Beshalach

This week’s Torah portion, Beshalach, marks the beginning of the journey that will define the remainder of the Torah.  “So God led the people roundabout, by way of the wilderness at the Sea of Reeds.”  (Exodus 13:18) The wandering begins.  The journey through the wilderness starts this week.

As the week draws to a close I want to reflect on the journey of Jews in America.  I am given to reflect about two Jewish women.  One brought the contemporary to Judaism.  The other brought Judaism to the contemporary.

On Sunday the great Jewish singer and songwriter, Debbie Friedman, died.  Debbie composed the Mi Shebeirach prayer for healing that we sing each and every Friday night.  She wrote countless other prayers that we sing.  So many of her tunes have become a part of the American Jewish prayer experience that we often fail to acknowledge her authorship. 

Beginning in the 1970’s Debbie Friedman rewrote the music of traditional prayers, accompanying them to contemporary sounds.  She started what we now call Jewish prayer music.  Before her it never occurred to anyone to accompany our praying with the contemporary sounds of folk and rock.  I grew up singing her songs and still remember standing arm in arm with my youth group friends singing her version of the V’Ahavta.  She revolutionized Jewish prayer.  We owe her a great deal for beginning the journey we continue, of bringing the contemporary into our Jewish practice.

The other woman is Representative Gabrielle Giffords who remains in a coma after barely surviving an assassination attempt.  Our hearts are joined in reciting the Mi Shebeirach prayer for the wounded, especially those injured in the shooting, and for the families of those murdered: Federal District Judge John McCarthy Roll; Gabe Zimmerman, a young staff member of Giffords who was recently engaged, Christina Taylor Green, a nine year old born on 9-11, Dorwin Stoddard, Dorthy Murray and Phyllis Scheck.

Congresswoman Giffords is Jewish.   I suspect her Judaism played a part in the murderer’s motivation.  He for example listed antisemitic books and organizations as among his favorites.  Many people are not aware that Gifford’s Judaism figured prominently in her world outlook and approach to issues.  She once remarked:  “If you want something done, your best bet is to ask a Jewish woman to do it.  Jewish women — by our tradition and by the way we were raised — have an ability to cut through all the reasons why something should, shouldn’t or can’t be done and pull people together to be successful.” 

On the issue of immigration and in particular migrant workers she was said to balance the need for security with the Torah’s teachings about reaching out to the stranger.  A trip to Israel in 2001 cemented her commitment to Judaism and Israel.  She said, “Religion means different things to different people. It provides me with grounding, a better understanding of who I came from."

Born to a Jewish father and a Christian Scientist mother she would not be considered Jewish by traditional authorities.  But she brought Jewish sensibilities and teachings to contemporary concerns.  She found meaning in her Jewish faith.  For traditional authorities as well Debbie Friedman’s prayers would not be recognized as Jewish.  In my mind both women are shining of examples of what it means to be both Jewish and American, contemporary and informed by our tradition and faith.

In this week’s portion we also read the Song at the Sea, the beautiful poem sung after the Israelites crossed the Sea of Reeds.  The Mi Chamocha prayer is taken from its verses.  There we read of the achievements of women and in particular an early leader.  “Then Miriam the prophetess… took a timbrel in her hand, all the women went out after her in dance with timbrels.   And Miriam chanted for them: ‘Sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously; horse and driver He has hurled into the sea.’” (Exodus 15:20-21)

We will continue singing.  We will continue wandering between the contemporary and our tradition.  Our journey never ends.  In two women we find guidance and inspiration.

May the memory and songs of Debbie Friedman continue to find their way into our hearts.  May Representative Gabrielle Giffords be blessed with refuah shleymah, complete healing, and may we continue to learn from her example.

Derekh Eretz

Founder of 'Civility Project' Calls It Quits - NYTimes.com
The way of the land, a euphemism for proper manners, has fallen out of practice in many circles.  Today's Times reports that the recent Civility Project is a bust.  The project was started last year by Mark DeMoss and Lanny Davis, a Republican and Democrat.  Last year they asked all governors, senators and representatives to sign the following pledge:

I will be civil in my public discourse and behavior.
I will be respectful of others whether or not I agree with them.
I will stand against incivility when I see it.

Only three signed the pledge: Senator Joseph Lieberman, independent of Connecticut; Representative Frank Wolfe, Republican of Virginia; and Representative Sue Myrick, Republican of North Carolina.  DeMoss remarked:  "Whether or not there’s violence, whether or not incivility today is worse than it’s been in history, it’s all immaterial. It’s worse than it ought to be."  That is exactly the point.  Our uncivil discourse is not the cause of the near assassination of Representative Gabrielle Giffords (may she soon be granted refuah shleymah) and the murder of six others (may their memories serve as a blessing).  The cause of this heinous act is Jared Lee Loughner and his ideology of hate and violence.  There are far too many in this world who believe that murder and terrorism are the answers.  If we can't keep such people from finding inspiration on the internet we certainly should keep them from too easily finding the tools of violence, in particular automatic weapons and explosives.  (I am thinking here of Timothy McVeigh y"s as well.)

On the other hand our inability to debate and disagree with each other leads only to our current inability to accomplish anything meaningful.  Republicans and Democrats are more interested in seeing each other fail than seeing America succeed.  Once we stop relishing in the failure of others and working instead towards our community's success will we achieve greatness.  Until then we will continue screaming at each other and every two years or four grabbing power from each other.  This nation's success is in the hands of all.

Bo Sermon

This Torah portion concludes the telling of the ten plagues.  The first seven are delineated in the previous portion: blood, frogs, lice, wild beasts, cattle disease, boils and hail.  In this week we read of locusts, darkness and the killing of the first born.  It is interesting and perhaps curious why the plagues are divided in this manner, but in doing so the rabbis certainly guaranteed that we would return to hear this week’s resounding conclusion.

There is also much discussion as to the purpose of the plagues.  Nowhere do we read that their purpose is to punish the Egyptians.  It is instead to motivate the Egyptians to let the Israelites go free.  In some commentaries we read that their purpose is to demonstrate God’s power to the Israelites.  But I don’t very much like this explanation.  Why would God want other human beings to suffer so that Israel can learn of God’s might?

Regardless our tradition has tempered the force of the plagues by insisting that whenever we retell them we lesson our joy.  In other words at every seder we remove a drop of wine from our kiddush cups so as to remove a measure of happiness.  In the most famous of retellings the midrash recounts how the angels sang and danced when the Egyptians were later drowned in the sea.  God silences their shouting of halleluyah with the exhortation: “My children are drowning!  How dare you sing praises!”

As I shared in my weekly email, the telling of the plagues is punctuated by the phrase, “And God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.”  Pharaoh wavers back and forth between letting the people go and hardening his heart and not allowing the Israelites to go free.  I am not going to here explore the question of why God hardens Pharaoh’s heart but instead the meaning of this phrase.  What does it mean to harden our hearts?  To what do we harden our hearts?

The most obvious answer is that sometimes we harden our hearts to others.  We do so to strangers and even to those we love.  Everyone stands guilty of doing this.  Sometimes we become so wrapped up in our own lives and our own concerns that we forget others.  We harden our hearts to their needs, to their pains and even to their joys.  Sometimes we are unable to celebrate others joys and successes because we are so hardened by our own failings and trials. 

I think especially of the homeless who we often confront living in New York.  Do we walk by them in Times Square?  Do we step over them as we rush to catch the subway?  I remember once when we learned from a homeless person.  He was actually no longer homeless and working for an advocacy group.  When we asked him, “What was the worst part about being homeless?” he answered, “To be ignored.”  He could deal with the physical challenges of being hungry and even the cold, but the emotional was far more difficult.  People used to walk by him as if he was invisible, as if he did not exist.  This was the most difficult.  And this is hardening of the heart.

And what is the cause of this hardening of our hearts?  It can be ideology.  It can even be our beliefs.  Sometimes we become convinced of the rightness of our own opinions and then the world becomes invisible.  We only see ourselves and our ideas.  We fail to see others.  And so do we choose to be right and sometimes alone, or to be surrounded by others and then often our community?

Lately I have been thinking of an even more insidious hardening of our hearts.  It is the hardening of our hearts about the future.  We read article after article about the diminishing of America.  We read of states running out of money, of services being cut, of budgets being squeezed.  And our hearts have therefore become hardened.  We have become convinced that we will never be what we once were.  It is the decline of America.

But to be Jewish is to never lose hope in the future.  Think of the seder and its retelling of the plagues.  Even more importantly think of the seder and the singing of Next Year in Jerusalem.  Think of how many thousands of years we sang this song when there was not even a glimmer of a State of Israel.  Think of Elijah and his promise of bringing the messiah.  The messianic dream means that the future will be better than the present.  As Jews we must never lose sight of this dream.

When we allow our hearts to become hardened we become like Pharaoh.  We can like Pharaoh harden our hearts to others and harden our hearts to the future.  Lately I have been thinking that the latter might indeed be the more dangerous of the two.  To believe that the future cannot be better creeps into our hearts and coarsens our souls.

Our tradition reminds us each and every Saturday evening when we sing to Elijah that the future can be better, that the future will be better. We must never allow ideology to harden our hearts to others! We must never allow circumstance to harden our hearts to the future!

Debbie Friedman z"l

The singer and songwriter, Debbie Friedman, died early yesterday morning. More than anyone else she created the genre of Jewish music. It was she who in the early 1970's began matching traditional prayers to contemporary tunes. It was she who wrote the Mi Shebeirach prayer for healing that we sing each and every Shabbat.  This new prayer and song has become so much a part of our liturgy that I dare not forget to recite it.  The Mi Shebeirach  has become so much a part of every Reform congregation's prayer service that it was included in the new siddur.  What so many of us have come to accept and expect as "normal" Jewish prayer was quite revolutionary when Debbie Friedman first began writing and singing.  Today there are many more Jewish songwriters.  Today we sing many of our prayers to contemporary tunes.  Today there are many singers and musicians who bring contemporary sounds and sensibilities to the Jewish prayer experience.  It is true that Debbie Friedman died too young.  It is also true that her legacy will continue well into the distant future.  I am grateful that she led the way in transforming our prayers.  As one of her more recent compositions, and Psalm 30, attests, "You turn my mourning into dancing..."  Kein y'hi ratzon!



To learn more about her legacy watch the below video.    



May her memory always serve as a blessing!

Bo

This week’s Torah portion, Bo, details the last three plagues brought down upon Egypt: locusts, darkness and the killing of the first born.  The first seven are described in last week’s portion.  The telling of the plagues is punctuated by an interesting, and perhaps troubling, phrase: “For I have hardened Pharaoh’s heart…” 

The drama moves back and forth.  Moses goes to Pharaoh telling him that the Jewish people must be allowed to leave.  Pharaoh refuses.  God brings a plague.  Pharaoh decides to let the Jewish people go.  Pharaoh changes his mind telling Moses the people cannot leave.  God brings another plague.  Even after the tenth plague Pharaoh again has a change of heart and pursues the Israelites to the Sea of Reeds where his army is drowned.  The Torah’s drama then moves away from Egypt to the wilderness.

Pharaoh’s change of heart is marked by the phrase “For I have hardened his heart.”  The Hebrew would be better translated as “I made his heart heavy” or perhaps “I weighed his heart down.”  What is the meaning of this unusual phrase?  What does it mean to harden our hearts?

A Hasidic master, Rebbe Eliezer Hagar of Vizhnitz (1890-1945), offers the following comment.  He begins by quoting a midrash.  This phrase is as it is written in Proverbs: “A stone is heavy and the sand weighty; but a fool’s wrath is heavier than both.”  He then goes on to interpret the rabbinic commentary with the following observation: It is hard to write on a rock, but after something is engraved on it, the writing will last forever.  In the case of sand, on the other hand, one finds it easy to write whatever he wishes, but the writing can be erased in an instant.  The difference between the two is the same as that between the person who finds it difficult to understand something, but once he understands it does not forget it, and the person who finds it easy to understand something, but soon forgets it.  Pharaoh had both disadvantages—he found it hard to understand, and he forgot easily.  Immediately after he said, “God is right,” he changed his mind and did not allow Israel to leave.

Typical of the Hasidic masters this negative notion of hardening the heart is transformed into one that has positive potential, albeit a potential that Pharaoh missed.  Had Pharaoh heeded Moses’ words he would have learned a hard and difficult lesson.  Pharaoh would have learned something that would have left an imprint for a lifetime.  He would have taken to heart the lesson that you must never harden your heart to others.  You must never harden your heart to their suffering.

At times our hearts are open.  Other times they are closed.  Sometimes our hearts are weighed down by sorrow.  And other times by pain.  Sometimes our hearts are hardened by stubbornness.  Other times by ideology.  To what do we harden our hearts?  What weighs our hearts down?  What stands in the way of our learning lessons that will last a lifetime, lessons that could be written on stone?