I’m sure you have heard about the Rabbi, Priest, and Imam who were asked, “What would you like said about you at your funeral?” The Imam wanted to be known as someone devoted to faith and family--served as a role model. The Priest wanted to be known for his selflessness, his devotion to the Pope and as one who grew his parishes. The Rabbi said, “I’d like someone to say: “Look! He's moving!”
This has been a year of motion and movement, tumult and turmoil, hope and blessing for many of us, including my family. Following the Yom Tov season last year, just before beginning my sabbatical leave, Josette was diagnosed with cancer. One can have a sabbatical from work, but not from life. After almost a year of surgeries and treatments Josette is looking forward to good health. During the year, Josette received excellent care in oncology centres in Toronto and Jerusalem. We were blessed that because of my time away, I was able to devote attention to her. We thank you for your words of support. In a world of uncertainty, Josette and I hope that you will be blessed with a shanah tovah, a year of life, good health, love and peace.
It was a berakhah that, despite Josette’s medical treatment, we were able to visit historic Jewish communities in Italy, Spain and Morocco, and I was able to study in Jerusalem at the Hartman Institute. The Path of Abraham multi-faith tour was a great success. I also organized a series of meetings with political and economic leaders in Jerusalem and Ramallah. I plan to tell you more about that tomorrow.
Another blessing this year was to watch our son and daughter-in-law become parents of a beautiful girl. It is no secret that spending time in the maternity floor is much preferable to being in a cancer ward.
Over the years, I have spoken many times about how Judaism is an embodied faith, building spiritual insights upon our physical activities and our biological realities. We all know that our bodies are composed of the basic elements of all existence. We digest the stuff of the world “until we die and are decomposed into its elements” (Fishbane, 15). But in the intense moments when we face mortality or celebrate life, we are truly conscious of our connection with the natural world. Our biological highs and lows point us to greater attunement with the world of which we are part.
In addition to these poignant personal moments, connecting with the natural world can uplift our lives and give us powerful insights about ourselves. A Muskoka lake scene or Mediterranean sunrise can link us to something beyond our individual identities. In those moments, we sense that we are part of the flow of the universe from the greatest of super novas to the most minute of molecules. Our individual bodies and our connection to the cosmos are primary and preliminary to all expressions of Torah.
A midrash (Devarim Rabba, Kee Tavo, Lieberman, p.111) tells of a gentile who asked: We have holy days and you have holy days, we have Calanda, Starlania, and Carosis. You have Passover, Shavuot and Sukkoth. On what day are both you and I happy? Answered Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai: On the day when rain falls, as is written “You crown the year with Your bounty… The meadows are clothed with flocks; the valleys mantled with grain” … “Praise the Eternal all the earth. (Psalm 66). We share this wonderful world with so many diverse creatures. This awareness can attune us to what we have in common.
We are challenged to find ways to hold onto the fleeting feelings of those “wow” moments. After our “radical amazement” at the fragility and complexity of our own lives, a spiritual discipline seeks to capture and cultivate the primary wonder that we experience. For Jews, the written Torah, the writings of our Sages and the mandates of Jewish law follow those primary spiritual insights. They also help us to sustain them. We benefit from the accumulated wisdom that our ancestors found in their careful search for the holy and through their continuous practice.
Although we are capable of following our own personal spiritual practices, as Jews we do this best within a communal context. We cultivate a culture of spiritual attunement in three ways: through prayer, mitzvah activity and Torah study.
Think of the central question of Unetaneh Tokef, “Who shall live and who shall die?” After acknowledging our existential anxiety, our prayers state: “But Repentance/return, Prayer and Tzedakah avert the negativity of the decree”. Awareness of personal mortality attunes us to act with and on behalf of others.
This should be more than a Rosh Hashanah moment- an annual renewal of consciousness. Judaism teaches us to recite berakhot on a daily basis for what we eat, see, hear, smell and do. The act of blessing is similar to a stop sign, intended to give us pause, to arouse in us attention and appreciation. In this coming year, you might try to recite a berakhah for food or express your gratitude for life by articulating the Shema each day as you wait for a red light or stand in line at the grocery store.
Mitzvah moments are another way that we tend our spiritual gardens. They are intended to awaken in us an awareness of the Divine and to construct a connection to our people, our past and our dreams. Many of you recite kiddush. Some of you kindle Shabbat candles even when you travel. This year, a few of our young people participated in a seder in Africa. One of the wonderful aspects of our travels this past winter was the hospitality we received from Jews in Italy and Spain, Morocco and Portugal. We were strangers and they followed the tradition of Abraham. Our acts take us beyond where we are at any one moment. This year, look for one mitzvah to make your own and do so with full consciousness that this finite act attunes you to the Infinite.
Torah study can also link us to something beyond ourselves. Last December, as I sat in Spain writing my teshuvah about women in minyan, I was conscious of the historic past of Spanish Jewry. When I stood in the Juderia of Cordoba and in the mellah of Fez, I felt the presence of Maimonides who lived and taught in those cities.
Sometimes in one of our synagogue seminars, a comment in class or during paired havruta study illumines a private issue unknown to others and momentarily takes a person’s breath away. We are called to be attuned to these moments, for they are fleeting, but precious. Consider taking some time for study, on-line or in person, to deepen your awareness and knowledge of the tradition that you have received as a gift from earlier generations.
Years ago I became intrigued by the final stop of one of the Metro lines in Paris, Villejuif, Jew Town. In our peregrinations this year, Josette and I ate in neighborhoods of Venice, Milan, and Rome clearly identified as ghettos; viewed Barcelona from Montjuif; drank hot chocolate in the Calle Judaico in Girona; shopped in the Mellah Yahud in Tangiers and Marrakesh; and explored the cemetery near Jew Gate in Gibraltar. Even where there are no more Jews, a remnant of our past remains. We were conscious of how singled out and fragile Jewish life had been throughout Europe and North Africa well before the Holocaust. As a people, we have survived with creativity and we should count our blessings here and in Israel.
Conservative Jews are particularly attuned to Jewish history. We believe that our Torah tradition went through a process of development at the hands of human beings. Neither the Torah nor the prophets nor the great insights of our Sages were given to us whole or immaculate. The fingerprints of humans striving to respond to the call of the divine in the world marked the shaping those traditions.
Arnold Eisen, Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, recently wrote:
We dance around the Torah to new melodies as well as old, and power enduring commitments with new ideas. We hold that the beliefs and practices of Judaism as our tradition developed over many centuries are fully compatible with the best of modern convictions and sensibilities—pluralism and reason, democracy and human rights, global citizenship and social justice— and that our love of Torah, Israel, and God is strengthened, rather than weakened, by full participation in the societies and cultures of which Jews are a part....
The ethos of Conservative Judaism is different from other expressions of Jewish life. Our homes and synagogues, schools and seminaries, camps and youth groups are the primary incubators of a Conservative spiritual outlook. Israel experiences and Jewish study at university benefit from and build upon these primary foundations.
Each year, the Tanenbaum Rabbinic Fellows who train with us study how we at Beth Tzedec combine an appreciation of the natural world, engagement with Canadian culture and exclusively Jewish mitzvot. They discover that this is different from the Israeli rabbinate and bring that mixture back with them to Israel or to their future pulpit service. Each year our Young Emissaries come to bring a bit of Israel to Beth Tzedec, Camp Ramah and Robbins Hebrew Academy. They return to Israel deeply affected by the style of Conservative Jewish life that they discover in our congregation and in the homes of our members.
Although many of our spiritual insights are profoundly personal, we often want to ground them in a larger, historically validated tradition. While the classic image of Christianity is of an individual on a cross, the core image of Judaism is of a people standing together at Sinai. We need not want to stand alone in our spiritual quest. Our synagogue provides moral guidance, spiritual support and educational opportunities. We are a centre for community for all generations. Through our programs, the synagogue supports Jewish home life. In the diverse ways that each of you practices Judaism, our shul is a conduit to a wise heritage that strives to cultivate an awareness of the magnificence of life and the value of engagement with others.
A meditation early in the Morning Service asks: “Mah anaknu, meh hayyenu? Who are we? What is our life worth? What is the value of our deeds, our acts of kindness, our acts of greatness? We acknowledge the precariousness of our personal lives. Then we say "Aval" - YET- we are Your people, the children of Your covenant, descendants of Avraham and Sarah, of whom we read today. We have a vision of a divine unity that underlies our world. We and generations before us play a role in sharing the insight of Shema Yisrael.
If you pay attention to airplane safety talk, you will recall that if you are traveling with someone who needs assistance with an oxygen mask, you are supposed to put your mask on first, then help the other person. During these Days of Awe, our spiritual quest must begin with ourselves, our experiences and our hopes. But it should not end there. Use these Days of Awe as a time to attune yourself to your Jewish spiritual quest. Consider getting involved in some way in the life of our congregation. First for yourself and then for others.
We need your support so that Beth Tzedec can remain a tower of strength for the teaching that we represent. As Chancellor Eisen put it:
Many rabbis … make pronouncements in the name of God and Torah that dismiss science, attack [modern] Jews …, preclude respect for non-Jews, demean women, and mandate self-segregation from the larger world.
We need Conservative Judaism to say loud and clear, from inside deep Jewish learning and intensive Jewish practice, that this is not ... what the Torah had in mind, ... We … must not allow Torah to be squeezed between extremes of fundamentalism and militant atheism. Too much is at stake in the world. Too much is at stake in our communities, our families, and our souls.
I hope you will become engaged in the work of our community and the work of Conservative Judaism. On the tickets for entry today there are tab cards to identify yourself as someone who wants to learn and become involved. Some of you would prefer to offer financial support. Either would be deeply appreciated. Both are needed.
There are ways through our synagogue that you can help others and grow yourselves, deepening your self-awareness of your place in the universe, holding onto personal insights that flow from your moments of attentiveness, retaining your enhanced consciousness of others and of the world. It begins for each of us on Rosh Hashanah, but it should and must be carried forward – into the year and throughout our lives, for ourselves and for all generations.
Once again, despite our turbulent world, I hope that you will have the vision to attune yourselves to the blessings already in your life. May this year bring you life, good health, and many opportunities to give and receive love.
Many of the ideas related to attunement to the personal and cosmic as a path to a Jewish spirituality and the importance of mitzvah, prayer and study as means of sustaining that primary theological attunement were inspired by my reading of Sacred Attunement: A Jewish Theology by Michael Fishbane.
