Kol Nidre

KOLNIDRE  ISTHESTRANGESTPRAYEREVERTO ENTER THE PRAYERBOOK .

NOTLEASTBECAUSEITISN’TAPRAYER,

ITISALEGALFORMULAFORANNULMENTOFWOWS,

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THE FIRSTTIMEWEHEARABOUTKOLNIDRE ,  ITISINTHE8THCENTURY.

THEGAONIMANDTHERISHONIMWEREAGAINSTITALLTHEWAYTHROUGH .

ITISNOTRIGHTTOSAY,  ITDOESNOTBELONGTHERE,

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THEBIGQUESTIONISWHY ?

FOREVERYONEITISTHECENTEROFYOMKIPPUR’SPRAYER !!!!

THEREARE4BASICOBJECTIONSWHATEXITSABOUTKOLNIDRE :

OBJECTION( 1 ) 

              ITISNOTAPRAYER ,

ITISALEGALDOCUMENT,

ITDOESNOTMENTIONTHENAMEOFG’D,

IT’SAFORMULAFORTHEANULLMENTOFWOWSANDIT DOESNOT TOASERVICEPRAYERATALL

OBJECTION( 2 )

THERISHONIMANDTHEGAONIMASKEDTHEQUESTION:

CANYOUDOATARATNEDARIM ,  CANYOURELEASEWOWSFORANENTIRECOMMUNITY!

THEWAYITISUSUALLYDONE,

YOUGOTOABETHDIN, THEYWILLASKYOUHUNDREDSOFQUESTIONS.

THEYWILLGIVE   YOUAHARDTIMEANDTHENYOUANNULYOURWOWS !

OBJECTION( 3 )

ISITRIGHTTODOSUCHATHING ?

CANYOUTHINKOFANYTHING,  WHYITISRIGHTTODOSUCHATHING ?

WHATHAPPENSWHENEVRYYEARWEGETOUR WOWSANNULLED ?

THEDANGERIS :

WECANTAKEWOWS,

WECOMEYOMKIPPURANDWECANUNDOIT !!!!

THEREFORE,  THE GUEMARAISQUESTIONINGTHEATARATNEADRIMIN AMYROUTINEWAY,  BECAUSE   ITWILLLEADPEOPLETOTAKENEDARIM,  WOWS,  LIGHTLY !!!

JUDAISM, ISARELIGIONOFHOLYWORDS !

OBJECTION( 4 )

DOWENEEDTODOATARATNEDARIM ?

ANDHERETHEPOINTISVERYSIMPLE !

WEJUSTHAVEDONEIT !

WHENDOWEDOIT?

EREV R”H,  AFTERPRAYER,  WESTAYBEHIND

SAMEEREV YOMKIPPUR !!!!!

ITDOESNOTSAYANYWHEREDOIT ONYOMKIPPUR !!!!

• ITISNOTAPRAYER ,
• ITISNOTTHEWAYTODOSO ,
• ITISNOTTHERIGHTTHINGTODOSO ,
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WHATISITTHENFOR ????????

ONYOMKIPPUR,  ACERTAINGROUPOFJEWS,  CAMETOSHUL.

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KOLNIDRE ,  ANEMOTIFPOWER!!!!!

SINCEROSHHASHANA ,  WEARERECITINGSEVERALTIMES :

AVINUMALKENU !

OURFATHER ,  OURKING !

BEFOREBEINGOURKING,  G”DISOURFATHER ,

MAYG”DOURKING ,  OURFATHERLISTENTOOURPRAYERS  

AND ,

WISHYOUALLGMARCHATIMATOVAANDANEASYFASTING

PARASHAT VAYEIRA

PARASHAT VAYEIRA, 

is about

SEEING THE OTHER!

I’ve been told that I look like my father. In fact, at this very moment, I probably resemble my father more than any moment before today. 

And if we’re going to be discussing fathers and sons, what better Torah portion could we ask for? 

We just read the Akeidah, 

the Binding of Isaac. 

It’s an interesting thing,

 people resembling each other. 

I wonder whether Isaac looked like this father. He probably did.

I’d assume that Abraham and Isaac looked something alike. I’d also assume that when Abraham looked at Isaac, he saw himself and remembered his youth. 

Isaac resembled Abraham.

And I can only wonder what it must have felt like for Abraham to look down at Isaac, bound on the altar.

Take your son, your only son, the one you love- take Isaac.

We can only keep on imagining what it will feel like to look into the face of someone who resembles us. 

But what must it have felt like for Abraham to see Isaac’s face, resemble it, 

love it, 

look into Isaac’s eyes, 

and raise up the knife? 

What must it have felt like to harm someone who looked just like him?

Even more than that

As a human being, created, in the image of God, Abraham resembled God! What could have been going through God’s Mind when God commanded a human being, created in God’s image, 

to kill?

Think of it as a three-leveled mirror: 

God looking at Abraham 

looking at Isaac. 

Our story is about three beings that resemble each other. 

And so many questions come to mind when we read this section of the Torah.

Why does God command this?

Why does Abraham say yes?

Where is Sarah during the entire story?

What psychological ramifications does the Akeidah have on Isaac?

What must it feel like to know that you resemble someone?

And what must it have felt like to be brought to a mountain to be sacrificed to God by someone who looks just like you?

Listen to the words that God speaks to Abraham: 

Take your son, 

your only son, 

the one you love.

God refers to Isaac by four names, and only the last one is Isaac’s name. 

Every other

name is in relation to Abraham:

your son, –your only son, – the one you love- And finally, –Isaac.

Isaac reminds Abraham of his youth, of Abraham’s family line. 

For Abraham, who has been promised countless descendants, this command from God amounts to suicide. 

He is killing his future. 

And that is what he sees in Isaac,

his future.

Abraham simply does not see Isaac as a separate person

he sees Isaac as an extension of himself. 

Abraham does not see is Isaac as a separate individual

But, as the Other. 

Abraham is willing to commit suicide, not murder.

My rabbi, once took part in a biblio-drama where different participants took on different roles within the story of the Akeidah. 

Ironically enough, He played G-D.

An audience member posed a question to him and said, 

“G-D- how could you command such a thing?! 

You finally gave Abraham and Sarah a child, and you’re commanding its death? 

Why are you doing this?”

His response was moving, and is a strong part of my thought today. He answered, 

“Don’t you see that every person I’ve created has gone the wrong way? I just want to know that I got it right. I feel like Abraham is my chance to prove that people can love me and listen to me, even when it’s hard! Abraham is my chance!”

Even God only sees Abraham as an extension of God’s self.

Abraham is God’s chance. Just like Isaac is Abraham’s future.

This is a great message to take from the story,

We must see the people around us as separate individuals, as the Other.

I deeply believe that we will never understand the texts completely, and that is what

Emmanuel Levinas, the great French Jewish Philosopher meant when he taught that 

the Torah is holy because it has infinite meaning. 

We can never exhaust the meaning of the text, and so the text of Torah is holy.

And that is what it means to be the Other.

To be the Other is to have unlimited potential. 

We will never realize the entire potential of the Torah. 

So when we can view the Torah as the Other, and not as an extension of ourselves, and therefore not completely knowable

that’s when we are really learning Torah. That is when we sense the holiness of learning.

And I believe that the same is true for G-d

we can never exhaust the meaning of G-d, and so God is also the Other. 

When we can view G-d as the Other, not as an extension of ourselves, and therefore not completely knowable  

that’s when we are really in a relationship with G-d.

The same is true for people. 

To look at someone in the eyes and recognize infinite potential is to see that person as an independent Other,

that’s when we are really in a relationship with another person.

Even at the end of the Akeidah, Abraham hasn’t recognized Isaac as the Other. 

When G-d reveals that this whole mission has been a test, what does Abraham do? 

He sees a ram and rushes to sacrifice that. But what doesn’t he do?

 He never unties Isaac. Isaac must have untied himself! Isaac was aware of his own needs, but Abraham saw only his own.

My father and I do resemble each other! But our close relationship is based on recognizing that we are different people.

In other words, I will never completely know you. Only you can do that. And since every one of you here is the Other to me, every one of you here is also holy.

And so,

If the student is the Other to the Teacher, then I will always be the Other to Torah.

If children are the Other to their Parents, then I will always be the Other to my child.

If the Other contains infinite possibilities, then God will always be the Other.

And if those are true, then Teachers, Children, Parents, and God are all Holy.

So I want to bless us all that we should find deep faith in our lives, remembering once in a while that each one of us, each Other one of us, contains infinite meaning within us.

I also want to bless us all that we should begin to realize that infinite meaning is within the person next you, the person you pass on the street, and the people we have yet to meet.

May we never, ever, slow down in our journeys to see the Other.

Shabbat Shalom.

Neilah

The Neilah Prayer on Yom Kippur

Neilah is the fifth and final prayer of Yom Kippur. On an ordinary day we pray three times – evening, morning and afternoon. 

On Shabbat, holidays, and Rosh Chodesh we have an additional fourth prayer, musaf. 

Only on Yom Kippur is there a fifth prayer.

Neilah means “locking” 

and therefore indicates the close of the ten days of judgement. 

Having the gate locked in front of us is a jarring image, 

one that is meant to motivate us to intensify our petitions before it is too late. 

One of the Chassidic Rebbes taught a gentler image of the closing of the gates. 

It is as if God says to each individual: 

During these awesome ten days we became so close, therefore I want to grant you a private audience. So please come in and close the gate behind you. In other words we are inside the gate, not outside! There is a subtle, paradoxical allusion to this due to the fact that the ark is actually kept open the entire prayer, another unique aspect of Neilah.

The image of being on the “inside” actually symbolizes the very nature of Neilah. 

We are taught that there are five levels of soul:

Nefesh, the “animal” soul, 

Ruach, the emotional aspect of man, 

neshamah, the intellectual component, 

chaya, the bridge between the conscious and superconscious soul and 

yechidah, the place where the human soul unites with its Divine origin.

The yechidah, the fifth and highest level of soul, 

is manifest through pure faith, sincere and complete devotion 

and 

the will to sacrifice all for God.

Neilah activates this most elevated aspect of man. 

It is the culminating and defining moment when we gather all our inner forces one last time to express the deepest longings of our being before our Creator.

Yom Kippur, which literally means the Day of Atonement, is mentioned explicitly for the first time in Leviticus. Throughout its description in the Torah the idea of atonement is repeated continually, ending with the words: “And it shall be an everlasting statute to you, to make atonement for the children of Israel for all their sins once a year.”

Along with a detailed description of the service of the High Priest in the Temple on this holy day, the Torah commands us to “afflict” our souls. The oral tradition explains that to “afflict” the soul means not eating or drinking, not anointing the skin with oil, not wearing leather shoes and not engaging in marital relations. Abstaining from these five physical actions separates us from the needs of the body and instead we concentrate solely on the soul and spiritual matters.

Though the actual day is not mentioned in the written Torah, it is explained in the oral tradition that Moses came down from Mt. Sinai with the second tablets containing the ten commandments on Yom Kippur. This symbolized God forgiving the Jewish people after the terrible sin of the golden calf, which caused Moses to break the first tablets. Therefore, the first Yom Kippur in the desert, which preceded the laws given in Leviticus, was a day of great joy, forgiveness and atonement. This energy is impressed upon all subsequent Yom Kippurs.

Worshipping the golden calf represents the ultimate perversion of physicality while “afflicting” the soul rectifies this misuse of the material world. Although today we “afflict” our souls, it is ultimately a day of great joy for what feels better than to receive forgiveness, atonement and the chance to begin anew.

Parashat Haazinu

With  HA AZINU ,  we climb to one of the peaks of Jewish spirituality. 

For a month Moses had taught the people. 

He had told them 

their history,

Their destiny, 

and the laws that would make theirs a unique society of people bound in covenant with one another and with God. 

He renewed the covenant and then handed the leadership on to his successor and disciple Joshua. 

His final act would be blessing the people, tribe by tribe. 

But before that, there was one more thing he had to do. 

He had to sum up his prophetic message in a way the people would always remember and be inspired by. 

He knew that the best way of doing so is by music. So the last thing Moses did before giving the people his deathbed blessing was to teach them a song.

As we already mentioned in our last week's dvar Torah, 

There is something profoundly spiritual about music.  

Many biblical texts speak of the power of music to restore the soul. 

When Saul was depressed, David would play for him and his spirit would be restored (1 Sam. 16). David himself was known as the “sweet singer of Israel” (2 Sam. 23:1). Elisha called for a harpist to play so that the prophetic spirit could rest upon him (2 Kings 3:15). The Levites sang in the Temple. Every day, in Judaism, we preface our morning prayers with Pesukei de-Zimra, the 'Verses of Song' with their magnificent crescendo, Psalm 150, in which instruments and the human voice combine to sing God's praises.

Mystics go further and speak of the song of the universe, what Pythagoras called “the music of the spheres”. This is what Psalm 19 means when it says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands . . . There is no speech, there are no words, where their voice is not heard. Their music 3 carries throughout the earth, their words to the end of the world.” Beneath the silence, audible only to the inner ear, creation sings to its Creator.

So, when we pray, we do not read: we sing. When we engage with sacred texts, we do not recite: we chant. Every text and every time has, in Judaism, its own specific melody. There are different tunes for shacharit, mincha and maariv, the morning, afternoon and evening prayers. There are different melodies and moods for the prayers for a weekday, Shabbat, the three pilgrimage festivals, Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot (which have much musically in common but also tunes distinctive to each), and for the Yamim Noraim, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

There are different tunes for different texts. There is one kind of cantillation for Torah, another for the haftorah from the prophetic books, and yet another for Ketuvim, the Writings, especially the five Megillot. There is a particular chant for studying the texts of the written Torah: Mishnah and Gemarah. So by music alone we can tell what kind of day it is and what kind of text is being used. Jewish texts and times are not colour-coded but music-coded. The map of holy words is written in melodies and songs.

Music has extraordinary power to evoke emotion. The Kol Nidrei prayer with which Yom Kippur begins is not really a prayer at all. It is a dry legal formula for the annulment of vows. There can be little doubt that it is its ancient, haunting melody that has given it its hold over the Jewish imagination. It is hard to hear those notes and not feel that you are in the presence of God on the Day of Judgment, standing in the company of Jews of all places and times as they plead with heaven for forgiveness. It is the holy of holies of the Jewish soul.4

Nor can you sit on Tisha B’av reading Eichah, the book of Lamentations, with its own unique cantillation, and not feel the tears of Jews through the ages as they suffered for their faith and wept as they remembered what they had lost, the pain as fresh as it was the day the Temple was destroyed. Words without music are like a body without a soul.

Beethoven wrote over the manuscript of the third movement of his A Minor Quartet the words Neue Kraft fühlend, “Feeling new strength.” That is what music expresses and evokes. It is the language of emotion unsicklied by the pale cast of thought. That is what King David meant when he sang to God the words: “You turned my grief into dance; You removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing to You and not be silent.” You feel the strength of the human spirit no terror can destroy.

In his book, Musicophilia, the late Oliver Sacks (no relative, alas) told the poignant story of Clive Wearing, an eminent musicologist who was struck by a devastating brain infection. The result was acute amnesia. He was unable to remember anything for more than a few seconds. As his wife Deborah put it, “It was as if every waking moment was the first waking moment.”

Unable to thread experiences together, he was caught in an endless present that had no connection with anything that had gone before. One day his wife found him holding a chocolate in one hand and repeatedly covering and uncovering it with the other hand, saying each time, “Look, it's new.” “It's the same chocolate,” she said. “No,” he replied, “Look. It's changed.” He had no past at all.

Two things broke through his isolation. One was his love for his wife. The other was music. He could still sing, play the organ and conduct a choir with all his old skill and verve. What was it about music, Sacks asked, that enabled him, while playing or conducting, to overcome his amnesia? He suggests that when we “remember” a melody, we recall one note at a time, yet each note relates to the whole. He quotes the philosopher of music, Victor Zuckerkandl, who wrote, “Hearing a melody is hearing, having heard, and being about to hear, all at once. Every melody declares to us that the past can be there without being remembered, the future without being foreknown.” Music is a form of sensed continuity that can sometimes break through the most overpowering disconnections in our experience of time.

Faith is more like music than science.5 Science analyses, music integrates. And as music connects note to note, so faith connects episode to episode, life to life, age to age in a timeless melody that breaks into time. God is the composer and librettist. We are each called on to be voices in the choir, singers of God's song. Faith is the ability to hear the music beneath the noise.

So music is a signal of transcendence. The philosopher and musician Roger Scruton writes that it is “an encounter with the pure subject, released from the world of objects, and moving in obedience to the laws of freedom alone.”6 He quotes Rilke: “Words still go softly out towards the unsayable / And music, always new, from palpitating stones / builds in useless space its godly home.”7 The history of the Jewish spirit is written in its songs.

I once watched a teacher explaining to young children the difference between a physical possession and a spiritual one. He had them build a paper model of Jerusalem. Then (this was in the days of tape-recorders) he put on a tape with a song about Jerusalem that he taught to the class. At the end of the session he did something very dramatic. He tore up the model and shredded the tape. He asked the children, “Do we still have the model?” They replied, No. “Do we still have the song?” They replied, Yes.

We lose physical possessions, but not spiritual ones. We lost the physical Moses. But we still have the song.

Sukkot

The power of SUKKOT is,

that it takes us back to the most elemental roots of our being. 

- You don't need to live in a palace to be surrounded by clouds of glory.  

- You don't need to be rich to buy yourself the same leaves and fruit that a billionaire uses in worshipping God."

Of all the festivals, SUKKOT is surely the one that speaks most powerfully to our time.

Ecclesiastes, 

known in Hebrew as Kohelet, 

is in the Writings (Ketuvim)

and is read during the week of Sukkot.

KOHELET could almost have been written in the twenty first century. 

Here is the ultimate success, 

the man who has it all, 

the houses, 

the cars, 

the clothes, 

the envy of all men,

who has pursued everything this world can offer,

from pleasure to possessions 

to power to wisdom 

and yet who, 

surveying the totality of his life, can only say, in effect, 

“Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless.”

Kohelet’s failure to find meaning is directly related to his obsession with:

the “I” and the “Me”: 

“I built for myself.  

I gathered for myself. 

I acquired for myself.” 

The more he pursues his desires, 

the emptier his life becomes. 

KOHELET was also, of course, a cosmopolitan: 

a man at home everywhere and therefore nowhere. 

In the end KOHELET finds meaning in simple things. 

- Sweet is the sleep of a labouring man. 

- Enjoy life with the woman you love. 

- Eat, drink and enjoy the sun. 

That ultimately is the meaning of Sukkot as a whole.

It is a festival of simple things. 

It is, Jewishly, the time we come closer to nature than any other, 

sitting in a hut with only leaves for a roof, 

And taking in our hands 

A palm branch, the LULAV,

2 willows, ARAVOT,

A minimum of three myrtles, HADASSIM

And one lemon , ETROG 

The power of Sukkot is that it takes us back to the most elemental roots of our being. 

Living in the sukkah and inviting guests to your meal, you discover 

– such is the premise of Ushpizin,         the mystical guests – 

that the people who have come to visit you are none other than: 

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their wives. 

What makes a hut more beautiful than a home is that when it comes to Sukkot there is no difference between the richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor. 

We are all strangers on earth, temporary residents in God’s almost eternal universe. 

Sukkot is the time we ask the most profound question of what makes a life worth living!

Having prayed on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to be written in the Book of Life, 

Kohelet forces us to remember how brief life actually is, 

and how vulnerable.

What matters is not 

how long we live, 

but 

how intensely we feel that life is a gift we repay by giving to others. 

Joy, is the overwhelming theme of the festival, 

Most majestically of all,

Sukkot is the festival of insecurity. 

It is the acknowledgment that there is no life without risk,

yet 

we can face the future without fear when we know we are not alone. 

G-D is with us, in the rain that brings blessings to the earth, 

in the love that brought the universe and us into being, 

Sukkot reminds us that G-D's glory was present in the small, portable Tabernacle Moses and the Israelites built in the desert!

A Temple can be destroyed. 

But a sukkah, broken, can be rebuilt tomorrow. 

Security is not something we can achieve physically but it is something we can acquire 

mentally, psychologically, spiritually. 

All it needs is the courage and willingness to sit under the shadow of God’s sheltering wings.

VAYELECH

The moment had come. Moses was about to die.

With words of blessing and encouragement he hands on the mantle of leadership to his successor Joshua.

The time had come for another age, a new generation, and a different kind of leader.

But before he takes his leave of life God has one last command for him, and through him, for the future:

“And now write for yourselves this song and teach it to the children of Israel,

put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for Me among the children of Israel”

understood by rabbinic tradition to be the command to write, or at least take part in writing, a Sefer Torah.

Why this command? Why then, at the end of Moses’ life? Why make it the last of all the commands?

And if the reference is to the Torah as a whole, why call it a “song”?

The oral tradition is here hinting at a set of very deep ideas.

First, it is telling the Israelites, and us in every generation, that it is not enough to say,

“We received the Torah from Moses,” or “from our parents.”

We have to take the Torah and make it new in every generation. We have to write our own scroll.

The point about the Torah is not that it is old but that it is new;

it is not just about the past but about the future.

It is not simply some ancient document that comes from an earlier era in the evolution of society.

It speaks to us, here, now – but not without our making the effort to write it again.

And why call the Torah a song?

Because if we are to hand on our faith and way of life to the next generation, it must sing.

Torah must be affective, not just cognitive.

It must speak to our emotions.

If our Torah lacks passion, we will not succeed in passing it on to the future.

Music is the affective dimension of communication, the medium through which we express, evoke and share emotion. Precisely because we are creatures of emotion, music is an essential part of the vocabulary of mankind.

Music has a close association with spirituality.

Song is central to the Judaic experience.

We do not pray; we daven,meaning we sing the words we direct toward heaven. Nor do we read the Torah.

Instead we chant it, each word with its own cantillation.

Music is the map of the Jewish spirit, and each spiritual experience has its own distinctive melodic landscape.

Judaism is a religion of words,

If we are to make Torah new in every generation we have to find ways of singing its song a new way.

The words never change, but the music does.

It is the songs we teach our children that convey our love of God.

So it is with a poetic sense of closure that Moses’ life ends with the command to begin again in every generation,

writing our own scroll, adding our own commentaries,

the people of the book endlessly reinterpreting the book of the people, and singing its song.

The Torah is God’s libretto, and we, the Jewish people, are His choir. Collectively we have sung God’s song.

We are the performers of His choral symphony. And though, when Jews speak they often argue, when they sing, they sing in harmony, because words are the language of the mind but music is the language of the soul.

SPEECH FOR R"H

HAVE YOU EVER FOUND YOURSELF UNDER SO MANY PRESSURES THAT IT FEELS AS IF,

HOWEVER HOW HARD YOU WORK YOU JUST CAN'T KEEP UP, JUST WHEN YOU THINK YOU FINISHED YOUR DAY'S WORK, THERE IS ANOTHER CALL, ANOTHER TASK,

JUST WHEN YOU GOT HOME ABOUT TO RELAX, THERE IS ANOTHER EMAIL DEMANDING IMMEDIATE ATTENTION!

SOMETIMES YOU CAN BE SO BUSY MAKING A LIVING, THAT YOU HARDLY HAVE TIME TO LIVE!

THAT, ACCORDING TO MAINONEDIS, IS WHAT THE SHOFAR IN ROSH HASHANAH ALL ABOUT.

IT IS A WAKE UP CALL SAYING:

STOP FOR A MOMENT AND OPEN YOUR EYES TO WHAT YOU ARE DOING!

AND ASK YOURSELF: IS THAT REALLY THE WAY TO SPEND THE LIFE?

TRAVELING SO FAST THAT YOU NEVER HAVE TIME TO ENJOY THE VIEW!

LIFE, THAT IS THE KEY WORD OF THE HOLIEST DAYS OF THE JEWISH YEAR!

LISTEN TO THIS ONE SENTENCE WE REPEATEDLY SAY FROM ROSH HASHANAH UNTIL YOM KIPPUR:

" ZOCHENU LAHAYIM "

" REMEMBER US FOR LIFE O KING WHO DELIGHTS IN LIFE, INSCRIBE US IN THE BOOK OF LIFE, FOR YOUR SAKE, O G"D OF LIFE "

LIFE IN JUDAISM, IS G"D GREATEST GIFT. THE ONE HE GIVES TO EACH OF US IN EQUAL TERMS!

BECAUSE, HOWEVER RICH WE ARE, HOWEVER POWER OR SUCCESSFUL,

THERE IS STILL ONLY 24 HOURS A DAY, 7 DAYS IN A WEEK, IN A SPAN OF A YEAR, THAT'S ALL TOO SHORT!

THE SHOFAR, ACCORDING TO MAIMONEDIS, IS G"D's WAY TO SAY TO EACH OF US:

" DO YOU WANT ANOTHER YEAR OF LIFE ?

WELL,

HOW DID YOU USE THE YEAR I GAVE YOU LAST? DID YOU JUST SPENT IT,

OR,

DID YOU JUST USE IT WELL? THAT's THE QUESTION!

I THINK THAT IS WHAT MAIMONIDES WAS HINTING, THAT WHAT PEOPLE HAVE ALWAYS DONE AND WILL ALWAYS BE DOING TODAY:

WE MISTAKE THE MEANS FOR THE END, WE FOCUS ON THE HOW BUT NOT THE WHY!

LET ME SHARE WITH YOU A SHORT STORY OF THIS RABBI WHO TOOK A YEAR OUT TO CONTEMPLATE THE STATE OF THE UNIVERSE!

AFTER HE REACHED HIS CONCLUSION HE LOOKED UP AT HEAVEN AND SAID:

" RIBONEI SHEL OLAM " " MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE "

" LIFE IS GOOD! " BUT TELL ME MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE:

IF THINGS ARE SO GOOD, HOW COME THEY ARE SO BAD???

THE BEST ANSWER I CAN GIVE: IS THAT WE KEEP MISTAKEN THE MEANS FOR THE END!

WE CONCENTRATE SO HARD ON THE JOURNEY THAT WE FORGET WHERE WE ARE TRYING TO GET TO!

THE SHOFAR ON ROSH HASHANAH IS G"D's CALL REMINDING US , WHY WE ARE HERE: TO DO GOOD TO OTHERS, TO BE A SOURCE OF BLESSING TO THE WORLD! TO THANK G"D ABOUT WHAT WE HAVE AND NOT SPEND OUR LIFE's WORRYING WHAT WE DON'T HAVE!

TO GIVE, TO FORGIVE, TO LOVE,

THIS ROSH HASHANAH, MAY OUR EYES BE OPEN TO THE BEAUTY OF G"D's WORLD ! MAY OUR HEARTS BE THANKFUL THAT WE ARE HERE TO ENJOY IT !

MAY WE RUSH LESS AND LOVE MORE!

GMAR VECHATIMA TOVA!

MAY IT BE A YEAR OF BLESSING FOR US, FOR YOU, FOR THE WORLD!

Rabbi Jean Pierre Fettmann

Nitzavim

Why Be Jewish?

In the last days of his life Moses renews the covenant between God and Israel. The entire book of Devarim has been an account of the covenant - how it came about, - what its terms and conditions are, - why it is the core of Israel's identity as an : am kadosh, a holy people,

Moses, however, is careful not to limit his words to those who are actually present ! About to die, he wants to ensure that no future generation can say:

"Moses made a covenant with our ancestors but not with us!

We didn't give our consent. We are not bound."

It is written in the Parasha of this week Nitzavim:

It is not with you alone that I am making this sworn covenant, but with whoever is standing here with us today before the LORD our God, and with whoever is not here with us today.

As the commentators point out, the phrase

"whoever is not here" cannot refer to Israelites alive at the time who happened to be somewhere else.

In fact, this cannot be, since the entire nation was assembled there.

It can only mean:

"generations not yet born."

The covenant bound all Jews from that day to all times.

As the Talmud says: we are all mushba ve-omed me-har Sinai, " foresworn from Sinai "

By agreeing to be God's people, subject to God's laws, our ancestors obligated us.

One of the most fundamental facts about Judaism, we do not choose to be Jews. We are born as Jews.

We are part of the covenant from birth.

That choice took place more than three thousand years ago when Moses said

"It is not with you alone that I am making this sworn covenant,

but with ... whoever is not here with us today,"

meaning all future generations including us.

BUT, HOW CAN THIS BE SO?

How can we be bound by an agreement to which we were not parties?

How can we be subject to a covenant on the basis of a decision taken long ago and far away by our distant ancestors?

THIS IS NOT A SMALL QUESTION!

In short, this is the question of questions of Jewish identity.

How can we be bound by Jewish law, without our choice, merely because our ancestors agreed on our behalf?

We inherit many things from our parents

most obviously our genes.

But being Jewish is not a genetic condition,

it is a set of religious obligations !

For the most part, Jews did not ask the question, "Why be Jewish?"

The answer was obvious. My parents are Jewish.

My grandparents were Jewish.

So I am Jewish.

Identity is something most people in most ages take for granted.

The sages answered the question mystically. They said, even the souls of Jews not yet born were present at Sinai and ratified the covenant (Exodus Rabbah 28:6).

Every Jew, in other words, did give his or her consent in the days of Moses even though they had not yet been born.

Demystifying this, perhaps the sages meant that in his or her innermost heart even the most assimilated Jew knew that he or she was still a Jew. That seems to have been the case with figures like Heinrich Heine and Benjamin Disraeli, who lived as Christians but often wrote and thought as Jews.

Perhaps a simpler answer to this question is :

Not every obligation that binds us is one to which we have freely given our assent.

There are obligations that come with birth.

The classic example is a crown prince. To be the heir to a throne involves a set of duties and a life of service to others. It is possible to neglect these duties. In extreme circumstances it is possible for even a king to abdicate. But no one chooses to be royal. That is a fate, a destiny, that comes with birth.

We are part of a story that began long before we were born and will continue long after we are no longer here, and the question for all of us is:

will we continue the story?

The hopes of a hundred generations of our ancestors rest on our willingness to do so.

Deep in our collective memory the words of Moses continue to resonate.

"It is not with you alone that I am making this sworn covenant, but with ... whoever is not here with us today." We are part of that story. We can live it. We can abandon it. But it is a choice we cannot avoid and it has immense consequences. The future of the covenant rests with us.

Rabbi Jean Pierre Fettmann

Ki Tavo

We Are What We Remember! One reason religion has survived in the modern world despite four centuries of secularisation

is that it answers the three questions every reflective human being will ask at some time in his or her life:

Who am I?

Why am I here?

How then shall I live?

These cannot be answered by the four great institutions of the modern West:

science, technology, the market economy and the liberal democratic state.

• Science tells us how but not why.

• Technology gives us power but cannot tell us how to use that power.

• The market gives us choices but does not tell us which choices to make.

• The liberal democratic state as a matter of principle holds back from endorsing any particular way of life.

The result is that,

contemporary culture sets before us an almost infinite range of possibilities,

but does not tell us

who we are,

why we are here,

and how we should live.

these are fundamental questions.

Moses’ first question to God in their first encounter at the burning bush was:

" Who am I?”

The real meaning of this verse is that it was a rhetorical question:

Who am I to undertake the extraordinary task of leading an entire people to freedom?

More deeper, the plain sense was a genuine question of identity.

Moses had been brought up by an Egyptian princess, the daughter of Pharaoh.

He then married Zipporah, one of Jethro’s daughters, and spent decades as a Midianite shepherd.

So when he asked God, “Who am I?” there was a real question.

Am I an Egyptian, a Midianite, or a Jew?

By upbringing he was an Egyptian,

by experience he was a Midianite.

Yet, what was decisive, was his ancestry.

He was a descendant of Abraham, the child of Amram and Yocheved.

When he asked God his second question,

“Who are you?”

God first told him,

“I will be what I will be.”

But then he gave him a second answer:

Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ This is My name forever, the name you shall call Me from generation to generation.

Jews have told the story of who we are for longer and more devotedly than any other people on the face of the earth. That is what makes Jewish identity so rich. In an age in which computer and smartphone memories have grown so fast, from kilobytes to megabytes to gigabytes, while human memories have become so foreshortened, there is an important Jewish message to humanity as a whole.

You can’t delegate memory to machines. You have to renew it regularly and teach it to the next generation.

Winston Churchill said: “The longer you can look back, the further you can see forward.”

Or to put it slightly differently:

Those who tell the story of their past have already begun to build their children’s future.

Shabbat Shalom, 

Rabbi Fettmann