“Striving for perfection is demoralizing,” wrote psychologist Harriet Braiker, so why does this week’s Torah portion seem to command us to be perfect?  It says (Deut. 18:13), “You must be tamim with your God.”  The word tamim elsewhere in the Torah means “unblemished” when it applies to animals fit for sacrifices (see Exod. 12:5); “whole” when it refers to counting out days and weeks (Lev. 23:15); and “perfect” when it refers to God (Deut. 32:4) and the Torah (Prov. 19:8).  What could the Torah possibly mean when it tells us that we must be “perfect” with God?
     

It cannot mean “don’t ever make a single mistake.”  Judaism accepts that it is human to be flawed.  With the arrival of the month of Elul this week, a month-long prelude to the High Holy Days, we’re reminded that Jewish tradition sees “sin” as the times when we’ve aimed but missed the mark.  The commandment that we be tamim with God does not require that we attempt perfection (which would be impossible and demoralizing), but rather that we try to be “whole-hearted” in our relationship with God, and that we try to live our lives with a pureness of intentions in all that we do.  In its context, the verse instructs us to not stray and follow other gods or soothsayers.  If we approach God – or the people around us – with an insincere heart, with ulterior motives or withholding part of ourselves, it is as if we are reserving ourselves for a foreign god.  To be tamim is to strive for personal completion and wholeness within us, to be “whole,” and this is God’s true desire for each person.
-       Rabbi Andy Vogel

Sinai Update – Week of August 23-29, 2009
Parashat Ki Tetze  (Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19)
Reflections on the Jewish Calendar – Rabbi Andy Vogel

Last Thursday, we began the month of Elul, the somber but joyful 30-day month of reflection and meditation that precedes Rosh Hashanah and the Ten Days of Awe.  It is a time of soul-searching, cataloging our strengths and weaknesses and misdeeds during the previous year, and of re-orienting ourselves toward the way of life we want to live.  Traditionally, to set the tone for the High Holy Days, the shofar is blown every morning in the month of Elul. 
    

An ancient midrash teaches that it was this 40 day period (30 days of Elul, plus 10 days from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur) that Moses ascended to the heavens a second time to get the second set of tablets, after the Jewish people had abandoned God for the Golden Calf, to plead for their forgiveness (Midrash Pirke D’Rabbi Eliezer #46).  On the first day of the month of Elul, God said to Moses: “Now, come up to Me on the mountain,” and the shofar was blown.  The implications are beautiful for us today living in our own month of Elul:  God welcomes us back, even after the mistakes we have made, and, as the shofar sounds, we gain renewed access to God’s gifts of love to us (symbolized by the Torah).  If we engage in teshuvah, repentance, God envelops us in love and forgiveness, as if we were ascending a mountain to be close to God.
 - Rabbi Andy Vogel

Sinai Update – Week of August 9-15, 2009

Parashat Re’eh (Deuteronomy 11:26-16:17)

Reflections on Jewish Values – Rabbi Andy Vogel

The health insurance debate raging now in America is without a doubt a Jewish concern.  It has been cast as a deeply politicized issue by industry professionals, lobbyists, and politicians on all sides, but as a Jew and a rabbi, I believe that providing health care for all is a religious obligation.  The Book of Exodus contains commandments that doctors must try to heal all their patients, and not depend on prayer for healing.  Maimonides, the great 12th century rabbi, declared that health care is one of ten mandatory services a community must provide for its citizens (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot De’ot 4:23).  And the commandment that supersedes all others is saving a human life. 

This week’s Torah portion illuminates for us another aspect of the American health care debate: that providing health insurance for all is also a move to fight poverty.  “If there is a needy person among you – one of your kinsman in any of your settlements in the land… – do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy kinsman” (Deut. 15:7-8).  The Torah instructs us to look out for the well-being of every individual in our society, including the weakest and poorest.  With health care, this is a critical aspect; under the current system, about 46 million Americans are uninsured and cannot afford health insurance.  Yet, Jewish teachings remind us to provide care to all.  The Shulchan Aruch, the definitive 16th century code of Jewish law, requires Jewish doctors to cover the costs of caring for all whom they treat who cannot otherwise afford to pay.  As the debate about health insurance heats up, I encourage Temple Sinai members to let our voices be heard with our nation’s leaders.  As Jews, we must respond to our religious tradition’s call to provide insurance coverage for all who need it, so that everyone in our society, including the neediest, can live a long, healthy and happy life. 

-       Rabbi Andy Vogel

Sinai Update – Week of August 2-8, 2009

Parashat Ekev (Deuteronomy 7:12 – 11:25)

Reflections on the Jewish World – Rabbi Andy Vogel

The horrific shooting Saturday night in Tel Aviv’s center for gay/lesbian teens calls us to attention.  Israel’s gay community, which struggles mightily for acceptance throughout Israel, is deeply shaken by this likely hate crime.  Fifteen members of the club, mostly teens, were injured and two Israelis, ages 15 and 26, were killed by the gunman, who is still unidentified and on the loose.  The shooting has shattered the sense of security that GLBT Israelis usually enjoy in cosmopolitan Tel Aviv.  Unfortunately, many of the victims or survivors of the attack had no choice but to reveal to family members or friends that they were gay because they were present at the shooting.  One anonymous witness – anonymous, he told the Ha’aretz newspaper, because in Israeli society today he does not yet enjoy the security of being “out” to his parents – put it this way: “It's important for me that this issue not drop off the [public] agenda, because there is so much hate in Israeli society, and it seems like this could easily happen again.” 

If we hadn’t yet added homophobia and hatred of GLBT individuals to the list of Israel’s challenges we must help Israel fight, we must do so now.  As American Jews and Temple Sinai members we have something to offer here.  We Americans know how insidious the hatred of gays is; to be sure, it is not yet in America’s past.  But living here – in New England, that is, and specifically in Massachusetts – we are proud that the appreciation of diverse sexual identities is growing within our culture, and we must share that with Israelis.  The Torah portion reminds us: “Remember the long way that the Lord your God has made you travel in the wilderness these past forty years” (Deut. 8:2).  As the founder of Merchavim, an Israeli group that promotes pluralism among Israeli youth, said, “We need to do a better job at helping Israelis of all backgrounds feel comfortable with their fellow citizens,” he said. “Ignorant attitudes toward diversity must be delegitimized, whether it’s homophobia or xenophobia.”  We American Jews who cherish our pluralism through the long road we have traveled to achieve it must add this to our conversation with Israel.

-       Rabbi Andy Vogel

Sinai Update – Week of July 26-August 1, 2009

Parashat Va’Etchanan (Deuteronomy 3:23 – 7:11)
Reflections on the Jewish Calendar – Rabbi Andy Vogel
I’ve just come back from Jerusalem with my family (we had a wonderful vacation!), and I return to the holiday on the Jewish calendar that marks the destruction of Jerusalem.  Tisha B’Av (the 9th day of Av) begins tonight, a traditional day of mourning for Jews, when the story of the Babylonian destruction of the First Temple (in 587 BCE) is told through the book of Lamentations, and Jews recount other catastrophes that have occurred on this date: the Roman burning of the Second Temple (70 CE), the defeat of Jewish rebels at Beitar (135 CE), the explusion of Jews from England (in 1290), the expulsion of Jews from Spain (1492), mass deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto (1942).  The Talmud also says that on this date God punished the Jewish people with wandering for forty more years in the desert for their lack of faith.  Historically, the 9th day of Av has not been a good day for the Jews.
   

Many Reform Jews choose to not observe Tisha B’Av, for a number of good reasons (i.e., I personally am NOT waiting for sacrifices to be reinstated in a rebuilt Temple, nor do I wish to focus our Jewish attentions today around our people’s victimhood and suffering).  But having just returned from Israel, I’m conscious of how important it is to remember the power of Jewish history and the shockingly real ordeals that our people has endured through the centuries.  In Israel, one is painfully aware of the long travels of our people in all four corners of the earth, how Jews yearned to return to the Land of Israel and a rebuilt Jerusalem in every generation for 2,000 years, and what a miracle it is today to have the precious State of Israel, even with all its challenges today.  Dr. Mark Washofsky of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati (and a Cohon Lecturer at Temple Sinai in recent years) writes that “there is no such thing as Judaism without the Jews and the historic experience of our people.  Our religious ideas, however high-minded, remain lifeless abstractions so long as they are divorced from the concrete experience of the Jewish people throughout the ages.”  This is part of what we mark this evening, during the solemn service of Tisha B’Av at 8:00 p.m. tonight.
-       Rabbi Andy Vogel