Ma tovu ohalecha Ya’akov. Mishkenotecha Yisrael. How lovely are your tents O Jacob, your dwelling places O Israel.

Look around. This is a lovely place. We all enjoy being here. The light in the stain glass windows is beautiful. This is the place we dwell. Where G-d presence dwells. It is good. It is lovely. But it is not quite good enough. We are not fully handicapped accessible. We can do better. So today we are taking the Torah down from the bimah so that everyone has access. Today, we will begin a project so that our bathrooms are handicapped accessible. This is part of our pillar to “embrace diversity” and it makes our dwelling more lovely for all.

Our dwelling places include here, this great country of ours, the United States of America whose birthday we celebrated yesterday. And Israel, our spiritual home. How lovely are your dwelling places, O Israel. Did everyone have fun yesterday? Good. 4th of July: Parades, John Philllps Souza, Music, Fireworks, Flags, Red, White and Blue. There is a rhythm. A ritual. Independence. Freedom.

That is what the 4th of July is about. Independence. Freedom.

I love the 4th of July. I am proud to be an American. No one ever asked me where I would be for Rosh Hashanah. The question was always about being “home” for the 4th. And then celebrating my parents’ birthdays on the 6th and the 7th. So this sermon is dedicated to my mother, who would turn 90 tomorrow—and some of the things she taught me.

Her favorite line of the Bible is in this week’s haftarah. What does the Lord require of you, “Only to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your G-d.” Think about that for a minute. What does that mean? I think it is about having a balance between justice and mercy, between being strict and being lenient, between rushing to judgment and being non-judgmental, between discipline and lovingkindness. Her Judaism did not say “Are you kosher and if so how kosher are you? It did not say, “Are you Shomer shabbes and if so how much?” She would have a hard time also understanding the recent battles between Sunni and Shiite.

She cared that we were good persons. Do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your G-d. That is all G-d requires of you to be good. It is simple. Walking humbly has to do with not being too haughty, not being too proud. Remembering as the sign that hangs over the ark says, “Know before whom you stand.” Again it is about balance. If we are too humble we can become like a doormat and let people walk all over us. If we are too proud, we wind up with narcissistic character disorder. Where is that balance?

Our tradition begs that we keep two truths in our pocket. “For my sake the world was created.” And “I am but dust and ashes.” How do we hold those at the same time?

And sometimes the word humble, is translated as modest which is what Eitz Chayyim does. How does that change our understanding?

The concept of modesty comes from this week’s portion. Balam was sent by Balak to curse the Israelites. Leaving the whole talking donkey, the original Mr. Ed out of the story, eventually he arrives and he tries to curse the Israelites. He says, “How good are your tents O Jacob, your dwelling places O Israel.” Think about that. “How good are your tents O Jacob. Your dwelling places O Israel.”

From this verse we derive an important halacha: The Mishnah teaches, In a courtyard which he shares with others, a man should not open a door facing another person’s window.” Now probably none of us have a courtyard, but we might if we lived in Europe or in Israel. Or maybe it is the common space in some condo developments. I was relieved to know that in our new house, we cannot see into anyone else’s house, fulfilling this verse. Somehow modesty is about privacy. In the Gemara we learn from Rabbi Johanah we derive this from our verse, “And Balaam lifted up his eyes and he saw Israel dwelling according to their tribes.”4 This indicates that he saw that the doors of their tents did not exactly face one another, whereupon he exclaimed: WORTHY ARE THESE THAT THE DIVINE PRESENCE SHOULD REST UPON THEM! Rashi explains that we were living b’tzni-ut following a code of modesty.

Now sometimes that means we should dress appropriately—arms covered, women in longer dresses with their legs in stockings and their hair hidden. And tzniut, modesty, comes from tzanuah, hidden. Our tents were positioned in a manner that would afford each family, privacy. We did not, nor did we desire to, look into each other’s tents without permission.

Now maybe my mother overdid that part. We were not supposed to “air our dirty laundry” in public. For her that meant never saying we had a problem. So when my father was sick, we never told people he was in the hospital. I just went “home” to work in the bookstore. It meant that sometimes I was tagged with the name “Big Mouth” for not being humble enough. You should never toot your own horn. And as parents we shouldn’t say we are proud because the child might get a swelled head. That understanding of the verse was probably misguided and later in life, when she had to do a toast at my brother’s wedding, she finally understood that saying that you are proud of your children is good.

If we are modest, if we are private, if we are humble, then the Divine Presence will dwell among us and will not be hidden. But sometimes that is exactly what seems to happen. The Divine Presence seems lost, hidden.

Once I was sitting at Plum Island, on the second morning of Rosh Hashanah. It was a beautiful day. We had just blown shofar at sunrise—a wonderful tradition, and I was sitting on the beach looking out at a very calm ocean. I was flying the next day to Germany—and the world, like the world this week—seemed very complex and very scary. A terrorist plot had been unraveled for the airport in Frankfurt and the airbase in Heidelburg. The rabbi in Frankfurt had been stabbed walking home from shul. Why was I going? Why couldn’t everyone just get along?

Why couldn’t people remember the Golden Rule or Love your neighbor as yourself or this verse. Do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your G-d. You do those things and my mother was right; the world is simple. But unfortunately it is not. It has been a hard week.

Where is the Divine Presence? Don’t hide Your face from me! Once again, our houses have been exposed again for all the world to see. And it isn’t pretty. It isn’t lovely. Ma tovu? How lovely? How good do we have to be? Do justly and love mercy. Both. Not one of the other. Although the investigation is not over, it would seem that some Israelis forgot this very verse.

While there are calls to “Love our Neighbor as ourselves,” by no less than Finance Minister Lapid, who said as part of his eulogy, “But today, at this funeral, in the presence of this family, we need love. We need to speak in one language. We need to rediscover the paths that connect all of us. If in fact we seek to punish our enemies, there is no greater punishment than for them to behold this sight and to see that nothing can divide us. If we want to take revenge on these murderers, and we find them and punish them, the true revenge will be the ability to transcend the differences among us and to embrace one another, despite all of our shortcomings and the disagreements among us. If indeed we want to sanctify Gilad’s memory, we need to choose what to sanctify: the hostility towards the other or the love for each other – that which divides us, or that which binds us; the suspicion or the trust among ourselves. Children don’t write wills, so we must therefore write Gilad’s will. If the family and those assembled here permit me, I would submit that we begin the writing of this will with the words of the Holy Ari, “I hereby take upon myself the commandment of loving thy neighbor as thyself and I hereby love each and every child of Israel as my own soul and my own being.”

Others felt that maybe they should take justice into their own hands and exact an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth. It is wrong. Even by Talmudic times, the very Talmud that Steinsaltz has made so accessible to us with his modern English translation, we knew that the verse meant some kind of monetary damages, not an actual life for life. Now I will leave to people like Risa or Rachel in the insurance industry, or people in the courts to figure out what that life is worth,. People like Ken Feinberg have had to do exactly that with the 911 fund and other funds he has administered. But it is clear, that my role as a rabbi is to say, clearly and loudly. Enough. Murder is murder and one murder does not justify another. Ever.

Rabbi Shai Held said, “As we mourn, let’s resist the temptation to use these three kids to grind our ideological axes. Screaming for vengeance, calling for wars we ourselves will not fight, accusing those who don’t share our politics of being traitors, or, conversely, mouthing tired formulas about cycles of violence or enough blame to go around, or whatever– none of this does honor to these three children and their families. If all we are doing today is deploying these three murdered people to make the same point we’d have made yesterday, only louder and with greater shrillness, then we are not mourning but using them. And that is, to put it bluntly, a desecration of their memory.”

Rabbi Jill Jacobs said, “Too much pain and suffering already; too many grieving families; too many terrified children. Revenge will not bring back the boys or ease our pain; it will only lead to more death and more mourning.”

My tradition says, “Vengeance is Mine, sayeth the Lord.” (Deut. 32:25)

My tradition says, “You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge…but your shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Lev. 19:18).

This prevents me from taking action into my own hands. Even if I am enraged. Even if I am furious. Even if I want revenge.

So when we gather as a group and someone says, that he doesn’t want revenge, he just wants all the Arabs gone. I am concerned. Very, very concerned. When I am told that Israelis are chanted “Death to Arabs” or when American Jews tell me, as they sometimes do that the only good Palestinian is a dead Palestinian. I am concerned. Very, very concerned.

I am reminded of Golda Meir’s words. “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”

It has been a hard week. Not only in Israel, where we mourn three Israeli boys and one Palestinian boy but we mourn what Israel has become. The promise of early Zionism seems to have faded out of reach. How can we be a “light to the nations.” How can we love our neighbors as ourselves when we fear for our own lives? Rockets continue to rain down on southern Israel. One hit a summer day care center. Riots continue in the West Bank and in Old Jerusalem. Those are wrong too and must be condemned in the strongest of possible language.

When I read, My Promised Land, and Ari Shavit describes in detail the War of Independence in 1948, I begin to understand better the roots of the Israeli Palestinian crisis and why it is so intractable. He uses the actual words of soldiers of that day who captured cities like Tiberias and Safed and Lyddia. Their words are haunting. And I am very, very sad.

Yet there is hope. By Thursday night, there were rallies throughout Israel calling for a cessation to the violence. 3000 people turned out in Tel Aviv. 1000 turned out in Jerusalem.

If you read my last blog post, this is a revised version of what I talked about on the 4th of July. You have my permission to skip to the end.

It has been a hard week, not only in Israel but here in the United States, as well. I am proud to be an American. We have the best legal system. We have the best health care. We have wonderful educational opportunities. We have a system of government that includes checks and balances. We believe in “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” We have a bill of rights that includes freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, and freedom to bear arms.

I am proud to be an American, but what if some of those freedoms are in conflict? I am an American. But I am also an American Jew (or a Jewish American, that is a debate for another time). I am proud to be an American but it seems to me that some of my values as a Jew, based on how I understand Torah and Jewish law, are in conflict with current policies and how I understand the intentions of our founding fathers.

Three things concern me greatly. The Supreme Court ruling in Town of Greece vs. Galloway, about how we pray. The Hobby Lobby decision. And how we are treating immigrants, especially children, unaccompanied minors, on our southern borders.

In May, the Supreme Court ruled that sectarian prayer is acceptable. This means that in Lowell, they could go back to reciting the Lord’s Prayer before every city council meeting. This means that in Elgin, where there are currently three clergy associations, Interfaith Thanksgiving may be less Interfaith and more Christian in nature. In neither case would it reflect the ethnic and religious diversity of the community.

On this Fourth of July weekend, this seems a step backwards from what George Washington was talking about in his famous letter to the Jewish community in Newport: “The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”

Our founding documents prohibit the establishment of a state religion. It lives out the words of a non-Jewish prophet, trying to curse the Israelites who actually winds up blessing them.

How lovely are our tents….O America!

The Supreme Court made another ruling that challenges me as a Jew. Much has been written about the recent Hobby Lobby decision. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote a 35 page dissent. Three women voted against, five Catholic men voted for. Her words were excellent but not good enough to sway the court: including:

▪ “Would the exemption…extend to employers with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions (Jehovah’s Witnesses); antidepressants (Scientologists); medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin (certain Muslims, Jews, and Hindus); and vaccinations[?]…Not much help there for the lower courts bound by today’s decision.”

▪ Approving some religious claims while deeming others unworthy of accommodation could be ‘perceived as favoring one religion over another,’ the very ‘risk the [Constitution’s] Establishment Clause was designed to preclude.” And the ruling challenges my very right as a Jew to practice my religion, not just as woman.

And finally, on this day of freedom. What about the children on our southern border? What right to freedom do they have? This is a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. Is this any different between this and the hard choices Jewish parents made in another generation in countries like Germany and Poland and Hungary and Russia. We have a congregant who spoke to a group of mostly Hispanic youth attended a summer camp at the Renz Center. She was describing her father’s journey from Germany to England to America during World War II. He was one of the lucky ones. He was saved. By the foresight of his parents who sent him away and by the mercy of those in England and his uncle in America. He survived. His parents did not. How do we now put children in “detention camps” in unspeakable conditions?

Emma Lazrus penned it well as the promise of America: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

So on this birthday of America I pause.

I remember the prophecy of Balam, that non-Jewish prophet whose curses turned to blessing.

I remember the promise of Micah.

The poetry of Lazrus and the present of my mother, that of balance.

She would always say quote Micah. Micah becomes the answer to Balam. How good are your tents? They are good when we do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God. Every time I would drop Sarah off at day care I would use my mother’s words, “Be good.” Eventually the director took me aside and said, “Why do you say that? Most parents say ‘Have fun.’ Or ‘I love you.’” So we changed it. “Be good and I love you.” Micah’s balance. We need it.

And after the parades, and the family reunion, and the backyard barbecue I will continue to work for freedom–freedom and peace–for all.

So that as Washington said in his letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport, “May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.” Everyone sitting under his vine and figtree, enjoying a cold beer on the porch, and not being afraid. Then we can live out the promise of this country and the hope of Israel. How good are your tents? Do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your G-d. I love you, Mother.