As we catch our breath at this dramatic moment in history, I have a few thoughts to share.

There is cause to be concerned that rhetoric of the campaign has emboldened hate groups.  Prominent white supremacists have expressed elation over the election results.  Efforts to improve security at the Temple have been underway for some time, and we have a meeting of the Security Committee scheduled for next Tuesday, November 15, from 5:30 to 6:30, before the Board Meeting.  I will be available to continue meeting with members for discussion and prayer after the Board convenes.  In spring of 2015, Eureka Police Department’s Captain Stephens met with us at the Temple and proposed various security procedures that we have yet to implement.  Some of us also attended a security forum presented by the EPD this spring.  We have several strategies to consider.  Please join us on Tuesday to discuss how to implement new security measures and to share any concerns you have.

I am aware that the election results are deeply disturbing for many members of our congregation.  To those members I offer the lyric to a song:

Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav used to say, Friends do not despair!
When a difficult time is upon us, joy must fill the air!
We must not lose our faith in living, we must not despair.
When a difficult time is upon us, joy must fill the air!

We have witnessed a series of unprecedented events that may bring about changes in our political system for years to come.  It will be a dynamic time with many challenges, but perhaps also some new opportunities and new ways of looking at the civic life of our nation.

B’shalom , In Peace,
Rabbi Naomi

As a minority population in far flung lands for over two thousand years, the Jewish community was influenced by external social pressures, but the Jewish experience also has been shaped by creative inner tensions.

One tension is that of the particular versus the universal.  Our traditions have evolved from our tribe.  We are a small group, sometimes described as a people or a nation, never more than eighteen million individuals. Our ancient literature articulated for the world some of the loftiest ethical values: fairness, honesty, humility, sympathy for the stranger and the oppressed.  Through numerous Jewish philanthropic organizations we reach out to help those in need all over the world, as in the current outpouring of support for victims of the hurricane.

Twenty-seven hundred years ago the prophet Isaiah delivered a Divine message to the Israelites: to be an or la-goyim, a light unto the nations, to model and share our ideals. (Isaiah 49:6) But we have never developed universalist ambitions, never sought to bring the nations into the Jewish fold.  We address universal concerns, but we do so as a particular people.  Unlike the great traditions of the Christian Church or the House of Islam, we speak not to the masses of humanity, but to one another.

Another tension in our tradition is that of the collective versus the individual, the importance of belonging to the group versus the longings of each person.  Rabbi Baer of Radoshitz once said to his teacher, the Seer of Lublin: “Show me one general way to the service of God.” The Seer replied: “It is impossible to tell men what way they should take.  For one way to serve God is through learning, another through prayer, another through fasting, and still another through eating.  Everyone should carefully observe what way his heart draws him to, and then choose this way with all his strength!”
We also have inner tensions between those who see our customs as fluid and changing, and those who see them as fixed and not to be changed.  Over so many years of holding these tensions, our tradition has developed a tensile strength which resists being pulled apart.

Most of our prayers are in the first person plural; we ask, we plead, we praise – Avinu Malkeynu – Our parent, our sovereign, be gracious to us and answer us!  When we say the Sh’ma we declare, Hear Israel, HaShem is our god, HaShem is One! (Deut 6:4)  Despite the centrality of this beloved verse, and the emphasis on Divine Oneness, I would like to suggest that we do not actually pray to the same God, that it’s impossible to do so.  Let me explain.

The Laboratory of Neuro Imaging at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine has found in preliminary studies that the average person has about 48.6 thoughts per minute, a total of 70,000 thoughts per day. That would be 25 million thoughts per year.  There is not yet a firm definition of what a thought is.  The study assumes a thought to be a “sporadic single-idea cognitive concept resulting from the act of thinking, or produced by spontaneous systems-level cognitive brain activations.”

If I were to hold up a flower, you all would see the same flower, and agree generally about its size, color and shape.  But if I say, “Imagine a flower”….within moments there will be more than a hundred very different flowers in the room.  And if I say, “Imagine another kind of flower,” and then “Imagine yet another,” and then “Imagine a bouquet of a flowers,” “Imagine a garden”…within minutes the room can be filled with thousands and thousands of flowers blooming in the hot houses of our imaginations!

The Chassidic masters were intently focused on the workings of the mind.  In the 18^th century the Baal Shem Tov taught: “You should have just one thought in the service of God, Blessed be He…for it is from the multiplicity of thoughts that confusion comes.”  (Tzavaat ha-Ribash, p. 12, Jewish Spiritual Practices, page 296) 

Two generations after the Baal Shem Tov, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi wrote, “Purify all your ideas and thoughts, and do not think many thoughts, but one alone: to serve your Creator with joy.  And let all the thoughts that come to you be included in that one thought.”  (Kitvei Kodesh, p 23, Jewish Spiritual Practices, pg 297)

The beginning of the last century saw an extraordinary leap in our understanding of the cosmos and of ourselves.  Albert Einstein famously remarked, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”  How inspiring!  To think of taking in, of embracing the whole world through the imagination!

But acknowledging the limits of our brains, in 1927 the British geneticist J.B. S. Haldane wrote: “I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”

Haldane considered himself an atheist, but his sentiments are echoed in the words of the modern Chassidic master Rabbi Arele Roth who emphasized the importance of emunah, of faith: “I believe that God is the beginning and the end of all Creation, the catalyst of everything, who always was, who always is, and who always will be the all-powerful source of all possibilities.  God controls all forces in the world, is above everything, and is the cause of all causation.  No human can ever fully and completely capture the true essence of God.” (Ahron’s Heart, pg 44)
From all this wisdom we might conclude that Ultimate Reality, which we might call God, is beyond our ability to grasp with our God-given brains.  And yet we all dare to try.  And we each imagine the unimaginable in our own completely unique way.

The second line of the Sh’ma says, “V’ahavtah et adonai elohechah…You shall love HaShem, your God, with all your heart.” (Deut. 6:5)  The “you” here is not in the plural, but in the singular.   When I recite the v’ahavtah, I am not speaking of our God, but of my God.  I ask myself, how do I attune to the God that is mine, the God that I imagine as only I can imagine, the God of my intuitive knowing, which is unlike that of any other person who has ever lived?

Jewish holidays usually include the conviviality of sharing a special meal as families and friends gather around the Passover table or sit together in the Sukkah.  In the fasting of Yom Kippur there is no conviviality.  Though gathered together in music and prayer, on Yom Kippur we are each on our own.  Deep teshuvah is when we address a problem that is specifically our own, when we complete a circuit which is ours alone to complete, when the return to self is a completely unique journey for each of us.

Our prayers consist of both supplication and praise.  I think supplication is easier for us, especially when we supplicate for the needs of others, we can pray with great feeling.  I think praise is harder for us, especially if we limit ourselves to our ideas of a general, all-purpose, universal God which can seem hopelessly distant and disinterested. The individual cannot truly express appreciation to the God of the collective. But if we personalize the Divine, each of us praying to our own partsuf, our own unique interface with reality, then our praise can be profound.

In these precious hours of Yom Kippur, I encourage each of you contemplate your God, and I’ll contemplate mine, and together we will generate hundreds of thousands of unique thoughts of prayer and blessing that have never been thought before.  And in this way, we take part in the God-experience.  Or as my beloved Reb Zalman would say, “we grow the God field.”  And this is part of the magic of our long, strong tradition, that we can use words that have been said and sung for thousands of years, to offer thanks, praise and appreciation that have never before been expressed!

We call this the season of Teshuvah, usually translated as repentance, but more precisely meaning turning, returning, or completion of a circuit.

Jewish tradition focuses intently on words – engraved, written, spoken, whispered, chanted and sung. The Hebrew term for word is d’var from the verb to say, to speak.  This seemingly simple noun is translated variously as speech, saying, pronouncement, and also as advice, counsel, decision, reason, cause, subject matter, and even as events, things, something and anything!  It could be said that Judaism is one long love affair with words and their multiplicity of meanings.

Our High Holy Day customs are rich with language.   We pray and sing and read from the Torah, as we do on other holidays as well. But what ritual is unique to the High Holy Days? The sounding of the shofar (Ram’s horn).

Kabbalah identifies four kinds of beings in our world – from the stones, called domeym, the silent ones, to the plants – tsomeyach, the sprouting ones, to the animals, chayai, the living ones, and finally we humans, who are known as m’daber, the speaking ones, the talkative ones.  We define ourselves by our ability to express ourselves in words.  But on Rosh HaShanah the mouth is used to produce a non-verbal sound.  We can talk while engaged in all sorts of activities, but it is impossible to talk while sounding shofar and pointless to speak while hearing shofar.

Of course we chatty humans also communicate with our faces and our bodies, and other species as well have systems of non-verbal communication: the cries of primates, the whistle of dolphins, the call of elephants, the song of whales, the dance of bees – all without words but rich with content.  On Rosh HaShanah we attune ourselves to the non-verbal language of the shofar.

In Tanach, the Hebrew Bible, we read of the great, mysterious shofar heard on Mount Sinai, and of the shofar sounded to announce holidays, to declare battle, or to celebrate the coronation of kings.

We have three traditional ways of sounding the shofar: tekiah, shevarim and teurah
.
Earlier, Berel sang from Psalm 81: “Sound the shofar at the new moon…tiku vachadesh shofar!”  The shofar sound commanded here is tekiah, consisting of one long, strong note.  In the Book of Kings, the elderly David commands that his son Solomon be anointed as his successor and the shofar be sounded prompting everyone to declare, “Long live Shlomo HaMelech – King Solomon!” (1 Kings 1:34)  Tekiah is the sound of extraordinary good news, the kind that so often goes under-reported.  Last night I watched a video of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife

Dr. Priscilla Chan announcing their three billion dollar initiative to cure, prevent, or manage all disease by the end of this century.  That’s a tekiah gedolah moment if ever there was one!  A great tekiah!
Another sound of the shofar is shevarim – three short sustained notes.  The name shevarim comes from the verb meaning to break or to shatter.  On High Holy Days we strive to break bad habits and old ways of thinking that no longer serve us, to shatter complacency – like the brave Israeli veterans’ group Shovrim Shtikah, idealistic men and women who have risked their lives for state security and now risk their own security in Breaking the Silence about human rights abuses.  We need the shevarim to shake up the status quo and stir us to action.

The third shofar sound is teruah, which is made with nine quick consecutive notes. Tomorrow in our Torah service we’ll hear of teruah in Psalm 89: “Happy is the people that knows the shofar sound teruah; Eternal One, they walk in the light of your Presence – Ashrei ha’am yodeiah teruah, HaShem, b’or panecha y’haleichun.”  (Psalm 89:16, Machzor page 251)  Because of this verse we would expect teruah to be a happy sound, but the rabbis have taken it in the opposite direction. Classical texts associate teruah with the sound of a woman sobbing uncontrollably, as in childbirth or in mourning.  In the 13^th century, Maimonides, who was both a rabbi and a physician, ruled that teruah should sound like both groaning and wailing, in the way that humans express pain.

On Rosh HaShanah we say, “L’shanah Tovah” and wish each other Happy New Year.   But the Bible calls Rosh HaShanah yom teruah, the day of teruah, which the rabbis of the Talmud translated into Aramaic as yom yevavah, a day of sighing and sobbing!  (Bamidbar 29:1; BT Rosh HaShanah 33a-b)  And the stories we read for High Holy Days are anything but happy.  In the Torah readings we hear the cries of Ishamel and Hagar stranded in the desert.  Rabbinic legends describe the whimpers of Isaac bound in fear and the sobs of his mother Sarah when she hears of his close encounter with death.

In the Rosh HaShanah haftarah from Jeremiah, the Divine Voice invokes the mythic figure of mother Rachel weeping for her children, and in the Book of Samuel we hear Channah weeping over her childlessness.  And in our haftarah reading on Yom Kippur we hear the lamentation of Jonah and people of Nineveh.  As if all these scriptural tales of woe were not enough, the rabbis of the Talmud tell us that in the wailing of the shofar we also should hear the cries of the enemy Sisera’s mother when she learns of his death.

“Happy is the people that knows the shofar blast, that knows teruah…they shall walk in the light of Divine Presence.” 

Torah scholar Aviva Zornberg raises questions:  Why are we supposed to know the shofar sound?  Isn’t it enough to hear it?  And what is the “…mysterious happiness that comes from knowing?”  (Beginning Anew, page 175)

Just as in English, in Hebrew there are several different words for happiness, joy, delight, contentment.  The ancient Hebrew term employed here is ashrei, from which we get the Modern Hebrew ishur, meaning validation. So we expect ashrei to be not a frivolous, but a grounded, substantive happiness.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, the Italian rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto taught that in the Jewish community, a person should feel as if saturated in someone else’s sorrow or good fortune (Tomer Devorah, Chapter 1, Part 4). We mourn together, we rejoice together, and in so doing we experience a certain effacement of ego and we are able to empathize with one another.

This is the Judaism we need for this time in history. We need to move beyond the “us versus them” mentality, both within and without the Jewish community.  Internally, we fifteen million Jews have a wide range of views – on religious practices and customs,  on resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and on political priorities here in the United States.  At this time of deep divides, we need to cultivate empathy for our fellow Jews.

Externally also, we can no longer afford the “us versus them” way of thinking. Too often we lump together Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims in the category of “them.”  We must move beyond this.  It’s a small planet. There is no them; there is only us.  We share in the joys and sorrows of all humanity.

Next week, right before Yom Kippur, comes Columbus Day, observed as a Federal holiday since 1937.  Here in California for the past eighteen years, Columbus Day has been balanced with observance of Native American Day, a small but symbolic step to acknowledge the suffering of the indigenous population.  Let us hope that we can develop the cultural sensitivity to remember that Israeli Independence Day, Yom Ha-Atzma’ut, is referred to by some as al-Nakbah, the day of catastrophe.  We’re shocked that Palestinians don’t teach their students about the Holocaust, but not many Jewish students are taught the Palestinian narrative of displacement and impoverishment.

In Talmud we read: Great is teshuvah for it brings healing to the world – gadol teshuvah, shemeyviah refuah la-olam. (Yoma 86a)

As we learn to acknowledge, to hear and to know the suffering of others, we return to what it means to be part of the human family.  We are hard-wired for sympathy and empathy. In every moment of compassion there is completion of a circuit of blessing.

May the sound of tekiah move us to hope.  May shevarim shatter our illusions.  And when we know teruah as the cry of all suffering souls, may we grow in kindness, generosity and love.
This is what it is to be truly happy and to walk in the light of God’s Presence.

L’Shanah tovah tikateyvu.  May you be inscribed for a good new year.

In the Book of Devarim (Deuteronomy) we read, “Justice, justice you shall pursue.” (Chapter 16, Verse 20)

The month of Elul is drawing to a close with a sudden wave of heat, as if to intensify the High Holiday process of doing teshuvah, taking steps to correct mistakes made in the year that is ending. As well as our individual soul searching, we turn our attention to the Jewish people as a whole, those fifteen million men, women and children with whom we share ties of heritage, and whose destinies are intertwined with our own.

Before we gather for Rosh HaShanah, I want to draw your attention to two important initiatives undertaken by our national Reform Movement leadership in an effort to redress injustices in Israel, one situation impacting our rights as Jews, another impacting the rights of our Palestinian neighbors.

One of the most impressive sites in Jerusalem is the Western Wall, Ha-Kotel Ha-Ma’aravi. This massive retaining wall is a remnant of the lavish rebuilding and expansion of the Temple undertaken by Herod, who was appointed King of Judea by the Roman Senate in 39 BCE (Before the Common Era).  Herod ruled for nearly forty brutal and bloody years during which time he earned the censure of the Sanhedrin (the Jewish legislative and judicial assembly) for oppressive taxation and the murders of his own family members.

Despite these origins, the Kotel has become a place of Jewish pilgrimage and prayer for hundreds of years.  In the past quarter of a century the Kotel also has been the focus of controversy within the Jewish community over worship customs, especially the practice of women wearing a tallit (prayer shawl) and reading from the Torah. The activist group Women of the Wall provides a concise history of this drama at http://www.womenofthewall.org.il/legal-struggle/.

In 2003 an Israeli Supreme Court ruling prohibited women from wearing a tallit or reading from the Torah at the Kotel, but the court also mandated that the government provide an egalitarian worship space at a nearby site known as Robinson’s Arch. This site was rejected by both the Orthodox women activists and Reform leaders who sought unrestricted access to the traditional prayer area.  After years of negotiations, court rulings and steps toward compromise, this January the government passed a resolution with detailed plans for construction of a spacious new plaza for egalitarian prayer, to be administered by a pluralistic group that would include non-orthodox rabbis.  This month the Israeli Supreme Court admonished the government for failing to move forward on implementation of the resolution.
It is at this juncture that Rabbi Rick Jacobs, President of the Union for Reform Judaism has called members of Reform congregations to action on this issue.  Please take a few moments to peruse these brief articles:

It is helpful to keep in mind that the vast majority of the world Jewish population belongs to either the Reform or Conservative movements in the US, or identifies as “secular” in Israel.  The political power wielded by the ultra-Orthodox in Israel is greatly disproportionate to their small (but rapidly growing) numbers: https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/essays/demographics-of-judaism

Another instance of non-Orthodox exclusion pertains to recent restrictions on Jewish access to publicly funded mikvaot, ritual baths: https://www.urj.org/blog/2016/07/25/netanyahu-government-subverts-supreme-court-court-favor-haredi-parties

At this point you may be wondering, “A few days before Rosh HaShanah, why is the Rabbi talking about retaining walls and bathing facilities?  Isn’t there something more important or inspiring to address?”

For those of us who came of age in the 50s and 60s, drinking fountains, bathrooms and seats on the bus are serious matters.  We know that depriving segments of the population of access to public places and resources must be vigorously opposed.

The Reform Movement also recently has taken a stand on another very serious controversy in Israel – the government plan to demolish homes of 340 ethnic Palestinian citizens of Israel in the village of Susya.  Please see Rabbi Jacobs’ letter to Ron Dormer, Israeli ambassador to the United States: https://www.urj.org/blog/2016/08/11/urj-president-israel-protect-village-susya. Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel has championed the cause of Susya and provided background material on the situation: http://rhr.org.il/eng/save-susya/

When we reflect deeply we see that these two seemingly separate themes – restrictions of freedom at the Western Wall and demolition of Palestinian homes – are connected by a common thread.  The stunning victory of Israeli forces in 1967 allowed Jews access to the Western Wall after nineteen years of Jordanian control.  The famous photo of young Israeli paratroopers gazing up at the Kotel is etched on a generation of Jewish hearts. And yet we must soberly remember that in just a few days following the victory an Arab neighborhood dating back some 700 years was demolished to make room for the spacious plaza, now itself a locus of controversy.

As a people who have been driven from our homes countless times throughout history, surely we Jews should have compassion for others threatened with such losses.  Rabbi Jacobs is to be commended for providing leadership on this difficult issue.  The Union of Reform Judaism and the Women of Reform Judaism support numerous social justice initiatives in the US and abroad. Our Temple Beth El “Weekly Update” regularly includes links to the Reform affiliated Religious Action Center (www.rac.org) and the Israel Religious Action Center (www.irac.org).

A project for the New Year at Temple Beth El is the redesign of our website.  Among other improvements, we will make it easier to learn about and take part in social and environmental justice efforts underway in progressive Jewish communities around the world.

Two thousand years ago the rabbis of the Talmud observed: “The sword comes into the world because of justice delayed and justice denied.” (Pirkei Avot 5:7) 

May the holiness of the Days of Awe inspire us to work together to counter injustice wherever it arises.

Wishing you all a New Year of goodness and blessings,
Rabbi Naomi
 24^th of Elul 5776 ~ September 28, 2016

One of the most deeply religious feelings we can experience is longing – longing for closeness with God, longing to be on good terms with the Cosmos, longing to love and be loved. The longing for union with the Divine Beloved is exquisitely expressed in the songs of the poet-saints of the Bhakti tradition in Hinduism and the Sufi tradition in Islam.

In our Jewish tradition, the longing for spiritual intimacy comes out in the poetry of Kabbalat Shabbat, the Friday evening service that welcomes the coming of the Sabbath. In the glow of Shabbat candles we sing romantic verses from the Shir HaShirim, the Song of Songs: “My beloved is mine, and I am my beloved’s!” In verses attributed to 16th century poet-Rabbi Eliezar Azikri we sing, “Yedid Nefesh, Beloved of the Soul, my spirit is lovesick with longing for you! I am yearning, yearning to see the beauty of your power!”

On Passover we have another experience of spiritual longing; we long not only to be loved but to be free, to break through the bonds that hold us back, to be liberated, and to share our experience of liberation with others. Coming at the full moon in springtime, Pesach is redolent with the fragrance of fruit trees, flowers, and romantic images with which we celebrate both earthly and more-than-earthly love. The Song of Songs is read in its entirety on a Shabbat falling in the festival and many contemporary editors have included selections of Shir HaShirim in beautifully illustrated Haggadot.

In their great wisdom, the rabbis of the Talmud married this springtime holiday with our sacred story of liberation – the Exodus from Egypt. In the Haggadah we read, “In every generation, each of us should feel as though we ourselves had gone forth from Egypt, as it is written: ‘And you shall explain to your child on that day, it is because of what the Eternal did for me when I, myself, went forth from Egypt.” (Exodus 13:8)

For the ancient authors, the Exodus story was history and they instructed us to take history personally. We have learned this lesson well; Jewish communities are deeply involved in the study of 3,000 years of Jewish history. For a discussion of the historicity of the Exodus, see archaeologist William Dever’s Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?

We are fortunate to live in a time when we can acknowledge and celebrate the fact that we all have multiple identities; how we think about ourselves determines how we embody our tradition.

As Jewish Americans, we can to pause at Passover to reflect on some of the great moments in two and a half centuries of effort to liberate the oppressed: the Declaration of Independence in 1776; the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, which liberated more than three million people; the Civil Rights Act of 1964; the Endangered Species Act of 1973, which extended our concern for freedom to the more-than-human world; the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990; the Affordable Care Act of 2010. Let us hope that the list will go on to legislation that will eradicate the enslavement of poverty!

As Jewish citizens of Planet Earth, we can reflect on the breathtaking events of our own geological time scale spanning four and a half billion years. For an overview, see the iconic “clock” here. A fifth question for the Seder might be: why among all the planets did ours develop “the elegant balance necessary for life and mind to emerge”? (Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story) Let us contemplate the astounding complexity of processes required to bring a sprig of parsley and a piece of matzah to our plates and to our awareness!

As Jewish souls in the Universe, we can gaze all the way back some fifteen billion years to the Big Bang that Swimme and Berry poetically name the “Primordial Flaring Forth.” How can we begin to fathom the astounding energy of cosmogenesis that brought about everything there is, including our own longings? How do we express our personal gratitude for this great existence that makes our own existence possible? Perhaps it’s time to compose a Song of the Universe to sing at our Seders!

Families and communities each have their own cherished Passover customs and recipes. Part of the magic of ritual is that the more personal we make it, the more universal it becomes – and the more we focus on the universal, the more personally meaningful it becomes. In the words of the great modern mystic Rav Abraham Isaac Kook:

Orot HaKodesh- 3:147, translated by Rabbi Itzchak Marmorstein

For a beautiful Rav Kook teaching on Pesach, see Rabbi Marmorstein’s blog: Ha-Orot: The Lights of Rav Kook

May the loving intimacy of our Seder tables extend to all the family of life!

13 Nisan 5776
April 21, 2016

With a twinkle in his eye, my grandfather liked to ask us, “What do you say to the Pope on Yom Kippur?” Then he would divulge the answer: “Good yontiff, Pontiff!”  (Yontiff is Yiddish for the Hebrew yom tov, meaning simply ‘good day,’ but signifying a holiday.)

My grandfather, whom we called Papa, passed away in 1968. I was sixteen and not particularly concerned with Jewish-Catholic relations, so I never asked my grandfather what he thought about Vatican ll, the council that from 1962 to 1965 reshaped Catholic rituals and opened inter-faith doors.  I don’t know if my grandfather’s delight in his joke bespoke affection for the Pope and appreciation of the changes taking place or if it was just the joy of wordplay.

On January 17^th, Pope Francis paid a formal visit to the Great Synagogue in Rome, the third pope to do so in modern history.  It was quite an occasion. While reading an article about it in Ha-Aretz, I watched a wonderful short video

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/news/1.697989

and then found my way to the nearly two hour version. This had me mesmerized for nearly an hour

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJCWHIJYw78.

Before entering the synagogue, the Pope placed wreaths at memorial plaques for Holocaust victims and for a boy of two who was killed when the Palestine Liberation Organization attacked the site in 1982.  Then the pontiff strolled amiably with a gray-haired man in a yarmulke and with a stylishly dressed, youthful woman.  I wondered, “Is this the rabbi and perhaps a woman on his staff, or his wife?”  Then the Pope spent nearly 15 minutes moving through the synagogue, shaking hands with everyone he passed by.  He seemed to be genuinely interested in meeting the people present, an elegant crowd whom we would identify as Modern Orthodox; many yarmulkes, few beards.  As the Pope schmoozed, the cantors sang; except for the organ (rather than an orchestra), we could have been at the opera.  Finally the Pope ascended the bimah, where he greeted the cantors, all of them in white robes.  (Evidently they have the same costume designer.)  Once the Pope and the Rabbi were seated, the young woman we saw earlier went to the podium.

My very limited Italian comprehension was acquired singing Italian art songs in high school and watching Fellini films in college.  Still, I could catch enough of the woman’s speech to stay glued to my computer screen.  It turns out that she is Ruth Dureghello, who just last summer, at the age of 48, became the first woman to serve as president of the Jewish Community of Rome.  In contrast to the smiling and cheerfulness of the Pope’s arrival in the scola (the shul), Ms. Dureghello’s address was the heart of seriousness, focusing on anti-Semitism and terrorism, which of course the Pope also addressed in his gracious remarks.  Some moments in the president’s speech especially caught my notice.

When the speaker made reference to Pope John Paul ll, she followed his name with the Hebrew phrase, “Zichrono l’vraka” (May his memory be a blessing).  We usually employ this term when referring to departed members of a Jewish family or community, and it touched me deeply to hear it used in this inclusive way.  By honoring the memory of the Pope John Paul, the speaker brought honor on the community and the custom.

It was also charming to hear the pontiff addressed as “Papa Francesco,” somehow far more endearing than the English “Pope Francis.”  At the close of her talk, Ms. Dureghello spoke of hope, quoting a line from the prayer book: “L’taken olam b’malchut shaddai” (To repair and realign the world with the kingdom of God).  (You can find this at the 44 minute mark.) I felt that I was witnessing a moment of tikkun, a fixing, a realignment for Jewish-Catholic history.

While pondering this, I happened, coincidentally, to come across an article penned in 1862 by the German-Jewish intellectual Moses Hess and titled, “Rome and Jerusalem.” (The Zionist Reader, edited by Arthur Hertzberg, editor, JPS, 1997).  In contrast to the warmth in the Great Synagogue, Hess holds up Rome and Jerusalem as opposites, one representative of ancient oppression and the other of ongoing hope.  What would Hess have thought had he lived a hundred years and heard the news of Vatican ll?

In ancient times, cities had their own deities who became part of a regional pantheon.  As scholar Tikva Frymer-Kensky has written of Ur in ancient Sumer, the city was a “locus of divinity.”  How our attitudes have changed!  These days most of us find spiritual nourishment in the nature rather than in society.  But seeing the Pope, the Rabbi and the President of Rome’s community go far beyond civility, into open expressions of respect and affection, can remind us of the holiness to be found in our great cities.

[For a more about Ruth Dureghello see http://alainelkanninterviews.com/ruth-dureghello/].

 Rabbi Naomi Steinberg
January 26, 2016

At a climactic moment in the Civil Rights struggle in 1965, Reverend Martin Luther King called on religious leaders across the country to join him in the third march from Selma, Alabama to the State Capitol in Montgomery.  Among those who answered the call was the great scholar Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. The first two Selma to Montgomery marches had been met with violence by state troopers and white supremacists.  Born in Warsaw in 1907, Rabbi Heschel was well acquainted with tragedy; his mother, sisters and his community had perished in the Holocaust.  Already a teacher of renown, Heschel managed to leave Poland in 1938 and arrived in the United States in 1940.

Rabbi Heschel was a living bridge between Jewish worlds.  On his mother’s side he was descended from the hassidic master Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev; his paternal great-great-grandfather and namesake was Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel of Apt, who himself was descended from the Maggid of Mezeritch who succeeded the Baal Shem Tov as leader of the nascent hassidic movement in 1761. Quite a lineage!  Having been born and raised in an atmosphere of piety and learning, Rabbi Heschel received traditional orthodox ordination in his native Poland.  Then at the age of twenty, he moved to Berlin where he earned a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Berlin and received a second ordination at the Hochschule fuer die Wissenschaft de Judentums, the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies. (This progressive rabbinical school was established in 1872, where the first class of twelve students had included four women).

Rabbi Heschel taught American rabbinical students in the Reform Movement in Cincinnati for five years, before settling down for a quarter century of teaching for the Conservative movement in New York until his passing in 1972. The author of numerous eloquent works on Jewish philosophy and practice, Heschel was a towering figure in American Jewry when he met Dr. King at the National Conference on Religion and Race in Chicago in 1963.  They became close friends – the Rabbi who wrote the quintessential work on the Hebrew prophets, (The Prophets, 1962), and the Reverend, who loved and quoted those ancient social reformers: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream!” (Amos 5:24)

Last year the rabbi’s daughter, Jewish Studies Professor Susannah Heschel told The Forward, “I felt terrified of my father going because we knew what had just happened when the march had just tried to take place weeks before…My father’s health was always fragile. I didn’t know if he could withstand the march. If somebody tried to hit him, I think he would’ve just collapsed. But at same time, because the way my father talked about the civil rights movement, it felt to me like he was doing the most important thing a human being could be doing at that moment.”

In an iconic photo we see Rabbi Heschel in the front line of the march with Dr. King and other religious leaders, linked arm in arm and striding forward.

After the historic event Heschel wrote, “For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.”

In his speech at the conclusion of the march Dr. King declared, “There never was a moment in American history more honorable and more inspiring than the pilgrimage of clergymen and laymen of every race and faith pouring into Selma to face danger at the side of its embattled Negroes.’’

I recently discovered a new book for children titled, As Good As Anybody: Martin Luther King and Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Amazing March Toward Freedom, written by Richard Michelson with beautiful illustrations by Raul Colon. We have ordered a copy for the Temple Beth El library – but this is one many families might want to have in their homes to read with children and grandchildren every year on Martin Luther King Day, to learn how to follow in those famous footsteps.

I was also moved to find numerous videos of Rabbi Heschel on Youtube, including selections from and about a documentary-in-progress titled, “Praying With My Legs,” which captures a few moments of Dr. King, Rabbi Heschel and the others walking in the famous march. (See a nine minute segment of PBS’ Religion & Ethics Newsweekly in 2010 – https://vimeo.com/5022677.)

On this national holiday let us reflect deeply what it means to say that black lives matter, Muslim, Jewish and Christian lives matter, Buddhist, Sikh, Hindu, indigenous, LGBT, female and male, human and other-than-human – all lives matter, all part of the web of life in our world of amazing diversity and inter-connection.

Rabbi Naomi Steinberg
7^th of Shevat 5776
January 17, 2016

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Chanukah – From Rabbi Naomi

Here we are in the darkest time of the year with the sun sinking low so early and long, moonless nights. And the blessing of rain makes the days seem even darker. It’s a time for cozy fires, reading, and singing around the Chanukah candles.

Most Jewish holidays are based on our mythic history (Pesach, Sukkot, Shabbat, Shavuos, Simchat Torah, Rosh HaShanah), some are historical (Yom Kippur), some works of historical fiction (Purim), and some based on historical events (Chanukah, Tisha B’av, Yom HaShoah). Understanding the holidays that derive from historical events requires historical analysis. We achieve this for Tisha B’av and Yom Hashoah; reliable, accessible histories of those tragic events abound. But we miss the mark for Chanukah. Most versions of the Chanukah tale in circulation are gross over-simplifications. Why is this?
Let’s start to answer the question by asking some more: If the story of the Maccabees is so important to us, on what holiday do we read it in the synagogue service? On which night or day of Chanukah? (These are trick questions.) The answer is: we don’t read it on any night of Chanukah, nor on any other holiday, in fact we never read it at all, because the two Books of the Maccabees were not included when the Tanach, the Hebrew Bible was canonized circa 100 Common Era. The First Book of the Maccabees was written in Hebrew sometime around 150 BCE, the Second Book about 25 years later in Greek, most likely in the great city of Alexandria, famous for its extraordinary library. Ironically, the texts – which are interpreted as reviling Greek culture – were revered by Greek-speaking Jews in Alexandria, survived only in Greek, and were included in the “Old Testament” of the Catholic Bible. Go figure.

The rabbis of the Talmud – the founding fathers of Judaism – didn’t care for the story of the Maccabees, a priestly Judean family that led a guerilla war of resistance in 169 BCE (Before the Common Era) against draconian policies of Antiochus Epihanes lV, the Greek-Syrian ruler of the Seleucid Empire (sih-LOO-kid.) The Maccabees were also in conflict with fellow Judeans allied with the Seleucids. The rabbis had a few good reasons to downplay the bloody historical tale: 1) The story starts with one of the Maccabees killing a fellow Jew, 2) once they achieved power the Maccabees’ descendants (the Hasmonaen dynasty) indulged in standard monarchic excesses of greed, intrigue, murder, massacres, forced even conversion to Judaism, 3) the Maccabean strategy of resistance was not deemed a helpful model for rabbis living under Roman rule and protection.

We can understand why the rabbis make scant mention of Chanukah in the Talmud – and when they do so it’s in reference to the legend of a small miracle; when the Temple in Jerusalem was rededicated there was only enough oil to last one night, but it lasted for eight. (The Maccabees were celebrating a delayed Sukkot. They had been able to gain the upper hand in the war because the Seleucid army suddenly had bigger fish to fry being redeployed north to put down a rebellion in their capital of Antioch in Syria.) So the rabbis turn our attention at Chanukah to the dark time of the year, and the modest miracle of the oil. (Perhaps someone had developed a new technology for wicks, lamps and oil refinement that conserved energy?)

The rabbis also gave Chanukah a message of peace by choosing verses from the Prophet Zecharyah as the Haftarah reading for the Shabbat on the festival: “Not by might, not by power, but through my spirit, says the Holy One.”

Zecharyah was from a priestly family who lived 350 years prior to the Maccabees, in the time of Darius, King of Persia (520 BCE). It was about sixteen years after the first wave of Judeans exiles had returned from Babylon and begun rebuilding the Temple, thanks to the largess of Darius’ predecessor Cyrus the Great. (Cyrus was from Persia, now Farsi in Iran and figures prominently in modern Iranian identity – which gives Jews and Iranians a shared champion!)

As the esteemed historian Elias Bickerman pointed out, by the time the Persian Empire fell to Alexander the Great in 333 BCE, “six generations of God-fearing Jews had been brought up under the protection of Persian archers.” Similarly, before the time of Antiochus Epiphanes lV, there had been minimal political tension between the Greek/Macedonian overlords and the small community of Judeans: “Ancient empires were neither willing nor able to change the traditional structures of subject cities, villages and tribes. Thus the privileges obtained from the Persian kings remained essentially in force under Macedonian [Greek] rulers and Roman emperors alike.” (Bickerman, The Jews in the Greek Age.)

During the Persian Empire the lingua franca of the region was Aramaic, which we still use every time we recite the Mourners’ Kaddish. After the conquests of Alexander, Greek became the international language for trade and administration, just as English is today. As cultures of west and east met, both were gradually reconfigured, adopting one another’s institutions, literature and vocabularies.

Let us hope that Zecharyah’s vision of peace remains the message that we want to share with the world on the dark, wintry Shabbat of Chanukah.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Naomi

The Torah refers to Yom Kippur as Shabbat Shabbaton, a complete Shabbat. (Ex. 35:1-2, Lev. 16:29-31)  Everything we experience on Shabbats throughout the year can inform our experience of Yom Kippur, and vice versa.

My husband and I have lived out in Carlotta for almost thirty years.  Though I sometimes miss the conviviality of town, we do get to enjoy a very serene Shabbat, almost like going on retreat every week.  A neighbor of ours recently lost his wife and has been coming to our house for Shabbat dinners on Friday night. We’re happy to have his company, and we get to fulfill the mitzvah of welcoming a guest.  It’s also good for my Old World heart to say goodnight, good Shabbos, and watch our neighbor just walk down the road.  I must be drawing on past life memories of the shtetl where we all lived within walking distance of one another.

I’ve been explaining Jewish traditions to our neighbor, including our plethora of holidays.  He commented thoughtfully, “I envy you these holidays. You always have something to look back on and something to look forward to.”

In Jewish life we’re constantly looking back to memorable moments in our lives; bar mitzvahs, weddings, funerals, holiday gatherings.  In reading our ancient stories and studying our texts and teachings, we gaze far back into thousands of years of Jewish history, and eons of legend and myth.  There is a great deal of Jewish past.  Up until modernity, that intense focus on the past was balanced by a zealous concern for the future, epitomized in Jewish thinking as y’mei mashi’ach, the time of the Messiah, the coming of a messianic age when the Jews would be liberated from oppression and all the world would be at peace.  Though we may not use the traditional language, when we engage in acts of tikkun olam (community service, social and environmental justice efforts) we are creating the preconditions for mashi’ach consciousness with the hope of a better world for future generations.  My beloved mentor Reb Zalman taught that we each have a shtikele mashi’ach, a little bit of the messianic consciousness.  He wrote, “If you allow mashi’ach to pull you into a deeper future, then you will always have something to look forward to and a transcending purpose through which to evaluate the present and whatever difficulties it presents.” (Renewal is Judaism Now, page 24)

The past and the future both command our attention; we are fascinated by cosmology and questions of the origin and the ultimate fate of the universe; the deep past and the deep future.  But on Yom Kippur it’s not the past nor the future with which we are concerned, but the present.
                                       
The great Austrian-Jewish philosopher Martin Buber wrote an inspired, poetic little book titled, Ich und Du, widely known since publication in 1923 as I and Thou.  Walter Kaufman wrote a wonderful new English translation in 1970 that explains, “Thou is not very similar to the German Du…lovers say Du to one another, and so do friends.  Du is spontaneous and unpretentious.”  (I and Thou, A Prologue, page 14). In Yiddish, Du has the same sweetness and sense of intimacy, as when we sing, “By mir bist du sheyn – by me, you’re lovely,” so I will follow Kaufman’s translation.

In Ich und Du, I and You, Buber postulates two modes of interacting with reality and constructing the sense of self using what he calls two word pairs: I-It and I-You.  In the I-It mode, we experience the world as the object of our actions, perceptions, thoughts or feelings. I read my Yom Kippur teaching; I see the faces of the congregation; I generate ideas; I feel excitement.  The “I,” my own self, stands opposite everything else.  All the features of reality are objectified.  In contrast to the I-It mode, Buber describes an I-You mode, in which my sense of self emerges in relationship to another being, in dialogue, in mutuality.

Buber writes, “This world [in the mode of I-It] is somewhat reliable; it has density and duration; its articulation can be surveyed. One recounts it with one’s eyes closed and then checks again with one’s eyes open.  There it stands – right next to your skin if you think of it that way, or nestled in your soul if you prefer that: it is your object and remains…primarily alien both outside and inside you…Or man encounters being and becoming as what confronts him [as I-You]…What is there reveals itself to him…Measure and comparison have fled…The world that appears to you in this way is unreliable, for it appears always new to you…It lacks density, for everything in it permeates everything else.  It lacks duration, for it comes even when not called and vanishes when you cling to it.” (I and Thou, pages 82-83)  I believe Buber is speaking of an awareness of not just co-existence, but inter-existence.  My dear Reb Zalman liked to quip that he and the typewriter were inter-typing.  Or we could say that the violinist and the violin are inter-playing.

Translator Walter Kaufman points out one of Buber’s “favorite words is Gegenwart, which remarkably can mean either the present, as opposed to the past and the future, or presence” – as in the presence of another entity, another being, or the presence of God.  Kaufman explains that “the German language does not distinguish between these two senses of the word, nor does Buber.” (I and Thou, A Prologue, page 45). So throughout Ich und Du, Buber suggests that to be in the present is also to be in the presence, and vice versa.

Four days after Yom Kippur we begin the festival of Sukkot and read from Ecclesiastes,

the Book of Kohelet, a majestic work of ancient wisdom literature.  While reading Kohelet a few years ago, I was seized by this short, pithy phrase: “What was is far away, and deep, so deep, who can find it?”  There is an onomatopoetic quality to the original Hebrew: Rachok mah she’hayah, v’amok, amok mi yimtsaehnu? (Kohelet 7:24)  (Sounds a bit like Klingon).

A couple of years ago my when my precocious nephew AJ was eight years old, we were sitting together gazing at the Shabbos candles on my picnic table when he exclaimed, “Looking at the candles makes me sad!  They’re burning so fast, and soon they’ll be gone.  And everything is going by so fast!  Even what I just said, it’s already gone!”  A young existentialist!

To tell another family tale, a few days before his bar mitzvah, I was saying goodnight to Berel and he started to cry.  I said, “What’s the matter, dear?  Are you nervous?”  He whimpered, “No, Mama, it’s just that in a couple of days my bar mitzvah will be here, and it will be so great, and then it will be over!” (But actually, it seems like Berel’s bar mitzvah never ended!)

When we realize how fast and irrevocably the past is moving away, we can respond by focusing on it intently, accumulating memories and memorabilia, artifacts and documentation to keep the past vital for us, to understand the forces that have shaped our lives and history.  Or we can use the power of the past as a springboard to propel us into the future, envisioning not-yet-enacted scenarios, outcomes and solutions, flowering, ripening, failures or triumphs.

The magnificent human faculty of imagination enables us to construct a vivid past and a detailed future.  But the present, the presence, cannot be imagined; it can be only encountered directly.  There is a place of balance, where we neither fall back into the past nor dive into the future, but we perch like a bird on a delicate branch, poised in the present moment, not absorbed in imagination, but encountering what is astonishingly real.

Powerful events can seize our attention and bring us out the mind’s habitual dashing back and forth between past and future; a close strike of lightning, a shooting star, a musical climax, a great leap of a dancer or an athlete, the breaching of a whale.  Also in moments of great personal joy or sorrow we can feel our awareness heighten, our consciousness expand, and we are released into the reality of the present and the presence, and we experience a profound sense of connection, awe, gratitude and love.

Buber describes these as moments of grace that are both immortal and fleeting (page 82), warning us, “Genuine contemplation never lasts long” (page 68) and “One cannot live in the pure present.” (page 85).  Buber was deeply influenced by his study of Chasidic masters, the 18^th and 19^th century rabbis who moved the mystical teachings of the kabbalah from the realm of the elite scholars to the heart of the community.  But Buber did not use the term mystical to describe the I-You encounter; he wanted to avoid the suggestion of other-worldliness, emphasizing the this-worldliness of the deep mutuality, reciprocity and inter-existence in which we don’t lose ourselves, but find ourselves.

Buber was ahead of his time.  In the past hundred years we have moved far away from a mechanistic interpretation of the cosmos and a utilitarian attitude toward the environment, embracing a holistic, relational understanding of our reality.  Now every school child is taught that we are part of nature, that our human life is part of a sublimely intricate web of relationships – with one another, with other species, and with the stars.

In the Introduction to his just-published Kabbalah and Ecology, my friend Rabbi David Seidenberg writes: “We live in a wondrous place, this Earth, filled with beauty and surprise.  A world where the merest sparkle on the surface of the water can suggest in its variation the infinitude of the universe, ‘ru’ach Elohim m’rachefet’ – the spirit of God hovering, fluttering on the face of the waters; a world where all our senses can be filled and overflow; a world in which we share so much with even the wildest and least known creatures.”

As we were learning on Rosh HaShanah, as soon as Adam, the first human, has the ability to speak, he uses it to give names to all the other creatures.  He perceives them as distinct and different from himself.  But what makes Eden a paradise is that they are all in the garden together. In Martin Buber’s idiom, the longing for return, for teshuvah, is the yearning to be re-established in the primacy, power and tenderness of Ich und Du.

Lighting candles on Friday night or wearing white garments on Yom Kippur are lovely customs that help us attune to the holidays. The practices of Shabbat and Yom Kippur do not guarantee an experience of heightened consciousness, but they establish an atmosphere and frame of mind conducive to extraordinary encounters in ordinary settings of home, neighborhood and synagogue. Yom Kippur offers us a wealth of words in Torah readings, teachings and prayers.  And to that we add a treasury of beautiful music!  As a shabbat shabbaton, Yom Kippur can permeate all our Shabbat moments, whether we make Shabbos from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday or enjoy Shabbat-like minutes and hours of renewal throughout the week.  Shabbat can happen any time when your eagerness to do and accomplish can be at rest, in moments of learning, reflection, recreation or creativity. May we all be blessed with a multitude of moments when we can let go of the past, refrain from reaching for the future, and slip into the astonishing experience of being right here, right now, in the deep, deep present.

Jewish tradition identifies four categories of being that make up our world.  First we consider the inanimate, mineral realm such as stones; they are called “domem – the silent ones.”  Then we consider the plants; they are called “tsomeyach – the sprouting ones.”  Then we consider the animals; they are called “chai – the living ones.”  And then we get to humans, and what are we called?  “M’daber – the talkative ones.”

In the opening passages of the Hebrew Bible, we have two tellings of the story of creation.  In first telling, in Chapter One, we read how in the first three cosmic days the Creator brings into being and gives names to day and night, sky, land, and seas.  Against that backdrop, all vegetation comes into being.  On the fourth day we get the great luminaries for day and night, that is the sun and moon, and also the stars.  On the fifth day the seas and the sky come to life with fish and fowl.  The sixth day brings forth cattle, insects, and wild animals of every kind.  And then comes Adam, made from adamah, the first human made from the humus.  (Not from the hummus, a common mistranslation.)  Adam – a dual gendered humanity – is given power to rule over the other creatures and to enjoy a vast vegetarian feast.  And when the heaven and the earth are finished, and all their array, the Creator rests and blesses the seventh day, and we have Shabbat.

In the second telling of the tale, in Chapter Two, the Creator forms the human from the soil and breathes life into him, and places him in Gan Eyden, the Garden of Eden, to work it and to watch over it.  Realizing that it’s not good for a man to be alone, the Creator forms beasts of the field and birds of the sky and brings them to the human to see what he would name them – leerot mah yikra lo. (Gen 2:19)  In this telling, surprisingly, the Creator gives away the power of naming and gives that privilege to the human who assigns names to all the other creatures.  But of course none of the animals are exactly the kind of companion a man needs, so the next creature brought into being is woman, and the rest is history, or herstory, and the plot thickens.

So Adam, who is m’daber – a talkative one – uses his extraordinary skill of speech for the first time not for prayer nor deal making, not for courtship nor small talk, but for naming.  Adam sees a tail-wagging quadruped and declares, “keylev,”or “canis familiaris,” or dog, hound, pooch, or “Lassie,” “Rover,” “Sally,” “Wiley,” “Snoopy,” “Rin-tin-tin.”

And so we humans have this penchant for naming.  Discover a new plant or star – give it a name. Bring home a new puppy or a baby – give it a name.  Some people give names to their houses, their cars.  We love to be the name generator.

In the words of the machzor we declare, “You are holy and awesome is Your Name – Kadosh atah v’norah sh’mecha.”

Ancient societies did not shy away from assigning names to their deities.  Pantheons across the world have been populated by thousands of colorful figures with fascinating names deriving from the worlds’ many thousands of languages.

The Torah gives us two primary ancient names for the Divine: Elohim, which has come to be associated with midat hadin, the attribute of justice, and the unpronounceable Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, for which we say HaShem or Adonai and associate with midat harachamim, the attribute of compassion. What were once rival deities among many god and goddesses worshipped in ancient Israel and Judah have become two complimentary aspects of a nuanced concept of Divine Reality. (See The Triumph of Elohim, pages 117-9)

When we sing the Aleynu we give voice to the prophet Zecharyah’s vision: Va-yom ha-hu yihiye Adonai echad u’shmo echad (Zecharyah 14:9).  Zecharyah lived two and a half thousand years ago in the reign of Darius of Persia, who permitted the Judeans to return to their homeland after the Babylonian exile. Zecharyah’s prediction that one day would see “Adonai echad u’shmo echad” strikes me as a theological and political slogan of his time: Y-H-V-H is the one god, and has only one name.

Thousands of years later, the Kabbalists expand on this idea of the separation and desired union of the Divine and the Divine Name, giving it a mystical meaning.  On Friday nights we sing L’echa Dodi, the beautiful love song to the Sabbath written by 16^thcentury poet Shlomo Alkabetz, declaring, “Adonai echad u’sh’mo echad l’sheym u’l’tiferet v’lee-t’hila – HaShem is One and His Name is one for renown, for splendor and for praise.”

Over the millennia, many other names have arisen in our tradition, including: HaMakom – the Cosmic Place; Av Harachamim – Compassionate Father; Adonai – The Lord; Ayn Sof – the Eternal; Shekhinah – the Indwelling Presence.

The letters of the Hebrew alphabet all have a numeric value, and so the four numbers in the Hebrew year can be read as a word, an acronym, or a name, suggesting that the new number of each year indicates a new Divine name.

My teacher Reb Zalman, alav hashalom, explains a fascinating tradition:  “The name of God, which is the interface between infinity and the finite that wants to keep order in the universe and keep it working, gets dislodged by our wrongdoing.  At the end of the year, the name has to be changed and a new name has to descend from the highest realms to become the new interface for the coming year…On Rosh Hashanah the old name gets scrapped and the new name is dislodged by the shofar.  The new name is drawn down during the ten days of teshuvah…Finally, in the four days between Yom Kippur and Sukkot, the four letters of this year’s new name arrive, one each day. That’s why these four days are known as God’s name, Gotts numen…This process began with the name for the year being transcendent, distant, then coming closer until it is within the height of a sukkah and then fully internalized on Simchat Torah.”  (A Guide for Starting Your New Incarnation, page 56)

“..Every Rosh Hashanah…I have to reconfigure my system as to who is God for me in the coming year.  If I deal with the old God, I’m going to be dealing with a childhood notion of God, and my relationship would be fixed at a very childish level.  So I have to break the mold at least once a year to get rid of the old images that I have outgrown or made an idol of.”  (Page 134-5, Wrapped in a Holy Flame.)

Imagination is a wonderful tool in spiritual life.  The spiritual and imaginal realms are intimately connected.  Like the story of our mythic ancestor Abraham smashing idols his father had carved, at least once a year we too have to deconstruct our core ideas, to dismantle the apparatus we’ve built in our minds to make sense of the mystery around us, to let go of old names and images.

We are so fortunate that participation in our beautiful Jewish rituals does not require any standardized declaration of faith or uniformity of belief. When we come together as a praying community, someone who loves the Divine as a kindly parent may be seated next to someone who prefers contemplation of the Ineffable. Someone who is moved by the images of Divine hands, arms and face may be sitting next to someone who is enthralled with new ideas of the Divine as the ultimate emergent phenomenon.  I think we enjoy a depth of community not in spite of our diversity, but because of it.

One of the most well-known common and most difficult to translate Hebrew words is ‘shalom.’  Used as a greeting, it can mean hello or goodbye.  From the combination of the root letters shin, lamed and mem, many meanings are derived, including completion, reciprocity, restitution, well-being and peace.  So the peace of ‘shalom’ is not strictly the absence of conflict or the cessation of violence, but the integration of diverse elements.

Many years ago someone donated a framed needlework of the word ‘shalom’ in Hebrew.  When Rabbi Aryeh Hirschfield, of blessed memory, was teaching here, he mentioned to me that the piece should be handled with special care because “Shalom is a name of God.”

The Book of Judges is primarily a war story, but when he is called to service, the young hero Gidiyon declares (6:24): “HaShem shalom,” which the rabbis of the Talmud interpret to mean, “The name of God is Peace.” (Shabbat 10b)

I think ‘shalom’ is not just one of many names for the Divine, but the most wonderful Divine name, and not just the most wonderful Divine name, but the only Divine name that makes sense at this time; not the only name that has come down to us from the tradition, but the only name coming down from Heaven right now to inspire and guide us through the tremendous challenges facing humanity and the rest of the world. Some will argue that peace is a luxury, but most thinking people in the world understand that peace is a necessity. Shocking events capture mainstream headlines, but we must not fail to appreciate the many quiet victories of nonviolent statecraft and powerful citizen-led movements effecting positive change across the world.  On this Rosh Hashanah, I hope we can strengthen our efforts to increase the peace in ourselves, our families, our communities, societies, our eco-systems, and our nations.

Later, as we close the service, we’ll sing, “You are all that we praise You for,” a beautiful interpretive translation by Rabbi Ronald Aigen, editor of our beautiful machzor.  A more literal translation would read, “As your name, so is your praise – ki k’sh’mecha kayn tehilatecha.” (Chadesh Yamenu, page 299)

We often find it difficult to commend the love and kindness of a Creator who allows so much suffering and heartbreak in the world.  But in our stronger moments, when we feel supported by love and community, I hope all of us would whole-heartedly praise a Divine persona whose name is “Shalom.”

May we hold in our hearts a vision of a time when the Divine essence and the Divine name will be one, unified expression of Shalom.

L’shana tovah u’metukah – I wish you each a good, sweet New Year.