The close of Kaddish is Oseh Shalom. Elan Jagoda leads the Songleader Boot Camp community in this beautiful melody.
“May the One who brings peace on High bring peace to us all.”
On this Shabbat, may all those in need of comfort find peace.
Shabbat Shalom
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A small gathering of family said goodbye to the matriarch this past Sunday. Adult children and wives, adult grandchildren, and a “bun in the oven.” I was asked to officiate because that is what the family believed mom would have wanted. They and their mother understood themselves in a humanist way, but they believed it was the appropriate honor for mom- to bury her Jewishly. The boys never had a chance to have this conversation with her as she had dementia that ravaged her by the end.
I did my best to honor her and those who were trying to honor their mother by weaving rituals with stories that each family member was eager to share and reluctant to stop. This beautiful family time ended by raising a glass of chocolate milk, mom’s favorite drink, toasting her life and the family that is her legacy.
As I was preparing to leave, the sons presented me with the replica Torah Scrolls given to each of them by the rabbi from their Bar Mitzvah. They found them among the few possessions mom brought with her to the care facility.
May her life be for a blessing.
The tragic murder of 11 people one year ago in Pittsburgh is a harsh reminder that hatred is real and we are not always in control of events. Things often happen to us. As painful, hurtful, or even devastating as something can be, how we react is in our control. What is the life-lesson that we learn and how do we actively embrace that life lesson going forward?
Do we react cynically or with an open, albeit wounded, heart? Can we forgive? Will this event haunt us holding us back, or compel us to move onward? What is the vision of the future we see that is shaped by what happened, what is the world we want to see, and how will we get there?
I struggle with an anger and pain that could be overwhelming, especially as one of the Rabbis initially deploying to Pittsburgh with the Red Cross in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Our Jewish tradition helps me re-center myself. Here I can embrace the timeless values that understand the human condition and provide a framework for a just society where we all might live in peace, based on the idea that we should treat our neighbors as ourselves. But it is a hard climb up to that mountaintop.
This is the challenge of Pittsburgh. Our hearts ache for those lost as a result of violent Anti-Semitism. We take solace in the love of our neighbors and find strength standing shoulder to shoulder with other people of goodwill to continue to strive for the kind of just society we want America to be.
Our tradition is one of deeds. Our response to this tragedy needs to be more than a feeling. There are many ways to respond through civic involvement and community activism. Judaism requires that we belong to a community committed to promoting our values be it a synagogue, philanthropy, or civil rights group. The important thing is that you are compelled to respond with actions to live the values of our tradition and to build a better world. What will you do?
Zichronam Livracha and Shabbat Shalom.
In the wake of yet another inhuman tragedy, we stand in silence and solidarity mourning lives senselessly taken in the name of hate and pray this Shabbat that we may someday find peace and wholeness.
Shabbat Shalom
I have just returned from a deployment to Pittsburgh with the American Red Cross.
For any of my colleagues who have experienced grief, the trauma experienced by the Pittsburgh Jewish community is similar, but orders of magnitude larger. Despite all of the wonderful Jewish institutions that make up the community, Federation, JFCS, the JCC, and all the synagogues, the event was bigger and more catastrophic than anyone could have imagined would happen in 2018. The American Red Cross (ARC) stepped in to help as it does in all disasters and I was called upon to join in the effort.
I joined the Disaster Spiritual Care Team of ARC as a volunteer watching their work in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. As a rabbi, I believe this is important and sacred work, and I needed to be part of the team that did that. So, when the call came to assist my own people in the wake of this unspeakable horror, I knew I had to go.
For the Pittsburgh massacre, Rabbis were selected because of the Red Cross’ desire to work with the Jewish community; we know the “language” and are the people to help in creating a liaison, bridging more effectively to the community to share the wealth of services offered with those in need. We focused on communications with institutions and then reaching out to individuals as was possible. It is impossible for two rabbis to care for a community of almost 50,000, so we worked to create connections. It was also clear that we needed to support the rabbis and others who were desperately trying to serve their people while struggling themselves to find strength and succor. Much of the healing work that needs to be done won’t be accurately assessed for some time. As others have noted, this past week we have been sprinting at the beginning of a marathon. And furthermore, the nightmare and the work of healing goes far beyond the Jewish community, all of Pittsburgh suffered this trauma
I was there to help bury people, say Kaddish, attend services and vigils and do what I could, as meager as that sometimes seemed. I held people and I cried (a lot), but mostly I was just present- an empathetic embrace to those in awful anguish and pain to let them know they were not alone in their time of extraordinary grief.
There are multiple levels to this event, like ripples from a stone hitting the water. The families, the congregations, the Jewish Community, the people of Pittsburgh, Jews across the country and the people of America, each has been touched by these murders in Pittsburgh. Each community needs to understand how it has been impacted and how we relate to the others who have also been impacted. It is complicated and it will take time.
The Jewish Community came together. The denominational differences that often separate us were set aside. Funeral services were packed to overflowing as were Friday and Saturday services. And so importantly, we were not alone.
I was heartened to see the greater Pittsburgh community response to this tragedy. The outpouring of love, the sharing of the horror, clearly said to me that the Jews of Pittsburgh are part of the community of Pittsburgh and the community is appalled by this horrible thing perpetrated on a part of it. This sense of unity is an extraordinary and wonderful counter-response to the feelings of isolation or the existential threats that members of the Jewish community may be feeling.
Many others from other faith traditions joined us. For example, I spent time with a family of the Bruderhof tradition (an Anabaptist denomination) who I met at a funeral service held in the Reform Temple Rodeph Shalom and again at the Shabbat morning services held at the Conservative Synagogue Beth Shalom. They were there to be with us. I found some comfort in expressing my deep appreciation for their presence and helping them to understand our siddur, the readings from Torah and Haftarah, and some of the common themes of our faith traditions.
The Moslem community raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Victim’s fund. They also offered to create a physical wall of people to surround synagogues in a show of solidarity and protection. All faith traditions joined with us in solidarity as this was an assault against all of us. Our common humanity brought us all together. It was an inspiring message of hope and love.
Rabbi Jeffrey Myers has been remarkably eloquent speaking to the community with important messages as a witness to the horror and as one who has been harshly criticized by some for his welcoming of the President to Tree of Life Synagogue. Rabbi Myers taught in his D’var Torah this past Saturday that if he was to truly practice the values we preach, he was obligated to respectfully welcome the President of the United States into his Jewish home. This also gave Rabbi Myers the opportunity to directly state to the President the need for him to stop the hate speech.
In the midst of it all, the Kiddush after Shabbat services was used to share Sheva Brachot, the recitation of blessings to a wedding couple. For one of the extraordinary Pittsburg rabbis and his wife were just married. We sang the blessings and then everyone burst out in Od Yeshama and we started to dance. Watching my two new friends lead the community in joy and celebration of the hope represented by their marriage brought all of us to our feet. Her unbridled exuberance made all of the pain disappear for a short while. I cried as I clapped and sang as hard as I could.
People are quick to explain why this happened offering ideas that are more pronouncements rather than thoughtful quiet dispassionate analysis. I suggest that it is premature to try to address the question why. It is deeply layered and complex and we are still in the midst of the acute trauma making such conversation and inquiry too highly charged and all but impossible. Instead, as a thoughtful colleague in Pittsburgh suggested, we might instead look towards the question how. How do we move forward in the aftermath is a question that will yield more pragmatic answers that will help those struggling to get through. We will do better to engage in those conversations for now.
The people of Pittsburgh are strong and resilient. But they are hurting badly and deeply. In the name of Klal Yisrael and as fellow Americans, we have an obligation to be there for Pittsburgh’s Jews as the immediacy of the trauma and shock wears off and the struggle to heal begins. We are forever changed by this. May we learn constructive lessons so that those lost as true martyrs in the Jewish tradition will not have died in vain. May their memories be for a blessing.
Maerten van Heemskerck
“Nachamu, Nachamu Ami”- Take comfort, my people. So begins Isaiah 40, the readings we use for the Shabbat after Tisha B’Av.
Tisha B’Av is a day of deep sorrow, for so many of the catastrophes that have befallen the Jewish people are linked to this day. We fast and read the book of Lamentations recalling the destruction of the First Temple.
The prophet’s urging to take comfort seems more than for us to be consoled in our time of grief. It urges us to look beyond our grief. For we will rise up, continuing life continuing the ongoing work as partners in God’s creation in spite of, or perhaps because of the loss that we encounter. We will remember, but we are exhorted to move forward both as individuals and as a people. The world will go on and we must take our place to continue to build.
History has shown that out of the ashes, like a phoenix, we will rise up. Carrying our memories of what was lost, we will create new memories. As we commemorate the losses marked on Tisha B’Av, we also take tentative but deliberate steps forward out of our grief towards our tradition’s aspirations of a better world that we work to create and we find our comfort through this renewed purpose.
When we rise from Shiva, we are instructed to go outside and walk around the block. This is symbolic of our reentering the world. Changed because of our loss, but compelled to move forward honoring the memory of the loved one lost, or in this case, the loss befallen upon our people. The values we hold dear; caring for the widow and stranger, clothing the naked and feeding the hungry are the cornerstones for the ongoing work of Tikkun Olam and creation that is ever-present. We must also vote; for voting is our most precious special franchise granted to all who are blessed to live in the United States. We can leverage our work through elected representatives fighting for us to achieve our vision of a better world.
We rise not only with our voices but with our actions. For ours is to pray with our feet, as Rabbi Heschel once said. We can make our country and our world a better and more compassionate place through our actions. Nachamu, Nachamu Ami.
How many parents send their children off to school with this blessing?
The level of violence in our society is incomprehensible. It happens on so many levels but the most blatant manifestation is the tens of thousands of people who are murdered with guns. Seventeen children and teachers are the most recent victims, murdered in their school.
There is no single solution to the problem, but that cannot keep us from working hard to reduce violence and death. Mental Health issues may be at the heart of much of this, but there is an entire category called crimes of passion wherein people resort to guns when the rage is uncontrolled. But the mass murders of innocents such as children and teachers in school can only happen in a society that is content with permitting it. We cannot be complicit any longer.
We are responsible. We do not invest in adequate security for our schools, we do not invest in mental health professionals to help troubled people, we do not invest in systems to keep lethal weapons restricted, we do not ban weapons of mass destruction such as assault rifles.
We can blame feckless and craven Congressmen and State House representatives for inaction, but the ultimate responsibility is ours. If we do not demand action and accountability, these elected representatives devolve into pawns and lackeys. They will neglect the duties of their offices and work only to retain their offices by kowtowing to those with a particular political agenda and money to promote it.
Today we are reeling yet again at the tragedy in a Florida High School. But when we are finished burying the dead, we must galvanize the people to demand thoughtful action to address our horrific problem. There are important organizations advocating ways to reduce gun violence. Join them in their life-saving work.
