Before I can even begin to dream of the "leisure" Torah study that Hillel prescribes, I've got to prepare for Shabbat and for all the classes I teach. Alongside the Torah work there is the pastoral work: visits, calls, responses to cries of pain both actual and anticipated. Im

agine a doctor who not only has to care for the patients who come to see him, but must follow up on every single patient all the time. It's not quite that extreme, but there are always more calls to make and more that I wish I could make. If I don't follow up often, I know that to a degree congregants feel that they are losing touch with much more than a mere care-giver. Like it or not, the rabbi's concern, and therefore the rabbi's time, is perceived as an indication of God's love.

And in the midst of all this there is my family, for whom prime time must be dedicated. At my eldest's brit I promised him that the family would always come first. I've kept that pledge reasonably well, though not without great anguish on everyone's part. There just isn't enough time to do all that I want to do.

Just as my world is beginning to spin out of control, I am stabilized by the realization that the spokes of my week radiate from a fixed center: Shabbat. Although Shabbat is the day when I work the hardest and am most governed by the clock (just ask the congregant who subtly taps his watch during late-running services), the day rejuvenates me by marking work's completion rather than its cessation. When the day is done and all the programming is behind me: a sumptuous meal, a great discussion, two namings, an ufruf and lots of intense community-building, I sense that all my frenetic jousting with time might actually have amounted to something.

Shabbat breaks time down into palatable parts, each week becomes a chapter with a beginning and an end. And just when I begin to feel as pressed as that retired football player who used to be seen running through airports (whatever became of him?), I find inspiration in, of all things, a sublime Hindu symbol, the Shiva Nataraja. Shiva is the King of Dance, often depicted in a state of absolute motion, with arms and legs contorted in all directions, yet with an unfathomable serenity on his face. With one leg he maintains complete balance while another flails, and his out-stretched arms appear to be lifting up the world effortlessly. Like Shabbat, he is the center of all activity, the culmination of endeavor. In the words of religion scholar R.C. Zaehner, "he dances in the sheer joy of overflowing power - he dances creation into existence."

Shiva reconciles all opposites: male and female, creation and destruction, human and divine. Dance can do that.

Early this month, a bat mitzvah student who also loves to dance decided to choreograph all the prayers of the service to the steps of modern jazz, ballet and tap. As she pranced around in my office displaying the real leaps of rapture that should accompany the "Asheri" prayer (which is all about joy), I saw a prayer that had been utterly boring to her suddenly come alive.

A few days later I brought my 3-year-old to morning minyan. Midway through the Kedusha he abruptly left our row and began running circles in the aisle, singing out letters of the alef-bet.
Embarrassed, I coaxed him back to his seat.

Later he told my wife, "Daddy didn't want me to dance at temple today."

It made me think of that bat mitzvah student and how we drain our kids of the passion, the pulp of prayer, and how only the lucky few survive to reclaim it when they are older.

It made me realize that we spend too much of our time sitting shiva and not enough dancing it.

OK, so the Dancing Shiva is a graven image. Minor technicality. Dancing wasn't patented by the Hindus; not even Zorba has a monopoly on it. We Jews, although historically long on verbosity and short on choreography, have had our great Lords of the Dance as well, including Miriam, David and a host of chasidic masters, not to mention Tevye the Dairyman's various incarnations.

A neo-chasidic revival now is cutting across denominational boundaries because the joyous dance of the Baal Shem Tov is just what our hassled masses are looking for. So what if most of us shuckle with two left feet and can't do the Macarena with abandon.

We have been wallflowers for too long. It is through such movement that we can be released from time's shackles and begin to dance our way through airport, and through life.

The Alexanderer Rebbe said, "We read in Isaiah 55:12, `For you shall go out with joy.' This means: If we are habitually joyful, we shall be released from every tribulation." So it's not the dancing that we do on the dance floor that matters. It's the dancing we do in our hearts.

I've come to understand that it is far preferable to be hyperbusy than to have nothing important to do. If we can accept that we'll always feel the crying need for more time and that death will ultimately keep us from finishing the job, we can begin to know the satisfaction of filling each instant to the brim.

I don't need to manage my time according to a pre-set plan. Every moment I am leaping along the spokes of my Shabbat-centered wheel, chaotic yet balanced, flailing yet serene. I have not one second of free time, yet I feel totally liberated. No need to pace myself, nor could I if I wanted to.

I leap from spoke to spoke, day to day. There are seven days. In Hebrew, seven is sheva. To be a Jew is to be Dancing Sheva - and to be a wallflower no more.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Jewish (Jewish Week)

 

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Jewish

by Joshua Hammerman

Have you ever stopped to think of how many useless things you've accumulated? Sukkot is a great time to reflect on this this, as we recall our ancestors' journeys through the wilderness with few posessions but enormous faith. This realization also hits me when I head to the outlet malls to buy the exact same khaki pants I purchased a few years before -- only one size larger. I buy the new pants reluctantly, but simultaneously pledge not to part with the old pair, just in case. The Messiah will undoubtedly come before I again fit into them, but I keep the older apparel nonetheless. I hate to throw things away.

It's the same with magazines. In my basement I've got decades of Newsweeks and Sports Illustrateds (worth pittance compared to all those baseball cards my mother chucked), a few ancient copies of Moment and some collector's item copies of the Jerusalem Post when it was left-wing. And then there's my fourth grade math homework, my old harmonica, some Hebrew notebooks with all the original psychedelic alef-bet doodles, and letters; loads of letters, personal, junk and life-transforming -- enough mail to fill the Smithsonian someday after I write the great American-Jewish novel, follow up with my memoirs and die.

But in the unlikely case that I don't become obscenely famous, I've got to start lightening the load.

Baggage accumulation, like the national debt, rises uncontrollably even as we seek to rein it in. Every Pesach I dutifully perform the ritual of spring cleaning, but with each seder comes another albumful of snapshots, accompanying the escalating collection of clippings for the files, books for the shelves, videos for the cabinet, CDs to replace the tapes to replace the LPs to replace the 45s to replace the 78s, to put next to the 486 to replace the 386 to replace the PC Junior to replace the slide rule. If I were to sit down and read all the books I've got lying an a neat pile on my night table, I'd never have the time to scan the millions of pages of literature I can download right now from the Net or on CD ROM. It is petrifying to note that through computer technology I now have accessible to me a Judaic library greater than the cumulative libraries of all the great and not-so-great sages of the last 2,000 years. This baggage has deep value, but one can suffocate from the sheer weight of it.

Judaism has lots of baggage too. Our core acts of religious expression have been smothered by centuries of accumulated embellishment. Though some piyyutim (religious poems) are beautiful, most come across now like the old clothes that fill my closets. Very few of them actually "fit," and by the time you get around to the best stuff, you're too tired from "trying them on" to notice.

But we keep adding layers, to the point where our tallesim are becoming as weighty as those moon suits worn by the astronauts. As I stand during the Amida, straining to lift myself to angelic heights with each utterance of the word "Kadosh," I am weighted down by so much ballast that it is virtually impossible to pray.

Maimonides wrote about 24 things that keep us from truly doing teshuvah. There are umpteen impediments keeping me from truly baring all before God each moment of each day. If the world is a very narrow bridge, as Nachman of Bratzlav suggested, then in order to cross it we've got to cut loose the loaded U-Haul that we are dragging along. The problem is that the things we jettison might prove valuable to others, including our own children. So we shouldn't obliterate everything, rather we should place the superfluous in storage -- somewhere else. Then, free at last, we can begin to negotiate that narrow bridge.

So what could we do without? What weighs me down? For one, we really don't need the New York Times. Try going without it for a week and we might discover something amazing: our own opinions. On a Jewish communal level, we've probably got a few too many organizations and far too many fund raising dinners. We really don't need two days of Yom Tov in the diaspora and we could cut down on the times we repeat the Sh'ma, Kedusha and Ashrei at services. We could do without lengthy sermons and solos too. But these aren't really what weighs us down.

Our primary burdens are self-inflicted. They include feelings of guilt and inadequacy, unresolved relationships with parents, children, spouses and lovers; and hopelessness. The burden comes not from accumulated photos and fourth grade homework, but from seeing those bygone days as our best days. Then there are the burdens of pretension, status-seeking and conformity. The obsessive fear of change is a horrible burden to bear, and the need to always be right. Hatred is equally terrible, taking so much energy to sustain.

When all these burdens are shed, the other trappings hardly matter. So what if there are two Ashreis, five black-tie dinners and a closet full of outsized pants. These are the peripherals. The junk I shlep from place to place can often spring to life with new, sudden significance, if only I could color them with hope and humility.

If only I allowed myself to shed the extraneous layers and bare my soul before God, not allowing anything to get in the way, not the page number I have to announce next, nor the name of the Kiddush sponsor. Then I would truly be God's instrument, a violin in God's hands, allowing myself to share my most beautiful music with God's world.

I am God's instrument, exposed and lithe. And all the old pictures, the extra prayers and ancient periodicals serve to moisten the strings when I myself am stored away for the night. Even my old harmonica has become a life-giving force; it is the instrument of an instrument. These things can easily accompany me across that narrow bridge, not as the ballast but as the bounce.

If only I could let the baggage go.

First email to the congregation

 

Interfaith Dialogue At A Crossroads (Jewish Week)

The Jewish Week, October 18, 1996

It was supposed to be a simple Yom Kippur sermon about the need for Jewish-Christian dialogue, in advance of a major international conference that will bring distinguished clergy and laity to Stamford at the end of October. Since I'm president of the local Council of Churches and Synagogues, the workshop's main sponsor, I felt a need to promote the big event.

All I wanted to do was explain why dialogue is so essential and that Jews and Christians get along so well now that our clergy are doing Volkswagen commercials together (incredible chutzpah by Hitler's automaker, but a true reflection of growing interfaith congeniality). I figured I'd briefly touch on some of the stickier problems, like abortion, anti-Semitism and missionaries.

All went according to plan in my preparations - until I got to missionaries.

I began that section by alluding to the college students, our best and brightest, who had recently been taken in by the missionaries' duplicity. I then added pertinent information about the Southern Baptists and their millennium-inspired conversion frenzy. Suddenly I was the one in a frenzy, and my parenthetical paragraph was expanding rapidly. I wrote of how an estimated 200,000 Jews in North America have converted to Christianity over the past 20 years, more Jews than had voluntarily become apostates over the previous 2,000.

And then I inserted a tidbit that had been told to me only hours before Yom Kippur: that a missionary had been harassing worshipers at our Rosh HaShanah services the week before. It was time to reach into that secret compartment on the reader's lectern - the place where I store the fire and brimstone.

"And to the missionary who was here last week and who I suspect is here today," I cried out that morning, "hear this! Any person on earth is most welcome here to pray, but if your intent is to delegitimize our faith and destroy our people, you are not welcome. We love you, but we will pursue you, and we will delegitimize you, and you will fail, and maybe, when you die, God will forgive you."

Dead silence.

I later found out that the perpetrator left 10 minutes after the sermon, in a huff. But the 1,800 others in attendance didn't know this, and there was a pervasive feeling of having been violated in one's sanctuary. As the anger grew, palpably, the missionaries became in their minds Amalekites, attacking our weakest, our elderly and our students, our hospital patients and immigrants.

Consciously nurturing this bogeyman image, I was able to convey the dangers of Jewish illiteracy and assimilation with an effectiveness that would not have been possible had the sermon been about that most untouchable subject: intermarriage. In fact, many congregants with intermarriages in their families, usually the most defensive when interfaith matters are raised, were among the first to congratulate me for standing up to the missionaries.

I realized that I was on to something.

The Southern Baptists might singlehandedly have saved the Jewish people from extinction, because they gave us a common enemy (Did someone say "scapegoat?") just at the time we were beginning to turn on our own. In throwing down the gauntlet, they just handed Jewish youth groups, camps, day and supplementary schools and Hillels an early Chanukah present, and Jewish federations the campaign theme for their next emergency appeal.

And it's not as if this bogeyman hasn't earned the distinction. With the millennium approaching, and with Jews continuing to defiantly stand in the way of the Second Coming, proselytizing efforts have been increasing dramatically, and will continue to do so. The method of choice will not be Christian hate, as it has been for most of the past 2,000 years, but Christian love combined with an increase in the efforts of the fake Jews to perpetrate their poppycock claims that it is possible to have a foot in both theological camps. Already more than 200 so-called Hebrew Christian "synagogues" exist, and more are on the way.

I've learned that some Yellow Pages listings for places to worship include "Synagogues: Conservative, Orthodox, Reform and Messiaic."

I propose that we boycott any telephone directory that perpetuates the ruse that a person who believes that Jesus is the messiah can possibly be a Jew. Such a person is not a Jew. He or she is an apostate, who can always return to Judaism but will likely have to undergo a ritual re-conversion to do so. This boycott should extend to any media outlet that allows advertising directed at converting unwitting Jews, and any university that allows "Hebrew" Christians to prey freely on our youth.

The work of missionaries is systematic, theologically driven and degrades our heritage. It threatens our survival, takes advantage of our weakest and is dishonest. And it threatens to paralyze Christian-Jewish dialogue.

Which brings me back to this month's workshop. I will gladly sit down with Christians and discuss why Jews believe Isaiah couldn't possibly have been alluding to virgin birth. I will gladly engage in spirited discussion over the differences between Catholic and Jewish theology regarding abortion. I'll dialogue about political matters anytime. But when spiritual genocide is going on, openly, I cannot engage in dialogue with any group that refuses to condemn it and does not try to stop it. We must take the offensive against these modern Amalekites.

In the end, it is in our spiritual self-interest for dialogue to prosper. Love our neighbor we must, because it will enable us to love ourselves. Jewish-Christian dialogue is essential primarily because it will help us to become better Jews and them better Christians. The vast majority of Christians do condemn this form of theological guerrilla warfare being waged by evangelicals, and we need to join forces to break the power of fundamentalism that threatens us all.

As for those otherwise-friendly mainline churches that give financial support to groups like Jews for Jesus, we must let them know how much pain they are causing in the Lord's name. In many cases they know not what they've done.

I'll talk to my colleagues anywhere, any time, but the brave new world of interfaith co-operation is still as fragile as the Israeli-Palestinian accords. Until the missionary issue is resolved, I don't think I'm quite ready to pile into that Volkswagen.

High Holiday Sermons 5757: The Power of Words / Love Our Neighbor, Love Ourselves

Day 1 | Day 2 

First Day Rosh Hashanah: The Power of Words

by Rabbi Joshua Hammerman

Recently I was surfing through the rabbinic chat line, Ravnet, and there appeared a collection of what are called Shul Bloopers, those little mistakes that make a big difference. One rabbi in Westchester wrote of a person who would lead the congregation in the prayer that we say when we return the Torah to the ark, when we conclude, "hadesh yamenu ke-kedem," "Renew our days as of old," this person would sing, "kadesh yamenu kekedem," or, "Make Kiddush all our days with Kedem wine."

A rabbi from Maryland told of the Bar Mitzvah student who began his blessings with, "Baruch ata annoy," or, Blessed are you, but don't bother us," A rabbi in California wrote of a Bar Mitzvah who, when blessing his tallit, said, "Asher Kidshanu bemtizvotav vitzivanu lehadlik ner shel tzitzit," praising God "who has commanded us to kindle the flame of the tzitzit." A sure flag burner in the making there. And then my favorite, from a rabbi in Massachusetts, who had a young student say the blessing over cookies, which usually concludes, borei minei mezonot, only the child said, "Borei pri zonot," thanking God for the fruits of the world's oldest profession.

I bring up these bloopers to make three important points. First: everyone makes mistakes. And much of the time we don't even realize what we've done. But because everyone makes mistakes, we should not be self conscious about it. That's why we've done a lot this past year to reduce that stigma associated with perceived inadequacy in that strange foreign language called Judaism. Our "Davening for Dummies" series has been quite successful and we are continuing it. If you're worried about a lack of expertise, you can't do worse than Borei pri zonot and it's already been done. Nothing can phase us here. If ever you feel totally inadequate, look up here and realize that whatever you feel, I have felt too. If you forgot to put on a kippah and the service is three quarters over, look up here: been there; done that. Message number one: relax and keep trying; Judaism is too precious to give up on simply because it is complicated.

Message number two. Rabbis gossip. Just as congregants often tell tales of rabbis, rabbis love to talk about their congregants. Except me. I've never let my colleagues know about the bloopers that occur here, even the time where the Bat Mitzvah chanting the half kaddish replaced the word tushbechata withtushy bechata. I actually thought it to be a nice poetic commentary about God's more earthy qualities. So rabbis talk about congregants. We talk about other rabbis too. We spread rumors, we spew anger; in short we're human. But while we can and must forgive ourselves for our bloopers, we can't and mustn't accept a propensity to gossip.

And finally message three: the power of words. As we have seen, a single letter can reverse the entire meaning of a prayer. And while these bloopers are primarily laughing matters, the power of words is dead serious.

I would like us all to dedicate these next several days to exploring closely the meaning of these three messages for our lives and our community: the power of words, the danger of gossip and the need to not give up something very Jewish and very right simply because it is difficult.

How often do we think about the words we speak? Judaism understands words to be bearers of holiness. There is no custom of kissing simple ritual objects like candlesticks and kiddush cups. But we kiss a mezuzah because it contains a word, the name of God. Next week we'll recite the Kol Nidre prayer because we understand that the promises we make, to ourselves and God are at the heart of who we are. Words have extraordinary power. Recite fourteen of them over two burning candles on a Friday evening and you have, magically, brought Shabbat peace into your home. Recite only nine while giving or accepting an object of minimal value, usually a plain gold band, and you have sanctified a relationship for eternity.

Words can increase holiness, and words can diminish it: The National Committee for Prevention of Child Abuse has compiled a list of disparaging comments made by angry parents to children, including: "You're pathetic." "You can't do anything right." "You disgust me." "Just shut up." "Hey, stupid. Don't you know how to listen?" "You're more trouble than you're worth." "I wish you were never born." Does anyone here think that a child raise with these words believes that sticks and stones can break our bones but words can never hurt us?

An old Jewish teaching compares the tongue to an arrow. "Why not another weapon, a sword for example?" one rabbi asks. "Because," he is told, "if a person unsheathes his sword to kill his friend and his friend begs for mercy, he can always put the sword aside; but the arrow, once it is shot, cannot be returned, no matter how much the person wants to."

Words. The power of words. A year ago, Zion Square in Jerusalem was filled with protesters crying, "Death to the traitor," and some fringe rabbis gave sanction to those calls through their warped interpretation of Jewish law. A few weeks later, Prime Minister Rabin lay dead in Tel Aviv. It all began with words.

We were beyond consolation; except for the heartfelt words of his granddaughter, and two masterfully chosen words of an American President, "Shalom Haver."

Words. Filled with violence, like the gangsta rap lyrics that glorify killing policemen and abusing women. Words, words that destroy people bloodlessly. Raymond Donovan, President Reagan's first secretary of labor, was the victim of a long campaign of rumors and innuendo, which finally culminated in a criminal prosecution. After running up legal bills in excess of a million dollars, he was acquitted of all charges. When he emerged from the courtroom he posed the bitter question, "Where do I get my reputation back?" One could imagine the security employee accused of the Olympic Park bombing asking the same thing.

In a small Eastern European town a man went through the community slandering the rabbi. One day, feeling suddenly remorseful, he begged the rabbi for forgiveness and offered to undergo any penance to make amends. The rabbi told him to take a feather pillow from his home, cut it open, scatter its feathers in the wind, then return to see him. The man did as he was told, then returned to the rabbi and asked, "Am I now forgiven?" "Almost," came the response. "You just have to do one more thing. Go and gather all the feathers."

"But that's impossible," he replied. "The wind has already scattered them."

"Precisely," the rabbi answered. "And although you truly wish to correct the evil you have done, it is as impossible to repair the damage done by your words as it is to recover those feathers.

This message is not new to us. We hear it every year at this time. Many of the Al Het sins recited on Yom Kippur are about gossip, slander, anger, talebearing and disrespect. Jews have about as many words for bad language as Eskimos do for snow. And it's not because we do it more than anyone else, but it might be because we recognize the dangers more than most. Because we have seen those dangers first-hand.

We Jews have suffered from the big lies and small ones. We have seen Zionism equated with racism in United Nations and we have seen the word Jew as a verb, equated with cheater in the dictionary. We have seen gossip destroy Alfred Dreyfus 100 years ago and that same year, whose centennial we now mark, we have seen how two words could galvanize us and restore hope to our people: the words, "Jewish State." The author: Theodor Herzl.

Yes, you've heard this before and will again, but I contend that we need to understand the power of words now more than ever, and not just because of the hatred that led Yigal Amir to commit his infamous deed. We have, in this community, this country and in this world, reached a crisis in civility that we have never before seen. And the dangers for America, for the Jewish people and for humankind, cannot be overstated.

It's getting mean out there. We see it in the talk shows, we hear it on the radio, we witness it at athletic events, where a fan's right to cheer and boo has now become the right to throw ice pellets at opposing players at a football game, live rats at a hockey game and at a boxing match simply to jump into the ring and start punching.

The motto in newspapers has become, slander now, retract later. Even the gossip columnists think it has gone too far. Liz Smith noted recently that she has been criticized by higher-ups for not attacking people enough. The USA Today's Jeannie Williams concurred, saying that standards of civility among columnists have gone down.

Which brings us to Dick Morris. This is not to condone anything Morris is alleged to have done. Adultery is immoral; and it was immoral when the alleged adulterer was Gary Hart, when it was John F Kennedy, when it was Franklin Roosevelt. But if we ask the question, would the world have been better off had Roosevelt and Kennedy been wiped off the political map as Hart was, and as Clinton almost was, because of this darkest form of gossip, then the answer must be that a person's private life must be allowed to remain private as long as it does not effect job performance. If public figures are to have no private life, than anyone with an ounce of conscience will refuse to run for office; we all have skeletons in our closets, at one time or another, we all have inhaled, so to speak. So who will run for office, if all is fair game? Exactly the kind of brazen, boorish person we would not want to run this country.

What was most alarming about the Morris case was how the allegedly responsible news media justified taking their scoops second hand from a supermarket tabloid. ( I can just imagine the network execs in a smoke-filled room at the Democratic convention, popping the cork and reciting the blessing, "borei p'ri zonot.") It was legitimate news, they said, because the President had opened his personal life up to public view throughout the convention, talking about his brother's drug problem among other matters. Well, that makes no sense at all. It's like saying that if a person decides to give blood he deserves to bleed to death. Just because a candidate wants to select certain elements of his human, private side to reveal to the public, is that an invitation to invade the privacy of his associates? Just because the President invited us into his living room, did that give us license to snoop around his campaign director's bedroom? What was the news here? If humiliation is now legitimate front-page news, we have indeed lost our way.

It's not just journalists. How many fine trial attorneys discover that their reputations can only be enhanced not just by discrediting the opposition, but by destroying them. And it isn't just in law and journalism where malicious gossip is put to use for profit, it's found all over the business world, at the water fountain and in the board room; it's found in medicine and science, it was virtually invented in academia and it certainly has its place in Jewish community life, and it's even on Ravnet. And if you don't believe it has gotten worse out there, calculate if you can exactly how many reputations were utterly decimated by the O.J. Simpson trial. Two people were murdered, we know that, but the damage only began there, for no one who was involved in that judiciary circus emerged unscathed. Historians will have to look no further than that trial when determining when American society hit rock bottom.

And then there are politicians. Joseph Telushkin, in promoting his new book, "Words That Hurt - Words That Heal," which I've just had the pleasure of reading and reviewing, tried to marshall support for a national "Speak No Evil Day." A great, if somewhat idealistic concept, a sort of "National Smoke Out" for the tongue, one day when we would all try just a little bit harder to refrain from excessive anger, unfair criticism, public and private humiliation, bigoted comments, cruel jokes, rumors and malicious gossip: those things that traumatize us all and destroy so many lives. Sounds like an easy sell, an apple pie issue, right?

Telushkin came upon a day, May 14, as the National Speak No Evil Day. He found two senators to co-sponsor a bi-partisan resolution, our own Senator Lieberman and Senator Connie Mack of Florida; the bill was sent to the Judiciary Committee and there it rested, awaiting the 50 needed signatures to send it on to the Senate floor. The resolution reached the committee 13 months ago. May 14 came and went. The bill died. It never reached the floor of the Senate. It has since been reintroduced, with the target date of May 14, 1997.

Abraham, the hero of our reading today, asked of God, "Are there not 50 righteous people in the city of Sodom, and for their sake will you not save the city." There were not. Are there now not 50 civil Senators to sign this innocuous resolution promoting civilized discourse? Alas, the answer appears to be no. Is it possible that our nation's leaders don't feel themselves capable of resisting character assassination and innuendo even for a single day? I would hope not.

No doubt gossip can be good at times. After all, that is what is the mishaberach prayer, the get well prayer is all about: empathic people talking about one another. Language can be our most life enhancing tool and language can be our most lethal weapon. But at some point in this century, the innocent busybody bantering of Yenta the Matchmaker became the lethal three bullets of Yigal Amir. At the time of the assassination last fall, the Jewish world was awash in proclamations decrying inflammatory speech, but that clamor has long since subsided. Now it has been replaced by more of the same. In Israel, inflammatory language has recently led to death threats against Reform rabbis and a Supreme Court Justice. We're back to business-as-usual, with far less communicating and much more excommunicating going on. This has got to stop. 2,000 years ago, Jerusalem was destroyed because of malicious use of language, the Talmud tells us -- it is happening again.

The world has fallen steeply since Yenta. In America, in Israel and here in our own community, our words destroy lives daily. We are killers and we don't even realize it. On a daily basis we rip open that pillow and allow those feathers to fly, and each feather is an arrow straight to someone's heart. We must become far more sensitive to each utterance, even each raised eyebrow. That's what our tradition demands.

How can we change things? Rabbi Milton Steinberg once said. "When I was younger, I admired clever people. Now that I am older, I admire kind people." We need to do that more. We need to show our greatest admiration not for those who claim to be in the know, but for those who know how to keep that arrow in the bow. What do we gain, after all, by telling gossip? Does it enhance our status? Does it make us part of the in-crowd? Judaism prohibits gossip, which we call "lashon hara," evil language, even when the rumor is true, because we always color the truth with our own anger, our own shadings of the truth. We must turn our back on rumor and assume it is false and politely but firmly, turn our backs on the rumor-spreader as well. We must declare an all out war on verbal terrorism. This must be indeed a second Civil War -- a war to restore civility to our ruptured civilization.

In the Torah, when Miriam spoke one-dimensionally about Moses and his relationship with a foreign woman, she was inflicted with leprosy. Leprosy is the Torah's way of saying that those who abuse the right of social conversation, must be sent out of the community where their tongue can do no more harm. When we hear garbage, we shouldn't have to wait 'til pickup day to take out the trash.

But not self-righteously, because we all do it. We are addicted to gossip. This is perhaps the only mitzvah where the Torah expects everyone to fall short of the mark. It's human nature to be insecure, to want to feel important, in the know. As Joseph Telushkin writes, "The desire to seem important can impel otherwise rational people to act in a pathetically dishonest way." And it's human nature to be angry at times and to channel that anger into twisted facts and distorted tales, anything to help us sustain our anger, because it takes so much energy to hate. But we can change it. I am convinced that we can. We must.

A week from now on Shabbat Shuvah, we'll read the immortal words of the prophet Hosea, "Take words with you and return to the Lord. Instead of bulls, our offering will come from our lips." On these days of repentance, let us inscribe each word we utter into the book of life -- let us aim higher than ever before in how we speak. Let us aim for nothing less than perfection. I actually tried it. For one day, I tried to make my every utterance a vessel of Godliness. Of course I failed, but that's not the point. The point is that it changed me. And it could change you too.

This morning, I propose that we take Telushkin's Speak No Evil Day and we try it, right here. But not for a day: for a week. Starting at the end of services tomorrow until the shofar blast at the end of Yom Kippur. Starting tomorrow. From tomorrow to Yom Kippur, for the duration of the Ten Days, I challenge you to see how far you can go.

Of course no one has to do this. You know me well enough by now to understand that my aim is to challenge, not coerce. If enough of us try, however, our community will never be the same again. And we can do it. We can support each other, because we know that this is one sin that we've all committed, probably within the last ten minutes. We come into this project as a team. We also know that no one can possibly succeed completely. Yet that does not mean we are doomed to failure. I feel that this congregation is ready to set a precious example for others. 

The concept of Shmirat ha-lashon, sensitivity in what we say, is as central to Judaism as Shabbat, tzedakkah and Israel. Yet most people don't know this, probably because it is so difficult. We who are committed Jews, and that means all of us because we are here today: how could we abandon a core principle of Judaism simply because it is hard?

So how do we do it? Today I've presented the problem; tomorrow, you'll hear the solution. Tomorrow, I'll prepare you, as best I can, for a ten-day journey the likes of which this community has never experienced. I'll also tell you what happened to me when I tried it for a day. In the meantime, there are copies of The Ten Days project guide at your seats and out in the lobby to take home with you today. Take a look at it tonight, and tomorrow we'll go into basic training. While it already feels good for us to be here together, this is something that will bring us together even more. From this common quest we will share more than ancestral heritage and congregational affiliation: we will share an adventure of stunning proportions and unlimited potential. A congregation of shared geography is about to become a congregation of shared purpose. The Civil War has begun. It's time to start being extraordinarily nice. If we all take part, these ten days will shake the world.

Second Day Rosh Hashanah - "The Ten Days" Project

The humorist Art Buchwald once wrote a column about riding in a New York taxi with a friend. When they got out, his friend said to the driver, "Thank you for the ride. You did a superb job of driving." The driver was stunned for a second. Then he said, "Are you a wise guy or something?"

"No, my dear man. and I'm not putting you on. I admire the way you keep cool in heavy traffic."

"Yeah," the driver said and drove off.

"What was that all about?" Buchwald asked his companion.

"I was just trying to bring love back to New York City," he said. "I believe it's the only thing that can save the city."

"How can love save New York?"

"It's not one man. I believe I have made the taxi driver's day. Suppose he has twenty fares. He's going to be nice to those twenty fares because someone was nice to him. Those fares will in turn be kinder to their employees or shop-keepers or waiters or even their own families. Eventually the goodwill could spread to at least 1,000 people. Now that isn't bad, is it?"

"But you're depending on the taxi driver to pass that good will on to others."

"I'm not depending on it," the friend said. "I'm aware that the system isn't foolproof, so I might deal with ten people today. If out of ten, I can make three happy, then eventually I can indirectly influence the attitudes of 3,000 more."

"It sounds good on paper," Buchwald said, "but I'm not so sure it works in practice."

"Nothing is lost if it doesn't," came the response. "It didn't take any of my time to tell that man that he was doing a good job. He neither received a larger tip not a smaller tip. If it fell on deaf ears, so what? Tomorrow there will be another taxi driver whom I can try to make happy."

"You're some kind of nut," Buchwald said.

The friend replied, "That shows how cynical you have become."

We have become so cynical about our world and our ability to change it. So cynical that we have lost that part of the Jewish message that lies at its core: the belief in the enchantment of words. Imagine if all of us complimented cab drivers. Imagine if we all complimented each other.

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin writes of the case of Ian O'Gorman, a ten year old cancer patient in Oceanside, California. The doctors warned him that his ten week regimen of chemotherapy would cause his hair to fall out, so to limit the trauma, the boy had his head shaved. One can only imagine Ian's feelings when he returned to school, prematurely bald, and found that the thirteen other boys in his fifth grade class, and the teacher, greeted him with their heads completely shaved. What an extraordinary gesture, one that didn't require a single word, but one that screamed out I Love You in a manner that transcended words.

Indeed, gestures and words can heal. When we have healing services here, there is no voodoo or laying of hands. All we offer are words of love and support. And they work. In today's reading, when Isaac asked his father where is the lamb for the sacrifice, at this point probably engulfed in fear, Abraham responds, first, "heneni v'ni," I am here my son, then he says, "Elohim yireh lo ha seh l'olah b'ni," "God will provide the lamb for the offering, my son." It was no lie. And Abraham did not know how things would turn out. He was likely hoping against hope. But however he felt, he was placed in extremis, in a situation so dire that no one should have to face it, a choice so excruciating, yet through it all he found the words that could provide the most comfort to his son, most notably the word, b'ni -- my son, which he used twice. Through it all, b'ni. You remain my son, b'ni. I love you more than my actions can ever say, b'ni. With that one word, I can imagine Abraham running his fingers through Isaac's hair and calling him myiskite or motek or sweetie, the way Jewish fathers have been comforting their children ever since Abraham, the way my father caressed me. Jewish fatherhood began on that fateful day with that word "b'ni."

Words are life-affirming, words are enchantment, words have power. Last spring we lost a dear member of our temple family who was an exemplar of the power of positive speaking. Through his career, Mel Allen must have uttered millions of words in public, and yet so few, so few were spoken in malice, so few in anger, so few filled with gossip or spite. That's why he was mourned so passionately by people who never met him. With his kind words, he made people feel special. The letters I received from his fans were a testimony to that power of words. This is the power that we must all marshall.

And now I want to tell you how we can do it. The Ten Days project has two parts; one is to eliminate negative speech from our lives, and the other is to nurture our abilities to speak words that heal. First, out with the bad.

It is our good fortune that the greatest champion of sacred speech that the Jewish world has ever known lived in our century. Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan was also known as the Chafetz Hayyim, the Seeker of Life, after a book he wrote with that title. Kagan was the first to systematize the laws of gossip for a popular audience. He died in 1933, which is just about when everything began to go awry for the civilized world. Now, as distilled by the Chafetz Hayyim, here is how Jewish law instructs us to clean up our use of language.

• It is considered lashon hara, evil speech, to convey a derogatory image of someone even if that image is true and deserved. A statement that is not actually derogatory but can ultimately cause someone physical, financial or emotional harm is also lashon hara.

• It is lashon hara to recount an incident that contains embarrassing damaging information about a person, even if there is not the slightest intent that s/he should ever suffer harm or humiliation.

• Lashon hara is forbidden by Jewish law even if you incriminate yourself as well.

• Lashon hara cannot be communicated in any way shape or form, for instance through writing, verbal hints, even raised eyebrows. When that person you can't stand turns away and you roll your eyes in disgust to a third party, that is a form of slander known as "Avak Lashon Hara," the residue of evil speech.

• To speak against a community is a particularly severe offense.

• Lashon hara cannot be related even to close relatives, even to your spouse. The columnist Dennis Prager argues that this goes too far, saying, "If you never speak about other people with your partner, you're probably not very intimate with each other." Telushkin suggests that if we are going to gossip we should develop a way of talking about others that is as kindly and fair as we would want others to be when talking about us.

• Even something that is already well known should not be repeated. Princess Di had an affair. Yes, she admitted it before billions of people in TV. Too bad. We still can't talk about it unless that information has a direct bearing on the well-being of the person we're talking to.

• Tattling is a no no. This is called Rechilut in Hebrew. The crux is this: if you know that a person has spoken badly about your friend, you don't go to your friend and tell him, because all it does is cause him pain and provoke animosity between the friend and that other person. Well, you ask, shouldn't we have a right to hear what's being said about us? In practice, however, the one small piece of gossip transmitted often provides a totally false impression. Who here has never said a negative thing about the person you love the most? How devastating it would be for a so-called friend to tell our loved one about it. Mark Twain said, "It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you."

• And finally, not only does Judaism prohibit the spreading of lashon hara, we can't listen to it either. And when we can't help but hear it, we are instructed not to believe it. Imagine how different our lives would be if everybody gave the victim of gossip the benefit of the doubt. Dick Morris might still be employed. Oliver Sipple might still be alive.

Oliver Sipple was an American hero, an ex-Marine who saved the life of President Ford in 1975 by grabbing an assassin's gun in San Francisco just as she was about to shoot. When reporters came to interview him, he had only one request: that they not publish anything about him. This only led the reporters to dig into his history, and in profiling him they trumpeted the fact that he was active in Gay causes in San Francisco. One reporter confronted Sipple's mother in Detroit and asked about her son's apparent homosexuality. She was visibly stunned; she had known nothing about it. Shortly thereafter, she stopped speaking to her son. When she died four years later, Sipple's father informed his son that he would not be welcome at her funeral. Devastated by the rupture in his family, Sipple began to drink heavily. He became increasingly withdrawn. A few years later, he was found in his apartment, dead at age 47.

The Los Angeles Times reporter who had publicized Sipple's homosexuality made this postmortem comment: "If I had to do it over again," I wouldn't." The Talmud states that the gossiper stands in Syria and kills in Rome. If I were to ask you to please try to refrain from murder over the next several days, you would not think that an unreasonable request. Well, that is exactly what I am asking you to do. This week, we will take a stand in Stamford, and who knows how many lives we will save.

So now, with these principles of Jewish law in mind, what am I asking us all to do this week? Here are some realistic, achievable guidelines on how we can bring ethical speech into our daily lives. And remember this always, bad speech is an addiction, no less than nicotine and alcohol. It will not be easy. But here's what we can at least try to do, using Telushkin's recommendations as a model:

1. Regarding gossip that is true, remember: when we make comments, even positive comments, about someone, the conversation can easily drift into a negative direction. When we say, "I think Chuck is great," the next inevitable utterance out of someone's mouth will be, "But..." or "If only he..." Whenever you are about to discuss another person, think about Oliver Sipple. 
2. Regarding negative truths, recall the advice of the 18th century Swiss theologian, Jonathan K. Lavater: "Never tell evil of a man if you do not know it for a certainty, and if you know it for a certainty, then ask yourself, 'Why should I tell it?'" Sometimes this information must be relayed, if for instance, a person is about to go into business with a convicted embezzler. But then you tell the person who would be affected and no one else; and there is no need to exaggerate. Let the facts speak for themselves. Be specific, be precise, be fair. Otherwise, follow the advice of the ancient sage Ben Sira: "Have you heard something? Let it die with you. Be strong; it will not burst you."
3. As for blatant rumors and lies - motzi shem ra: when you are party to a rumor that just doesn't make sense, recall all the lies about the Jews that cost so many millions to suffer and die: the lie that the Black Death was caused because Jews poisoned the wells; the blood libels accusing Jews of using the blood of Christian children in their matzohs, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, accepted to this day by Louis Farrakhan and others who believe in a massive Jewish conspiracy described here last week by Henry Lewis Gates, this outlandish idea that a dozen rabbis rule the world. I happen to know personally that rabbis don't rule the world, we can't even get their congregants to come to morning minyan. Don't believe a rumor, don't spread it, unless there is a real danger to an individual, then you go to that person alone and make sure to say that the rumor is unconfirmed. Needless to say, all cruel ethnic jokes and bigoted comments, anything that stereotypes a group or individual, must be avoided.
4. Regarding anger, a very powerful emotion -- let's try to limit our expression of anger to the incident that provoked it and deal directly with the person at whom we are angry. Don't drag in anything and anyone else. And for those of us who have a talent of channeling our anger into the snidest form of humor, one of my specialties, we've got to avoid it. You wouldn't believe how much sarcasm has been excised from these sermons and left on the cutting room floor. It might make my writing less spicy and more boring, but it will be more holy too.
5. And we should try to fight fair. The idea in an argument is not to win but to achieve peace, not to embarrass or to humiliate, but to elevate the quality of the relationship. The one comment that we will forever regret, that one knockout punch, is the one that should never leave our lips. How many families have relatives that are not on speaking terms. There is no need for a show of hands. It's probably about half the families here. And how many would there be if only that one last gotcha line had been resisted. And, I should add, if only that terrible line had been taken back, and forgiven. Also, let's stay away from inflammatory language. If you don't like the coffee, there is no need to say, "This coffee is disgusting." Simply brew yourself another cup.
6. Criticism often must be offered, but how? Jewish law is very specific about this. It should be offered in private; it should be offered gently and tenderly, and it should be offered out of genuine concern for the wrongdoer. No other format is valid. Public rebuke is simply unacceptable.
7. And how should we accept criticism? By resisting the temptation to become defensive or gain revenge by pointing out the weaknesses of the other; rather we should ask ourselves if the criticism is in fact correct, and how can I take this information and improve myself?
8. Judaism considers public humiliation as akin to murder. And it can be subtle. The Talmud warns us to be careful not to say in public, "Will someone hang this fish for me," to a person whose relative has been hanged for a crime. I can recall being crushed at age 12 when I must have made some goof up and a boy at camp called me a retard, when in fact my brother is mentally retarded. For us the temptation is always there to make fun of a handicap, a deformation or failure to achieve professional success. How many people have we dubbed a "loser" this year? We just must recall that life and death are in the power of the tongue. For the Jew, heroism is measured in self restraint.
9. Lying: let's keep from it, unless the truth would inflict unnecessary pain. When your spouse or child comes downstairs and says "How do I look," think twice before telling the truth. The Talmud goes into a long discussion about what to say if the person looks to you as if he or she just rolled out of an IRT train at 2 A.M. The decision? In most cases, you say, simply, "You look great, honey."
10. And what happens, inevitably, when we fail, which we all will do, and often. Let's put it this way: if the speed limit is 55 and you catch yourself doing 60, do you then go up to 100 simply because your speeding anyway? Stay as close to 55 as you can and see what happens. All of this will probably mean that for one week at least you will not be the life of the party; unless everyone at the party happens to be from Beth El. I've actually made this easier for you than it was for me the first time around, because people will know why you're always changing the subject when they want to gossip with you. You can just blame me -- only not by name. And there's no need to cancel hair appointments. Just keep the guidelines in mind and you'll be fine, no matter what anyone else says to you. Our goal is not to change others, at least not overtly, but to improve ourselves. No need to climb into a hole for the week.

And what happens will change our lives. I guarantee it. And that's why I highly recommend that you keep a journal each day of how you confronted various challenges presented you. After Yom Kippur, I would love it if some of you could write some general conclusions and even jot down some non incriminating anecdotes and send them to me. Perhaps they could be compiled as primary source material for the coming generation to learn about the Ten Days that changed our community and changed our lives.

I said that this Ten Days project has two parts. Once we've eliminated the bad, we can fill that space with good words. And this is what we should inscribe into the Book of Life this week: Words of appreciation. Words of understanding. Words of forgiveness. Words of love. In other words, prayer. Whether spoken to God or to your spouse, parent or child, all created in God's image, these are prayers. When the week is over, it would be wonderful if you could write down some of your own personal prayers, and perhaps these too could be collected and compiled. I would love to have our congregation write a prayerbook, a supplement much like the yellow book we use on the Holidays, but available to everyone every day of the year. And created exclusively by us. What a magnificent offering that would be. Send me your poems; send me your passages; send me your favorite quotes, yes even things that you didn't write but that have special meaning to you. Some congregations compile cookbooks. Let us create a prayerbook. Our Ten Days journey will have an even longer lasting impact if we share our experiences and our hopes and dreams as well.

Allow me to describe for you what happened to me when I tried to be extraordinarily nice, cold turkey for a day earlier this year. Just to give you a taste of what we are in for, let me quote from my journal entries of that day. I began at 5:00 on a Monday afternoon.

5:30: my mother calls. By 5:40 I decide to postpone the beginning of my Speak No Evil Day until after the phone call. I refuse to answer the phone for the rest of the night. Next morning. I tip toe out the door before anyone else is awake. Later, driving to my rounds at the hospital, I switch the radio from anything that resembles lashon ha-ra to something safe. I bypass Imus and Stern and land on classical music. I miss the dirt. I need coffee.

9:25: An elderly patient whispers to me that the hospital is filled with anti semites conspiring to steal her flowers. I hold her hand, calmly, saying, "The people here are very nice." The word nice is beginning to get to me. As I leave the hospital, I smile at everyone, including an orderly sweeping the floor. He seems agitated. I am stepping on his mop.

11:30: Back in the office, I take a phone call from a man moving to the 'burbs from Manhattan. I try to talk up Stamford without saying anything derogatory about the noisy, filthy, crime infested city he inhabits. It's not easy. I'm famished.

With each encounter that follows, I walk on eggshells. A close friend calls, a primary source for community gossip. I'm afraid to ask a simple, "How is everything" for fear of getting us started. I have a deep thirst for some juicy stuff and sense an unnatural distance between us. What can I say to convey warmth without it being at the expense of innocent others? Through the day, I manage to deflect deprecatory comments about everyone from the Lubavicher Rebbe to Yasser Arafat.

3:30: I am courteous, through gritted teeth, to a phone solicitor offering a VISA gold card to "Rabie Hammerman" 3:40: I stand before 75 restless Hebrew School students, with a splitting headache and a desire to dock them from life eternal if they don't calm down. I'm ready to give myself over to a higher power.

Exhausted, I go home, flick on the tube and hear Dole attacking Forbes. I turn it off. In local news, one of my children informs me that the other was pinching and kicking at gymnastics class. From day one we are programmed to blame and defame. I understand now that with or without a Senate resolution, each of us will have to shake this addiction alone, step by step, word by word. But it will be much easier if we do it together.

I was asked by someone, "How can you measure success?" We have already succeeded. If only some of us become only a little bit more sensitive to the use of language, we have succeeded. We have just begun. What happens from here is entirely up to you. And I have a great faith in the people of this congregation and in people in general. If a man can jump off the Tappan Zee Bridge to save a total stranger, several hundred people can try to be nice for a week. But it doesn't matter now -- my words have been released like feathers in the wind, and I know not where they will land.

The Chafetz Hayyim wrote a prayer, which he recited each morning to help him maintain vigilance inShmirat Ha-lashon. I close with an excerpt:

Gracious and merciful God, help me to restrain myself from speaking or listening to derogatory, damaging or hostile speech. I will try not to engage in lashon ha-ra, either about individuals or about an entire group of people. I will strive to say nothing that contains falsehood, insincere flattery, scoffing or elements of needless dispute, anger, arrogance, oppression or embarrassment to others. Grant me the strength to say nothing unnecessary, so that all my actions and speech cultivate a love for your creatures and for You. 

At the beginning of the Amida we whisper a verse taken from the psalms: Oh Adonai, open my lips that my mouth might speak Your praise." Every time I say that prayer, I allow those words to roll off my tongue slowly. Like the shofar, our voices are echoes of divinity; each utterance contains a whispering remnant of the thunder at Sinai. Let that thundering whisper roll from our lips this week. May God grant all of us the courage to do something outlandishly good and decent these next eight days, and may our own words inscribe the entire world for life in the year - and the journey - that we have just begun.

Source material taken from the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), Talmud, Midrashic Collections and High Holidays Machzor, as well as... 

Words That Hurt, Words That Heal: How to Choose Words Wisely and Well, by Joseph Telushkin (William Morrow and Co. N.Y., 1996)

Chofetz Chaim: A Lesson A Day -- The Concepts and Laws of Proper Speech, (based on works of Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan of Radin, Sefer Chafetz Chaim and Shmiras Halashon) (Mesorah Publications, Brooklyn, N.Y., in conjunction with the Chafetz Chaim Heritage Foundation, 620 Coney Island Ave., Brooklyn, N.Y. 11218 / (718) 871-6700 or (800) 867-2482)

It's A Mitzvah: Step-by-Step to Jewish Living, by Bradley Shavit Artson (Behrman House, W.Orange N.J., and Rabbinical Assembly, New York, N.Y., 1996)