Yom Kippur Morning Sermon 5784

 YK Sermon 5784 -- Jewish Future -- YK Morning

Four years ago I began one of my Yom Kippur sermons with a thought experiment. Imagine that a visionary philanthropist offered our kehilah an endowment of 20 million dollars on condition that we no longer charge membership dues. An endowment of that size with a conservative investment portfolio would produce more than enough income to keep our shul going without ever touching the principle. Unless, of course, so many people found out that there was a shul in Montgomery Village that didn’t charge dues and in fact was forbidden by the terms of an endowment gift to charge them. If our no dues policy resulted in a massive membership growth, we might have to hire more staff and expand the building to accommodate our greater numbers. We might find that the income from our endowment no longer covered our expenses. Would we simply continue to accept everyone who signs up as a member? Or would we try to define some non-monetary requirements for membership?

For the typical American synagogue, membership is defined financially. You fill out an application, you pay your dues -- or if you can’t afford full dues you make some kind of arrangement and pay a lesser amount -- and that’s pretty much it. If a congregation could no longer define membership by virtue of paying dues, what would be the criterion?

A few months ago Rabbi Danny Schiff, a friend from rabbinical school who is now the Federation Scholar for the Pittsburgh Jewish Federation, published a book called Judaism For A Digital Age. We were fortunate to arrange for him to speak over Zoom to my class on Contemporary Jewish Controversies this past spring. One of the questions Rabbi Schiff explores is why both Reform and Conservative Judaism are facing a crisis of numbers. To give you an example of what that crisis  looks like, the 2019 Washington Jewish Population survey revealed that between 2003 and 2017 the Jewish population of Greater Washington grew by 37% but the absolute number of synagogue members shrank slightly from 26,500 households to 25,600 households; and that 58% of Jewish children received no formal Jewish education of any sort at any point.

For several decades following the end of the Second World War, the suburban synagogue was in the Hebrew school and Bar/Bat Mitzvah business. Jews were moving  to the suburbs, which were ethnically and religiously mixed, from their urban, predominantly Jewish neighborhoods. The Jews in this exodus were mostly American born children of immigrants. When growing up they might have spoken English with their parents but they probably spoke Yiddish or Yinglish with their grandparents. The neighborhoods where they lived were overwhelmingly Jewish. The newly-suburban Jews might not have been religiously observant but they were steeped in Jewish culture.

Now they found themselves living in neighborhoods which might be ten or twenty percent Jewish rather than eighty or ninety. Their children were going to public schools with mostly non-Jewish classmates and very often the grandparents stayed behind in the “old neighborhood.” New synagogues were created at a dizzying pace and were sometimes unkindly labeled “Bar Mitzvah factories.” The typical membership trajectory saw a family join when their oldest child started Hebrew school and give up their membership shortly after the youngest kid’s Bar Mitzvah or maybe Confirmation in tenth grade. The fact that a significant percentage, perhaps even a majority, of families were only members for a few years didn’t threaten the stability of the model because there were always more families in the pipeline to replace them. Jewish parents would always want to make sure their kids had Bar or Bat Mitzvahs, the only way to do that was to join a shul and send your kids to Hebrew school, so people would join, pay the assigned dues, and send their kids to Hebrew school for the specified number of years. Postwar America placed a lot of importance on religion, and for American Jews, part of fitting in with their neighbors was to create and support synagogues, which were often located on the main thoroughfares of the new suburban neighborhoods as a sign of full Jewish belonging.

But this model started to crumble in the 1990s or so. More families had one Jewish and one non-Jewish parent, and even families with two Jewish parents didn’t always consider Jewish education a priority or feel the need to provide their children with Bar and Bat Mitzvah ceremonies. And if the family did decide that a Bar or Bat Mitzvah was important, there were other ways of doing it; independent Hebrew schools, tutors, free-lance clergy who operate on a fee-for-service model. 

What have we done wrong that got us in this situation? 

Rabbi Schiff says that Reform and Conservative Judaism continue to do an excellent job at what they were invented to do. They are both answers to the challenge of modernity -- how do we participate in a democratic, pluralistic society and still maintain our Jewish identity? The problem, says Rabbi Schiff, is that Reform and Conservative Judaism are excellent answers to questions that no one is asking anymore. When a US president whose daughter converted to Orthodox Judaism is followed by a president whose three children all married Jews; when the Vice President and her Jewish husband attended Rosh Hashanah services at the largest Conservative shul in the District of Columbia and have a mezuzah on their official residence’s front door; when the Jewish White House Chief of Staff resigns and is replaced by another Jewish White House Chief of Staff who is also part owner of a Jewish, albeit not kosher, deli named “Call Your Mother”; the question of how exactly we maintain our Jewishness while participating in general society is not exactly high on anyone’s list anymore. 

A few days before Rosh Hashanah I asked members of our community to answer the question “what is the purpose of Kehilat Shalom”? I set up a Google Form so that it could be done anonymously because I wanted people to feel that they could answer the question honestly without fear of offending me or being judged by me. Sixteen people answered the question; it’s impossible to know to what extent this is a representative sample but for a community of our size it is a pretty good rate of return. 

The answers to the question were quite varied. A number of them mentioned that Kehilat Shalom is or should be primarily a place of prayer. One congregant wrote that the purpose of Kehilat Shalom is to focus on providing spiritual experiences in the company of other congregants and that  all other activities are secondary. “Without the spiritual, Kehilat Shalom is a social club, and the rituals are pointless and might as well be scrapped.” But other congregants wrote that they are not particularly religious, but they view Kehilat Shalom as a source of friendship, of comfort, of connecting to their people, providing intellectual stimulation and doing good deeds. A couple of congregants wrote about the importance of religious school education and Bar and Bat Mitzvah ceremonies, which does not fit our current demographic situation at all. Some of the writers spoke about their attachment to our current building, and that no other synagogue sanctuary had ever given them the feeling that they get in this room. Others said their connection is to the community and not to the building, and that given financial realities we should consider some real changes.

COVID-19 simply accelerated changes and questions in American Judaism and American religious institutions generallly which were already on the horizon. There are more and more single person households, and the advent of online services and the convenience of praying at home in your sweats has served to further attenuate the nature of community. 

Rabbi Danny Schiff says: “People are asking themselves, ‘If I can do everything I want to do with life without having to compromise with somebody else, then why would I?’ Is that in line with classical Jewish thinking? If not, then is it something we should now take on as being a positive or take a stand against?  I’m not asking these questions with a particular agenda. I’m simply pointing out that this is a dramatic shift in the way that people live. Judaism needs to think that through and to have a thoughtful response.”

In my introduction to the Unetaneh Tokef prayer on Rosh Hashanah, I quoted Rabbi Lawrence Kushner’s observation that when we repent we acknowledge that we have done wrong and are not perfect; when we pray we reach out and acknowledge that we cannot fix what we have done wrong without external help; and when we give charity we give up a part of what we believe belongs to us. All involve a diminution of the ego and a sense of belonging to something bigger and beyond oneself. 

Because American synagogues have generally not asked for anything from their members other than money, synagogue membership has been for many a business transaction. While it is true that we use the term “member”, so does Costco. I am a “member” of Costco which asks nothing of me other than payment of my $60 annual dues. But if Keleigh and I ever reach the point where we shop at Costco so infrequently that it no longer seems worth the $60, we will not have any moral qualms or lose any sleep over our decision not to renew our membership. In being a member of Costco, I do not get a feeling of being part of something bigger than myself, something which transcends boundaries of place and time or connects me with my people’s past and future. I just get an opportunity to purchase multi-packs of organic salsa or 96-packs of K-Cups. 

There are new questions which postmodernity poses: in an era of artificial intelligence, what does it mean to be really human? Rabbi Schiff writes: “over the course of three decades, our technology, culture, society, financial system, media, marriages, families, sexuality, privacy standards, and even our mental functioning have changed. . . . The way we live, the way we work, the way we interact, the way we communicate, the way we think, and the way we curate and perceive our reality have all been refashioned. . . . This digital age is thoroughly discontinuous with what preceded it.”

The questions we are asking may be different in some ways than before, but in other ways they are not so different. What continues is the human quest for meaning and for ways to be less lonely. Our tradition has a lot to say about these questions. Synagogues in the next decades may look different in some ways than what has come before, but Rabbi Schiff says, and I agree with him, that they will still be the key institutions of Jewish life and Jewish community.

Synagogue membership is not a “fee for service” proposition where you are purchasing certain services. It is a brit kodesh, a holy covenant. It is a two-way commitment and a two-way responsibility. 

The Days of Awe are all about teshuvah, which while we translate it as “repentance” is really closer to “return.” There are certain values which we know we ought to live by. We know that we need community, that we need each other. We know that our society can be better, that taking care of our neighbor is more important than saving a couple of bucks, that caring about others and being cared about are basic human needs. Yom Kippur comes to remind us, to call us back to a better way of life. May we have the courage to live our lives in community and with concern for each other. 

Kol Nidre Sermon 5784

 YK Sermon 5784 -- Forgiveness -- Kol Nidre

“The most influential person in your life is the person you refuse to forgive.” A couple of months ago, someone I know shared a picture of this sign from the Madison Avenue Baptist Church in Manhattan on Instagram. There is a lot of wisdom in that sign.

I mentioned in my remarks at our joint Selichot service that my late father’s last remaining cousin passed away recently in New York. My brother went to a shiva minyan at the home of her daughter, our second cousin, and told me that our other cousin wasn’t there because he and his sister have not spoken to each other in five years. Neither my brother nor I know what is at the root of this family dysfunction and alienation but it’s hard for me to imagine that whatever one sibling did or said to the other, it justifies that kind of alienation and refusing to go to your sibling’s home even for shiva.

Many of us are familiar with the Talmudic teaching that while Yom Kippur atones for offenses we have committed against God, it does not atone for offenses we have committed against another person until we have apologized to that person and tried to fix whatever harm we have caused. But Moses Maimonides in his commentary on this teaching, says that we don’t only have an obligation to seek forgiveness from someone we have wronged. We also have the obligation to forgive those who have wronged us once they have taken responsibility for the wrong they have committed and asked forgiveness. In fact, Maimonides says, once a person has asked our forgiveness three times, they are automatically forgiven even if we refuse to forgive them. On top of that, the guilt for what that person originally did is now transferred to the one who refuses to forgive.

Because today is Yom Kippur, many of us may be more inclined to believe that there is an actual divine accounting of guilt and forgiveness than we would the other 364 days of the year. But Maimonides was not primarily concerned with divine accounting; he was concerned with what being unwilling to forgive and carrying a grudge does to our own souls. Carrying the burden of unforgiveness is like carrying a heavy chain that shackles our souls. When we hold onto grudges, anger, and resentment, it consumes our thoughts, poisons our hearts, and creates a divide between us and others. Unforgiveness can lead to bitterness, hatred, and a cycle of hurt that perpetuates pain across generations.

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, in her recent book “On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unrepentant World '' points out that there are two different words for “forgiveness " in Hebrew: mechila and slicha. Mechila might be better translated as “pardon.” It has the connotation of relinquishing a claim against an offender; it’s transactional. It’s not a warm, fuzzy embrace but rather the victim’s acknowledgment that the perpetrator no longer owes them, that they have done the repair work necessary to settle the situation. You stole from me? OK, you acknowledged that you did so in a self-aware way, you’re in therapy to work on why you stole, you paid me back, and you apologized in a way that I felt reflected an understanding of the impact your actions had on me — it seems that you’re not going to do this to anyone else. Fine. It doesn’t mean that we pretend that the theft never happened, and it doesn’t (necessarily) mean that our relationship will return to how it was before or even that we return to any kind of ongoing relationship. With mechila, whatever else I may feel or not feel about you, I can consider this chapter closed. Those pages are still written upon, but we’re done here.

Slicha, on the other hand, may be better translated as “forgiveness”; it includes more emotion. It looks with a compassionate eye at the penitent perpetrator and sees their humanity and vulnerability, recognizes that, even if they have caused great harm, they are worthy of empathy and mercy. Like mechila, it does not denote a restored relationship between the perpetrator and the victim (neither does the English word, actually; “reconciliation” carries that meaning), nor does slicha include a requirement that the victim act like nothing happened. But it has more of the softness, that letting-go quality associated with “forgiveness” in English.

Forgiveness is a serious challenge. Forgiving someone who has wronged us deeply can feel like an insurmountable task. We may ask ourselves, "How can I forgive when the pain is so real?" It is essential to recognize that forgiveness is not the same as condoning the wrongdoing. Instead, it is an act of releasing the hold that hurt has on our hearts. It is a process that brings healing and restoration. When we forgive, we free ourselves from the chains of bitterness, allowing us to move forward with grace and peace. Forgiveness does not erase the past, but it enables us to create a brighter future. As the great Rabbi Harold Kushner once said, "Forgiveness is an act of letting go of a hurt."

One of the most profound meditations I have read on forgiveness was published recently in the Jewish feminist magazine Lilith. It was written by my former Hillel colleague Mindy Sue Shapiro. Fifty years ago her father, a Baltimore businessman and politician, was murdered by two former employees he had fired, shortly before Mindy’s Bat Mitzvah.

Mindy and I are the same age, and she reports that like most fathers of his era -- and like my father -- he spent little time with his family. Since he was murdered shortly before her Bat Mitzvah, she did not really get to know him very well. But because he was a public figure, the trial of the two people who murdered him became a public spectacle -- during which she learned, at the same time everyone else did, that her father had an affair with his secretary.

As her father’s fiftieth yahrzeit approached, Ms. Shapiro asked herself some questions. “Where did the years go? Why am I still traumatized? Why am I not at peace? Why do some people find it easy to forgive when inside I still feel twelve? In my research, I have discovered there might be good reasons.” She began reading and studying about forgiveness and listening to a podcast called the Forgiveness Project. She writes that she learned a few things:

1. Shame is defined as  when wrongdoing is found out–there is public disgrace

2. Shame associated with trauma prevents trauma from washing away

3. Forgiveness allows one to detach from trauma 

4. Forgiveness—letting go of bitterness and anger—gives one freedom of mind and heart

5. What does one hold onto when they do not forgive? A story– is it true? Is it a feeling?

6. Hurt people, hurt people. As I learned in my Mussar studies, we all have a burden and when we are hurt it is helpful to recognize that the person who hurt us is operating from their own burden. 

She also sought out friends of her father so she could see him in a different light. She writes that “All of the discussions and learning made me think deeply about my father from different perspectives.  I realized that all of this time I expected him to be a perfect father and I have been disappointed for 50 years that he was not. But of course he was not perfect. No one is perfect, and while that might sound like not a big insight, for me it was everything.”

Rabbi Ruttenberg writes that “Maimonides’ concern about the victim being unforgiving was likely at least in part a concern for their own emotional and spiritual development. I suspect that he thought holding on to grudges was bad for the victim and their wholeness. That is, even if we’re hurt, we must work on our own natural tendencies toward vengefulness, toward turning our woundedness into a power play that we can lord over the penitent, or toward wanting to stay forever in the narrative of our own hurt, for whatever reason. And perhaps he believed that the granting of mechila can be profoundly liberating in ways we don’t always recognize before it happens.

[…]

If you are still so resolutely attached to the narrative that you were forever wronged, you are harming yourself and putting a kind of harm into the world. Try to respond to those who approach you sincerely — and who are sincerely doing the work — with a whole heart, not with cruelty.”

Forgiving others is an act of compassion and empathy. It requires us to see the humanity in those who have wronged us, recognizing that they too are flawed beings. Just as we seek forgiveness from God, we must extend the same gift to our fellow human beings. By forgiving others, we break the cycle of hurt and sow the seeds of reconciliation.

Equally important is the act of forgiving ourselves. We are all imperfect beings who make mistakes. Yom Kippur reminds us that we have the capacity for change and growth. By forgiving ourselves, we embrace the opportunity for self-improvement and a renewed connection with God.

May this Yom Kippur be a day of forgiveness, a day of transformation, and a day of profound connection with the Divine. G'mar Chatimah Tovah—may you be sealed for a good year, marked by forgiveness, love, and peace.

Rosh Hashanah Sermon 5784

 Rosh Hashanah Sermon 5784

Rabbi Charles L. Arian

Kehilat Shalom

“I’m worried about your drinking, Charles”

“Lihyot Am Chofshi B’Artzenu -- To Be A Free People In Our Land”

What’s the Connection?

Autumn of 2021 was a very difficult period in my life, both professionally and personally..  After not having services in our sanctuary for over a year,we had to  make plans for conducting  hybrid High Holiday services.. As you may remember, our Hazzan was unable to participate in our services because of her health problems. A beloved member of our community died by suicide days  before Rosh Hashanah. Personally,  my father was slowly dying in New York, causing me to  choose between two bad alternatives. Either I could wear myself out by frequent travel back and forth, or I could not make the trip quite as often and feel guilty that I wasn’t seeing him as often as I should.

I was having trouble sleeping, and feeling anxious, so I started therapy and met with a psychiatrist . She prescribed  an antidepressant and other  medication for anxiety and to  help with my sleep. 

For many years I had been a casual drinker and was known as a bourbon hobbyist. I conducted bourbon tastings for various nonprofit organizations and had even been quoted in the New York Times in a story about Jews and the whiskey business. But in the fall of 2021 I began to drink both more frequently and more heavily. The night before my father’s funeral, alone and depressed,  I got extremely intoxicated and behaved in a stupid and harmful way,  having repercussions that I continue to deal with nearly two years later. Looking back,  it’s a miracle I was able to conduct my Dad’s funeral the next day considering the condition I was in.

Not long after that, my wife Keleigh said to me that she was worried about my drinking. I will always be grateful to her for phrasing it exactly that way. She didn’t yell at me, she didn’t say I was an alcoholic, she didn’t demand that I stop drinking. She just told me that she was worried, and by phrasing it that way I felt comfortable enough to be honest with both her and with myself and acknowledge that I was worried too.

After discussing my concerns with my psychiatrist, she gave me a prescription for a medicine called Naltrexone. Naltrexone is a medication that blocks the effects of alcohol in the brain. It works by binding to the same receptors that alcohol  would normally attach to, thereby reducing the pleasurable or reinforcing effects. This helps in reducing cravings and dependence.  I was fortunate to find that after a couple of months of Naltrexone treatment I had no desire for alcohol at all and have been alcohol free for over a year.

Why am I sharing this with you? Not primarily to share  my issues with alcohol. Rather, it is to share the blessing I received when Keleigh shared her concerns with me in a way that I was open to hearing.

“To Be A Free People In Our Land”

In Leviticus 19:17 we are taught “you shall surely rebuke your fellow and not bear sin because of him.” This verse is a little confusing; the two parts of the verse seem to have little to do with one another. Rashi explains that the verse means we must rebuke another person who is doing wrong gently and discreetly , in a way that does not embarrass him or her. Only in this way can rebuke be effective, whereas embarrassing another person in public is, itself, a sin.

Maimonides says that we should not say “I will not sin, and if someone else is sinning that is between them and God.” We have to do our best to prevent another person from doing wrong. Between Maimonides and Rashi, we find ourselves in a complicated situation where we have to make a judgment call. If we can stop someone from sinning and don’t even try to stop them, Maimonides says we too have sinned. But if we rebuke someone too harshly or too publicly, in a way that humiliates them, we have also sinned, at least according to Rashi. 

Late last month, three prominent Israeli writers with roots in North America -- Matti Friedman, Daniel Gordis, and Yossi Klein Halevi, the cousin of our own David Markowitz -- wrote an impassioned essay in the Times of Israel called “Diaspora Jews: Time to Take A Stand.” They write: “when someone you love is in danger, you draw closer.”  When Keleigh knew that my alcohol consumption was causing serious harm, she spoke up. It would have been irresponsible for her not to do so. But she had to do so in a way that made it likely that I would hear what she was saying, that I would understand she was speaking up because she loved me, and because of that do what I needed to do to fix the problem.

As you probably know, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is a coalition between his own Likud party and far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties. Although they control a majority in the Knesset, they actually received only 48.4 percent of the popular vote in the last election. Although “judicial reform” was not part of their platform, since taking office they have proposed a series of laws that would undermine the independence of the Israeli Judiciary. They already passed a law that limits the Supreme Court’s ability to invalidate government actions. A 13 hour hearing was held at the Court earlier this week on whether this law itself will stand, but both the Prime Minister and the Speaker of the Knesset have publicly stated that they will not abide by a Supreme Court ruling striking down the law . They have also proposed a change in the way judges are appointed that will give the Knesset majority more control over that process. And perhaps most worryingly, they have proposed a law that any decision of the Supreme Court can be overridden by a bare majority of the Knesset. Can you imagine how different US history would have been if the Congress could override unpopular decisions of the Supreme Court? Would we still have racial segregation in schools and public accommodations? Would same sex marriage still be illegal? Possibly; both decisions were highly unpopular when they were issued.

Classic Western democracy does not mean simply “majority rule.” The majority cannot do whatever it wants -- and it certainly cannot change the fundamental rules of the game without a broad consensus.

If you are involved in the American Jewish community and particularly the pro-Israel community, the names of Gordis, Klein-Halevi and Friedman will be quite familiar to you. Gordis and Klein-Halevi until quite recently were both regulars on the AIPAC and Jewish Federation lecture circuit. Friedman is somewhat younger than the other two but he has written two outstanding books in recent years which I have read -- one on the Aleppo Codex and one on Leonard Cohen’s series of concerts in the Sinai Desert during the Yom Kippur War. For them to not only take a stand against the current Israeli government but to actually urge Diaspora Jews to participate in demonstrations, sign petitions, and write letters against that government’s policies would have been inconceivable a few months ago. 

Gordis, Klein-Halevi and Friedman write: “This political crisis is not just one more Israeli debate over policy, but a struggle over the fundamental identity of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. . .  Vital institutions that require social solidarity, and most importantly the military, are splintering, as Israel’s most committed and productive citizens revolt against a leadership that is beyond the moral pale. The tech economy that buoyed the “start-up nation” is beginning to sink. State power is shifting from judges to extreme clerics. The voice of fundamentalist religion is emboldened. A year ago, Israel was a regional powerhouse. Within a year, we could be on the road to becoming another failed Middle Eastern state. This unprecedented threat requires unprecedented changes in the Diaspora’s relationship with Israel.

Diaspora support for Israel has traditionally taken the form of support for its government. But now the greatest threat facing Israel is its government. Jews in the Diaspora can no longer support Israel without asking which Israel they are supporting.

To treat Israel’s present leadership as a normative government is to be complicit in the self-destruction of the Jewish state. Diaspora organizations and leaders who continue to meet politely with government ministers and pose for photographs with the prime minister are failing the Israel that Diaspora communities helped create. At this fraught moment, Jewish organizations conducting business as usual are placing themselves on the wrong side of history.

We urge you to get involved in supporting the democracy movement. Attend the pro-Israel democracy demonstrations that happen weekly in Diaspora communities around the world. Invite representatives of the democracy movement to your community. Insist that your community’s missions to Israel include a meeting with movement leaders. Organize study groups to familiarize yourselves with the issues. Challenge your national Jewish organizations to respond to the state of emergency with the gravity it deserves.”

While I agree with Gordis, Friedman, and Klein-Halevi -- and have participated in three demonstrations for Israeli democracy in the last few months, the most recent this past Sunday -- I also think it is important to participate only in actions that are phrased as for Israeli democracy and not as against Israel. Every Saturday night for 36 weeks now, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have demonstrated to preserve their democracy under the slogan of “Lihyot Am Chofshi Be’Artzenu -- To Be A Free People In Our Land.”. By no means are all the demonstrators leftists or secular Jews -- surveys indicate that a good chunk of Likud supporters and Orthodox Jews oppose the government’s plans to curtail judicial independence. Both in Israel and throughout the world, demonstrators carry Israeli flags and end the demonstration by singing Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem. Frankly, progressives in this country could learn a thing or two from the protesters in Israel. The democracy protesters in Israel are asking for our support, and those of us who agree with them should provide that support.

While I agree with Gordis, Klein-Halevi and Friedman, I don’t assume that everyone hearing me today does so. And that’s fine. If you know me, you know that I believe in reading and hearing a diversity of views and thinking for oneself. But if you think they are wrong, take the time to read up on what is going on in Israel today. Benjamin Netanyahu is Israel’s longest serving Prime Minister and has historically been very cautious. The Israeli “Start Up Nation” boom is to a large extent due to policies he put in place. But the Netanyahu of a few years ago is not the Netanyahu of today, (people can change for better OR worse)  if only because his coalition is much more Orthodox and right wing than previous coalitions. 

If you love Israel, if you are concerned about Israel, if you worry about Israel -- now is the time to find out what is going on, speak up, and take action. We cannot just sit and watch when a country we love is engaged in a situation which may, God forbid, lead to its destruction. But we have to speak up out of love, and try to do so in a way which will be heard and lead to positive change. Whether Netanyahu himself is willing to listen to the voice of the Diaspora is open to question -- but the Israeli public needs to know where we stand and the pro-democracy forces need our support. And we must never lose the hope -- HaTikvah -- that Israel can be the homeland that our grandparents dreamed of -- to be a free people in our land.

Shana Tova --may we all be blessed with a good year.

Yom Kippur Day Sermon

 YK Sermon II 2020

Rabbi Charles L. Arian

Kehilat Shalom

On Sept. 23, 2001, a most unusual event took place in Yankee Stadium in New York City. There was a five hour long memorial service with Oprah Winfrey and James Earl Jones serving as co-hosts, with the participation of rabbis, ministers, the Roman Catholic Cardinal Archbishop, the Imam of the Malcolm Shabazz Mosque in Harlem, as well as Buddhist and Hindu religious leaders. New York’s then-mayor, Rudy Giuliani, spoke, as did the then-Governor George Pataki. Placido Domingo, Bette Midler, and Lee Greenwood sang. The service was broadcast in its entirety on what were then considered the “four major TV networks”: CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN. It was originally planned to be held in Central Park but so soon after 9/11, the security implications of an event that might be attended by a million or more people quickly led to the service being moved to the more-controlled environs of Yankee Stadium, and tickets were given primarily to the families of those who were killed or missing. Contemporaneous news coverage of the service refers to the 6,000 people presumed dead or missing, which was what was believed to be the number at the time; it was not until much later that we learned that the true number of those killed was actually just under 3,000, including those who died at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, PA.

Today we are in the midst of a pandemic that has killed over 200,000 people in the United States so far with no end in sight. To put this in terms of the 9/11 death toll, this is 67 9/11s and we add another 9/11 every four days. When the death toll reached 100,000 many newspapers ran feature sections with the stories of some of those who had died, but the 200,000 milestone which was reached this week received much less attention. There are many reasons for this, of course; the presidential election, the passing of Justice Ginsburg, tropical storms, and other stories competed for attention. There is also a large element of fatigue -- we are all tired of the virus, but unfortunately the virus is not tired of us. 

When I went back to read the coverage of the interfaith memorial service at Yankee Stadium, it was jarring to read the estimates of 6,000 dead in the 9/11 attacks. Some of those who were assumed dead were later found elsewhere; others had not come to work that day, were waiting for elevators in the lobbies of the Twin Towers when the first plane struck, or were otherwise not present and didn’t even realize that they were among those assumed to be killed. Why was there a rush to hold a memorial service before the number of dead was even known and while rescue and recovery work continued at Ground Zero?

But the need to ritualize mourning is, I think, if not quite universal then almost so. When my mother died three years ago, she wanted no funeral or memorial service of any kind. But neither my brother, who is an active Unitarian, nor I, found ourselves able to fully comply with her wishes. I said Kaddish for 11 months and held a shiva minyan at the synagogue. My brother arranged for a memorial service at his Unitarian congregation after scattering her ashes at the New Jersey shore. I am sure that in specifying that there be no services, my mother was trying to relieve us from the burden of arranging them. But she unwittingly left us with a different type of burden; a circle of grief that was not fully closed.

We are of course all aware of the terrible toll of this pandemic. Not only 200,000 plus lives lost but millions of jobs, trillions of dollars in economic activity, businesses closed, lifecycle events cancelled, and years of education lost. And many of the millions who have been sickened by the virus but did not die from it have had and will continue to have all kinds of medical issues known and unknown.

We can calculate losses in numbers of deaths and in dollars but there are other losses, less tangible but no less real. For many of us, the fear of dying alone is one of the greatest fears we have. And yet, because of coronavirus restrictions which are quite necessary and proper, thousands of people have died alone, without their loved ones nearby to hold their hand and just be with them as they face the unknown.

Because of the pandemic, travel is restricted -- sometimes by law, other times by the precautions that people quite naturally take in the face of a highly contagious and deadly disease. In our mobile society, many of us have relatives all over the country if not the globe. When a parent dies and is going to be buried several hundred miles away, should their adult child risk their own health and that of the rest of their family to fly there for the funeral? Do they stay home and participate at a distance on Zoom? Will there even be a Zoom? I officiated at a Zoom funeral towards the beginning of the pandemic, and the spotty data coverage at the cemetery combined with the high winds that created background noise, made the Zoom feed almost useless for the friends and family who were not permitted to be at the cemetery.

One of the virtues of traditional Jewish mourning rituals is that they give us a roadmap and a schedule. From the time the death occurs until the funeral you are exempt from all ritual requirements and don’t even count for a minyan -- which means you don’t yet say Kaddish, for example. From the time of the funeral for seven days you don’t leave your house, you don’t go to work, the minyan comes to you. But what do you do if the funeral is delayed for several days, a week, or even longer -- as was quite common at the beginning of the pandemic? What significance does it have to stay in your house for seven days when you haven’t left your house for months? What does it mean for the minyan to come to you when it’s been coming to you over Zoom since mid-March?

Our individual mourning has become so complicated because much of what we would normally do either cannot be done, or ironically enough, is precisely what we are doing already as part of our day-to-day lives in this time period. Our national mourning is even more complicated.

While I was struck by the fact that we had what was to all intents and purposes a national memorial service for 9/11 even before all the victims were found and the number of dead known, 9/11 was a discrete event. It happened, it was over, and we knew who was responsible. We had a president who understood that one of their most important roles is to serve as “consoler in chief,” to bring our country together and unify us in times of trouble.  We do not have unity today. Everything about this pandemic has become politicized and partisan-- whether to wear a mask or not, whether to observe physical distancing or not, whether children get the disease and spread it to others, whether we can trust that the vaccine which does not yet exist will be safe and effective once it is distributed. 

The same Jewish tradition that provides us a roadmap for mourning also recognizes that sometimes that roadmap needs to be adjusted due to circumstances we can’t control. If a funeral has to be delayed, we begin shiva when the body is given over to the custody of those who will perform the burial. If we did not learn of a death until 30 days or more has passed, we sit shiva for only one hour. While at times I have given congregants advice based on these specific rulings, the point is, the tradition recognizes that we do what we can and that is sufficient in the eyes of God and in the eyes of those we have lost. 

God asks us on Yom Kippur  what we are going to do now. How will we move forward? We are left mourning national losses to COVID, and left mourning the life we had before COVID. Mourning  a life of social interaction, travel, and interpersonal supports. Yom Kippur gives us the opportunity to acknowledge those losses, as well as associated personal regrets, by refraining from such activities as bathing, eating or drinking. Just like with the restrictions we face during COVID, our body is uncomfortable during Yom Kippur; by feeling pain one can feel how others feel when they are in pain. And we can seek comfort in the fact that God has faith in us that we can indeed move forward through tragedies such as 9/11 and the Pandemic.

May the memory of those we have lost inspire us to live always by our highest ideals.

Yom Kippur Evening Sermon

 YK Sermon I 2020

Rabbi Charles L. Arian

Kehilat Shalom

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed away Erev Rosh Hashanah, once said “so often in life, things that you regard as an impediment turn out to be a great good fortune.” She was talking about the fact that when she was fresh out of law school, no major law firm would give a job as a permanent associate to a woman. If she had been hired by one of the firms where she applied, she said in an interview, she probably would have followed the typical career trajectory and ascended up the ladder of corporate law. Instead she turned to academics and legal advocacy, and we all know the rest of the story.

On Rosh Hashanah I briefly discussed what may be one of the most difficult prayers of the High Holiday liturgy, Unetaneh Tokef, which says that on Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed, who shall live and who shall die, who by fire and who by water and who by plague . . . but teshuvah, prayer, and acts of charity and justice can transform the harshness of our destiny.

It seems almost contradictory; if it is written and sealed, how can we do anything about it?

But I believe that this seeming contradiction contains the seeds of a powerful lesson. Accepting that we are not always in control can help us to judge others more favorably. It can also help us to judge ourselves more favorably; and one of the great sources of suffering that I have seen in 34 years as a rabbi, is people being extremely and unfairly critical of themselves as well as of others.

But accepting that certain things are beyond our control could also lead us to passivity. While we need to accept that not everything is within our control, that doesn’t mean that it’s the case that nothing is in our control. While we often don’t control what happens to us, we do have the ability to choose how we respond. 

On the second day of Rosh Hashanah, instead of a sermon, I taught a text from Avot D’rabbi Natan about a conversation between Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai and Rabbi Joshua as they were gazing on the ruins of the Temple.  The Temple was destroyed in 70 CE and Rabban Yohanan died twenty years later so while we don’t know exactly when this conversation took place, it was no further away from the destruction of the Temple than 9/11 is for us today. A very recent memory, a wound that was still open.

Rabbi Joshua lamented the destruction of the Temple because, in keeping with explicit Torahitic teaching, he believed that only through the Temple rituals of animal sacrifice could Jews gain atonement. But Rabban Yohanan told him not to grieve, that we have another means of atonement which is just as efficacious -- gemilut hasadim, acts of lovingkindness. How does Rabban Yohanan know that this is so? Because it says in Hosea 6:6 -- “I desire hesed and not sacrifices.”

The text doesn’t tell us how Rabbi Joshua responded but he would have been biblically correct to disagree. What gave Rabban Yohanan the right to change the rules? And what gave him the right to bring a quote from Hosea -- in the Bible, sure, but not part of the Torah and thus not legally authoritative -- in order to do so?

In establishing that acts of lovingkindness were spiritually and legally the equivalent of Temple sacrifices, Rabban Yohanan is responsible for the fact that Judaism still exists today. He knew that there was no possibility of rebuilding the Temple; it was he who had been smuggled out of the besieged Jerusalem shortly before the Romans destroyed the Temple and cut a deal with them to establish a yeshiva in Yavne, on the coast. 

Leonard Cohen wrote: 

Ring the bells that still can ring 

Forget your perfect offering 

There is a crack, a crack in everything 

That's how the light gets in. 

Under the leadership of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, our ancestors forgot their perfect offerings sacrificed in the Temple and let the lights in through the cracks to create the Judaism we practice today; rabbis instead of priests, prayer instead of sacrifices, and Torah study and acts of lovingkindness as our holiest actions.

Last year on Yom Kippur in one of my sermons I said the following:

The Hebrew term for a synagogue is “Bet Knesset” which means “House of Assembly.” But when we pray in Hebrew for the welfare of the congregation and its members, we do not use the term “Bet Knesset” but rather “Kehila” or “Kehila Kedosha” -- congregation or holy congregation -- the same word as in the name of our congregation. We are Kehilat Shalom; we are not Beit Knesset Shalom. Our beautiful building is the place we study, the place we pray, the place we gather with each other for friendship and fellowship. But the building is not the congregation; the people are the wonderful congregation we have today.

I did not know then that for six months and more, our building would not even be the place where we study, pray, and gather for friendship and fellowship. Zoom has been that place, as have to a lesser extent the telephone, emails, and text messages. And yet we have not skipped a beat. We have had a minyan and more for every Friday night and Saturday morning service and for all but one or two weekday evening minyans. We had a beautiful Bat Mitzvah which was written up in Bethesda Magazine. We added a weekly Havdalah service and virtual social events. We have had an educational musical performance, cooking lessons, classes and lectures. We had a meeting with the CEO of the Jewish Federation and next month will have a meeting with our Member of Congress. We’ve had a drive-thru kosher barbecue and a pick-up Break Fast and a drive-in Shofar Service. And I participated over Zoom in the Bet Din for a conversion candidate in Iowa City, sponsored by the rabbi there who usually has to bring candidates to Chicago to meet with a Bet Din.

Just like with our pandemic, when the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, some Jews believed that it would be rebuilt soon and the old ways of worship would be restored. Rabban Yohanan understood that this was not to be and laid the groundwork for a type of Judaism that no longer depended on a particular building or a particular piece of ground; the Bible became, in the words of the poet Heinrich Heine, our “portable homeland.” While we certainly mourn the loss of lives during the Jewish Revolt against Rome and the loss of independence, few of us, I think, really mourn the fact that we no longer have a Temple where Levitical priests offer animal sacrifices to the Lord.

Jewish sovereignty was not reestablished until 1948 and the Temple has not been rebuilt. We can be pretty confident that we will not have to wait nearly 2000 years until we can once again hold services in the synagogue building without taking unacceptable risks. But social distancing and COVID precautions do not come with an on/off switch. Even under the more relaxed Montgomery County regulations which were announced literally as I was writing this sermon, we would have been able to legally accommodate only about a third of our typical High Holiday attendance today.

In having our services online we discovered that there are a lot of people in our community who have not participated in some of our in-person activities because of various pre pandemic health concerns or because it didn’t make sense to drive half an hour in each direction for a fifteen minute minyan service. We have congregants who suffer from both visible and invisible disabilities and health conditions that make it unlikely that they will feel comfortable at indoor in-person activities until there is a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine. We have had participants join us for services and classes from a number of different states, from the UK and Taiwan and Canada and the Bahamas.

If we treat the six or eight or however many months of COVID precautions as a blip and simply go back to doing everything precisely as we did before, we will leave out many members of our community no matter how we define community. Is it ethical to have services which exclude some congregants? Should we continue to do Zoom services only? A hybrid model with some people at the synagogue and others online? What would that look like?

There are no easy answers to these questions. As we consider all the alternatives and discuss them, it is clear that we will not be able to go back to what we had done before, and our new reality will be deeply uncomfortable for a lot of people -- including, at times, me. But precisely 1950 years ago our ancestors faced a similar crisis as the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed and the main form of worship that they had was now impossible. They responded creatively with Torah study, acts of lovingkindness, and prayer replacing the Temple service. We too will figure this out and emerge stronger than before.

Ring the bells that still can ring 

Forget your perfect offering 

There is a crack, a crack in everything 

That's how the light gets in. 

The Power of God in the Human Heart -- Rosh Hashanah Sermon 5781

 High Holiday Sermon I 2020

Kehilat Shalom

Rabbi Charles L. Arian

Since mid-March my colleagues and I have faced a lot of situations that are so unprecedented that they  fall under the general rubric of “they didn’t teach this stuff in rabbinical school.” Although I was in fact the first student in my rabbinical school to own a personal computer, it had no hard drive and no modem, two 5.25 inch floppy disk drives and a 64k memory, and it cost $2500 in 1983, equivalent to $6500 today. The Internet had not yet been invented, let alone webcams or Zoom.

The unprecedented use of technology is only matched by the unprecedented times we are living in. I’ve been asked more than once over the last several months, where is God in the midst of all this suffering? While our ancestors saw God’s power directly at the Red Sea and at Sinai, today God works through the power of love in the human heart. We know what we need to do to get through this.

If you have not watched the series “Regular Heroes” on Amazon Prime you really ought to do so. The series tells the stories of ordinary Americans who have done extraordinary things, sometimes by just living their lives, during the pandemic. Doctors and nurses but also a hospital supply clerk and an ambulance driver. A young girl who puts together art kits to distribute to classes in poor neighborhoods. A woman in our area who raises money to obtain and distribute sanitary supplies to homeless women. A father and his young daughter who match health care workers who need to remain isolated from their families with unused RVs. 

Burnell Cotlon is 53 years old and a veteran of the US Army. He lives in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city and the one which was most devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Five years ago, ten years after Katrina, there was still no grocery store in the Lower Ninth Ward and in order to buy fresh fruits and vegetables or anything that wasn’t junk food, residents had to take three buses to the nearest Walmart. Or they could subsist on snacks and junk food from the local gas station.

So Burnell took his life savings from jobs working at fast food restaurants and dollar stores to buy a dilapidated building on an empty block to open the first grocery store in the Lower Ninth Ward since Katrina.

When the pandemic hit New Orleans the role of Burnell’s grocery store changed. He began letting his customers run tabs and even gave away groceries for free.  In April he told the Washington Post: “Last week, I caught a lady in the back of the store stuffing things into her purse. We don’t really have shoplifters here. This whole store is two aisles. I can see everything from my seat up front. So I walked over to her real calm and put my hand on her shoulder. I took her purse and opened it up. Inside she had a carton of eggs, a six-pack of wieners, and two or three candy bars. She started crying. She said she had three kids, and her man had lost his job, and they had nothing to eat and no place to go. Maybe it was a lie. I don’t know. But who’s making up stories for seven or eight dollars of groceries? She was telling me, “Please, please, I’m begging you,” and I stood there and thought about it, and what am I supposed to do?

I said: “That’s okay. You’re all right.” I let her take it. I like to help. I always want to say yes. But I’m starting to get more desperate myself, so it’s getting harder.

“This guy, he was hurting. He needed something to eat. He picked up four cans of tuna, a Sno-Ball, and laundry detergent. He told me he was good for it as soon he gets his unemployment check, and I trust him. I rang it up for eleven dollars. I took out a notebook that I usually keep near the register and started a little tab.

That notebook kept coming back out. Next it was Ms. Richmond. She did housekeeping at a hotel and lost that. Her tab was $48. Then it was a lady who shucks oysters downtown. She’s got a big family to take care of, so she’s at $155. Then there’s another guy who I deliver to, since he’s bedridden, and I showed up with two bags and he had nothing to give me. So he’s at $54.80.

This has gone from a grocery store to a food pantry. That’s how I’m feeling.”

Because “Regular Heroes” is a feel-good television reality show, the producers of the show have a celebrity place a call at the end of the segment to thank them and tell them what gifts the producers are giving them. In this case, it was Alicia Keys who called and presented Burnell with all kinds of equipment to make his store function more efficiently as well as a bunch of staple foodstuffs so he could continue to give food away to the most needy people in the community. And so Burnell’s Market remains in business and Mr. Cotlon continues to serve his community.

“Regular Heroes” presents the kind of country we would like to see ourselves as. I watched it every Friday afternoon for eight weeks as new episodes came out and I cried and cried through each episode. It renewed my faith in humanity -- that most people are good, that most people care, that most people will go above and beyond and place their wealth and their health at risk for the good of the community.

And we are that country but we are sadly not only that country. There is a reason that the United States has 4 percent of the world’s population but 22 percent of the world’s coronavirus deaths.

Burnell Cotlon loves his community and his community reciprocates that love, and they take care of each other. And here at Kehilat Shalom, we also do a pretty good job of caring for each other.

Did anyone imagine back in March when we first started holding our services over Zoom that in September we would still be doing so? That kids would still be doing distance learning and many people would still be working from home or worse yet, not working at all? That close to 200,000 people in this country would die of COVID-19?

This country is filled with people like Burnell Cotlon, like Roman Grandinetti who kept his Manhattan deli open to feed first responders, like Athena Hayley who was once homeless and now feeds and clothes homeless people in Los Angeles. Sadly it is also filled with people who assault store employees who are fulfilling their job responsibilities by trying to make sure that anyone who enters wears a mask, and people who insist on holding large events without masks and without social distancing despite the dangers that these events cause.

Rabbi Akiva said that “you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself” is the general principle on which all of the Torah stands.As we recall the miracles of the Red Sea and Sinai, we can and we will overcome this pandemic. We can and we will meet again in our sanctuary. We can and we will rebuild our economy and see our kids back in their school buildings, safely. In order to do so, we need to love our neighbors. Not only the neighbor who looks like me and votes like me and prays like me and speaks my language. Like it or not, we are all in this together. As we begin the New Year, may our country be blessed with the power of love so that together we can build a better future.

Hoarding and Shortages

I heard this story at a Holocaust Remembrance Day program some years ago and I cannot swear that every detail is accurate, but the story itself is true. The person who told it is a friend who is the son of Holocaust survivors

His father was around 16 years old and the family was locked up in the Warsaw Ghetto with thousands of other Jews and no food. They were on the verge of starvation when the 16 year old decided he had nothing to lose by trying to sneak out of the Ghetto and find some food. If he succeeded, they would have something to eat. If he got killed trying, then they were still no worse off because they were soon going to die of starvation anyway.

My friend's father was gone several hours and came back with exactly one potato -- not much for their family of four, but something.

He triumphantly handed it to his father who proceeded to take a knife, cut the potato in half, and head for the door of the family's apartment.

"Dad, what are you doing?"

"The people downstairs are hungry too."