I begin with a blessing, with gratitude!
Baruch atah Adonai she’asani Yisrael. Thank you, God, for making me a Jew. And if I want to be literal – thank you God for making me Yisrael – one who struggles with God.
This blessing is part of our morning prayer service in the section, nisim b’chol yom, daily miracles.
Some may ask, why would I thank God for making me a Jew?
Why not? Why not feel gratitude for something that is part of who you are, part of your identity?
And yet, I worry that today being grateful to be Jewish is hard for so many American Jews.
Lightning may strike or I might even be put in cherem, excommunicated, by the Reform movement, but I want to say tonight that I think we’ve missed the mark in our attempt to create a vibrant American Judaism.
The early Reformers attempted to create a Judaism focused on our belief in God and the ethical texts of our tradition, moving us toward a more universalistic understanding of Judaism and seeing Jewish values as being synonymous with what Americans like to call Judeo-Christian values. For example, no longer did we speak of a Messiah, instead it is a Messianic age, brought about by our ethical actions, not our ritual ones. And, with this re-imagining of Judaism, we redefined ourselves as a religion, and no longer saw ourselves as part of a people, thereby putting distance between ourselves and our fellow Jews who understand Judaism in a different way. We separated ourselves from the idea of a Jewish homeland, removing it from our prayers, because we didn’t need it. America was our safe haven, and yet, we didn’t think about our fellow Jews in other parts of the world, who might one day need Israel. Thankfully many congregations and communities, much like United Hebrew, continued to understand the need for a national Jewish homeland in eretz Yisrael.
Early on, instead of re-imagining and giving life and new meaning to “old” practices that felt archaic in an “enlightened” modern world, we got rid of them, instead speaking of choice through knowledge and personal autonomy, which in later generations has sadly equated with Judaism lite.
With each generation, as our movement focuses more on a Torah of ethics and justice, as opposed to a Torah of mitzvot and middot, Jewish rituals and values, it feels as if we have less and less of a shared, meaningful Jewish connection with which to hold on and pass to the next generation.
This past Spring, I watched so many of you – young and not so young – struggle with the military conflict in Israel and Gaza. We all struggle when there is conflict in the world, and especially Israel, but this, this was different. The struggle for so many American Jews was not only our own conflicting feelings about what was happening but the anti-Semitism cloaked as anti-Zionism that reared its ugly head. For many young Reform Jews,especially, besides not knowing how to respond, they were called out as Jews, they were “othered,” because once again Judaism became synonymous with Israel.
For those of you on tiktok and Instagram, how often did you see negative comments on a post about something Jewish that had nothing to do with Israel?
For the first time many millennials and Generation Z, were told that if you want to be in a particular space, you can’t support Israel, you can’t be a Zionist, you cannot show up in this space as a Jew. It hurts. It hurts even worse when we feel that our only two options are to let go of our Jewish identity and focus on what it means to be part of humanity or to turn inward, thinking that we’re only safe inside of our own Jewish community.
Many might classify Israel as a political issue one not just affecting Jews, which is absolutely true, so let’s think about Judaism closer to home. Over the past 18 months, I’ve had conversations with so many of you asking about Judaism. Struggling with what it means to you.
Without access to the synagogue building many of us felt lost, unsure of how to do Jewish, as for too long we’ve assumed that being Jewish meant being here,
our tushes in seats, sitting through services, whether we found them meaningful or not. Somewhere along the way, what we heard is that Judaism and doing Jewish takes place in the synagogue building. It is THE place where we pray, where we learn, where we get our Judaism.
COVID disrupted that – Thank you, God!!
Let me be clear, the synagogue is a very important part of the Jewish community, but it isn’t meant to be the only space in which we do Jewish. The synagogue is meant to be a resource, an extension of your Jewish home, the center where you come to be in community and gather the tools that you need to live a rich Jewish life. Judaism is meant to be lived every day, and yet, we’ve relegated it to religious moments – like weddings, b’nai mitzvah, brises, and baby namings, and even funerals and stone dedications. While so many of these moments are meaningful and incredibly special, they don’t sustain us, they don’t nourish us, they don’t truly give us the tools to navigate life in meaningful, Jewish ways. And, when we don’t value Jewish education and think it not relevant and boring, then we truly limit ourselves because we don’t know or understand our history, the why’s, the how’s, and so on.
You may be thinking, Rabbi, I’m not religious, I don’t believe in God, I don’t really buy into religion and spirituality, I’m just “Jew” ish. I hear you. And my answer to you is that Judaism is so much more.
If we think of Judaism as only a religion, then what does that mean for Jews who don’t believe in God? What does that mean for Jews who don’t connect with or find meaning in prayer?
Does that make you not Jewish?
If so, then it should be easy for us to shed being “Jewish” or being seen as Jewish by the rest of the world, and yet, that has never happened. Think about it, in every generation, Jews have converted to other faiths by force or by choice, and yet, time and again, they were still seen as Jews. We only need look at Nazy Germany in the late 30’s for an example of this. Anti-Semitism doesn’t care if you beleive in God or Not and countless Germans learned this when they were taken to the camps for having a Jewish grandparent.
The reality is that we Jews are not merely a group who just share the same religion, we’re a PEOPLE – we’re a nation – we have a land, a shared language, our own calendar - we are B’nai Yisrael – the children of Israel, a people connected not only by our faith, but by a shared history and shared experience.
I believe it is our sense of peoplehood that we’ve lost in our desire to become more American. We can absolutely be both American and Jewish, but somewhere along the way we gave more credence to being American, to being part of the universal, and let go of those aspects of Judaism, like daily rituals and practices, that were particular and set us apart.
How many of you grew up in kosher homes? For how many of you are your memories of holidays not of sitting in services at the synagogue but gathering with family and friends, eating specific foods, singing songs or prayers and hearing chatter in Yiddish or Ladino?
I recently read the book, Jewish Pride: Rebuilding a People, by Ben Freeman. I highly recommend it. It was the book I needed, as I worked through the past year, the past six months of watching and feeling the struggle with what it means to be Jewish in 2021 in America. Mr. Freeman’s premise is that for too long, for too many generations, we’ve allowed and accepted other people’s definitions of Judaism, of anti-Semitism, and it’s time for us to define ourselves, to be proud of who we are, proud of our history, proud of our traditions, not be afraid to “own” who we are as Jews, and not to feel that we must hide our Judaism or set it aside to be accepted into society at large. And yet, to do this, we must first connect with our Judaism, know and understand our history on our own terms and not on others.
There is a story told of a young Jew, in his mid-twenties, who was raised in a Jewish family, but with little Jewish observance or Jewish learning. He was an intellectual, but he didn’t connect with Judaism, and he found it a religion not in touch with the modern world around him. He didn’t want to be connected to something old and meaningless. Rather, he wanted to be part of the world around him, to feel like he belonged and was contributing to society.
He gravitated to the religious understandings of the majority, feeling that it offered him a path toward greater acceptance, as well as the possibility of spiritual connection with a higher power.
This young man decided to convert to Christianity, as many young Jews of his time were doing. However, he felt the need to say farewell to the religion of his ancestors by taking in one last worship service. He found himself in a traditional synagogue on Kol Nidrei, surrounded by Jews young and old, wrapped in their white kittles, praying and singing, pouring out their hearts and souls to the Almighty. Something happened that evening, the young man had an experience, an awakening he felt deep in his soul, something for which he could never explain but it was a moment that connected him to Judaism. That evening the young Jew didn’t convert to Christianity, instead, he chose Judaism. He recognized in that moment that he needed to learn more, more about Judaism and his history, and in so doing he found a relevant, meaningful faith tradition that he assumed didn’t exist because it was never taught to him.
This is a true story. 108 years ago in Berlin, Franz Rosenzweig, a young Jew whose Jewish experience was like so many of ours today, thought he was walking into a synagogue for the last time. And yet, how amazing that during this holy season of return, that is exactly what he did. He never explained what happened, what “clicked” for him, however, he shared with a friend the following insight: “I descended to the vaults of my being, to a place whither my talents could not follow me; that I approached the ancient treasure chest whose existence I had never wholly forgotten, for I was in the habit of going down at certain times of the year to examine what lay uppermost in that chest: those moments had all along been the supreme moments of my life. But now the cursory inspection no longer satisfied me; my hands dug in and turned over layer after layer, hoping to reach the bottom of the chest. They never did. They dug out whatever they could, and I went away with armfuls of stuff—forgetting, in my excitement, that it was the vaults of myself that I was thus plundering! Then I climbed back again to the upper stories and spread out before me what treasures I had found: they did not fade in the light of day. These, indeed, were my own treasures, my most personal possessions, things inherited, not borrowed!”
What I read in Rosenzweig’s words, is that he found in that moment, that he could define for himself and bring his own meaning to Judaism and Jewish living in a way that he had never understood. He assumed that Judaism was a stagnant, unchanging religion that he had been handed, never recognizing that Judaism was something he had to find meaning in for himself by digging in and experiencing rather than just accepting what was given to him. After that Yom Kippur experience, Rosenzweig went on to become one of the greatest Jewish thinkers of the 20th century.
“Ein HaTorah overet k’yerusha. Kol dor tzarikh lilmod otah mechadash,” the ancient rabbis warn us, “The Torah is not inherited as an heirloom. Every generation needs to learn it anew from scratch!”
Or as Rabbi Donniel Hartman teaches, “Our responsibility is to protect and ensure the survival of the Jewish people, but our mission is to create a people guided by a tradition which challenges us to live lives of meaning and value and which can be a light both to ourselves and others.”
Judaism is meant to be lived and experienced not just received, like a package, and then passed on to the next generation like an heirloom. We are the ones who give meaning to Torah, we are the ones who transform Torah when we connect wherever we are in life back to it. This is what it means to be Jewish, to find ways to connect the universal world to Judaism, to recognize that Judaism is our lens, our language through which we walk in this world and share ourselves. When we take pride in that, when we learn and live Torah - the laws, the lessons, the history of our people, the history and experiences of our individual families, and of course our own personal struggles with God, this is when each successive generation will know that they too must live it, take pride in it, and care for it, because they witnessed us, their parents and grandparents, doing the same.
As we enter this New Year, this choice is ours. My hope is that like Franz Rosenzweig we’ll choose Judaism and choose to re-engage with Torah and with our history so that our understanding of our past can help inform our future.
Choosing Judaism is recognizing that there isn’t one way to do Jewish and that one size doesn’t fit all. Choosing Judaism means turning to your clergy and seeing your synagogue as your personal Jewish “Home Depot or Lowes” the place where you can find the tools you need, to do Jewish as Rabbi Bellows alluded to on Rosh Hashanah. This can be through the various educational classes we offer, join me this year for an exploration of the 613 mitzvot - what they mean and who is obligated, it can be through experiences like our challah bakes, our tzedek days, Israel programs, Artists and Scholars in residence, our upcoming Build Your Jewish Toolbox series, and if there is something that we’re not offering or doing, that you’ve always wanted to learn, to know more about, or experience – call me, tell me about it, and together let’s make it happen. My guess is that if you’re curious, someone else is too, and together we can learn our tradition anew, just as the rabbis suggested.
Ask us questions – we’re Jews – we love questions and the only stupid question is the one not asked. Lean on us, let’s work together to rekindle our collective pride in being Jews, pride in being part of an ancient people who have not only survived millennia of persecution, but who time and again have triumphed and thrived because of faith, hope, and the knowledge that we are a part of something greater than our individual selves, we’re a resilient people – B’nai Yisrael – ones who struggle and Yehudim - ones who are grateful!
As we enter this New Year, I share with you a blessing adapted from a prayer written by Ellie Fish on the occasion of his visit to the grave of our teacher, Franz Rosenzweig.
May it be Your will, Adonai our God, and God of our ancestors, that we find success in this new endeavor. Help us find the path, and help us help others find the path, from Torah to life, and from life to Torah; to find eternity within the details, and the details of the Eternal. Unite us all in the pursuit of Jewish learning, so that we may embrace the whole of Judaism. Permit us to return to You by returning to the treasures we have inherited from our ancestors and help us appreciate that others may embark on similar journeys and discover very different treasures. In the merit of our teacher, Franz Rosenzweig, grant us the courage to face life’s challenges with humor, dignity, and common sense, and to heed, study, teach, observe, perform, and uphold Your Torah with love.
And in so doing, may it be that we rise each day and proclaim, Baruch atah Adonai she’asani Yisrael. Thank you, God, for making me a Jew. Amen.
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