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The Sea of Tears - Behukotai 5782

6/2/2022

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Rebbe Yitzhak Kalish of Vorka, known as the Vorker Rebbe, believed foremost in patience and peace, and he was known as a goodly and kindly teacher. The other, the Kotzker Rebbe, Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Kotzk, was most concerned with the pursuit of truth and he sought it out at the expense of all else. Though their paths were vastly different, they were nonetheless the closest of friends. So much so that even death would not keep them apart. 

So, when the Vorker Rebbe passed away, and a full month went by without his appearance in a vision or a dream, the Kotzker Rebbe decided to ascend to heaven in order to search for his friend in all the palaces of Torah study. At every place he stopped, they told him that his beloved friend, the Vorker, had been there but he had gone away. 

In growing despair, the Kotzker Rebbe asked the angels, "Where is my dear friend Rebbe Yitzhak?" And the angels sent him in the direction of a dark, dark forest. It was the most fearsome and foreboding forest he had ever been to, but he pushed on, anxious to discover the whereabouts of his friend. As he travelled deeper into the forest he began to hear the sound of gentle waves lapping upon the shore. He reached the edge of the forest and before him lay a great and endless sea, stretching in every direction. But then the Kotzker Rebbe noticed a strange sound. Every wave as it swelled high would cry out a soft, but heart-breaking sob. The sound was terrifying and he turned to run away, but just then he saw, standing at the edge of this wailing sea, staring at its melancholy waters, his holy friend Rebbe Yitzhak. 
"I've been looking for you,” said the Kotzker, “why have you not come back to visit me?" Instead of answering his friend, Rebbe Yitzhak asked him a question, "Do you know what sea this is?" The Kotzker replied that he did not, and so Rebbe Yithak explained, "It is the sea of tears. It is the sea which collects all the tears of God's holy people," he said, "and when I saw it I swore in God's name that I would not leave its side until God dried up all these tears." 

…

We are, once again, in a place of great grief. Our community is a community is a community traumatized by gun violence, and so every new tragedy - every Buffalo, every El Paso, Every Newtown and Sandy Hook, every Las Vegas or Orlando is just a variation on 10-27-2018 for us. We spend the week doomscrolling social media and being short with our friends and coworkers and hugging our children or our parents or our loved ones just a little bit more - a little bit longer.

We come to synagogue seeking solace. We come seeking meaning, and reason, and answers. We arrive and discover that synagogue is a lake of tears with a rebbe sitting beside it, asking God to dry it up. And thus we become of people grieving - sitting by the lake, hugging our children. And this is a form of Schrodingers Cat grief therapy - both comforting and not comforting at the safe time. We all come here to sing and pray and cry a little with other people who’s response to trauma is to sing and pray and cry, and things are better. But also, they are not, because the cycle of awful mass shootings in America is never-ending.

The Jewish spiritual tradition towards firearms is unequivocal. We are opposed to violence. We are opposed to weaponry. We believe the ideal state of humankind is to move towards peace, and we believe we must be part of the effort to make that so. To wit:
  • In Isaiah we are taught that we should beat swords into plowshares.
  • In Pirkei Avot we learn that Hillel used to say: be like the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving humankind and drawing them close to the Torah.
  • In Exodus 14, we learn the Israelites went up from Israel armed, but later on, we learn that the weapons there are never used. A hassidic teaching by The Seer of Lublin, Jacob Issac, (1745-1815) says the following:
    • Why did the Israelites need weapons? When would they have used them? They simply end up saying “And the children of Israel cried out to God” [and God saves them]. And one can say that there is a parallel in another verse “which I wrested from the Amorites with my sword and bow” (Genesis 48:22) that the commentator Onkelos translates as “with my prayer and my supplication”. Prayers and supplications are weapons for us, and by these armaments we defeated Egypt.
  • And most recently, the Rabbinical Assembly of the Conservative movement in part said the following:
    • “It is high time that United States politicians, currently obsessed with reelection campaigns, put aside partisanship in order literally to save lives. They must firmly and immediately enact meaningful gun reform legislation. The same with mental health reform.
    • “The Rabbinical Assembly has spoken out many times against gun violence in the United States. We unequivocally call upon lawmakers to immediately take all available measures to ensure the safety of the public and to limit the availability of guns. As our tradition reminds us, 'Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor' (Leviticus 19:16).”

These are our values.

But of course, we are but a small minority in a very violent America. The Jewish moral view that we strive to live in peace, without firearms or swords or bloodshed, is at odds with the path America is on. It is a bad path.

Our haftorah alludes in part to the fate of a nation that treads down the wrong path. As Michael Fishbane wrote eloquently in his commentary on page 762, “The sinners folly lies in the flagrant disregard of the divine way. They act with deception and stealth, hoping to increase unjust gain.” Jeremiah says the following of a nation who are driven by greed and power and forget the way of God - a path we refer to as a path to peace. The text says this: “I will make your rampart a heap in the field, and all your treasures a spoil. You will forfeit, by your own act, the inheritance I have given you. I will make you a slave to your enemies in a land you have never known.”

But of course, all is not lost. The prophets message is not eternal doom, but hope emerging from darkness. And America is not a lost cause, a slave to our worst impulses, or a nation that persists in evil against all else. America has emerged from great moral crisis time and time again. And so, if we want to, we can shift the narrative from the doom and gloom in verse 4 to the promise and hope of verse 7 and 8 ; “blessed are they that trust in the Lord; whose trust is in God alone. They shall be like a tree planted by waters; its leaves are ever fresh. It has no care in a year of drought, it does not cease to yield its fruit.”
In parshat bechukotai we learn the following:

 אִם־בְּחֻקֹּתַי תֵּלֵכוּ וְאֶת־מִצְותַי תִּשְׁמְרוּ וַעֲשִׂיתֶם אֹתָם׃ 

If you follow My laws and faithfully observe My commandments,

וְנָתַתִּי גִשְׁמֵיכֶם בְּעִתָּם וְנָתְנָה הָאָרֶץ יְבוּלָהּ וְעֵץ הַשָּׂדֶה יִתֵּן פִּרְיוֹ׃ 

I will grant your rains in their season, so that the earth shall yield its produce and the trees of the field their fruit.

This idea in that second sentence, of reward for obedience to mitzvot is one we mention twice daily, in the second paragraph of the amidah. In the first sentence, Rashi notices the redundancy of ‘follow my laws’ and ‘obey my commandments’ and says that it’s not enough to just observe torah, but to be amelim beTorah - to toil laboriously at it.

We will work hard to make a peaceful world with less violence and bloodshed. But we also need our rest and solace and comfort from that violent world. And in this the Chofetz Chaim, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, comments on that second line, I will grant your rains in their season.

He says “There is nothing in this world that a person can simply achieve by toil and labor alone. Even if a person crafts something for endless days in the making of some item, there’s no guarantee they’ll be paid appropriately for the work, or perhaps the work will never be finished adequately. No so with the study of Torah. Even if one does not complete the task, yet there is still a reward.”

We come here to be comforted at the end of a traumatic week. We come to be made whole. And even if the work is only partly done, the work of prayer and study of Torah is rewarded. We walk in the way of our tradition, and the rain will fall. As the work of learning Torah fills our souls it recharges us to do the work of actualizing Torah, and building a world of peace, so that we may beat swords into plowshares. Because the lake filled with tears does not dry up on its own. We must, like the Vorker Rebbe in the story that I began with, sit with God and move the Kadosh Baruch Hu and the world to dry the lake of tears. 
​

Yehi shalom b’chelech shalva bearmonotayich
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Enough

5/25/2022

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Enough

Sometimes the world feels so heavy. Like an unbearable weight that bends the backs of everyone that lives in it. Sometimes the weight of the world feels incomprehensible - we think 'ah, yesterday it was so light. I could breathe and walk and smile. And today is bent backs and agony and sadness.'

Of course you know what I'm referring to. I'm referring to the mass shooting on May 24 at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. But also, the mass shooting on May 17 in Buffalo, New York. And the mass shooting in Pittsburgh on April 17, and the shooting in New York City on April 12, and the shooting in Cedar Rapids on April 10. All told, as of May 22nd this year, there have been 213 mass shootings this year alone. There have been 17,196 deaths by gun violence. 647 of the dead are children.

I want to make political suggestions - about activism and voting and calling your representative - but I can't. Because I've already done that in message after message, sermon after sermon, year after year. I want to offer solace and prayer, but I don't know that I can. I've wept and agonized after Aurora, Colorado and Buffalo and Tree of Life and Sandy Hook and South Carolina and Orlando and El Paso and offered prayers of hope and healing and grief.

To God at this point, I offer my total and complete exasperation. My rage. My anguish at children who will never grow up and teachers who will never go home and grandmas who will not squeeze their grandbabies. In turn, I imagine God returns this exasperation back at us, saying 'despair is not an option.' 'Hopelessness is not an option.' Olam Hesed Yibaneh, we are taught - a world of justice we must build. So as much as we've had enough of mass shootings and high powered guns, we also need to be enough to be some part of reversing this horrible trajectory that we are on.

L'Shalom (In Peace),

Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
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We do it even when nobody's watching - Bo 5782

1/15/2022

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I want to share with you a really neat text I learned this week on the Torah portion from one of my favorite hassidic rabbis, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev. A brief reminder; this week’s torah portion of Bo covers the final three plagues against pharaoh - locusts, darkness, and the death of firstborn male animals and humans. After that, we get Pharoah’s release of the people, followed by the actual exodus, including the story of the flat bread that the people carried, and then the instructions by God for us to remember this exodus each year with the celebration of Pesach.

According to the Torah we are told:

Exodus 13:6-7
שִׁבְעַת יָמִים תֹּאכַל מַצֹּת וּבַיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי חַג לַיהֹוָה׃ 
“Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a festival of the LORD.
מַצּוֹת יֵאָכֵל אֵת שִׁבְעַת הַיָּמִים וְלֹא־יֵרָאֶה לְךָ חָמֵץ וְלֹא־יֵרָאֶה לְךָ שְׂאֹר בְּכל־גְּבֻלֶךָ׃ 
Throughout the seven days unleavened bread shall be eaten; no leavened bread shall be found with you, and no leaven shall be found in all your territory.


And to this idea of the people inspecting and self policing their own houses to remove all hametz, Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev shares a story:

Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev was walking once on Erev Pesach with his assistant on the outskirts of the city. He happened upon a non-Jew who was a customs agent. He asked him:
- Do you have any forbidden goods that have come from abroad?
(The agent replied):
- Certainly. Please come with me, for in my house there are many.
He conceded the matter, and went on his way. He then met a Jewish person, and asked with wonder:
- Do you have any chametz in your home?
(The Jewish man replied):
- Now?!? Behold, it is Erev Pesach now, after noon!
Rabbi Levi Yitzhak went on and met another Jew, and asked him the same question.
(The second Jewish man replied):
- Rabbi, are you mocking me? Or are you suspicious of my kashrut? Behold, the hour for burning and nullifying the Chametz has already passed!

The rabbi turned his eyes towards heaven and said:
‘Master of all worlds! Look from Your holy abode and see Your people Israel; how attached they are to Your mitzvot and how careful they are with them. The Russian Tzar, glorious king he is, with so many judges and policemen he has, and so many soldiers in his army and conscripted guards in all of the farthest reaches of the realm and in every city that is known, and they all guard the laws and supervise the borders, that one should not import goods without going through customs. And even still, violators are found in every place. And You, Master of the Universe, wrote in Your Torah ‘No leavened bread shall be found with you’, but You didn’t establish guards, didn’t establish taskmasters, didn’t create an army, and on Erev Pesach, there isn’t to be found any bit of chametz in the home of a Jew.
…

The idea here is that we Jews operate with love, honor, and fealty to God to such an extent that we will scrub and clean our houses and trash and burn our hametz with great effort, great rigor, despite the fact that all of us know - there’s no punishment if we don’t. There’s no goons, no brute squad, no kosher police knocking down our door if we stash an entire loaf of pandemic sourdough in our pantry just in case we get peckish. Nothing bad happens if I forget to sweep behind the heavy refrigerator before the holiday. And yet we trash the sourdough; we vacuum between the cushions; we boil our pots and cutlery; we bring the pesadic dishes up from the basement and drag the fleishedic regular dishes down to the basement. We do it all because we believe in God, Torah, and mitzvot.

Meanwhile, everybody here knows a friend of a friend who can get cheaper prescription drugs over in Niagra falls or Windsor or Hamilton; and so they send them over the border to get some. Most americans have snuck a bottle of booze or an undeclared box of cuban cigars or something past customs. Most of us have snuck a beer before our 21st birthday. Some of us have engaged in illicit superbowl gambling, or smoked a joint without a medical marijuana prescription. There are actual cops, actual customs agents, actual DEA soldiers - trying to stop us - and we’ve pretty much all done it anyways. The tzar … glorious king that he is … can not stop us.

It tells us something beautiful about observance and love of God.

But it also tells us something deeper about human nature - and that is - we are far more compelled by being bound together by our community to do what is meaningful than we are bound or compelled by violence or fear. 

We are far more compelled by being bound together by our community to do what is meaningful than we are bound or compelled by violence or fear. 



One year ago yesterday, a terrible thing happened in America, as thugs and bandits and hooligans tried to disrupt democracy with violence. The idea of America, that our compact is that we all agree to elect our leaders and then abide by the election even when we don’t like the result, was assailed and threatened existentially. We were this close to going from the pillar and the beacon of freedom and good government to just being another unstable south or central american country, another flimsy constitution that can be toppled with a little violence and a little demagoguery.

The idea of America is that we are compelled to trust one another and our fellow citizens, even though sometimes it’s about as much fun as scraping chametz off the sides of a roaster pan or scouring the grill with a wire brush. The idea of America is NOT that might makes right; that even when we are dissatisfied, we should never take up arms against one another.
Violence has never had it’s intended result in America. The violence against the Civil Rights marchers only steeled their resolve. Violence in the Civil War to maintain slavery only accelerated its demise. An attempt by one to impose their will on another through fear, intimidation, and threat - through force and police and military - instead of by compelling through intellect and right and love - is inherently unjewish. It’s the way pharaoh wanted to rule. It didn’t work. We Jews believe in being compelled by soul force - not by might, not by power, but by spirit alone. We keep our houses clean and our souls clean, not out of fear, but out of love. Not because of soldiers, but because of God.  And think America feels the same way too. Love - fellowship - brother and sisterhood and common cause -  not force. Not by the bullet, but by the ballot. 

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