From The Bimah: Jewish Lessons For Life

Sometimes I feel like a spiritual hustler (and I don’t mean I daven quickly). I meet young people in bars and cafes and ask them questions about their Judaism. Questions like, “what do you love about being Jewish?” and “do you feel it is important to live a Jewish life?”  But sometimes their answers catch me off-guard.  So many young adults are living Jewish lives for other people in other times. We are so committed to safeguarding what we received that we’ve forgotten why Judaism exists in the first place—as a way for us to connect with God, with ourselves, and with our larger Jewish community. 

I want to raise a large question with you today, which is this:  Is knowing more better?  Is knowing more facts about yourself, your history, your biology, your family history, better?  In our reading this morning, the High Priest, the Kohein Gadol, keeps in a pouch above his heart an ancient device intended to discern God’s will on hard questions.  It was called the Urim v’Tumim.  Let’s say there were a vexing question the Israelites could not answer on their own.  The Urim v’Tumim was an instrument of decision that only the High Priest could use that would enable him to ascertain God’s answer to this hard question.  He kept this instrument in a pouch above his heart. 

Namely:  How should we think about the aspiration to be the greatest, the best?  Is thinking this way, is dreaming this way, is acting this way, I want to be the best, healthy?  What happens to our heart when we are focused on becoming the goat? I remember as a teen being drawn to the climactic line in the poem Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.  “To strive to seek to find and not to yield.”  Is this a good thing?  How does the goat beat the ram?  With a lot of help from our friends. That is true for Tom Brady.  That is true for all of us.   

It was early in the morning. I had just sat down at my kitchen table with a cup of coffee, when I happened to look out the window and caught my breath. A deer stood there, ears erect, eyes darting around. I live in a condo in Boston, built along a busy street by VFW Parkway.  Where did that deer come from? How does it spend its days? Is it always wandering between scraps of forest, pockets of grass and trees? Does it miss just running through the woods, without having to dodge cars and hide from people? Where does it go during the day?  And as I pondered the deer’s predicament, I began to see the ways in which we are all like that deer. Our lives are hemmed in on all sides with work and obligations.  So many of us wake up extra early to nibble at that patch of grass—the 5 minute meditation app, the chance to drink a cup of coffee sitting down, to read the paper—and then we’re off, darting from task to task until late at night. 

When you see somebody do something that you do not understand–perhaps it is puzzling, perhaps it is more than puzzling, it might even be offensive to you–how are you supposed to think about and respond to this challenging conduct?  Consider three vignettes. Read the full sermon here  https://www.templeemanuel.com/rabbi/rabbi-wes-gardenswartz/their-battle-that-you-know-nothing-about/ 

I was recently speaking with my son Sam about a book he was reading that he was raving about.  He said it was giving him so much to think about every day when he went to work and interacted with his colleagues.  The book is Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman. Have you ever read a book that articulates a concept that you have never quite heard that way, but it totally captures reality?  You say yes! O my God, yes!  I never saw it before, but what she writes is so true.  And helpful.  It is going to help me take up my game! Read the Sermon here:  https://www.templeemanuel.com/rabbi/rabbi-wes-gardenswartz/becoming-a-multiplier/ 

We knew it was coming, this report from an expert who had been spending a lot of time investigating, but when it landed, it really hurt. I am talking of course about the recent report that concluded that French fries are bad for you.  According to Eric Rimm, a professor of nutrition at Harvard, French fries are, in his cruel phrase, “starch bombs.”  He argues that French fries—even though they are made out of potatoes, and even though potatoes are a vegetable, that grows from the ground, and even though vegetables that grow from the ground are usually good for you—in the specific case of French fries, they are not so good for you. Read the full sermon here:  https://www.templeemanuel.com/rabbi/rabbi-wes-gardenswartz/after-the-crash/ 

There is a town in northern California called Paradise which was destroyed last month by fire.  Ninety percent of Paradise residents lost their homes.   What this meant for the people who lived in Paradise was brought home to me by an article I read about the Paradise High School football team.  Read the sermon here:  https://www.templeemanuel.com/rabbi/rabbi-wes-gardenswartz/love-in-paradise/ 

Tomorrow night we will be singing the song of a man who died 28 years ago.  Had he been alive, Leonard Bernstein would be 100 years old.  However he died relatively young, at the age of 72.  And yet, all these years later, we still think about Leonard Bernstein. Which raises the question:  do you have to be a musical genius for your song to play on after you are no longer here?  Let’s say that you are an ordinary person who works and loves and lives and gives and passes, with no soundtrack attached to your name.  Is it possible that 28 years after you pass people will still remember and celebrate you? Read the full sermon here:  https://www.templeemanuel.com/rabbi/rabbi-wes-gardenswartz/a-song-that-plays-on/