RH DAY 2

It is a new year for each of us and for the synagogue, as well as for the world. Hayom Harat Haolam...This day the world was born! We can’t send a New Year’s Card to the world, but we do send them to each other.... thereby strengthening our words and hopes by actions (in a way similar to doing mitzvot --  which we will talk about later). If you’re a congregant and you didn’t get a card from Iris and myself, kvetch with the Post Office – we sent out  280 of them to congregants alone! And let us know - we’ll make sure you get one!

Yes, it is a New Year for the Synagogue. Our President has shared some of her thoughts in relation to BHS and the coming year.... but in so many ways I think all of you are aware of how much has been turned around, how a downward spiral has been reversed.... and how much a new spirit of optimism and pride is part of BHS today. Maybe it’s similar to the prescription, the message of hope that we learned from Dr. Groopman yesterday!

But programming and enthusiasm are in many ways the easier part. How do I, as your rabbi, put into you, the congregants who are the heart and the soul of Beth Hillel Synagogue, quoting the words of the prophet Jeremiah, “a new heart and a new spirit...” What is the key to opening your souls to become both more inspired and more committed… and where do I find it? To have you come to more Shabbat services and more minyanim? To study more  and make mitzvot more of your life both within and outside of the synagogue? What can I say that other rabbis didn’t say before me?

There are a few ways to answer this question.....

1) I am certain that previous rabbis DID inspire many of you... and that helped you to become the committed synagogue members that you are.... a commitment I always prize and never take for granted…. And rabbinical leadership that I acknowledge!

2) Others here in the past were indeed inspired but have moved to other locations or cities and taken that inspiration and commitment with them.... (and also many to “olam haba,” the world to come, as well.)

3) Others were indeed inspired but then things in life happened – as we all know they do – and it just happened that the needed “booster shot” just wasn’t given at that time.

4) Or, lastly, that same eternal message and teaching just needed to be repackaged/ reformulated so that it would be more attractive/ that you would want to “try it on” and listen.

Whatever the reasons, and they all can be part of the final equation, if towns and states can declare a “tax amnesty,” Rosh Hashanah is here to proclaim a “lack of inspiration” amnesty, and on this second day of Rosh Hashanah we are all here to start anew, to try again, to be ready to bring our Judaism into our hearts and souls and have both ourselves and our synagogue immeasurably enriched thereby. This would enable our synagogue to flourish…. and have it be an inspiration to us all. Everyone here knows that I am truly blessed with a committed and caring wife. Iris often encourages me to think “outside the box”, and in discussing this ideal synagogue, if she were “just” a congregant, she said that she would want, in such a synagogue,

….my rabbi to ask me what I wanted to see/have in my shul......... to be asked to think about what would involve me/my family... what would make me feel welcome....... what would cause me to take time out of my  schedule to be at the shul… whether on a sporadic basis, or a regular basis.  I would want to be asked what would bring me down to services....... what would make services more enjoyable to me..........  what times I could be there...... how others could be more welcoming......perhaps with personal phone calls/invitations.......

Trying to fulfill those thoughts is my goal for the coming year….. not just to make my wife proud, but even more to have Beth Hillel continue to flourish. And this concern for excellence is true for both individual shuls and the Jewish Theological Seminary, the rabbinic “fountainhead” of the Conservative movement, the rabbinical school which trained and inspired me and ordained me as a rabbi some 33 years ago.

For there is a new chancellor, Dr. Arnold Eisen. He had his formal installation last week, but ever since his appointment was announced almost a year ago, he has been truly “shaking up” the Seminary and thereby arousing the entire Conservative movement to renew itself, as I am attempting to do with you here over these High Holy Days. It is remarkable that Dr. Eisen is not himself a rabbi. He is a scholar, a student of the Conservative movement, its sociology and its changes. But he never went to JTS… or any other Seminary. He is not steeped in Talmud or Bible or halacha (Jewish law).  He is not part of the Seminary culture. WHAT HE IS is an active member of a Conservative congregation (like you all)…. So he knows the congregational side of the rabbinate very well. And his inauguration has been warmly welcomed by the Jewish world. (Article)

What made him accept this position with all of its challenges and demands? Dr. Richard Freund from the University of Hartford (who will incidentally be speaking here next month, tells an anecdote about his relationship with Rabbi Marshall Meyer….. (quote story).

For all kinds of reasons this is a major change in the ethos of Conservative Judaism…. I have heard Dr. Eisen speak… and he has promised numerous changes. I was recently told by my colleague, Rabbi David Small, that Dr. Eisen has been invited/ has on his agenda a speaking visit to Hartford, so hopefully all of us will soon have the opportunity to hear him firsthand. One example of change is his announcement, this past spring, after going through appropriate consultations with different parts of the Seminary, that JTS would now accept students who were homosexual to its rabbinical and cantorial schools. This will be an example to many USCJ congregations.

And what are his thoughts on how to renew/ re-teach the soul-message I mentioned? What is the keystone of his effort to bring a new sense of renewal to the Conservative Jewish community? Chancellor Eisen wrote to every member of the Rabbinical Assembly, “I am circulating guiding principles and questions to RA members in the hope that they will form the basis of one of the sermons you deliver in the course of the upcoming High Holy Days. Our aim is to engage Conservative Jews in discussion on mitzvah which, I believe, is of vital importance to our movement and to the Jewish people. To begin that conversation, it is important that we reflect on the many possible layers of meanings and nuance to the term mitzvah ­ as the Torah does, as the rabbis did over the centuries, as the Hasidic masters, and the master thinkers of modern Judaism did­ lest we fall into the traps of dichotomies that get in the way of our full embrace of mitzvah.

I have to abridge his letter, but it will form the basis of study later in the year….

 Three guiding principles underlie and drive this conversation.

1. We have much to learn by talking and listening to one another on these vital matters. The approach taken here does NOT have any one authority announcing what mitzvah means or should mean. Rather, we invite thoughtful Conservative Jews to reflect carefully and speak honestly about a subject that is both close to their hearts and crucial to our communities. We may well discover more commitment, individually and collectively, than we had imagined. We also may see greater commitment and perhaps even consensus emerge from the discussion begun here.

2. Our tradition has always understood that "mitzvah" embraces a range of nuances broader than "commandment" alone. This is certainly true of popular Jewish usage of the word mitzvah. In common usage the word is generally understood as "good deed."  That may be an element sometimes inherent in specific mitzvoth, but again does not capture the breadth of nuance. JPS renders our key term as "instructions" that were "enjoined upon" the Israelites and not only as "commandments" that they were "commanded." The range of nuance demanded by our tradition’s use of the word over the centuries and to the present day is broader still.

Those meanings include, but are not limited to, actions that we feel obligated to perform, that engage us, that we are responsible for, that we undertake out of love.

3. We must know what we as Jews are committed to do and why we do it before we tackle the more complex and difficult issues of halakhah..

So there is an emphasis on/ a reteaching of/ a push to apply the essential concept of “mitzvah” to our personal or synagogue lives. That leads us to the essential question, “What does the word mitzvah mean?”

I have a friend, Arnie Resnicoff, who was a classmate of mine at the Seminary and who went on to become a career chaplain in the Navy. He shared some insightful thoughts on this question, and I want to share a few of them....

“There is an old joke about the mouse who saves herself and her children when they hear the cat coming around the corner -- by barking like a dog. Then, when the cat runs away, the mouse says to her children, "Never underestimate the value of a second language!"

Sometimes I think the fact that I "speak military" as one of my languages helps me understand how to "speak Jewishly," as well, because the idea of commandedness...and the "call of duty" is inherent to both.

When we say Sh'ma Yisrael -- HEAR, O Israel -- the word "hear" is much closer to its use in "Now hear this," the words over the loudspeaker on a ship that demanded both attention and obedience/action. And when the Israelites said "naaseh v'nishmah (we will do and we will hear)" at Sinai, they were saying, "aye, aye," which -- according to longstanding Navy tradition -- includes three affirmations: (1) I hear, (2) I understand, and (3) I will obey.

When we ask which is preferable, to do a good deed without a sense of command or because of one, I think of the military idea of "acting above and beyond the call of duty." Those heroes who act in such a way are praiseworthy, but the system would collapse -- the military could not function -- unless there was also a sense of "the call of duty" itself.

In other words, when the Israelites, our Jewish ancestors, accepted the covenant for themselves and their descendants, those of us alive today became part of the Jewish vision -- with its call to duty: living, witnessing, struggling with asking the right questions.... for it is important that Judaism survive, because the world would be less without it, and if we believe that fact, then we must live up to the call of duty to help keep it -- and its lessons, visions, dreams, values and vision -- alive.

I proudly claim to be a student of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who writes of a "leap of action," because, although values are important, they MUST be lived out in this world and thereby link us to other Jews, to our community; and to our God,  whose presence we sense, sometimes too rarely. Yes, there are peak or special moments when we do feel that presence -- and then the challenge of  our Judaism, our mitzvot, is to keep us from dismissing those moments as flukes, but rather, help us understand them as "true north," holding on to them during desperate times, until we feel them again. Repeat

I mentioned yesterday that my oldest daughter and her family are in Taiwan for awhile as my son-in-law teaches in a university there. I thought it was humorous when she wrote me that each of them has been given Chinese names that match the meaning of their Hebrew ones, especially relevant for their children as they immerse themselves in a Chinese school.

Tchelet: Ru-lan (rhymes with Mulan). It means like sky blue.

Rakia: Ru-tsyr: It means like feeling in heaven.

Elal: Ru-yun It means like a cloud up in the sky.

Larom: Ru-chin. It means like sunshine in the sky.

So I can call the girls: All four of roo, come here or line up, now, all in a roo.

But I see a value in this as well.... much more than having classmates being able to identify them. Using a language is a way of becoming a part of that culture. We cannot learn to speak our Jewish spiritual language without jumping in and speaking, speaking mitzvot, -- answering that call to duty and that call to action (or leap of action) -- any more than we can learn to speak any other language merely by studying its rules and its laws………..

Heschel also writes that we often think of religion as an approach to God, but that it in actuality it should be looked at differently. God speaks first. God is in search of us. One of Heschel’s most important books is “God in Search of Man.” Faith is the sense that there is something larger than us, calling to us, searching, inviting, commanding.... Religion, then, is the response to God, not the approach. Mitzvah -- our call to action in response to our call of duty -- is part and parcel of the Jewish language our community shares as part of that response.

Have I convinced you? We’ll see…. Was I too technical or lengthy?.... I tried not to be.

I want to close by sharing one more selection from Dr. Jerome Groopman, who I discussed yesterday. I hope its relevance is clear. One of his patients said, after discussing her belief in an afterlife as she looked towards her death, “Of course, I have doubts. Everyone who believes has doubts if they’re honest with themselves. I suppose it could all be an illusion..... that God is an invention of the human mind, and after your life on earth, there is just nothing. But deep inside, it doesn’t feel that way at all.”

I hope, deep inside, you can agree..... we have an unbreakable, eternal covenant with our God. How special, how wonderful that statement is, and that our God is in search of each one of us! Especially on this Rosh Hashanah day, I hope we can let ourselves be found!!