Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Adventures in Judaism: Frontiers of Modern Jewish Life

Adventures in Judaism:  Frontiers of Modern Jewish Life
Yom Kippur 5776 - September 23, 2015

What was your last adventure?  Was it a trip that you had planned for a long time?  Perhaps, your last adventure was the unexpected phone call from an old friend…the catching up, re-living of past experiences and rekindling of a great bond.  We know that adventure, at least for most of us, involves the unusual and some level of excitement.  But, what are our ways of adventuring…what comes to mind when you hear the word:  Adventure?  Is it something that is passing?  Episodic?  An experience with that quality of thrill alone, or does it entail more?  Adventure can be the beginning of something, the initiation of a passion, the spark that occurs when there is something new happening or even the continuation of a lasting journey of sorts. 

Believe it or not, we are on an adventure here today.  The work of these Holy Days demands of us something that is unusual, it even involves the hazards and pitfalls of self-reflection and, I would argue, it is exciting and enterprising too.  We adventure to do the work of Teshuvah, we continue the tradition of our ancestors…continue in the footsteps of Abraham, who he himself was certainly on a journey of excitement, thrills and the unknown.  

Abraham was not just an adventurer, he was our iconoclast.  He, our Torah teaches us, was not afraid to rock the boat.  He broke the mold of what it meant to worship, to connect with the spiritual and to experience something beyond and more than ourselves alone.  The best example is the Midrash of Abraham destroying the idols and it is so ubiquitous in our tradition; so much so that some are surprised to learn it is not even in the Torah narrative.  This tale has been shared in different ways, but ultimately, the story remains the same, the moral inspiring us to understand that Avraham Avinu - Abraham our Father contested cherished beliefs, he pushed the status quo and in destroying the images of gods, the graven images carved by his father Terah, that he set out on the journey to explore the frontiers of spirituality, of what we now call religion - Our Judaism.  The story goes:

Abram’s family made images, idols, and sold them in the marketplace.  One day, Abram was charged to mind the shop.  A powerful and middle-aged man walked up and requested to purchase the mightiest of idols.  Abram reached high up on the shelf, seeking to find what the man sought, and handed him one of the sculpted images.  As the man paid the money, Abram asked him his age.  Seventy years of age was his reply.  Abram said, ‘woe to the man who is seventy yet prostrates himself before this thing that was made but yesterday’.  The man, now angry, demanded his money back and returned the idol. 

At an early age, our forefather understood that something was not right.  Terah, Abram’s father was certainly unhappy as he continued such behaviors.  The tale continues:

A woman came carrying a bowl of fine flour offering it to the gods in Abram’s family’s shop.  At that moment, Abram grabbed a stick and smashed the idols, all but the largest and placed the stick in the hand of that larger idol.  When his father Terah returned he demanded, ‘who did this to the gods’?  Abram told him that when a woman came with a fine offering, the idols fought over it.  Terah chided his son, ‘are you making sport of me?  These cannot do anything!’  He responded, ‘You say they cannot.  Let your ears hear what your mouth is saying!’

This Midrash, this story about the stories in Torah, paints the picture of our progenitor as one who not only pushes the boundaries, but later goes on to explore the frontier.  He sets out to explore and discover more. 

From this first story of our Jewish journey, we inherit the foundation for seeking.  We are bequeathed a heritage of looking for those frontiers, exploring them and making meaning out of our own lives and times.  Judaism began with Abraham’s rising up to the status quo, becoming not just an iconoclast, but our iconoclast.  Judaism is our journey.  It is our way of finding adventure and discovering the frontiers of Modern Jewish life.

What we know as Jewish life is our frontier of sorts.  For example, the synagogue as we know it:  Community center, religious school, worship led by a rabbi, etc. is actually a young model, it is but only a fraction of our Jewish history.  In each place we have found ourselves living, throughout our storied history, we have re-imagined the ways we can connect with the Divine, to engage with the commandments and to live that we call Judaism. 

Today, while many adventures in Judaism continue… I sometimes feel as though we are in the boring part of the story, the lull just before the climax perhaps.  We might even consider the Jewish world, certainly in America, to have become complacent with our way of doing:  Business as usual.  We ought to think about our Jewish lives as an adventure; we ought to be considering where we can find the new untouched frontiers and how to reach them.

Over the last quarter century, the landscape of Jewish life has found its spirit of adventure once again.  There are countless examples of non-traditional and exciting adventures in Judaism that explore the frontiers of Modern Jewish Life.  Most are aware of programs like Birth Right and the American Jewish World Service.  Lesser known, but still very much on the national stage are programs like PJ Library and Godcast.  All worth checking out if you are not familiar.  When we consider the ways that we embrace and live modern Jewish life, it is crucial to recognize, and I say this often, no one has ever been Jewish on September twenty third, two thousand fifteen before…until now.  We are the first to be here at this moment in this place.  It - our Judaism, and therefore WE must always embrace the frontiers we find ourselves standing upon.  Judaism is the continuation of Abraham’s journey; so where is the adventure?

These shifting sands of Judaism are partially explained by the recognition that the reality of each new day is a frontier, but there is more.  Since the Mishnah, around two hundred of the Common Era, leaders of our people have expressed concern for the next generation; just think about the adage:  Oh, kids today!  It is this desire that creates the most important realization, and it is not that far off from that moment when Abram smashed his father’s idols.  That is the realization that while we inherit the Judaism of our parents and grandparents, we must sift it for our own meaning, inspiration and connection.  Some might call it our parents’ baggage, but what if we considered it our luggage? 

Rabbi David Hartman taught us, “Judaism imposes a vital task on the parents:  to tell the children their people’s story.  What the child does with this past, no parent can decree.  Parents provide their children with luggage.  Whether the child will open up the suitcases and use their contents is beyond the reach of parents.  They have no right to enter the child’s future.  Parents must aim at instilling memories that haunt the child an entire lifetime; their bequest is a weight of generations, an awareness that one’s biography began with Abraham and Sarah.”

So what began with Abraham?  It was a first class adventure.  It was seeking the frontier, embracing and using it to inspire future generations.  The PJ library program, for example, provides books and music to children and families, teaches us a new way to look at Jewish literature.  In their own words, “…families in hundreds of communities across the United States and Canada are able to explore the timeless core values of Judaism through books and music.”  They have over two hundred communities actively using PJ Library with over one hundred twenty five thousand subscriptions and through this, more than five million books have been mailed to interested Jewish families…for free.  These families are given the opportunity to unpack their luggage in new ways, because someone explored the frontier.

In the last sixteen years, Taglit - Birth Right has helped more than half a million participants experience a ten day educational trip to Israel.  Creating a Jewish identity that is linked to Israel and Israelis has been crucial in establishing the next generation of our Jewish community, here in the United States and abroad.

These examples could go on.  There is a plethora of programming across the country that explores these frontiers, that lives adventures in Judaism.  Most of you know about my own involvement with Adventure Rabbi:  Synagogue without Walls.  We are an innovative Jewish community that engages in physical adventures as well as of the mind.  If you have not read any of Rabbi Jamie Korngold’s, the founder of Adventure Rabbi, books, consider this an endorsement.  We strive to provide programming, holiday celebrations and Jewish education that inspires, excites and leaves people wanting more. 

But the frontier does not end there.  Even our community here on the South Shore of Lake Tahoe is a frontier.  Of the Jewish communities that exist and thrive in tourism driven economies, we are unique and have something to be explored, something that we must offer the many Jews who come to visit the Jewel of the Sierra - Our Lake.  For the last four years, we have welcomed visitors to hike with us on Shabbat in the summer, to Ski with us in the winter and teens to spend a Shabbat here in our building - learning and solidifying their Jewish identity.  Last year, we ran our first adult retreat program - sharing our community as a future pillar of our programming and sharing our Jewish frontier with others.  In the coming years, we are calling on all of you to be a part of this adventure.  To explore this frontier of modern Jewish life, we will be providing Jewish programming for groups coming to visit, to retreat and to recreate.  We know that each of us has a unique offering to what this programming can and should be.

Part of this journey includes the building project, and you can read about it in your High Holiday handout.  But it extends far beyond the physical.  It is about how we take seriously the model Abraham laid out for us at the beginning of our people.  It is about our own teens serving as hosts, our membership volunteering to lead and run programming and tapping the resources of our amazing surroundings here in Lake Tahoe, and to explore how even our small and mighty Temple Bat Yam community can be a frontier of modern Jewish life.

Between this Yom Kippur and next, what will your adventure be?  How will you build this frontier for modern Jewish life?  I hope that each of us will be inspired to make our community with a regional reputation for quality, exciting and innovate Jewish program.  It begins by recognizing the legacy of Abraham and Sarah - being adventurers ourselves.  It will continue when we create a synagogue identity - together - that is built on our already strong sense of place and adds to that by playing host.

In April, we will once again welcome teens and adults for two separate retreat programs from the Sacramento region.  We will likely be playing host to a family retreat form Reno in November too.  These, we hope, are the beginning of the way we can enhance our own Judaism, by sharing it with others.  Now, we can ask how next year, at this time, how will we be part of an adventure?  It has been, it is and it will continue to be my privilege and honor to share these journeys with you - all of you - into the future.   Whatever our adventures in Judaism will be in the coming year and beyond, I want to be here to learn about them with you, and our Bat Yam community will experience whatever unfolds?

May this New Year 5776 be full of explored frontiers and be its own story of a renewed connection to Abraham’s initial journey. 

Shanah Tovah!  


 



No comments:

Post a Comment