Rabbi Dan Levin's Blog

Today marks the beginning of the Hebrew month of Elul 5775.  Traditionally this marks the beginning of our preparation for the High Holy day celebrations of Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur next month.  The month of Elul invites us each day to hear the sound of the shofar, calling us to begin the process of introspection and reflection that make this season so spiritually powerful.

In the book of Ecclesiastes, we read: “The eye never has its fill of seeing, nor the mind of knowing.”  Ultimately, this month invites us to use the power of sight and insight to think about our lives.  We look outward to see the world in which we are privileged to live for such a short span of time.  We look at the blessings of our existence – our comparable comfort, modern technologies that allow us to travel and communicate as never before, advances in healthcare and medicine that extend life’s quantity and quality, the safety and security we enjoy in this country and the blessing of living in a time when our people controls its fate and destiny in our own homeland.  We think about the gift of relationships with family and friends, who so deeply enrich our lives through the sharing of the power of their love, their intellect, their passion and compassion.

At the same time we look inward to examine our inner life.  We think about how we have chosen to construct our lives. We consider how we chose to use our talent and ability, toward what we devoted our resources and our energies.  We reexamine our dreams, reflect on our purposes, consider how we chose to serve our own individual needs and the needs of others.

Each day this month, I will invite you to examine some element of life and our individual and collective journeys.  I hope that by sharing this journey with you, that we all will greet the year 5776 with better wisdom for what life can ultimately mean, and with better understanding of how we can enrich our lives – physically, emotionally, and spiritually – in the New Year.

Now that the dust has settled from Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, I thought I would take the opportunity to reflect on my thoughts on this crucial period for America and Israel.

At the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, DC this week, the Prime Minister said this about Israel’s relationship with America: “We’re like a family. We’re practically mishpocha.” There is no question, despite the challenges of the past several years, that America and Israel are very much like family.  We share a deep and abiding commitment to the eternal values our people has taught for centuries.  Part of the reason our people have prospered so magnificently in America comes from the separation of religion and state, which has allowed Jewish life to flourish and grow in expressions remarkably creative and passionate.  But the other reason we fit so well in America is that the values of our people have become synonymous with American values.

Thus Israel, while being founded from the echoes of a dream reverberating across two millennia and being born into the aftershocks of the most violent human conflict in history, is in many ways a reflection of what America seeks to be in itself.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said: “Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds, they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.”

If America and Israel are family, then we are witnessing the tensions that arise from a family quarrel.  Like all family quarrels, the discord and antagonism of a few of its members has the potential to explode into a full-blown rift.

Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama sit at the epicenter of that quarrel.  Throughout the long tenure both have shared as leaders of their respective nations, neither has found the way or professed much desire to build any sense of a meaningful friendship.  Both are committed to the family to which they belong.  In many ways, President Obama, as acknowledged by leaders on both sides, has done more to support Israel than his predecessors.  He has ensured that the billions in foreign aid that Israel enjoys has grown.  He has supplied Israel with vital technologies, like the missile interceptor technology that has grown into the Iron Dome that has saved countless lives.  Military and intelligence collaboration has never been stronger.  And he has done everything he can to shield Israel from the UN’s psychopathic obsession with the State of Israel.

But the growing sense of alienation between the two leaders has created a vacuum into which partisan politics has seen fit to enter.  From Netanyahu’s clear support for Mitt Romney in the last American presidential campaign, to the Republican party’s growing insistence that they are the true friends of Israel, we are beginning to see a trend toward support for Israel as a partisan wedge issue.

I am grateful that every message I heard at AIPAC and from nearly every member of congress was to support the bipartisan nature of the American-Israeli partnership.  From many members, there was a lament that the Prime Minister’s invitation to speak to congress seemed to tear at the fiber of that ideal.

What bothers me most about the invitation to Prime Minister Netanyahu was that it was done without collaboration with the White House.  Part of the genius of the American political system is the separation and balance of powers between the executive, legislature, and judiciary.  But while these branches of government may be separate, they are all part of one government, and that government cannot have more than one leader conduct foreign policy.

The American people elected Barack Obama to be their leader.  John Boehner was elected by several thousand people in Ohio to be their representative.  Even though he is third in line to the presidency, I don’t believe the Speaker of the House ought to be conducting foreign policy apart from the President.  They don’t have to like each other, and they most certainly don’t have to agree.  But they must work in some measure of collaboration or America risks despoiling its ability to conduct foreign policy.  It was wrong, in my judgment, to have invited the Prime Minister to speak without consulting the White House, and it was wrong, in my judgment for the Prime Minister to accept the invitation without ensuring that the President had been consulted or at least informed.

It is also unfortunate, given the proximity of the speech to Israeli elections, that the speech was scheduled when it was.  It gives the veneer of American interference in Israeli elections, and that is wrong.  Whether or not the speech will influence the Israeli voter remains to be seen, but America ought not be seen as siding with one Israeli candidate over another.  For example, what if Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni win?  Will they wonder if they will enjoy the same support from Congress as did their predecessor, whom they defeated?

With all that said, I am disappointed that so many members of congress elected not to attend the speech.  The rationale given by many was that they were offended that the speech had become politicized, but by choosing not to attend, and then holding a press conference later, they added fuel to the fire.  I appreciate the response I heard from several members of congress that said while they were disappointed in the process for the reasons I explained above, the relationship America shares with Israel, and the issue of the negotiations with Iran, were too important to absent themselves.

America and Israel together face a terrible quagmire when confronting Iran’s nuclear ambitions.  As Ambassador Brad Gordon said at the AIPAC conference, the time to have dealt with this problem was years ago.  It has taken time for the sanctions regime to take effect, but the effects have been severe.  Iran’s economy has suffered terribly from the sanctions the world has imposed.  The Rial has dropped 50 percent in value, and the Iranian oil industry has suffered billions of dollars in lost revenue.  The purpose of the sanctions was to bring Iran to the table, and now Iran is sitting at the table.

I would have wished that America and our partners would have required stronger concessions to begin negotiations, including halting the enrichment of uranium.  By allowing Iran to continue to enrich uranium during negotiations already conceded that enrichment would go on as part of any deal.  I am deeply concerned that America is not negotiating a deal that will be strong enough to secure our interests.

Iran is a terrifying regime.  I think the Prime Minister’s description of tentacles of terror is apt.  Iran has extended its reach to Iraq through its connections to the Shia regime.  For years, Iran has supported Hizbullah, helping it to build a massive stockpile of 100,000 rockets and missiles under the nose of the UN, which promised in 2006 to prevent Hizbullah from rearming.  Iran has funded and supported Hamas, who used Iranian weaponry in its war with Israel last summer.  Iran has destabilized the Yemenite government, and helped in the overthrow of the regime there.  Iran is the leading sponsor of state-sponsored terror in the world, and is certainly responsible for the bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Argentina in 1993.  Iran even attempted to attack the Saudi diplomatic mission here in the United States.

Imagine an Iran with a nuclear weapon.  What limits could the world impose on an emboldened Iran?  Can we be sure that Iran would not proliferate or sell its nuclear technology to the array of non-state terror organizations they support throughout the region?  Iran has repeatedly called for the destruction and annihilation of Israel.  What would it mean if they then secured the technology to make good on that threat?

The Jewish people and the world learned an important lesson in the last century:  when someone says it is their goal to annihilate you, you have to take them seriously.

I think there is agreement between America and Israel that Iran must be prevented from getting a nuclear weapon.  So when we hear that a deal with Iran lasts only ten or fifteen years, with no restrictions on what Iran may do following that period, that it permits the continued enrichment of uranium, that it leaves at best a year break-out for Iran to develop a bomb … that sounds like a very bad deal.

But what might be the alternative?  There are many constraints on what America can ultimately do.

First, America is not the only party to these negotiations.  America’s partners, Russia, China, Great Britain, France, and Germany need to be convinced that a stronger deal is also in their interests and as far as China and Russia goes, that will be heavy lifting indeed.  Second, consider the alternative if Iran walks away from the table.  They may resume the installation of centrifuges, the enrichment of uranium, and whatever other undertakings they may choose without any constraint at all.

Between 2003 and 2005, Iran began negotiations to limit their nuclear program.  Negotiating with Britain, Iran agreed to cap its centrifuges at very low levels, keep enrichment levels well below those that could be used for weapons and convert its existing stockpile of uranium into fuel rods that could not be used for military purposes.  The Bush administration vetoed that idea.  As Fareed Zakaria writes in The Washington Post, “Harvard University’s Graham Allison, one of the United States’ foremost experts on nuclear issues, pointed out that “by insisting on maximalist demands and rejecting potential agreements, the first of which would have limited Iran to 164 centrifuges, we have seen Iran advance from 10 years away from producing a bomb to only months.”[1] Since then, Iran has built 19,000 centrifuges, enriched 17,000 pounds of uranium, built a heavy water reactor at Arak to produce weapons-grade plutonium.  As painful as the current sanctions regime is, it has not, and likely will not deter Iran from moving forward with its nuclear program.

Which leaves a military option.  In September of 2012, the Iran Project published a paper titled: “Weighing Benefits and Costs of Military Action Against Iran.”[2]  The report concluded that there could be significant benefits to military action.  It could damage or destroy Iran’s current enrichment facilities, it could damage Iranian military capabilities, it could enhance the perception of America’s seriousness and credibility, and it could also help deter weapons proliferation.

But there would be serious costs as well.  First, military action would provoke a strong Iranian reaction against both the United States and Israel, either directly by Iranian military action or more likely through non-state actors and terrorist organizations.  We can be certain that an attack on Iran would provoke missile attacks from Hamas in Gaza and significant missile attacks from Hizbullah in Lebanon.  While Israel’s Iron Dome technology will blunt much of these attacks, it won’t stop them all, and one must expect significant Israeli casualties.  In addition, terror attacks on U.S. targets, at home and abroad, will likely create significant American casualties as well.  We could lose the hard-won world consensus against Iran’s nuclear program, especially if Iran suffers significant casualties as would likely result from any campaign.  There would certainly be global political and economic instability from a military campaign, and disruptions in energy supply and security. It would foment popularity and support for anti-American extremist groups in the Middle East and around the world.  And it would result in the unification of Iranian society against America and American interests, hardening Iran in its resolve to produce a nuclear deterrent to such attacks in the future.[3]

While we may be able to destroy Iran’s infrastructure, we cannot destroy Iran’s know-how, and the best estimates indicate that a military strike would only set Iran back by several years.[4]  And then what?  Iran would be determined to rebuild its nuclear infrastructure, only in more hardened locations like the installation at Fodor and in secret, so the world will have no knowledge of where Iran is in its nuclear capability.

So where does that leave us?  Ultimately there is a very large gap between the vision of the future we want and the future we can have.  A poignant moment at the AIPAC Policy Conference came during National Security Advisor Susan Rice’s address.  She said, that we might wish for an Iran where all their nuclear infrastructure was dismantled and was interrupted by applause before she could finish her sentence.  The completed sentence, however, concluded with “If we insist on no enrichment, our partners will abandon us. Simply put, that is not a viable nor obtainable negotiating position.”

In his message to Congress, the Prime Minister related the negotiations to bargaining in a Persian Bazaar.  It is my hope that the public pressure the Prime Minister’s address and Congress’s legislative response to propose additional tougher sanctions will strengthen America and the P5+1 negotiators at the table. I am hopeful they will realize the unique opportunity that the sanctions and the precipitous drop in the price of oil has in bringing international pressure to bear on Iran to get the strongest possible deal to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

I appreciate the administration’s statements that they will insist on a deal that cuts off all pathways for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon, and that they will, as Susan Rice said, “distrust, and verify.”  I am grateful that the administration agreed that a “bad deal is worse than no deal” and for reiterating that “all options are on the table to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.”

I believe it is crucial for us all to continue to advocate for Israel, to help our neighbors and our friends to understand the unique nature of Israel’s history, culture, and democracy, and the way in which Israel proves again and again to be America’s best and most reliable ally in the cauldron of the Middle East.

Lastly, I hope that with this episode now behind us, America and Israel can recommit to the collaboration and trust that needs to be the hallmark of this special relationship.  America is Israel’s attorney in these negotiations.  Since Israel cannot advocate for herself at the table, they must rely on America to advocate for her.  The breakdown between the American and Israeli leaders and their administrations has caused Israel to lose faith in their lawyer.  It is my hope that together that faith and trust can be restored.

[1] “Netanyahu Enters Never Never Land,” by Fareed Zakaria in The Washington Post, March 5, 2015

[2] “Weighing Benefits and Costs of Military Action Against Iran” by The Iran Project, September 24, 2012.

[3] Ibid. pp. 11-13.

[4] Ibid. p. 38.

Today we honor the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. and the epic struggle for civil rights he led, and for which he paid the ultimate sacrifice.  In accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. King said: “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.  That is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.”

We cannot allow our own comfort and security to satiate us and callous us to the suffering of others.  We cannot ignore the injustice rendered to some because we ourselves are not victims of injustice.  It was Dr. King who taught us that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  And for men and women who are gay, bisexual, or transgendered, there is profound injustice in the State of Florida, in the United States of America, and around the world.

Just an hour ago, I had the privilege of standing beneath the Chuppah, the wedding canopy with David Hanowitz and Eric Gottlieb, surrounded by close friends and family, as we celebrated the first legally sanctioned wedding between two men on the bima of Temple Beth El.  It was magical, it was holy, and it was legal.  And it was redundant.  It was redundant because two years ago, in that very space, we consecrated their wedding and their love in a celebration that was also magical, and holy, but not legal.

But more than the celebration of that wedding, why are we here tonight?  Why has this congregation joined hands with the Anti Defamation League, Equality Florida and Northern Trust Bank to bring you all here?

The fact is I believe securing civil rights for the LGBT community is a Jewish imperative.  In the Talmud, the rabbis try to find the once verse in the Bible that sums up the totality of Judaism.  First they turn to the prophet Micah, who qualified Judaism into three ideas.  He said:

“What is it that God demands of you?  Only this: to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly in God’s presence.” – (Micah 6:8)

Isaiah based all the mitzvot on two ideas:  “Keep Justice and Righteousness” – (Isaiah 56:1)

Amos reduced it to one:  “Seek me and live.” – (Amos 7:5-6)

Rabbi Akiva said: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Leviticus 19:18)  This is the most important precept of the Torah.

But Ben Azzai said:  “This is the book of the Generations … Humanity was created in God’s image.”   This is an even greater principle.

Ultimately, the entirety of Judaism rests on these two ideas.  The fact is, as Jews, we are obligated to love.  We are obligated to reach beyond the confines of our own immediate selves and seek to build bonds of love and intimacy with each other.

The Holy One clearly had a problem with sex for its own sake.  Pages of proscriptions in the book of Leviticus describe sexual encounters that are not founded in real intimacy and love as abominations.  But what Ben Azzai tells us is that humanity is created in God’s own image.  And that image is not gendered.  The essential nature of our humanity is not male or female.  The essential nature of our humanity is the spiritual energy that comes from love.  All we are is love.

But too often we focus on the vessel that carries that love.  We focus on the color of that vessel, or its gender, and assume that the vessel is really the self.

The fact is, God does not care whom we love, but that we love.  And Ben Azzai taught us that the core of Torah is that we treasure the sanctity of each and every individual life, created in God’s holy image.

As we look back on our nation’s history, we see too many examples of where we as a society allowed for horrible injustices to be perpetrated because we were blinded by bigotry and ignorance, and unable and unwilling to treasure that sacred human sanctity embedded within us all. We look back with horror on the idea that we once considered a person 3/5 of a human being simply because of their African origin.  We look back in disgrace that we once believed it appropriate for there to be separate water-fountains or restroom facilities for Caucasian and those of color.  We look back with shame that we interred thousands of Japanese Americans and challenged their loyalty and their patriotism.

And we look back equally with disgust at the idea that there were once laws that banned sexual intimacy between two men, that our country devoted millions of dollars to root out men and women who sought to serve in their nation’s armed forces if they were found to be manifesting their love for someone of the same gender.

And someday, someday soon, God willing, we will look back on our society today with the same sense of disgust and embarrassment.  God willing, soon and in our day, we will look back and ask ourselves how could we deny gay men and women the right to marry whomever they chose to love, how could we not think it criminal to deny someone housing, or employment, or service in a restaurant or hotel on the basis of someone’s sexual orientation.

It’s amazing to me that just ten years ago, a significant majority of the citizens of our state thought it right and just to enshrine in our state’s constitution the unjust banishment of the right for a person to marry another of his/her own gender.  But, as Dr. King said, “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself …”

And it is manifesting itself here tonight.  We who come together this evening are heeding the call from Moses across the centuries: “Tzedek, Tzedek Tirdof – Justice, Justice shall you pursue.”

On March 12, 1930, Mohandas Gandhi set out from his Ashram with a few dozen followers on a 240 mile march to the sea to make salt and establish justice for the oppressed people of India.  By the time he arrived at the seashore almost a month later, there were tens of thousands of people walking with him.

The struggle for civil rights begins with a few dozen and culminates when a whole society says, no.  We will no longer tolerate injustice.  We will Move Forward Together until we achieve our dream of justice and peace.

We are on our way.  Together let us move forward into a world that is healed of bigotry, injustice, and fear, into a new world where we raise the chuppah to celebrate the creation of a society where justice is championed for all, and God’s love and ours will spread a shelter of peace over everyone.

In tenth grade, my parents encouraged me to acquire a skill that changed my life.  For an entire year, first period, I took touch-typing.  Ms. Griffin, my teacher, who hailed from Mississippi would admonish us in the morning to put our hands in the home position – asdf jkl; – and begin our exercises.  It was a great way to wake up in the morning.  Imagine the machine-gun like chatter of 32 IBM Selectrics rattling at 8:00 a.m.

Eventually, I got good.  By the end of the year, I could type nearly 90 words per minute.  It was a particularly useful skill.  I’ve always had terrible handwriting, and I found that by typing I was much more free to express myself.  The ability to touch-type opened a doorway through which I fell in love with writing.  It was also quite lucrative – I made a lot of money in summer jobs working as a secretary and in college typing my friends’ papers.

But in rabbinical school, when I was writing my thesis, I had to learn a different skill – touch-typing in Hebrew.  It was so much harder.  Not only did I have to figure out where the new letters were on the keyboard, but I had to learn how to keep changing left to right – then right to left – then back again. I eventually got the hang of it, but I’m nowhere near as proficient typing in Hebrew as I am in English.  Somehow typing in Hebrew is like using a different part of my brain.

Then this summer, I found out I was right.  Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his phenomenal book The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search For Meaning describes a particular “eureka” moment he had in school.  In the last 150 years, neuroscientists have discovered the incredible differences between the two sides of our brain.  The left side of our brain tends to be where we process linear, analytical, mechanical thoughts.  The left brain breaks things down into component parts, categorizes and classifies them, and figures out their logic and sequence.  The right side of our brain tends to be where we find empathy and emotion and social intelligence.  The right brain integrates ideas, irony, and metaphor and humor.

Rabbi Sacks, who was the former chief rabbi of England, notes that in languages where there are letters for vowels, words can be recognized one by one with limited ambiguity, but in Hebrew, there are no letters for vowels.  When you read the Torah, there are no vowels at all, and so the meaning of words depends significantly on the context.  From English, you can figure out the meaning from the phonics; in Hebrew you figure out the phonics from the meaning.  English, is a left-brained activity; Hebrew, more a right-brained kind of thing.[1]

Over time, the western world evolved into a left-brained kind of world.  With Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and the advent of science and philosophy, the West began to prize rational inquiry and scientific thought.  And while Judaism has always prized that left-brained perspective, Judaism is founded more on the importance of love and relationship, compassion and covenant: what we need from our right-brain.

The fact is we need both: to be all we can be in the world, we need to use our whole brain – right and left.  There are times we need to be logical, rational, and physical, and there are times we need to be emotional, passionate, and spiritual.  As Rabbi Sacks relates: “Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean.”[2]

When I was a kid I loved to grab a screwdriver and take things apart, but what I found is that it was often much more difficult to figure out how to put things together.  Building a world of meaning is not nearly as simple as a mathematical proof. Moral truths are hard to determine.  For example, we may say that murder is wrong.  We know that to be true.  But how?  There are any number of philosophical arguments we might make, but those arguments are based on an idea, on a belief.  Murder is only wrong if we believe that human life is sacred.  And that truth, though we embrace it with every fiber of our being, is not one that we can prove.  It is one that we take on faith.

What is faith?  Faith is that which you believe that you cannot truly prove.  And faith is hard to come by.  In the story of the Exodus, our people are given plenty of signs of God’s presence and power, wonders that Moses performs, plagues that afflict the land of Egypt and its people, a sea that parts, manna in the wilderness, water from a rock, even their own experience of revelation at Mt. Sinai.  But as powerful as were these signs, they could not offer the proof the Israelites craved.  So when Moses is gone, the people lose their faith.  They say to Aaron, “make for us a God that will go before us, for that man Moses – who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we don’t know what’s happened to him (Exodus 32:1).”  Why do they need Aaron to build them a God?  They had witnessed the plagues, and all the other miracles, had even heard God speak to them directly the month before.  The evidence was strong, but their faith was weak.  They needed proof that God was with them, so they built an idol, a God they could see and touch, proof that God was with them.

And in many ways, we are just like them.  We want rational and scientific answers to prove that Judaism and the Torah are true.  It’s amazing to see the pretzels we turn ourselves into to prove scientifically that the Bible is true.

Every year, two or three people will email me an article claiming to understand the scientific basis for the ten plagues, the rational basis for the laws of kashrut, and the Discovery Channel will inevitably show how the story of Noah and other biblical events can be traced back to astronomical and meteorological phenomena.  There … I guess that proves the Torah is true.

But the Truth value of Torah is not found in left-brain analysis, but in right-brain appreciation.  The stories of the Torah are not meant to be taken as literal scientific truth.  They are allegorical narratives designed to help us figure out the purpose and meaning to our lives.

But we cannot abandon the importance of what left-brain truths we constantly learn.  People who abandon their left-brain rationality and reason are dangerous.

This is what groups like ISIS in the Middle East are trying to achieve.  They want to turn the clock back a thousand years to establish a society built solely around the dictates of religion.  They want to build their whole society around ancient Muslim Sharia Law.  A 23 year-old young man who goes by the name of Abu Tareq grew up in Denmark and decided last year to travel to Syria to join the fight for the Islamic State.  While visiting the city of Raqqa, he saw a man was arrested for drinking alcohol.  After the charge was leveled, the man was beaten seventy times with a lash, after which he kissed the two men who delivered the punishment.  “I could tell he regretted his offense,” recalls Abu Tareq. “It was the most beautiful moment to me, illustrating the peaceful, beautiful life under Sharia, under ISIS.”

But in truth, a world where we live by the literal world of religious texts is a scary, horrifying place.  Life under Sharia law is draconian and negates all the progress society has enjoyed since the middle ages.  According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the news report Syria Deeply, life under ISIS in Raqqa is a “nightmare” in which crucifixions and beheadings take place on a regular basis, and women are forbidden access to employment or education or even sunlight on their skin. Just recently, within the span of twenty-four hours in late July, two women who were accused of adultery were reportedly stoned to death.[3]

We cringe with horror as gruesome acts of inhumanity, intolerance, terror and murder are committed in the name of religion.  We live in an age where ultra-orthodox Jewish men spit on an eight year old girl and call her a whore because she had the audacity to wear a long-sleeved, high-collared shirt that wasn’t long and high enough for their taste.  We live in an age where fundamentalist Christians demand that biology curricula teach creationism as science and evolution as merely a theory.  We live in an age where pathological Muslim men shout “Allahu Akhbar – God is great” as they steer an airplane at over 500 miles an hour into the side of an office tower.  Living in a completely right-brain world where religion, and only religion holds sway is like living with half a brain.

If that’s what religion brings, then who wouldn’t turn away from religion?  Everyone from Bill Maher to many members of our own congregation profess to me some measure of atheism.  When I talk to many people who feel disaffected with religious life, inevitably they point to the history of war, bloodshed, tyranny and oppression religion leaves in its wake.

But as dangerous as the world seems to be from religion, a world without religion is even more dangerous.  There are many modern day scholars, writers, and people like us who worship science and atheism with the same ferocious commitment as the most religious fundamentalists.  Certainly we can look at religious movements and be repulsed by the wake of destruction they seem to leave, but when we look at movements that cast out religion, they are far more destructive.  Count up the millions who were murdered by Hitler, and Stalin, and Mao to see how infinitely more dangerous and horrifying is a world without religion.

This idea was brought home to me several years ago by a young man from our congregation who was home visiting his family.  He had studied at the University of Florida and majored in Sociology with a minor in Chinese, and he wanted to see how good his Chinese actually was.  So after graduation, he moved to Shanghai, where he eventually built a business consulting on design and operations for Chinese night clubs.  He had met a beautiful Chinese woman and was wondering whether he should actually built his life in China.

“What’s holding you back,” I asked him.  “Sounds like you’ve built a great life for yourself.”

“The problem is, Rabbi,” he said, “I don’t know if I can live in a country where people don’t believe in God.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “the Chinese people I’ve met have almost no sense of morality like we do.  They love their immediate families and will do anything for them.  They are generally nice people.  But for anyone else, most of the people I know wouldn’t hesitate to lie, cheat, or steal if it would help them get ahead.  Because they have no religious life, they have no sense of moral code, nothing that tells them this is right, and this is wrong.  There is no sense that they should care about each other, no sense that they should be generous for those less fortunate.  The ideas of morality I was taught to value they think of as quaint and naive.  I don’t know if I can really live in that kind of society.”

This isn’t to paint the Chinese with a broad brush but to make a point: if we put all of our trust in science and reason, and leave no room in our hearts for faith and purpose, it’s like living life with half a brain.

We come here today because in some measure we believe in something sacred.  We believe in the creation and maintenance of a moral universe that is founded on a very distinct set of values and principles: wisdom and understanding, compassion and justice.  The Prophet Micah said it best: “What is it that God demands of you?  Only this: to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly in God’s presence. (Micah 6:8)” We believe in generosity and kindness, in protecting the vulnerable and the weak, in the sacred nature of the bonds of love that unite us in a web of interdependent relationship, and in cherishing and honoring the infinite value of life itself.  We have taught, and we believe, that all this is good.  And you know what’s amazing?  We believe all this and we can’t prove any of it.

The fact is that the moral underpinnings of our society got there because we live in a world founded on religious truths – faith-based truths.  And unless we take seriously the religious foundations on which that moral framework is built, then it will eventually give way, crumble, and fall.  Tolstoy wrote in A Confession and Other Religious Writings: “The instructions of a secular morality that is not based on religious doctrines are exactly what a person ignorant of music might do if he were made a conductor and started to wave his hands in front of musicians well-rehearsed in what they are performing.  By virtue of its own momentum, and from what previous conductors had taught the musicians, the music might continue for a while, but obviously the gesticulations made with a stick by a person who knows nothing about music would be useless and eventually confuse the musicians and throw the orchestra off course. … It is truly desirable,” he said, “that moral teaching should not be adulterated by superstition, but the truth of the matter is that moral teaching is only the result of a particular relationship established between man and the universe, or God.”  For us as Jews, the particular relationship Tolstoy describes we call the covenant.  A covenant we are admonished on Yom Kippur to embrace with more deliberation and seriousness.

The fact is that science and reason may teach us how to build a better IPhone but it can’t teach us how to build a better world.  Science and reason may teach us how to make more money, but it can’t teach us what we should use that money for.  Science and reason may teach us why things happen the way they do, but science and reason will never tell us what it all means.  Science and reason may explain how the world is, but only the Torah will tell us how the world ought to be.

On this Yom Kippur, we have to finally admit to ourselves that it’s not okay to be ignorant of our religious teachings and it’s not okay to have a half-hearted commitment to religious life.  We have to know our people’s story, understand our people’s teachings, and practice our traditions.  It’s not enough just to “feel Jewish in our hearts” or simply to “try to be a good person.”  We need to know where being good comes from.  We need to take a leap of faith and build for ourselves a Jewish life and a Jewish understanding that feeds the other side of our brain without having to check our mind at the door.

Each of us today has a responsibility – a responsibility not to let religious life take a backseat to, well, just about everything else. If not through religious life, in the home or the synagogue, how will we, our children, and our children’s children ever learn the wisdom and the moral values that make for the kind of society we want to have?

We need to lead by example, and make the observance of Shabbat, holidays, and Jewish learning a real priority for ourselves and our families.  We need to admit that to end our children’s Jewish education after Bar/Bat Mitzvah is a sin. It’s not their sin; it’s our sin.  It’s a sin to think that a 13 or 14 year old child has the wherewithal to decide if he or she needs to lead a religious life. We need to admit that it’s a sin to drop our kids off at Temple for Youth Group on Friday night, or a holiday, and then drive off and go do something somewhere else. It’s time for us to devote the same time and commitment to taking care of our spirits as we devote to taking care of our bodies.  It’s time for us to devote as much attention to developing our right brain as to our left.

What we discover as we go deeper in Jewish learning and living is that a religious life is not just reasonable, but good.  We learn, as have our people throughout the centuries, that acts of faith make rational sense.  Judaism is ultimately not simply a religion of reason, but the transformer from which we can draw the power of a deeply meaningful spiritual life. Join me.  In this New Year 5775, see how a more serious investment in building a life of religious meaning can make perfect sense.  And let us more fully embrace our collective mission to secure the moral framework on which we can build a world filled with understanding, love, and peace.

[1] Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership, New York: Schocken Books, 2011, pp. 39-41.

[2] Ibid., p. 55.

[3] “Inside ISIS: The Making of a Radical,” by Louise Stigsgaard Nissen in http://www.narrative.ly

On a late summer day in September 1654, a small French frigate named the Ste. Catherine, sailed into the port of New Amsterdam.  Most of the ship’s passengers – “twenty-three souls, big and little” – were Jewish refugees from Recife, Brazil, who had been expelled by the Portuguese.  They were seeking a new home in a city of extraordinary religious diversity.

While they were not the first Jews in America, they became the foundation for what would become one of the largest, most prosperous, and most diverse Jewish communities in history.  The story of Jewish America and American Jews is the ultimate story of the American dream.

The wall built by our founding fathers between religion and state created fertile ground for the flowering of Jewish religious and cultural expression.  New understandings of what it means to be Jewish have blossomed here in nearly every variety: Reform, Conservative, Modern Orthodoxy, Reconstructionist, Chabad, Renewal and more each day.  More than 600 Jewish entrepreneurial initiatives and companies have formed in the last ten years.  Jewish studies departments can be found at small and large colleges and universities across the country.

Despite our experience of prejudice and anti-Semitism, there has never been in the history of the world a home outside the land of Israel more welcoming to the Jewish people or one in which we have better integrated into the larger fabric of civil life than here in America.

The 2010 Census estimates that there are 6.5 million Jews in the United States today, just over two percent of the total population.  And yet today there are twenty-two Jewish members of the House of Representatives, eleven Jewish members of the Senate and three Jewish members of the Supreme Court.  Jews have excelled in nearly every avenue of the arts, in the sciences, in business, and even a few in professional sports. 

This year, the celebration of Chanukah begins on Thanksgiving Day.  Thanksgiving is a time when we are asked to consider with gratitude the blessings of our lives, as did the early settlers in Massachusetts.  It has become a celebration of the gift of the American Dream, a dream of living in a land where we are free to express our religious conscience precisely as we choose, with no compulsion or interference from the state.

The Maccabees in ancient times were also fighting for religious liberation, so that the land of Israel might be restored to her people for freedom to lead a Jewish life.  The celebration of Chanukah harkens us back to the restoration and dedication of the Temple which had been wrested from us by King Antiochus. 

As we celebrate both of these festivals of freedom, we remember that “Chanukah” means “dedication”.  We should use this time to think of what it is in our Jewish American story that we have chosen to honor with our life choices.  Have we used the freedom America afforded us to pursue a Jewish life unfettered by external pressures and forces, or to use that freedom to walk away from the covenant and our Jewish heritage?  Have we honored the sacrifice of so many who fought to defend American ideals so that we can enjoy the privilege of the freedoms that make America great?  Have we done enough to spread the promise of American opportunity and freedom to those who are vulnerable here:  those stuck in the cycle of poverty, those who are newly emigrated, those who suffer from disability or prejudice? 

This year, as we celebrate Chanukah and Thanksgiving, we think of the immortal words of John F. Kennedy, whose yahrtzeit we observed last week: “Ask not what your country (and your people) can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”  Let us give thanks for the American dream, and let us see that it is spread to all who call America home.

     “What’s in the box?”  These are words I will never forget as long as I live.  It’s amazing how four simple words can change your life.

     It started as a dream.  Nearly five years ago, I received a call from Tracey Grossman, a young member of our congregation who has been a teacher in our religious school.  Tracey had a dream.  She wanted to find a way to help a congregation, somewhere in the world, that had no Torah scroll be able to have one to call their own.  We sat and talked and from her dream came Temple Beth El’s Torah project, where hundreds of members of our community had the spiritual joy of helping to write a new Torah scroll for our congregation.  The idea was that once our new Torah scroll was written, we would contribute one of Temple Beth El’s Torah scrolls to a congregation in need.

For years, we sought to find a partner.  We investigated congregations in Latin America and eastern Europe, and then, through the help of the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry, were connected to a congregation of Ethiopian Jews in Jerusalem who had no Torah scroll of their own.  I was shocked.  How could a synagogue in the State of Israel be without a Torah scroll?  In conversations with the leaders of the community there, I learned that the Ethiopian community there used Torah scrolls on loan from other synagogues, who were pressuring the Ethiopian congregation to return them.

We made arrangements for the Temple’s Torah scroll to be repaired.  Rabbi Bialo, who worked with Temple Beth El in writing our new Torah scroll, examined every word and made sure the entire scroll was perfect, and pronounced it kosher.  He brought the scroll back to the Temple, gave me a long cardboard box, several yards of bubble wrap, and foam packing peanuts to secure the scroll for the flight to Israel.  We wrapped our scroll carefully in a tallit, covered it completely with bubble-wrap, placed the scroll in the box as Rabbi Bialo had instructed us, added extra insulation with our group’s T-shirts, taped it up, and checked it with ElAl for our flight to Israel.

After claiming all our luggage, we made our way through customs where I heard those four words: “What’s in the box?”

“T-Shirts for our group, and a Torah Scroll.”

“A Torah scroll?”

“Yes, a Torah scroll.  It’s our synagogue’s Torah scroll that we are giving as a gift to the Ethiopian congregation in Katamon, in Jerusalem.”

“I see,” said the inspector.  “Let me get my boss.  Wait here.”

I was confused.  What could possibly be the problem?

When the inspector came, she asked again, “You have a Torah scroll?”

“Yes,” I said, retelling the story.

“Well, what’s it worth?” she asked.

“What’s it worth?  It’s a Torah scroll.  It’s priceless.”

“Well, you are going to have to leave it here with us.”

“Whatever for?” I asked.

“You’re going to have to pay tax.”

“Tax?  On a Torah scroll?”

“Of course.  It’s like anything else you would bring into the country.  It’s worth something, and you’ll have to pay the tax.”

I was stunned, confused.  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.  This was, after all, the State of Israel, the Jewish state.  Bad enough that an Israeli congregation couldn’t get a Torah scroll of their own, but now they wanted to charge an import tax on ours?  There was nothing I could do.  The rest of the group was waiting on the bus. I had to leave it with them.

In Israel there is a phenomenon called “Protectzia!”  Protectzia is what gets things done – by drawing on who you know.  A friend of our guide works for Ya’akov Ne’eman, the former Justice Minister of Israel.  After phone calls from him, and the intervention of a few other people of influence, and $900, we finally had our Torah scroll.

I think about that, for as we have reflected in our service this afternoon, today is the 40^th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war.  With valor, courage, and humanity, with the sacrifice of thousands who gave life and limb, the State of Israel and Jews around the world rallied to fight and save the Jewish state.

The magic of Israel is that it is more than a country for Jewish people.  The power of Israel is that it is, fundamentally, a Jewish state.  It is, and should be, a state that is animated by the texts and traditions of our people, whose calendar is reflective of Jewish time, and whose society is governed by the mandating eternal values of Judaism.

Israel is at its best when Jewish teaching and tradition flows through its veins.  For example, the Torah teaches that we cannot stand idly by while our neighbor bleeds, and that we must extend care even to our enemies  In chapter 5 of the book of second Kings, we read the story of Na’aman, the commander of the Aramean army, who becomes stricken with leprosy.  He learns that the prophet Elisha is known to be able to cure disease, so he asks the king of Aram to send a letter to the king of Israel, asking if he can visit the prophet of his enemy to seek a cure.  The king of Israel is anxious and perplexed, but Elisha understands that he must extend love and understanding, even to the leader of his enemy’s army.

And today, as war rages in Syria, Israeli hospitals in the north have treated over 100 injured men, women, and children, despite the fact that Syria and Israel remain in a State of War.

We take a look at what Israel has achieved and we stand back in awe.  In just 65 years, Israel has created a prosperous and multifaceted society that expresses excellence from nearly every pore.  Israel boasts universities, orchestras, musicians, artists, and athletes that are among the best in the world.  Israeli technology and inventiveness have not only created the most powerful army in the region, but also the most powerful economy in the region.  Israelis bring things back to life, whether in making the desert bloom or in pioneering medical research.  We have so much to be proud of.

But what happens when Israel forgets the Torah from which it finds its reason for being?  What happens to Israel when the Torah itself becomes just another import?  We cannot judge the strength and success of the Zionist enterprise merely by the growth of GDP.

Yossi Klein HaLevi writes that “at its core, Zionism is the ideology of Jewish peoplehood…. To be true to itself, Zionism must accommodate all parts of the Jewish people.”[1]

Which is why we still ask more, demand more of Israel.  Israel cannot be all she ought to be so long as Jews like you and I cannot pray together at the Western Wall, in the custom that speaks to us beyond the rigid confines of ultra-orthodox norms.  Israel cannot be all she ought to be so long as there are bus routes where women are forced to sit in the back to accommodate the needs of Haredi men.  Israel cannot be all she ought to be so long as there are Ethiopian synagogues who have no Torah scroll of their own.

But what I love the most about Israel is that Torah is constantly a part of the national conversation.  As Israeli and Palestinian negotiators finally returned to the table this summer, Rabbi Donniel Hartman reminded Israel that peace is not a process, but a value whose pursuit is demanded of us by Torah.  “Like all values,” he writes, “peace is difficult to attain. The world of realpolitik does not merely question it but attempts to erode its place within our system of values. In a harsh world in which naivete is often dangerous, the value of peace is often undermined.”  At the same time, he also demands that we never allow the underlying values of our people and the state to be suffocated by “cynicism” and “realism”. “The meaning of holding something to be a value is that I shape my world in its light and do not allow the world to shape it… As a value whose implementation never ceases to obligate me, I think about it, speak about it, dream about it and constantly ask myself one simple question: What do I have to do today to bring peace closer?”[2]

We must approach the peace process not simply as another exercise in which we enshrine the status quo, but as an opportunity to realize the values and principles that make Israel great.  At the same time, our obligation to seek peace must be pursued with open eyes and awareness of the unfortunate realities of the 21^st century Middle East.

Israel faces enormous challenges.  In Syria, the world has witnessed a bloodbath, the deaths of more than 100,000 men, women, and children, with the commission of any number of crimes against humanity, most recently the deployment of chemical weapons on thousands of civilians. America and the world’s collective ineptitude in formulating a response I fear has signaled most clearly to Iran that they have the world’s blessing to build nuclear weapons. The political turmoil in Egypt calls into question the foundations of our peace agreement and the region’s stability.  Israel occupies an ever growing population of Palestinians, and must manage a right-wing settler movement that commits acts of violence and vandalism in response to decisions of Israel’s supreme court.  Israel continues to grapple with a yawning gap between rich and poor, with how to integrate the growing number of ultra-orthodox Haredim into the larger fabric of Israeli society, with how to maintain a society that is both Jewish and democratic.

This Yom Kippur we celebrate Israel’s 65^th year, and celebrate all her accomplishments and triumphs.  But Rabbi Hartman asks what we want Israel to be in her 66^th?  “… will we,” he asks, “be able to celebrate a year in which our national identity reconnected with its noblest values and aspirations?”

In the Midrash, in the Sifrei to Deuteronomy, R. Shimon bar Yohai offers a parable: “A king brought two ships and tied them together and placed them in the middle of the sea and built palaces on them. As long as the ships are tied to each other, the palaces stand, but once they separate, the palaces cannot stand. So it is,” he said, “with Israel.”[3]

I will never forget, the night our group brought our congregation’s Torah scroll to the Ethiopian community of Katamon, the Jerusalem neighborhood in which they live and pray.  I walked up the stairs to the community center, holding the scroll we had redeemed from captivity in the customs office at Ben Gurion airport.  The rabbi of the community, Shachar Ayalin, came over, and embraced the Torah scroll like a long, lost love.  Immediately, he began to dance, swaying with excitement and joy with the Torah scroll in his arms, the community circling around him.  Men danced with men; women danced with women, our Ethiopian hosts embracing us arm in arm, hand in hand.  After dinner, the entire community processed through the streets of Katamon, with music blaring, voices singing, each of us taking turns carrying the gift of Torah beneath the rolling chuppah, with candy raining down from the apartment balconies of Jews of every variety, sharing in our collective excitement and joy.  With a kiss, the Torah scroll, which was written over 100 years ago in Kiev, and which had traveled to America, to Boca Raton, was now, finally, at home in the land of Israel.

The Jewish people is a palace built on the twin decks of the State of Israel and the Diaspora.  Our people will be cast in the sea should one or the other fail.  But we must never forget that the palace is simply an ark, an ark in which we reposit the gift of Torah, for without Torah, without the flowering of the Jewish spirit in all its many varieties and expressions, we and the State of Israel, are simply an empty cabinet.

The Prophet Micah said: “Ki Mitzion Tetzei Torah, U-D’var Adonai MiYerushalayim: From Zion will Torah go forth, and the word of God from Jerusalem.”  May it be that the spirit of Torah will flow forth from Israel, in all it does, in all it is, and in all, together, we will help it to be.