Hanukkah Feels Very Different This Year

For over 2,000 years, from the time of the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE up until the establishment of the modern State of Israel in 1948, we Jews were an extremely vulnerable people. Living in galut, exile, we endured inquisitions, pogroms, and genocide. We were not in control of either our security or our destiny.  

But if we go back some 2,100 years to the time of the Maccabees, we find a period when we were not so vulnerable. The story of Hanukkah recalls that time when a relatively small band of Jews decided that they had enough of being ruled by a cruel tyrant. We rose up in revolt against the powerful Assyrian Greeks. What followed was a resounding Jewish victory, the rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, and the miracle of Hanukkah which we celebrate every year until this day.

Jewish rule in Judea lasted some 200 years after the Maccabees, finally collapsing in the first century of the Common Era.  During much of the next 2,000 years, without a homeland, without a military, and without the ability to ensure our own safety, we lived (or died) at the whim of various rulers, kings and tyrants.  We shuddered in fear of the next crusade, pogrom, or anti-Semitic attack, relying on the good graces of the king or government to protect our communities.  And often there was no protection to be found. 

The American Jewish experience, of course, has been markedly different from what our people experienced in Europe. Sure, antisemitism existed on these shores as well, often just below the surface, but it was largely limited to rhetoric and discrimination. We felt safe, built robust communities, synagogues, JCC’s, Jewish Day Schools and Yeshivahs.  We thrived as Jewish Americans, and felt that here we were finally accepted as an integral part of the American tapestry.

But after the events of October 7th we feel that familiar, aching sense of vulnerability once again. Our people in Israel were brutally attacked in ways that were reminiscent of some of the worst atrocities our people suffered during the Holocaust. And what followed was equally distressing. Sure, there was sympathy and outrage at first, but that sympathy quickly gave way to an explosion of antisemitism we had hoped was long defeated.

If there is a lesson to be learned from the Hanukkah story, it is that fatalism and retreat is not the answer. Complacency is not an answer either.  The answer to hate is resolve, inner strength, pride, determination and resilience. 

We saw that power of the Jewish spirit on full display during the solidarity rally last month in Washington DC. Nearly 300,000 of us came together from across the country to sing, pray, and come to understand that ‘never again’ is now.  There was a meme going around that captured it perfectly: “If there’s one thing we Jewish people have learned in the past few weeks it’s this: The world doesn’t care about us as much as we hoped, but we care about each other a lot more than we realized.”  

And therein lies the Jewish people’s most powerful weapon. We may disagree with one another on this or that issue, but we must never let those disagreements devolve into fracturing our sense of unity, and shared destiny. As the Talmud states (Shevuot 39a) kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh, all Israel are responsible one for another.  

All of us have some very concrete things that we can do today.  Educate yourself  on what’s going on.  Know how to answer Israel’s critics and don’t be afraid to do so.  Contact your members of Congress, regularly.  Send donations to Hatzalah and Magen David Adom and Federation. But more importantly, stand up for human decency and make your voice heard.
Sadly, these threats are not new for us. The Jewish people have been around for 4,000 years, and we are not going away anytime soon. God willing, the heroism of the Maccabees will inspire us and provide us with the courage to face whatever challenges lie ahead.

May the lights of the Hanukkah menorah continue to inspire us during these difficult days, strengthen our resolve, and give us the fortitude to achieve a more peaceful and compassionate world.

Those Who Sow in Tears Shall Reap in Joy: How We Will Overcome Covid-19

As we approach the holiest period of our Jewish calendar, the spark of Yiddishkeit deep within our soul begins to exert its pull. Many of us resist that pull. But for those of us who have not abandoned their connection to our people and its heritage, that force grows stronger and stronger as Rosh Hashanah approaches. 

And so we begin to plan, just as we have every other year. We make sure that we have a place to pray with our community in synagogue.  We start to look inward and examine how we can improve our souls and uplift our communities. And we reconnect with our family and make plans for them to join us for our Rosh Hashanah meals. 

This year, however, is very different.  Mah Nishtanah on steroids!  Sure, we still feel the lure of our tradition. But in the age of Covid-19 many of our families have been forced to remain physically apart. We are socially distancing from our communities in order to safeguard our health and the health of those we love. Nothing feels certain anymore.  We feel the gaping hole in our lives that this pandemic has left behind.

Well, the Jewish experience has been no stranger to pain and adversity.  We have endured persecution, annihilation, and exile. This served to make us particularly sensitive to the plight of others who suffer anywhere around the world. But it also taught us how to cultivate our inner strength and resilience. With our dark past, or perhaps in spite of it, the Jew has become particularly adept at facing challenges and overcoming obstacles.

When the Temple was destroyed and our people were forced into exile, we never gave up.  We re-invented ourselves, and we unleashed the creative Jewish spirit like never before. The Talmud, Jewish philosophy and our rich liturgy are but a few examples of that creative spark.  

Likewise, Covid-19 has forced us to re-tool and reinvent ourselves. Some rabbis have even resorted to making cheesy Hamilton parody videos to keep folks engaged... (Guilty! See my: Hamilton Parody – You’ll Be Back).. I look back and realize that I have led High Holiday services for over 35 years, which I guess makes me a pretty seasoned rabbi (perhaps over-seasoned). Yet this year I feel like a newly minted rabbi straight out of school who has never led a service before!

No-doubt, we will do many things differently this year.  Our Sukkahs will be smaller.  We will daven differently than we did last year.  We may not be able to hold hands and dance together this Simchat Torah the same way we have in the past.  But we will overcome.  We will use that same Jewish creativity and resilience to reinvent ourselves with Zoom minyanim, online learning and other virtual experiences. And God-willing, this will all be but a temporary setback.

Right before the Birkat HaMazon (the grace after meals in Shir Ha’Maalot) we sing: Ha-zor’im b-dim’ah, b-rina yiktzoru. Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. (Psalm 126).  This year we may have to live without a few of the pleasures of years past. But next year, when we are able to be physically back together, our holidays will be all the sweeter.

Our Jewish way of life, with its emphasis on building community, creating holiness and pursuing justice has been a tremendous gift to the world. We are proud to have been blessed with such a rich history and heritage. From that same well of tradition we will find the strength to persevere and overcome this pandemic. And when we do come back together, it will be stronger and more joyful than ever before.

Thoughts on the Approaching High Holidays: Elul Preparations

As we begin the month of Elul, the steady march towards Rosh Hashanah has begun. Elul is a month of soul-preparation. We traditional recite selichot (penitential prayer) and embark on the work of introspection that needs to be done before we can be ready to enter the year 5781. 

We all can attest to the fact that 5780 has been a most challenging year.  May 5781 bring us to a place of shleymut (completeness), and may we all have a year of health, prosperity and personal growth...

Life is About What We Learn along the Way

Here is my take on this week's Torah portion: V'Etchanan.  

Moses pleads with God to be allowed to enter the Land of Israel, but alas he will only get to see it from afar.  Life can be like that. Sometimes despite our best efforts we fall just short of reaching our ultimate goals.  But the real blessings are to be found in the journey, and all that we learn while traversing along the path of life.

A Year of Thoughtfulness and Forgiveness

Words can hurt, yet words also have the capacity to heal. For congregational rabbis, this time of year is focused primarily on the power of words as we assemble our thoughts and choose the appropriate themes to discuss during our holiday sermons. 

There are always more worthy issues to address than time will permit, and so rabbis perform a kind of “sermonic triage”, limiting ourselves to only a few topics at the expense of others that are just as deserving. The contending issues are weighty indeed. Immigration, refugees, gun violence, climate change, anti-Semitism, Israel’s standing in the world, and the erosion of public trust. The list goes on and on. 

But what about the spiritual state of our Jewish community?  Are we Jews growing more disconnected from God, Torah, and from one another?  In our toxic political climate, have we wounded others with our words? Have we been forgiving to those who have wounded us?

If there is one thing I hope to focus on in the year ahead it is to bridge the gaps that are driving us further apart from one another. As we become more entrenched and inflexible in our points-of-view, we don’t usually discuss our differences as calmly and respectfully as we should.  Instead we use social media, slogans or bumper stickers, which often undermine any opportunity for meaningful discussion. All these things do is to proclaim: “I’m right, you’re wrong”.

Judaism teaches a different way. One of the great strengths of Judaism is that it developed as a religious tradition full of compromises, and valuing the opinions of others. 

As Judaism evolved, different practices began to emerge in different communities, and we had to decide which ones were the best to follow.  For example, when we hang a mezuzah we always hang it on an angle. Did you ever wonder why that is? Well, there was an argument between two rabbis whether to hang it straight up and down (vertically) or whether it should be hung horizontally. 

There were cogent arguments to be made for each position. Ultimately however, the decision was made to hang our mezuzot on the diagonal. In other words, a compromise was hammered out between the two competing opinions. The inherent value of each was preserved. The clear lesson is that for there to be peace in any home (shalom bayit), there must be compromise and respect for the positions of others. A place where we can forgive those with whom we disagree.

It’s not a far stretch to see a small community or even an entire nation as one big extended family. And a society or even a small village is strengthened when there is community-wide shalom bayit -- where we practice forgiveness; where we raise each other up instead of tearing each other down. 

Debate can be wonderful but only when it is coupled with respect. That’s how we learn. And we Jews are not usually shy about sharing our opinions! At the same time, we must be on guard not to divide and conquer ourselves. We need wisdom in our speech and compassion in our actions. We must never forget how important it is to remain am echad, one people, despite our differences; and to forgive those who may not always be as gracious.

We are all “others”.  We have all gained different experiences, and traveled along different paths while on life’s journey.  My prayer is that in the year ahead we learn to value, care about, and even forgive another, while we work to uplift and strengthen our Jewish community. That way we can make 5780 a real Shanah Tovah -- for all of us. 

Now will a single sermon change the lives of those who listen?  No rabbi has that expectation.  But what we do hope for is that at least some of our words will resonate and make an impact. As rabbis, we hope that our words during these Holy Days will penetrate the soul, and inspire a life of meaning and of kedushah, holiness.

Torah and High-Tech

I have always been a great lover of all things tech-related. In fact, for much of my college years I vacillated between two career paths that could not have been more different from one another: computer science and the rabbinate. Linda will say that she ALWAYS knew I would be a rabbi, but honestly, I did not.  So perhaps I can say that Linda knows me better than I know myself!

Technology is cold and impersonal, and the rabbinate is, well, supposed to be the opposite! Ultimately I chose the rabbinate, but never quite recovered from my passion for the former and the “cool factor” that the latest feature brings. So of course, in our home I have Google Assistant set up to respond to my voice and turn on lights, change TV channels, alert me to people at the door. etc.  It doesn’t write sermons, make the bed, or start the coffee yet -- but I’m sure we’ll get there!

While tech is convenient, we would all prefer to speak to a human being rather than a computer. (Who among us has not fought with an automated phone system trying to get to a human representative on the phone!)

Yet there are certainly great lessons to be gleaned from technology, and fitting analogies from the world of science-fiction have often found their way into a sermon or two of mine. (But I still must admit that since the end of the classic “Star Trek” series, I’ve never really found any of the current crop to be as thoughtful or philosophically poignant as the adventures of James T. Kirk - the original!)

So let me share a few technology-related thoughts that I think are spiritually relevant today. And I promise you won’t have to be a computer maven to understand my point.

All kinds of signals are hurtling through space and through our bodies at every moment.  Just as multiple signals travel through the airwaves, they can only be made sense of if there is a tuner on the other end to pull-in that particular frequency, or an algorithm that knows how to interpret the incoming data. (I won’t confuse or bore you by talking about frequency hopping or the digital signal encoding formats which are so important in today’s world of cell phones and wifi.)  At the risk of over-simplification, the TV, laptop or cell phone only “receives” the signals they are tuned to, and they remains completely oblivious to all of the other signals out there.

Our relationship with God can be understood in much the same way.  The Kotzker rabbi was once asked by one of his disciples: “Where is God to be found in the world?” The rabbi answered: “God can be found wherever he is allowed in.” In other words, you have to tune yourself to the right channel in order to be touched by the Divine.

We are always deciding what signals we wish to focus on in life.  And often we choose the wrong signal.  Heschel suggested in his renowned book “God in Search of Man” that God is reaching out to us on several of those frequencies, trying to make contact with us and touch our souls.  But we are usually so busy surfing through every other signal out there that we fail to find the holy places in life where God can be found.  We switch stations so fast that we often skip over any vestiges of holiness altogether.

In our busy lives today we simply have too many responsibilities and distractions. We’re always busy shlepping the kids somewhere –to birthday parties, music lessons, play dates or the doctor. We are beset by countless errands that we never seem to catch up with. And mounting work deadlines always manage to keep us apart from our families and further erode any meaningful private time.

That is the beauty of the Sabbath.  It forces us, at least once a week, to cut out all the static from our lives and focus on the things that truly matter. Regular prayer and study also helps attune us to the sacred and keep our fleeting lives in proper perspective.  The Divine “signal” is out there.  It just takes an act of will for us to tune it to that station.

For our ancestors coming out of Egypt, God was very real, very near.  Everywhere our ancestors looked, they saw God’s handiwork and splendor. We, on the other hand, are fascinated by our own power and our own creations.  It is fine to glory in our own achievements, but we should never lose sight of the source that has given us the power to attain them.

When our ancestors arrived at Mt Sinai to receive the Torah, they were awed by God’s presence. On Erev Shavuot we attempt to recreate that sense of actually receiving the Torah by spending an evening engaged in Torah study, as a way of spiritually preparing ourselves to receive the Torah anew during this season. This tradition is called a "Tikkun Leyl Shavuot". 

On Saturday evening, June 9, we will be holding an innovative Tikkun at Beth Shalom beginning at 7:15 PM with Seudah Shlishi (the 3rd Shabbat meal). I invite you to join us as we study together, learn from one another, and reconnect ourselves with the Torah on Shavuot as we celebrate Z’man Matan Toratenu, the giving of the Torah at Mt Sinai.

L’Shalom,

Rabbi Mark Zimmerman

Enough is Enough: Another Tragic Shooting...

Only six months have passed since the tragic shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. And once again, on a sacred day for the Jewish people, the peace of Shabbat has been shattered by another brazen anti-Semitic attack -- this time at a Chabad shul in California.  So far what we know is that during Shabbat / Passover services, a congregant has been killed and several others injured, including the rabbi of the synagogue.  Many details are yet unknown, but it is clear that this was another horrific hate-crime targeting Jews simply for being Jews.

This attack, having occurred on the last day of Passover, calls to mind a passage we just read together at our seder tables in the Haggadah only a few days ago: B'chol dor vador omdim alenu l’chalotenu… In every generation there are those who have risen up against us to destroy us.  And yet despite our history, often living in an unwelcoming and hostile environment, Am Yisrael Chai, the Jewish people lives. We are a resilient people, and we will not be intimidated by hate-mongers, or stop living as proud Jews.

Sadly, the Jewish people have not been strangers to threats, violence and intimidation throughout our history. In fact, just this past week, a congregant reached out to me after his child was being harassed on the school bus to her middle school with anti-Semitic threats.

Those who perpetrate such cowardly acts on innocent shul-goers want us to cower in fear and run away from our Jewishness. That will not be our response. We will remain proud of who we are and join together as a kehillah in worship, fellowship, learning and tikkun olam.

And we join together in this effort with the majority of Americans who believe in showing goodwill to all no matter where they come from -- not only toward Jews but toward one another. From the dawn of our great nation, people of all faiths have been free to worship as they wish. While there have been dark periods in which bigotry gained momentum, thankfully we live in a country that is committed to the well-being of all its citizens.

Let us not forget that as we comfort one another and work to repair our broken world.

Shavuah Tov,
Rabbi Mark