Post by Rabbi Neil on Apr 25, 2019 16:20:29 GMT
By Fred Milder
Well, as is obvious, the rabbi isn't here with us this week. Earlier in the week I ran into Aaron and he asked me if I wanted to do the sermon tonight.
I responded with a yes, and asked if I could simply play and sing Elton John's Saturday Night's Alright and just change the words to Friday Night's Alright. We decided that wasn't appropriate because it's all about drinking with your buddies and picking up women at the bar. So I thought, oh yeah, how about Katy Perry. She has a song called Last Friday Night. But it turns out that's all about debauchery and getting drunk too, so same problem.
So, I gave in to the usual - I would do a spoken sermon based on this week's parsha. As it turns out, this week is a double portion out of Leviticus. The first section is about the uncleanliness, the blood purification, and then eventual sin offering for a mother after giving birth. And interestingly enough there is a difference depending on if the baby is a boy or a girl. This section also mentions the requirement of the brit mela for boys. Ah ha - I could talk about gender inequality issues in the Bible. But with Neil as our rabbi and given his extensive knowledge in that arena, I'd definitely be a poor substitute. So nix to that.
The second part of this double portion is almost exclusively about leprosy and skin disease. How the priests should examine skin problems of the Jewish people; which ones are okay and which ones not; what color are they; is there a hair in the center; is it a lesion or just a rash; and on and on, as is typical of Leviticus. A second "ah ha" - I could just to read a few pages to the congregation from Tabor's Encyclopedic Medical Dictionary about leprosy and a few pages about skin rashes, and I'd be done. So here we go......[take out the book and open it on the podium].....no, just kidding.
So what was I going to do my sermon on? I decided I'd discuss a question that remarkably pops up in my life on a random but not unoften basis. The question mostly comes from my friends and acquaintances who are not Jewish and the question is "What do you have to believe or do to be a Jew?" And if you hang with me until the end, you'll see how this question relates to this week's Torah section.
Puzzle Piece Number 1: I have a friend at work who is a Jehovah's Witness. He's a bright guy and we often get into good deep discussions on philosophy, the universe, and religion. And one day he asked me just that - What do you have to believe or do to be a Jew? Of course the answer to that varies quite a bit, particularly depending on whether you are Orthodox or Reform. And my discussions with him are usually about my practice of Judaism because I really can't speak with any accuracy about the Orthodox or the Hassidic. One reason I struggle a bit with this question is that at this moment in my life, personally, I'm not much of a believer in God. But I certainly consider myself absolutely a Jew. And so I end up asking myself that question. What makes me a Jew?
As many of you know, I am a physicist. I specialized in elementary particle physics in graduate school, so I have lots of implanted knowledge of how the universe actually does work. About 30 years ago, my father asked me how, as a physicist, do I reconcile my Judaism with my scientific knowledge. My answer to him at that time was that I didn't feel I had to. I was comfortable with keeping those parts of my life separated - even in my mind. But then I am stuck - if I either don't believe in God, or I find that the facts of the universe don't require one, why do I consider myself Jewish? Why do I practice Judaism? What does a Reform Jew have to do or believe?
Puzzle Piece Number 2: A few years ago, in a Torah class being led here at TBS by our dear Rabbi Ben Morrow, he offered up that he had been, in his terms, "a seeker" for many years. Then he was an agnostic, by which he meant more than that the question of the existence of god was unknowable; he meant also that to him it was no longer important. He then went on to ask himself the rhetorical question "Why then do we study Torah?" And his answer was that we study Torah because it is our story. It is the story of our people. He offered that there were other stories for other peoples and cultures, but this one was ours. I note that he didn't say it was our history, as that would imply its authenticity regarding the facts. He said it was our story.
Puzzle Piece Number 3: The beginning of this week's parsha provides us with two mitzvot following a birth: Number 1. The required sin offering by the mother after a specified amount of time, and Number 2. the circumcision ritual after 8 days for boy babies. It's pretty obvious that amongst Reform Jews, one of these mitzvot, that of the brit mela, has largely stuck and even been expanded in ritual to include a parallel ceremony for girls, obviously not including a circumcision; and the other, the sin offering, is certainly almost entirely ignored. My sister-in-law (who happens not to be Jewish) calls this "shopping cart religion." She doesn't do so antagonistically. It's just a statement of the facts of what Reform Jews everywhere do, and it is clearly sanctioned by the Reform Movement. We adopt and adapt by choice.
When my sister's son was born, even though both parents were brought up Jewish, they chose not to have their son circumcised. Later on, they chose not to do a bar mitzvah. Yet if you ask that family, all three of them, parents and child alike, consider themselves Jewish. If you take their opinion as truth, what is it that makes them Jewish? Maybe the obvious answer in their case is bloodline.
Puzzle Piece Number 4: When Elizabeth Warren was challenged about her claim of being part Native American, she responded with the results from a DNA test that came back saying that in all likelihood she was 1/1024 part Native American. In other words, 8 generations back, one of her ancestors was Native American. So much for a bloodline rational. But some of the tribes here in the U.S., took it farther, and in my opinion, pointed to the answer to my dilemma about what does it take to be a Jew. The tribes said that even if she had more blood ancestry in her line, that would not make her Native American. Why? Because she was not brought up in nor had she participated in the culture and rituals of the Native Americans tribes.
Without doubt, the most significant thing that sets humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom is our rich use of language. Most importantly, we use language to tell stories, and thereby pass on knowledge, history, and traditions from generation to generation. So for a moment I will digress and tell two stories about one of the most practiced traditions of Judaism around the world and it's coming up very soon - Passover. These are two of my stories.
When I was young, we lived in New York, and for the first Seder, we would get together with all of my mother's side of the family in Brooklyn at my Bubby's house. There were 14 of us all together: 2 grandparents, 6 aunts and uncles, and 6 cousins. It was joyous and raucous. We loved it. The living room was set up with a day bed on one side of the table, where the kids all sat. Was that brilliant! We could sit, we could squiggle all we wanted, we could recline like free people, we could elbow each other and joke around, and after 4 small cups of wine, we could just lay back and fall asleep.
When I was a bit older, and had studied for my Bar Mitzvah, I thrilled my Orthodox grandfather by actually following along as he read all of the concluding passages in the Haggadah after the meal at lightning speed. And it made me so proud that I could. To this day, I can directly trace the warm spot in my heart about Passover to those special evenings in Brooklyn, and they form the foundation of my love of the Passover holiday.
More than a decade later, after I became a physicist, I was doing a post-doc at Virginia Tech and found myself engaged in an experiment up at the Los Alamos Linear Accelerator with a consortium of five universities from around the world. One of the universities was Tel Aviv University and I became friendly with the professor from there with whom I was working. Sure enough, it was Passover and I had nowhere to go for Seder. I knew no Jews in Los Alamos save him. But Israelis are amazing - they always know where to find other Israelis. It's like a special built-in compass that they have. So I ended up being invited along with him to a Seder at the home of another Israeli whom I had never met.
When I arrived at the home, I was the only American. They were all Israelis and the Haggadah was entirely in Hebrew. Also, the chatting going on was in Hebrew. I knew no one except my friend from Tel Aviv University. But as the rituals and prayers started, I realized quickly that it made no difference. The prayers, the songs, and even most of the melodies were all the same. I had a wonderful evening, and because most Israelis speak a good amount of English, I probably learned a few conversational Hebrew phrases along the way. Without even knowing each other, we were family.
Up until recently when my own family is now spread across the entire U.S., Passover has been a big deal at our house every year. The preparation, the rituals, the songs, the prayers, we have everything from that old Maxwell House Haggadah that New York Jews all remember, to a beautiful set with illustration prints by Mac Chagall, we actually act out the plagues at the table, we play Passover jeopardy at the end of the meal, and we invite non-Jews to our celebration. And, I am proud to say that now, my daughters both do something in their own homes albeit on a much smaller scale than what we did while they lived with us.
So in conclusion, here is my answer to "What does a person have to do or believe to be a Jew?" In this time of shopping cart religion, I have a real collection of things in my shopping cart. Things that mean something to me and to my family. I have participation; I have daughters that have been brought up in the traditions; I have hopefully passed on Jewish values to them through study, stories and by example; I am ecstatic for Purim every year; I play the service music on Friday nights whenever my schedule allows; I have memories of the Bat Mitzvahs of my daughters; I even wrote a song for each one that our utterly fantastic cantor sung to them at the service; I took my wife and daughters to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat on Broadway; my wife converted to Judaism in a beautiful ritual, although she hated the mikvah part beforehand; I love Gefilte Fish; I am truly contemplative and focused on atonement for the High Holidays; and the list goes on. Maybe by the end of my days, I will even fill two shopping carts, because one thing I can tell you - I haven't stopped shopping. And what makes Jews a world-wide family, is that I know all of you are just in the next aisle over. And let us say "Amen."
Well, as is obvious, the rabbi isn't here with us this week. Earlier in the week I ran into Aaron and he asked me if I wanted to do the sermon tonight.
I responded with a yes, and asked if I could simply play and sing Elton John's Saturday Night's Alright and just change the words to Friday Night's Alright. We decided that wasn't appropriate because it's all about drinking with your buddies and picking up women at the bar. So I thought, oh yeah, how about Katy Perry. She has a song called Last Friday Night. But it turns out that's all about debauchery and getting drunk too, so same problem.
So, I gave in to the usual - I would do a spoken sermon based on this week's parsha. As it turns out, this week is a double portion out of Leviticus. The first section is about the uncleanliness, the blood purification, and then eventual sin offering for a mother after giving birth. And interestingly enough there is a difference depending on if the baby is a boy or a girl. This section also mentions the requirement of the brit mela for boys. Ah ha - I could talk about gender inequality issues in the Bible. But with Neil as our rabbi and given his extensive knowledge in that arena, I'd definitely be a poor substitute. So nix to that.
The second part of this double portion is almost exclusively about leprosy and skin disease. How the priests should examine skin problems of the Jewish people; which ones are okay and which ones not; what color are they; is there a hair in the center; is it a lesion or just a rash; and on and on, as is typical of Leviticus. A second "ah ha" - I could just to read a few pages to the congregation from Tabor's Encyclopedic Medical Dictionary about leprosy and a few pages about skin rashes, and I'd be done. So here we go......[take out the book and open it on the podium].....no, just kidding.
So what was I going to do my sermon on? I decided I'd discuss a question that remarkably pops up in my life on a random but not unoften basis. The question mostly comes from my friends and acquaintances who are not Jewish and the question is "What do you have to believe or do to be a Jew?" And if you hang with me until the end, you'll see how this question relates to this week's Torah section.
Puzzle Piece Number 1: I have a friend at work who is a Jehovah's Witness. He's a bright guy and we often get into good deep discussions on philosophy, the universe, and religion. And one day he asked me just that - What do you have to believe or do to be a Jew? Of course the answer to that varies quite a bit, particularly depending on whether you are Orthodox or Reform. And my discussions with him are usually about my practice of Judaism because I really can't speak with any accuracy about the Orthodox or the Hassidic. One reason I struggle a bit with this question is that at this moment in my life, personally, I'm not much of a believer in God. But I certainly consider myself absolutely a Jew. And so I end up asking myself that question. What makes me a Jew?
As many of you know, I am a physicist. I specialized in elementary particle physics in graduate school, so I have lots of implanted knowledge of how the universe actually does work. About 30 years ago, my father asked me how, as a physicist, do I reconcile my Judaism with my scientific knowledge. My answer to him at that time was that I didn't feel I had to. I was comfortable with keeping those parts of my life separated - even in my mind. But then I am stuck - if I either don't believe in God, or I find that the facts of the universe don't require one, why do I consider myself Jewish? Why do I practice Judaism? What does a Reform Jew have to do or believe?
Puzzle Piece Number 2: A few years ago, in a Torah class being led here at TBS by our dear Rabbi Ben Morrow, he offered up that he had been, in his terms, "a seeker" for many years. Then he was an agnostic, by which he meant more than that the question of the existence of god was unknowable; he meant also that to him it was no longer important. He then went on to ask himself the rhetorical question "Why then do we study Torah?" And his answer was that we study Torah because it is our story. It is the story of our people. He offered that there were other stories for other peoples and cultures, but this one was ours. I note that he didn't say it was our history, as that would imply its authenticity regarding the facts. He said it was our story.
Puzzle Piece Number 3: The beginning of this week's parsha provides us with two mitzvot following a birth: Number 1. The required sin offering by the mother after a specified amount of time, and Number 2. the circumcision ritual after 8 days for boy babies. It's pretty obvious that amongst Reform Jews, one of these mitzvot, that of the brit mela, has largely stuck and even been expanded in ritual to include a parallel ceremony for girls, obviously not including a circumcision; and the other, the sin offering, is certainly almost entirely ignored. My sister-in-law (who happens not to be Jewish) calls this "shopping cart religion." She doesn't do so antagonistically. It's just a statement of the facts of what Reform Jews everywhere do, and it is clearly sanctioned by the Reform Movement. We adopt and adapt by choice.
When my sister's son was born, even though both parents were brought up Jewish, they chose not to have their son circumcised. Later on, they chose not to do a bar mitzvah. Yet if you ask that family, all three of them, parents and child alike, consider themselves Jewish. If you take their opinion as truth, what is it that makes them Jewish? Maybe the obvious answer in their case is bloodline.
Puzzle Piece Number 4: When Elizabeth Warren was challenged about her claim of being part Native American, she responded with the results from a DNA test that came back saying that in all likelihood she was 1/1024 part Native American. In other words, 8 generations back, one of her ancestors was Native American. So much for a bloodline rational. But some of the tribes here in the U.S., took it farther, and in my opinion, pointed to the answer to my dilemma about what does it take to be a Jew. The tribes said that even if she had more blood ancestry in her line, that would not make her Native American. Why? Because she was not brought up in nor had she participated in the culture and rituals of the Native Americans tribes.
Without doubt, the most significant thing that sets humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom is our rich use of language. Most importantly, we use language to tell stories, and thereby pass on knowledge, history, and traditions from generation to generation. So for a moment I will digress and tell two stories about one of the most practiced traditions of Judaism around the world and it's coming up very soon - Passover. These are two of my stories.
When I was young, we lived in New York, and for the first Seder, we would get together with all of my mother's side of the family in Brooklyn at my Bubby's house. There were 14 of us all together: 2 grandparents, 6 aunts and uncles, and 6 cousins. It was joyous and raucous. We loved it. The living room was set up with a day bed on one side of the table, where the kids all sat. Was that brilliant! We could sit, we could squiggle all we wanted, we could recline like free people, we could elbow each other and joke around, and after 4 small cups of wine, we could just lay back and fall asleep.
When I was a bit older, and had studied for my Bar Mitzvah, I thrilled my Orthodox grandfather by actually following along as he read all of the concluding passages in the Haggadah after the meal at lightning speed. And it made me so proud that I could. To this day, I can directly trace the warm spot in my heart about Passover to those special evenings in Brooklyn, and they form the foundation of my love of the Passover holiday.
More than a decade later, after I became a physicist, I was doing a post-doc at Virginia Tech and found myself engaged in an experiment up at the Los Alamos Linear Accelerator with a consortium of five universities from around the world. One of the universities was Tel Aviv University and I became friendly with the professor from there with whom I was working. Sure enough, it was Passover and I had nowhere to go for Seder. I knew no Jews in Los Alamos save him. But Israelis are amazing - they always know where to find other Israelis. It's like a special built-in compass that they have. So I ended up being invited along with him to a Seder at the home of another Israeli whom I had never met.
When I arrived at the home, I was the only American. They were all Israelis and the Haggadah was entirely in Hebrew. Also, the chatting going on was in Hebrew. I knew no one except my friend from Tel Aviv University. But as the rituals and prayers started, I realized quickly that it made no difference. The prayers, the songs, and even most of the melodies were all the same. I had a wonderful evening, and because most Israelis speak a good amount of English, I probably learned a few conversational Hebrew phrases along the way. Without even knowing each other, we were family.
Up until recently when my own family is now spread across the entire U.S., Passover has been a big deal at our house every year. The preparation, the rituals, the songs, the prayers, we have everything from that old Maxwell House Haggadah that New York Jews all remember, to a beautiful set with illustration prints by Mac Chagall, we actually act out the plagues at the table, we play Passover jeopardy at the end of the meal, and we invite non-Jews to our celebration. And, I am proud to say that now, my daughters both do something in their own homes albeit on a much smaller scale than what we did while they lived with us.
So in conclusion, here is my answer to "What does a person have to do or believe to be a Jew?" In this time of shopping cart religion, I have a real collection of things in my shopping cart. Things that mean something to me and to my family. I have participation; I have daughters that have been brought up in the traditions; I have hopefully passed on Jewish values to them through study, stories and by example; I am ecstatic for Purim every year; I play the service music on Friday nights whenever my schedule allows; I have memories of the Bat Mitzvahs of my daughters; I even wrote a song for each one that our utterly fantastic cantor sung to them at the service; I took my wife and daughters to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat on Broadway; my wife converted to Judaism in a beautiful ritual, although she hated the mikvah part beforehand; I love Gefilte Fish; I am truly contemplative and focused on atonement for the High Holidays; and the list goes on. Maybe by the end of my days, I will even fill two shopping carts, because one thing I can tell you - I haven't stopped shopping. And what makes Jews a world-wide family, is that I know all of you are just in the next aisle over. And let us say "Amen."