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A palpable paradox exists in our nation. As the religious right grows more powerful, or at least more vocal, in their desire to impress the masses with their theologically based and often rigid political views (at least IMHO), there is a growing move towards secularism and atheism among many that is often blamed for the lack of religious affiliation among young Americans. Evidence of this trend appeared late last fall in four billboards strategically placed and marketed by the nascent Baltimore Coalition of Reason that read: Are you good without God? Millions are. The Baltimore Coalition of Reason is part of a National Coalition of Reason that has sponsored similar marketing campaigns nationwide. This past June, for example, commuters in Austin, TX were treated to this slogan on their ride to work: Don’t believe in God? Join the club. Philadelphians and Floridians: Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.
The existence of non-theists is nothing new there are and always have been those who actively and publicly reject the notion of a God, and there are those who do so even though they are intimately connected to religious organizational life, even synagogue life. As the research of Daniel C. Dennett, a philosophy professor at Tufts University underscores, personal belief does not necessarily go hand in hand with organizational and denominational commitment. In a study summarized in a recent issue of The Wilson Quarterly, Dennett identified and investigated what he calls, the invisible phenomenon of non-believing ministers, ministers who expressed skepticism over religious doctrine and at times outright atheism yet who still remain committed to their respective church institutions. Such a coordinated and well-funded organizational attempt (by an anonymous Philadelphia based businessman, by the way) to raise awareness and increase acceptance and visibility of atheism, of non-belief independent of political ideology on such a wide scale perhaps is. This isn’t Marxism mind you, which demanded liberation from religion as part of its social and political agenda. What is striking to me is this Coalitions reliance on reason as their mantra that is, reason replacing God and theology as the movements unifying tenet.
As an inheritor of the values of Reform Judaism, a movement birthed in the social and intellectual atmosphere of the European Enlightenment and nurtured during the 19th and early 20th centuries when the critical historical method was first being applied to biblical and liturgical studies, I view reason as central to religion. The application of reason, from the Latin ratio, to judge, to think understood in its European context as wissenschaft was and is still critical to discerning the difference between, as well as, the intersection of history and theology. What claims are our religious texts making? What was the agenda of our Biblical writers and editors, and how do we reconcile that agenda, particularly the declaration and promulgation of a singular God, with modernity? These questions require the application of reason.
Despite, however, my rationalistic, academic sensibilities and the fact that as so many in my generation I too vacillate between periods of agnosticism (that is doubt in the ability to understand God), atheism (that is doubt that there even is a God), and theism (faith in a supreme and transcendent God), I view both God and reason as necessary ingredients to religion, particularly Judaism.
Do you? As we embark on a new year, when we are tasked with the introspective work of tshuvah, how many of us are taken by a billboard that not only reassures us that we are not alone in our theological doubts but more importantly in our frequently all-too-ready desire to shed the burdens of responsibility to our religious faith and institutions? Lets be honest with ourselves. It isnt easy to support a synagogue: to make the time and commitment to attend worship services, prioritize religious instruction in our lives, whether for our children or for ourselves, among all of the other activities available to us, to pay dues and support Temple fundraisers particularly in economically trying times. These tasks require conscious commitment as does carving out the time to gather together here in order to pursue social justice through a Jewish lens. Yet, we do it! Those of us who are present today celebrating the beginning of 5771 within the context and embrace of our synagogue community do it.
Why? Is God part of our motivation? Is God a necessary factor to our commitment to synagogue life? The popular punch line is familiar, shared from this pulpit on a number of occasions: Max comes to shul to speak with God; Sam comes to speak with Max Does the synagogue depend on us believing in God, or is being a Beit Knesset, a place simply to gather enough? No question that the social connections we form within these walls are vital, but I wonder, if that conversation Sam seeks to have with Max is enough to keep synagogue life thriving well into the 21st century.
According to a study reported a year ago in The New York Times Magazine, a study by the Pew Forum, a non-partisan research think-tank that strives to understand the juncture between religion and public affairs, 75% of Americans report that they pray at least once a week while only 39% attend a worship service on a weekly basis. Now prayer doesn’t necessitate a belief in God; however, arguably this interesting statistic suggests that most Americans believe in something greater than themselves, something toward which to pray. Call it God, a Higher Power, The Divine, Adonai, Elohim, Shechinah, Jesus, Allah whatever its name, there is something towards which prayer can be directed for most Americans. Yet only a minority of those who believe in and actively pray towards some form of deity seem to require an organized communal outlet for this God seeking. At first glance, this study seems to suggest that God trumps the social connections we make within these walls!
It isn’t our lack of faith or our doubts about God, our atheistic and agnostic tendencies if you will, that keep us from connecting more fully, more actively to the synagogue. Clearly, as the Pew Forums research indicates, there are many who believe in God but still choose to remain outside the institutional walls of organized religion. And Id bet, that a number of those who choose to come inside and engage in organized religious practice have a belief in God that is far less secure.
So if isn’t our theological doubts that prevent us from connecting more fully to religious life, what is preventing so many? One possibility is our insecurity regarding our ability to pray and engage despite theological struggles. Prayer is a skill. As the Rev. Daniel Henderson, a Baptist minister and former head of a suburban mega-church in Minneapolis who now leads a non-profit organization that runs how-to worship seminars, notes people just assume they know how to pray. But Prayer is a lot more than reciting words. It requires a [mastery of] both theory and technique. Few of us are cognizant of the level of skill development required for prayer which leads us instead to assume that we can’t or don’t want to engage in liturgical recitation. The comparison between prayer skill and physical fitness, one I make often, offers a useful metaphor. One cannot expect to run a 10-mile race without skill and endurance training. The muscles, particularly the brain, need to be prepared for the activity. We know this; we expect to have to work towards physical goals, yet we have difficulty transferring this understanding of preparation to less physically demanding, more mindful goals such as prayer. Instead, we grow quickly impatient and give up assuming there is little or no meaning in the task.
One of the greatest challenges of Reform Judaism, frankly, is our overall liturgical illiteracy. We may balk at the keva, the routine and fixed nature of the traditional liturgy. We liberals emphasize kevanna, that is spontaneity over rigidity, but here is an area in which we could learn a few pointers from our more traditional brethren. It is that adherence to the structure of the siddur that enables Orthodox Jews to at least know what to do when they walk into the doors of their synagogues and to have the endurance to focus on the task at hand for an extended period of time regardless of whether they fully understand what they are saying or why, for that matter. The skill set is in place; its rote. Mind you, I wouldn’t trade our tendency toward kevanna or our responsiveness to modernity for that skill set, nor would I relinquish our movements commitment to the highest aesthetic expression of worship; yet, it would behoove us to learn from that commitment to skill development by acknowledging that prayer requires a certain level of literacy and skill.
The development of prayer skills need not be all that difficult, but it requires attention and mindfulness. To quote Rabbi Marc Gellman, a Long Island Rabbi made famous by his appearances on ABCs Good Morning America throughout the 90s, when you come right down to it, there are only four basic prayers: Gimme! Thanks! Oops! And, Wow! Gimme – expressions of petition; Thanks – expressions of gratitude; Oops – requests for forgiveness; Wow — wondrous expressions of praise. Id bet we all can and have used these expressions of prayer often in our daily lives. The challenge for the modern synagogue is helping each other to recognize and then communicate these colloquial (and comfortable) expressions of prayer through the language of our siddur within the context of our congregational community a community comprised of many generations with rich yet incredibly diverse backgrounds. Far easier said than done, for sure. Communal prayer requires that we set aside some of the individualism for the sake of communal cohesiveness — again, no small task, but one that is vital to the sustenance of communal prayer and the synagogue community.
Communal prayer demands a bit of vulnerability and perhaps unreasonableness. To recite prayers that may indeed challenge our own personal theological struggles, and to do so in a public setting among friends and acquaintances, seems counter to our modern desires for individual integrity. Our fear of being vulnerable, our fear that we have to check our reason at the door, these may be more likely factors that keep some from entering those doors than issues of belief. Our fear of fundamentalism on the one hand unchecked theology that leads to unbridled religious passion, and our resistance to using our reason thoughtfully, that is taking the time and effort to formulate for ourselves a workable and well-reasoned theology on the other (in other words using our brains), both of these extremes can prevent us from taking steps that would connect us to the very community that could support us in so many significant ways through the valleys, heights, and plains of life.
God & Reason both are necessary for worship and for the sustenance of synagogue life, and both can be found in the sense of community that gathers here whether around Torah, worship, a TESCA event, or even a highway clean up. Perhaps the joke about Sam coming to talk with Max isn’t far off the mark. God isn’t necessarily found in some tightly held theological belief system. God can often be found simply in our presence, our actions, and our willingness to bring our modern sensibilities including reason into our religious pursuits.
The Hebrew word for face offers us a beautiful and compelling metaphor. Panim, face those familiar with the rules of Hebrew grammar will note that it rests in the plural. Indeed, it only appears in the plural form, panim. In theory, it has a singular root ( פ-נ-ה ), though, in practical usage, the singular is non-existent: face never appears panah; it always appears as panim faces, plural and inclusive. The Hebrew implies that our face ceases to exist in the singular. For all our post-Enlightenment interest in the sanctity of the individual, our humanity still requires us to interact with others. Moreover, the Midrashist adds, in a commentary to the Priestly Benediction, that only when we greet each other directly פנים אל פנים face to face is Gods countenance lifted upon us (Numbers Rabbah Naso, pp. 440). Accordingly, God becomes present in Sams conversations with Max even if, and perhaps all the more so because Sam isn’t consciously seeking God. It is within our effort to connect with others, to honestly engage with each other, what 20th century Jewish philosopher Martin Buber identified as our I-Thou moments, that Divinity, that God, even has a chance of entering.
The rhetoric of the Religious Right in our country gives us plenty of reason to want to avoid God completely. And, there is no question that God without reason has the tendency to lead to fundamentalism on the right and at the same time, untamed mysticism on the left; yet, let us not be so quick to throw out the baby with the bath water. A willingness to at least contemplate Gods existence coupled with the activation of our hearts and minds is required in our modern day synagogues. Recall that in the ancient world the lev, the heart was understood as the seat of our intellect as well. We need both heart and mind to fully activate our intellect, and we need our reasoned intellect in order for us to develop a well-honed and flexible theology, God-system, that can help us navigate through our daily lives.
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Swimming, swimming in a swimming pool, when days are hot, when days are cold, in a swimming pool…
The Talmud teaches, gentlemen, that among the obligations a father, and by extension at least I’d argue in the modern world at least, both parents have towards their sons is to teach them to swim. Yes, to swim. In a fairly well-known passage in tractate Kiddushin of the Babylonian Talmud it states, האב חייב בבנו למולו, ולפדותו, וללמדו תורה, ולהשיאו אשה, וללמדו אומנותֹ וי״א: אף להשיטו במים “The father is bound in respect of his son, to circumcise him, redeem (him if first born), teach him Torah, to get him wife, and teach him a craft; and there are those that say, to teach him to swim.”
While the Talmud then goes on to provide fairly detailed commentary and explanation of each of the other obligations, obligations that may on the surface seem more self-explanatory, the text provides just two Hebrew words regarding the command to teach our children to swim, “חיותיה הוא” ‘it may indeed save his life.’
There has been much discussion throughout the ages regarding why the Talmud choose swimming from a number of other very useful skills upon which to focus. One could argue that our lives may depend on a number of physical skills or test of endurance. If someone is pursuing us on foot, running – indeed sprinting – would be a far more useful skill than swimming, no doubt. So why the specific mention of swimming?
It is quite possible, that our sages were referring to the actual physical skill of swimming. I learned to swim as a very young child. I was taught by my mother – well she actually took me to the local Y – indeed because my physical existence may have been threatened otherwise. No, both my mother and father were hardly familiar with the Talmudic injunction regarding swimming, rather, my parents had just bought a house with a pool in the back yard that went up to 10 feet deep. There was a concern about my physical safety. While the geographical region of the middle east is surrounded by various bodies of water, no archeological evidence has shown that there was a sudden rise in pools or watering holes in Babylonian neighborhoods of the 2-4th centuries that would have made parents feel like mine did. It seems much more likely that our Talmudic sages were offering a metaphor for living.
Swimming is one of those rare activities that takes us fully out of familiar territory (it is one of the reasons I still love to swim) – surrounded and literally suspended solely by water, we have to teach our limbs an entirely different set of tools for mobility and survival. Moreover, swimming is a skill that requires a range of skills beyond sheer athleticism; it requires balance, trust, endurance, and consistent & steady rhythm – all necessary skills for successful living. Certainly there are basic tools, a skill set that is required to swim – how to cup one’s hand so it functions efficiently as a paddle, how to turn or lift one’s head for a good breath, how to kick in useful manner that actually serves to propel and not just splash, … but what really makes someone a confident swimmer is the ability to trust the density of the water and allow oneself to balance or float instead of panic and to pace oneself in a consistent and confident rhythm that enables one to get where they are going even if they can’t always see the way through the murky water.
You have been given a skill set – it’s called Torah! You have learned the basics over these many years of religious school and synagogue involvement that can serve to keep you afloat if you nurture them and use them. There may be times in your life when you feel like you are drowning. One of the first rules of swimming is to replace panic in those moments with a calm use of learned skills. Draw on the skills that you’ve been taught. Use Torah as a resource. Draw on the Jewish community to support you and to provide you continual skill development and nourishment.
There is no question that a good swimmer must continue to work on those basic skills – in swimming they’re called drills. They can, frankly, seem dull and cumbersome, but they are necessary for continued growth.
So too with Jewish learning. You’re not done. You have each reached an incredibly important milestone of which you should take a great deal of pride. This evening’s Confirmation ceremony is an opportunity to pause, reflect upon, and celebrate your achievements, but it is not a time to stop. It is incumbent upon you to continue learning. Don’t stop practicing the skills that will enable you to not only be confident in your Jewish identity in future months and year, but that will also help to keep you afloat as you venture further and further out into the world.
You have each expressed the ties that you have to our congregational community, so I invite the entire congregation to rise and join me in offering blessing from our tradition upon you. Words to the priestly benediction can be found on the back cover of your supplements, please join me when we get to those ancient words of blessing.
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Delivered by Rabbi/Cantor Silverman Shabbat Tazria/Metzora, 4/17/2010
Tazria/Metzora. These just may be the most dreaded Torah portions among young students studying to become Bat or Bar Mitzvah, not only because of their detailed descriptions of infections, discharges, and various other eruptions that make us uncomfortable, but also because of the procedures that were applied in response to such tza-ra-at.
According to the text, the Priest is tasked with the role of diagnostician. It is up to the Priest to identify and evaluate if and when such infections qualify as tza-ra-at, as ritually impure. It is also, of course, up to the Priest to implement and enforce the required treatment, to evaluate the progress of healing and when appropriate to facilitate the ritual by which a person returns to their status of tehara, a full participating member of the community.
As Nehama Leibowitz points out in her detailed study of the parashah, some view these portions as biblical recommendations for the prevention of the spread of disease in the community, a medical handbook of sorts used to ensure public health. Other commentators focus on the obscure and seemingly supernatural elements in the text highlighting these diseases as a form of direct retribution from God in response to ill behavior. The rationalist in me certainly leads me to prefer the former understanding; I simply cannot accept a theology of divinely gifted affliction. Regardless, what remains clear, however, is that this text resists clear understanding in a modern context – our questions may have to be left unanswered. We may simply have to live with our discomfort in not fully comprehending the biblical procedures. As Meshekh Hokhma, a late 19th century commentary by Rabbi Meir Simha ha-Kohen of Dvinsk, reminds us ‘The preoccupation with these plagues, entrusted to the judgment of Aaron and his sons, is one of the mysteries of Torah…” (see N. Leibowitz, Studies in Vayikra, p. 185)
Lessons in the text abound, however, despite our inability to comprehend the details with certainty. This year, in light of the national debate regarding health care reform, one verse stands out. If, however, one is poor and without sufficient means… (Lev 14:21). After outlining the offerings one is expected to bring to the priest before being deemed fully recovered from affliction, the text provides an alternative for those who cannot afford. Verses 21-32 of chapter 14 detail the manner in which the one with insufficient means can still make appropriate offerings in line with that person’s means.Consideration is made for all; no one in the community is left ostracized by illness due to financial constraint. Everyone is given a path back into the community. The system doesn’t turn away those of lesser means; it accommodates to them. And more importantly, at a time when healing is most in need, the opportunity to return to a state of ritual purity – a state we may not fully understand today but which was clearly a significant status in the biblical period – is not withheld from those with insufficient resources.
Regardless of where we each stand on the current status of health care reform legislation, one thing I hope we can all agree on is that no one who is suffering from affliction, particularly treatable illness, should be left on the outskirts of society simply due to insufficient means. Access to quality health care is a public health issue, and we cannot allow our health insurance companies to serve as our priests, as the sole decisors of who is granted access back into the community and who is left alone without communal support. No question one of the greatest challenges of our current administration, but our health care system must find a way to recognize the humanity and entitlement to good care of each and every individual in our society.
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Delivered by Rabbi/Cantor Silverman Erev Shabbat Tazria/Metzora, 4/16/2010
This week, the Facebook Group, “If you were a little girl in the 70’s” has been making its way around my “Friends’” pages. Other than making one feel a touch nostalgic with its list of all things popular in the 70’s from Mrs. Beasley dolls, The Love Boat TV series, banana bicycle seats and even Dorothy Hamill haircuts, this list -coupled with an upcoming birthday- reminds me that though it was a lovely era in which to be a child, I wouldn’t want to return to it. And, I’m glad I am not raising my own children in it. The 70’s contained within it some exciting times of ‘coming out’ for women. This was the decade of among other achievements, Title IX, Roe vs. Wade, the opening of US Military Academies to women, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, and the Women’s Educational Equity Act. And, as I’ve expressed from this bema before on more than one occasion, I am so grateful for the efforts of the women and men of that generation that worked to make such important changes from which my and later generations benefit. But that being said, it was also a time when those little girls who were raised then were given extremely conflicting messages. It was okay to play with the GI Joe at my neighbor’s house (he was a boy, by the way), but no one would dare buy a girl any male doll besides Barbie’s slick and equally perfect sidekick, Ken. We were taught to think beyond traditionally female careers – the work place was opening to us – ‘you don’t have to be a teacher like your mother and grandmother before you,’ we were told. Marlo Thomas, Mel Brooks, and Alan Alda in their Free to Be You and Me collection taught us that we didn’t need to follow convention – girls can like fire engines, and boys can like dolls, yet in the next breath most of our parents warned us girls not to forget to wear the little white gloves, cross your ankles, act lady-like and demure in public, and most importantly do as you are told. ‘Boys are made of snips & snails and puppy dog tails, while girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice” still rang true as a mantra. Perhaps it still does today; equity among the sexes is extremely difficult to establish even with the best of intentions.
Parashat Tazria opens with a difficult passage regarding childbirth against which the feminist in me wants to rail against. That is used to want to rail against. That was the feminist who was raised in this hot bed of conflicting messages that characterized the 70’s, that was the feminist who had yet to experience first-hand the full reality of childbirth and early parenting. That was the feminist who saw a hierarchy of inequality in all aspects of unequal expectations and roles. To be fair to myself and to others who like myself may seem reactive, those differing expectations have historically been used to limit women often unfairly; and thus, many of us do remain a bit defensive when faced with such a text that on its surface smacks of disrespect. Fortunately, our relationship with Torah changes as we age; and, if we allow ourselves to be open to study year after year, we can experience the blessing of our own notions being challenged again and again. The beauty of our Torah cycle.
This passage is messy. Childbirth is messy; and fair or unfair it is not in any way a gender equitable endeavor — despite the popular tendency a few years back for couples to announce, ‘we’re pregnant!’ Absurdity. ‘We’ may be expecting a child, but no man has, to my knowledge outside of the imagination of Hollywood, experienced pregnancy and childbirth. The opening passage of Tazria gets to the heart of this reality – that childbirth, the primary, particularly in the biblical period, method of becoming a parent, is not at all an Equal Rights Experience. Perhaps this is why still in the 21st century many if not most couples still have a tough time creating an equitable division of labor when it comes to home and family despite the fact that so many households are supported by two-careers outside the home.
Tazria demands a period of separation for either 33 or 66 days after childbirth depending on the gender of the child, a separation that is often read as punishment due to the priestly hand’s language of t’meiah and t’hara – words that stretch the English capacity for adequate translation – and the requirement of a ritual offering at the end of these days of separation. Ritually impure and pure are the best we can do, perhaps, but sadly these phrases are loaded with such subjective qualitative connotations in english that to translate them may skew the intent of the text. In short, t’meiah and t’hara are ritual categories. In this case, the state of t’meiah ensured a period of healing for the mother and initial bonding between mother and infant. Yes, in the biblical period the after-birth blood flow was most surely feared and thus deemed contaminating; yet, the ritual category of t’meiah can be understood as a means of protecting this time of healing, shielding the mom from other responsibilities. During this period the new mother was released from all sacred and marital obligations – this state of t’meiah set a boundary around her allowing her much needed emotional and physical space.
Today too, it is standard ‘ritual’ procedure to have a period of separation after childbirth (we call it maternity leave) and to then subsequently visit our medical priests, if you will, during the early weeks after childbirth to make sure that mom’s bleeding has ceased, healing has progressed appropriately, and that child is thriving. We have privatized much of the affair, but for many, if not most, women, these early medical visits are the first significant ventures out into the world after childbirth. Unfortunately we’ve privatized the affair so significantly that many women today feel isolated as opposed to feeling supported by the rituals of our community.
This labeling of the period following childbirth as t’meiah recognizes an important reality of our modern society namely that in our attempt to make all things equal between men and women, we often forget that childbirth is an awesome physical and emotional feat for the mom, one that requires a very different period of recovery and healing than is required of the dad.
Understanding the text in this manner compels us to ask an important question: why the period of t’meiah was reduced, cut in half, for the birth of a boy? Certainly gender doesn’t impact the amount of time a woman needs to heal and adjust to the new addition.
Rabbi Helaine Ettinger, in her thoughts on this portion published in The Women’s Torah Commentary published in 2000 (the Jewish Lights volume not our newest WRJ work), notices that there are two ritual processes that take place after childbirth. The first was gender specific and focused on the need to differentiate between the sexes. On the 8th day, the boy was circumcised which ended the initial period of the mom’s t’meiah. The second ritual was solely about the mom’s relationship to God. Regardless of gender, she shall bring two offerings: an olah and a chatah to the priest at the Tent of Meeting these offerings formal marked the conclusion of her maternity leave and could participate fully in society.
Gender matters. We know this truth – the unfinished work of the 1960’s and 70’s has taught us this well. Rabbi Ettinger notes that the ceremony of circumcision required on the 8th day for boys may have been as much about acknowledging this truth – publically marking the child’s maleness and formally allowing the important processes of father-son bonding that would have been critical in the ancient world where gender roles were so definitive. The period of t’meiah for the mom in the case of the birth of a boy is shortened in order to allow the father to enter. Notably, according to Jewish law, it is incumbent upon the father to circumcise his own son and bring him into the covenant, a task that still today is formally and ritually delegated to the mohel as part of the ceremony. According to such an understanding, there is no need for such a separation ritual between mother and daughter. There the bond had already begun and it was thus allowed to continue on its own; there was no need for the interruption of ceremony.
Today there is (and should continue to be) opportunity for both mothers and fathers to be intimately involved in the rearing of both sons and daughters. While gender matters, we have learned that we need not fall victim to assumptions about gender roles based on past roles. One of the ways liberal Jews challenge gender role assumptions is to encourage welcoming ceremonies for all Jewish children, male and female. Male and female are different – but both are worthy of celebration, both are worthy of the full involvement of both parents in their rearing, and both are worthy of a public affirmation of their presence in the community and their relationship with God. Just as both young women and men are called to Torah to mark their coming of age in Jewish tradition.
Ken y’hi ratzon.
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