All of the jokes about sleeping during the rabbi's sermon pale in significance to my joke about the rabbi sleeping during his own sermon, while continuing talking! This morning I will forgive your sleeping, if you forgive mine. Jet lag is still lagging, as I returned just yesterday from over a week in Israel attending the Rabbinical Convention and doing some surrounding study of Torah.
In reporting to you on Israel, it is easy to fall into a trap and tell you what you already have read in newspapers and seen on television. I don.t like to do that. On the other hand we American Jews are somewhat like the namesake of this week's Sidrah Jethro. The Sidrah which gets its name after this non-Jewish .priest macher. father-in-law of Moses begins .VAYISHMA YITRO, KOHEN MIDYAN, HOTEN MOSHE, KOL ASHER ASA ELOHIM L.MOSHE. - .And Jethro the priest of midyan the father-in-law of Moses heard,. All that God had done for Israel his people. Rashi asks .What exactly did Jethro hear about the children of Israel?. He answers that Jethro heard the news of .KERIAT YAM SUF. - .The crossing of the Red Sea. and .MICHEMET AMALEK. - .The attack of the anti-Semite Amalake against the ancient Israelites.. Jethro heard about the children of Israel what we usually hear about the State of Israel: the crossing of the Red Sea - that is the great accomplishments of the State of Israel in the context of the Mid-East; and .the wars of Amalake. the anti-Semites whether then, or now, Hamas, Hezbollah to undermine our legitimacy and safety. These are important subjects to know about. It is important to know what Jethro did not hear of. - .The Torah of Israel. - .Torat Yisrael.. That is because he had not experienced yet the seminal revelation of Mt. Sinai which begins with the Ten Commandments later in the Sidrah. So this morning I want to fill in and report .Torat Yisrael. - the Torah of the fate of Israel. The Torah of Israel is the constant daily although less dramatic way in which the laws and culture and religious insights of the Torah are realized in the State of Israel. There are two kinds of Torah - .Torat Hayim. - .living daily Torah applied to the realities of religious and moral life.; and what we call .Torah Lishma. - .Torah for its own sake,. more theoretical Torah, perhaps not immediately applicable but just as morally insightful and religious important in the overall life of a Jew.
Let me start with .Torat Hayim. - living Torah. Let's look at an example Orthodox world, of modern Israel. Sometimes that means Haredi, the passionate, medieval, fundamentalist black hat kind - basically, except for technology, denying the validity of modernity. Sometimes Orthodoxy means the more Western educated, but with absolute fidelity to Halacha modern form of Orthodox. I want to tell you of a shul in Jerusalem which personifies .living Torah.. The shuls name is Shira Hadasah. We would all call it Orthodox, but it is very different from our imagination. One pillar of Orthodoxy of course, is the absolute separation of men and women in religious public life. Shira Hadasah maintains this principle but with a creative twist within halachah, so creative that it is difficult to find a seat among the hundreds of modern Orthodox in attendance. What is striking though is that a Halachic way is found to push that Mehitzah and exclusion of women in public worship to the most liberal extreme. The curtain which divides is a sheer gauze curtain. Not only can women be seen, but the representatives of those hundreds of women actually lead parts of the service on their side of the curtain so that their voice and prayers are heard by the men. The Keriah Haftorah occurs in the middle with the Schulchan stationed between the curtain as it is drawn partially back. Women are called for Aliyot and read the Torah - of course on their side of the curtain but clearly sharing that mitzvah with the men. So is this creative understanding of Halacha really Conservative Judaism in spirit? Or is it pushing the legitimate boundaries of Orthodoxy? It depends who's analyzing and ultimately unimportant. What is important is that men and women are equalized in public ritual within the boundaries of Halacha - so that the parts which the women lead are those portions of the service minus a Berach; the physical separation is preserved, although flimsy. An example of .Torah Hayim,. .Living Torah. in Israel within the Orthodox world.
What about .Torah Lishmah?. Remember that means Torah is not immediately applicable, but instructive as a beacon in living out one's overall religious life. How about the subject of .ANIYUT. - .humility?. That means, being Torah knowledgeable and Torah observant within a humble framework - minus arrogance; minus showoff; minus haughtiness. In one part of my stay in Israel I studied with a Conservative scholar, his name is Richie Lewis - all of the classical sources on modesty. Recall that the Christian Bible itself spends a great time mocking the pharesies as public showoffs, while Jesus teaches that true faith is inward and modest. The prism of Christianity saw mitzvot as inherently arrogant public show-off. So what exactly does our tradition teach about religious humility? Let me just share with you one classical source to learn what they mean by religious modesty.
. Your humility has made me great; R. Shimon ben Zeira said: who is humble like the Holy One, blessed is He? (an example): A student says to his master (teacher), .Master, teach me one chapte.. And he says to him (his student), .Go before me to such and such a place (where I will come and teach you).. However, the Holy One, blessed is He, said to Ezekiel (Ezekiel 3:22), Arise, go out to the valley, and there I will speak with you. But when Exekiel went he found that the Holy One, blessed is He, had preceded him there - as it says (Ezekiel 3:23), I arose and went out to the valley, and there stood the Presence of the Lord..
Humility in Judaism is connected with social and religious hierarchy. One view is that social and religious, hierarchy should be eliminated, as much as possible. All should be equal in religious function. No rabbi, no hazzan, no gabbai, no board of directors! The other view, which is in the Jewish sources is that social hierarchy is required for functional purposes. Without social hierarchy there would be anarchy. It would be difficult for institutions, religious or otherwise to work. But this idea, which admits that these - and others, show that there are people at the top of the religious hierarchy, (like Masters, like God) enabling it to function, but that functional necessity does not imply a moral or religious superiority. That is why this source shows for example that God descends and waits for the student to come or not come. God is not like the human master, in that source, tell the student to go and wait until He arrives. An example not of .Torah Lishmah., for its own sake, which in the long run teaches much of the ethics and morals of religious life.
So let us know return to the one aspect which Yitro did hear - .MILHEMET AMALEK. - .the wars of Amalek of the anti-Semites.. A few insights gained in listening to observers on that issue in Israel today.
What of the killing of so many civilians among the current manifestation of Amalake, Hamaas? What of that killing, not politically, not militarily, but morally? When I was in Israel Professor Asher Kasher philosopher from Tel Aviv University reflected on this from a moral standpoint. His point was in the context of what is morally permitted in a .just war. - and hardly anyone in Israel disagrees that this was not a .just war.. They may argue the extent of it or the response but not its .just. quality. Professor Kasher argued that the first responsibility of fighting in a .just war. is to maximize the safety of the soldier who is fighting. That principal in a .just war. may mean that in boundaries which are blurred between civilian and combatant, killing, wounding, tragically many civilians .is morally justifiable to keep your soldier alive.
That is not to speak of the efficacy of the war, or when an overwhelming response is enough. Those issues you have heard about. It is to speak morally and philosophically of proper behavior once a war is .just. and engaged in.
And then we heard among others from a journalist Yossi Klein Halevi, an American, a journalist for the Jerusalem Report who I quoted recently who wrote a fine piece in the Washington Post on comparing his experience as a soldier in Gaza with that of his son now. Mr. Klein Halevi followed that up with several new observations - some rather depressing - on both Hamas and Iran.
As a parent, he is concerned about several aspects of the Israeli Army which have not been widely reported; the graffiti which soldiers left widely in Palestinian homes, defecation on the floor, and he says too many examples of looting by Jewish soldiers. He attributes this to what he calls .Jewish street rage.. That is, the Israeli soldiers who fought there were in the 90's teenagers who experienced the suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv front. He thinks that the army has to do more to understand this and deal with it. Secondly, he describes the Gazan war as one part of a very long war, which began with the two intifidas in the nineties, suicide bombings, than the shelling of Hezbollah form the north, and this more recent war, with according to him, other parts to come soon. And in distinction to FOR EXAMPLE, the Yom Kippur war with Egypt, this long war is about the inherent right of Israel to exist not over borders or land but wars over the inherent right of Israel to exist. Most alarmingly regarding Iran, he predicts that the attempts of President Obama to negotiate with Iran regarding nuclear weapons will fail. His negative prognosis is that within a year, Israel for its shear survival will send its air force to attack and to attempt to destroy the nuclear facilities in Iran. He does not fool himself that there will not be rockets from multiple in retaliation. But because no one else will do it, he, Klein Halevi who began as a leftist, says that Israel must do it.
Mr. Yossi Klein Halevi did share a new understanding of what we call Tikun Olam. Most of us know that as social justice, social equity emanating from the Jewish tradition. But Mr. Halevi says that term requires an additional application. As a nation and as a people, it is Jews who have been either the victim of the bulwark against the three larges totalitarian threats to the world in the past hundred years: the Nazis, Communism; and now Jihadism. That too says Mr. Halevi is Tikun Olam - rectification and reasserting God's kingdom and morality in this earth.
I want to emphasize that not everyone who spoke or who I spoke with shared Mr. Halevi's alarmist position, including our own Rabbi David Zissenwine, who I.ve asked to share his own views on these issues with the congregation on the High Holy Days.
Let me conclude with a lighter note - from the gossip column of the Jerusalem Post while was in Israel.
Among the 300 plus conservative rabbis who flocked to Jerusalem to participate in the Rabbinical Assembly conference this week was former Rabbinical Assembly President Rabbi Gerry Zeller, (sic)who is coming back in the summer with 40 people, aged 9-84, who have never been to Israel before. Zeller's congregation has an endowment fund which among other things subsidizes trips to Israel, so that participants pay only $1000 and the endowment fund takes care of the rest.
So the news of our unique program to subsidize those who have never been in Israel, has reached across the oceans. While in Israel I was able to do some work in tweeking the programming and schedule, so that those who go with me in August will maximize our time there.
Shabbat Shalom