Theodore Olson passed away recently. Olson was a leading Conservative power broker in the 80s and 90s, a legal advisor to President Ronald Reagan, a founding member of the Federalist Society, the influential conservative legal group, and a leading figure in many conservative legal triumphs of the 2000s, including Bush v. Gore (2000) and Citizens United (2010). But in 2009, Mr. Olson shocked both right and left-wing adherents when he fought for the right of gay marriage before the Supreme Court. People assumed it must have been personal for him – a gay child, or other relative. But Olson insisted it was consistent with his conservative political beliefs – one should be able to live freely without government interference on such personal matters.
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On Wednesday morning, I woke up admittedly a little later than normal because it was my day off. However, I noticed a remarkable event – the sun came up just like on every other day! I went out shopping, and observed that the foliage was looking remarkably beautiful this year. I stopped into the stores and the price of eggs – were the same as last week! And Christmas displays were up, 2 months early, just like they were supposed to be! It was a perfectly normal Wednesday!
And that was the problem.
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If you keep your ears open, you can learn Torah from everywhere.
On the yahrtzeit of October 7, Vice President Kamala Harris commemorated the tragedy by planting a pomegranate tree on the grounds of the naval observatory, the official residence of the Vice President. She shared a beautiful davar Torah about the meaning of the Kaddish that I am sure was news to many Jews.
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For the last three years I have taken on a personal learning project and shared it with the congregation. Five minutes of Torah from Sinai is literally a Torah lesson that takes five minutes to read. The last two years I have chosen two midrashic compilations as the source for the lesson. This past year the midrashim came from Midrash Tanhuma, an 8th century compilation of midrashim on the Torah portion of the week. This coming year I am going to try something different.
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On November 29, 1947 Zipporah Porat an American student studying at Hebrew University, wrote this to her family:
I walked in a semi-daze through the crowds of happy faces, through the deafening singing, "David, Melech Yisrael, Chai, Chai ve Kayam", past the British tanks and jeeps piled high with pyramids of flag-waving, cheering children. I dodged motor cycles, wagons, cars and trucks which were racing madly up and down King George Street … their running boards and headlights overflowing with layer upon layer of elated happy people. I pushed my way past the crying, kissing tumultuous crowds and the exultant shouts of "Mazal Tov" and came back to the quiet of my room...to try to share with you this never to be forgotten night.”
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Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
So begins Leo Tolstoy’s great novel Anna Karenina.
This quotation can be an apt description of the Jewish people. For the image with which we Jews prefer to draw ourselves is an extended family, unlike for example, Christianity which sees itself as a community of believers. And families disagree but continue to love each other. What is our unique form of unhappiness?
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I don’t know how many of you remember the Chicago Bear Devin Hester who entered the NFL Hall of Fame this year. He was the greatest football return specialist and was honored for it with his induction.
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Lizzie and I were so grateful to be in Israel this summer. We had wonderful visits with our Sinai friends as well as with family. We took a powerful trip to Nir Oz, one of the kibbutzim attacked on October 7 and we spoke about the impact of the trip on us and our friend Nitzan and family a couple of weeks ago. One of the wonderful aspects of being in Israel after the last year and so many news reports about anti-Semitism and rallies calling for death to Zionists is that you go to Israel and there are so many Jews there! No worries about hiding your Jewish star or kipa. Hebrew is everywhere, Jewish heritage is all around you. It is so great. On the other hand, what is so challenging about being in Israel is that there are so many Jews there! I mean, it’s enough already with the pushing and shoving, and everyone has an opinion, which they and they alone know is the correct opinion.
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In the medieval period, an approach to Torah developed that was different from the earlier periods. It was called musar, meaning instruction, with the intention being ethical instruction. The concept developed from the impact of Greek wisdom, specifically Aristotelian thought, that suggested a division between external behaviorism and inner intention, between the role of the body and the role of the soul, the conscience. The belief was that the soul and its intentions were most important than the body, which was the source for sin and transgression. The soul was pure, the body a foul prison.
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Purim - Same as it Ever Was
This Shabbat is Shabbat Zachor, the Shabbat before Purim, the story of Esther. I would call The Book of Esther the truest fictional story in the Bible. It is the story of how one Diasporan Jewish community staved off annihilation, not through the plot device of deus ex Machina, or the sudden appearance of God, but through their own machinations and a little bit of lucky timing.
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They say ‘never count your chickens before they hatch’. Just before the Israelites leave Egypt in liberation, they become aware that they are not leaving without resistance. The Egyptians are drawing nearer and they scream Moses: Was it for want of graves in Egypt that you brought us to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, taking us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, saying, ‘Let us be, and we will serve the Egyptians, for it is better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness’?”
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In the Torah, the word herem is a most interesting word. We are familiar with its use as a term of banishment, a Jew put in herem was exiled from the community. However it can also mean something sacred, no one but the priests are allowed to touch it. The connection between these apparently opposite meanings is the idea that a herem item is untouchable for the common person.
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