5775 – Noah — “Between the Ark and the Tower”

“Between the Ark and the Tower”

 

Parashat Noach

Neil F. Blumofe

25 October 2014

 

As much as our tradition makes the compelling claim that the stories of Noah and his family are God’s grand experiments in trying to make this created world work – situated between the failed undertaking of the Garden of Eden and the still evolving research and open question of the efficacy and success of the descendants of Abraham – one can make an equally viable claim that as much as the Divine is trying to get it together, so are the creations of the Divine. If we look at the story of Noah’s ark as connected to the episode of the Tower of Babel, we may discover that humanity is trying to articulate a sense of meaning about the purpose of life.

In the command to build and board the ark, Noah is asked to go small – asked to move beyond the dangers of the larger world, and huddle with his people – to create a fragile, floating Garden of Eden that will be sustained, while the rest of the world disappears. All Noah is asked to do is to survive, and then simply regenerate in the proper time. There is no healing, there is no tikkun olam that Noah is able to do – the events in the world are too far gone, and rather than confront the overpowering difficulties of the day, he is asked to essentially go underground, and wait out the storm.

Conversely, the building of the city with a large tower is not so much hubris by the community, as it is confidence in belonging to this world – a contrast to the fleeing of Noah. Here, people want to be rooted to a place – to have a home, and to find meaning in engaging with each other. Here are people who are comfortable in their existence and who want to further their connection and develop their standard of living as well as their technologies.

Perhaps as humans in the scope of God’s creation, we were never meant to get it exactly right. If we sin too much, we are destroyed, and if we all get together and attempt to build a great civilization, we too, are also intimidated and dispersed. We exist eternally within the great vacillating center of ambition and catastrophe – of using our resources for good and also squandering them, immolating ourselves in our own predilections and burning passions. Many times, we overlook the holy to revel in our fright – and over time, we become alienated from our own beauty, in our coarseness.

As we study this Torah portion, we discover that the guardrails that God puts up for both God and for us, are too close to the edge – we don’t have enough space to skid on the neutral ground and come to a full stop, before hitting a wall. As we seek to navigate this world and at the same time, protect our families and ourselves from perishing – both examples offered by our Torah portion should give us pause. All of us in our way are seeking meaning, and a power to live an unobstructed life – and even those who fall, usually try to do the best that they can, at least some of the time, as we take the observation of the 19^th century Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky to heart: power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing – to be able to dare.

Each of us is Noah, an ish tsadik tamim hayah bidrotav – et haElohim hithalech – each of us, in our better moments, consider ourselves righteous, blameless and walking with God. We do not consider ourselves deviants, outcasts, or fugitives doomed to wander the earth, outside of the rhythms of society. We look to both determine our environment and to blend in, have a good name, be successful and hopefully contribute a bit to the betterment of civilization. When asked to merely survive, to build an ark and survive, we will dare to do so as we comply.

And yet, we know the limits of our accomplishments – if we are too successful, if we all band together, ironically we become estranged from each other. In our own experimentation of how to live in this world, what do we do? For here’s the limit as we study the residents of Babel: it is easy to get frustrated or to find an existence that is filled with absolute certainty. To find a life that is only black and white – to find a reality that pronounces judgment on difference, and criminalizes those who aren’t us, is much easier than living with nuance and doubt. We like to identify our heroes and our villains, feeling secure in knowing that one is different from the other. Yet, this is a false security – for each of us holds the capacity for both.

It makes us feel better to condemn the drowned sinner, left in the water – to draw a distinction between someone who falls short and each of us who is calm and carrying on within the artificial boundaries of what is acceptable – each of us who is still on the ark, waiting for the storm to end. And when we disembark, when we step again onto dry land – what options lie open for us – Noah brings an offering to God and also brings shame on himself and creates dissension in his family in his intoxication. He lives his life too, between a rock and a hard place.

Each of us, in our own way, exists on our ark, hopefully unaffected by the ravages of flood – and at the same time, we are part of the citizenry of Babel, who would like to build a magnificent city in our own happy valley, in concert with each other. We are both looking to escape and to engage – and we’d like the luxury of choosing the time and space for both. We would like to name the time when we board our ark to get away from the difficulty and also when we are productive and contributing members of society. Each is necessary – and one cannot live without the other. After all of this time, we are still tinkering with the balances of our life – with our bass and our treble – with our work and home – with what we choose to present and what we’d like to hide.

God continues to send us back from our blind spots and our dead ends – to not lose ourselves in our work, and not to withdraw from our relationships to the point where we are isolationists, living with distorted or bloated meaning. To live means to strike an uneasy balance – to forge a determined recognition that we are sometimes our own worst enemies, and sometimes that we can’t fix the great difficulties of this world, and that nevertheless we persevere, pick up our broken pieces and move ahead everyday, continuing to dare.

Shabbat Shalom.

5775 — Bereshit — “Antidiluvian”

“Antediluvian”

 

Parashat Bereshit

Neil F. Blumofe

18 October 2014

 

It is striking that in this most majestic of Torah portions, when the human being is said to be created betzelem Elohim, in the image of God, things so quickly go wrong. After the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden for listening to the machinations of a snake – Cain commits the first homicide, murdering his brother – and as the generations pass to the birth of Noah, the world is filled with violence, and God calls upon the flood to destroy the world and start again.

Our tradition wonders about this concept of betzelem Elohim. How can we be created in the image of God, if we are so flawed and if we tend to choose unwisely as we navigate our existence? We would much prefer to contrast our imperfect lives with a concept of God that is perfect, whole, and infallible. When we say baruch hagever asher yivtach baShem, we mean it – and we in kind, return that trust by saying baruch hashem, as a practice of gratitude, as we live our life. We would like to think that God is not as reckless as we, and does not make mistakes – that when we commit transgressions and have moral failures that it is not a reflection on our concept of how the universe works – that God, the ghost in the machine, is somehow awry, and primed to fail.

In our civic life, it gives us great discomfort to think that big agencies fumble the ball. As we think about the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 2005 reacting to the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, or as we think of the malfeasance or greed of those institutions making risky or bad loans in the real estate or banking markets leading to the Great Recession beginning in 2008, or as we have great consternation about how the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is handling this latest outbreak of Ebola in Dallas, and anticipating its spread, we quickly realize that no organization is too big to fail, and all of our assurances and reliance on a greater protector should be in doubt.

The Garden of Eden came with a fatal flaw. The snake was not an aberration – rather, it was part of paradise, and literally, part of God’s creation. As Jews, we do not think of the world Gnostically – we do not believe in separate entities of Good and Evil. Creation itself, all of creation has within it a moralizing force – a proclamation that each Day of Creation and all that was created in it, between Evening and Morning, was Good, and even on the sixth day, Very Good.

There is no lurking dark power that is ready to do battle with the forces of light. Although there are vestiges of it in our tradition, we do not think God is in a battle with Satan for this world. All difficulty, all tragedy is built into the one overpowering concept of a singular force creating this world – separating out chaos from order, and keeping destruction at bay, by barring the primordial waters from returning to ruin the rare ecosystem of our life.

When we lose the Garden of Eden, when we pollute our world and commit acts of savagery, or more commonly, when we are careless, indolent, and disregarding – all of this is a reflection on God. When we feel desperate or fearless – vindicated or attacked, and we act destructively, we weaken our claim to be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and over all the animals, the whole earth, and over every creeping creature upon the earth. We exchange our birthright for a quickly cooled red lentil stew of instant gratification or satisfaction – and we become another nameless part of creation – no more unjust and selfish, as apes are mischievous, wolves savage, or vultures ravenous.

Another way to consider the concept of betzelem Elohim, is to submit that in our human, all too human actions, God is not so dissimilar from us. Like us, God is vengeful and catty – filled with gossip and sinat chinam – baseless hatred. God is overly protective, sometimes cruel, and even abusive – and sometimes altruistic, doing random acts of kindness, with no set goal – paying it forward, so to speak. God then can be moody, and impulsive flirting with strangers before returning home for the evening– constantly needing attention – and of course, always vowing to lose some weight, and thinking that tomorrow will be a better day. Like us, God is wounded, in relationship, and always digging to locate that cornerstone of love that keeps things from toppling over, day-by-day.

How can we be separate from God? Rather than denying God, what is the mystery of Free Will — a concept that gives us some space, an alibi to strive after wholeness while having anxiety, and shattering the unbroken vessels as we walk? Why do we oftentimes act against our best interests, choosing exile over homecoming, attempting to hide our baser nature in the soothing light of status and comfort? Is God truly on the sidelines, watching us bruise each other – watching us destroy the earth in front of us, before pulling us back from the edge, before the point of no return? How much suffering is too much suffering, in the estimation of God? Is our current residence with Cain, somewhere East of Eden, somewhere on the sitra achra side of what we consider to be predictable and safe? Because of our brutishness, have we never been redeemed – do we live in a parallel world of impurity, corruption and degeneracy, masquerading as a place of virtue and decency?

We are commanded to repair this world and thus, to repair God. The choice of what land we inhabit is up to us. This is more than just the facile understanding of tikkun olam – our own blood is already crying out to us from the ground – we are asked to feel obligated – not just for what we choose to do or not do as we pass by – rather, we are asked to witness, to take on the great task of staking out this world for holiness. Every step we take, every word we say challenges us to make things better.

All of the mitzvot are not stars, points, or good deeds that we collect for a reward – rather they are a key to our universe and to our survival, as we ask questions – as we drill down into the details of our life and practice caring before compassion. We are meant to show up first and then to assess how best we can practice betzelem Elohim inspiring us to rise about our baser inclinations perhaps, and to offer a blessing to God, with a gentle push, reordering the world in a way that brings healing, strength, and hope – before waiting for God, we are asked to take the Divine Position, and to trust that what we do, is for the best – baruch hagever asher yivtach baShem – may our determination to improve things, to walk a bit more softly, and to trust that our actions and our voices do matter bring blessings to this world.

We are not asking to return to Paradise – all in due time. For now we are asking to plant seeds in our desolate land, and by our efforts and our prayers, Baruch haShem, to have flowers and sustainable crops, bloom.

Shabbat Shalom.

5775 — Shemini Atzeret (Yizkor) — “The Sukkah That Wasn’t There”

“The Sukkah That Isn’t There”

 

Shemini Atzeret – Yizkor

Neil F. Blumofe

16 October 2014

 

On this day, a day of assembly, we reserve this time to dwell a bit longer in the moments of the High Holydays – days perhaps long anticipated or dreaded, and now after a blink or two of our eyes, gone. We are already towards the end of this first month of the New Year, rapidly establishing our routines, and perhaps, falling into familiar patterns.

The world is again beginning to overtake us, and charge us with time-sensitive responsibilities. These precious moments of the Yamim Noraim, filled with reflection, seem muted and now compressed in this final day of gathering memory, before a long spell of winter until Yizkor again appears at the end of Pesach, in the spring. Beginning this evening, we open ourselves up to celebrate as we dance with our sifrei Torah – putting our diminishment and our brokenness behind us, falling directly into the plum blessings of our living as we appreciate these moments of being alive.

And yet, now we linger. We are invited back into our memories – to go back in time and share our deconsecrated sukkah with all of the figures, peopling our past. We ask Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Rachel, Miriam and Aaron, David and Devorah to move over, as we invite Bubbie, Zayde, Uncle Nate, Aunt Fanny, Mom, Dad, and a host of others into our sukkah, into our fragile space. Today, we all sit together without a blessing of leishev basukkah – today we sit, as if we were in a palace of mourning – where we share our memories, rethink our childhood – in our pursuit of inspiration or peace. Today, we go home – and we go home, differently.

We have a bit of remove as we enter our old houses again – as we smell the smells of our childhood and as we brace for unexpected memories in front of the television, listening to the radio, out on a walk, or just living an everyday life. Our senses are to become a bit more vivid now, in this time – in these moments devoted to silence, tears, and reflection.

A well-known rabbi of a previous generation, Hillel Silverman tells the following story:

Mamaroneck, New York is just 20 minutes from Greenwich, Connecticut – and yet this is a journey that took me 30 years to complete. Because my parents of blessed memory lived back East, and I at the time, was young rabbi in Dallas, we were not able to visit each other very often during the year.

 

One summer, 30 years ago, we rented a home together in Mamaroneck. It was a beautiful, white stucco house directly on the Sound at Orient Point. We had a wonderful summer together – six incredible weeks – sharing all meals together as a family. We were able to step out of the back door and swim in the ocean. We watched the boats going back and forth, and in the distance we were able to see the skyline of Manhattan. Included in our summer rental was a car, housekeeping, and golf privileges.

 

In these 30 years, I had not been back. For 30 years I have been reminiscing about that memorable summer with my parents. Little did I dream that I would settle in Greenwich, so close to Mamaroneck.

 

A few years ago, my daughter, Gila, and her two-year-old son, Matthew, visited us. “Gila, do you remember the wonderful summer we had with Saba and Savtah?” “Yes, I do,” she replied. “How can you remember it – you were five years old.” “I remember it, dad,” she exclaimed. “I remember the house, and the cliffs nearby – I remember the avenue we drove down, and the guardhouse, and the beach.”

 

“Wow! Do you think if we got into our car with Matthew right now, we would be able to find it?” “I know we will,” she quickly responded. We were a bit farblundget, because 30 years ago, there was no I-95 – and yet, somehow we found our way to Mamaroneck Avenue and then, to Orient Point.

 

All of a sudden, my daughter screamed out, “Dad, there it is! There’s the house!” Sure enough, there it was — she cried, “Here’s the beach, there’s the greenhouse, and the yard!” It looked just like yesterday.

 

As we drove back to Greenwich, we tried to recapture the memories since that long-ago summer. We fondly recalled a Bar Mitzvah and two B’not Mitzvah – confirmations, weddings, funerals, vacations, trips, celebrations, new cities, summer camps, college, engagements. We thought about all the things that happened in the last 30 years – the assassination of President Kennedy, the war in Vietnam, Martin Luther King, and so much more.

And for us, what do we remember in these last 30 years in our lives and in the lives of our civilization – the Challenger Explosion, the First Gulf War, Monica Lewinsky, 9/11, Afghanistan, the election of President Obama, SARS? As we take these moments together, and we all climb into our respective cars for a trip down memory lane – avoiding the interstate, of course – what memories do we have in common – what would we like to share with others – what would we like to get rid of, and erase – what is sweetness, and what is a nightmare. What would we like to do differently, and say, before time gets too late?

A few weeks later, Rabbi Silverman called his daughter and said, “our recent trip has inspired me to write – I’ll write about a father and a daughter and a grandson searching for a home, where they had a lovely summer, long ago – replete with memories and our conversations – and eventually the family will find the house and will go up to the front door – a place that seems unchanged from 30 years ago – and they will ring the doorbell, hoping to see the home once more. And the door will open, and there will be Rabbi Silverman’s mother, who is long dead – she will be standing there in the front room, holding a cake and inviting them to enter.

As we knock on the front doors of our memory houses – or as we sneak in a window in the back, whom do we bring with us, to reminiscence and to tell our stories? As we tell our stories, how accurate are we in our rendering? What details do we highlight, gloss over, or make up?

As Miranda Lambert sings,

I know they say you can’t go home again

I just had to come back one last time.

Ma’am, in know you don’t know me from Adam,

But those handprints on the front steps are mine.

 

And up those stairs, in that little back bedroom,

Is where I did my homework and I learned to play guitar,

And I bet you didn’t’ know under that live oak,

My favorite dog is buried in the yard.

 

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it,

This brokenness inside me might start healing.

Out here it’s like I’m someone else,

I thought that maybe I could find myself,

If I could just come in I swear I’ll leave.

Won’t take nothing but a memory,

From the house that built me.

We are here now in our sukkah that once existed – a time to enter and see that the sukkah will continue in our heart and mind. We will trod these places again next week, and we will have just our memories to direct us, to the places that we hold sacred – to the times where we felt vital – to the friendships that we shared, and the mistakes that we made. This is the moment of entry into this place, as we say goodbye, and change the Torah covers — white back to purple – as we clean out the rose petals from the ark, and put away our shofar for another year.

We begin our stories again this evening, in a time of merriment – knowing that 30 years is but a stitch in time, and all that we ever do is not forgotten and our intentions are known – our smiles, our sweetness, and our bad days too. May our memories inspire us – and provide us with health to not survive this day, rather to dance, to dance with all that we hold sacred and important in one hand, and in our other, the hands of those whom we hold so dear.

(Niggun)

5775 — Sukkot (Shabbat Hol haMoed) — “In the Clouds”

“In the Clouds”

 

Parashat Hol haMoed Sukkot

Neil F. Blumofe

11 October 2014

Among the many special ways that we observe and celebrate Sukkot, in our Birkat haMazon, our Grace After Meals, there is a particular line that has perplexed me. Among the few prayers beseeching God, on Sukkot we add the line, Harachaman Hu yakim lanu et sukkat David hanofelet – May the Merciful One raise up the fallen sukkat of David. This image is connected to the prophetic book of Amos, which states that in that day I will raise up the sukkah, the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and I will repair its breaches, and I will raise up his ruins and I will rebuilt it as in the days of old (Amos 9:11).

Our traditional commentaries link this connection to the building of the Temple in Jerusalem — and that our dwelling in the sukkah is akin to witnessing God’s Presence, or the Clouds of Glory. This idea is linked to a teaching in the Talmud, which states that the clouds of glory originated at the time of the creation of the world, when aid ya’aleh min ha’aretz – when a mist rose from the earth. (Sukkah 11b), forming the clouds above that watered the whole face of the ground. This is to mean that the clouds in the sky date from the original mist from the earth – which is why our sukkot covering, our skackh, is to made from items from the earth that cannot contract impurity. We are thus building our sukkah with the same material that existed at the time of creation – connecting our experiences to the first urges that shaped our universe.

Another idea about raising up the fallen sukkah – is about the resilience of the Jewish people – that no matter the time or place, even if blown down or damaged by a strong wind, we will constitute ourselves anew and we will find a way to reconstruct our essence. We are but a fragile sukkah in the whirlwind of the world – and yet we will endure. Building on this idea — the concept of truly appreciating permanence while recognizing impermanence is a core meditation when dwelling in the sukkah. According to the Maharal, a 16^th century Ashkenazi sage, the sukkah is impervious to the physical permanence of this world. When we dwell in the sukkah, we are free from the shackles of our regular physical houses – and we can yearn for a better time to come – to invite not only our wonderful guests – our teachers and our fathers and mothers from yesteryear into the sukkah as part of our ushpizin – we can invite the legacy of David into our sukkah as well – a hope that by our efforts, what we might call the World-to-Come is activated.

We are thus reminded that what appears permanent in this world is only fleeting, and that which seems ephemeral in this world – spiritual growth – is what has eternal significance – haolam hazeh domeh laprozdor bifnei haolam habah – this world is compared to a corridor that leads to the World-to-Come (Avot 4:21).

Another idea that is compelling to me this year is the idea that the sukkah represents our life – at a certain age we go out into the world and we are buffeted by the elements – we are sheared by the wind, we are pummeled by the rain, and over time, despite our best efforts, we sink and sag. No matter our successes we eventually relinquish to the next generation – our doctors, our clergy – authority figures — will be younger than we are, thus giving us a sense of discomfiture.

I have been holding onto a quote from Frederick Douglass, the 19^th century orator, statesman, and abolitionist, who said – it is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. In the context of the Festival of Sukkot, the sukkah, rather than being seen as something that is fragile and easily destroyed, can be seen as a symbol of a well-lived life – one that endures, before finally being swept away. Seeing Sukkot as a meditation about the meaning of our life, we can counter-intuitively hold the sukkah as a strong child – how we celebrate our Festivals, how we approach our responsibilities, how we live – all effects those who are watching and using us as examples.

It is so easy to be a broken man – and so hard to repair. As we build our sukkot, may we say that we are building strong children – that we are watering the ground, preparing for planting for the future — overcoming our own imperfections and imperfect proclivities – we are surpassing our tendencies for hypocrisy and negativity – and in the simple acts of showing up, construction, and dwelling, we are teaching powerful lessons about living.

As the journalist, Murray Kempton has written: there are new endeavors and fresh disasters, for they are the way of life. And the art of life is to save enough from each disaster to be able to begin again in something like your old image.

May our celebration of Sukkot, bring us joy and strength in this New Year. Rain or shine, may we have the opportunity to enjoy the moments that we have, the time that is presented to us and stand courageously and unafraid, raising ourselves up from where we have fallen – for, nothing’s impossible, I have found/for when my chin is on the ground/I pick myself up, dust myself off/And start all over again.

Especially in this time of shemitah, this year of pause – we do well to consider the sukkat David hanofelet – and see that we are gifted with opportunity to consider, to build, to improve, and ultimately, to take down – appreciative in the rushing of time — of what was, what we have done, and what will never be again.

Shabbat Shalom.