What if the internet goes in and out. Not a complete failure but disruptive. You write up what you were planning on saying. Here is some of last night’s discussion….

With thanks to Temple Beth Sholom in New York and Congregation Kneseth Israel in Elgin, IL, we participated in a late night services to really “open the gates” of the Days of Awe. This ancient service used to take place just before dawn when Jews believed G-d is closest to us. Others would begin the service at midnight. We started at 8:30 East Coast time or 7:30 Central time.  

With the help of The Bayit and the excellent music of Cantor Jerry Korobow and the words of Rabbi Sharon Ballan we began with Havdalah and continued through the high lights of the prayers for the High Holy Days. It is all designed to get us in the mood, to beg G-d for forgiveness and to make us think, to reflect about our lives. For this we use the ancient words that G-d taught Moses, reminding G-d of G-d’s very nature that includes that G-d is merciful and compassionate, slow to anger, full of lovingkindness and truth, and forgiving of iniquity, transgression and sin. 

We used a setting for these 13 Attributes of the Divine from Beged Kefet.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRKs2k3e634   

This setting is part of how I became a rabbi. Growing up in Grand Rapids I was always reminded by others that the Jewish G-d is the G-d of vengeance and the Chrisitan G-d, you know, Father, Son and Holy Ghost is the G-d of Love. What I didn’t understand fully is that G-d is G-d. G-d is One. G-d is loving. Period. And G-d will forgive our sins. Period.  

Yet, we are also taught “For sins between a person and God, Yom Kippur atones, but for sins between a one and another, Yom Kippur does not atone, until he or she makes peace with his fellow.” 

My congregation has a four part vision statement that includes meaningful observance. It is a challenge, because what is meaningful to me might not be to you and visa versa. The real challenge is in making a life of meaning.  

Our discussion last night centered around Ron Wolfson’s book, The Seven Questions You’re Asked in Heaven, Reviewing and Renewing Your Life on Earth. 

Wolfson identifies seven questions that you might be asked in heaven. It fits squarely with the metaphor for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur that G-d is evaluating our lives and writing our names in the Book of Life.  

Here is the list: 

1. Did you tell the truth (in business and elsewhere)? 

2. Did you leave a legacy?
3. Did you set aside time to study?
4. Did you have hope in your heart?
5. Did you get your priorities straight?
6. Did you enjoy this world?
7. Were you the best you could be?

And for each question there are other questions that could be asked or explained. Let’s dive in.: 
1, Did you tell the truth? We talked about telling the truth can be difficult. Can mean in business that you are not a team player but in the end it is better. We talked about “Is it kind? Is it necessary? Is it true?” and whether being able to maintain a filter can help. We talked about Brene Brown’s book, Rising Strong, and her idea that if we assume that everyone is doing the best they can, we can eliminate much grief.  As Wolfson said, “It’s not easy to live with lies.” And in fact, all the way back in our reading for Yom Kippur, the holiness code, we are commanded to have honest weights and measures. As our former CKI president would say, “It is all about balance.” Balance and honest in our work lives and in our personal lives. Honesty is about accountability. Do you count on others? Do others count on you? That’s how we become a blessing. Debbie Friedman’s beautiful misheberach, the prayer for healing of mind, body or spirit, says, “Help us find the courage to make our lives a blessing.” Every one of us counts, just like in the beginning of the book of Numbers, which starts with a census. Honesty, truth, faithfulness are related words in Hebrew with the root, Emet, which is another name for G-d. It represents the first, the middle and the end. They are the key values of a life well lived. Be honest with others. Be truthful with yourself. Be faithful with your G-d. How are you honest.  

2. Did you leave a legacy? Many times we see our legacy, our place in time as our children and grandchildren. However, a legacy could be your children and grandchildren or it could be a poem or other writing or a business. Some people become teachers and their students are their legacy. (That applies to corporate training and mentoring too!) Nobody of their deathbed ever asks to be able to work longer. Most want to spend more time with family. (That gets to priorities, see below.) It is what you leave behind. What values do you want to leave? Here I usually tell the story of Honi. He saw a man planting a carob tree. “Why are you planting something you won’t be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor.” The answer was “Just as my ancestors planted for me, so too shall I plant for my children and grandchildren, my descendants.” It is part of how we live out the message of Girl Scouts, to leave the world a better place. How are you leaving a legacy? How are you teaching others? How are you making the world a better place? 

3. Did you set aside time to study? It teaches in Pirke Avot that we should, in fact, set aside time to study and many of the people on this call are active participants in adult study, whether that is a book group, adult Hebrew, Torah Study, even going to services. But study doesn’t have to just be Jewish. One person talked about teaching juggling to kids who were having a hard time succeeding in school. What great mentoring. Teaching and Learning in Hebrew have the same three letter root. For me and my husband, we try to study with another rabbinic couple every week. Thursdays at 2 will find Rabbi Steve Peskind, his wife Judy, Simon and me drinking coffee, laughing, catching up on our lives and reading a book together. Yet it is hard in our busy lives to keep to the schedule. Someone is late. One of us has a funeral. Someone has had a hard week. Currently, we are studying a book called “The Talmud of Relationships.” We don’t often agree with everything in the book but it is a great discussion starter. Pirke Avot also teaches that without Torah there is no bread (sustenance, income) and without bread there is no Torah. We also say that we turn it again and again. That’s why we read it in a yearly cycle. If we turn it again and again, we will learn everything. “Through the study of Torah, by applying its lessons to our lives, we learn to make a living and to make a life well lived.” The study of Torah leads to it all. See we are back to creating a meaningful life! Often, I have dreamed of learning Spanish or studying voice. Those goals will have to wait for another year. What do you long to study or teach? How do you make learning a priority? 

 4. Did you have hope in your heart? We talked about how hope helps us with fear. We talked about Rebbe Nachman’s song, “All the world is a narrow bridge. The important thing is not not be afraid.” Louis Armstrong sang, “What a wonderful world.” When G-d created the world, G-d saw it was very good. That’s hope. When Anne Frank was hidden, she wrote, “Despite everything, I believe people are really good at heart.” That’s hope. Roosevelt talked about it in his famous speech Obama wrote about it in the Audacity of Hope. “It wasn’t just the struggles of these men and women that moved me. Rather it was their determination, their self-reliance, a relentless optimism in the face of hardship.” But sometimes hope is hard. As Wolfson says quoting a cancer survivor, “We don’t always feel it. Whan you insist that we be hopeful and positive, we feel we have failed when we aren’t. Don’t cut off the possibility that we will share our burden with you and the opportunity to support us through hard times.” How have you fostered hope and optimism? 

5. Did you get your priorities straight? Did you understand one thing from another?  Say what? We’re back to priorities. What is really important to you? How do you find the things that matter to you most? How do we achieve balance? Sometimes I use a Star of David and put the things that matter to me most in the six points. Sometimes I replay the experiment of the rocks in the jar. (Spoiler alert—you will see that one in person or on Zoom soon). What is the most important to you? Ultimately, this is about asking the big questions. Did you ask questions about your life experience that led you to wisdom. Did that analysis lead you to understanding? As Wolfson put it, “Were you able to combine your analytical abilities with your hard-won wisdom from your experience to make good choices.” If you knew you only had one more day to live, what would you do? I’ve thought about this a lot recently. For me, I would still like to travel—that includes back to Israel and Italy and places I haven’t been, Alaska, Hawaii,  Giverny, Savanah. I would like to learn to dance. I would like to be a better wife and mother. And according to the very first piece of Talmud I ever learned, I should repent one day before I die. The rabbis then ask, how do we know when? Then we should repent every day. How perfect as we approach these Days of Awe. Teshuvah is not just for the Yamim Noraim but every day. These are the questions that will help us answer our big question. Did that you lead a life of meaning? 

6. Did you enjoy this world? This is the one that has really captivated me this year. In a year where it has been hard to celebrate, it is important to find ways to still enjoy life. The actual question was “Did you see My Alps.” G-d created the Alps and they are a thing of beauty and an awesome sight. It is OK to enjoy them. It is more than OK to enjoy them. You are supposed to. But like with meaning, what is enjoyable or pleasurable to you may not be to me and visa versa. The rabbis of the Talmud teach we should say 100 blessings a day. What blessings for pleasurable things can you think of. When we were driving through Michigan this summer there was a billboard, “Do what you love.” It was a sign for a job fair. Wolfson summed up this chapter giving us permission. “Enjoy G-d’s creation. All of it that is permitted to you. Each and every minute. Today…and every day.” How have you enjoyed this world. What would you still like to taste, touch, see, smell, hear?

7. Were you the best you could be? This was the question that Reb Zusia asked. When he was dying, he was crying. His students, his legacy, were surprised. “Why are you crying?, they asked. He answered, that when he died, he was not going to be asked, “Why were you not Moses?” Instead, he would be asked why was he not Zusia. This is like the Army commercial. We are asked to be all that we can be. We don’t need to be Moses or Zusia. We need to be the best we can be. We need to be fully, uniquely, ourselves. Figuring out who we are is our life’s work. 

And in the end, we decided that the questions are very interconnected. And related to the Mary Oliver poem, The Summer Day, which asks the question, “What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life.” We only have one life to live. That life is right now, in the present moment.  

Wolfson sums it up beautifully. “Now you have a choice. You can look at your life so far and answer the questions. Or you can look forward and ask yourself, “How can I get to yes.” How can I be more honest? How can I leave a legacy? How can I find time to study? How can I have hope? How can I prioritze? How can I enjoy? How can I be me?” 

Let’s ask these questions. Now while the gates are open.  

1. What is a commandment and who is doing the commanding? 

2. What are the purposes of the commandments? 

3. What habit would you like to change? 

4. Are any of the commandments more important to you than others? Why or why not? Make a list of those that are.  

1.  
   Identify what behavior you want to change. 

2. Identify the stimulus that creates your behavior 

3. Identify the response. 

4. Identify a substitute. 

5. Try for seven days. 

6. Record in a log and share with us! Did it make a difference? Is the new habit established? 

Still playing catch-up. But here is Re’ah. It is based on a recent experience I had learning of a family that chose organ donation.

“Ani l’dodi v’dodi…I am my Beloved and my beloved is mine.” These words from Song of Songs, are chanted at many weddings. Is also the acronym for the month of Elul that starts tonight. Tonight we celebrate, yes celebrate Rosh Hodesh Elul—just 40 days to Yom Kippur. As the midrash teaches, it was on Rosh Hodesh Elul that Moses began his journey back up Mount Sinai to receive the second set of tablets of the 10 commandments.  

G-d was willing to give Moses, and the people of Israel a second chance.  

Yes, even after the sin of the Golden Calf, G-d will take us back in love. G-d will go with us and give us rest. So very needed in these complicated times.  

But what happened to the first set of tablets?  

According to Torah, the first set was inscribed by God’s finger – whereas the second were chiseled out by Moses and rewritten by God – but it doesn’t tell us what happened to shards. One Talmudic tradition states the broken tablets were placed in the Holy Ark along with the second, which were intact. Another tells us: “Two Arks journeyed with Israel in the wilderness. One in which the Torah was placed, and the other in which the tablets broken by Moses were placed.” 

Estelle Frankel said in her book, Sacred Therapy, that “If the two sets of tablets represent developmental stages we go through in our spiritual and emotional development, the first tablets correspond to our youthful dreams and ideals. . . . The second tablets represent our more mature visions and dreams, which perhaps are not as lofty as our youthful visions and dreams but are more viable. . . . Gathering up the broken pieces suggests that we must salvage the essential elements of our youthful dreams and ideals and carry them forward on our journeys so that we can find a way to realize them in a more grounded fashion. For ultimately the whole and the broken live side by side in us all, as our broken dreams and shattered visions exist alongside our actual lives.” 

They are like the pieces of the glass that are shattered at a wedding, that many couples keep for placing in a mezuzah to reminds them of their dreams on their wedding day.  

Today’s Torah portion, we are told “See I set before you blessing and curse.” It implies then that we then have a choice, to choose blessing. That part seems easy. Who wouldn’t want to choose something good?  

Melissa, you have chosen Jason and Jason you have chosen Melissa as your beloved. Ani l’dodi v’dodi li. As a blessing.  We, as your congregation, are excited for you. You have dreams and goals of happiness. Visions of the way life will be in your new married status. 

There are books with titles like Finding Joy and Choosing Happiness—and there is some evidence in modern psychology that you can in fact choose happiness or at least put it as a slogan on a coffee cup or a t-shirt.  

The reality is that each of us will go through experiences that will seem like curses. Can we find the blessing in the curse? That can be really, really hard to do.  

That’s because there are a couple of challenges here. The first is to not blame G-d. While our parsha tells us explicitly that blessings and curses come from G-d, I am less sure of that. The name of Rabbi Harold Kushner’s book is When Bad Things Happen to Good People, and not why? The question is what do we do when bad things happen. 

We have a choice. We can choose how we respond to tragedy. One thing I tell people preparing for a marriage is to prepare wills and health care proxies and power of attorneys. I pray that you then don’t need them for a long, long time. As part of your advance directives, I strongly encourage people to become organ donors.  

Sometimes people are surprised. They had heard that Judaism rejects organ donation. But it is not true. Even in the Orthodox world, organ donation is now encouraged. Of course, we Jews argue about everything—even this. But here are my positions as your spiritual leader. 

It says in the Talmud that if you save one life it is as though you have saved the whole world. I actually quoted this earlier this week as it related to the vaccine clinic. Some were disappointed that so few people that night chose to be vaccinated. Let’s look at that another way. While I don’t have the final number of people vaccinated that night, you can think about it that at least 5 people’s lives may have been saved.  

For much of this past year, we have talked about the principle of pekuach nefesh, saving a life. That principle relates to organ donation too. 

While some have argued no to organ donation, because Judaism prohibits the unnecessary mutilation of the dead. However, if the mutilation is done with the purpose of saving life, the principle of Pikuach Nefesh allows it. 

Judaism encourages the quick burial of the dead and prohibits the postponement of burial, and harvesting organ may postpone burial, if it is done with the purpose of saving life, the principle of Pikuach Nefesh allows it. This applies as well for donating a body “for medical science” 

We are also prohibited from benefiting from the dead.  Although the recipient of the dead person’s organs benefits, since this was done with the purpose of saving life, the principle of Pikuach Nefesh allows it. 

Israel, in particular, in 2008 passed laws allowing organ donation passed with the full support of its Chief Rabbinate. The Halachic Organ Donor Society and other organizations like that, including Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz my friend and colleague who happens to be an Orthodox rabbi,  who has donated his own kidney and arranges for others to do likewise, encourages and supports organ donation. 

In my role as police chaplain, I recently learned about a family that chose, our key word, to donate the victim’s organs, after tragedy. Six people received the gift of life. I am grateful that that family in the midst of unspeakable tragedy had the courage to choose blessing. May we all be able to do likewise. See, I set before you blessing and a curse. Choose blessing. Be a blessing.  

Every now and then, you write a sermon and it doesn’t “preach well” Here is what I was trying to say. You need two eyewitnesses. Eye witness testimony is unreliable. Just look at the research on the black blue dress. So in pursuing justice, and setting up fair courts, the death penalty, while permitted by Biblical law is not used in rabbinic law. Here is the full, edited sermon:

“Seeing is believing.” We’ve all heard that. But my answer is “Well, maybe.” 

Seeing places an important role in Judaism. We are told in the same chapter that we are commanded to “Love our neighbors as ourselves,” to not out a stumbling block before the blind. We are told that we cannot see G-d face to face and live and that Moses was the only one who did—and that Moses saw G-d’s backside. What does that mean? Sometimes when I am teaching kids I say that it is like the wind. You cannot see the wind and yet you know it Is there. You feel the breeze on your face. See the leaves rustling. Sometimes, like this week, you see the destructive nature of wind, and you know it was there. You witness it. 

We witness G-d’s presences by feeling G-d’s loving compassion and mercy. We emulate that by doing similarly. As Sotah tells us, just as G-d clothed Adam and Eve, we should clothe the naked. As G-d visited Abraham, we should visit the sick. As G-d fed the Israelite manna, we should feed the hungry. As G-d buried Moses, we should bury the dead. Each of these is the visible sign of G-d’s compassion. That is how we walk in G-d’s ways. It is about walking the talk, to use that business phrase.  

The Sh’ma, the proclamation that G-d is one, the watchword of our faith commands us to hear.  But there is also a command to witness. The last letter of Sh’ma, Hear is ayin (which actually means eye) and the last letter of echad, dalet, taken together these two letters, ayin dalet mean witness. 

Today’s Torah portion has lots to do with justice, tzedek, tzedek tirdof, justice, justice shall you pursue. Part of that is in creating fair, equitable courts. One thing you need is two witnesses. Male, of course. We women didn’t count.  

And as a footnote. That is still true today. As recently as 2001 and again in 2004, in a Committee on Jewish Law and Standards for the Conservative Movement, in a well researched and documented responsa went through all the halacha. https://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/sites/default/files/public/halakhah/teshuvot/19912000/geller_womenedut.pdf  

https://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/sites/default/files/public/halakhah/teshuvot/20052010/mackler_women_witnesses.pdf  

So women can be witnesses but cannot sign legal documents especially for gittin, divorce decrees.  

To this day, when I meet with wedding couples I suggest strongly that they have two, male, non-related witnessed for the ketubah signing so that there are no questions about status in case they ever want to move to Israel. It is always a painful part of pre-marriage counseling.  

And it is important for another reason. In the case of an agunah, a chained woman, In the case of a classical Agunah, a woman whose husband has disappeared and it is not known whether the husband is still alive, a single witness (even a woman or slave, normally invalid as witnesses) may testify that the husband has died, and on that basis the woman may remarry. 

Take a breath. That was a long footnote…and while that is important, you need to understand that there are two kinds of witnesses in Judaism. Testifying—those that witness a crime for instance and attesting, those that witness something like a chance in status—marriage, divorce, conversion, even rabbinic ordination. 

It leaves us with a critical question:  

What, then does it mean to witness something?  

Scientific American did an entire issue on this important topic.  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-seeing-believing/  

We have all seen, yes seen, and probably argued about the blue or gold dress Perhaps you saw a blue dress with black stripes or a white dress with gold stripes.  

https://slate.com/technology/2017/04/heres-why-people-saw-the-dress-differently.html  

For more fun, including the tennis shoe. Is it teal or pink, try this article: https://www.insider.com/best-optical-illusions-photos-2017-10#as-you-probably-know-by-now-the-dress-turned-out-to-b 

It is fascinating to think about how the eyes see something and then the brain processes it. Apparently most people at first saw the dress as white and gold but in reality the dress was really black and blue. Read the article. It is fascinating and fits within our scientists in the synagogue grant. How do we really see what we see? 

It has practical implications for this very Torah portion. We need just courts. One of the most significant books I read in 2020, just before the world shut down, was Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson about his death penalty work. There is a movie by the same name, which I confess I haven’t seen but should. We know in this country that people who are on death row are disproportionality people of color have not had the same access to quality legal representation. It is part of why my husband’s brothers, both attorneys, have argued death penalty cases at the US Supreme Court. This is a topic with my own commitment to racial justice I too feel passionately about.  

But what does Jewish tradition say? Like everything, the rabbis argue about it. Biblical law allows for the death penalty in 36 offenses. They include crimes like murder and kidnapping, adulty to incest and rape, idolatry and apostasy and, pay attention kids, disrespecting parents.  

And yet, by the time of the Talmud, in Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5 we learn that rarely was there is a need for “presenting completely accurate testimony in capital cases because for any mistakes or falsehoods could result in the shedding of innocent blood. If any perjury were to cause an execution, ‘the blood of the accused and his unborn offspring stain the perjurer forever.’” This is the root for learning, which I quoted last week in a different context, that “if you save one life it is as though you’ve saved the whole world. If you take a life it is as though you have destroyed the whole world. 

In Talmudic times, capital cases required a 23-judge court, while you only needed 3 for a non-capital case. The US Supreme Court is 9 people (and yes, it includes women!) And coming out of today’s portion, you needed two or more eyewitnesses to testify to the defendant’s guilt. (Sanhedrin 4:1) Judges were urged to rule against conviction and if there was a one-vote majority, you could not convict. So additional judges were added in pairs until the majority ruled against conviction. (Sanhedrin 5:5)  That piece was new learning for me, so if you look at current discussions about “packing the court” I guess as Ecclesiastes says “there is nothing new under the sun.” 

The real argument against the death penalty is here: “Said one: The Sanhedrin (Supreme Court) that puts to death one person in seven years is termed tyrannical. Rabbi Eleazar Ben Azariah says, ‘One person in seventy years.’ Rabbi Tarffon and Rabbi Akiba say, ‘If we had been in the Sanhedrin, no one would have ever been put to death.’ Rabban Simeon Ben Gamaliel says, ‘They would have thereby increased the shedders of blood in Israel (Mishnah Makkot 1:10).’” 

Many have argued through the years that the death penalty serves as a deterrent. That argument was made to me recently as it relates to the sentencing in the Poway Chabad shooter, most research has shown that the death penalty does not work as a deterrent. Would that have made a difference with an Hitler? An Eichmann? It is an important question.  

While the last line of this sugiya, argument may be used to support a belief that the death penalty, if carried out judiciously, can be a deterrent, prevailing Jewish thought in every major Jewish movement in the United States has followed the previous opinions, which either oppose the death penalty outright, or allow for it only in the most extreme — once in seventy years — circumstances. Following this line of thinking, the major Jewish movements in the United States all have specific policy supporting either abolition of the death penalty, or a moratorium on its use. 

And here’s why. If you convict on eye witness testimony it may not be accurate. We just proved that back with the white and gold, or wait, blue and black dress. People see what they see.  

In 1992, the Innocence project was founded to use DNA testing to clear wrongly convicted people. As of  August of 2019, they have won 365 exonerations including 20 people on death row.  

This, is part of what we learn out of today’s portion. Tzedek, tzedek tirdof. Justice, justice shall you pursue, by setting up just and merciful courts AND making sure that they are equitable with honest eyewitnesses and the right kind of evidence. And that we should not support the death penalty, not even once in 70 years.