A year ago, both tragedy and profound beauty struck at the heart of the United States of America. On a Shabbat morning in October, at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, fear and sadness blanketed their lives, rapidly sending tremors of concern and shared sympathy across our nation and across the world. One week later, hundreds of synagogues hosted crowded services that were attended by Americans of every stripe who simply wanted to stand and be counted among the kind and inclusive of our nation.

Here at Woodlands, we named a baby. Camila Chesterson, daughter of Tiffany and Jedd, had been born on October 21, just thirteen days earlier, and was only expecting one of her rabbis to bless her. Instead, while she did get a rabbi, she found the hands of a Christian and a Muslim were blessing her as well. It was a beautiful, powerful moment and the first of many responses that we and so many others have made, and will continue to make, whenever hate tries to ruin people’s lives.

On a related note, our sukkah fell down. Again. A year ago, one good storm sent it toppling. This year, we were certain no rains would bring it down. But we didn’t expect as hard a rain and as unyielding a wind to ravage our harvest home, and down it came a second time. But don’t you fret. Next year, we’ll be back, and better than ever!

Our fallen sukkah is as good a metaphor as any for the difficulties and challenges this nation finds itself confronting in recent times. As wonderful as America has been for us, for our immigrant grandparents and great-grandparents, and for new Americans everywhere, it takes a special kind of vigilance to ensure that the rights enshrined in our Constitution remain strong and protected. Not only must legal and political vigilance be maintained, but how we treat one another, including people who may not like us, may very well be the keystone that locks America’s humanity into place.

Consider this.

In 2017, when the current administration first enacted a travel ban preventing entry into the United States by citizens from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, mass protests appeared at airports throughout the nation, with pro bono lawyers climbing over each other to provide representation to individuals and families who had arrived from those countries by plane only to find themselves unable to enter. The response was swift, merciful, just and unforgettable.

When America’s sukkah of welcoming shelter was toppled by the hard-hearted winds of xenophobia, crews appeared almost out of nowhere to set that sukkah upright again. At the very moment when so many of us thought America’s soul had been overrun, we learned just how amazing the citizens of this nation can be.

Perhaps the most compelling story that I’ve heard of acting against hate comes from a man name Daryl Davis, a blues musician who, after a set one evening, found himself talking to a man who’d never heard a person of color play the blues. “This is the first time I’ve ever heard a black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis,” he said. To which Davis replied, “Well, where do you think Jerry Lee Lewis learned how to play that kind of style?” The man objected, “Jerry Lee invented it. I’ve never heard a black man except for you play like that.” And as Daryl Davis spoke about the music of Fats Domino and Little Richard, the other man interrupted, saying, “You know, this is the first time I’ve ever sat down and had a drink with a black man.” “How is that possible,” asked Davis. Came the reply, “I’m a member of the Ku Klux Klan.”

So began Daryl Davis’ travels across the United States, welcoming the opportunity to speak with members of the Klan, starting as enemies, in time always finding commonalities that then became the basis for a relationship, and then a friendship. In time, because of Daryl Davis’ willingness to meet his enemy, more than two hundred of these men gave up their robes. Davis would ask, “How can you hate me when you don’t even know me?” He’s been a good salesman, that’s for sure. But Daryl Davis wasn’t selling Toyotas; he was selling love.

Here’s a photo of Daryl Davis standing with Richard Preston, who participated in the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, two years ago. Here you can see the two of them visiting the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. First Davis invited Preston to his home. In time, Preston invited Davis to his wedding. “That’s a seed planted,” Davis said, as he continues his truly sacred work of bridging the divides between people.

This past Sunday evening, we celebrated Simkhat Torah. What a blast! Music, dancing, juggling(!) and unrolling an entire Torah around this sanctuary. All to celebrate the completion of our year-long reading of the Torah and then, without so much as a single breath, because we love the Torah and what we learn from it, starting all over again. Which means that this week we’ve been reading and studying Bereshit, the beginning of the Torah, which tells the story of the beginning of everything! And while we don’t look to the Torah to teach us the science of how things began, we do look to it to try and understand what life is all about.

In Genesis chapter one, throughout the story of Creation, God is continually noting that the things being created are good. Light is good. Land and seas are good. Plants and animals are good. Sun and moon are good. You know the one thing God doesn’t say is good? Us. Human beings. Why not? Are we bad? Of course not. We’ve been created b’tzelem Elohim, with the spark of God inside of us. But even that doesn’t make us good. Not yet, anyway.

What we are, the Torah teaches, is “in process.” We’re neither good nor bad until we establish that for ourselves. Each one of us determines our own status. Each one us must decide what we stand for. That’s why it’s so important to learn from our parents and from our teachers and, yes, to come to temple and learn from our rabbis. And it’s also so very important to be a good role model for others, because we never know who’s watching.

In the early 1960’s, a first grader went off to her first day of school. It was a newly integrated school down south, at the height of the desegregation storm. That afternoon, a very anxious mother met her daughter at the door as the little girl returned home. Once inside and sitting for a snack, her mom asked, “How did everything go, Honey?” “Oh, Mother, did you know that a little black girl sat next to me?” This had been a new experience both for the child and her mother, who didn’t know how to respond. Finally, she asked, “Well, what happened?” The little girl said, “Oh, Mommy, we were both so scared, we held hands all day.”

America is a great country. It’s built on a mighty foundation of fairness and understanding. It doesn’t always work but, given enough time and sufficient attention, things get better. It’s each of our jobs to do what we can to see it stays that way.

During the story of Creation, God never says that human beings are good. Because God’s waiting, waiting to see what we do, and waiting to decide whether we become worthy of the words, “kee tov … and they were good.”

October 27, 2018, at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, will not determine God’s final declaration. We mustn’t allow days like that one to become the face of our humanity. It’s in the days following October 27 that showed the real beauty of our species. Plus all the pro bono lawyers, and all the Daryl Davises, and little kids who hold hands to take care of each other. Let these be what show the beauty, the compassion, and the real future of humankind.

Jackie Pilossoph, a freelance columnist in Chicago, writes, “Hate is exhausting. Hate makes a person lose sight of life’s beauty and goodness. Hate destroys others. Hate destroys the hater. Love, on the other hand, rejuvenates. Loving and being loved makes a person want to help others, sustain compassion, and make the world a better place. Love makes people grow and prosper. Martin Luther King Jr. said: ‘I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.’”

Shabbat shalom!

In this week’s parasha, Ha’azinu, Israel has completed its forty years of post-Egypt wandering and is looking into the Promised Land from the eastern bank of the Jordan River. Moses is about to die and is offering his farewell address, reminding his people of the b’rit, their Covenant with God, that was forged at Mount Sinai, and was repeatedly violated throughout their forty-year journey. “Tzur y’lad-kha te-shee,” Moses tells them. “You have neglected the Rock that begot you … va-tish-kakh Eyl m’khol-l’le-kha … and you have forgotten the God who brought you forth” (Deut 32:18). And yet, God remains a willing partner if Israel will just do its part and observe the terms.

It’s a problem, to be sure. No one among the Children of Israel, save Moses and Joshua, is still alive to remember the parting of the Red Sea, their miraculous rescue from slavery by God’s outstretched hand. Telling them that God has never stopped watching over them is like my telling you, “The setting of the sun, the movement of the oceans, the cry of a newborn baby, are all evidence of God’s presence in the universe.” For me, that’s exactly what these are. For you, maybe not so much.

And yet, here we are. Summer has turned to autumn. The changing of the seasons always seems to present nature’s best side. We take long drives to view the turning of the leaves. We take long walks on autumn afternoons when the sun shines brilliantly but the air is cool and comfortable.

That’s not why Sukkot happens now, but it’s lovely that it does. Sukkot occurs at this time because in Israel the rainy season is about to begin. And if you recall your geography, Israel and the Middle East are desert, or become desert if the rains don’t come. Sukkot was placed just before the coming of the rainy season because the ancient Israelites wanted to make their case before God that they needed God’s blessing of rain. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur were actually preparatory holidays before HeKhag, Sukkot’s other name, which means “The Festival.” Sukkot was the High Holy Day of ancient Israel. Without rain, their crops wouldn’t grow, and that would spell disaster.

Dreskin Sukkah 2003 (l-r: Aiden Dreskin, Josh Rosenthal, Jonah Dreskin, Julia Rosenthal, Russell Steinberg and Matt Steinberg)

That was then and this is now. For us, Sukkot comes at a time when we feel wonderful about being alive. We’ve completed our High Holy Days, ostensibly having been inscribed in the Book of Life for another year, the autumn months bringing not just moderate weather but new beginnings as we return to work and to school after summer’s respite.

Judaism challenges us to see God at work in the universe. We may be tempted to take credit for the works of our own hands, but those hands – our tradition teaches us – are gifts from a loving Creator. Our High Holy Days asked whether we live our lives in a world of God’s making, or do we not care where the world came from, only what we can take from it?

Seeing God isn’t hard. But neither is it easy. It takes perspective. And perspective takes practice, and a special eye.

Rabbi Simkha Bunim lived and taught in early-19th century Poland. He told of a king who owned an exceptionally beautiful garden. So magnificent was this garden that the king felt it worthy of having a portrait painted of it. He hired the finest artist in the land, who captured the garden in remarkable detail, every tree, every flower, even the bees pollinating those flowers. Even the king himself was depicted in the portrait, enjoying the transcendent beauty of his own garden. The painting was of such superior quality that one might even mistake it for the real thing.

The king was so pleased that he invited the artist to come to a special reception of honor where all could view the painting on one of the palace walls. With hundreds looking on, surprised and happy cries went up as some birds that had gotten into the palace tried to peck at the apples painted onto a few of the trees. “How marvelous,” proclaimed the king. “Even the birds think your painting is real!” But the artist was disappointed. Asked why, he said, “If the picture had succeeded in truly looking real, the birds would not have pecked at the apples for they would have seen that is God watching over the garden.”

Judaism presents the idea of God as the world’s owner. The plants, the animals, the very ground itself, all belong to God. Judaism teaches that we should respect that. And respecting that should affect the way we relate to the world.

Have you ever screamed, “It’s mine!” Two men were arguing over a piece of land. One said, “This land belongs to me!” while the second shouted, “No. It belongs to me!” Their dispute went through numerous courts and arbitrations. A hatred sprang up between them, drawing others into the fight. Threats began to be heard from both sides. Eventually, they were persuaded to travel to the Rebbe and put their case before him. Each presented at great length not only his claims but contemptuous and insulting remarks aimed at the other side (sounds like Congress). The Rebbe listened quietly, noting how passionately they were arguing. Then, at last, he spoke. “From what you have said, I understand that both of you make the claim, ‘This ground belongs to me.’ That is the reason you have argued so violently, dragging those around you into your dispute. Why don’t you take my advice and listen for a moment to the voice of the ground itself. If you did so, you would hear the voice of God whispering, ‘Both of you belong to Me!’”

God is an idea, one that has helped shape how we view the world. Without God, there is no owner. We can do anything we want. Pollute, deforest, overpopulate, use up all the water, render species extinct, overheat the planet. And then there’s how we treat each other. Bigotry, prejudice, persecution, slavery, hunger, homelessness, murder and war. Nothing is off-limits when there’s no accountability.

For us in the 21st century, the juxtaposition of our High Holy Days with Sukkot is instructive. Theoretically, we’ve identified and apologized for the mistakes we’ve made in the past. Sukkot now presents an opportunity to do real teshuvah, to do more than say we’re sorry, taking the next, crucial step of demonstrating that we have stopped doing what we’ve done before. When we’re inside the sukkah and we look up at the s’khakh, and see holes, spaces up there so that we can see more than the roof; we can see the earth’s owner.

Sukkot stares us in the face and says, “Nu?” Did you mean any of that stuff you promised only a week ago? Have you donated to an organization that’s trying to help? Have you volunteered any time? Have you lent a hand? Do you know who your elected leaders are, and whether or not they’re helping or hindering? Do you vote in “off-year” elections, doing your part to get good people elected at the local level? Or are you only waiting for November 2020?

Can you see the Owner of the garden? Or do you only have eyes for the apples?

Rabbi Bunim teaches, “Most of us are like those birds. Because God is not real to us, we never see the Owner of the garden. We see all the beautiful things that have been placed in our world, but we’re unaware of God who created them. We think these things belong to us. In fact, we are nothing more than unappreciative guests.”

The purpose of Judaism is not to prove God. It can’t do that. Its purpose is to provide a way for us to live as if there is a God. And the trick is to see God in the garden, whether God’s actually there or not, and allow that perspective to affect how we live our lives. When we do that, if we’re true to the intention of our sages’ teachings, if we’re true to the promises we made on Yom Kippur, we might just make this world a little cleaner, a little kinder, a litter better than the way we found it.

As we all know, our garden is in big trouble. Every one of us needs to start working on fixing it, before it’s too late.

When I was a kid, my temple’s religious school put on a play for the whole congregation. It was a production of Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I got to play Benjamin. Okay, I wasn’t really Benjamin; I was one of Benjamin’s sheep. Well, I wasn’t really one of his sheep either; I was one of six fleas on the sixth sheep. We had a lot of kids and I guess we all needed parts.

Afterwards, there was a big reception which, true to religious schools everywhere, served lots and lots of dessert so that nobody would have an appetite when they went home. Some long tables were filled with lots of goodies – candy, fruit, and veggies. Naturally, everyone swarmed. Having been a flea, you might think I’d be too small to get in there until the end. Actually, having been a flea (and yes, small), I got there first!

At one end, there was a large pile of apples. Next to the apples was a note: “Take only one. God is watching.” Dutifully complying, I took one (the upside of which was that left plenty of room for other stuff). Someone’s parents brought a tray of carrots and broccoli. No note needed there. Fortunately, most parents understood the assignment and, at the far end of the tables, lay the “treasures of Adonai”: chocolate chip cookies! I loaded up maybe fifteen cookies next to my apple. That was when I remembered the note at the other end of the table. I took the apple, bit into it, and let it hang there in my mouth. I scooped up the cookies and put them in my pockets. I took my paper plate, turned it over, wrote a note on it and placed it next to the remaining cookies. As I was walking away, I heard another kid reading the plate with glee. It said, “Take all you want. God’s watching the apples!”

As you can see, I began thinking about God at a very early age. Fortunately, my thinking matured a bit over time. I see God everywhere, reminding me how lucky I am to be part of Creation, how lucky I am to have consciousness and the ability to care and to love, how lucky I am to do my part to take care of Creation, and how lucky I am to have good people in my life and throughout the world with whom to share it all.

Danusha Lameris is a poet and author who lives in Santa Cruz, California. Her second book, Bonfire Opera, is due out early next year. As we contemplate the meaning of these Holy Days just past, reconciling them with the challenge of Sukkot and the open rooftop, I’m going to give her the last word. I think she can point the way forward for many of us:

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you” when someone sneezes, a leftover from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying. And sometimes, when you spill lemons from your grocery bag, someone else will help you pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other. We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot, and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder, and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass. We have so little of each other, now. So far from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange. What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here, have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

Shabbat shalom.

Throughout my entire rabbinic career, whenever Sukkot has arrived, I have enjoyed explaining that sukkot – the three-sided booths we erect following Yom Kippur and in which we spend a week visiting with friends, dining with family, and watching squirrels carry away its vegetative decor – are fragile! Without a whole lot of trouble, they can fall down. But I never actually thought I’d see one tumble!

My synagogue’s sukkah, lovingly constructed each year out of sustainable materials harvested and built by our sukkah team, crumbled to the ground on the first day of Sukkot.

And I just love that! What a powerful lesson for all of us. We told you it could come down. And lookee there, it did! The world is a fragile place. Things can break. And sometimes they actually do.

I can remember when I was a kid, that from time-to-time I’d get to bring home a model airplane made of balsa wood. These were really flimsy objects, but if you wound up its rubber band enough times, the propeller as it twisted back around would make the airplane really fly. But it would only last maybe fifteen minutes before a wing or the tail would break right off. And I was always devastated by that. Those things were cool!

But sometimes things just break.

Sometimes, we break them ourselves.

Once when I was practicing meditation (you’re gonna love this), I was maybe seventeen years old and sitting still for twenty minutes was, under the best of circumstances, not easy to do. It was a summer day, and I’d brought a glass of ice water to keep me from melting, setting it on the dresser just behind my chair, which was also where I placed my watch so I wouldn’t keep looking at it. But from time-to-time, I obviously did need to look at it to see if I was finished. So I reached back and, while feeling around for the watch, my hand found the iced water, knocking over the glass so that its entire freezing contents spilled right down my back. Furious, I jumped up, spun around, picked up my watch and proceed to smash it to smithereens.

Sometimes things don’t just break. Sometimes we take care of that ourselves.

Once a couple of weeks ago, nature did some of the breaking.

Hurricane Florence dumped up to three feet of water on cities and towns throughout North and South Carolina. The damage was estimated at $48 billion. But the image I will always remember of these two broken states is of a cow struggling to swim through the flooded waters inside and outside her barn and just keeping her head above water until being rescued by a passing boat. Its skipper wrapped a piece of rope around the cow’s nose and mouth, holding its head above water as they towed it to safety.

Sometimes the world breaks all by itself. And all we can do is hang onto each other and ride out the storm.

Then there’s the United States Congress, rendered almost completely ineffective by their refusal to work with people of differing political positions and points of view. That wasn’t what I thought I was voting for. People used to say that nothing except compromise ever takes place in the Senate and House of Representatives. Oh, how I miss those days.

Sometimes we deliberately sabotage ourselves and break things on purpose! On purpose!

Which makes our little sukkah seem pretty insignificant, don’tcha think? Which is what it was always meant to be. Because it’s just a symbol. The sukkah is supposed to remind us of how fragile our world is, that sometimes we have to endure what naturally happens, but that so much of the brokenness is in our control to fix. And when we stand up and angrily smash our watch to pieces, we’re in need of … well, we’re in need of, quite frankly, something we just spent the last few weeks talking about: teshuvah … changing our behavior for the better.

Throughout Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, reading after reading and sermon after sermon urged us to fearlessly examine our lives and to inventory where we have fallen short of our obligations to the human family. Some of us spent more than a dozen hours in ten different services engaged in this sacred process of heshbon nefesh, of figuring out where we could seriously improve ourselves in the year ahead.

Now it is the year ahead and the question before each of us is, “So what are we gonna do about it?” Have we simply packed away the makhzorim from our High Holy Days and moved on? Or are we going to take that list of ways we can be kinder and more generous, and actually try to change?

That’s why I love our fallen sukkah. If we’ll let it, it’s reminding us that there’s so much brokenness in our world, and while we may or may not fix our symbol of life’s fragile nature, we can certainly get to work trying to fix some of the real brokenness that’s all around us.

A week ago, members of the Peace Islands Institute, a Muslim community organization, came to visit our high school Academy and served them a homemade dessert called Noah’s Pudding. Premised on the supposition that when the Flood ended and the Ark landed, the community joined together for one last meal, a meal made from the last supplies that still remained on the Ark – Noah’s Pudding – and broke bread together one more time before journeying into their new and individual futures, Noah’s Pudding is an offering from one person to another, symbolizing a wish that whatever lies ahead will be filled with sustenance, sweetness and human companionship. Their sharing of Noah’s Pudding with these Jewish high school students was a powerful and unforgettable demonstration of friendship, of building up, not falling down. I have no doubt that on Monday evening, through the simple sharing of a humble Muslim tradition, we fixed just a tiny bit of the brokenness in our world.

Things break. That’s going to keep on happening. Our great gift is that we can be there for each other when they do. Sometimes we can rebuild; sometimes all we can do is offer a hug.

During the High Holy Days, we shared in the dramatic and, quite frankly, frightening words of Un’taneh Tokef, “Who shall live and who shall die?” When I encounter this reading, I no longer see it as God’s judgement of me or of others. Rather, I see it as a call to action. It reminds us that people do live and people do die. And sometimes, there’s nothing to be done, but sometimes, and perhaps far more frequently, there is something we can do; there’s much that we can do. Like helping a cow keep its head above the floodwaters, if we just keep our eyes and our hearts open, there are plenty of ways to fix things.

And then there’s Simkhat Torah. A simply wonderful celebratory holiday that wraps up this otherwise serious time period. A holiday that may be the most important of them all. It is a time when we dance with the Torah as a symbolic conclusion to these High Holy Days. The Torah is, of course, not only a symbol of our passion for learning right from wrong, it’s also a guidebook for doing so. We’re right to dance with our scrolls. In a world filled with brokenness, our communities must come together, with whatever ideas we can muster, and, like our friends from Peace Islands Institute, share in bringing hopeful change to everyone.

I imagine that I will never see a sukkah fall down again. But I will see children break some of their toys, adults break some of our communities, and nature break some of our homes. May we remember that each one of us is capable of doing something, maybe even a lot, to make things better. May these High Holy Days, and one broken sukkah, inspire us to roll up our sleeves and get to work.

Billy

Postscript: On Thursday (Sep 27), many of us listened in as the Senate Judiciary Committee heard the testimonies of Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford. While there is much to criticize about what took place, whichever side of the aisle and/or the issue we’re on, there was also something very right happening. We may not like what we see going on in Congress, but we have a Congress. It may be damaged and in need of repair, but it’s still there. So register to vote, run for office, or help someone else run. If you see a sukkah that’s fallen, figure out if it needs picking up. And if it does, let’s do what we can do to lend a hand.

In case you didn’t know, it’s the Hebrew month of Elul. These are the four weeks leading up to the High Holy Days, a time when most Jewish families are thinking about, well, probably nothing having to do with the High Holy Days. Including this Labor Day weekend, it seems to be a time to squeeze out the very last minutes of summer fun and relaxation.

Rabbis and cantors, on the other hand, are pretty much thinking about nothing BUT the High Holy Days. There is music to prepare, sermons to be written, and a thousand other preparatory activities that must get done before any of you set foot in the tent next Sunday evening.

Let me give you one small example of how this season affects clergy. On Facebook (you know, where all serious work gets done), we Reform rabbis have a page all our own. It’s a place to discuss Torah, Talmud, and contemporary issues of import. This week, amidst the intense laboring to prepare our sermons, this most crucial posting was placed by a rabbi I know. He asked: What’s a “fun fact” that’s actually fun?

And that’s all it took. Dozens of rabbis, all with way more important things to do, began chiming in. Responses included:

• Ducks are the fastest flying birds.
• Your ears never stop growing.
• In Switzerland, it is illegal to own just one guinea pig.
• During our lifetime, each of us will produce enough saliva to fill two swimming pools.
• Escalators never actually break, they just become stairs.

I know you’re impressed by the width and breadth of knowledge that rabbis possess. You simply have no idea! By the way, I can’t verify that any of these are accurate, except maybe that broken escalators are stairs. I did learn that ducks are not the fastest flying birds. While the swiftest duck may clock in as high as 100 mph, the peregrine falcon flies double that!

All of this is to say: One never knows how someone is going to spend their summer vacation. Sure, there may be trips to exotic locales and sunbathing at the local pool, but those aren’t necessarily summer’s most indelible moments.

My summers, by the way, like yours, aren’t all vacation (tho I do remember those sublime years of youth when nothing needed to be accomplished between the last day of school in the spring and the first day back in the fall). My summer, slowed down as it was, included a half dozen funerals during which I was honored to share in the sacred act of saying goodbye to someone who was well-loved and will be much-missed. It’s always a privilege to be invited into these private, intimate, holy moments in people’s lives.

Other significant moments in my life this summer have included:

• Presiding over the demise of my kitchen stove and oven, during which Ellen and I had much fun picking out new appliances, but not quite so much fun having to spend lots of money hiring a carpenter to modify drawers and cupboards that no longer opened because the new units obstructed things deep inside our cabinetry. The lesson: Home ownership is really satisfying except when, like an aging body, it requires surprise visits and expenditures to keep things running.

• Speaking of which, earlier this summer I thought I was going deaf in one ear but, upon visiting the ENT doctor, I learned just how much wax can build up inside there. The lesson: Try to stop being so dramatic about physical demise. While we’re all definitely disintegrating, it’s probably happening at a much slower rate that we think.

• I got to visit my two now-pretty-well-grown children. Katie is married and an art educator living in Montpelier, Vermont. This summer, she returned to Eisner Camp after a 10-year hiatus, where she taught yoga, meditation and, of course, art. Aiden has gone what they call “adulting,” moving to Denver this summer, getting himself five part-time jobs, an apartment, and even a new dentist! The lesson: All that love we gave our kids when they were young? It really does serve as the foundation for them building lives that are vibrant, healthy and satisfying. And I have to say, I’m happier for my kids now than any report card or school concert ever made me feel!

• Lastly, bringing it all together, there’s Mars. Throughout June, July and August, the red planet came nearer to our earth than usual. Mostly residing about 140 million miles from Times Square, this summer Mars almost made it all the way up to Westchester, coming 100 million miles closer than ever! But what was most profound for me was that no matter where I was this summer: Massachusetts, Colorado or New York, there was Mars, shining brilliantly in the night sky. The lesson: Everything is connected, no one is alone, and we are all part of the same magnificent, unfolding story.

So while, yes, the White House continues to give us reasons to wonder if civilization is rapidly coming to an end, there remains so much that is good in our world. And even while we fret – concerned for immigrant children still living apart from their parents, Russian meddling in our democratic elections, genocide in Myanmar, North Korea’s nuclear weapons, and rampant gun violence – we can also rejoice – 12 boys and their coach successfully rescued after 17 days stuck in a cave in Thailand, the World Cup bringing us all together in global competition marked by shared friendship and excitement that transcended all ethnic and nationalist demarcations and, since the year 2000, 1.2 billion additional human beings on the planet have gained access to electricity, one of the first steps out of poverty.

There is still much reason to rejoice.

In this week’s parasha, Kee Tavo, we read (in Deut 26:11) Moses’ instructions to the Israelites as they prepare to conclude their 40 years of desert wandering and enter the Promised Land: “V’samakhta v’khol ha’tov asher natan lakh … you shall enjoy, together with the Levite and the stranger in your midst, all the bounty that God has bestowed upon you and your household.” This foundational value, shared as they readied themselves to go to war, serves as a profound reminder to us that human existence isn’t for the purpose of suffering; it’s to build lives that mean something, that provide sustenance and safety for all people, and ultimately to love and to laugh and to luxuriate in the simple joys of being able to have a place to live, enjoy one’s family, and even to chuckle at fun facts shared while avoiding matters of responsibility.

So I’ll leave you with two more fun facts and a wish.

1st fun fact: Banging your head against a wall for one hour burns 150 calories.

My wish: There are an infinite number of ways that we can spend the time allotted to us on this earth. Some of it should be spent helping make things better for everyone. And some of it should probably be spent fretting about how bad things are. But not only is it vital that we spend time with people we love and in activities we love, we ought also avoid, as much as possible, uselessly banging our heads against a wall, even if someone tries to convince us there’s a benefit in it.

The Israelites understood that joy was a fundamental component to life, and that all are commanded to enjoy, and to ensure others can do the same. From the dawn of Creation, a bounty has been bestowed upon us. It would be mean-spirited to squander that.

2nd fun fact: 7% of all Americans actually believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’d bet it wouldn’t surprise many of you to learn it is (the 7% believing, I mean). This big, beautiful world of ours is filled with the full spectrum of humanity, including a few (what’s 7% of 325 million?) who think some pretty strange stuff. As the month of Elul nears its finishing line and we prepare to meet in the tent next Sunday to greet the New Year, may we embrace all of our human family, chuckling at those who subscribe to fun facts that are much more fun than fact, all the while extending our love and our compassion even to those from whom we differ immensely. Let’s resolve to make this New Year 5779 one of goodness, kindness, understanding, and the simple delight that comes from sharing the most magnificent fun fact of all: life.

That’s how I spent my summer vacation.

Ketivah v’khatimah tovah … may all soon be inscribed for blessing and peace. Shabbat shalom.

Billy

I have a story to tell you. It’s about a tiny bird. I’ll come back to that.

Tisha b’Av has been set aside as a day for the Jewish community to remember the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple two thousand years ago. Traditionally, this day is observed with fasting, prayers of lament and rituals of mourning. Two thousands years is a very  long time, however, and grief abates.

So if Tisha b’Av no longer compels, what’s to be done with it?

Earlier this week, while I was trying to figure this out, I took my dog for a walk. Not ten feet outside the front door, we encountered a baby bird on the ground. It was alive but I couldn’t tell by how much. I could only imagine it had fallen from its nest perhaps fifty feet above and that couldn’t have been good.

Charlie sniffed but respectfully backed away. Ellen came out and very gently carried the bird to the bottom of the tree from which it had fallen. It was out of direct sunlight and the possibility of getting stepped on. It laid its head on its wing to rest. Not thirty minutes later, we checked on it and it had died.

For a good while after, our home was subdued. Even Charlie seemed quiet. It was only a baby bird, but in the few minutes that it had entered our lives, it had evoked our sympathy and stolen our hearts. We grieved.

I wondered. Is this what we need in order to feel the pain of loss? If we are to act on human suffering, must we experience that suffering firsthand?

I have a handmade tallit that I purchased in Israel. Before completing the order, I was asked, “What text would you like embroidered on the atarah?” Well, that was going to take some thought and I returned home to America without completing the order. What text would I want to see every time I place that garment across my shoulders? Three weeks later, I sent them my response. It came from the Book of Job (38:35):

For me, this text, God’s response to Job’s asking what we all want to know, “Why?” Why has my health failed? Why has my loved one died? Why is my marriage over? Why did that earthquake have to cause so much destruction? How can that leader condone so much suffering?

God’s response to Job was that there is so much we can’t control. And there are questions for which we will never have answers.

We may not like that response, but it seems pretty accurate to me.

There is a passage, however, from Noah benShea’s Jacob the Baker that helps me live with this unsettling reality:

Watching a flotilla of small sticks and leaves dropped into a river race and tumble around one bend only to be caught in another, someone said, “Clearly we are not in control of where our lives are going.” But another responded, “We are nevertheless responsible for how we conduct ourselves as we are carried on.”

This is how I’ve tried to approach my life, which has been a pretty easy one compared to so many others, but I’ve had my share of sorrows. I don’t hide my grief, but I try not to be crushed by it either.

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about Tisha b’Av. Each of us quite likely has horrible moments that are ours. Not all are the result of evil people, but they are painful memories no less. Loved ones die. Natural disasters claim the lives of hundreds. Political disasters (like tearing immigrant children away from their parents) exact a different but no less painful price.

Tisha b’Av comes along. We allow our pain to reemerge, even after two thousand years. Or we just remember — we don’t own, or we don’t directly feel, that pain. The message in both cases, I believe, is that these memories and their concomitant feelings are valid but, if possible, they ought not end there. Painful memory can and should be used for good purpose.

Perhaps by limiting this communal grief to a single day, Jewish tradition is trying to say, “It doesn’t have to ever go away. But like that flotilla of small sticks and leaves, we need to choose how to live in its aftermath. Always always, choose life.”

We needn’t relinquish our sadnesses forever. The hurt might never fully go away. But if in addition to missing what has been lost, we can turn that grief (and our hearts) toward making the world a bit more hospitable for someone else, then our pain and the grief that comes from someone’s life having ended far too soon (or whatever it is that lingers on), perhaps we can turn it toward something of deepening value and even personal redemption.

That little bird haunts me. I think I’ll be carrying the image of its dying for a while yet. I don’t think I’m going to become a bird doctor, but my sadness did prompt me to write this. And perhaps, as Tisha b’Av approaches, that’s of some worth and a fine way to channel this loss.

For me, that seems like a good lesson learned.

Billy

It’s the season of Jonah in our home – his birthday is February 14, his yahrzeit is March 5, and his Concert is March 10. Since he’s on my mind, no reason he shouldn’t be on yours as well. So here’s a Jonah story.

When Ellen and I were young parents, we decided to rear children who were free of gender stereotypes, unhampered by society’s expectations that they fit into certain roles and not into others. And so, our children, who never signed onto this platform, ignored our convention-defying instruction and did whatever they wanted. Katie adored Barbie dolls and all things girlish, while Jonah turned any object he picked up, benign or not, into a gun and battled his way through early childhood.

Ellen and I quickly learned we’d have to find another way to teach our children to respect and embrace the full spectrum of the human family. In time (including Aiden’s entrance into the story), we watched three wonderful young people grow in spirit and goodness.

Judaism has always taught the importance of beating swords into ploughshares. Yehuda Amichai suggested we keep going and beat those ploughshares into musical instruments, so that anytime we think about harming one another, we’ll need to beat our musical instruments back into ploughshares before we can turn them into weapons.

The world’s such a challenging place, and aren’t we humans fascinatingly complex? I’m grateful to be part of a tradition that calls us to struggle for freedom and peace.

Purim is upon us. This year, “A Hairspray Purimspiel” has taken over our celebration. We open with these reworked lyrics to “Good Morning, Baltimore” …

Queen Vashti woke up one day, feeling dismay, her nerves all frayed.
Her husband, Akhashverosh, had gone overboard, inciting the hoard.
With wine flowing free, the king did decree, “Six months of sensual debauchery!”
Queen Vashti took all the women and hoped that the men would not see.

Good God, Shushan’s laid low. Her good name’s received quite a blow.
Common sense and humanity were replaced by insanity.
Good God, Shushan’s laid low. Any semblance of grace is for show.
We’re falling apart by degree. Save us all, Vashti!

Purim is our annual send-up of life in ancient Persia, but it’s really a commentary on our own lives, right here right now. As we wrote new lyrics to the melodies of “Hairspray,” we soon realized these words could not have been written at any other moment in history. And while we did not set out to critique President Trump’s America, it was unavoidable.

Later in that same song, “Good God, Shushan’s Laid Low,” we sing:

Akhashverosh was incensed,
Who would dare stand against such a handsome guy?
Akhash proclaimed for himself
That throughout the land Queen Vashti was banned.
The courts said, “No way!” The king shouted, “Foul play!
It must be fake news from CNN!”
Our base is stronger than yours
And we will make Shushan great again!”

Depending on the theory to which you subscribe, you may attribute the current #MeToo movement of women pointing accusing fingers at sexual harassers everywhere to a critical mass of frustration and outrage at our president’s serial abuse of women (of all of us, really). “Critical mass” may be the operative term here as we witness a sudden flood of allegations against men who will no longer be silently endured by the double-X chromosomal half of the human family. We have reached some sort of watershed moment, and American society will hopefully be better because of it.

Before the February 14 shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, synagogues were wondering how to deal with the Esther story in light of the #MeToo movement. I’ll come back to the violence in Florida after we tackle this first challenge for a bit.

At this specific moment in American life, it’s important to take a closer look at Queen Vashti and Queen Esther.

First, Queen Esther. As a child, my friends and I all loved the celebration of King Ahashuerus’ “beauty contest” to find himself a lovely new queen. But the details of the biblical story don’t shine as kind a light on Esther, the surprising victor in that Olympic category. The women with whom she was competing for Vashti’s vacated queen-ship were judged not only on their looks (see chapter 2, “Each girl went to King Ahashuerus at the end of twelve months’ beauty treatment”), but on their sexual performance (see elsewhere in chapter 2, “She would go [to the king] in the evening and leave in the morning”). We don’t tell that to the kids, and you end up missing out on that detail as well.

Further, when Mordekhai begs Queen Esther to help rescue the Jews of their kingdom, she pleads powerlessness. After all, she’s only the queen. She sees the king only when he calls for her, which likely means for a sexual rendezvous. She can’t even imagine pursuing a relationship with him that goes any deeper; forget about actually leading her people.

Esther, at least as our Purim story gets going, is not much of a role-model for us today.

Then there’s Queen Vashti. When I was growing up, she was the story’s villain every bit as much as Haman. We couldn’t wait for justice to be served through her banishment. Disobeying her king — imagine! The Midrash, examining Vashti’s refusal to appear before the king and his pals, suggests that Vashti was in fact an immodest woman who would not have hesitated to appear before the boys buck naked (I’m sorry, “wearing her royal diadem”). The midrashic rabbis say she either had an embarrassing rash or had somehow sprouted a tail and, vain as she obviously was, wished to show neither in public. For those of you who find it difficult to swallow a tale about Vashti growing a tail, the Maharal of Prague (a 16th century commentator) agrees with you that’s ridiculous. He likens Vashti’s tail to my spare tire. She put on a lot of weight and, again in her vanity, refused to display her slothfulness.

Justice, I say! Good riddance, Queen Vashti!

And then I grew up. The first step was in noticing that hanging in my home on the dining room wall my entire childhood was a painting of Queen Vashti. Not Queen Esther, but Queen Vashti! Only later did it occur to me that I should ask my mom why she had a picture of this vile woman prominently displayed in our home. That was the beginning of my adult Jewish education. Vashti, she told me, was (in contrast to how Jewish tradition has treated her) a dignified woman. She’d stood up to a boorish king, and on behalf of women everywhere, told him she was no longer willing to merely be an object of his desire. As a result, Vashti may have disappeared from the Purim story, but beautifully, royally, and with great dignity, she lived in my home, and now in my soul. Thanks, Mom.

Vashti’s story was always one of resistance against sexual harassment. We can only wonder what she might have done for the oppressed elsewhere. Would she have stood up to Haman and his genocidal scheme? We don’t get to know that. We only get to wonder if we ourselves have the strength and the hutzpah to stand against bigotry in our own time.

Back to Esther. Her story, I think, is one of tremendous growth and maturing. Because she was anything but a hero when the story began, her evolution is remarkable, touching and inspiring. In the beginning, whether pushed by Mordekhai or eagerly signing up, she gave her body to King Ahashuerus. When it became clear that Esther was uniquely positioned to convey to the king the Jewish people’s plea for rescue, she wanted nothing to do with it. Esther had a sweet scam going and she had no interest in jeopardizing a good thing. Not until Mordekhai pointed out that Esther would likely also be caught in Haman’s net of destruction did she reluctantly offer to help.

Perhaps that’s how it is for many of us. We live out our years quietly enjoying life with family and friends. Then one day our life is upended. A loved one is struck by tragic illness or death, and we devote ourselves to seeing that others need not succumb to the same. Once we too have been caught in a net, we often turn our attention, energies and resources to making a difference. In this very way, Esther’s story is our story too.

Why our rabbis felt the need to castigate Vashti, I don’t know. It’s not like they had to protect the good reputation of King Ahashuerus. But castigate they did, and at every opportunity. In chapter one, we’re told the king had thrown a wild celebration for his administration and supporters (think Jared and Ivanka, and the NRA). Six months into that celebration, he held a week-long banquet, on the seventh day of which he ordered Vashti to do some pole-dancing for him and his buddies. The rabbis presumed this “seventh day” was Shabbat and that — because Vashti would frequently choose that day to summon Jewish women, strip them naked and make them work for her — it was therefore on Shabbat, they say, that Vashti was banished.

The world has changed. And not just in the Trump era. I’ve been a rabbi for thirty-one years. I wrote my first purimspiel twenty-eight years ago, in 1990. Riffing on the “Wizard of Oz,” I wrote:

Seven days into the celebrating, Ahashuerus called for his queen to come and display her beauty. Now Vashti was a good queen. What she wasn’t was someone who simply did what someone else told her to do, especially if she thought it was demeaning. And being asked by her husband to “display her beauty” for his pals … that was demeaning! So she said, “No.” She refused to appear.

Since I’m pretty sure I didn’t come up with that respectful perspective on Vashti by myself, I have to assume we Jews have matured a bit in the last thousand years. Treated poorly in their own time, both Vashti and Esther are now seen in noble light by our community. If all of us are part of the #MeToo movement, and we should be, our Purim story provides an annual reminder that people are people; we may not be born heroic but we can rise to life’s challenges and, doing so, we can bring honor to ourselves, to our families, and to our people.

Vashti was always about doing what is right. Her resistance against sexual harassment may have lost her a job, but it earned her an honored position in our people’s history (well, the made-up part of our history) as a model for consistently living a principled set of human values. Esther grew into her highly-regarded place in Jewish life. She didn’t start out that way, but grew stronger through adversity and, in the end, has become a model of strength and integrity for us all.

Let me come back to gun violence.

Purim has always been about social justice. Its message was never limited to gender issues alone, or to opposing the persecution of our people. The issue of guns being used to indiscriminately slaughter American citizens is a #MeToo movement no one should have to belong to and that all of us should belong to. The story of Purim is a violent one. A deranged individual has deadly force placed into his hands and he chooses to direct that force at the Jews of Shushan. And while they knew at what moment – the 13th of Adar – the violence would be unleashed, there was nowhere for them to run. The story resolves in a surrealistic bloodbath during which the Jews turn the tables on, and slaughter, their attackers. This was not, I believe, an endorsement for arming teachers. This was a perverse fantasy, for we know of far too many times in Jewish history when we were herded like sheep to the slaughter, unable to defend ourselves. There is hardly a Jew throughout history who wouldn’t have preferred the rule of law, not guns, to ensure the safety of their children.

When we gather on Purim – the 14th of Adar – we cheerfully recount the grotesque counter-offensive that killed 75,000 would-be attackers and saved the Jews of Shushan. But that’s not the resolution to conflict that we seek in real life. It’s not the message Judaism teaches us. Rather, we are, as much as humanly possible, encouraged to work through our differences, and to use acts of compassion that are undergirded by strong, effective laws to make our nation and our world safe and secure.

Will the Parkland shooting finally turn the debate on guns? I’m certainly not counting on Congress to offer solutions. But maybe those who say that young people can really make the difference this time are right, and I’m more than willing to cast my lot this Purim with them. So while yes, you and I need to remain involved in whatever efforts we find to curb gun violence, let us make certain that we are good allies and lend our support to any young person’s campaign seeking to effect these changes. One, they need to know we’re proud of their efforts. And two, we’re the ones to teach them how to open doors, how to speak truth to power and, frankly, to bankroll their efforts.

These young people are trying to write a new Purim story. They’ve identified their Haman and are reaching out to persuade the king to save their people. My prayer? That generations that from now, we’ll be retelling the glorious tale of how it was our kids who finally brought rational, compassionate action to this incredibly dark chapter in our nation’s history.

On Facebook, my daughter the art teacher posted the following: “Anyone who wants teachers to carry guns in the classroom should probably know that earlier this week I misplaced half a banana when I put it down to help a student, and forgot about it until three hours later when a very confused child found it on the clay cart.” Eloheinu v’elohei avoteinu v’imoteinu … dear God and God of our ancestors … we don’t know all the answers, but we’ve got some pretty strong instincts, and a couple thousand years of experience to help guide us. Still, now would be a great time for You to pop up in one of those pillars of cloud or fire and guide us the rest of the way. Or maybe that’s what You’ve just done by sending us these kids. May this year’s Purim celebration inspire us to work diligently for the betterment of women’s lives and of our children’s lives, to topple Haman wherever he appears and, in so doing, better the lives of people everywhere.

Last weekend, Ellen and I traveled northward to Buffalo where Ellen was officiating at the 2nd wedding ceremony of two very dear men who wanted to marry under the newly-legal auspices of New York State. We joined them on a small boat that travels the famous lock-system of the Erie Canal. Ellen presided over the re-union of the two gentlemen while the boat was being lifted in a lock from one level of the canal to another. It was a beautiful, touching, incredibly loving celebration that, for many of us, was enhanced by the excitement, if not the symbolism, of rising up with the waters beneath us.

Afterwards, as the boat ride continued, family members handed out words to a Bruce Springsteen song about the Erie Canal. As they taught it to us, I couldn’t help but laugh, knowing that I had learned this song when I was maybe ten years old and Bruce was just learning how to play guitar.

“I’ve got an old mule and her name is Sal. Fifteen years on the Erie Canal. She’s a good old worker and a good old pal. Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal. Low bridge, everybody down. Low bridge cause we’re coming to a town. You’ll always know your neighbor and you’ll always know your pal, if you’ve ever navigated on the Erie Canal.”

It was written in 1905 and recalls a time when mules walked along the shoreline, pulling the barges along the canal. I happen to know this because, growing up in Cincinnati, it was perhaps the only part of the social studies curriculum that actually caught my attention. Why we studied a New York waterway in Ohio, that I never understood until I looked it up on Wikipedia this week and learned that my teacher had probably tried to get me to understand that Ohio also had a canal system that formed, along with New York and Pennsylvania, what must have been America’s “super-highway” system of the late-19th and early-20th centuries.

Riding that little boat through the old locks, albeit sans mule, was for me a nostalgic journey that filled my mind with wonder and my heart with a certain satisfaction that comes from climbing into one of those boats that had been described to me more than fifty years ago. I bet I’d ace that quiz if I could just take it once more.

Memories are an important part of what makes us who we are. Without memories, not only would we lose much of our personality, but we’d also be far less able to make good decisions about nearly anything. We wouldn’t know what tastes good to us. We wouldn’t know with whom we enjoy spending time, or how we enjoy spending time. And at a meta-level, without memory, our communities would be unable to learn from previous experience and prepare for what awaits us all down the road.

Part of the conversation taking place right now is how the city of Houston could have been so unprepared for the waters of Hurricane Harvey when, back in 2008, Hurricane Ike killed nearly a hundred people and caused $30 billion in damage. It was a dress rehearsal for Hurricane Harvey, and yet little was done in the years since. So while Houston has been experiencing incredible economic growth, it has also erased marshland after marshland, leaving few escape routes for the eventual floods that were coming. They were sitting ducks, they knew it, yet did nothing about it.

We’re all familiar with George Santayana’s prediction that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” But what about those who do remember the past and ignore it? Same thing, I guess. Except for the added characteristics foolishness and arrogance.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel taught, “The past defers to the future, but it refuses to be discarded. Only he who is an heir is qualified to be a pioneer.”

We learn perhaps the same lesson from the 25th chapter of Deuteronomy, in which the Israelites are told, “Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey out of Egypt, how, undeterred by the fear of God, he surprised you on your march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear. When God grants you safety from all your enemies around you in the land that God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!”

I suspect that “blot out the memory of Amalek” means precisely the opposite of how it sounds. Do not forget Amalek. Ever. And if he should reappear, remember what he did to your ancestors and act to prevent it from happening to you.

Memory is supposed to be our teacher. But like I tuned out during social studies and only learned a portion of what was being offered to me and to my fellow students, history – whether it’s retelling the story of a fascist dictator, or recounting the devastation caused by weather patterns (that are patterns, folks, and they will return) – there’s great wisdom in the past. It can help us determine best avenues for the journey ahead. But only if we study it.

I’m reading Dandelion Wine, one of the great narratives by Ray Bradbury of Fahrenheit 451 fame. It took a while for me to start enjoying it. I turned that corner when I realized that, with each chapter, the author was drawing these remarkable pictures of small-town life in 1930s America. And while these are not my memories, I’m loving the neighborhoods which Bradbury has invited me to visit with him.

Nostalgia is defined as a sentimental affection for the past. This visitation through Bradbury’s writing to Green Town, Illinois, may seem like it’s just for fun. But the author’s intentions go further. Bradbury wants to teach us about fears that we all must, at one time or another, face, and about the acceptance that is sometimes all we can offer in the face of our inability to change where things are headed. Memory may not provide the tools to win, but it can give us enough knowledge to equip us to live as gracefully and gratefully as possible. Technology, for Bradbury, is both the way forward and a door that sometimes shuts unceremoniously on ways of life that we have loved and must increasingly leave behind.

I have occasionally engaged in grieving for the ridiculous. A television series that’s come to an end. A food I can no longer find in the grocery store. Even this past summer, when a flood in my basement destroyed items long-stored, I was saddened to lose possessions that neither Ellen nor I were ever going to use again.

Still, those memories are pleasant ones. And life ought to include unsubstantial acts that bring us a bit of joy and contentment. We can’t always be saving the world. As Ray Bradbury would suggest, everyone should take the time to make some dandelion wine, that is, to capture one’s best summer memories in a bottle and, when winter has frozen the world around us, head down to the basement and take a sip every now and then to remember warmer times.

In this week’s parashah, Kee Taytzay, there is a passage in the 21st chapter of Deuteronomy (v14) about what to do with the women you capture when you’ve been victorious in battle. Apparently, you can bring one home to mom and dad, and make her your bride. Then, and I now quote, “Should you no longer want her, you must release her outright. You must not sell her for money. Since you had your way with her, you must not enslave her.”

Setting aside the awful way that people in the past, our ancestors included, sometimes comported themselves, I found myself reading this passage as if it were about memory. “Should you no longer want them, you must release them outright.” Some memories need to be let go. Their pain debilitates us and we are continually diminished by them. I’m thinking of memories about terrible ways some have been treated, and how long the memories of such moments last. Their pain can continue for decades. To move forward in a life that has been bruised by such experiences, it might be better to let go of these memories. To leave the traumas behind. Since there’s nothing but anger to fuel the way forward from them, it is better perhaps to abandon both the narratives and the emotions that go with them. We ought neither enslave those memories to us, nor become a slave to them.

It is the month of Elul. In three weeks’ time, we’ll gather here for our annual Days of Repentance, of turning, of doing the work to make our and others’ lives better. For that period of reflection to be a successful one, we are called upon to look back at the year just ending. We think of our actions, our deeds, where we stood tall and where we demeaned ourselves in order to engage in the unimpressive deeds that should be beneath us. But first comes memory. For memory is a sacred act. It is a holy act. During this High Holy Days season, may we do our remembering with humble yet insightful recognition that where we’ve been is a precious asset. For out of our past, we can plan a better future. In the new year 5778, may we succeed in making that so.

Shabbat shalom.

Billy

In 1893, a a 17-day “Parliament of the World’s Religions” was held in Chicago, Illinois. At the convocation’s opening day events on September 11, a young man named Swami Vivekananda, representing the nation of India as well as the Hindu religion worldwide, addressed the gathering with the following words:

Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honor of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen.

108 years later, on that very same day, terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and maybe the White House too, reminding us that “the death-knell of all fanaticism” is a long ways away.

With each New Year, our community gathers to rearticulate a vision handed down to us by our ancestors. On Rosh Hashanah morning, we will read from Mishkan HaNefesh of Judaism’s challenge to us:

You have made everything wondrous after its kind. The x molecule hooks the y molecule. Mountains rise with utmost gravity, snow upon their shoulders. A congress of crows circulates through the maize whose sheen brightens through a breezeless morning. […] You have done enough, Engineer. How dare we ask You for justice. (Mishkan HaNefesh – Rosh Hashanah, page 171)

That task is ours. To build a fair and compassionate society, we will need to work side-by-side with people of all colors, all religions, all nationalities, all genders and sexual orientations … all of us, together, impassioned if not impatient for peace.

May this be the year when Vivekananda’s words don’t merely grace the steps of the Art Institute in Chicago (see below), but adorn our hearts, our breath, and our every step through life.

L’shana tova … may it be a sweet year, a year of peace for all,
Billy, Ellen, Katie, Mark and Aiden

Ludwig van Beethoven lived from 1770 to 1827. During those fifty-seven years, he composed a ton of music. When he was 28, in a fit of rage he fell and stood up to discover he’d gone deaf. For twenty-nine more years, he wrote his music without being able to hear well or, for the last thirteen years of his life, at all.

One year before he died, Beethoven composed his string Quartet in C-sharp Minor. Upon listening to a performance of this remarkable composition, another celebrated composer, Franz Schubert, remarked, “After this, what is left for us to write?” The piece is technically and physically demanding work, and must be played without pauses for more than forty minutes. This leaves the musicians with no time to retune their instruments. Done badly then, the piece can end up a mess.

In the film, A Late Quartet, Beethoven’s composition serves as a metaphor for life, and it isn’t a subtle one: “What are we supposed to do?” asks a quartet of musicians preparing to perform the piece. “Stop,” they are advised. “Or adjust to each other” as you’re playing the piece.

Tonight begins the 14th day of the Hebrew month of Elul. These are the twenty-nine days that lead up to Rosh Hashanah. During them, Jewish tradition challenges us to get ready for teshuvah, the process of turning – of recalibrating our lives for the better – in the year-to-come.

The days of Elul seem to me not unlike Beethoven’s string quartet. School has begun, we’re back to work after summer vacation, we never stopped working at all, or taking care of our kids, or any number of jobs and responsibilities that prevent us from ever slowing down enough to take the time and review how we’ve been doing.

But that’s what Elul’s supposed to be for! During these four weeks leading up to the High Holy Days, we’re to take stock of the kind of person we’ve been in the past year. We identify where we’ve fallen short. Have we been kind enough? Have we been generous enough? Have we been selfless enough? And even, have we taken enough care of ourselves?

All of these questions need answers before we enter the sanctuary on Rosh Hashanah. Why? Because there’s important, serious and not very easy work to be done in there. We’ve all made some mistakes in the past twelve months. Maybe lots of them. By the time we enter that room, we really need to know what each of us is dealing with. In that way, we can spend time thinking of ways to be better, kinder, more compassionate and just human beings. We don’t want to simply acknowledge our shortcomings during the High Holy Days services; we need strategies for overcoming those shortcomings.

Yesterday morning, while reaching over a counter to open up a window, I pulled a muscle in my back. It really hurt. It got so bad as the day wore on that I had to lie still for most of the day. So I had a lot of time to think. Which is kind of interesting, owing to it being Elul and thinking is what I’m supposed to be doing.

Here are my two significant thoughts from yesterday. First, it took a temporary but debilitating condition to carve out time for me to do my Elul work. And second, that pulled muscle demanded of me my full attention. I couldn’t say I was too busy; the pain relieved me of that excuse. But the pulled muscles of our souls, the debilitating condition of our spirits, that’s much easier to ignore. I received a gift – a mixed bag, to be sure – of uninterrupted time to ponder the questions posed by Elul. But what am I gonna do tomorrow, when I’m not stuck in bed? What will any of us do with these twenty-nine days?

In Islam, the month of Ramadan serves much the same purpose as our month of Elul. But Muslims have many rituals – including the pre-dawn meal and prayers of suhoor, and the sunset prayers and meal of iftar, and of course the day-long fast – all to focus them on the spiritual meaning of the Muslim relationship with God.

You and I have the same month, same opportunities, and an occasional blast of the shofar to remind us the High Holy Days are coming.

This fragile world of ours needs good people to take care of it and to make it a safe home for all. Goodness isn’t an impossible task. But it does take work. More than anything, it takes resolve, telling ourselves over and over again, for a lifetime in fact, “I want to be a good person. I will be a good person.”

May these reminders never hurt like a pinched muscle. And even though the challenge never ends … just like Beethoven’s string quartet, may we be ever able to retune our instrument – our bodies, our words, our actions. And may we use this gift of the month of Elul to get ourselves ready so that, when we enter into Aseret Y’mei Teshuvah — the Ten Awesome Days of Turing — only a few weeks from now, we make the best use of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, helping one another to become the gracious, understanding, loving people that God wants us to be.

L’shana tovah … may it be a year of goodness for each of us, because we made it so for all of us.

Shabbat shalom,
Billy

While procrastinating about writing for tonight, I watched what I thought was a pretty extraordinary and wonderful film called The Road Within. Released without much fanfare earlier this year, it’s about three teenagers – one with Tourette Syndrome, one with obsessive compulsive disorder and the third suffering from anorexia – who flee from their residential facility and embark upon the first great journey of their lives. I think what I love about this film is that these three teens, whose medical conditions are typically ones that debilitate an individual’s chance at having any sense of normalcy, set off on a road-trip which not only exacerbates their conditions but liberates them from constant enslavement to those conditions as well. Nothing goes away but, as the characters evolve, each tests the boundaries of what they can achieve in spite of their disability.

We’re finishing up the week of Sukkot, Judaism’s harvest festival and a time during which we wave the lulav, sniff the etrog, and spend time in the sukkah, all to celebrate and express our gratitude for God’s gifts. The ritual for waving the lulav has us do so in six different directions, the purpose of which is to affirm that God’s presence is everywhere, no place is devoid of the Divine.

That’s all well and good when life chugs along without disappointment or pain. And for a while, a lot of us get to live lives like that. But even for the most privileged among us – and by that, I not only mean materially but also physically and emotionally – time comes when we learn our lessons. It may wait til we get old and we learn that old-age hurts; it may come sooner when illness or setback or loss finds us and pushes our lives into a deep hole. But it does come. Eventually, we all learn what it means to live without.

In The Road Within, Vincent, who has Tourette Syndrome, complains, “This <bleep>ing sucks. Can’t I get one <bleep>ing advantage out of this <bleep>ing illness? [My tics] only come when I don’t want them and only in the worst <bleep>ing moments!” But Vincent soon discovers that he can live life, and he can do so with grace, with intelligence, and even with a smile. He may be a fictional character, but I’ve encountered him many times.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, reelected President so often they had to pass a law to keep that from happening again, was paralyzed from the waist down by polio at the age of 39.

Oprah Winfrey was born in rural Mississippi to an impoverished, teenage single mom. She was raped at the age of nine, pregnant at 14, and lost a son during infancy.

Sylvester Stallone was a forceps-baby, complications from which resulted in the severing of a nerve that caused paralysis in the lower left side of his face, including parts of his lip, tongue and chin. This is what gave him his famous snarling look as well as slightly slurred speech. Truly, “a legend was born.”

And Marc Zupan, a paralympic Gold medal-winner in wheelchair rugby, he’s rock-climbed, sky-dived, and been a guest at the White House.

We all know someone whose life has been destroyed by something that plagued them. But we also know someone who rose above the worst that life had thrown at them, and prevailed.

In the Talmud (Sukkah 23a), we’re taught that one may use an elephant as one of the walls of our sukkah. An interesting argument occurs there: “If he used an animal as a wall of the sukkah, Rabbi Meir declares it invalid and Rabbi Judah valid, for Rabbi Meir was wont to say, “Whatever contains the breath of life can be made neither a wall for a sukkah nor a side-post for an alley, nor boards around wells, nor a covering stone for a grave. In the name of Rabbi Jose the Galilean they said, “Nor may a bill of divorcement be written upon it.”

Pretty outrageous stuff, right? But it begs the question why one would even consider using an animal in any of these circumstances. Accusations of exploitation and mistreatment aside, I can imagine someone justifying this because they simply have no other options. And before you start yelling at me that no circumstances can justify mistreating animals, I am inclined to agree. But as often occurs in the Talmud, what they’re speaking about may not be what they’re speaking about.

Sukkot, as I’ve mentioned, is our gratitude holiday, our Thanksgiving. And much as we Americans consider it a fairly sacred national observance to prepare turkey and all the fixings, building a sukkah is the same kind of sacred (in this case, religious) observance for Sukkot. But if for Thanksgiving you can’t afford a turkey, what then? Families try to figure out some way to make Thanksgiving happen, whether it’s getting a turkey through the local food pantry or serving bowls of cereal because that’s all you’ve got and Thanksgiving needs to happen so cereal it is. The issue here, of course, is not Thanksgiving and it’s not the bowl of cereal; it’s continuing food-insecurity in America. When we hear about a family serving cereal for Thanksgiving, or even when we drop off our turkeys here at Woodlands for Hudson Valley Community Services to distribute to families living with HIV or AIDS, our minds (and our hearts) need to go to that next place, that next question: What do I do about the fact that there are people living in my community (in Westchester, for God’s sake!) who have nothing but cereal, or nothing at all, to serve at any meal in their home?

That’s what Sukkot is all about. And what that elephant holding up a sukkah is all about. If we can understand the blessings present in our own lives, then perhaps we can better see and respond to the lack of blessing in other people’s lives. A well-known Hasidic story has a rabbi imploring a very wealthy person to stop limiting their meals to bread and butter alone. “If you can survive on only bread and butter,” says the rabbi, “will you then assume the poor can survive by eating rocks?” Where we have blessing, our appreciation of those blessings can help ensure we don’t miss the blessing that is missing from other people’s lives.

Tonight, we’ve heard from five congregants who have shared their thoughts about the challenge of living these imperfect lives of ours and, despite the difficulties encountered along the way, the desire to (and sometimes, the success at) coaxing a sense of beauty and abundance right there in the middle of it all. It inspires me to hear from fellow journeyers that others are figuring how to feel grateful for life’s goodnesses even while struggling with its adversity.

Earlier this evening, before the Silent Prayer, we read the words of Noah benShea, reminding us that during our efforts to “build a fire” in our lives, we sometimes have to scratch at the ground “hoping to find the coals of another’s fire,” but all we come across are ashes. While some will crumble in despair because no light, no warmth remains, others will be comforted by their understanding that “somebody else has bent to build a fire,” “somebody else has carried on.” That too can be a blessing.

When my son Jonah died at the age of 19, it felt for a while as if my life was over. I was emptied out, broken-hearted and irretrievably lost. In time, however, I began to remember all the goodness that had been Jonah’s life, his antics, his energy, his kindness. And though I will never cease missing him, I will scratch at the ashes on the ground, forever grateful that I got nineteen amazing years to experience him and to love him. Each Sukkot, I remember how he always jumped in to help us build our family sukkah. His spirit was delightful, uplifting and inspiring.

I won’t say I’ve mastered the art of expressing gratefulness for life’s bounty even when that bounty eludes us, but I’ve definitely gotten better at it. And while unfortunately life provides each of us with opportunities to practice gratitude-amidst-hardship, it also showers us with an embarrassing abundance of riches-without-any-cost-other-than-being-human, for which I will always be practicing my thank you’s.

The traditional greeting during Sukkot is “Moadim l’simkha,” which means something like, “May the moments in your life always place you on a path that brings you to a deep, abiding sense of joy.”

Moadim l’simkha,
Billy

P.S. Thank you, Joshua Spodek, for writing about People Who Succeeded Despite Adversity.

And just in case you’d like to read a bit more, here’s a poem written by W.S. Merwin, an American poet who was particularly prolific during the 60s anti-war movement. He lives in New York City and is 88 years old. This is entitled “Thanks.”

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
smiling by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

To which I add Anne Frank’s immortal words, “In spite of everything.”

W.S. Merwin’s poem is published in Migration: New & Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2005).