Memorial Day Tribute to My father.

Dear Friends,
I had to write something about Memorial Day. I know this is a day for barbecue. It is a day that should hold more importance in the mindset of our nation. In Israel it is a big deal because everyone has either lost someone in battle or knows someone was killed in war.
Yet why do we not consider this day as sacred? Sure lots of veteran organizations do their best and parades try to capture the honor that is due the fallen. Somehow it does not seem to unite our nation. What will unite our country these days?
I lost my father in 1999. He was a staff Sargent on Utah Beach on the  the first day of D-Day. He was one of the unspoken heroes of WWII. He did not brag about his service record. He was proud of what he did and as a disabled war veteran he carried on with his life and was a fantastic father that both my brother and I loved dearly.
I will tell you this story.
He told me once that after he had returned home and had endured a year of numerous hand surgeries after getting a shrapnel wound at the Ziegfied Line (Battle of the Bulge) he was working part time in a grocery story. He struggled to pick up boxes given that his left arm had atrophied during the surgeries. He was probably 23 at the time when he heard twopeople  saying, about him; "Look at that man! What is wrong with him? Why didn't he serve in the army?" My father was convinced they were talking about him. I asked him what did he do? He said, "I just laughed under my breath." Staff Sargent Oscar Bloom- Third Division.

One more vignette.
Before he died he had the chance to see "Saving Private Ryan." One of my favorite movies of all time. I asked him, "Dad, what did you think of the movie?" He said, "Well , it was definitely the best and most realistic movie made about D-Day. But one thing was missing." He paused and I said, "What Dad?"  He replied, "The smell. A movie can't capture the smell. I remember the smell of war. Horrible"
There are times when I think to myself that all the good in my life was due to the fact that he served his country at the most important moment in modern times. His bravery is a protecting shield over me. I know it sounds strange or weird but I sort of sense it that due to the z'chut avot, the merit of the fathers I have enjoyed a good life.
Staff Sargent Oscar Bloom -Dog tags with the letter H which stands for Hebrew-Jew. My Dad. I wish you could have known the sweet man he was all his life.

Religion and the Schools can be Partners

http://www.islandpacket.com/2012/05/26/2081617/bloom-bluffton-middle-school-incident.html
 Here is the article I wrote in my column for the Island Packet Newspaper. It turned out to be a productive experience for the kids. The kids learned something. But what I hope will happen is that we will have the chance to meet with the faculty. We were supposed to do so but they cancelled the meeting. I think it is important to receive their feedback to our program and for them to  understand the impact of this teacher's alleged anti-semitic remarks to the student and her alleged manhandling of the same student in a classroom had upon the Jewish community.
My own view is that we need to cultivate more bridges of understanding between the Jewish Community and the school authorities as well as other public institutions. We are a growing Jewish community with a wider array of interests. But the other lesson of this event is not just about speaking out. It is about remembering that that different religions joined us to address this highly publicized event that went viral on the internet and wire services. A Catholic Priest and Protestant minister and the school authorities worked together with us. We cannot forget to respond willingly when others outside the Jewish community are in need of our support on issues we care about as well.

Know before whom you stand. What would you do to protect your religion?

I am thinking about the moment when Elie Wiesel on April 19, 1985 received the Congressional Gold Medal of Achievement from President Reagan. In his acceptance speech Wiesel forcefully criticized President Reagan for his planned trip to Bitburg military cemetery in which forty seven members of Hitler’s Waffen SS were buried. He said, “That place, Mr. President, is not your place. Your place is with the victims of the SS.” For me Wiesel’s words and what they meant to American Jewry in front of the President of the United States was an act of self sacrifice given the public relations repercussions of the speech for American Jewry. It is a credit to him and to President Reagan for listening to him. Unfortunately, President Reagan did not take Wiesel’s advice.

The Jewish view of this kind of an act of putting oneself on the line in speaking truth to power and accepting the consequences represents a longstanding theme in Jewish history. What is it all about? Whether we call it speaking truth to power or acting on the call to save our people or maintaining our own sacred principles, Judaism calls us to not profane God’s presence at all costs.  The Torah Portion of the week Emor provides us with the basic Scriptural and Rabbinical definitions of when and why a Jewish person may give up their life to protect sacred values and especially to defend God. I ask myself , ‘would I ever give up my life for any cause that I believe so strongly in that I would give up all that I  cherish in this life and life itself to stand up for something I believe in heart and soul? I cannot say I can truly answer that question. But I can say that our heritage provides us with examples of people who met that challenge and did give up their lives lest they be asked to commit transgressions and moral breaches of faith against God which would bring dishonor to God, themselves and to the community.

We are reading the end of the Leviticus holiness code which provides us all kinds of moral and ethical laws that go back to the basic principle that God wants us to act God-like, that is, to imitate God-like behavior. In the Torah the context is about the religious integrity of the priesthood. Yet, the core of the Jewish idea of giving up one’s life is called Kiddush haShem or Sanctification of (God’s) the Name. In Leviticus we read, “You shall not profane My holy name; but I will be sanctified among the children of Israel’ (22:31-32).

The sages long ago since the days of the Jewish revolt against Rome in the 2^nd century C.E. and Rabbi Akiva gave up his life and other sages like him when ordered to stop teaching Torah or ordaining rabbis or practicing the ritual of circumcision. To the rabbis the Roman decree to stop these sacred duties would have meant casting the Jewish people into idolatry because it would have condemned Judaism’s future.

Each year we read on Yom Kippur in the afternoon service the martyrology when the ten rabbis of that period died at the hands of the Romans.  The rest of the stories we read about from the Crusades and many other brutal accounts of violent anti-Semitism in history to our own times set in pattern the theme of intense reflection on Yom Kippur and canonized in the collective memory of the Jewish people the psychological trauma as well as the moral challenge passed down through the generations. The foundation of this heritage is the principle that standing up for God and for the honor of the Jewish people is a responsibility that a Jew bears even if the demands, under unique conditions, require self-sacrifice. Wiesel understood that dimension of risking his standing and that of American Jewry when we spoke to President Reagan.

The Jewish idea of martyrdom, explained in a commentary, puts it quite simply by saying, “This precept is based on the idea that man was created for the sole purpose of serving his Creator.  Whoever is not willing to lay down his life for his master is not a good servant”(sefer hachinuch).

I came across this commentary in preparing for tomorrow morning’s Torah Study discussion on the same topic. I stopped for a moment and thought about what I was reading. Quickly I realized that I could very well be a poor servant and, ergo, not a good rabbi. I don’t know if I would have given up my life, for example, in medieval Spain to resist the Inquisition. Would I have converted to another faith to save myself or my family in any time of oppression? Would I have accepted the fate of cruel torture and death like Rabbi Akiva?   What would any of us do if we were forced to transgress everything sacred to us in order to live?

Today we think about religion in a very spiritual way which means, in effect, ‘it is all about me.’ Forgive me for being a bit sarcastic here but people think about sacrifices when it comes to how much driving time it takes to get to their house of worship. We are, thank god, a far cry from more tumultuous and hostile times for our people. But in this period of history where we live in peace and tranquility should we be thinking about what we really believe in and what we would be willing to stand up for if challenged to the core of our being?

Rabbi Akiva disobeyed the Emperor Hadrian’s prohibition of teaching the Torah. He was arrested and was condemned to die a cruel martyr’s death.

When he was tortured in the presence of the wicked roman governor Tinneius Rufus, the time came for the “Hear oh Israel” to be recited. Rabbi Akiva recited it and smiled.

The Roman official shouted at him. “Old man, how can you smile in your pain?  You are either a magician, or you make fun of your sufferings.”

 Akiva answered:  “I am no magician, and I do not make fun of my sufferings.  But throughout all my life I have recited the words, ‘You must love the lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might’ and I was sad when I could not understand how I might possibly love God with all my soul.  I have loved God with all my heart and with all my might.  But it was never clear to me how I could also love Him with all my soul.  Now that I am giving up my soul and the hour of the Shema has come, while I am determined to remain true to my resolve, should I not be smiling?” (Palestinian Talmud Berakhot 9:7). This is speaking truth to power.

Of course the story is frightening. At the same time is it not inspiring too? Hopefully the future will never put our descendants to the test like the kind of martyrdom we read about in our sacred scriptures today? Looking back into history, the sages and people in general, men and women in our history, gave up their lives so that this people could continue to light candles and sanctify god’s world?  This story and the principle of Kiddush haShem should give us a deeper understanding about an uncomfortable but, nevertheless, important aspect of being a Jew which is exemplified in the statement from Ethics of the Fathers,” Know before whom you stand.” Certainly Wiesel understood that in his remarks to President Reagan.

The sociologist, Charles Silberman, characterized Wiesel’s plea to the President as “the most remarkable moment in the annals of American Jewry.” Religion has its own chemistry that is different than other sciences. Religion is not just a philosophic system or a compendium of tomes of laws and texts from ancient scholars. It is about real life and how faith will drive us to heroism in ways that we could never foresee. That is the awesomeness of the world God bequeathed and why it deserves our best effort to protect it. It is simply up to us on how we act in it.

Why we need a temple community

Kedoshim-New Member Shabbat

We are living in an age where the biblical verse “Love your Neighbor as yourself “is put to the test. We read about so much that divides us. We read about the politics and the economics that have challenged our faith in the elected leadership. We ourselves read newspaper accounts of incidents inside our own community such as teachers in the public schools hurling anti-Semitic slurs and manhandling students. There are other abuses of human dignity that happen in our region. And I hope it makes us feel just a bit more secure knowing that we have a Jewish Community at Congregation Beth Yam which will watch out and speak out for all of us at times when we feel deeply concerned about an issue in the community.

The Torah portion for this week is Kedoshim and it reminds us to imitate God in the way we live. For the most sacred kinds of values and behaviors are those that God has taught us to model these sacred values and behaviors.  Congregation Beth Yam is an institution that is supposed to represent those values of human dignity to each other and to the entire community. But when we see that others do not practice them then we must reflect carefully before we as a community respond. For those of us who are joining this congregation I say this because the reported incident in the newspaper this week of the Bluffton Middle school teacher has taught us a lesson about why we need to value and respect the purpose of having a temple in the low country. It is not always about the particular worship pattern we present or the adult education courses or the youth programs. They are all important. But tonight we ask why do we need a Jewish community for our relationships with the outside world? To answer this question is to answer another question. “Why am I joining a congregation and what am I investing in when I support this congregation?

We read in the Parasha “You shall not oppress your neighbor.” You shall not rob them. You shall render judgment fairly.  Do not gossip and do not hate your brother in your heart. You shall not stand by the blood of your neighbor.” All these verses are telling us that God has high expectations from us. And what unifies all these verses is the moral imperative to use individual restraint to keep our emotions in line. It is not just telling us what to do but how to feel emotionally towards our neighbors. Sometimes that could be our loved ones and other times those in the community we live in.

The Parasha continues to guide us about restraining our inner emotions. The Torah reminds us to treat senior adults with respect. And there is a great deal here about not harassing the strangers. We read about sexual immorality on all levels regarding prohibited behaviors within families. Again the point is to not indulge heated emotions nor our physical desires too. The Torah tells us about setting boundaries on all levels of human interaction.

God is telling us that God wants us to be different and that is why we have these laws. “For you shall be holy to Me, for  I, the Eternal One, am holy, and I have distinguished you from the peoples, to be Mine” (20:26).

We feel different and separate because we are Jews. I think that is part of the privilege of being Jewish. We have a different kind of mandate to observe laws and traditions that God handed down to our ancestors who transmitted them to us. Being identified as different, however, is a not so easy to cope with especially in our community. We imagine that when we retire to Hilton Head and Bluffton we don’t have to deal with so-called “Jewish issues.” The truth is that we do have a responsibility if we have any sense of honor or dignity about who we are as a Jewish community to educate others about us and there are times when advocacy is also important. The case of the school teacher has opened up questions not only about how the school system handles the Holocaust and Jewish students and faculty but also about the culture of the schools in how well they embrace religious diversity and how responsive they are to the Jewish community. Remember we have probably over 30 kids in our temple in the public schools and congregants who teach in these schools as well.

I am sure that protecting Jewish kids and faculty in our school system is not the reason for joining our congregation. But the idea that joining our community strengthens us and those who need our support has been part and parcel of the Jewish community mission in America. That mission does not change even when we retire.

Our faith tradition is concerned about life and there is no such thing as retirement from the world. Age itself does not exempt us from not acting or caring about injustice or building bridges for mutual understanding. And that is what we want to do with the school system and that is why we need our congregation to be knowledgeable about what happens in our community.

I am glad we have such a vibrant group of new members joining us this year. The leadership of Penne Meiselman and Mike Weingarten and their committee deserve our appreciation. We are striving for the kind of community that broadens the reach of this congregation into the community at large to do good work even if the issues are delicate and, at times, controversial. We will work hard with the leadership and engage us to make a difference in the low country. I personally want to thank all the new members for making this choice and strengthening our standing in the community. Your volunteerism in the broader community enhances the reputation and credibility Congregation Beth Yam. 

It is possible that we didn’t realize it when we joined this congregation but we invested something of our souls in standing united with a Jewish community. We invested our commitment to protecting the values that Torah teaches us for our children and teens and their parents as well as for all the age groups. They stand upon our shoulders and we must be strong for them and for the future so that anyone moving here will know that Congregation Beth Yam is a beacon of light and the central address for the Jewish community. That is the sacred mission of our community to imitate God’s will to fashion a healthy involved and secure Jewish community.

Shabbat Shalom

Passover is about the redemption in the here and now.

http://www.islandpacket.com/2012/04/07/2027587/passover-a-time-of-ritual-and.html#storylink=misearch

Here is another column that appeared in the Island Packet newsletter last Shabbat. It is part two in the Passover series. I hope you have time to read it and share any comments you may have about the article.
I wish every one a peaceful and reflective Passover. Remember Yiskor for Reform Jews is on Friday morning and Saturday morning for the Conservative and Orthodox branches of Judaism.
Take care and chag sameah Passover.

Passover thoughts: Meditations on Preparing for the Seder

Passover thoughts

It is the eve of Passover and the preparations are fast coming to a conclusion. I have made the trips to Savannah to buy the kosher brisket and all the rest of the Passover foods that typically become part of the week’s dietary regimen. Tomorrow morning we will have services at Temple and then over 130 for the second night seder. No doubt it will be a grand weekend for my congregation and the rest of the Jewish world sitting down in homes to retell the story of the Passover Exodus.

The most important aspect for me in preparing for the Seder and for Passover itself is reading the Haggadah. There are many kinds of Haggadot that represent all kinds of ideologies across the spectrum of Jewish life. It is interesting how creative we have become with designing Haggadot not only from an arts perspective but from the content itself. I have seen such Haggadaot as the vegetarian Haggadah, the Holocaust survivors Haggadah or the socialist Haggadah, just to name a few. There are hundreds more that one could amass a small library of Haggadot. It is the Jewish love affair with books that might fuel this passion for Haggadah. Maybe another reason is that it is the one traditional book that allows for each generation to stamp its print on the text and reinterpret it in a way that no other holy book has allowed for over the generations.

Each day this week I sat down and studied a portion of the most traditional edition of the Haggadah with all the rabbinical commentaries. I feel refreshed and engaged as if I am visiting my old friends again who wait for me each year to open the pages (not digital) and pour through their interpretations. It is not that I don’t want to read the new age commentaries, but, I just feel drawn to traditional ideas. I want to speak of redemption and of the coming of our deliverance today from the all the metaphors that contemporary thinkers, including myself, can come up with to make the text apply to our times. At the same time I am looking to go back in time sitting besides other sages who poured over the same texts and dreamed of their own vision of how the Exodus happened and what it was like to sit down in ancient Temple times to sacrifice and then eat the Pascal offering.

I want to imagine the children and the mothers, the grandparents and the aunts and uncles sitting down to Seder in Poland as well as in Cairo. I am wondering if they had the same pressures to finish at a reasonable hour as we do today. Did they discuss the well being of the Jewish community living under their rulers with the same trepidation and hope centuries ago as we did up until the creation of the state of Israel and the destruction of the FSU?

In so many ways I cannot separate the world of the Haggadah from Jewish history or our world today. I feel grateful that I can as a Rabbi allow myself to follow a melody of God that draws me back in time and at the same time causes me to look at Jewish life today.

I believe that there is a trajectory that history follows. Jewish history was about following a pathway that began with our servitude and concluded with our redemption. That is why living in these times with the existence of Israel makes the Passover story so exciting.  We are all witnesses to an ongoing story that begins a new cycle of history which I call the Redemption Cycle. We are only at the beginning of our Redemption and it will go in many different directions. That is also what preserves the mystery where God’s presence and teachings intersect with the choices we make as a people and with the actions that other nations in the world take towards the Jewish people.

This is why I love Passover because it is a moment in time to look upon the Seder table into each of the items that lay innocently before our eyes and see into them our history so as to meditate on what the future brings us.

I wish everyone a joyous and insightful Pesach.

Passover and Easter:" two faiths and one spirit"

http://www.islandpacket.com/2012/03/31/2019704/two-faiths-two-holidays-one-spirit.html#storylink=misearch

Here is the link to the column I wrote that appeared in the Island Packet Newspaper and the Beaufort Gazette this past Shabbat.
Have a good read.
Brad