V'zot Habracha: The Four Giants

This Dvar Torah comes from Rabbi Jay Kelman of Torah in Motion.  Since we just completed reading the Torah and begin again, let us contemplate what makes for a good life, as Rabbi Kelman cites in this drash.

"And Moshe was one hundred and twenty years when he died" (Devarim 34:7). It is a beautiful, if somewhat unrealistic, custom to offer blessings to those celebrating a birthday that they should live to be 120. While this quantity of life is (currently) unrealistic, the blessing to live to 120 relates not only to quantity, but to the quality of life; "his eyesight did not diminish and his strength did not wane" (ibid). 

The Midrash notes that three other giants of Jewish history also lived to be 120; Hillel the Elder, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zackai, and Rabbi Akiva. And like Moshe, the Midrash claims that they, too, "gave sustenance to the Jewish people for forty years", forty being the number representing transformation. These four are the transformative figures of Jewish history.

It takes forty days for fetus to develop, the flood lasted forty days, Moshe spent forty days receiving the Torah, and we wandered for forty years in the desert, fulfilling G-d's promise to Abraham that we would be strangers in a land for four hundred years.

Not surprisingly, the Midrash divides the lives of these four heroes into three periods of forty years, with the culmination being their service to the Jewish people for forty years. Moshe, the Midrash notes, spent forty years in Egypt, forty in Midian, and forty "sustaining the people". Rabbi Akiva became interested in Torah at the age of forty, and Hillel arrived in Israel from Bavel at forty.

The message of the Midrash is not to convey their age at death[1], but to link these four great heroes of Jewish history. Each led at a time of great historical crisis, and they literally "sustained (parnesh) the Jewish people for forty years" (Sifri 36:7). Without their efforts, there would have been no Jewish history.  Not only did Moshe redeem the people as they came perilously close to total assimilation--something the Midrash claims did indeed happen in the case of at least 80% of the people--he spared them from the destruction due them for their sinning. Hillel established the "house" (Beit Hilllel) that set up the contours of Jewish law. He was extolled for his great humility like Moshe, and had an uncanny ability to relate to all. His student Rav Yochanan ben Zackai perhaps single-handedly saved the Jewish people by not attempting to save Jerusalem, affording the opportunity to rebuild Judaism from the ground up in Yavne. With the Temple lost, many groups of Jews disappeared; and if not for Rav Yochanan's understanding that the Temple is only a means to an end, we would not be here today.

While Rav Yochanan ben Zackai saved Judaism, it was Rabbi Akiva who developed it. It was to his Beit Midrash that Moshe was "transported" at Sinai--to witness Rabbi Akiva "expound on every thistle and thistle, mountains and mountains of Jewish law" (Menachot 29b). His willingness to sacrifice his life in order to worship G-d with all his soul is the (tragic) model that was emulated by many. It is he and his students who are the primary teachers of the Mishnah and halacha.

Anthropologists generally divide life into three stages; growth, maturity and decline. Yet that is true in the physical realm only. If one is immersed in "sustaining the Jewish people", something each of us can do in some form or another, the legacy we leave for our people will endure for all time.

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[1]Even Moshe may not have been exactly 120 years old at death. The Torah tells us he was eighty when he first spoke to Pharaoh, and if we add the forty years in the desert, that leaves no real time for the ten plagues and the Exodus. Biblical numerology is often meant not as mathematical or historical certitude, but to convey certain ideas rooted in the symbolic nature of numbers.

Don't let your child get stuck in Juvenile Judaism

I want to share with you 2 articles which recently came out about Hebrew high schools.  The first one deals with one school in New Jersey that changed its curriculum to appeal to more students.  Here’s a quote from the article:

The new curriculum puts a modern, topical spin on the traditional Hebrew language, holiday, and ritual-centered program. Based on an eight-semester program developed by Brandeis University’s Institute for Informal Jewish Education, the curriculum will include courses on Jewish bioethics, modern and historic Israel, and “Who Wrote the Bible?”

In other words, they’re doing EXACTLY what we’ve been doing here for years – in fact we have offered all of these courses and are presently offering the first 2 this semester.  Read more in:

http://www.njjewishnews.com/article/18487/shul-revamps-approach-to-teen-education#.UkHTUFM2PuW

This next article deals with the cost of Hebrew High Schools.  As you will note, since we are a member of NAACCHHS, we have the lowest cost of any of the high schools in the country.

http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/what-is-the-cost-of-supplemental-hebrew-high-school/

With our innovative programming and no/low cost, you’d think parents and teens would be knocking down our doors to get in.  You’d be wrong.  Each semester it’s getting more and more difficult to get students to sign up for our innovative and interesting program.  We expend much energy querying the students as to what their interests are – many of whom express a desire to come to Chai School, and yet when the time comes they do not come to Chai School.  The feedback we receive from students who’ve taken the program is so positive – I know we are competing with many other after-school activities – but when all is said and done, isn’t it important to engage your child in a program that will make him/her feel positive about her/his heritage and give him/her a greater understanding of our Jewish history, culture, Israel and one’s place in the world today?

I hope you will consider enrolling your teen in the Chai School and if you know of other Jewish teens in the community who have not been to Hebrew school, ever, but would like to explore their heritage, please share with them the information about our Vermont Chai School.  After all, secular education doesn’t end after 7^th grade, why should Jewish education?

Learning Judaism as a Native Language Requires More Than Synagogue Once a Year

I wanted to share with you this article from Tablet Magazine, an online Jewish ezine with great articles:

Becoming fluent in your own religious tradition is like playing an instrument or a sport: It takes time, dedication, and practice.

By Mark Oppenheimer

It’s the High Holiday season, the time of year when synagogues double or triple or quadruple in attendance, as barely affiliated Jews stream back through the sanctuary doors, looking for their yearly connection. Some are scared, others disdainful, many bored. And confused—lots of confusion. As someone who writes about religion for a living, I have conversations throughout the year with these “High Holiday Jews,” but also with other Jews, some of them regular worshippers, others infrequent, who are trying to figure out why Judaism is so hard for them. I’m not a rabbi and I don’t have any good answers, but I do have some reflections, which I hope will put some people’s minds at ease, maybe even help them.

The basic problem is that for many people, Judaism used to be a native language. For many of them, it was a second language—after Russian, or Polish, or English, or whatever. But it was still spoken in their home, in one way or another. What’s more, because Jews were forced together by anti-Semitism, laws, or mere custom, Jews knew plenty of other Jews. Often, they knew other Jews almost exclusively. So, even if one was not from a very learned family, one still felt that a Passover Seder, or even a Simchat Torah parade, was familiar, friendly, native. Your family might go to synagogue only a few times a year, but when you went you saw friends, neighbors, relatives. Even if you didn’t understand the prayers or connect with any of it spiritually, you still felt more or less at home.

That was Judaism as a native language.

These days, except for tiny Jewish minorities in gentile lands, or for the Orthodox who live among other Orthodox, Judaism is not native to anybody. Even many Israelis are now estranged from, and don’t understand, Jewish religious practice. So, for most of the Jewish world, Judaism the religion is now a learned practice. It can still give great joy and meaning to one’s life, but most of us can never practice Judaism in the easy, unearned way that, say, I can celebrate the rituals of being American: the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Super Bowl parties.

So, if Judaism is no longer a native language for many Jews, what is it? I believe that Judaism is best thought of now as an art, or maybe a sport. Put in even simpler terms, it’s like playing guitar, or playing tennis.
Consider that playing guitar is very, very hard when you start. Let’s say you take a beginner’s class. At the beginning, you will feel frustrated and embarrassed when you make mistakes. If you don’t even know how to read music, and if, what’s more, you lack a good ear, then you will be surrounded by people, even in that introductory class, who seem far ahead of you. You may go back for a few weeks in a row, and you may even practice every night, but after a month you won’t have made what seems like satisfactory progress. Meanwhile, if you bump into fellow students, or hang out at the music school, you will feel as if all of them are ahead of you, making more progress, and coalescing into a community of musicians that you will never be able to join. Some of them may start jamming together, or using lingo that you have yet to master. You will already be defeated. (This doesn’t have to be guitar, of course. It could be violin, cello, lute, whatever.)
And what if you only went to this music class once or twice a year? (You can see where I am going with this.)

Continue reading.

Post Labor Day Whites

When is it fashionably acceptable to wear white after Labor Day? On Yom Kippur! Many people have the custom of wearing white on Yom Kippur. In the synagogue you will often see women dressed in white suits or dresses and men bedecked in a white garment known as a kittel (Yiddish for robe). There are several reasons for this custom: 1) Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the day on which we ask God to overlook all of our mistakes. Consequently, it is customary to wear white as a way of emulating the angels, who stand before God in purity. In Hebrew, angels are known as "malachim" (singular-mal'ach) which means messenger(s).  The malachim were created as God's spiritual messengers and are pure, totally spiritual creatures. Human beings, on the other hand, were created of both matter and spirit. It is this combination that gives us "free will," enabling us to make choices that, unfortunately, are not always the best. These unwise choices are what require us to engage in teshuva (repentance). On Yom Kippur, one wishes to emulate the malachim, the pure spirits who exist only to serve the Creator. 2) White garments, especially the kittel, are also reminiscent of the burial shroud. On Yom Kippur, one's life is held in balance by the greatest Judge of all. When one is reminded of one's mortality, a person is more likely to engage in honest introspection...Did I really act properly? Was there anything I could have done better? etc. 3) And of course, on Yom Kippur you don't have to worry about food stains!

How To Bake the Ultimate Challah—for Rosh Hashanah or Anytime

For Rosh Hashanah, I'd love to share with you Joan Nathan's video on baking a challah.

לְֹשָנָה טוֹבָה תִּכָּתֵיבוּ

Have a Sweet and Happy New Year

Guest Blogger

Shalom Chaveirim,

I'm back from my vacation and revving up to get ready for High Holidays, Religious School, Chai School, Adult Education Classes and all that comes with fall.

I read this wonderful newsletter from Nigel Savage, the Executive Director of Hazon, a Jewish organization dedicated to sustainable communities. With the holidays approaching so early this year, I hope you'll take a moment and read through what Mr. Savage has to say about community.

Morah Judy

Elul, my Grandma, the Tomato Hornworm,
and the Talmud

Dear All,

It's great to be at Isabella Freedman. Adamah Farm Vacation is underway – parents and kids hanging out here and having a whale of a time. I picked some of the last of the raspberries. I learned about the minimum temperature for a compost pile to legally be certified as safe to use (over 130 degrees, for at least two weeks). And I saw a tomato hornworm for the first time and learned about the wasp larvae that eat the hornworms – and thus enable the tomatoes to grow without having pesticides sprayed on them to kill the hornworms.

And meanwhile, even as it's the start of August and the middle of summer, it's also about to be the start of the Hebrew month of Elul.

I'm particularly conscious of the timing because my Grandma died – ten years ago this month – on the last day of Av. Confusingly the last day of Av is the first day of Rosh Chodesh Elul; ie the day before thesecond day of Rosh Chodesh Elul, which is in fact the first day of Elul. That in turn is the first day we blow shofar, and thus the official start of the season of teshuva – of returning to our best selves.

So, in honor of my grandma, and lest the holidays catch you unawares, a few things to think about in the forthcoming season of teshuva.

First: I don't want to mythologize either our grandparents, or the world in which they grew up. They were human, which is to say no less flawed than we are ourselves. I have no desire to go to a dentist of 60 years ago. I don't wish to smoke as they smoked. I'm glad I have google maps – even though I know it lessens my already weak sense of direction. I wouldn't have wanted to be gay when my grandparents were my age now. I don't mythologize living through the Great Depression or the Second World War – let alone the Great War that all four of my grandparents lived through, and that my father's father was injured fighting in.

But with these caveats, it's worth thinking, I think, about aspects of their lives that they took for granted, that many of us need to learn or relearn, and that underpin the building of healthier and more sustainable communities. Here's one in particular that I've been thinking about:

A sense of duty and obligation. I think the single greatest difference between my grandparents' generation and mine is in relation to a sense of duty and obligation. I don't think they were all great, and I don't think that we're not. And duty and obligation have their downsides. Nevertheless: there is something corrosive and damaging about how we relate to many institutions of Jewish life today (and, indeed, to many institutions in the wider society). Jewish tradition's foundational questions are not "is this meaningful to me?" or "what will I get from it if I go to services on Rosh Hashanah?" Jewish tradition starts not with rights but with obligations; not with the search for personal meaning, but with ol malchut shamayim – the notion of taking on certain responsibilities, even certain burdens, because the tradition expects them of us.

One of my favorite parts of the traditional morning service is that, very early on, you say a bracha (a blessing) for learning Torah and then – because you've said the bracha and you need, as it were, to complete it – you then learn a series of Torah texts. One of them is from the Talmud, 127a:

"These are the things which someone performs and enjoys their fruits in this world, while the principal remains in the world to come: honoring one's parents; doing acts of lovingkindness; going early to the house of study, morning and evening; welcoming guests; visiting the sick; accompanying the bride; escorting the dead; focus within prayer; and bringing peace between someone and their fellow; and the study of Torah is equal to all of these."

So I love a whole slew of things about this text, but I want to share just two:

• I love that it doesn't just say you have to do them. Rather the text is saying: these are reallygood things to do – they're so good that you'll be, as it were, doubly rewarded for doing them. But the obligation to do them is still, in some sense, internalized. We have a choice. Do we choose to do these things – or not?
• I love the mix. Things that divide out very clearly in contemporary life are all mixed up together here. Visiting the sick, acts of loving-kindness – those things are "social justice" – doing good by others. Focus in prayer – isn't that about my personal spiritual journey? Making peace between two friends who've argued – that's not religion, that's being a good friend, surely? Going early to shul – whose business is it if I go early to shul or not? The rabbis of the Talmud didn't draw such sharp distinctions.

And, even as I'm writing this, I suddenly remember something I had learned from Reb Shlomo Carlebach z"l, which I'd forgotten. In reference to this text, I once heard him say: "If it's a mitzvah to accompany the dead, how much more so is it a mitzvah to accompany those who are alive – but really struggling…"

So as the sun beats down, and the farmers pick our food for us, it's not too early to think about Elul, and your grandparents, and the lead-up to Rosh Hashanah and the Jewish New Year. What are those aspects of your grandparents that you want to emulate? And which are the mitzvot that you choose to take on, or to take more seriously — not simply for what you might get from them — but for what you might give?

Shabbat shalom, chodesh tov,

Nigel Savage
Executive Director, Hazon

Registration

Shalom,

I hope everyone is having a fabulous summer.  

By now you've probably read the Rabbi's blog and received a letter from the Temple outlining our new no-tuition policy for Religious School.  I am so thrilled that our Temple has committed its resources and philosophy to the education of our children.  We also have some wonderful new activities planned for schoolchildren and younger.

Each month starting in October we will have:

     A Saturday Morning Tot Shabbat at 10:00 geared for infants-5 year olds
     A Friday Evening Youth Service at 5:30 geared for ages 5-10
     A Sunday Morning Story Hour at 10:00 geared for 2-5 year olds

Another change you will see this coming year is a move to have all classes of Religious School on Thursday -- that’s all grades, Ganeinu through Chai School.  We appreciate all who responded to the survey, your voices were heard and the Education Committee made the changes.

Stacie is sending out a link to a  Registration Form.  We do need you to fill this out for each student (except Chai School) who will be enrolled this year.  This will enable us to know how many teachers to hire, books to order, etc.  We ask that you have registration into us by August 15^th.

I’m very excited about these changes.  If you would like to join the Education Committee, please let me know.  New voices always provide new ideas and energy.

Have a great summer and stay tuned for more information on the start of the coming school year, we have something very special planned for September 26^th. 

L’Shalom,

Judy Alexander

Director of Congregational Education