My words to the Elgin Chamber of Commerce Thanksgiving Luncheon this morning:

We are commanded that when we are eaten and are satisfied we should bless God. Jews have a very long Birkat Hamazon, Grace After Meals, Blessing of the Food. It contains one line that modern Jews struggle with. “I have been young and I have grown old, and I have never seen the righteous forsaken and their offspring begging for bread” (Psalm 37:25). It is a beautiful idea of divine righteousness, but it doesn’t always ring true for us today. We have seen good people go hungry and children beg for bread. They are haunting images. What country allows 22% of its children go to bed hungry? What kind of God allows this? Continue reading →

Last night we sang 18 songs of peace. I am attaching the song sheet. Hashkivenu is one of my favorite songs. A Jewish lullaby asking for peace when we lie down, spreading over us a sukkat shlomecha, a canopy of G-d’s peace.

Don’t know any of these songs? Try Craig Taubman’s setting of Hashkivenu which Sarah and I sang as a duet last night.

I announced earlier this week that I would talk about Jacob and Esau’s birthright and what it means to be a modern Zionist. What I wanted to talk about had to do with how Rebecca was responsible for making sure that covenant continued and the strong role that she played in this. What I wanted to talk about was the Women at the Wall and how 6 more women were arrested this week for davening at the Wall on Rosh Hodesh Kislev. Seems wearing a tallit and saying the Sh’ma out loud is disturbing the peace. Something we take as natural here at Congregation Kneseth Israel. I want to have those conversations but not today. Today there are even more important topics. Today we all stand with Israel. Continue reading →

It can be hard when we approach December to find light. The days are short, the nights are long. Many believe that is why Chanukah, the festival of light falls in Kislev. Kislev begins this week on Thursday.

This past weekend I experienced a new level of Interfaith Dialogue. I received a phone call from someone I couldn’t hear very well but who wants to participate in our Interfaith Thanksgiving service next week. She was the Muslim voice we were looking for. But she had a proposition, could I attend an interfaith event the next night to talk about light in Judaism. I agreed. I drove out to the address, getting lost along the way, but getting to see a rainbow on my way. Great—it reminded me that a rainbow is a symbol of the Divine covenant with all people—and it is the perfect balance between light and dark, sun and rain. I arrive at the MA Center, and it turns out that it is an ashram. Ablaze in light. This is Dewali, the Indian Festival of Light. The center is beautiful. The altar is filled with hundreds of oil lamps and draped with tiny Christmas lights. I am the last speaker of a panel that includes my new Muslim friend, a Mennonite, a Sikh, the head of the ashram, a Bahai woman. Our stories are all so similar. Each of us is supposed to present about light in our faith traditions for five minutes. Only five minutes? I represent a five thousand year tradition. Continue reading →

Aftermath
HAVE you forgotten yet?…
For the world’s events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you’re a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same–and War’s a bloody game…
Have you forgotten yet?… Continue reading →

This past Shabbat our congregation was looking for any and all blessings. It had been a hard week, burying a much beloved member whose daughter had celebrated her wedding just the Friday afternoon before. We are all concerned about friends and relatives on the East Coast (more about that later). We needed something to celebrate. We found it in the eyes of our youth when we hosted PJ Shabbat for our youngest members. We said shehechianu for losing a first tooth, for tasting a first tomato, even for fixing the rabbi’s bathroom, a first in more than six years. On Shabbat morning I sat in a pew next to my daughter as the Men’s Club led the entire service, P’sukei D’Zimra through Musaf. Someone read Torah, someone else gave a D’var Torah and I sat next to my daughter. For some on the bimah for the first time, it was a shehechianu moment. For me, the shehechianu was for seeing the beautiful calligraphed Men’s Club Haftarah Scroll. It is also in empowering lay leaders to be confident davenners and shlichim tzibbut, messengers of the congregation leading prayer. In a week full of uncertainty it is good to remember that life continues and to celebrate the small things, a tooth, a tomato, a toilet or a Torah. We are still here. We are still alive.

One of the things I enjoy about my job as rabbi is explaining Judaism to non-Jews. I have already had opportunities to do so here in Elgin. I hosted a class from Lincolnshire High School studying World Religions. They asked really good questions. Every time I do this kind of thing my own understanding of Judaism gets better. It sharpens my own understanding. Our synagogue is hosting the Elgin Interfaith Thanksgiving Service and some of the clergy and I had a good meeting yesterday. I have been asked to join the trustees of FaithBridge and will be participating in their concert, Sounds of Faith this Sunday. They asked me to speak on Unity and Diversity in Judaism several weeks ago. Here is the presentation that I did for them. It is good because it becomes the first night of my class in December on the many streams of Judaism. I welcome these opportunities. There is much more that unites us than divides us.  UnityandDiversity

Tomorrow we read the story of the Tower of Babel. In this story, the men wanted to build a tower so tall that it could reach the heavens and touch G-d. They wanted to make a name for themselves. They wanted to experience directly G-d or they wanted to become like G-d or they wanted to be G-d. G-d punished them by confusing their language, confounding their speech. The building of the tower and the city stopped and people were scattered all over the world. But they were men. Women build too. This week we celebrated Hadassah’s 100th anniversary with the dedication of their new hospital in Jerusalem. Many of my friends were in Israel for the opening. But unfortunately, we still have a problem, both here in the US and in Israel. Is it really possible that one presidential candidate spoke about binders of women? Is it really possible that at that same time, women were being arrested in Israel for disturbing the peace? Their crime–proclaiming the Sh’ma, the watchword of our faith, outloud with too much enthusiasm. What is it about women’s voices that scares men? How did we get to this point where only the very Orthodox control the Western Wall? When the Temple still stood, there was a men’s court, a woman’s court and even a court for the stranger among us. Women sang. Women danced. Women prayed. Women judged. Women taught. Now women can be arrested for singing or wearing a tallit or tefilin. This is nonsense and runs counter to the stories and halacha preserved in the Talmud. Those of us in the United States have an obligation to keep reminding Israel that there are a variety of opinions as to what constitutes acceptable, normative Judaism. We are women will not be silenced as we choose to worship how we want. We will not be intimated by the voices of a few men. We will continue to sing, to dance, to worship and to pray. This is not an issue just for me as a woman, or as a woman rabbi. It is not an issue just for me as a Reform Jew or a Conservative Jew or as a post-denominational Jew. It is an issue for all of us as Jews.
Perhaps as I learned in an email today, Yizhar Hess, Executive Director of the Masorti movement in Israel, put it well when he said: “In all honesty it must be said we have misunderstood our own history. The Kotel was never liberated, rather, it was handed over to the Ministry of Religion and to the Haredim who fully control the area. In a process of exclusion, this national symbol has been turned into an Orthodox synagogue. The women of Hadassah may be good enough to build hospitals but not good enough to pray and sing.”
Let me be perfectly clear, women are good enough to pray and sing, to be rabbis and cantors, to read Torah, to lay tefilin, to worship as Jews. The work of Hadassah to build hospitals and to save lives and the work of Women of the Wall must continue to be applauded and supported. Abraham Joshua Heschel had it right. “Prayercannotmendabrokenbridge,rebuildaruinedcityorbringwater to parched fields. Prayer can mend a broken heart, lift up a discouraged soul and strengthen a weakened will” My prayer this Shabbat is that we continue to build hospitals and we continue to sing and pray–however we see fit as women.