November 2022
Friends,
These have been tense weeks in our world especially across the Jewish world and community. The open and rising tide of antisemitic rhetoric (and attacks) continues even as this past week we marked four years since the horrific attack on the Tree of Life congregation in Pittsburgh. As I write these words, the Israeli polls are due to close within the hour on Israel’s fifth national election in four years, and the polls suggest yet another tension-filled and possibly indecisive outcome.
And of course, our own nation is on edge with our own mid-term elections just a week away. The rhetoric across the political spectrum is ugly, as are torrents of misinformation, and disinformation being poured across our airwaves. Whatever the outcome of next week’s voting, we are certain to be in for challenges and possibly rejections of some outcomes, no matter what they may be. It seems to be the tenor of our times.
Conflict and challenging relationships have been the human lot since time immemorial. Indeed, week by week we are reading and studying the book of Genesis, the first of our Five Books of Moses. My teacher, Rabbi Norman Cohen, wrote several books about the stories in Genesis which illustrate that the book is something of a mirror meant to hold up before our eyes the complexities of human and family dynamics and relationships. Whether it was Cain and Abel and their sibling challenge in the opening portion of the Torah, or this week’s strife between family members of Abraham’s clan as they dispute who can graze their flocks and herds on which parcel of land. (Sounds a bit like a popular TV series.) The old stories are not unlike our newer ones. He reasons that part of why Genesis speaks so pointedly about the challenges of human relationships and especially families is so that we can recognize some piece of our own experience in these narratives. The tools and technologies of interaction and relationships have changed (witness all the turmoil and discourse about Social Media these days), but human nature is just as a complex as ever. It’s hard to read (or watch) the news, and listen to the cacophony of voices, each one seemingly trying to drown out the other.
Some turn to exercise, yoga, mindfulness practice, and a myriad of other practices to settle the mind and the soul. Our Jewish tradition has long presented Shabbat as our antidote to the complexities and hectic realities of our lives. In recent days, our world noted the death of Thomas Cahill, oner of the great historians of our time who set out to write a series of works on the great civilizations of human history. Cahill’s second book was The Gifts of the Jews. Decades later, it is still a work worth reading. Among the cornerstone “gifts” that Thomas Cahill names is the concept of the Sabbath. The “island in time” as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel called it, was in Cahill’s view, one of the Jewish people’s greatest contributions to human civilization. I dare say, that in our chaotic times, we need this gift as much as we ever have.
I invite you, in the midst of these weeks of noise and turmoil, come join your Sha’arei Shalom community this Friday night, November 4th, as we come together on that island in time to reflect on life and calm our hearts, minds and souls.
Rabbi Eric