From The Bimah: Jewish Lessons For Life

Today, I want to share the story of a woman who stood in the shadows of history, but whose vision, whose courage, whose convictions have paved the way for generations.  We always talk about Ruby Bridges. We never talk about her mother. Lucille Commadore Bridges, who passed away this week at the age of 86, grew up in Tylertown, Mississippi.  She was the daughter of sharecroppers and dreamed of a world where she could learn and grow and become everything she was meant to be.  But that world was not her world, and though her parents dreamed of a better life for her, reality limited her opportunity.  After the eighth grade, she was forced to leave school so that she could help her parents in the field. She grew up, hemmed in by Jim Crow and blatant racism.  She became a housekeeper, married a mechanic, and saved away her dreams for her children.

Paradoxically, it turns out that we are the United States of America after all. United in our insomnia.  Both Republicans and Democrats report not being able to get a decent night’s sleep. United in our fear.  Both parties fear that if the other candidate wins, the very future of our nation is endangered. United in our alienation from national unity. However you voted, the reality is that about half the country voted for the other candidate.  United in not getting that fifty percent. United in living with a pit in our stomach. United in handling all this stress not well.  We eat too much. We drink too much. We perseverate too much. The United States of America. United in our dividedness. United in our 50-50 split. In the face of this division, I want to raise a single question.  For each person listening, here is the question: what can I do, what can I personally do right now, to make this grim situation a little better?

In her classic study of presidential leadership entitled Leadership in Turbulent Times, Doris Kearns Goodwin observes that Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Lyndon Baines Johnson all shared something in common: each fell into a deep depression years before they became president, and each was able to recover to the point that they could become and function as president.

In our fast and furious news cycle with so many historic moments of upheaval and anxiety covered every day, in the middle of this past week came a report that was different from all the rest.  Instead of division and despair, it noted that the current Pope had said supportive words about the LGBTQ community.  “They are children of God and have a right to a family,” Pope Francis said.  “Nobody should be thrown out or be made miserable because of it.”  He continued, “What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered." This was instantly met with backlash both from conservatives who railed at what they saw as a betrayal of Church doctrine, like Father Gerald Murray of New York, who said, “Pope Francis has overstepped his bounds,” and from liberals – too little too late.

Our Torah reading today is loaded with characters who get lots of press: God creating the heaven and the earth; Adam and Eve and the serpent in the garden of Eden; Cain and Abel.  All these stories are well known.  But the character who speaks most powerfully to us now, in our time—in month eight of the pandemic,  in the last month before an epochally divisive election—the person who has the most to say to us now is the one person most of us have  never heard of.  His name is Seth. Adam and Eve had two sons, Cain and Abel.  But Cain killed Abel.  If we pause here, and take this epoch narrative seriously, imagine what it would be like to be Adam and Eve, the parents of this murderously dysfunctional sibling pair.  One child is dead, murdered by your other child.  The other child has blood on his hands and is sent away by God nah v’nad b’aretz, to wander the world.

Growing up, Ann Patchett dreamed of becoming one thing, and one thing only, a writer.   “I wrote and read and read and wrote, ” she observes in the current edition of The New Yorker.  She didn’t like sports. She didn’t like clubs. She didn’t like socializing. She liked books, reading them and learning how to write them.   She fulfilled her dream.  Her  many books, like Bel Canto and The Dutch House, have become both critical and commercial successes. Yet for all her acclaim as a writer, her father Frank never believed in her as a writer, and told her so, explicitly, painfully, and repeatedly.

On Tuesday, Solomon and I spent hours lugging wood and trellises up three flights of stairs to assemble the frame of our sukkah on the roof. At the end of the day, I asked Solomon to take a picture of me, in between the walls of our sukkah, in a power pose.  I sent the picture to our family with the caption “we did it!” דִּבְרֵי֙ קֹהֶ֣לֶת בֶּן־דָּוִ֔ד מֶ֖לֶךְ בִּירוּשָׁלִָֽם׃ On Sukkot, we read Kohelet and Kohelet has a lot to say here. On Wednesday, I woke with a start. An ominous crash sounded on our roof. I catapulted out of bed, imagining that our sukkah had collapsed or was about to blow off the roof to cause who knows what damage.  I ran up to the roof in my pajamas, dodging the plants that had toppled in the wind.  Our sukkah was still standing, but barely.

A while back I was searching my bookshelf for Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning,” a philosophical masterpiece from the Holocaust era that has shot up Amazon’s bestseller list, a balm for our pandemic world. Frankl’s most profound point? That the answer to the question, “What is the meaning of life?” is, “To make meaning." I love the book. I needed the book. I know I have the book; my copy is dog-eared from repeated reading. But I couldn’t find the book. As I searched high and low, an entirely different book jumped out at me. Its spine read, “Not Quite What I Was Planning.” If ever there were a phrase that captured where we are right now, that would be it! I would wager there are not many of us who can say, “Yes, this is exactly where I thought I would be come Sukkot.”

When I first heard the story of Thom Brennaman, I knew that I had to talk about it on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of our year.  Thom Brennaman has something to teach everyone of us. Thom Brennaman was a sportscaster who called Major League Baseball games for 33 years.  There are a 162 games in a Major League Baseball season, and at least nine innings per game.  Thom Brennaman therefore called at least 48,114 innings of baseball over 30 years, not counting the many games that went into extra innings.  He had a special relationship with the Cincinnati Reds, whose games he started calling 14 years ago.  His connection with the Reds was generational.  His father Marty Brennaman had also called games for the Reds, and the son took over the mantle when his father retired, m’dor l’dor. Follow this link to view the sermon and watch the live streaming version on our website https://www.templeemanuel.com/rabbi/rabbi-wes-gardenswartz/your-final-chapter-not-your-finest-chapter/

It was right after Erev Rosh Hashanah services that I heard the news. Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died. Erev Rosh Hashanah. Happy. New. Year. I wanted to cry and scream and panic all at once. My throat constricted. My breathing hitched. Tears threatened to burst from my eyes. I was heartbroken. And I was furious. Follow this link to view the sermon and watch the live streaming version on our website https://www.templeemanuel.com/rabbi/rabbi-aliza-berger/for-the-sin-of-being-an-arrogant-sheep/

December 30, 1983 was a freezing cold day in New York City.  On that day a New York firefighter named Eugene Pugliese was fixing a broken pipe in SoHo.  Just then a man comes running up the street shouting that there was a fire.  Pugliese follows him, running towards the fire as fast as he possibly can.  The firefighter can see that an apartment building is on fire.  Smoke is billowing out from the sixth floor.  He runs inside the building.   Is anyone here? Is anyone here?  He can see that an artist’s studio is engulfed in flames.  Pugliese sees a woman crying hysterically.  My baby! My baby! My baby is in the fire. Follow this link to view the sermon and watch the live streaming version on our website https://www.templeemanuel.com/rabbi/rabbi-wes-gardenswartz/infinite-good/

If you had to pick the single most essential personal quality to be working on right now, what would it be?  Let me place this question in a context by sharing three recent conversations. One was from a beloved long-time member who really misses coming to services on Shabbat morning.  She misses it so much that she has counted exactly how many Shabbatot it has been since she was last in shul.  At the time we spoke, she had not been in shul for 25 Shabbatot. A second was from a wonderful couple that told me how much they used to love the energy of coming back to services on Rosh Hashanah.  They have had the same seats, in the same pews, near the same friends, for years. It just won’t be the same this year, they observed. A third was with a high school parent who shared their teen-age daughter, upon hearing that the Newton high schools will be all virtual this year, lamented that her high school experience has been, in her words, “ruined.”  She points to all the things that she used to

With four children schooling from home last spring, people would often ask me how things were going at our house.  I would smile and reply, “It’s one part Little House on the Prairie, one part Lord of the Flies.” Follow this link to view the sermon and watch the live streaming version on our website https://www.templeemanuel.com/rabbi/rabbi-michelle-robinson/lord-of-the-flies/

100% of us share the same problem.  100% of us will be experiencing the same problem next week on Rosh Hashanah.  100% of us experience the same problem in different ways every day.  Here is the problem.  I’ll use the language of the High Holidays.  When God calls on Abraham, Abraham says: Hineni.  I am here.  Our problem is, how do we say I am here, when I am not here? How does the Newton North or Newton South high school student say I am here for their new school year, when they are not here?  The learning is remote. How does your college sophomore or junior say I am here for my college experience, when they are not here?  They are in their high school bedroom. How do you say I am here for my office or workplace environment when there is no office or workplace environment? Follow this link to view the sermon and watch the live streaming version on our websitehttps://www.templeemanuel.com/rabbi/rabbi-wes-gardenswartz/block-out-to-dial-in-a-strategy-for-hineni-in-t

The new NFL season begins next week.  For the first time in 20 years, Tom Brady will not be playing for the New England Patriots.  He will be playing for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.  If you are not a football fan, here is some background.  Tom Brady is widely regarded as GOAT, the Greatest quarterback Of All Time.  In a league in which most players play a short time, get injured, and are replaced by a younger, healthier player—NFL stands for Not For Long—he has played 20 years and counting.  In a league set up to promote parity, where every team has the chance to win the Super Bowl, and no one team is supposed to dominate year after year, Brady has led the team to an unrivaled dynasty.  In his 20 years, he has led the Patriots to 17 playoffs, 13 Division titles, 9 Super Bowl appearances,  6 Super Bowl victories.  His sustained excellence over two decades is literally without precedent.  But instead of retiring as a Patriot, or playing another year for our team,

I want to talk to you about something that is very pleasant and productive at the same time.  You hear a lot about it from creative types, from artists, singers, composers, writers,  athletes—but it is not limited to these fields.  It is the feeling of having flow.  F-l-o-w.  Here is how having flow is defined by dictionary.com: In positive psychology, a flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. When you have flow, when you are in the zone, you are doing something that you are really good at, something that you have been trained to do, something that evokes the 10,000 hours Malcolm Gladwell taught us it takes to get really proficient at our chosen craft, and you are gushing forth with your creativity. The hours go by.  Time melts away. You don’t even notice.  The w

I am about to violate three cardinal rules of giving sermons. One: Don’t talk about sin. That’s too old-school.  Two: Don’t talk about punishment.  That’s too draconian. Three: Don’t talk about God.  That goes whoosh, over peoples’ heads. Too many folks are not God people. So in view of those three cardinal rules, here is my question:  Do you believe in a God who punishes you for your sins? Why bring up this heavy topic now, on a late August summer weekend?  Two reasons. Follow this link to view the sermon and watch the live streaming version on our website https://www.templeemanuel.com/rabbi/rabbi-wes-gardenswartz/do-we-believe-in-a-god-who-punishes-us-for-our-sins-a-question-for-the-elul-of-covid-19/

In our American milieu, we pride ourselves on individualism. We believe in the power of the American dream—the ability of every person to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, to make of themselves something great. Because we believe so much in the power of every individual, we tell stories of success as if each person were fighting against the current of the world, we talk about how they did this and thought that. Rarely do we remember to include in their stories the people that helped them along the way. It’s true that each one of us has the potential to live our American dream. But that dream doesn’t just come because we’ve got talent or because we work hard. More often than not, our dreams come true because there are people in our lives who care about us and support us, and who help us to open the doors to our future. Follow this link to view the sermon and watch the live streaming version on our website https://www.templeemanuel.com/rabbi/rabbi-aliza-berger/whats-cooking/

I want to speak to you today from the heart about something that is very important to me, I care a lot about it, yet I have never before in 23 years spoken about it from the bimah:  BDS, the movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel, the movement to single out Israel, from among all the nations in the world, not China, which imprisons its Muslim minorities, not Turkey, which stifles its dissenters, not any of the number of countries where being gay is a capital offense,  but BDS focuses only on the Jewish state for special boycott, divestment, and sanctions.   BDS does not say boo, does not raise a peep, about all these countries that violate basic human rights, but it saves 100% of its anger, 100% of its energy, only for the Jewish state.   Why is that?  Is there some agenda here? Follow this link to view the sermon and watch the live streaming version on our website https://www.templeemanuel.com/rabbi/rabbi-wes-gardenswartz/bds-boycott-divestment-and-sanction-of-only

The latest symbol of the American culture wars is a can of beans.  In case you missed the political scuffle, last week Robert Unanue, the CEO of Goya Foods, the largest Hispanic owned company in the U.S., stood next to the President in the Rose Garden and declared his support. The response was swift and severe: a massive outcry that took social media by storm with clips of Hispanic celebrities flushing Goya beans down their toilets, tweets of tutorials for how to hand-soak beans, calls to boycott Robert Unanue and Goya Foods for what he had said.  No question of why he was there or what his words meant to him. A similarly swift response came from the right – a “buycott.”  No question of why so many were so hurt. Boycott or buycott, one thing was clear. Goya had just taken center stage in what has become the template for how we in America engage with each other today – through what is colloquially called “cancel culture.”  The concept of “cancel culture” is a political flashpoint, often att