For my grandson

I think often of tikkun olam—repairing the world.  There are some big, sweeping, important ideas related to this Jewish precept.  Such as social justice and caring for the earth, as just a couple examples.  My personal commitment to tikkun olam, however, is on a smaller scale: a daily, analytical decision-making approach to the options that face us each day, whether discreet or far-reaching. I suppose that I can measure success in my personal pursuit of tikkun olam by the frequency with which I consciously go through this process when the opportunity arises.  As I recently said to some colleagues, deciding on the right thing isn’t just about whether our reputation is at stake, or whether others ever will know the ramifications of our choices.  What defines me is what I know about myself and the decisions I’ve made.

In Judaism’s 10 Best Ideas, Arthur Greene points out in his chapter on tikkun olam: “The account of creation in Genesis reaches its climax when God sanctifies the Sabbath. That passage ends with a verse that says, if read literally, ‘God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, for in it God rested from all the labor that God created to do’ (Gen. 2:3).”  This suggests to me that God’s work was not simply to create the world, but to create a world in which we would have a creative role.  For that creative role to have meaning, the world as “finished” by God must be imperfect. Hanging out there is the notion of the future messianic era, but it is not for us to await such perfection—rather, it is our responsibility to move the world ever closer with our restorative contributions.  This is tikkun olam.

In a discussion about Greene’s chapter, a member of my congregation talked about tikkun olam in connection with the legacy each of us passes down and leaves behind. This put me in mind of a recent dialogue on Facebook.  My daughter Audrey wrote:

While I'm so thrilled by the news in NY re: fracking ban and what it might mean as a precedent for environmental justice, my emotions are conflicted. It is hard to reconcile the joys of local sustainability victories with the sorrows of far-off tragedies... to care about future generations close to home without equal care for distant populations. I realize nobody can tend to the whole world or place it all on his shoulders, but I can't help thinking of the mothers of those young children in Pakistan when I see all the celebratory talk about the fracking decision, since they're both bombarding my digital world at the same moment in time.

Audrey is pregnant, her due date just nine days from when I am writing this.  She was recognizing the tension between joy and sorrow, the chasm that often yawns between our personal priorities and the world condition, and the questions tragedies raise about the world into which we choose to bring a new generation.  I responded to her:

It is an extraordinary blessing to be able to find joy in our lives even while we feel and cry for the deep sadness that may be at the same time in our own lives and in others'. Last night, I wanted joyfully to watch the news over and over to see the images of … Alan [Gross, my good friend Estelle’s cousin] finally being released from captivity in Cuba, and yet that interspersed with the excruciating news and images--from which we cannot and should not hide--in Pakistan. When we are expectant parents, we can't help but ask ourselves: what kind of world are we bringing this child into? The answer is--has always been--both kinds, and we have the opportunity to raise one more child to add to the vast majority of people who are so very good and, we can only hope and teach, to do his part to make it better.

Yesterday, my daughter told me of the exhaustingly busy day she’d had making the final preparations for the baby.  Cleaning, organizing, putting the car seat into place, packing the hospital bag, buying the last basics.  The next day, she said, she would rest.  How very much that sounds like “God rested from all the labor that God created to do.” Just substitute “parent” for “God.”  She was finishing with the act of creation that would come before the ongoing creation there will be to do, in the birth and raising of this new human being.  And all day, Audrey told me, as she accomplished these things she could not get out of her head the traditional tune of Adon Olam, the closing prayer of the Shabbat morning service.

Audrey did not have the words in mind, but these are the first stanzas of Adon Olam:

Before creation shaped the world, eternally God reigned alone;

but only with creation done could God as sovereign be known.

When all is ended, God alone will reign in awesome majesty.

(Translation from  Siddur Sim Shalom, The Rabbinical Assembly, fourth printing, 1999)

Adon Olam (sovereign of the world) defines, by calling attention to them, the gap that falls between these states of God's singular existence, which we collectively must fill with tikkun olam (repair of the world). This is how we ensure that “God… [is] known.”  I can think of no better tune for Audrey to have had running through her mind as she took care of the last details before that ultimate moment of legacy—bringing one more person into an imperfect world to help with the work of making it better.

This essay was inspired by a discussion and learning session, led by Rabbi David Finkelstein, at Temple Beth Israel in Waltham, MA.

Joy

Yesterday, I cleaned all the windows in my house, by myself, inside and out, in less than an hour.  It seems disproportionate, but this made me feel almost giddy with joy.  As I sprayed and wiped, sprayed and wiped, I thought about what it had taken in our 3-story + attic + basement Victorian with about 45 windows, most of them 7 feet long.  We couldn’t do it ourselves, it took a crew at least a full day, sometimes a second, and it was too expensive to do as often as we would have liked.  Thinking back on this, rag in hand, I smiled ear-to-ear.  Joy.  While cleaning windows.

Everything in our home is something we have consciously decided to own and use.  With the exception of the guest room, we spend a lot of time in every room in our home.  (And the guest room rarely goes empty for very long.) When our children were young, we used all the rooms in our last home as well.  But when we became empty nesters, we didn’t even need to open the heat registers on the second floor.  The house lacked the amount of activity that made it fully a home.  We fit our new home; it fits us.

In our last home, we had a stand-up attic stuffed floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall, and a basement much the same.  Now the items we’d held onto, just because we could, have homes with people who might use them.  We donated what our family had outgrown but others might still enjoy, and we discarded what no one could want (my college notebooks, anyone?).  In our new home, we never have to slog through the morass of our past belongings to find what we need right now.  How wonderful that feels!

We also felt joy when we moved into our big home 25 years ago, two young parents and their 2-year-old leaving their starter home for the place in which they could grow as a family.  On settlement day, though it would be a few weeks before we moved in, we took a picnic dinner to the December-chilled, empty house, turned on the heat, and sat on the dining room floor around the heat register to enjoy our dinner.  We were in heaven.  After moving in, I marveled that we put less time into straightening up a large house rather than more, because the extra room meant we weren’t tripping over toys.  This became the home where our two children and their friends found the nooks and crannies for hide-and-go-seek, where we hosted huge open-houses, terrific birthday parties, and extended family dinners.  Where we had the room to volunteer for an organization providing housing for people while they or their loved ones sought medical treatment at the world-class hospitals in our area (we and our children gained so much from sharing our home and lives with people from Siberia, China and all over the US).  We fit our home; it fit us.

Recalling our starter home, joy comes flooding back again.  My husband and I, married a year, each night after work attacked the institutional green on every wall and ceiling (what were they thinking when they chose that color?) of the little one-story Cape, armed with brushes and rollers--buckets of paint as the ammunition. We had such fun, sinking our energy and hopes for the future into weeks of making the place our own.  It was the perfect size for us to learn the ropes of homeownership, to bring home our first child from the hospital, to experiment with growing a few fruit trees and a compact perennial garden as we tested the capacity of the small property.  We fit our home; it fit us.

Yesterday, cleaning my windows, all of this came to me, with the three homes we’ve owned representing the joy of each stage in our three decades of married life.  The people, relationships and experiences that developed and intertwined within the homes have been the true source of our joy, of course.  Whatever our challenges, setbacks, struggles and sorrows along the way, we have been and remain extraordinarily fortunate.  

As we shopped for our current home, while we sought a smaller space we also wanted the perfect spot for the grandchildren we hoped eventually to welcome (the rec room, the protected back yard, the park and playground a few steps down the road).  And now our daughter who began life in our starter home 27 years ago is expecting her first child.  The joy continues.

Discomfort

Delivered as the d'var Torah (sermon, or words of Torah) at Temple Beth Israel, Waltham, MA on March 29, 2014.  It deals with the week's Torah reading, Tazria, Leviticus 12:1-13:59.


I raised my hand for this particular d’var because I’d never prepared one for Tazria before.  For that matter, no one ever had offered me Tazria.  When you think about it, there may be good reason for that.  What would they say to me?  “I’d like to honor you by asking you to deliver the d’var for the portion about bodily fluid excretions and skin disease?”

Tazria can make people uncomfortable.  But I’m not sure it’s the blood and scaly skin to which we react, so much as how the notions of impurity and its consequences sit with our contemporary sensibilities.

Is discomfort such a bad thing? It’s easy to imagine that it was discomfort—anxiety about life-threatening childbirth, the loss of life-giving and life-sustaining fluids, persistent and spreading disease—that led to the requirements and proscriptions we find in Tazria.  They may not, in our eyes, be perfect solutions. But I believe we can set our customary lenses aside to see that the Israelites took a hard, analytical look, rather than putting on blinders or rose-colored glasses when faced with something uncomfortable.

This has been on my mind since I read in the March 19 Boston Globe that there has been an uproar over the staging of shows with outdated themes—ones that cause us discomfort—in local high schools.  The article by Don Aucoin reported on the “collision between the past and the present, a frequent occurrence in theater as a dated canon meets an increasingly diverse population. The very plays and musicals that outwardly seem like a good fit for high schoolers—because of their tunefulness and large casts and overall buoyancy—are often the most problematic in their depictions of nonwhite characters.”

Do racial stereotypes bother me?  Certainly.  But as a student of literature, the premise of the article also disturbs me.  Enough, in fact, that I posted this response to the article online:

Mr. Aucoin reached the 12th paragraph before acknowledging the key fact that plays are part of our body of literature.  Will we ban Jane Eyre from high school English classrooms, citing its depiction of mental illness, or will we use it as an opportunity to teach more deeply about how the woman in the attic is portrayed?  I hope the latter, and I expect the school theater department to take on the same responsibility. When we stage a school play, I want to believe that we do more than put kids on stage in costume, with lines, tunes and dance steps memorized.  I trust we are seizing the opportunity to teach the literature and what it tells us about society then and now, both to the students participating in the production and to their audience.

 

It is in part because of the discomfiting madwoman that we should teach Jane Eyre and because of the negative stereotypes in Thoroughly Modern Millie and South Pacific that we should bring them to high school stages.  And talk about the discomfort.  And help to develop a generation that can find better solutions.  The fact is, we all know that we have not fully addressed the issues that generated those stereotypes, and if we ignore them we never will.

Given the age of the Torah text we’re here to discuss, it’s interesting to be talking about the outdated sensibilities of musicals from the 1940s through 1960s. Some of us may react strongly to Tazria’s view of women needing separation after childbirth—with the period of impurity doubled for the birth of a girl in comparison with the birth of a boy.  But instead of letting our discomfort turn us away, if we instead read more closely we could conclude that Tazria was in some ways light years ahead of the musicals from 50 or 60 years ago.

More often read as a double-portion with next week’s Metzora, Tazria does not speak only of ritual impurity and the resulting separation from community.  It also—and Metzora still more—addresses purification and reintegration.  It acknowledges that we differ from each other.  As women and men.  As the ill and the healthy.  As those with skin that looks different from what we consider normal.  But it also confirms that we are one community and the goal is to develop a means to bring us back together.  Tazria confronts us with difficult implications.   But we can learn a great deal about the desire for an integrated community of equals and we can take lessons, good and bad, for continuing to try to achieve that goal.

Again reading closely, we might find an extraordinary sensitivity to the needs of those who may, to modern minds, appear to receive unfair treatment.  In a life packed with requirements and expectations, fundamental both to daily survival and to religious life, when childbirth was regularly life-threatening, it may be a gift to delay re-entry after giving birth and afford the mother time with her child and for herself.  For a person with visible signs of disease on his skin, it may be a blessing to embrace a process, a priest’s oversight and the potential for healing and reintegration, rather than fear unfettered shunning and chaos.

In The Book of Jewish Values, Rabbi Joseph Talushkin writes that the Torah teaches us to break negative patterns. “If you have been hurt,” he explains, “learn how not to hurt. Were you taunted with an ugly nickname as a child?  Were you mocked because of your lack of athletic ability? Have you ever lost out on a job opening because of discrimination? Were you pained because someone spread a malicious rumor about you? Think of how you have suffered, and how you can ensure that those who have contact with you don’t suffer in a similar way.”

This is what it means to face our discomfort.  Look closely at the sources of our pain and sadness so we can bring something better to others.

Look closely at the hardships of giving birth and suffering disease with no protections in place, so we can ensure others have some protections.

Look closely at the negative stereotypes in the vast body of literature available to us, so we can build a better society.

In other words, find learning moments and teaching moments.

Last year, Rabbi Laura Geller wrote on Tazria-Metzora in The Jewish Journal. Her opening read:  “Most people try really hard to avoid having their bar or bat mitzvah on the Shabbat when we read Tazria-Metzora. I know this not only because I am a rabbi, but because this was my bat mitzvah portion.” She goes on to say, “When I was 13, I didn’t understand about human weakness and frailty. I didn’t understand our need for rituals that can support us and help us transform shame and guilt into wholeness again. …  I didn’t know that I would be called upon to create new rituals to help people navigate difficult and complicated transitions. Nor did I know that sometimes it would be necessary for me to intervene in situations where people needed to be quarantined, taken out of the community because they were dangerous to themselves or someone else. … But I know it now.”

In other words, Rabbi Geller came to understand that by looking beneath the discomfort that Tazria raises we can find guidance (and perhaps someone could have helped her begin to learn that when she was becoming a bat mitzvah).

Sometimes, it is enticing to ignore the things that make us squirm, and just move on.  Sometimes, it feels righteous to raise Cain over exposing our children to negative stereotypes. But these would be missed learning opportunities, missed teaching moments.

As I began, I quipped that perhaps I’ve never before been offered the d’var for Tazria because talking about bodily fluids and skin disease hardly seems like an honor.  But that is taking the parasha only skin deep, which does our tradition a great disservice.

Shabbat Shalom.

Place

Va-yetzei begins by quickly letting us know from where Yaacov has departed—Beer-sheba—and where he’s going—Haran.  This single sentence proves to provide the framework for the much lengthier description of the place that comes in between.

What is that in-between place?  At first, we don’t know.  It’s just “a certain place,” and “this place.”  A seemingly any-place where Yaacov happens to stop for the night and use a stone for a pillow.  But it becomes so much more.  It transforms from a wayside camp to the setting of a holy vision.  Yaacov wakes from his extraordinary dream of an encounter with God and calls the place “awesome,” “the house of God” and “the gateway to heaven.”  Yet still, it seems to have no name.  Not until after Yaacov has transformed his pillow stone into an anointed pillar, until after he as renamed the site Bethel (house of God), do we finally learn that it had formerly been the city of Luz.

Did the spiritual experience itself turn the forgotten place into sacred space?  Not entirely.  It was with the aesthetic transition of a randomly chosen stone pillow to a thoughtfully fixed commemorative monument that Yaacov declared the name and made the transformation complete.

In the current Temple Beth Israel newsletter, you’ll read about a new initiative for this sacred space.  We hope to gather momentum and commitment to attend to the aesthetic stewardship of our sanctuary, building and grounds.  Some may wonder whether investing ourselves in the beauty of our space diminishes us; are we frivolous to worry about how the sanctuary looks, or whether the front hall conveys both an inviting and an inspiring welcome, rather than how the liturgy and d’var Torah move us? 

In Philadelphia, I grew up in the only Frank Lloyd Wright designed synagogue.  Brad and I raised our children there.  Between the two of us over the years, we became involved at many levels—in the school leadership, in the Rabbi search committee, in the house committee, in strategic planning, in religious and social programming, in social action, in the religious committee, and I could go on.  The physical facility also grabbed us.  Brad transformed the grounds, both to align the landscape with the
unique beauty of the building and to develop the first of his gardens—ultimately acres in the community—to help supply the synagogue’s food pantry.  I chaired an event, the Landmark Ball, to mark the designation of the building as a national historic landmark.  We became founding supporters of the Beth Sholom Synagogue Preservation Foundation, a 501(c)3 established to help support the facility needs, complete with an interactive visitor center and Frank Lloyd Wright design store.

Some perceived any emphasis on the architectural significance of the building as discordant with the synagogue’s religious mission. Stealing volunteer and donor resources from what’s really important in the life of a congregation.  Conflating the space and the spirituality of the activities that happen within it.

But perhaps Va-yetzei teaches us that this very conflation yields just what we require.  Yaacov models to us that the spiritual and the visual intertwine in the establishment of sacred space. 

Abraham Joshua Heschel said : The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living.”  I believe that beauty contributes to our sense of wonder.  We accept and even expect to bring this wonderful beauty into our sacred liturgy through music.  Why not into our sacred space as well?

In The Book of Jewish Values, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin gives us another take on the intersection between aesthetic beauty and spiritual elevation.  He relates this Sukkot story from Israeli Nobel Prize laureate S. Y. Agnon:

[S]hortly before Sukkot in his Jerusalem neighborhood of Talpiot, [Agnon] ran into one of his neighbors, an elderly rabbi from Russia, at a store selling etrogim. The rabbi told Agnon that he regarded it as particularly important to acquire a very beautiful, aesthetically perfect etrog. Although he had limited means, he was willing to spend a large sum to acquire this ritual object.

How surprised Agnon was a day or two later, when the holiday began and the rabbi did not take out his etrog during the synagogue service. Perplexed, he asked the man where the etrog was. The rabbi told him…:

“I awoke early, as is my habit, and prepared to recite the blessing over the etrog in my Sukkah on my balcony.  As you know, we have a neighbor with a large family, and our balconies adjoin. As you also know, our neighbor, the father of all these children next door, is a man of short temper. Many times he shouts at them or even hits them for violating his rules and wishes.  I have spoken to him many times about his harshness but to little avail.

“As I stood in the Sukkah on my balcony, about to recite the blessing for the etrog, I heard a child’s weeping coming from the next balcony. It was a little girl crying, one of the children of our neighbor. I walked over to find out what was wrong. She told me that she, too, had awakened early and had gone out on her balcony to examine her father’s etrog, whose delightful appearance and fragrance fascinated her. Against her father’s instructions, she removed the etrog from its protective box to look at it. She unfortunately dropped the etrog on the stone floor, irreparably damaging it and rendering it unacceptable for ritual use.  She knew that her father would be enraged and would punish her severely, perhaps even violently. Hence the frightened tears and wails of apprehension. I comforted her, and then I took my etrog and placed it in her father’s box, taking the damaged etrog to my premises. I told her to tell her father that his neighbor insisted that he accept the gift of the beautiful etrog, and that he would be honoring me and the holiday by so doing.”

Agnon concludes:  “My rabbinic neighbor’s damaged, bruised, ritually unusable etrog was the most beautiful etrog I have ever seen in my lifetime.”
In this story, an act of spiritual beauty emerged from the tradition of bringing aesthetic beauty into our ritual.

***

As a newcomer to Temple Beth Israel, I’ve found spiritual beauty in abundance.  In the genuine kindness and community. In the lovely chanting and the inspiring d’vrei Torah from our clergy and fellow congregants.

When I was checking out the options in my new community, I first went to the TBI website.  Here I got the impression of a ritually rich traditional congregation with progressive values and forward thinkers.  But, to be honest, when I first walked in…I wondered.   It wasn’t that I was looking for another architectural masterpiece. I saw a place whose building was fine but whose level of aesthetic stewardship might suggest disconnection and stagnation rather than spiritual engagement and progression.  And if I hadn’t persisted past that first impression, I may never have discovered that we have the transformative community that moves us beyond simply a place…to a sacred space. 

As a marketer, I knew we had to better manage that first impression, aligning our aesthetic appeal to our heart and soul, to help our congregation compete for growth.  Fortunately, when I raised my concerns they were heard as opportunity rather than complaint.  With Rabbi Nathan’s support and involvement, a number of us are exploring ways to move forward; and as many of you have noticed Brad already has begun to make his mark outside.

As I read Va-yetzei, I see what we are doing not only through my marketing lens but, in some small measure, through Yaakov’s eyes.  I realize that we need to solidify our identity by placing our stone—anointing our place with the attention to beauty that helps us to experience it as sanctified space.

I delivered this d'var Torah at Temple Beth Israel in Waltham, MA on November 9, 2013.

Consequences

Today, the 20th of Av, marks my father’s yahrzeit.  I dedicate this d’var Torah to him, Bernard Wolfman, an accomplished speaker who gave me my first lessons in public address 39 years ago when I was preparing my Bat Mitzvah speech. And in the spirit of Eikev, he taught us to take responsibility for the consequences of our actions and inaction.

The circus is in town.  This weekend, Circus Smirkus performs at the Gore Estate.

What is the circus? It’s an opportunity to believe, if only for a couple of hours, in magic. 

And what is magic?  Wikipedia gives this definition:
The power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces.




TheFreeDictionary.com offers:
The art that purports to control or forecast natural events, effects, or forces by invoking the supernatural.

To promote this season’s act, with its Wizard of Oz theme, Circus Smirkus writes:
Grab your Ruby Slippers and click your heels together, as Circus Smirkus goes "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" ….

But in truth, a magical click of the heels does not bring a circus to fruition. The hard work that goes into perfecting acrobatics, clown acts, high wire precision and gymnastic prowess leads to an end result that makes it all seem magical.
 
As something that emerges from supernatural or mysterious forces, magic seems squarely in the realm of religion.  And in many contexts, religion focuses on the acceptance of unfathomable unknowns.  But Eikev asks us instead to look also at the hard, human work behind the supposed magic of the supernatural forces in our lives.

Eikev means, essentially, “as a consequence of.”  The commentary in the Eitz Hayim Chumash points out that it might seem odd that a portion begins with this word, as though in the middle of a thought.  But by beginning here it allows us to frame the narrative from here through chapter 8, which also ends with an Eikev clause.

What falls between these statements of consequence are, when you think about it, pretty magical concepts for any people at any time, but particularly for a group that just spent 400 years in slavery followed by 40 wandering in the wilderness.  The promise of no sterility among the people or their livestock.  No illness. Total dominance over enemies, regardless of their size and means. Unending resources of food, water and ore.  In fact the text seems to encourage ascribing these to magic, when defined as the supernatural, as Moshe says:
beware lest your heart grow haughty and you forget Adonai your God and you say to yourselves, “My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me.” Remember that it is Adonai your God who gives you the power to get wealth, in fulfillment of the covenant that God made on oath with your ancestors, as is still the case.

Yet the text anchors these fantastical concepts with eikev.  With consequences.  With cause and effect.  The promises that Moshe summarizes, as the embodiment of the covenant, depend upon the everyday actions of the people.  The parashah begins by telling us that eikev—as a consequence of—the people obeying the rules, good things will happen.  And chapter 8 concludes by telling us that eikev—as a consequence of—failing to heed God’s commandments, bad things will happen.

It’s a pretty radical concept.  We have influence interlaced with God’s power.  We have the will to help determine how God will act.  It is not enough to believe.  We must act.  We must act thoughtfully, purposefully, wittingly.  There are consequences to our actions that impact the forces in our world—even those we might call “supernatural.”

We should not be surprised, then, that in Chapter 9 Moshe warns against illusions of superiority, telling us “It is not because of your virtues and your rectitude that you will be able to possess their country; but it is because of their wickedness that Adonai your God is disposing of those nations…. Know, then, that it is not for any virtue of yours that Adonai your God is giving you this good land….” 

Having established that our actions and inactions have consequences, it might be easy for our good fortune to go to our heads.  In this complex relationship of human consequences and supernatural intervention, the role of God can help us to maintain our humility.

And suddenly, the text takes a hard turn away from the life to come across the Jordan, and how we might earn it, steering instead to a recap of all Moshe did to bring the Israelites to this point despite themselves.  In this interlude he seems to embody the very arrogance against which he has just cautioned.  Perhaps we are to take it as an example of the trap we must avoid.

What are we to make of a text that reminds us of God’s “majesty” and “mighty hand” in the plagues and the parting of the sea, while insisting on the cause and effect our own actions in determining the quality of our future?

I believe we are to understand that faith matters but it’s not enough.  It’s not the whole answer.  Nor is the elevation of our own power, impact and will.  Our future is born of both:  taking responsibility for our actions and respecting what is beyond us.

Perhaps this is why we love the circus.  The ability to perform results from the choices people have made to work hard honing their skills and practicing their acts.  It could not have happened without the hard work, and we do appreciate it all the more for knowing the effort behind the act, but we’d rather not see the sweat.  Instead, we want to suspend our disbelief and feel the magic. To some degree, we want to go on faith.

We must make decisions with an understanding that our choices, our actions, yield consequences.  And we must have faith that those actions happen within a context greater than ourselves.  This combination of perspectives just may bring out the strong yet graceful in us, or the practical yet idealistic in us.  It gives us dimension and makes us whole.

May we all feel the wholeness that comes from the comforting weight of knowing that our actions have consequences and the freeing lightness of knowing that we have the capacity to soar—even if it’s not on the flying trapeze.



Thank you to my fellow congregants at Temple Beth Israel in Waltham, MA--our new community--for inviting me to deliver the d'var Torah this morning.

Don’t let others’ “vestments” blind us

On Saturday, I participated in a discussion about the weekly Torah portion. The elaborate nature of the high priest’s vestments became a touch point for how we outwardly symbolize our Jewish identity, how much of that is traditional (and traditional to exactly when?) vs. a reflection of the culture in which we are contextualized, and how much of that in turn is a form of assimilation.  It was a fascinating and engaging conversation.  At the end, however, I voiced a caution:  Let’s be careful not to judge others based on their outward symbols of Jewish identity that differ from our own.  It will tear us apart. I’ve seen too many situations in which infighting ensued from focusing on others’ “vestments” of their Judaism rather than on the positives we can learn from and bring to each other.   If we bring our principles of civil discourse to the forefront, we can seek to learn from each other and find common ground.

Are you interested in bringing civil discourse to our political, religious, cultural and community organizations so we can learn and build together?  If so, please see what we are doing at The Bernard Wolfman Civil Discourse Project, which I established to honor my father’s legacy.

Here’s where to click:

• For more information and to register for our free civil-discourse-based public policy forum on March 28. 
• For our informative postcard about the Project and this year’s forum topic and nationally-renowned speakers. 
• For our Facebook page. 
• And for our Twitter feed.

What We Need: Balanced, Civil Discourse

My father, in his office at Harvard

It’s hard for me to contain my excitement about a new program in memory of my father, Bernard Wolfman, who died just over a year ago.  We soon will develop a more engaging public name for what we are now calling the Bernard Wolfman Memorial Public Policy Forum at Beth Sholom Congregation. 

My father was a scholar of tax law and legal ethics also widely known for his work in public interest advocacy.  After serving in private practice in Philadelphia, he went on to teach at University of Pennsylvania law school, where he also served as Dean, and then at Harvard University law school. Deeply committed to inquiry, thoughtful discussion and high public and academic standards, he not only practiced law, he sought justice. He also was proud and deeply connected to his Jewish heritage and in particular to what he perceived as a connection between that heritage and the pursuit of justice.

For these reasons, we are establishing The Bernard Wolfman Memorial Public Policy Forum at Beth Sholom Congregation in Elkins Park, PA, the synagogue community with which he was most closely connected in his adult life. The goals of this project are to develop an annual forum that provides the community with:

• An opportunity to learn about issues in contemporary American public policy in a balanced way
• A forum for experiencing public civility, academic inquiry, and pluralism
• Elevation of the level of discourse through engagement of high level scholars and facilitators to present and discuss current public policy issues
• The presentation of public policy issues through a Jewish lens

We wish both to present public policy issues and, in recognition of my father’s commitment to education, action and civil debate, to enable the community to more effectively engage by:

• Presenting both sides of the issue from scholars of great expertise in their fields
• Providing the tools for civil discourse and debate-we will ask scholars both to teach an issue and to model respectful, passionate disagreement
• Asking speakers to offer ideas and venues for participants interested in engaging in activism for a particular position

 We will determine each year’s topic to reflect current critical issues. To extend the educational opportunity as much as possible, the program will be free of charge and open to the community at large, entirely underwritten by a fund established at Beth Sholom Congregation. We intend to partner with other organizations that can assist in broadening the reach, including educational institutions and policy oriented groups on all sides of the issues. And we will market the forum, as we want this not to be not only about exposing the 900 people that the historic Beth Sholom sanctuary can hold each year for the event, but about using the event as a springboard to reach many, many more with the civil discourse concept that is becoming an increasingly critical issue in our society—as the current political debate vividly illustrates.

We announce this now, during the Jewish high holy days, when we seek to return to the better path for the coming year.  For it is our hope that the forum will help us all along that path. 

Similarly, we plan to hold the forum each year during the intermediate days of Passover.  It is a holiday that my father loved, in large part because it brings family together but also very much because of the message of freedom that the festival embodies.  That message fits well with the concept of our public policy forum.  By delving into key issues in a balanced manner, and by raising the bar for civil discourse, perhaps we can help free ourselves to explore, interact and move forward with impact.