Rabbi's Slog Through Africa - July, 1 of 2 Installments - Look below for Installment 2
On July 7th, Fred and I are flying Delta from National Airport to Senegal to Johannesburg to Maputo to Pemba, Mozambique. We are gonin’ to Africa. It’s funny isn’t it how we talk about Africa as if it is one big country, the size of North America. But it isn’t. we are going to Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony with a French sounding name on the Southeast Coast of Africa, across from that big, beautiful Island of Madagascar, which everyone knows because Disney made it famous through animation. The country is shaped kinda’ like new Jersey but is about 1500 miles long. It went through a terrible civil war in the 70’s and 80’s which left it devastated but it is now considered one of the up and coming nations in the continent.
Why are we going there? Because we are a little crazy and Erica, our daughter is in the Peace Corps there for two years, in the northern part of the country. I mean if you desire a trip to Africa you might as well go when you have a family guide, fluent in the language and the customs. The other reason is that, like Israel, Africa gets such a bad rap from what we see in the media that it is more frightening to have her there without knowing what it is really like. This happens with Israel as well. Before you take a trip to Eretz Yisrael you think it is all suicide bombers and hiding in bomb shelters in the middle of the desert. But after you arrive you wonder what all the fuss is about. Of course in both places, there is danger and one never knows when it might strike. Like getting on Route 95. In some ways I feel like a spy or scout in the the parasha Shelach Lecha, will I return feeling like a grasshopper in the face of a continent challenged by the greatest ills of our century?
So we are going. Our bodies are filled with more inoculations, I don’t want to think about it. But we are ready, our clothes sprayed, our Deet packed and our courage pumped.
There is no doubt that Mozambique will push my envelopes on many fronts. I imagine when we come back to America, we may wonder what all the fuss is about. High gas and food prices, a bad economy, a housing slump. I’m afraid this may all look a bit peculiar when we return from a place that regularly has its infrastructure washed away in heavy rains. Although this year has seen an awful lot of that here in the Midwest.
People often ask what it was like to live in a paradise like Bermuda and I say it was a place of no fear. Gas was $5 a gallon 10 years ago and milk was $7. (We wondered if the kids could drink gas instead.) When we first arrived in ’89, few people had dishwashers (that’s what you had children for) but now they are common place and they are having waste water issues. Guns were not allowed and you had to kill someone in hand to hand or machete to machete combat, a very rare occurrence. And you could see the stars well each night. Maybe not your paradise, but it was good for us for awhile.
I’m going to be pretty far away from communication. It’s taking nearly three days to go and three days to come back. Email is random, Erica does have a cell phone. So take very, very good care of yourselves. I’ll return with good stories and pictures and hopefully more compassion for this world we find ourselves in.
Rabbi's Slog through Africa - August, 2 of 2 installments
Tastes Like Chicken
Ten years out of college I had still not taken the obligatory trip to Europe. Fred and I had spent much of that decade wearing a deep path between Washington, D.C. and the Florida Keys. I had gone out West several times, spent time in Mexico under the auspices of the Smithsonian, been to Canada a little. But, like most Americans I had been nowhere where I needed a passport. I felt this was a great insufficiency in my character.
So as I planned my first trip in the early 80’s “across de pond,” as Bermudians would say about the Atlantic Ocean, I was proud that I was finally crossing some arbitrary boundary that had kept me land locked. I felt I was going to find some new level of enlightenment in Norway; my pristine passport was a ticket to illumination.
Rationally, my Dear Rebbitz’him, Fred, put it in perspective. “How many people do you know who have been to Europe?” he asked. “Lots,” I said, “Everybody I know.” “And are some of them still jerks, even after they have seen Europe?” “Yes,” I answered, “some are still jerks.” I guess Europe, though it might widen my horizons, would not necessarily inoculate me against bias, myopia, or preconceived notions.
And so I come home from a visit to Africa, the enormous continent that we treat like a single country. And I can’t begin to process the whole thing. I know I need to write, to talk about it, to let it “settle in,” to give it time. There must be an African re-entry recipe, seminar, workshop somewhere.
I noticed that while I was there, I would compare things to other places, other destinations I had known, Bermuda, Mexico, Greece. It was the only way I could cope with the newness, the strangeness, the exotica of what I was experiencing. I could only relate to the unfamiliar through the prism of some familiar thing, the way we always say something new and exotic “tastes like chicken.” I felt the same way when I read The Posionwood Bible a few years ago, the story of missionaries in the Belgian Congo, during the revolution. We had ants in Bermuda but the ants in the Poisonwood carried infant animals away with them, similar to the scene in The Crystal Skull with Indiana Jones. We had power outages often in Bermuda but not permanently. We had roads wash into the sea but not every day. We had rats in our little bungalow in Bermuda but we didn’t catch and kabob them and sell them in the market as they do in Guruw, the town where Erica lives. (if you would like to see a picture of her town check this out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gurue_Mount_Murresse.jpg)
I saw things in Mozambique I will never forget, both beautiful and bountiful and chilling and impoverished. I saw things in Mozambique I would just as soon forget. But what I take away is that in the face of grinding poverty, scarcity, disease, bureaucracy and corruption, there is beauty, compassion, joy and people of good will who are still trying. And that is what shook my core, how people choose to put their life on the line everyday to make small changes in a tiny piece of this world which appears to be Glory filled and at the same time God-forsaken.
When I ran Elderhostel in Bermuda, I met a woman who told me she was in the “192 Club,” a group of people, whose goal was to visit all 192 countries with membership in the United Nations. “Oh,” I asked, “where was your last trip?” “Vietnam,” she answered. “Oh, how was it? I’ve always wanted to go there.” “Oh,” she demurred, “it’s like any other country.”
I come home from Mozambique, East Africa. It’s not like any other country I have been to but I am still a jerk. I still want quick solutions for a country ten years out of a brutal thirty year war with the bias and impatience of a fat and sassy American, whose boundaries have not seen war since the Civil One, a hundred fifty years ago. I’m still a jerk because I have a closet full of clothes with nothing to wear, a store full of food but not the right product, a faucet that flows with water but I drink out of a plastic bottle. But perhaps this trip will show me a way to allow my work to be grounded in this little piece of American earth on which I happened to have landed, allow me to make a small but significant difference, allow me to fit into the larger puzzle of nations, both large and small, rich and poor on this third planet from the sun and home to one human family.
Rabbi’s Wanted Column:
1. Someone or two or three who enjoys holiday and interior decorating to lead the charge in hiddur et ha mitzvah, embellishing the mitzvah of Sukkot by directing the adornment of our Sukkah this October. I believe we have a donor for a new and bigger structure with room for more of the membership, tables and chairs, and more opportunities to fulfill the mitzvah of sitting in the Sukkah for enjoyment. Remember ALL, to save those secular decorations you have for the fall and winter holidays to add to the Temple Sukkah.
Pesach 2008
To Bean or not to Bean
April 11, 2008
I have a confession to make. I have a very difficult relationship with Pesadica food. In my twenties I went on very strict dietary restrictions because my health wasn’t so great and I read it might help. So for almost a decade I was off wheat, sugar, eggs, milk products, alcohol, meat and chocolate. This was in the seventies before Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and Wegmans. Before vegetarian dishes on restaurant menus. Before most people knew what tofu was and way before soymilk. I was about as welcome for dinner as a prohibitionist at the Super Bowl.
So you can imagine that when Passover arrived, so did a sense of dread. Passover food made me quite ill with its focus on wheat (matza), eggs, sugar, milk products and meat, all of the above things I didn’t eat.
For years I avoided Passover food. Then I started discovering that the Sephardim (Jews of Southern Europe and Northern Africa) were mostly vegetarians and included in their permitted foods soy, peanuts, beans and rice. This was an ah ha moment or maybe a “where have you been all my life?” moment. Needless to say I secretly began to impersonate a Sephardi on Passover though I come from a long line of Poles and Russians.
So what’s the scoop on kitniyot, those little things like rice, beans, peas, and peanuts? For centuries when we didn’t travel far from home, Ashkenasim didn’t eat kitniyot and Sephardim did. But what happened in the twentieth century when both groups found themselves in Israel and North America and South America and other far flung places? They found it very hard to eat with each other on Pesach and if they married each other, oy vey, it was almost a mixed marriage.
So what’s the latest on kitniyot on Pesach? Two groups have endorsed the eating of kitniyot by all Jews; the Conservative Movement of Israel and The Reform Movement. If you would like to read the responsa on this, (the research and consensus) there are two websites:
1. Detracts from the joy of the holiday by limiting the number of permitted foods.
2. Causes exorbitant price rises, which result in “major financial loss,” and, as is well known, "The Torah takes pity on the people of Israel's money”.
3. Emphasizes the insignificant (legumes) and ignores the significant (the avoidance of chametz).
4. Can cause people to ridicule Jewish ritual in general and the prohibition against eating chametz in particular. One might think that if this custom prohibiting eating kitniyot has no purpose yet is observed, then perhaps there is no reason to observe other mitzvot.
5. Can even cause divisions between World Jewry’s ethnic groups.
They started arguing about this when the law was suggested in 15th century France. There was fear that these “little things,” rice, beans, peas would get mixed in with the forbidden grains. Opponents at the time called it Shtuyot, nonsense. Now there is fear that a major tradition will get confused or die out. But many rabbis and scholars are coming around to thinking that the focus is too much on kitniyot, little things, and not on the bigger issue of chametz, leaven, the corruption that puffs up our egos.
I tell you all this tonight, not because I am so interested in Halacha. I tell you about this because I am fascinated by the flexibility and evolution of our religious tradition, our precious Judaism, right before our very eyes. And if that freedom, to discuss, to argue, to yell at each other and even throw food down the sink is not a beautiful and chaotic and creative freedom, I don’t know what freedom is.
Tonight I have brought a sample of my Haggadah collection for you to look at. If you are still using only the Maxwell House Haggadah you are missing out on the incredibly rich and creative body of haggadic literature that is an especially beautiful symbol of our freedom. There are Haggadot by famous scholars like Adin Steinsaltz, Nehama Liebowitz, and Elie Weisel. Illuminated ones by artists. Here is a kibbutznik haggadah, an old hippie haggadah, left wing, right wing, four languages, ecological, gay and lesbian, and the story behind the famous feminist seder on the Upper West Side with Gloria Steinem, Letty Cottin-Pogrebin and Bela Abzug. There’s one from San Diego, Vancouver and Sao Paulo Brazil. The Haggadah our family used when I was a kid and the one I use today. But I spread the different one all around the table so everyone can take a look, if they get bored.
My colleague Rabbi Danny Zemel, from Temple Micah in D.C., said in a Pesach sermon that after the destruction of the Temple, we replaced animal sacrifice with prayer, and we replaced the altar with the dining room table. At the dinner table discourse, conversation, and yes, food fights, the very stuff of culture became our gifts to the altar. And that dining room table allowed for the wise child, the wicked child, the child with annoying questions, and the child who has nothing to say. We are all there, Ashkenazi, Sephardim, secular, observant, perplexed, disaffected, tattooed, pierced and ADHD. Bring them all in, invite them all, don’t be shy and ask questions. The Sedar is a night of questions. Endless questions. Otherwise these nights are all the same to me and that’s slavery.
So, nu, now you have permission to eat humous on matzah on Pesach. If you want. You don’t have to. And of course if you do, YOU’LL have to deal with your mother-in-law. not me. Shalom Bayit, keeping peace in the Pesach house, might be a higher priority than a bowl of refried beans.
So please, do me a favor, don’t stress out in preparation and have a kasher Pesach. Kasher means fit, like at the gym. Don’t sweat the small stuff, the kitniyot, and remember the big picture. That asking questions, questioning authority is a true sign of freedom. A sweet, zeesan, Pesach everyone.
Sermon Bo-08
This week I have been complimented and accused of being on just the easy side of politics. I have been praised and criticized for not playing or even talking about politics, political parties or political candidates. By law I risk our tax exempt status if I do. And in actual practice I risk my skin if I do. So I shall continue to skirt the edge. They say a Rabbi is no Rabbi is everyone loves her. But she is no human being if they run her out of town, tarred and feathered. And so when I talk about Pharoah, the cruel villain and protagonist of our parasha tonight, I talked midrashically, metaphorically and you may draw your own conclusions.
Bo, this is the stirring climax to the confrontation between Moses and Pharoah.
Bo means come but since it rhymes with Go we think of both at once in this portion. Moses comes to Pharoah to demand Shelach ami. Let my people Go.
And Pharoah hardens his heart. Actually God hardens Pharoah’s heart. This collusion on God’s part to actually make Paroah’s heart even more closed and hard than it already has been, to make it impossible for Pharoah to repent and let my people go has bitterly troubled Torah interpreters and commentators, congregants and Rabbis alike.
But this week as I watched the caucuses, primaries and their returns I got it. By Jove, I think I got it. Perhaps it was when Hillary almost cried. Perhaps it was when Bill Richardson dropped out. Perhaps it was when Romney spoke an apologetic for his religion.
I got it. You have to harden your heart to run a nation. The Job is too vast, the People too demanding, the media too predatory. You must have a coat of steel for skin. And because of that the government has hardened its heart to the plagues of today. The government has hardened its heart to the pollution in our streams. Hardened its heart creatures like frogs that jump from their home and invade mine. Hardened their heart to infestations of disease carrying insects, hardened their heart to creatures whose territory we have invaded, hardened their heart to mad cow disease, turned our back on the blight and hail of bullets in our cities, turned our backs on the boil of our climate, hardened our hearts to the locusts of telemarketing, to the darkness of ignorance, prejudice and hunger. And turned our backs on the killing of the first born on the altar of victory. The job of leading a nation, of leading a company, of leading a congregation may have gotten just too hard for any human to do without hardening some hearts.
I get it now.
And why could Pharoah do this? Because he was worshipped. He was believed to be a God and so assumed to be able to do just about anything and everything. Because his populace, his nation was made up of slaves, partisan yes men, or the disenfranchised.
We cannot blame all that has been wrought on this nation to our leaders for as Walt Kelly that great cartoonist posed through his character Pog. “We have met the enemy and it is us.” Though we are four months away from reading the haggaddah, this portion reminds us tonight that the enemy is both without and within. That we must have the courage to put the blood of sacrifice on our own doorpost. We cannot harden our heart when we see suffering on the street, in our parks, in our schools, in our hospitals.
I don’t care who you vote for this year. For a change we seem to have a wide range of talented, devoted, eloquent people to choose from. And who would have thought that after centuries of white Protestant men, we this year, 2008, 5768 get to choose from A man of color, a woman, a Hispanic, a white man who lost a son and risks losing a wife, and a very little guy. And on the other side even, an Italian, a Morman, a Senior Citizen and Now we even have an Independent Jew who might be, perhaps considering running. How exciting is that? Maybe it took God to harden our hearts, for things to get so bad, so desperate to bring out the best in our people to lead. Now it will take the best in all of us to choose, to support, and to do the work that need to get done.
Changes of State - A poem
Changes of State
Solid.Liquid.Gas
Devorah Lynn
December 22, 2007
I had hopes that this was
What death would be
Sitting in a red convertible
Head back looking up
Drops of dew lovingly collected by
Needles and cones
Raining down on my face.
No sound but the crickling of the creek
Pillars of redwood towering to
A blue sky
A soul drifting by disquised
As a white and fluffy cloud
Silence save for the settling of my blood
The crickling of the creek
Dead silence
December 28, 2007 - Rabbi Lynn Sermon
Sermon December 28, 2007
The last time I attended a Bienniel was in 1991 in Atlanta, fresh from certification as a para-rabbi. My recollection is hundreds in attendance, the main service room consisting of a crudely built wooden bima, a hand carved wood ark that looked like it was straight from Coleman Summer camp in Georgia, the lighting was from the ceiling and I remember making jokes about how we Rabbinic-aides, flush with fervor were “overdressed” with kippot and tallitotbecause no one on the bima even had a kippah on.Larry Hoffman, author of My People’s Prayer book seriesAnd my teacher wore a baseball cap. Toronto Blue Jays I think. The music, an acoustic guitar or two at most, Debbie Friedman music, Jeff Kleeper singing, perhaps.
Bienniel 2007 memories: a glass palace in San Diego’s convention center, a sanctuary with six mega screens, Mishkan Metatrone (or Metrodome) they called it, a 100 person choir, the music ranging from Debbie Friedman live to Josh Nelson’s heavy metal to Joshua Nelson’s true Jewish gospel. Broadway quality lighting, a fluorescent ark (God knows what it was made of), projected prayers and photos of waterfalls and 5,000 congregants. The Reform mega shul for sure.
There in five days we had 16 services, including contemplative, meditative, traditional, men’s, women’s, all singing, all Hebrew or yoga. Eleven concerts, from Hazanut to Chasidut, almost 200 workshops including topics on synagogue management, fundraising, worship, music, membership, education, ethics, media, demographics, art, security, politics, interreligious, intermarriage, interim rabbis, Israel, six plenaries, 300 vendors including our own Diane Kowalski, Woven Gems all under a ginormaous indoor tent.
It was big, It was huge, it was overwhelming and you sent little me there on my own. Our movement, Reform Judaism, is big, huge, 900 congregations representing 1.5 million people in North America. The Reform movement is diverse, contentious, and influential. It’s voice is heard loud and clear in major newspapers, on the web and around the world We are in Argentina, Uganda, Kajikistan, and even Germany and now the Movement is holding sway in Israel. Our Jewish world has expanded to the entire globe and we are movers and shakers in it. We have come a long way from the shtetl, the ghetto, baby. It would be overwhelming to try and bring this all home to you, bringing this tiger by the tail back to little out-of-the-way Fredericksburg would be impossible for our limited resources but luckily President Yoffee’s sermon on Saturday morning, an hour long state of the Union, boiled down his three resolutions for the year 2008. And I must say I am on the same page with Rabbi Yoffee. His three top wishes: A mindful attention to the observation of Shabbat, dialogue with our moderate Muslim neighbors and affordable Health care in this country to anyone who wants it. I have hoped to focus our attention on membership this year, both existing membership and new membership. And this remains a priority and concern for me certainly but I see these three highlights of Eric Yoffee’s speech as integral to exciting our membership, both young and old, new and existing members.
I will talk about Shabbat in another sermon in the future. Some in the community would say that if someone doesn’t show up for worship services than they are not an active member in the congregation but that might be because that is what they do to remember Shabbat. But I know that as modern Jews, we are drawn to our heritage by many gates. Gates of worship, yes, but gates of celebration, of learning, or compassion, of social or political action of giving in time, effort dollars and deed. And it is by these many gateways that we must give everyone a chance to make meaning in their lives through membership at Beth Sholom Temple.
It is ironic that our prayer book Sha’arei Tefillah, Gates of Prayer is being transformed to Mishkan Tefillah, Tent of Prayer. We no longer want to stand in the doorway. We want to come in under the big tent and do something special in our lives. Participate in something unique, something out of the ordinary from our workaday world.
Many times we focus on what we can offer members but we lose sight of the fact that people join a religious community not for what they can get but for what they can give. People are longing for belonging to something they can be proud of, something that has integrity, something that gives meaning and clarity to a life of confusion.
For some it was always reason enough to join because it is the right thing to do. Rabbi Hillel says in Pirke Avot do not separate yourself from the community and that is reason enough for many. But for many modern Jews there needs to be a reason more than “tradition” that brings them into our house of worship, our religious school, house of gathering. I want to give deeper meaning to what membership here means. I want to go beyond synagogue and programming I want to offer synagogue and relationship. I want to go beyond a program driven Temple and enter a purpose driven congregation. And it is Yoffe’s three mandates that form a concentric circle of purpose in our lives.
What does Shabbat mean for me and what does it mean for my family? How can I live in peace and in comfort with my neighbors who may not share my values or tradition? Who in the greater nation is suffering and what can I do about it? It would be overwhelming to try and tackle all the problems and issues and concerns and new ideas that were addressed at the Bienniel. It would be impossible to implement one tenth of what was taught in the convention hall in San Diego. And it wouldn’t make sense unless it had the stamp of BST on it, the imprint of Fredericksburg, Virginia, and the mark of who we are as a congregation. How can this Temple community reflect what we truly want for ourselves, our families, our community our nation our lives?
We must listen to all the voices of this community. And Shabbat is a good way to start. To take that brief moment of silent prayer, focus on the still small voice within our heart or the loud voices that argue in our head, whichever way you hear the authentic you, and figure out what makes you tick. Is it a new way to participate in prayer? Is it a new way to make a space for Shabbat? Is it a new class to sit in on, is it a committee to join? Is it a project to express yourself? Is it organizing around an issue and making something new, a new spark happen and take hold?
Start here at Shabbat and allow these sacred walls, sacred texts, sacred songs speak to you. I urge you to be my ambassadors. I invite you to invite somebody personally here to share in that which brings you in the door, whether it is worship or study or a bagel. That person from work who drops a word of Yiddish here and there, the soccer Mom who wears a Chai. The family who sends matzah in the lunch box at Pesach. They are calling out to you. Don’t stand idly by. Invite them into our tent. Ask them what makes them tick, why they haven’t called us before, what they would like to help us with.
We have been great lately at Outreach but now we have to do a bit of Inreach. Follow the Chabad example. Be your own Mitzvah Mobile and ask someone to come for the ride. A marketing census tells us that there are 3,000 people within 20 minutes drive of here that describe themselves as Jewish. Everyone here seems to be skeptical except me. I know they are here. I know some might be Messianic. OK, so if 10, 20% are, that leaves 2,400 people! We are not serving them. They don’t know we are here. You have to tell them. They may need a personal invitation. They are quiet Jews, hiding Jews, timid Jews, disaffected Jews, private Jews or Jews who in the turmoil of their lives just haven’t gotten ‘round to it. They are our co-workers, playdates, neighbors. Bring them in. Bring them home. We need them not only for our financial bottom line but for our spiritual bottom line. We need them to add a new spark to this venerable old community housed in the new big tent.
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