Bless me. Bless Us. Bless God.

Taking full notice of what we see and how we react to it undergirds the whole Torah.  God wants us to look, really look, at His work.  From the “Beginning” where God commands all of life to emerge from the dormant earth to the mitzvot of protecting one another, God’s ultimate concern is our interrelationship with the world.

Torah begs us to be engaged in all facets of life.  The pathway to engagement is to see grass, observe birds, listen to the cicadas, and participate in other people’s joys and oys. 

That is why the Talmud tells us we must say one hundred blessings each day.  We bless new clothes, our ability to see, walk, relieve ourselves, eat, experience holy time, and see the mysteries of nature.  One cannot do these things with eyes closed.  When we bless our world we become part of it.  We witness creation.

We are supposed to notice beauty.  Who knows?  Perhaps God will one day ask if we took the time to notice the variegated stripes on a mosquito’s leg.  “It is quite ornate.  I spent a lot of time designing it,” He might say to us.  Such a small miracle is remarkable.

Shug Avery, one of the characters in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple said, “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”

The universe is a harmonious, seamless place, where the only potential renegade variable is us.  Yet, with Torah as a guide we can at once work with God’s world and feel content instead of wondering what to do next.  The way we see matters.  Here is an illustration:

A man walked over to gaze at a construction site where workers were busily cementing bricks.  He asked a bricklayer, “What are you doing?”

The bricklayer answered that he was making twelve dollars an hour to do his work.

The observer asked a second man the same question.  He responded, “I have to support my family, and must earn enough for their needs.”

The third man said, “I am building school for children.”

Being a part of the universe that is fully alive, pulsating with energy is to uncover a great source of personal strength.  To see the world as dynamic, alive, flowing with possibility is to access and harness our potential.

Each prayer we utter changes the object of the prayer as well as us.  Everything we say is of consequence.  The opposite is also true: There are no secrets in the universe.  Nothing is done that does not have a ripple effect.  Everything matters.  That is why it is so important to pay attention.

Judaism’s insistence that we daven, say one hundred blessings each day, observe the 613 mitzvot, conspires to create a meaningful life and better world.

A visitor to Princeton University once remarked to Albert Einstein, “I am surprised that you work so hard.”  Einstein replied, “I am surprised to hear you say that.  I never work.  Everything that I do is pleasure and enjoyment.”

With such a regard for where our feet travel, what our mouth says, what our eyes see, and what our hands do, we become fully alive acting in consonance with the Lord, God.

As the year draws to a close consider bringing God and self into closer alignment.

° Try saying a few more blessings each day (plenty are in the back of the siddur (prayer book) or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_prayers_and_blessings.

° Put a tzedaka box on the counter and make putting something in a daily practice.

° Come to shul.

° Make it a point to do someone a favor once each day.

° Bless your food before eating

° Keep far from people and places that are bad for you.

Embrace life.

The Word

Words spoken at the wrong moment can have dramatic and long-lasting consequences.  The same is true for words that have not been thought-out, a spontaneous blurt.  Reflect for moment on the residual insults, slights, and wounds you bear.  More often than not, we are not victims of physical assaults but have all been are verbally abused.

Long after the words were spoken, long after the person who said them forgot what he said, we still remember.  Those words keep us up at night.  They come to us in dark moments and cause us to cringe…often decades later.

The internet has hastened the verbal decline in the psychic abyss.  Words sent with abandon are read and re-read, each time extracting new unintended meanings.  Deler licebit quod non edideris; nescit vox missa revert.  “You can change what you did not write - but words written you can never retract,” wrote the Roman poet Horace.  I know people who hold onto excoriating notes written to them years later and grow angrier every time they read them.

Perhaps that is why Rashi identifies the aspect of man that was “made in the image of God” as the gift of speech.  When we speak we build or destroy; we heal or hurt.  Just as God cast the world into being with words so too we become creators with what we say.  Words are never meaningless or empty; they are filled and volatile vessels.

It is interesting that the Hebrew for “words” is the same as for “things” (devarim).  I suspect that the ancient ones knew that words are things.  Once spoken they become alive.  They embed themselves quickly into the minds of the listener and become part of their being.  Kabbalah goes so far as to tell us that letters and words the building blocks of the physical universe.  The letters themselves are like the foundation which undergirds everything.  Without their power the universe would collapse on itself.

In tefilah, prayer, one word can have a tremendous impact.  One single word uttered with focus and intention can elevate a moment or even a lifetime.  In life, a word of praise spoken at the right time can redeem a lifetime of regret and despair.  A wrong word can destroy a person and even ruin their family.

The power invested in humanity by God through the gift of speech is overwhelming.  We are charged to use it well – for the sake of building life and not tearing it down.   Be compassionate in word.

Judaism Where?

Stephen S. Wise was the foremost rabbi in America during the War years.  I was reviewing a sermon he delivered in 1933.  Read what he said:

“Jewish Reformism…unconsciously or subconsciously followed the non-Jewish model.  At first purposing and later purporting to magnify the Synagogue, it began to move in the direction of holding the synagogue, its worship, its practices, and its mores, as distinct and distinguishable from the Jewish people.  Some unhappy results followed…”

What Wise was talking about was the move into the synagogue all things religious.  Kiddush moved out of the home, candle-lighting now happened in the synagogue, shuls bought token lulavim for Sukkot and held community Passover seders (away from homes).  All things Jewish were taken out of the house and transferred over the official religious home.  We are living with those results now.

On Yom Kippur I begged for a change.  I asked the congregation to consider doing one home observance: blessing your loved ones.  The truth is, this is a return of restoration of Judaism, and at least as critical, a return to God and back into the home.   Blessing one’s family is not only a means of expressing love in an authentic Jewish manner but also reminds that it is Shabbat.

Asher Ginsburg, known as Achad Ha’Am, made the observation, “More than the Jewish people have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.”  What Achad Ha’Am meant by that statement is that ‘we are what we do.’  Self-definition comes as a consequence of action.

Most times we believe that what we think defines our character.  There is some truth to this.  Truer still, is that our thinking is informed by what we do. 

Example: When we give tzedaka we teach ourselves the value of giving and train our mind to think in terms helping.  People who are used to doing tzedaka tend to repeat it.  Likewise, people who are used to holding back….

Example: Kissing the mezzuza when we walk through a door makes the mind constantly aware of the sanctity of the mundane.  That small act, redefines the way we think.

Example: Saying a blessing before eating brings a fresh appreciation to the table.

Example: Lighting two candles on Friday nights and holy days brings an awareness of the holiness of time that otherwise would pass unnoticed.

These and countless other Jewish actions are what creates self image.  They also have little to do with the synagogue, everything to do with the home, and nudge us closer to soul and the Almighty. 

Changing Tines

Reality check: You aren't in the closet any more.

For those of my age and older we straddled two universes: one of them was living a cloaked existence.  People of this generation did not name their kids Aaron, Miriam, or Benjamin.  Instead, we chose or were given "pareve" names that would “pass.”  Judaism was a weight that could confine us and restrict our movements.

Mordecai Kaplan wrote in 1937, the "average Jew today is conscious of his Judaism as one is conscious of a diseased organ that gives notice of its existence by causing pain."

It was a time of quiet suffering.  Quotas were in place limiting Jews into universities.  Virtually everywhere across the United States, neighborhoods were restricted or limited.  No Jews allowed or only a few were tolerated. Compare that with contemporary times:

·     Nowadays the JCC not only stands out, but advertises on public billboards. 

·     Two republicans in the south were recently called on their anti-Semitic comments roundly, especially by leading Senator Lurie of South Carolina. 

·     It is not infrequent to see yarmulkes bobbing in the aisles of Piggly Wiggly. 

·     The Synagogue maintains a very public web site along with a Face Book account.  We are out there. 

All these things would have been unthinkable one generation back.

For the old timers: would you have ever thought we would have a Jewish Studies Department at University of South Carolina?  If this public university scheduled parent's day on Yom Kippur who would care?  Who would have spoken against it?  Who could have ever imagined that the Jewish community would rise up and demand that the University pay more attention to our religious sensibilities?  Yet, that has just happened.

Did you know that Hebrew is now offered as a choice for students in many charter schools across the nation?

What does all this mean? It means that we compete for Jewish souls in many fields nowadays.  People do not just come to the synagogue for their dose of Judaism.  They get it in the marketplace as well. 

In some ways little has changed in four thousand years and in other ways much has changed in the past few decades.

Over past few years there have been parlor meetings in synagogues, mission statements crafted, and vision statements honed.   We are ready to take these words, make them official, and then make them reality.  We will need to look outward and inward to address the shifting landscape of American Jewry.  It is a significantly different place than it used to be and calls for a different approach.

Now is the moment to look around, gauge where we are, and plot the course for where we want to end up.  We have already started the process of reimagining our spiritual home.  Services are being made to be more user-friendly, uplifting and meaningful.  Yet there is much more to be done.

I invite your opinions and am even happier to invite your participation as we look at new ways to strengthen our faith.  It is with our commitment and investment that we will guarantee not just our continuity but our ability to thrive.