Valley of Dried Bones

God lifts up Ezekiel and carries him to the “Valley of the Dry Bones.” There, the prophet gazes about himself and sees a vast human graveyard. As far as the eye can see, remains of dried up bones cover the entire valley.  And God speaks:

"Can these bones live again?”

Ezekiel thinks and responds,

“Oh Lord God, only you know.”

Then, God commands Ezekiel to prophecy over the bones with these words: “Oh dry bones, hear the word of the Lord: thus says the Lord God to these bones: ‘Behold, I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live. And I will lay sinew upon you, and cover you with skin and place breath in you and you shall live.  And you shall know that I am the Lord’.”

The prophet speaks these words and a tremendous noise is heard.  It rises from all around as the bones reassemble and flesh begins to cover the newly re-formed bodies.  Then, in a second command, the winds of the earth stir and flow in to the lifeless dead.  They come alive, an army of the resurrected.

In this remarkable episode, God, through Ezekiel speaks to the people in exile. These are the ones who lost their homes; these have lost their land. The blackened skies would not always be dark but would ultimately reveal hope. The exile would end and people would return to their ancestral home. There maybe sorrow but there must also be hope.

Awed into silence, Ezekiel hears the voice of God once more. His words are the message to mankind, not just to his community.

"Behold I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, O my people; and I will bring you to the land of Israel. …And I will put my spirit into you and you shall live…”

Life must be full of hope. God gave Ezekiel the tools to teach this crucial lesson. Israel knew that eventually they would be returned to their homeland. Just as the bones knit together with flesh and sinew and fused with the breath of life, we are meant to understand the underlying message of hope.

The parable of Ezekiel is powerfully relevant.  It is this stirring message that we read every Passover.  We reaffirm the prophet’s words each year as we sit down to recite the narrative of the Haggadah. We are, as Yehudah HaLevi called us, “the people of hope.”  Time has tempted us to squash our will to live as free people, free Jews.  Throughout the long years of persecution and hatred we have survived with an almost burning fervor not to relinquish our heritage. Despite the long history of anti-Semitism we refuse to become pessimists; but instead we are the people of HaTikvah, “The hope.”  We end every service with the Aleynu prayer which contains the words, “Therefore we hope…”.

“Hell,” wrote A.J. Cronig, “is a place where one has ceased to hope.”

Pity those who have lost ability to help. In hope, lies life. Without it, we are but bones.

I've Got the Sun in the Morning and the Moon at Night

The sun governs our lives.  We adjust our watches to the lengthened days at this time of year to compensate for more sunlight hours.  Later we will reset them.  Days are measured not only by the placement of the sun overhead but by its anticipated appearance.  For example, we call the midpoint between sunset and sunrise, midnight.

We adjust the years to the rotation of the earth around the sun using the “leap year” as a Band-Aid to remedy the true year of 365 1/4 days.  Otherwise, we would eventually end up with New Year’s Day being where Thanksgiving is now.

For ancient man, time was more easily calculated by observing changes in the celestial bodies.  Each evening the star change their positions ever so slightly.  Yet those slight changes enable us to grasp the passage of days and weeks and seasons.  The sun, however, remains basically the same.  The days grow warmer or colder but the brilliant orb does not radically shift its position.

In Judaism, time is marked by the waxing and waning of the moon.  While Jewish holy days always seem to come on different days each year, the always appear on the same days of the lunar cycle.  Rosh Hashanah, for example, always is marked by a new moon.  The Festival of Booths, Sukkot, falls when a full moon is visible in the heavens.

In this way, the seasons ebb and flow according to a lunar cycle which is both predictable and visible.  Interestingly, the eastern churches also celebrate the holiday of Easter using the same cycle, unlike their western counterparts, which have adopted the solar year as the yardstick for the passage of time.  For the eastern sects, Easter invariably coincide with Passover while most American churches celebrate the holiday on a consistent solar date.  And we know the solar calendar really makes our days slightly longer than twenty-four hours.  A complete revolution of the sun necessitates adding a full day to our calendar every four years.

Still, the moon, like the sun, is not a completely accurate measure of time either.  The moon revolves around our planet every twenty-five hours, not the twenty-four hours of the sun’s day.  Left alone for long stretches of time, spring would gradually slip into winter and winter into spring.  So, to keep our lunar calendar in “sync” with the solar calendar it too is adjusted every now and again.

When the moon catches up with the sun at the beginning of a new cycle (and it will do this approximately every twenty-nine days) we witness a “conjunction” or “new moon.”  When the old moon has faded away and yielded a new view of itself in the heavens, we celebrate a “Rosh Hodesh.”

A mystical quality hovers around the moon.  It is not unlike the shadow of our personalities.  To us, the moon appears to have strength all it sown.  Hence, we call someone under an unknown power, a lunatic or a looney.  But that too may be lunacy for the moon has no power of its own.

The sun casts its own light over the world while the moon is merely reflective.  The only reason we can see the moon at night is because it reflects the light of the sun on the other side of the earth and, like a mirror, returns it to us in the darkness.

The moon therefore becomes a paradigm for humanity.  Just as the Divine exists outside of us, each person is endowed with a reflective quality to mirror the brilliance of the Holy One, blessed be He.

Conservatism

Conservative Judaism is reactive.

Originally, our movement began as a reaction against Reform Jews, who were awash with all possibilities that the freedom allowed in the late 1800s. Germanic Jews arriving in New York brought with them the Reform movement. Reform grew at an alarming rate, for those of a more traditional bent.

Wanting to conserve the core of Jewish values, a few committed Jews banded together to form Conservative Judaism. Their goal was simple; preserve traditional Judaism while allowing for integration into the fabric of American society. One of the early cogitators of conservatism, Solomon Schechter, called our brand of Judaism, Catholic Israel. Schechter used this term to indicate that we are at once a community with our own practices, which must be preserved while allowing for modern and thoughts and additions to be considered. It was, in short, a reaction against Reform Judaism and a worn and complacent Orthodoxy.

The truth is, Conservative Judaism has created many changes in our century and the one before.  Did you just have occurred over four generations. Yet, and our generation, there is a greater Porsche than ever for more rapid change. I am amazed for example that while a new prayer book is “hot off the press” new versions are already being circulated.

The major changes in this new edition are the move toward alternative rights and practices. The prayer book that we use now contains only the Shabbat and festival liturgy. There are no weekday prayers found.

In the past few decades or movement has seen many changes.  Questions for you to consider: do you feel we are too slow to embrace change? Or to quick?

Purim Data

Imagine. What a tale we share at Purim time.

Here are these two guys, Bigthan and Theresh, emasculated I might add, who sieza the throne until Mordecai gets wind of it, leading us to the fateful line: “When the queens eunuchs made a play for the throne it was a very impotent moment in history.” Inconceivable right?

Now what were these guys doing there anyway? And why were they, well, you know. Back in ancient China they used to do this sort of thing to poor young boys so that they could guard the Emperor and his harem. While the rest of the kingdom would bow and genuflect before the king, these guys would scurry about about whispering little terrors into the head honcho’s ear. Believe it or not, the church liked cash traded boys as well as the voices added a shirt and something to the choir. Needless to say, listening to them must have been a unique experience.

Meanwhile back at the castle, Vashti was in deep Doo Doo. Here is a little ditty I wrote in Vashti’s  honor:

What a young lady (like her shvester),

Who had a punim like Uncle Fester,

She was a blight,

Upon the King’s sight,

So he opted for the sexy Esther.

Well, so much for her. Now the real story begins.  As a man of religion I am always sensitive to parallels and precedence. I think of Adam and Eve when I think of love. When they ate the fruit was the case of cores and defect. So too with beautiful Esther.

I have it from the greatesthistorian and lucid fabricator, Rabbi I.M. Wise that Haman’s real name was Mervin.  When he tried to open a casino in downtown Shushan, the peasants began to revolt when they heavily losing saying, “Hey man, what are the odds on blackjack?”   The name stuck. “Hey man,” is also spelled Hyman or Haman.  Those guys were so dumb they thought arcade was a beverage invented by Noah.

They believed way back then, I am not making this up, that baths were for weaklings. These men proved their manhood by never, but never, coming into bodily contact with anything remotely resembling soap. Frankly, I have done an exhaustive study of the roots of their revulsion observing boys over several years. My conclusion: males Hyman and Harriet, inborn fear of all things clean.

The dreaded childhood malady, Cooties, stems from ancient Persia when men have to protect themselves from the time when Vashti demanded that the king bathe. Their conversation went something like this:

Vashti: Ashky, can we talk?”

King: “Huh?”

Vashti: “Do the flies buzzing around your head ever bother you?”

King: “Say what?”

Vashti:  “I want you to wash up.  Take a bath.”

King: “Guards!”

One who is that terrified of water to not be a good influence.

Even today and ordinary bar of Ivory Soap strategically placed in a body of water presently inhabited by peaceful young boy playing with his Ninja Turtles from Hell turns this darling into an ICBM. Naturally this proves that males have a chromosome defect, which makes them allergic to all non-dirt items.

Incidentally, I have tested this theory personally and have consulted over 5000 random samples and I found that the most mild children can be transformed to Genghis Khan with a toothache, from soap and water.

It is only with very thorough brainwashing that we manage to wedge them into a bath everynow and again. Left to their own devices life would revert back to the Dark Ages.

More Purim Knowledge

Professor J. L. Siegel is a scholar from the town of Pulkey, New Jersey.  He has given many talks on the lofty topic of creatures in the air and their relationship to Judaism.  Through a variety of lofty concepts of creatures of the air and the relationship to our faith, Judaism. Through a variety of means-telling talons and generally winging it-Professor Jonathan Siegal will lead our congregation to this little known, but critical, area of Jewish thought.

Part of Siegel’s approach incorporates the analysis of ancient texts. For example, most people are not aware of the fact that the beasts of the air pre-dated the arrival of mankind by one full day.  

Furthermore, higher on the pecking order of life, these important animals maintain a distinct position in the world. In fact, there is reason to suggest that these beasts had a hand (?) in the creation of humanity. The winged ones prefigured man’s formation, the holy writ mysteriously remarks, “Let us make man in our own image.” Who was the us in the ancient narrative? According to the sage, Rabbi M. Shuggina, someone or something had to help. The bird fit the bill.

While some theories have run afoul over the course of time, J. L. Siegel’s proposal seems to be grounded in some reality. Looking to the original version Genesis we find the words, v’et ofe k’naf (1:21), which could either mean “the voice of the cornered clod or “the winged clod.” Siegel proposes that it means the latter, again suggesting that the vital role that the bird played in the creation process.

The power of the winged creatures is further demonstrated by the flood sequence. The saintly I. M. Klutz once noted that the first bird dispatched from Noah’s Ark was the raven. What, says Klutz, is important about that? Not a lot. But if we look closely at the original Hebrew we find an amazing philological occurrence.  Vayaytzay yatso v’shove, ad vyoshet.  “The raven fluttered all over the place (my translation) until became embarrassed.”  What creature could feel this deep emotion, if not a highly intelligent and gifted being? Plucky as ever, though often ridiculed for his approach, Siegal has maintained his theory.

We are delighted to welcome Dr. Siegel into our community for a relatively modest fee, chicken feed.  Jonathan Livingston Siegel is a prolific author. Among his more famous works are, The Truth About Lyndon Johnson’s Wife and Daughters, Cry Foul, and the bestseller One Day in the Life of Ivan Sandersovitch.