Yom Kippur 5781 - A New Fire, Making Changes

The narrative of our Torah reading for this morning begins just after the death of two of Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Avihu. According to the rabbis of the Talmud, Aaron’s sons had committed a major sin by bringing an unacceptable sacrifice into the Temple and as a result they were consumed by the fire they had created.  The mere mention of the deaths of Aaron’s sons at the opening of the narrative is a reminder to us of how powerful our actions can be; and that death can be the ultimate consequence – a perfect opening to set the scene on the Day of Atonement.  

As the reading begins, Aaron is instructed to bring a sin offering, a sacrifice, to the Temple following his period of mourning.  There are two key elements for this morning’s study. The first is that with the destruction of the 2^nd Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 of the Common Era, the Jewish tradition of animal sacrifice ended.  By the 1^st century, the rabbis recognized that as the world around them changed, rabbinic Judaism needed to adapt. The dramatic evolution from sacrifice to prayer was necessary to keep Judaism relevant, and to make it sustainable for the future.  If the rabbis of the First Century understood the need to change a major practice of Jewish spirituality…then we can do the same. The second key element of the Torah reading reminds us that we must be cautious in changes we make to ensure they are acceptable to God.   Most modern rabbis in all of the major movements believe, like the rabbis of the 1^st century, that religious law must be open to changes in relationship to the nuances and standards in the society of the time. 

A colleague and I were recently talking about making changes.  He shared a parable. A friend of his was about to change his voice message greeting. He wanted to say: “Thank you for calling. I’ve been making some changes in my life. Please leave a message. If I don’t call you back soon, then know that you are one of the changes.”  I would assume the message is that we’d better learn how to welcome change.

I am not sure how many of you know that at its beginning the Conservative Movement had nothing to do with egalitarian rights, gay rights, or even interpreting Jewish Law in a way more relevant to the lifestyle of a future suburbanization of America.   Just over a 100 year ago, the Conservative Movement was founded by members of the Reform Jewish community who had arrived earlier in the United States from a more refined European background.  There was one simple purpose in mind:  use the synagogue to help the new Eastern European Jewish immigrants, who they viewed as backwards and unsophisticated, acculturate into the American society.

Over the years, Conservative Jewish thinkers realized that Conservative Judaism needed to create new concepts and experiences to rejuvenate the religious experience.  Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan stated that Judaism was an evolving religious civilization; not just a religion but a culture as well. It was for that reason that swimming pools and gymnasiums were built as part of synagogues in the 50’s and 60’s and were called Jewish Centers.  Rabbi Mordechai Waxman coined the term Tradition and Change, finding ways for people to be members of Conservative synagogues by reinterpreting Jewish law to fit the suburban lifestyle, so that driving to and from synagogue or using electricity on Shabbat became religiously legally acceptable.  

During the past 40 years or so, Conservative Judaism and specifically the Rabbinical Assembly have evolved to reflect a Judaism that is morally inclusive. During my rabbinical career, it has become normative for women to read from the Torah and count to the minyan; women and gay rabbis have been admitted into the Rabbinical Assembly; the Conservative rabbinate has reinterpreted the Torah, providing a way for rabbis to perform same sex marriages.  

I believe that what makes our synagogues’ brand of Judaism relevant is that acts of gemilut chesed or acts of loving-kindness through inclusiveness and our social justice activities are just as important as observing some of the more restrictive laws such as such as maintaining kosher dietary laws and keeping the Sabbath holy.  At the same time, I believe that we need to find a new definition that fits the Conservative Judaism of our Congregation Beth El community beyond the legalisms, programs and initiatives of the Conservative Movement. We cannot simply rely on halakha, Jewish law, alone to define a Conservative Jewish lifestyle, because honestly, most of us do not define our lifestyles as strictly halachic. Even in the Orthodox world in Israel there seems to be an adaptation of Jewish law to modern day living.  Not too long ago one of the most popular Orthodox newspaper in Israel reported that many men and women are texting during services on Shabbat and Yom Tov.  The gist of the article: there is a new type of religiosity in all our communities, people deciding halakha, Jewish law and practice by what they think is right for them. Needless to say, we all understand this reality in this Zoom service world.

As our nation paused to remember Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, zichrona livracha, of true blessed memory,  many questions arose regarding the timing of her death in the Jewish calendar as well as the Jewish tradition of burial. Once again, the halakhic responses were reflective of a tradition that understands reality over strict law. As Rabbi Ovadya Yosef, chief Rabbi of the Sephardim in Israel in the 1970’s and 1980’s, once taught, one must understand the difference between gevurah­, heroism, and hessed, compassion. The first is “marked by the desire to adopt as many stringencies as possible to demonstrate how self-sacrificing one can be in fulfilling the mitzvot and the second by “the desire to deal with halakha in a humane, loving and kind manner.” While the gevurah concept of Jewish burial tradition would require a speedy kevurah, burial, hessed, requires that family members and friends be able to travel to pay their respects and perform the most important mitzvah of honoring  a loved one through one’s presence. Just as in Eretz Yisrael, when funeral services for Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Yitzchak Rabin were delayed to allow dignitaries and friends from around the globe to make their way to Jerusalem, so too here in America, the kavod, honor, due Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was not only paramount providing her the kavod, but extremely appropriate in  a most wise halakhic reality using the concept of hessed. It provided the family the presence of others to respond “Amen” to their obligation of reciting the words of the “Mourner’s Kaddish once the burial took place. In that regard, while in the strict sense of tradition it is solely her children’s responsibility to recite these words, needless to say in this day and age, the principle of hessed opened the prayerful moment to many others in her family. I’m certain that at certain times, we all feel that we are a part of her family and need at least once to either hear the words of the El Maleh Rachamim or express the words of Kaddish. That would be the hessed, in the halakhah.

Rabbi David Hartman, zichrono livracha, of blessed memory, a modern Orthodox visionary, in his extremely important work entitled The God Who Hates Lies: Confronting and Rethinking Jewish Tradition” provides a model of interpretation that I am hoping is the right fit for our shul.  Rabbi Hartman asks: “What is the weight of tradition when it conflicts with one’s deep moral sense? How does one maintain membership in the halachic community while acting against the authoritative tradition? Is making choices that favor moral convictions equivalent to stepping out of the tradition?  If we squelch the ethical impulse…what is lost? What is lost personally, what is lost to the community, and what is lost to religion itself?” I admire such questioning; specifically, because it reflects the questions that we need to ask as we continue to transform our model of Conservative Judaism here at Beth El.

Let’s consider an example from our own community.  Traditionally, the Mourners’ Kaddish was omitted from our services when there was not a minyan, a prayer quorum of 10 Jewish adults present at services.  A few years ago, I revisited that tradition using Rabbi Hartman’s logic. In my previous congregation we asked: how does it hurt Judaism if someone says Kaddish for a loved one without a minyan? It was clear that when we deny someone the opportunity to say Kaddish, we only hurt two entities: the individual who wants to say the prayer to honor the memory of a loved one… and our community, which cares about the reason that people come to shul in the first place.   When I moved here, we found ourselves occasionally without a minyan. In the morning, we began saying kaddish without even asking the question. The evening minyan used a different ruling, where only a part of the Kaddish was said.  Without even hesitating, I asked individuals to recite the kaddish together.  Everyone agreed with my thoughts. So, now we recite Kaddish when a member of community comes to services to say Kaddish – regardless of the number of congregants at the service.  Our moral compass guides our practice rather than strict traditions. To date, we have only experienced the positives of Judaism with this evolution within prayer.

A second example: Our community’s demographics have changed. There are many in our community who live in homes where only one member of the family is Jewish, by birth or by conversion. It is imperative that we as a community make these families feel welcome. A few years ago, a young woman asked whether I would be able to officiate at her wedding.  Her email to me was very personal, sharing that she was the first bat mitzvah in my previous congregation more than 16 years before. She now is a physician living in Texas but is returning home for her wedding. She stated, I understand that you may not be able to officiate in my wedding, but I would appreciate your blessing.  She understood that the Rabbinical Assembly has specific regulations that it places upon its rabbis. That hasn’t changed. But nothing in the rules forbade me from performing an aufruf. With the approval of the ritual committee, on the Friday evening of her wedding weekend, I was able to unfurl my large tallit, and have her family and her fiancé’s family hold a tallit over their heads as I recited a blessing of aufruf, just prior to their wedding.  A second bar mitzvah asked if his mom could come up onto the bimah and stand beside him when he read his portion from the Torah. Once again, I understood. His mom brought him up to be Jewish. She cried with joy when we brought him to the mikvah for his conversion and sang with us siman tov u’mazal tov after she put her hand upon her son and blessed him repeating after me the traditional words that a parent recites on Friday evenings. But our synagogue rules forbade her to come up onto the bimah, especially when the Torah was open.  Within a few weeks’ time of that request, Mom once again cried knowing that while she was not officially Jewish, she had a Jewish lev. On that Shabbat she held her husband’s hand and walked up onto the bimah, listened as her husband recited the blessings for the parental Aliyah, and then stood to the side of the lectern as her son chanted his own Aliyah at the Torah. Subsequent sets of parents stood in joy, as they were invited up to celebrate their child’s simcha in a similar fashion.

Let me share with you another example.  There was a resounding approval for our changes in last week’s Rosh Hashanah services. As a High Holy Day committee, we asked ourselves what was the way to create meaning in our service for the community and the individual, especially during these days of Zoom.  We decided to skip a second silent devotion and have the congregation pray out loud certain pieces of the Musaf service together. We also agreed to shorten services and to offer a totally alternative Musaf on the second day.   The fact that so many more of you stayed until the end of services and then in great number joined us at Tashlich at Ocean Beach shows us that this was a change that was meaningful and what you were looking for. In continuing to develop programs that are relevant to our membership we have been discussing a future pontoon minyan, a Drive Thru – Shake your Lulav campaign and a Havdalah on the Beach program in late October.

Within the context of the creative and ethical halakhah of Rabbi Hartman, I am certain we can innovatively create meaningful connections to Jewish life, as we confront and rethink Jewish tradition, and find ways to truly embrace all our families in a non-judgmental and open-minded manner. Jodi Picoult in her novel Keeping Faith wrote: “We don't have to accept each other's beliefs...but we do have to accept each other's right to believe them.” That concept was reinforced for me while on a walking tour in Jerusalem on Shabbat with an Orthodox rabbi, known as Rav Binny.  Rav Binny uses Rabbi Hartman’s approach as a guiding principle. Amongst our group of synagogue representatives was a man who photographed almost every moment with the camera on his iPad, even on Shabbat.  It bothered me…not only his asking that I pose for his pictures, but more importantly not respecting Rav Binny’s Shabbat.  At one point, I ran ahead and, I asked Rav Binny why he stood indifferent to the Shabbat photographer. He turned to me and said, “Earl, you know I am shomer Shabbat. He is not. I live here in Israel. He does not. This is his first experience in Israel and in Jerusalem…what gives me the right to deny him…simply because I am shomer Shabbat?”   I walked away from that experience quite moved: but also, quite taught.

I hope that you will bring other suggestions on how to make Congregation Beth El more meaningful to your Jewish experience. No doubt in our continuing need to bring God and Jewish community together as one, we need to think out of the box in a creative way, not simply because we care about Conservative Judaism.  It is because, as I learned from Rabbi Hartman, God Hates Lies. Perhaps that is why this morning’s Torah reading has relevance today, even though it is reflective of a religious practice that we no longer follow – the ritual of sacrificing animals.  The God, who hates lies, recognizes that Jewish tradition needs to borrow and learn from the past to create new and evolving experiences for the present and for the future, so that it is not only relevant but vital. So, let us now join together in prayer now that we have read how to create a fire of spirituality that will be acceptable to the God who hates lies.