November 16, 2013 פרשת וישלח
Daniel Silverman – Beth Tzedec Congregation
Struggling with Judaism
A few years ago, some friends of mine and I invented a game, and I want to give you a chance to play right now. The game works like this. Imagine you are someone who has had no interaction with anything Jewish. You have never met a Jewish person, and know nothing about any Jewish practice. Now, think about the five most awkward, or uncomfortable, or foreign Jewish rituals that you might find yourself watching or participating in, having been offered absolutely no context or explanation. I’ll give you a few seconds to see what might come to mind.
I really do want to know what you are all thinking, but this format doesn’t allow for two-way sharing all that well, so please pocket your ideas and find me at Kiddush, or send me an email or give me a call after Shabbat. But I will share my list, which I should note is ever-evolving. I will also present the character trying to process what they are seeing.
5. Tefillin – All right, it looks like everyone is getting ready for morning prayers. What are these black cubes? And why do they have leather straps attached to them? There’s no whipping as part of prayers, right? Ok, it just looks like people are using the straps to attach the boxes to their arm and their head. That’s nowhere near normal, but I guess it’s better than whipping.
4. Hoshanot – OK, you’ve bought some green plants and a strange citrus that looks like a shriveled lemon. Wait, you spent $40 on this? And you only use it for a week? And you only use it for about 15 minutes per day? And you just walk around a room with it and that’s all? I don’t get it.
3. Brit Milah – What a cute baby boy! Oh look, they’re bringing him to the front of the room. Now they’re undressing him? Isn’t he cold? And why is there a scalpel? They’re not going to…no, not here, this isn’t a hospital, or even a doctor’s office! Why are we all watching this?? I don’t get it, and I really don’t want to watch.
2. Birkat Kohanim – Why are there some men up at the front of the room? With no shoes? And with their backs to everyone else? Now everyone is hiding or turning around. They’re saying words one at a time, with a special action and symbol. Is this some ancient cult? Are they going to shoot lightning bolts out of their hand? I don’t get it, and I’m a little frightened.
1. Bedikat H̱ametz – So you just spent weeks cleaning your house, getting rid of any and all bread products. You’ve changed over your kitchen with all new sets of everything: dishes, glasses, cookware, and cutlery. Now, the night before Pesach starts, you’re finally all ready to go. What are you doing? You’re putting bread all over your house? Just so you can find it and then burn it in the morning? You just cleaned! Why are you making a mess again, and with the one thing you’re supposed to have gotten rid of! And you’re looking for it in the dark with a candle, and cleaning up the crumbs with a feather? Just turn on the lights! Or don’t put bread back out in the first place! I really don’t get it.
We are a people of strange – or maybe I should say not mainstream – rituals, customs, and practices. For much of our history, we were seen as an other. We did things differently: we were monotheists, we circumcised our males, we had strict dietary restrictions, we maintained rules and regulations about ritual purity and we kept an ancient language alive.
I would argue that the last 2000 years of Jewish history have been shaped by a mirrored paradox, which each one of us needs to understand in order to address the challenges facing world Jewry, Canadian Jewry, Toronto Jewry and the Beth Tzedec community in 2013.
The mirrored paradox of Jewish history and Jewish life is that for 1800 years, being an outsider preserved our tradition. In the last 200 years, conversely, being insiders has weakened our tradition.
Let me elaborate. From the year 70 of the Common Era until the late 1700s, Jews were outsiders wherever they lived. In Christian Europe, at least, we were not allowed to own land, hold public office, work in certain professions, and live in certain neighbourhoods. We had to pay higher taxes, wear certain clothes, sometimes of prescribed colours like yellow or blue or black, and solve issues in our own court system. We were ridiculed, persecuted, and sometimes even killed for our beliefs. And yet, what did we do? We did not abandon these rituals and practices that so obviously marked us as different. We did not leave Judaism behind so as to have an easier life. The vast majority of Jews maintained their tradition, keeping them in a state of other-ness. Yet at the same time, many Jews in these periods wanted nothing more than to be just like everyone else, to have the same access and rights while being permitted to maintain their Jewish practice. This is one part of the paradox: being an other preserved us, yet we longed to be mainstream.
From 1789 onwards, everything began to change. In the years after the French Revolution, Western European Jews finally got what they had been wanting for centuries – a chance to participate in general society. Jews could now go to university, hold most jobs, serve in the army, and live where they wanted. They were able to be part of the outside world; but with hindsight being 20/20, I would say that this brought about an unintended downside: the opportunity to be like everyone else created ideal conditions for the erosion of Jewish life.
Think about it. You are a young Jew in the early 1800s, able to attend university and become a doctor, surprisingly not yet every Jewish mother or mother in law’s dream. You are in school with other Frenchmen, and you are invited to go socialize after class. You head out to a restaurant, or a bar. Are you going to eat anything? Are you going to politely decline the un-Hechshered wine being offered to you? Are you going to refuse the invitation if it is Friday approaching sundown? All of a sudden, Western European Jews found themselves in a position of having to choose between Jewish practice and ritual, and fitting in with the world in which they now lived.
This challenge exacerbated itself even more on these shores. As immigrants flooded North America, at first from emancipated Western and Central Europe and later from Eastern Europe and elsewhere, the task facing these new arrivals was to fit in, to learn the language, and to make a living. This meant making choices about Jewish life: will I work on Shabbat and holidays? Will I buy only kosher food at a higher price? Will I dedicate time to prayer and study? Will I maintain the traditional way of dress? How will I educate my children?
It is fascinating to me that 120 years ago, Jewish organizations were created to help Americanize Jewish immigrants, to teach them the American ways of life so as to help them fit in and escape the old world characteristics that they knew. This is why the Jewish Theological Seminary for example, my alma mater, was created in 1887, to train rabbis that would be able to relate to the Eastern European immigrants and help Americanize them. The irony is not lost on me that these same institutions have now turned 180 degrees and are attempting to convince Jews why they should maintain Jewish practices and traditions.
Today, thankfully, our circumstances are different. Many of us have the financial means to live Jewish lives, and most of us do not need to work six days a week to make ends meet. In the last 50 years or so, our society has made it ever more convenient to live a committed Jewish life. We no longer face discriminatory quotas for universities and employment, we are welcome to run for public office, we can buy kosher products at brand name grocery stores and we proudly wear our Magen David necklaces and Israeli jewelry.
And here’s the reflection of the paradox in the mirror: While it is easier, more comfortable and more convenient to live a committed Jewish life now than at any point and in any place in Jewish history, fewer and fewer Jews are choosing to do so.
The question is why. Is Judaism not compatible with 21st century life? Are our rituals strange and meaningless? I believe the answer is firmly no. If anything, Judaism is needed now more than ever. It is a way to maintain community, to connect with family, and to infuse values and principles into our lives. It provides us with comfort when we face difficulty, mandates times of joy and celebration, and is rooted in an ethical view of the world that is more and more relevant each and every day.
So why the decline? Why the displacement? Why hockey instead of synagogue? Why dance instead of Jewish learning? Why trips to Florida instead of trips to Israel? Why Friday night at a club on King Street instead of around a Shabbat table? Why a long-weekend vacation when Sukkot falls on Thursday and Friday instead of enjoying the pleasures of putting up the aluminum siding or wood walls that makes your Sukkah?
In this week’s Parshah, Parashat VaYishlah, there is the famous scene of Yaakov, our Biblical forefather Jacob, wrestling with an angel. They wrestle and struggle all night, and when dawn breaks and the angel has to depart, Jacob insists on a blessing. The angel says:
(לֹא יַעֲקֹב יֵאָמֵר עוֹד שִׁמְךָ--כִּי, אִם-יִשְׂרָאֵל: כִּי-שָׂרִיתָ עִם-אֱלֹהִים וְעִם-אֲנָשִׁים, וַתּוּכָל. (בראשית, פרק ל"ב, פסוק כ"ט
“Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have struggled [the word שרית] with beings divine and human, and have prevailed.” (Genesis 32:29)
Our birthright is that of struggle, and this is what is missing from our community today. We are not struggling with the choices that we have to make that will result in Judaism playing a meaningful role in our lives.
Living an observant Jewish life in 2013 requires struggle, choice, and a little bit of sacrifice. It means taking off work on a weekday holiday. It means getting home early on Fridays during the winter months. It means learning a foreign language that is difficult and not always relevant. It means praying and allowing oneself to feel spiritual. It means taking on community responsibility in an era where individual autonomy is the ideal. It means working in the rain to put up a Sukkah. It means cleaning our houses and turning over our kitchens for Pesaẖ.
When things are easy, we are much more likely to do them. How long does it take to light Hanukkah candles and say the blessings, for example? But are we lighting candles every Friday night to welcome Shabbat? It takes no longer, and even requires one or two less blessings. But what’s the struggle? It might be lighting them on time, or the fact that it is every week and not a one-time occasion, or that there are no presents given out. But how beautiful is it to gather the family – or some close friends – together and mark the end of a hectic week with the calm of this ritual. The striking of the match, the wick catching the flame, the blessing sung together, and that moment where you uncover your eyes, see the candles, see your family or friends, and give hugs and kisses along with the greeting of Shabbat Shalom that is so much more than a statement of a peaceful Shabbat, but an attitude and a lifestyle.
One of the only other times that the words Yaakov and Yisrael appear together in the same sentence in the Torah is the famous prophecy of Balaam in the book of Numbers, Sefer Bamidbar, who blesses the Israelites rather than cursing them by saying:
(מַה-טֹּבוּ אֹהָלֶיךָ, יַעֲקֹב; מִשְׁכְּנֹתֶיךָ, יִשְׂרָאֵל. (במדבר, פרק כ"ד, פסוק ה
“How fair are your tents, O Jacob, your dwellings, O Israel.” (Numbers 24:5)
The word most commonly translated as “your dwellings”, משכנותיך, can also mean “your tabernacles”, the same word – משכן – that we use to identify the temporary structure of worship that accompanied the Israelites through the desert and during their early years in the land of Israel.
I see great meaning in this juxtaposition: the tabernacle of the people who struggle, משכנותיך ישראל. If we further this idea towards the concept of each Jew and each Jewish home being a משכן מעט, a Little Tabernacle of our own, the phrase משכנותיך ישראלcan now refer to the Jewish part of each one of us that struggles.
We all understand that our tradition is built upon the idea of struggle, that we are supposed to struggle and wrestle with our Judaism and our Jewish choices. My hope and prayer is that we continue to be like our ancestor Yaakov, who never let go of the angel, that we strive to comprehend and understand rituals, customs and practices that are new to us, or seem foreign or strange, and that we find those moments in our tradition that at the end of the day, are worth the struggle. We might not know that they will be worth it at first. They might seem hard, challenging, overbearing, too much work, too much time, or without meaning. But I promise you, it is almost always worth it.
So push yourselves, your family, your friends and your community. Take on a new Jewish ritual that you haven’t done before, or haven’t performed in a long time. Learn more about it, where it comes from, why we do it, how it relates to our lives, or the time of year, or the day of the week. Make use of the resources available to you here at Beth Tzedec. Learn with our wonderful clergy and our education professionals. Engage in our programming. Tell us what you want to learn about and how you want to grow Jewishly. We are here to assist you in your journey, and to make the struggle easier. These are the actions that will bring forth the טוב, the good, the sweet, and the meaningful that Balaam saw in our ancestors when he said מה טובו.
