On Giving

Just say you have one or two million dollars to give away.  It was a good year and now it is time to give back; time to do some “tikkun,” improvement.  The first decision you need to make is how to best use such a goodly amount. After all, being a good entrepreneur with solid business skills, you know that giving money must also be solidly researched and well-thought.  So you begin to think of all the worthwhile charities you can donate the money to with an awareness that the money must make a real and significant difference for your people.  You want to give it to Jews. 

The next decision is how best to allocate the money; there are many worthwhile causes.  Among them are programs and activities for the infirmed.  The money could go a long way toward giving meaning to the elderly.  Israel is a possibility too.  With years at war and ongoing economic as well as frontal assaults, such an infusion of cash would give much needed money along with an unspoken statement of support.  Youth programs are certainly worthwhile.  Recreational and sports activities for children.  So many things to choose!

You could even decide to divide the money up among the many willing and noble causes.  Why not give a little to each?  The only problem with that is that he greatest effect of the donation will not be met.  A single lasting contribution by you cannot be achieved when the money is thinned out among different agencies.  What do you do?

The one area so often overlooked when philanthropists seek ways to contribute to the welfare of the Jewish people is through the synagogue.  Odd, isn’t it?  In the past twenty years memorials and museums have been constructed to the memory of the Six Million in metropolises throughout the world.  Relying on deep pockets these buildings rise on significant gifts and bequests.  Massive JCCs have been built in virtually every city through the nation costing many millions of dollars.   At the same time, most religious institutions continue to exist on a shoe-string budget.  They barely balance their meager balance sheets.  And yet synagogues are the most meaningful contributors to Jewish survival! 

The fact that there are philanthropists at all that still remember they are Jewish is because of the shuls they were brought up in.  They never forgot the lessons of cheder (religious school).  Their teachers were insistent that tzedaka is humanity’s redemption.   Ingrained in their memory are sitting at shul and crying to God.  They will never forget the serious learning the long impassioned discussions about tzedaka and justice.  Wrapped in a tallit, benching licht (candle lighting), full emotional outpouring of the soul are all memories which inform the present.

It is usual too see sprawling hospitals in large metropolitan areas named for Jewish contributors.  The same is true of our universities.  A few years back a very rich and giving philanthropist died.  He donated millions to museums, institutions of learning.  One of his many legacies is the Annenberg Foundation which gives away grants and affords opportunities for many people throughout our country.    Training programs, educational media, communications and so much more were left by Walter Annenberg.  The name will be familiar if you watch PBS.  Little was given to Jewish causes.  Nothing at all that I am aware of was given to synagogues.  Why?

The same question can be leveled at many Jewish do-gooders.  Why do they ignore the fountain which feeds all the tributaries  If it were to dry up, rest assured the balance of the Jewish landscape would wither in its wake.  The Day Schools are in a similar quandary.  While they nurture the youngest shoots of the flower they receive scant attention from big donors.  Millions are given to create a chair at a university which does nothing to foster Jewish identity while rabbis and principals go about with their hands out.

Another oddity: all the afore mentioned buildings and programs will eventually fall away.  As proven through the epochs the only remaining feature of Jewish life are shuls and their educational appendages.  Need proof?  Think of the last time you traveled.  What noteworthy Jewish sites remain for more than a century?  Almost without exception they are synagogues.  What happened to the rest of their communal activities and structures?  We do not know.  They did not survive.

So why do the moneyed forget the place where the future is to be written?  I do not know.  But if anyone has an answer I would love to hear it. 

A Favor

Few are the tales that escaped the flames of the camps.  That is because the remnants of once-vast Jewish community were so few.  It is also because the survivors that emerged tried desperately to forget.  Those that attempted to relegate it to he distant past were haunted by unrelenting demons of the night.  Remembering was too difficult; forgetting too painful.

            One of the handful of stories that came to us was of Rabbi Kalonimus Kalman, who became rebbe of the Warsaw ghetto.  Many are the legends that surround the man...but they are the stuff of myth.  The Rebbe took children under his gentle arms and taught them while the unspeakable erupted all about them.  Daily he took the little ones and taught them Holy Torah while outside the walls the Torah was desecrated; menschlichkeit where there was inhumanity;  holiness in the depths of depravity.  An angelic grace hovered over the study hall, or so they said.

            After years of sifting through the ashes, one lone deformed survivor was found.  Reluctant to confront the ghosts of the past, he finally rested his old, frail body and began to tell a fragment of a Shabbes tale with the Rebbe: 

“We danced, hundreds and maybe thousands of children, and the Master was singing a song to greet the holy angel, and at the mean he would teach between every course. ‘Kinderlach, der grosser zach in de velt iz tuen emetzen a favor.  The greatest thing in the world in simply to do someone a favor’.”

            The Rebbe --along with all his holy students -- were murdered at Treblinka.  Five years in Auschwitz this lone, poor man saw what no human being should see, what no creation of G-d should endure.  And, still, throughout all the torments, despite all the depravity, when he wanted nothing else than to just die, the words of the Rebbe came back to him- precisely when he wanted give up, “The greatest thing in the world in simply to do someone a favor.” 

            From his perch resting his battered, crippled body, his eyes lifted to heaven with a radiance and he said, “Do you know how many favors you can do in Auschwitz?

            Perhaps we should all become disciples of Rabbi Kalonimus Kalman.  Maybe on the edge of this year we could bring the heaven of the Rebbe into our own lives.  - from the tales of Shlomo Carlebach

This Pesach

We have grown up in freedom.  We can say what we want to say, act within the boundaries of propriety (sometimes going a bit too far) because we are free.  It is very difficult to imagine what it would be like to live without that gift.  It is hard to imagine what it must be like to live in a totalitarian regime where every move is monitored and for the slightest infraction you can be thrown into prison.  There are dozens of modern-day examples.

Anywhere between 20 and 30 million people are slaves TODAY.  26% of that number involves children.   This number does not take into account more than 200,000,000 children working full time, for pennies.  It is entirely possible that children in Indonesia made the shoes you are wearing.  Children as young as five, are sent down into dank mines because they are able to squeeze into small places.  Some girls are sold or kidnapped as wives.  Remember the 200 captured in Nigeria?

It is stated by our sages, of blessed memory, that the idea of exploitation begins with a disparity in how people are viewed:

“That the master should not eat white bread and the slave eat course bread; that the master should not drink old wine and the slave drink new wine; that the master should not sleep on a feather mattress and the slave on straw….”  -Talmud, Kiddushin 20

Wherever there is inequality – when some deserve better than others - there follows forms of slavery. 

This is the essence of Pesach.  We remember what it means to have been a slave.  We are reminded that God hates slavery.  It is the Holy One who redeems the Children of Israel, our ancestors, from the torment of bondage.  It is He who wreaked havoc on a civilization because the Egyptians behaved uncivilly.

When we feel the power of freedom on Pesach and weep for the cruelly tormented in our time we have performed half the task that Passover demands.  The other half in found in the passage we sing on Yom Kippur from Isaiah:

Is such the fast I desire,
A day for men to starve their bodies???….
⁶ No, this is the fast I desire:
To unlock the fetters of wickedness,
And untie the cords of the yoke
To let the oppressed go free;
To break off every yoke.
⁷ It is to share your bread with the hungry,
And to take the wretched poor into your home;
When you see the naked, to clothe him,
And not to ignore your own kin.

⁸ Then shall your light burst through like the dawn
And your healing spring up quickly;
….⁹ Then, when you call, the Lord will answer;
When you cry, He will say: Here I am.  –JPS trans.

What is the prophet telling us?  The question most often asked is “Where is God when good people suffer?”  Remarkably, Isaiah teaches that the Holy Presence is among us when we continue the mission that He began.  God says, “heneni” when we bring freedom to the oppressed.

The Synagogue

When God gave His holy Torah to the people there was thunder shattering the air already thick with smoke.  The earth convulsed, as it was about to give birth to a new universe of order and justice and hesed.

And yet as we come to the next book of the Torah we are perplexed.  God speaks to the people through the Ohel Mo’ed, the Tent of Meeting.  In there, God spoke directly to His servant, Moshe.  When the Divine Voice spoke Moshe heard clearly, the ancient ones tell us.  Those outside the Ohel Mo’ed heard God’s Voice indistinctly.  They had to try to listen to hear the words being spoken.

Many of the sages wonder why the change.  Why was God’s Voice so thunderous at one time and barely discernable the next?

An answer: God was preparing us for a time when His diminished Voice would have to be sought.  That is why we come to the sanctuaries of today; it is where the Voice is most keenly felt.

That is why synagogue has been the central hub of all things Jewish for millennia.  From that place we feed the hungry; it is where we learn Torah.  Synagogues are places where children are educated; babies are named, brises are conducted, weddings performed and mourners encouraged.  From this cornerstone of Judaism cemeteries were purchased, news about Israel was gathered, and Federations were born.

When something goes wrong where do we gather for mutual support and strength?  Where can we pour out our heart without fear of ridicule or judgment?  It has always been the same whether in France, Poland, Russia or Yemen.

That is why support for the Synagogue remains the first and most critical arena for our ongoing care.  Without this what would remain?  Most of us know from our personal experience growing up in small hamlets around the south that when a synagogue closes in town there is no Jewish life left.  It is dead.

I am not a fundraiser.  I do not possess those creative talents.   I ask you to consider either a gift to the synagogue of whatever amount you can afford….or even better….think of leaving a legacy grant to the synagogue in your will.  Imagine the great good that can be done in preserving and enhancing Jewish life in Columbia for years to come!  The power of extending the gift to the next generation – as it was gifted to us – lies within our hands.

Remember all Jewish events and program are extensions of what we teach and promulgate right here.  

Yet. Don’t wait to be asked.

The Way

I often use the word halakha.  Taken non-literally, halakha means Law.  We speak of the Laws of Judaism (traditionally numbered at 613) as the binding concept of the Jewish people.  The halakhot govern the way in which courts function, how we daven; they cover rules of relations and discourse.  In effect, halakha dictates not just the way our society functions but how we relate to God, as well.

Halakha is the practical application of the Written Word, i.e. the Torah.  That which makes the Torah more than an interesting narrative, more than just good fireside stories, is the way that it leaps into the realm of living.  As a matter of fact, one of the primary functions of a rabbi is to breathe life into the Divine text, to make it available for usage.  That is why the Torah is more than a book of ideas or theology.  It is a handbook for life. 

And yet, if you have ever read the Torah for more than three minutes, it is clear that the Bible is not a completely useable document.  Example:  What does the episode of Noah teach us about life?  Sure, it’s a neat story and has fascinating insights and morals but how can it be used as a yardstick for living?  That is where human reason comes in.   Toward the end of the tale of the flood God tells the survivors, “…but flesh with its soul, do not eat its blood.” (Genesis 9:4).

Peering intensely at this passage the Rabbis deciphered several messages.

1). We are allowed to eat meat.

2). We are prohibited from eating living flesh.  That is, implicit in the words ‘flesh with its soul” is the idea that God does not want us to tear a limb from a living animal.  That is cruel.  As an extension of this interpretation comes the law that any part of an animal that is severed while it is still alive negates the whole beast.

3).  As blood is also mentioned in the same verse, that too, is equated with the soul of the animal.  So we have the halakha that any hint of blood in an animal renders it unfit for consumption. 

Our religion is a fusion of both God’s will and human insight.

The literal meaning of the word halakha is way.  For us halakha is the path to the living, organic faith that was born millennia ago.