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Yehudi: Jews Means Thankful When Gratitude Isn't Easy

This was the D'var Torah I gave on Saturday, November 28, the Shabbat of Thanksgiving weekend 2020.

We Jews have three major names in the Tanakh, in the Bible. When other people are around, we’re sometimes called Ivri or Hebrew -- the people from over-there, from the other side of the tracks, the parevenu. When we’re among ourselves, we’re known mostly as Yisrael -- the ones who struggle with God and with other people, according to the story where that name originates. And we’re also known as Yehudi or Jew -- the people of thanksgiving. Yehudi has the same root as todah, thank you.

I bet when you hear or use the words Jew or Jewish, gratitude is not top of mind. I never really thought about it myself until a few years ago.

You could say that these three biblical names of ours are three dimensions of our deep consciousness -- the other, the struggler, the one who is thankful. 

Really most of the traditional literature through our history uses the term Yisrael, the wrestler or struggler. First thing in the morning we say Baruch..She-asani Yisrael -- that’s how we bless God for making me a member of this group. Just like the real Hebrew word for Judaism is Torah, the Hebrew word for Jew for most of our history has been Yisrael.

But we have this other name, and it’s the one that’s become the most common -- Jew or Yehudi. The history behind the name has to do with the disappearance of the ten tribes, leaving basically some Levites and almost everyone else from the tribe of Judah and the territory of Judah. Yehudah, Yehudim. Judah-ites, Judeans, which in transliteration to Greek and Latin eventually becomes Jews.

Anyway, in our parasha, the name Yehudah comes from Leah Imeinu. When her fourth son was born, she said hapa’am odeh et Adonai -- this time, this moment, I am thanking Adonai -- and so she called his name Yehudah, from odeh, I am thanking.

This time, says Leah, this moment I am thanking Adonai. Leah’s life as a whole was not full of the kinds of things that make easily for gratitude. She was the unwanted wife of Yaakov. Her situation did not change the way she hoped it might when she had children for Yaakov. She called her first son Reuven, saying God has seen my suffering. She called the second Shimon, God has heard that I am not loved. She called the third Levi, saying maybe now my husband will become close to me.

She called the fourth one Yehudah, saying: right now I am giving thanks for Adonai. Hapa’am odeh et Adonai.

Leah’s gratitude is not a contentment of having things good all in all and taking time to notice it. Leah’s thanksgiving is not a blessing she says at a turning point in her life from bad to good. Things don’t turn around for her particularly after Yehudah is born. For the time being, she is ignored, if things aren’t actually worse. At a moment when it’s not easy or about to be easier, Leah says todah, and she gives all of us our name.

This year it’s not as easy to feel gratitude on a Thanksgiving weekend, and there are many in our community here today for whom the holiday weekend makes harder a year of loss. Some of that loss seems like it should never have happened to begin with -- loss of loved ones, loss of income, loss of connections. So maybe this year we might particularly tune into how it is that Leah could say this moment I am thankful, hapa’am odeah.

Actually every year on this weekend I find myself grappling a bit with how to teach about gratitude, because of a worry that preaching gratitude might sound like saying the world as we have it is enough. So I went looking for a teaching that would speak to this concern, and found a teaching from Rabbi Alex Weissman, from Attleboro, Massachusetts and T’ruah, the rabbinic human rights organization. 

Rabbi Weissman says we need a perspective of gratitude especially at the moments we are looking at imperfection. He says that when we talk about tikkun olam, we run a risk of overfocusing on brokenness. We might easily fall into a spiral where we need negativity to generate the motivation to act, and where our own personal blessings make us feel guilty rather than thankful. 

Though he doesn’t use this language, Rabbi Weissman says it’s not sustainable only to think of ourselves as Yisrael, as the ones who struggle -- we need to be Jews, Yehudim, people of gratitude.

Rabbi Weissman brings out this insight through a debate in the Talmud about the word Halleluyah. In the book of Psalms, the first time we see the word Halleluyah is at the end of Psalm 104. “Sinners will be ended from the earth and evildoers nevermore exist -- o my soul, bless Adonai, Halleluyah.” Yitamu chata’im min ha’aretz ur’sha’im od einam, barchi nafshi et Adonai, Halleluyah.

The Talmud concludes from this that King David, composer of the psalms, could not bring himself to say Halleluyah until he could see the downfall of the wicked. But the Talmud brings another view in the name of Beruriah, the wife of Rabbi Meir and a great scholar in her own name. Rabbi Meir was being harassed by local hooligans, and he prayed for their death. Beruriah said to him: I bet you think you are relying on this verse -- “let sinners be ended from the earth” -- but you read it wrong. Yitamu chatai’m means not that sinners will disappear but that sin will  disappear. You should pray for them to do teshuvah, then say Halleluyah!

Rabbi Weissman says that Beruriah’s Halleluyah is what gratitude really is. It’s not just thankfulness for what we have today, and it’s not even the ability to imagine the disappearance of today’s negative. It’s a vision, he says, handed down from our ancestors. Their experiences of liberation and healing, and their prophetic visions, are more than the absence of what’s broken and missing. They are a beautiful picture of the world after pain and loss. They are a song of Halleluyah.

When we can’t say thank you from our own personal experience, Beruriah says: sing Halleluyah on behalf of our ancestors, or on behalf of the future, or on behalf of someone you care about who is safe, who is well. And when you can say thank you out of our own deep contentment, remember to make yourself a person who can be a reason someone else has to give thanks. That’s Halleluyah -- not cold and broken, but truly joyful.

In the winter of 2017 our local interfaith council had a meeting to talk about immigration issues as the Trump Administration was initiating its all-out assault on people here without documentation. One of our presenters was Maggie Fogarty, who was and is one of our state’s leading faith leaders and activists on these issues. I asked her in front of the group how spiritually she was facing all of this, and she surprised me with a version of Beruriah’s Halleluyah. 

Maggie answered me without hesitation, and in the peaceful way that I’ve come to see as her hallmark in the middle of struggle. She said there is joy in the fellowship of people showing up to stand by others, and in the music of voices singing together on days of success and even on days of defeat. She said she was choosing to be curious about the people on the other side who were absolutely in favor of the harassment and deportations Maggie was and is organizing against, rather than feeling overpowered by them. She said she was certain that all of this would be worthwhile, for all of the four years to come. It was quite a Halleluyah, and it sustains me and I think a lot of others. Whenever I am grateful for Maggie, I think about what it would take for me to be someone who others would have good reason to be grateful for too.

The very first song of Thanksgiving, according to the midrash, was composed by Adam and Eve. Mizmor Shir l’Yom HaShabbat: Tov l’hodot l’Adonai -- the song of Shabbat:  It is good to thank Adonai. The midrash says they composed this song on the first and only Shabbat in the Garden of Eden, when they knew they’d be packing their bags after Havdalah. 

Even with all that, they gave thanks for a day in the garden, for knowing that a garden of Eden is possible; for a day of Shabbat; for each other and the hard lesson from the divine; for knowing there was light the morning after. At that moment, they sang thank you, and hoped we would sing their song and remember that their paradise is real any day we don’t have it yet.

Eve passed her song to Leah, who named Yehudah and named us, and Leah’s thankfulness in a hard time became Beruriah’s Halleluyah. These are all variations on a theme, of finding thanksgiving even as we await a better time and strive for a better world. We need such thanksgiving, just as we need Shabbat as a weekly thanksgiving that powers us into a new week. We are not only Yisrael, the strivers, but Yehudim, Jews, the ever-thankful people.

The Sacrifice of Yitzchak: Remembering Rabin on the Anniversary of His Assassination

October 29, 2020 is by the Jewish calendar the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin z"l, by a Jewish religious extremist opposed to Rabin's peacemaking with the Palestinians. This is the D'var Torah I gave five years ago for Rabin's yahrzeit.

This is the week of the 20th yahrzeit for Yitzchak Rabin, the prime minister of Israel who was assassinated by a Jewish religious religious fanatic.  By the Jewish calendar it was last Sunday, and by the secular calendar next Wednesday.  His murder took place in the first hours of the week of פרשת וירא, this morning’s reading, and I will never forget one of the headlines in an Israeli paper the week of his funeral:  עקדת יצחק, the sacrifice of Yitzchak.

There is a particular story told about Yitzchak Rabin in all the biographies and memoirs from Israel’s War of Independence.  It was June of 1948, only about a month after the State of Israel officially came into being.  The Jews of Jerusalem were under siege, living truly near starvation, because the road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was cut off around its midpoint by the Arab Legion, which was holding a police fortress in a place called Latrun.  The Israelis had already tried several times to storm Latrun without success.  The fortress was on ground just high enough to see the plain around it, and the Israelis did not have enough troops to take it by overwhelming force.  The battles for Latrun had been some of the costliest in the war in terms of lives lost; many of the soldiers had been refugees from the Holocaust, just liberated from displaced persons camps, with almost no training and no language in common to hear instructions in battle.

As dire as the siege was in Jerusalem, there were Arab armies threatening Jewish areas all over the country.  The Israeli commanders felt they had to make choices about where to deploy their limited number of trained forces, and they knew that attacking Latrun again would be futile  But David Ben Gurion was obsessed with Latrun and had summoned his army leaders repeatedly to demand an attack on Latrun to open the road to Jerusalem.

The commanders responsible in early June for the area of the road to Jerusalem included Mickey Marcus, an American Jew and experienced solider who had come to volunteer.  Some of you may know him and this part of the war through the film “Cast a Giant Shadow”, where he was played by Kirk Douglas.  Also Yigal Allon, commander of the Palmach, the most elite and well-trained Jewish fighting group.  Yitzchak Rabin was the young commander of the Harel Brigade of the Palmach.  Ben Gurion summonded his commanders, and Alon and Marcus knew they would be asked to divert their scarce resources to Latrun, and when they would object they would be subject to Ben Gurion’s fury.

So they decided instead to sacrifice Yitzchak.  The 26-year-old Rabin went by himself to talk to Ben-Gurion, to present an alternative proposal.  By accident, one of Rabin’s underlings had discovered a way to go around Latrun, out of sight of the Arabs, and create a path for supplies to get to Jerusalem.   Rabin would propose that they pave a new supply route and avoid Latrun altogether.

When Rabin came to Ben Gurion, the prime minister lived up to his name, son of a lion cub, and flew into a two-hour rage.  Yitzchak was astounded as Ben Gurion at one point threatened to shoot his own commander, Yigal Allon, in the head, but Rabin stood his ground.  Where other times Ben Gurion had overruled a more senior commander and ordered an attack on Latrun, not this time.  The attack did not take place, the road was built, and the siege of Jerusalem came to an end just in the nick of time.

For people who knew Rabin or wrote later about his life, that confrontation with Ben Gurion exemplified a couple key things about the man.  His wife Leah wrote in her memoir that as a commander and a statesman, Yitzchak was fanatical about his goals and but always looking for the least costly way to achieve them.  He tried to minimize risk to soldiers in battle -- by doing his own detail work of intelligence and reconnaissance to outmaneuver his enemy, by considering creative alternatives, rather than relying on superior force alone which could lose more more lives.  After Ben Gurion, Rabin was probably the most detail-oriented and methodical prime minister Israel has ever had.

The confrontation with Ben-Gurion also showed how little Rabin was interested in ingratiating himself with anyone if those things put the mission at risk.  He didn’t care overly about the feelings of his peers or his superiors, but about the many people he knew less well, the men who served under him.  So Rabin didn’t bother to join Mapai, Ben Gurion’s political party, even though he would have advanced much faster if he had.  He had no hesitation when he was prime minister about cutting his own mentor, Yigal Allon, down to size when he disagreed with him.  

Later on, as Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. and then as prime minister, Rabin could be plenty sharp and critical.  He could seem detached.  But at the same time, and this was key -- as long as he could win he had no need to demonize the people who disagreed with him.

These were not the things we call people skills.  Rabin was not a jolly man, and in no way a glad-handing politician.  Leah reprints a letter she received when they were dating in the mid-1940s and Yitzchak was imprisoned by the British, and it was more like a business letter than a love letter.  Rabin was not beloved or revered, the way his peers like Moshe Dayan would be.  He didn’t unite his country when he was prime minister or when he signed the agreement with PLO on the White House lawn.  It seemed ridiculous to me when Bill Clinton called Rabin his friend.

Yet without the typical people skills, Rabin was able, at key times, to surprise people and earn their trust.  How could Rabin have possibly negotiated with the Palestinians?  For fifty years, he had not only defeated them in battle -- he had out-organized and outwitted and outsmarted them.  He had every reason to have contempt for them, as soliders and leaders, and therefore to doubt their ability to do the things they were promising -- but he chose to see them simply as opponents.  Just as in 1948, Rabin was willing to fight only the battle that was necessary, in the 1990s Rabin was clear about exactly how much he needed to be the PLO’s opponent and in what ways he could be their partner.

Rabin knew that in order to bring Israelis along with the peace process, he would have to teach through his example how to balance peace ahead with justice and grief looking back.  At first, he wasn’t going to go to the White House to sign the Oslo agreement, but eventually he figured out that if he didn’t, Israelis would write it off as a ridiculous dream cooked up by Shimon Peres.  Rabin managed every step so carefully, relating just as in 1948 not to his fellow leaders but to the average Israeli.  So he opened his speech at the White House by talking about Israeli families who would never stop grievning, he shook Arafat’s hand in the only way he could, politely but not enthusiastically.  

At the White House and in later ceremonies to sign agreements with Arafat, Rabin put on his non-Israeli-style suit and looked like an adult, and made Arafat look like a child who could not take off his costume.  Rabin made sure to have a working relationship with Arafat and to show that when they appeared together, but he was also carefuly not to portray to Israelis that he and Arafat were becoming friends.  He was perfect for the role; he wasn’t big for smiling or scolding, his natural face and voice were holding back even when he tried to do revolutionary things.

Rabin understood that leadership is not like other relationships.  He didn’t try to use on the people skills he didn’t have, because that’s not what leading his people is only about.  And Rabin could lead because he was aware that he was modeling a new way of being a Jew in a new world.  Not just modeling, but maybe inventing it as he went along.

In 1994, at an award ceremony honoring Israeli writers just a year after the White House handshake, Rabin said:  “These days we are in the midst of a battle without cannons in a war without fire, which may turn out to be perhaps one of the most significant and decisive battles in the annals of the Jewish people in recent generations.”  In that speech, he said:

Let us admit the truth: the atmosphere of siege, the hostility, and the war have elicited tremendous energies from us for almost five decades. Much of what has been achieved in the State of Israel in all areas is a direct or indirect outcome of the necessity to defend our existence, of the atmosphere of siege from which we are so glad to free ourselves these days. Ours was a productive unity, a healthy unity, standing shoulder to shoulder against the manifestations of enmity and facing a hostile world. Just between us, we have become accustomed to this lifestyle, and, already, we think we cannot do without it. Perhaps we have even come to love the pleasant warmth of power and the encircling siege.

And now? What are we to do now? What message should we deliver to our people these days? How should we avoid becoming entangled in delivering a double, and contradictory, message: are we on the brink of peace, or do we expect another war? How do we change the atmosphere that has characterized our state for generations? What should we choose – should we declaim again and again: "a state under siege," "the whole world is against us," "all the Arabs are the same"? Or perhaps we should bear a new message: "the new Middle East," "the peace of the brave," "nation shall not lift up sword against nation," "He who makes peace in heaven above..."?

How do we become accustomed to a world of new concepts, to a different culture, a different style, and at the same time not completely abandon the old world, just in case, God forbid, we might need it again? How do we maintain the invigorating rhythm of our lives, the Jewish mind, all those tremendous energies of ours, our unity – without the sword hanging over our heads?

This is the Rabin who was taken from us by his assassin. How do we become accustomed to a world of new concepts,.... and at the same time not completely abandon the old world, just in case, God forbid, we might need it again?  This is who the Jewish people lost on the 12th of Marcheshvan 5755.  Not necessarily the man who signed the Oslo agreement, which may well have stalled even had he lived.  We lost the man who fought wars until the moment he thought they were not necessary, and was prepared to fight them again if necessary.  We lost the one who hoped we might figure out how to live as Jews in the world we are in and not in the mythic worlds of dreamy peace or eternal Jew-hatred.  

Rabin’s assassin took the worst message from the Akedah -- that to be Jewish is to live as though you were always just escaping a knife at your throat; and that extreme atrocities are beloved to God.  That is a Judaism of no joy and no hope, an impossible Judaism -- and in the square 20 years ago a desecration of God’s name.

Yitzchak Rabin was the truer heir of the biblical Yitzchak.  He lived through the wars of survival and knew they were over for his people, and he didn’t pretend to know for sure what was next or how long it would take.

We would honor Yitzchak Rabin’s memory most if we could find a way as Jews of being comfortable with our power, and with taking responsibility for how we use it.  We would honor his legacy if we could take the proper measure of the threats to Israel, and to Jews, and fight them rather than our ghosts, and take satisfaction when we are defeating them  That is the true spirituality of Zionism.  To know the perfect place between the smile and the scold, to scowl appropriately while trying revolutionary things.

Yehi zichro baruch -- May Yitzchak’s memory be a blessing.

My Rosh Hashanah Sermons 5781 (2020)

Rosh Hashanah 5781 (2020) Day 1            6 Feet Closer

Rosh Hashanah 5781 (2020) Day 2            Hope

Your Two Personal Assistants Toward the High Holy Days

This year I updated my usual re-post about Moshe and Yeshayahu, your "two personal spiritual assistants", and published it at the Times of Israel:

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/your-two-personal-spiritual-assistants-toward-the-new-year/

Pitchers and Catchers, Candles and Circles, Rivers and Apples: How Rituals Will Really Help Us Approach This New Year

This is almost too good to be true: the beginning of the month of Av in the Jewish calendar this year coincided with opening day for Major League Baseball.

Usually around this time of year I show you this T-shirt based on an observation by Rabbi Morris Allen at my parents’ shul about the absolute parallels between the Jewish calendar and the baseball calendar. 

In all other years, pitchers and catchers report to training camps around Tu Bishevat, and spring training games begin around Purim. Which is for us the start of a warmup period too, with planning and preparation for Pesach, which generally coincides with baseball’s Opening Day!

On the T-shirt this part of a typical year is what here is called the “dog days of summer”, and it lines up with Tisha B’Av, the fast commemorating the destruction of the Batei Mikdash (the two Temples). In baseball this kicks off a hot and hard period of time leading to the pennant races for spots in the playoffs and the World Series. The climactic moments of the season in September and October coincide with the month of Tishrei and the High Holy Days. (Well, they did before the expanded playoffs!)

This year, time and the seasons have been disrupted, and summer isn’t what summer usually is for many of us. Even baseball has this compressed season -- the whole cycle from Opening Day through the champshiop will take place in three months from now to the end of October. And for us, our season of teshuvah, of reflection and renewal, begins now with the week of Tisha B’Av and this Shabbat called Shabbat Chazon, the Shabbat of Vision. 

This week and this Shabbat kick off two months of reflection that lead toward the big games, so to speak, the High Holy Days, when we judge how the past year went and think about our destiny in the new year. We think about being in exile and coming home. We spend a month, well into October, with the holy days through Sukkot and Simchat Torah.

Like in baseball, there’s a lot this year packed into three months. But baseball’s new Opening Day, just invented out of whole cloth, can remind us that time in a ritual sense is something we construct as communities, to help us do what would otherwise seem infinite and overwhelming. Without the calendar rhythms and rituals, it would be harder to stop and take note of our blessings. Without them we couldn’t step out of everything that’s driving us, to tell stories of our past, stories of challenges and resilience, stories of difficulty and hope.

Without the calendar in particular, we could easily be overwhelmed by the demands of staying alive and getting by, in a world that is enormous and throws so much at us.

My teachers at the Seminary, Rabbi Neil Gillman and Rabbi Joe Lukinsky, taught us what calendars and rituals do for human communities. They are how we fight for some order out of chaos, and how we build actual power to push some of the chaos away. Think about how many of our rituals take place at the moments when darkness begins. Our candles on Friday night and Saturday night, when we fight off the darkness where danger might lurk -- we refuse to retreat, we insist on saying I am standing, we are standing. In Jewish ritual, we choose those night times for our most messianic dreams -- when we step into Shabbat, the Taste of the World to come; when we step out of Shabbat in the first darkness of the week and summon Eliyahu, the prophet who tells us when redemption will arrive for the whole world.

Think about how many of our rituals are sitting in circles, or nowadays rectangular circles around tables, singing -- creating strength, covalent bonds between us, a binding chemistry that draws out the power in each other that is more than the sum of all our parts.

Our genius as human beings is ritual and calendar. These allow us to pull blessing and strength and resilience and connection out of the chaos that could be the world. otherwise Rituals are supposed to help us face what we are afraid of and make it safer to be afraid and handle fears, together with each other, together with the wisdom of our ancestors. Rituals let us tell stories not just about the past but about the future, the crazy audacious stories of a world so much more perfect thatn our own.

Rituals aren’t life, and they aren’t the only thing religion is supposed to be. They are where we find the energy pods, the wisdom pods, and the connecting bonds that we need to go out and live. Rituals and holy days are not for themselves -- they are for life,as a whole and we need them so we can live in this challenging time.

This year, we especially need those rituals. We will use them and wring us much as we can out of them in this particular season of this particular year. We need to consciously bring more of the rituals and more of the calendar rhythm, from this Opening Day of the beginning of Av all through the whole holy day season, Rosh Hashanah through Simchat Torah. We need to use all of it, because there is so much chaos and so much overwhelm in our worlds. As individuals, as households, as parents and schoolchildren, as citizens.

I want to help us this year make use of all the time of these three months coming, especially starting with Elul at the next new moon. And I want to help us make use of rituals that we sometimes just do superficially.

The four weeks of Elul leading up to Rosh Hashanah should include four deliberate check-ins. Maybe you’ll set aside four times for yourself to sit and reflect. Or meet four times with a group of people online or in a yard, twice to look back and twice to talk about hopes for the new year. Or maybe you commit to just getting to know a group better within the congregation, or learning something that might be valuable for your new year from a Jewish source. 

We will have the sweet apples and honey, so we can think about what is still sweet in our lives, what is fruitful, what has been generative this year that we forgot to notice. We can look at the seeds and think of what we planted, or who planted something inside us that has grown beautiful and nourishing to others. We can think about what might grow and what will be sweet even in this unique new year.

We have the shofar, blown every day of Elul and on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We will think about the shevarim blasts, the brokenness of our world and the things that broke apart for us in our lives, and how we want to see them put together again. We will think about the t’ruah blasts, the scattered details of our lives as we have learned how to do each little thing again in a new way. We will think about the t’kiah gedolah, the clear calls we still believe in and still want to hear, the ways we are whole, the summons to  where we want to be going.

We will have lakes and streams and oceans we can stand by, where we can toss away the things we badly want gone from our old year.

We will have the sukkah, the simple structure that challenges us to think about what protection is, what we really need in our material lives. By the time of Sukkot, we can hopefully think of ourselves as active builders of the new year.

All of these times and rituals will help us think about uncertainty and fears, and give us time to reflect and redirect -- and help us find the powers we still have, the wisdom we still have, the power and wisdom we can share with each other, all that power over the chaos of 2020 and 5780. Our rituals and our calendar will not be another demand added to an overwhelming list. They will make our lives easier, and help us turn our cries into songs.

We will have this new season through these months, from the new Opening Day we declare this week to the World Series of our holy days. One way or another -- together, online --  we will stand in circles as the sky becomes purple, and light our candles, and sing together,  so we can live well in a new year.