Earlier this week, I was astounded to log in to one of the news websites I read regularly and see the word “Jew” appear – not once in one article, but three times, three different headlines, covering three different topics. This was not the Jewish press, mind you; it was the Drudge Report, which I read along with its left-leaning counterparts (we also subscribe to both the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal. Lest you don’t believe me when I say I am a centrist and pluralist to the core.) Between Kanye, former President Trump, and the UC Berkeley Law School student government, there was what to cover.

There are only 6 million Jews in this country. That’s less than 2% of the national population. Worldwide, there are fewer than 16 million Jews. In the world. That’s 0.2% of the world population.

Why are we in the headlines? Why are we the object of such fascination, obsession, hatred?

The recently appointed head of the Institute for Advance Study, David Nirenberg, explored this topic in his 2013 tome Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition. He argued that anti-Judaism “should not be understood as some archaic or irrational closet in the vast edifices of Western thought…[but is] rather one of the basic tools with which that edifice was constructed.” He traces this idea from Egypt through Roman through Islam and Christianity to the modern era. Several hundred pages of scholarship later he concludes: “We live in an age in which millions of people are exposed daily to some variant of the argument that the challenges of the world they live in are best explained in terms of ‘Israel’.”

Nine years later, we have only seen this problem grow. When a highly regarded law school, an internationally acclaimed rap star, and a former President are all talking about the Jewish problem, our radar goes off the charts.

I have very little new to add to the conversation. I write about this now mostly to convey a concern, one that I know most of us already share. I can invite you to read thought pieces I’ve appreciated this week, among them What Kanye Can Teach Us About Anti-Semitism, Yair Rosenberg’s piece in his Deep Shtetl column in The Atlantic, and We’re Jewish Berkeley Law Students, Excluded from Many Areas of Campus, published in the Daily Beast. I can invite us all to be activists on this issue, in as dovish and loving a way we can, so that we sow seeds of peace and not further antagonism. Our teens in the POST program are engaging this year again with the Anti-Defamation League’s educational programming so they can go out into the world educated and equipped with knowledge to help them navigate life on campus and in the world as Jews. As an ADL Signature Synagogue, we will continue to offer educational programs for adults to help us fight anti-Semitism. This spring we are looking forward to new programming now in the works with the local chapter of Sisterhood of Salaam-Shalom, helping strengthen our connection to the local Muslim community, and to lifting up as we do each year the memory of the Holocaust through the Interfaith Holocaust Commemoration and Yom HaShoah programming.

When I was in college, a student group sent in the postal mail an oversized envelope to every self-identified Jewish student on campus. Open the envelope, and on a large piece of paper, in huge black letters occupying nearly the whole page, was one word: JEW. A postcard also in the envelope asked: how do you feel seeing that word? Are you ashamed, defensive, braced for an insult? Or are you proud?

In a moment where our culture has once again fixated on Jew-bashing and anti-Semitism, I hope our congregation can be a source of Jewish pride, sanctuary and strength. I do not have easy answers for combatting anti-Semitism. What I do have is a way for us to calm our nerves and strengthen our resolve: residing in community. The more we connect with one another, the more we own our Jewish identities and operate from a deep sense of peoplehood. This is as true for our family members who are not Jewish as it is for those of us who were born or chose to become Jewish. May our connection to one another as a Jewish community fill us with the strength and resolve we need to move forward in a world that clearly needs us to heal much that is broken.

VIDEOS:

Yom Kippur Sermon 10/5/22
Rosh Hashanah Sermon 9/26/22
On overturning Roe v Wade 6/27/22

One of my earliest Jewish memories is of the shofar. In particular, the final blast of the season, that long blast at the end of Yom Kippur ne’ilah. My memory is of the synagogue elder, ancient to my little girl eyes, holding the Havdalah candle, and – to my horror – beckoning me and my sister to come join him on the bimah. We must have been sitting in the front rows. I was too shy in those days; I wouldn’t do it. From our seats, I watched the flame light, and then saw more than heard the shofar blown in the flickering shadows of the candlelight.

The shofar is one of the highlights of Rosh Hashanah, and that final Yom Kippur service. Tradition holds that we blow it 100 times on Rosh Hashanah morning; according to Jewish law, at least 30 are required. But did you know – that the shofar is blown every morning of Elul, this month leading up to Rosh Hashanah? With no blessings recited before, no words uttered at all. Just the sounds, a brief set that takes only a moment.

Why? If the mitzvah is to hear it on Rosh Hashanah, and then we use it again to close the service on Yom Kippur, why do we blow it daily for a whole month? Because teshuvah takes time. We cannot just wake up three weeks from now ready to jump in. Teshuvah is the work of bringing ourselves into alignment, of living up to the aspirations of our own best possible selves. And that re-alignment takes more than just a day. The shofar wakes us up to what we need to be doing right now, today, this whole month. Not just ordering the brisket, figuring out how to have meals with loved ones during the pandemic, arranging for seats. What we need to be doing is cheshbon ha-nefesh, accounting for our lives, looking at who we’ve become so we can become who we want to be in the new year.

To that end, I offer three suggestions.

1. My wonderful colleague Rabbi Jill Zimmerman has created an online guided workbook for your Elul journey at her website, www.jewishsacredagaing.com.
2. Spend time outside every day this month. Take a walk, or find someplace to sit. Don’t pick up your phone, check your email, or read anything. Just be outside, giving yourself some time to connect with yourself and nature.
3. Hear the shofar every morning. Some mornings I blow it, other days it is the awesome Steve Friedlander; perhaps others will take a turn, too. The shofar comes at the end of morning minyan, so even if you are not able or inclined to log in for the full service, come 30 minutes or so after we start to catch it (on Mondays and Thursdays, make that 40 minutes or so from the start). 

In these ways, we can take Judaism up on its annual invitation to live our best lives, working toward an annual reset where we can begin again – if we’ve taken the time to know where we want to start.

When I was in high school, I spent a large part of my time and energy helping people who were homeless. I helped organize a club at school which collected leftover and unused food from local supermarkets and restaurants and brought them to a local soup kitchen (we called it the Gleaners, taken from the Book of Ruth, though I admit I didn’t get the reference at the time). I spent a summer working at the Crisis Ministries, stocking shelves of the food pantry and learning the ropes of the office and doing phone intakes. I hung out with the pastor there and wondered what the Jewish equivalent of such work was. I suppose the seed of an idea was planted then, though again, I didn’t know it quite yet.

To be the Rabbi of Oheb Shalom Congregation, which houses a food pantry in the building, feels like a home-coming in this regard. The food pantry was one of the congregations “selling points,” and I look forward to joining with our social action and social justice teams in so many ways building from that foundation. I am deeply proud of the way this congregation uses our resources to help those in need. I am proud as well of the many Oheb members who take leadership roles at our partner organizations working towards social justice of all sorts.

On August 13, we have an opportunity to show up in support of one such communal effort. Isaiah House, the only comprehensive family shelter in Essex County, is hosting a daybreaker event to raise funds not only for its own work helping our most vulnerable community members but also to help in the effort of identifying the person or persons responsible for the tragic death of Columbia high school student Moussa Fofana last month. I will be there in my Oheb t-shirt and hope many of you will join me in this alternative morning minyan of sorts – one that connects us to the broader SOMA community and lifts up the Jewish imperative,  which we will read that very week in parashat shoftim: “tzedek tzedek tirdof” – “justice, justice you shall pursue” (Deuteronomy 16:20).

Jewish baseball is hot right now. Team Israel heads to the Olympics, in itself a minor miracle as Israel has yet to field a team making it past the European Championship B-pool, much less win the entire European competition or the next-level Africa-European games to clinch the Olympic spot. Closer to home, another miracle of sorts is taking place. Among the eight Jewish players called up so far this season from the minors to play for the Major Leagues (itself a terrific thing), two are shomer shabbat, keeping shabbat according to halakhically traditional ways.

That’s right. In an “only in America” moment, two players have thrown off the age-old compromise Jews in the Diaspora have for most of history felt torn to make. I’m thinking of my uncle’s father, a man who loved synagogue and shabbat deeply, but had no choice but to work his factory shift on Saturday mornings in order to support his family. I’m thinking of my friends in Paris, where required high school classes meet regularly on Saturday mornings. I’m thinking of the choices we make as parents navigating our childrens’ passions and weekend commitments.

The two players are not identical in their shabbat observance – what two Jews are identical in any of our anythings? Seventeen year old Jacob Steinmetz, picked 77th overall by the Arizona Diamondbacks, plays ball on shabbat, but stays at hotels within walking distance of the ballpark so as not to use transportation. Elie Kligman, 18, drafted by the Washington Nationals, takes Saturdays off altogether. “That day of Shabbos is for God. I’m not going to change that,” the New York Times quoted him as saying. Both keep kosher.

For my generation, this is our Sandy Koufax moment. These ballplayers are living their American dream and not compromising their Jewish values to do so. More than that, holding on to their Jewish observance has not hindered their professional advancement. That is not always possible, to be sure. But this story should loom large in our imaginations. It is the counterpoint to the narrative which encourages us to trade away Jewish life for other things, the fear that if we prioritize Jewish community and commitments we will lose in business, sports, or other kinds of success.

It is also a counterpoint to another major storyline of our community. At a time when rising anti-Semitism is of grave concern, we would do well to take note of what is happening here: two young men modeling for us all to live our Jewish lives out loud and with pride. Modeling for the rest of us that we can take our Jewish identities seriously, and make choices with integrity to our whole selves and our people.

I will still be rooting for the Mets and Yankees (who could use a miracle of their own this season). But I will have my eye on the Nationals and Diamondbacks and to two young players who by pursuing their baseball dreams are a source of pride and inspiration to the Jewish community they now unabashedly represent.