Superman was sent to earth as a baby from a dying planet. Spiderman was bitten by a radioactive spider that gave him amazing powers. The ancient Romans believed their city was founded by twins who were suckled by a wolf. A Hindu legend says that the cosmos rides on the back of a giant sea turtle.

These origin stories serve, in part, to say something about the character and values of heroes, of nations, and of the world. Superman fights for the well-being of the world because he knows what it feels like when your world is destroyed. The Romans saw themselves as noble survivors because they believed themselves to be descendants of warriors who fought for survival.

Passover is the great story of the origin of the Jewish people. We celebrate the holiday by retelling the story of how we were slaves and how God saved us. We recite for our children the legend of God's plagues against our captors and how God performed miracles to make us God's own people. Our story, too, serves to tell us something about who we are, about our values, and about the world we aspire to create. 

Here are some of my thoughts this year about what our origin story is supposed to teach us about ourselves and the world:

• Isn't it odd that we see ourselves as slaves in our origin story? Most civilizations tell stories about how their founders were brave soldiers or noble kings. We tell a story about how our founders were helpless servants to mighty Pharaoh. The story describes how we complained and griped all the way to freedom. At its essence, our origin story warns us against arrogance and hard-heartedness. It reminds us that, without God's help, we are nothing. It also reminds us to have compassion for people who are oppressed and helpless. We know that experience, too.

• The traditional Haggadah makes very little mention of Moses. We do not want to tell our story as the tale of one great man and credit him for our victory. The story we tell about ourselves is that no one human being has ever been our savior. Instead, we look to God and we look to ourselves as a collective nation for our redemption. Judaism, as a religion, is highly suspicious of the human tendency to turn great people into heroes, and to turn heroes into gods. We don't want to elevate any human to the status of a god. We have seen how the Pharaohs of the world quickly turn despotic, and how those who worship false gods become passive and cruel.

• In our origin story, the final chapter of the story is never told. By the end of the Seder, the Israelites are still a ragtag mob that has just witnessed the redemption at the Sea of Reeds (or, the Red Sea). We stop the story before we can get to Mount Sinai and the Ten Commandments. There is even a self-conscious incompleteness to the story seen in the four cups of wine we drink. Each cup represents a promise that God made to us: "I will bring you out of slavery in Egypt," "I will save you from their bondage," "I will redeem you with great power," and "I will take you as My people" (Exodus 6:6-7). However, there is a fifth promise in the biblical narrative: "I will bring you to the land which I promised" (Exodus 6:8). That unfulfilled promise is represented by Elijah's Cup, the cup from which we do not drink. The symbolism of the seder reminds us that our journey is incomplete. There is much that we still have to do to make God's promises true in the world.

As you experience the seder this weekend, consider what our story says about us. Think about what our first lesson is trying to teach us. We are not Romans who live to conquer and endure. We are not superheroes endowed with magical powers. In the story we tell about ourselves, we are human and deeply flawed. We are friends to those who are powerless and suspicious of those who are powerful. We are on a journey that is far from complete, but we are asked to be a part of it and to help write the next chapter – the one that starts today.

Other Posts on This Topic:
The Great Sabbath, Elijah's Cup, and the Unkept Promise
Matzah and Chameitz

This is the sermon I am delivering tonight at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island.

I don’t know too many people who live with the feeling that God is right there, standing behind them, all the time. I don’t know many people who would say that they spend their days imbued with the awareness of God’s presence in their lives. I am envious of such people and, I have to admit, a little bit suspicious of them, too. God’s presence, for me, is something that I can find when I focus my attention on it, and it is something that sometimes barges into my life at unexpected moments. I think that’s the way that most people experience God – at moments when our hearts are opened to God, and at moments when we least expect God.

This week’s Torah portion, Vayeshev, begins the story of Joseph, the eleventh of Jacob’s twelve sons. In the whole Joseph saga, which we will be reading for the next four weeks in the Torah, God is famously absent. Throughout the Joseph story, people talk about God and they pray to God, but God does not appear directly and none of the characters – not even Joseph – ever communicates with God. It is as if, at the end of the book of Genesis, God has stepped into the background and let the human beings take control of the story.

Except that, here and there in the Joseph story, there are moments when God’s presence is hinted at. Quietly and unexpectedly, God shows up in obscure ways throughout the story. Here is an example from this week’s Torah portion:

“One time, when [Joseph’s] brothers had gone to pasture their father’s flock at Shechem, [Jacob] said to Joseph, ‘Your brothers are pasturing at Shechem. Come, I will send you to them.’ [Joseph] answered, ‘I am ready.’ And [Jacob] said to him, ‘Go and see how your brothers are and how the flocks are faring, and bring me back word.’ …When [Joseph] reached Shechem, a man came upon him wandering in the fields. The man asked him, ‘What are you looking for?’ He answered, ‘I am looking for my brothers. Could you tell me where they are pasturing?’ The man said, ‘They have gone from here, for I heard them say: Let us go to Dotan.’ So Joseph followed his brothers and found them at Dotan. They saw him from afar, and before he came close to them they conspired to kill him. They said to one another, ‘Here comes that dreamer!’”  (Genesis 37:12-20)

Now, if you are familiar with the story, you will recognize that this is a critical moment in the plot of the entire Torah. The brothers, who are furious with Joseph, will throw Joseph into a pit and then decide to sell him into slavery. Joseph will be taken down to Egypt where he will be the trusted servant of a powerful member of Pharaoh's court, but then he will be thrown into prison when he is falsely accused of raping the courtier's wife. After that, because of his gift for interpreting dreams, Joseph will rise from his prison cell and become the second-in-command of all Egypt, and, yada-yada-yada, he will end up saving his entire family and preserving the future of the Jewish people. All of that happens in this week's Torah portion and the portions that follow, but, first, Joseph has to be able to find where his brothers are grazing those sheep.

Do you notice something odd about how he gets there? The Torah tells us that there was a man – we’re not told his name, or anything else about him – who sees Joseph wandering aimlessly in the fields and he asks Joseph if he needs some help. Joseph tells the man, “I’m looking for my brothers. Could you tell me where they are pasturing?”

How on earth would this man know? If you went up to a perfect stranger at Providence Place and said, “Excuse me, I seem to have lost my brothers. Could you tell me where they are?” what kind of response do you think you’d get? A few odd looks and a few curt replies? “Hey, buddy, how the heck should I know?” You might get someone to take pity on you and ask you where you last saw them, or what they look like. You might even get someone to you ask the question, “Who are you?” But the man in Shechem, the nameless man in the story, does not do any of those things. He just says, in effect, “They went that-a-way.”

Why is this detail even in the story? How does the reader benefit from the interlude of Joseph being lost in a field and needing the help of a nameless person who tells him where to find his brothers and how to get on with his life? I think it’s one of those moments. It’s like one of those moments in life when we are searching for something – maybe we don’t even know what it is we are searching for – and a presence appears to us and helps us find the right path – the path that is waiting for us to fulfill. Maybe it’s God’s presence popping up in Joseph’s life at a moment when he really needs to feel it, or a moment that takes him utterly by surprise.

Have you had an experience like that in your life? Take a moment now to remember the time when God’s presence came to you in some unexpected form, to help you when you needed help, or came to you when you least expected it. Got it? Good.

This week’s Torah portion, which kicks off the Joseph story, is read every year during, or (as this year) right before, Chanukah. I find the this story about God’s hidden presence to be a perfect fit for Chanukah.

Think about it. Who is the hero of Chanukah? If you ask most students in our Religious School, they will tell you immediately who they think it is. They will say that it was Mattathias, the brave priest of Modi’in who refused to offer a sacrifice to the Greek gods after he was ordered to do so. Or, they will say that it was Judah Maccabee, the son of Mattathias, who led the rebellion against the Seleucid Empire and drove the Greeks out of the Temple. Or, maybe, they will say that it was whoever found that cruse of oil that was used to light the Temple Menorah – the oil that was only expected to last one day, but lasted eight.

The rabbis of the Talmud knew this about the Chanukah story. They knew that it was a story that seems to point to a human hero, and that made them uncomfortable. For that reason, they assigned a haftarah portion for the Shabbat that falls during Chanukah that says, pointedly, “‘Not by might, and not by power, but by My spirit,’ says Adonai Tz’vaot!” (Zechariah 4:6). They wanted to make sure that everyone understood that God was the real hero of the Chanukah story.

But I won’t correct the student who says that the hero was Mattathias or Judah Maccabee, or even the person who found the oil. Those answers are all correct, too. When we feel God’s presence in our lives, God doesn’t do it alone. It is always people – human beings – who serve as God’s eyes, God’s ears, and God’s hands in making miracles happen.

Remember that moment when you felt God’s presence come to you when you needed help? In what form to God appear? Who served at that moment as God’s eyes, ears, and hands? Who was the unnamed stranger, or the intimate friend, who gave you what you needed to fulfill your destiny at that very moment?

Chanukah is a holiday of noticing miracles and noticing the way that they are sometimes hidden and unexpected. God does not always enter into our lives as the gigantic special effects moment of the parting of the sea. More often, God comes as softly flickering lights in the darkness that help us remember who we are and where we are going.

You know, there is a song we sing during Chanukah that goes like this:

“Who can retell the things that befell us? Who can count them? In every age a hero or sage came to our aid!”

Who is the hero of that song? Who is the song talking about when it praises heroes and sages?

The opening line of the song is actually a paraphrase of a Psalm. It’s Psalm 116, which opens:

Mi yimalel g'vurot Adonai, yashmia kol t'hilato!
Who can retell the mighty acts of Adonai, proclaim all God’s praises!

Even when we sing our songs, just as in this week’s Torah portion, we sometimes let God’s presence step into the background. We sometimes let the human beings take control of the story. That is as it should be. We need to live our lives as if our fate is in our own hands. We need to take responsibility. We need to learn to be the heroes of our own lives.

But we also need to remember, once in a while when we really need it, or when it comes crashing down upon us in a moment of crisis, that there is a Presence ready to help us. We need to notice the quiet and unnamed character at the edges of our story, guiding us, loving us, bringing light into our darkness.

Shabbat shalom.

This is the sermon that I delivered tonight at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island.

I came out of Shabbat services last Saturday morning on a spiritual high. We had gathered in the Chapel downstairs to spend the morning enjoying a wonderful breakfast as we do every week, we had studied together words from the Torah and the haftarah. We had a lovely service that included some regulars, some old friends, and some newer faces, too. We sang. We prayed. We remembered. We talked about hope for the future.

I came out of the service last Saturday and walked down the hallway to my study, and there a saw that there was a message waiting for me from a friend, the Rev. Andrea Wyatt, Rector of St. David’s on the Hill Episcopal Church here in Cranston. I read her words: “Dear Rabbi Jeff, I’m listening to news coming out of Pittsburgh. I wanted to reach out and say that I am thinking of you, and all of us in our troubled nation. When St. David’s gathers tonight and tomorrow for worship, we will be holding your community in prayer. Peace be with you.”

You can imagine how my heart sank at that moment. “Oh, no. What just happened?” It did not take me long to find out. My heart was broken when I learned what you all already know.

Eleven Jewish men and women were murdered at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in the worst act of anti-semitic violence in U.S. history. I want to name and remember the victims right now:

• Joyce Fienberg, 75, a retired research specialist, a small woman who lit up a room. 

• Richard Gottfried, 65, “Dr. Rich,” a dentist who volunteered at free dental clinics who was planning on retiring in a few months. 

• Rose Mallinger, 97, a former school secretary, the matriarch of her family. Her daughter is among the wounded. 

• Jerry Rabinowitz, 66, a primary care physician who was a core member of his congregation. 

• Cecil and David Rosenthal, 59 & 55, inseparable brothers who both had intellectual disabilities. They were well known and beloved ambassadors of the community.

• Bernice and Sylvan Simon, 84 & 86, a married couple who were active in the community and whose wedding was at Tree of Life 60 years ago.

• Daniel Stein, 71, a former president of his synagogue and the president of the Tree of Life Men’s Club. 

• Melvin Wax, 88, a retired accountant and grandfather who attended synagogue every week and often led services. 

• Irving Younger, 69, the first person to greet people with a handshake as they entered the sanctuary. He also volunteered as a Little League coach. 

I also want to share this with you: In the days since I found out about the shootings from Rev. Wyatt, I have heard and read so many stories from rabbinic colleagues across the country who also found out about the tragedy in Pittsburgh in much the same way. They, too, heard from their friends of other faiths – notably from other clergywomen and men – who reached out to them to express their sympathy and solidarity.

Over the past few days, I have received messages from literally dozens of clergy people and lay leaders of other faiths with words of support and condolences. I cannot tell you how grateful I am. The members of other faiths who have come out tonight – not just here in Cranston, but across the world – to sit in worship with their Jewish friends and neighbors is beautiful and so deeply appreciated. Thank you, my friends – ministers, pastors, priests, deacons, imams, clergy of all sorts, lay people of all faiths – who have cried with us and mourned with us over the past seven days. It means so very much.

In the days since the attack, I have heard many people say, "There are no words…" And it’s true. It is impossible to put into words the depth of our feelings, the way that we are broken inside over the shooting. Yet, there are some things that really do need to be said. It is not enough for us just to mourn the deaths and feel the agony of the world’s brokenness. We also need to speak out loud the many dimensions of this brutal act.

First and foremost, we need to speak the name of the hatred that led to the murder of eleven Jews. It is called anti-Semitism. It is the persistent and irrational hatred of Jews that has poisoned our world for millennia. It is a hatred that continues to falsely vilify Jews as demonic god killers. It is a hatred that sees Jews as preying on the blood of the innocent. It is a hatred that denigrates Jews as uniquely undeserving of a homeland and destined to wander the earth as nomads forever. It is a hatred that equates Jews with lechery, greed and carnality. It is a hatred that sees the Jew as a criminal desecrater of the holy. It is a hatred that sees Jews as the fomenters of global conspiracies to undermine the rule of godliness and truth in the world.

This is not some long-forgotten medieval lunacy. It is alive and all-too-well in our world today. The gunman who killed eleven middle-aged and elderly human beings, including a 97-year-old woman and two intellectually disabled men, believed that he was killing people who were – quote – “committing genocide against his people” – unquote. He is not at all alone in that belief. The delusion is still rampant. I see it growing in both dog whistles and in overt accusations almost every day. I hear it in the innuendo that behind every evil facing our society, there is a Jew. I will not stop talking about this hatred, and calling it by its name, until it ends.

We know, of course, that Jews are not the only victims of hatred and violence targeted against people because of their identity. Two days before the shooting at Tree of Life synagogue, two African Americans were murdered at a Kroger supermarket in Kentucky. In that incident, the white gunman first tried to enter a predominantly black church, but was unable to get inside. Determined to kill Black people, he went to the nearby supermarket and opened fire in the store.

In addition to the dead in Pittsburgh, tonight we remember Maurice Stallard, age 69, a warm and easy-going man who always greeted people with a hug. He was accompanied by his 12-year-old grandson when he was shot and killed. We remember Vickie Lee Jones, 67, a retired administrator at a VA hospital who loved to travel and was a faithful member of her church. They are two more people shot dead in America for being Black. May their memories be a blessing.

The fomenters of hatred seek to divide our society by making everyone hate everyone else. We won’t let them. Tonight, we know that we are united. Whether it is anti-semitism, racism, homophobia, or any kind of ideology that denies the humanity of anyone, we are together in our stand against hatred.

Let me say something else that cannot go unsaid. The gunman in Pittsburgh made it clear that what he hates most about Jews is our work to aid and welcome refugees to the United States – human beings he called "invaders" on a social media post just seventeen days before the attack. He specifically made reference in that post to HIAS (the organization once called the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) and to the ballyhooed migrant caravan that has been so prominent in the news during this election season. Concerning HIAS – an organization that exists to bring comfort and aid to desperate people risking their lives to flee violence, misery and poverty – he called it “sugar-coated evil.”

Two weeks ago today, Temple Sinai was one of nearly 300 Jewish congregations across North America that participated in HIAS's National Refugee Shabbat. In this sanctuary two weeks ago, we heard Kathy Cloutier, the director of Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island, talk to us about the ongoing needs of refugees and immigrants here in Rhode Island – people who come to our state from overseas with little more than a dream to live in safety and security. Rest assured that the attack in Pittsburgh will not deter us in our support for today’s "huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

I am the son of a mother who was a war refugee who came to this country after escaping Nazism in 1940. Many others in this room have similar stories. Having been refugees and immigrants ourselves, the Jewish people will continue to fulfill the Bible’s commandment: "Befriend the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt" (Deuteronomy 10:19).

Something else to say tonight: This murder was done with a gun. Not just any gun. It was done with an AR-15 assault rifle, a light-weight semi-automatic weapon modeled on military weapons designed specifically to kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible. Such weapons were banned for sale in the United States in 1994, but that law expired in 2004 when Congress failed to reauthorize it. Some say that banning weapons like this would only mean that law-abiding citizens would be prevented from buying them, while criminals would continue to get them on the black market. That’s probably true.

But why does any civilian need to have an assault rifle? Today, it is estimated that there are between five and ten million of these weapons in the U.S. They are one of the fastest growing segments of the firearms industry. Why? How does our society benefit from having so many of these weapons so easily accessible to almost anyone? Do we imagine that weapons designed to kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible won’t be used by someone to do just that? How many more mass killings need to happen before we say, “Enough is enough”?

And here is the last thing that needs to be said tonight: This shooting appears to have been the act of a single, disturbed individual. But, of course, we know that it did not come out of nowhere. American society has become increasingly dominated by hateful rhetoric on all sides. I hear people on the right calling people on the left “angry mobs bent on destroying America.” I hear people on the left calling people on the right “Nazis” and “traitors” whose actions kill. It is inevitable that violent words like these will lead to violent action.

Simply put, we need to find a different way to do politics in America. Instead of pointing fingers at each other, let’s begin by each taking personal responsibility for our own rhetoric. Let’s not be sucked into an escalating war of words in which we dehumanize anyone with a different perspective than our own. The future of democracy may depend upon it.
​
There is no question tonight that we are heavy-hearted with grief. And we also know that the Jewish people have been here before. Our secret weapon against all forms of hatred has always been hope. It is the most persistent trait of our people. We hope for peace in times of violence – and we continue to act with love when we are surrounded by hate. We hope for sustenance when there is deprivation – and we feed people who are hungry as a way of nurturing our own souls. We hope against hope for a better world in times of darkness – and we turn our mourning into dancing.

To all of the friends of the Jewish community who have come here tonight to be with us in our time of mourning, thank you. It means the world to us. We look forward to a time when we can gather together to dance.

Shabbat shalom.

This is the sermon I presented tonight at Temple Sinai of Cranston, Rhode Island.

Oh, God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son.”
Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on.”
God say, “No.” Abe say, “What?”
God say, “You can do what you want, Abe, but
The next time you see me comin’ you better run.”
Well, Abe says, “Where do you want this killin’ done?”
God says, “Out on Highway 61”

Bob Dylan’s song, “Highway 61 Revisited,” is hardly the first time that someone has taken the biblical story of the Akeida, the Binding of Isaac, and applied it to contemporary circumstances. Jewish tradition has been doing that for more than 2,000 years. For centuries, we have been trying to make sense of the story in which God, to our horror, tells Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, and, to our horror, Abraham obeys. Isaac is saved only at the last minute when an angel stops Abraham with the command, “Do not raise your hand against the boy!” (Genesis 22:12).

This week, as we again read the Akeida in the weekly Torah portion (Vayera), I want to look at it again and listen again to Bob Dylan.

Dylan’s interpretation of the story is interesting to me – and, perhaps, to you – for a few reasons. First, of course, is because Dylan – born, Robert Allen Zimmerman – is Jewish and grew up hearing Jewish interpretations of the story. Second, is because Dylan is recognized as a significant literary figure of the 20th and 21st century. You may or may not agree with the committee in Sweden that recognized him in 2016, but Bob Dylan will forever be known as a Nobel Laureate for “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” Third, and most important to me, is the fact that Bob Dylan helped shape my life. Through his music, Bob Dylan served as a spokesperson for the attitudes and ideas of people like me who grew up in the 1960s and ‘70s.

So, what does Dylan have to say about the Akeida that speaks to our circumstances? The song begins by removing the story from its usual reverential treatment. He turns it into the story of ordinary people, desperate people, and even unsavory people. Abraham becomes “Abe.” God is transformed into a bullying authority figure: “You can do what you want, but the next time you see me comin’, you better run.”

Yet, notice that this line is ambiguous. On one level, it is a threat of violence, like what you might expect from a corrupt sheriff in a small town who uses rough language and intimidation to work his will on others. However, there is another way to hear the line, too, one that plays upon classical theological ideas. God says, “You can do what you want,” meaning, you have free will. You are permitted to choose whether you will act according to God’s will or not. Yet, as in classical theology, God also says that wrong action carries consequences.

“The next time you see Me coming, you better run,” is a reminder that we are seen by God and we are expected to see God in our lives. If you don’t, your actions – and God – will eventually catch up with you. There might even be a suggestion here of the classical Jewish statement from Pirke Avot that a person should “run to do even a minor commandment and flee from a transgression” (Pirkei Avot 4:2). God tells us, and sometimes in harsh words, “You better run.”

At the end of this first stanza, we hear the repeating theme of the song. Where does God want Abe to kill his son? Out on Highway 61.

Highway 61 has significance in the history of American music and it has tremendous meaning in the life of Bob Dylan. U.S. Route 61 is the "Blues Highway" that connects New Orleans, Louisiana; to Vicksburg, Mississippi; to Memphis, Tennessee; to St. Louis, Missouri; and then all the way up to Dylan’s home state of Minnesota.

To the young Bob Dylan, Highway 61 was the road to the music of Muddy Waters, Charley Patton, and Bessie Smith. It was the road, according to legend, where bluesman Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil to master the guitar. And Highway 61 was the stretch of asphalt that led Dylan away from his home to the several birthplaces of American blues, jazz, country, and folk music. It was the escape route from comfort, safety, and suburbia in the upper midwest, away from the squeaky-clean dullness and conformity of white America, and into the unbounded world of creative expression, rebellion, confrontation, struggle, racial diversity, and danger.

Well, Georgia Sam he had a bloody nose.
Welfare Department they wouldn’t give him no clothes.
He asked poor Howard, “Where can I go?”
Howard said, “There’s only one place I know.”
Sam said, “Tell me quick, man, I got to run.”
Ol’ Howard just pointed with his gun
And said, “That way down on Highway 61.”

Well, Mack the Finger said to Louie the King,
“I got forty red, white and blue shoestrings
And a thousand telephones that don’t ring.
Do you know where I can get rid of these things?”
And Louie the King said, “Let me think for a minute, son.”
And he said, “Yes, I think it can be easily done.
Just take everything down to Highway 61.”

Now, the fifth daughter on the twelfth night
Told the first father that things weren’t right.
“My complexion,” she said, “is much too white.”
He said, “Come here and step into the light.” He says, “Hmm, you’re right,
Let me tell the second mother this has been done.”
But the second mother was with the seventh son
And they were both out on Highway 61.

The stanzas that follow the first tell a story of increasing danger and conflict. It is the real America of the mid-1960s beyond the wallpaper veneer of domestic tranquility. It is the America of subjugation and racial animosity. It is the America of violence and intimidation directed against the poor and the marginalized. It is the America of capitalism run amok, looking to make a quick buck by selling useless goods. It is the America of moral decay and flight from a society that had grown stale and soulless.

Dylan here is playing the role of the Hebrew prophet – the man who is willing to tell his people the truth that no one else dares to speak. He is like Jeremiah who risks the wrath of his own tribe by telling them, “This is what the Lord says, ‘Stand by the roads and consider. Ask about the ancient paths. Which is the road to happiness? Travel it and find your tranquility.’ But you say: ‘We will not go.’” (Jeremiah 6:16).

Dylan’s use of the Akeida to frame this story of flight from dullness to danger is a familiar reading of the biblical narrative. Jewish commentators of the Torah have seen the story of the Binding of Isaac as a kind of a warning against blind faith. Franz Rosenzweig saw the story as God’s challenge to Abraham – and to humanity – to become more than timid and fearful automatons. Real piety, according to Rosenzweig, is not to be found in mere obedience. Rather, it is the difficult path of freedom – free thinking, willing to question, able to defy even God. In Rosenzweig’s words, “God obviously wants only those who are free for his own" (The Star of Redemption, p. 284). 

Bob Dylan’s vision of God in “Highway 61 Revisited” is a God who challenges and goads us out of our comfort and into confrontation. God threatens us and chases us out of our sleepy acceptance of the world as it is, and forces onto a journey that will allow us to see darker truths – a journey along Highway 61.

It is in the last stanza that Dylan reveals the greatest danger that lurks beyond the curtain of the familiar and comfortable:

Now, the Rovin’ Gambler, he was very bored.
He was tryin’ to create a Next World War.
He found a promoter who nearly fell off the floor.
He said, “I never engaged in this kind of thing before,
But, yes, I think it can be very easily done.
We’ll just put some bleachers out in the sun
And have it on Highway 61.”

There are those, Dylan suggests, who will use our blindness to destroy us. If we don’t see the truth of the poverty that squelches the human spirit, the racism that turns people into social pariahs, the way that authority uses violence and intimidation to control society, and the way that rampant capitalism makes us suckers to buy things we don’t need – if we don’t see any of that – then we also won’t see the way that power will corrupt the entire fabric of society. Dylan raises the specter of a “Next World War” as a warning about nuclear war that was a real fear in the mid-1960s. Today, we can see the threat also in the corrosion of democracy. We are mindful today of hyper-partisanship that threatens to keep us permanently divided, permanently suspicious of each other, permanently angry, and permanently willing to ignore the real beneficiaries of our division. The final irony is that when our society’s dearest values are taken from us, we won’t even see it coming. We’ll just think that the “Rovin’ Gambler” is putting on another show for our amusement with the bleachers set out on Highway 61.

This song, that was written more than fifty years ago, that retells a story that was written more than 2,500 years ago, still tells a tale for our times. The Binding of Isaac is God’s whispered message to us across the centuries and across the millennia that we must always be watching to see God coming after us. We must always be awake and aware just at the moment when we fall into the trap of merely obeying and conforming without thinking. When we do see and notice what is really going on around us, we better run.

Shabbat shalom.

This is the sermon that I delivered at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island, on Yom Kippur morning.

​This has been a great baseball season, especially if you are a fan of the Boston Red Sox, the New York Yankees, or the Houston Astros. With just eleven or twelve games left to play, all three of these American league teams have either reached or have a good shot at reaching one hundred wins or more. If they can keep it up, this might be the first time in Major League history that three teams from the same league all finish above the century mark.

But, of course, that is not all that is happening in baseball. Every season is filled with thousands of stories – some big and some small – that all tell us something about the game, about life, and about our world. This morning, I want to tell you one very small story that you may not have heard about. It’s a story from the other league, the National League, and it is a story that teaches us about more than baseball.

In a game between the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals on July 22 at Wrigley Field, the Cards led 2-0 in the bottom of the fourth inning. Cubs center fielder Ian Happ came up against Cardinals pitcher Miles Mikolas with one out and a runner on second. Happ tapped a pitch softly foul down the first base line. The Cubs’ first base coach Will Venable picked up the ball and, as coaches often do, he tossed it gently to a young fan, about ten years old, sitting in the first row. Nice, right?

The boy, however, missed the toss from Venable and the ball fell to the ground under the seats. An adult man sitting in the row right behind the boy quickly reached down and picked up the ball that the coach had intended for the youngster. He immediately held the ball up in triumph and in laughter. He then presented the ball to the woman sitting next to him. Neither the man nor the woman even looked at the boy. The woman just took out her cell phone to take a picture of her prize.

Now, this entire sequence of events was, of course, caught by a television camera and broadcast across the country. Not only that, but someone captured the video and Tweeted it out to the world with the caption, “When going to a baseball game, DON'T be this guy.”

You can imagine what followed. The Tweet-storm that followed was filled with indignation over the grown man who stole a ball from a kid and laughed. Here are just a few of my favorite responses: “This guy shouldn’t be allowed back to the ballpark,” “Who is this guy? I bet he steals his kids’ Halloween candy,” “That was mean, just mean,” and, my favorite, “I hope this man and woman are booed wherever they go for the rest of their lives.”

The Cubs organization, realizing that they had a situation on their hands, sent a stadium worker to the boy to make amends. The boy was given a baseball signed by Cubs All-Star second baseman Javier Baez, and the Cubs official Twitter account sent out the message, “A [Javy Baez] signed ball should take care of it.”

A photo of the kid was included in the Cubs tweet showing the youngster proudly holding up two baseballs. Yay. The villains were publicly humiliated and, due to the quick thinking of the Cubs organization, the boy went home happy with, not one, but two baseballs, one signed by his hero. God’s in His heaven and all is right in the world.

Here are a few of the news headlines that came out that day: “Cubs intervene after fan steals ball from child.” “Cubs Give Young Fan 2 Baseballs After Middle-Aged Man Steals Foul Ball.” And “Terrible Cubs fan savagely steals foul ball away from young child.”

And, by the way, later in his at-bat, Happ hit a double down the first-base line to knock in the Cubs’ first run of the day. The Cubbies went on to win the game, 7-2.

But this is not the end of the story.

A few hours after the game ended, some new details emerged. It started when a fan who had been sitting next to the laughing man during the game sent out his own Tweet. He wrote, “He had already helped that kid get a ball. He gave two more [balls] away to kids also. He was a great guy. TV got this all wrong.” Uh-oh.

Then another fan wrote, “I was sitting next to the boy and the same fan helped him snag a ball a few innings before this.”

So, remember that the Cubs organization had given the boy a ball signed by Javy Baez, but, in the photo, the boy had two balls. Well, you guessed it. The second ball was one that the laughing man had given the boy a few innings before the incident caught on the video.

The Cubs organization confirmed this. One of the Cubs’ on-air hosts sent out a message saying, “The man who grabbed the ball on the widely seen video had actually already helped the little boy get a ball earlier. The young man has a game used ball and a Javy Baez ball. All is well. Guy is A-OK so let it go people.” Oops.

And, here is the last detail that came out. It seems that the woman that the laughing man gave the ball to – that was his wife. After she snapped the photo, she handed the ball to yet another child, a stranger to her, who had not yet gotten a ball that day. Double oops.

So, what do we learn from this? What Yom Kippur lessons are there for us to gather from this story of a baseball, the internet, and misdirected blame? Well, let’s notice a few things about this story.

We get outraged so easily, don’t we? It doesn’t take more than a headline to get our blood boiling. In these days when Twitter, Facebook, and a host of partisan news sites scramble post sensational headlines as quickly as possible, it is O-so-easy for us to react impulsively.

But before I get too self-righteous about modern technology, let’s also notice that this is a human problem, not just an internet problem. Our autonomic nervous system wants to respond with outrage much more than our conscious mind wants to investigate and digest complex information. We human beings are prone to overreacting when we feel a situation is unfair and unjust, or if we believe that someone vulnerable, like a child, is being taken advantage of. It’s part of how our brains work.

It’s actually even worse than that, because, as we have seen, there are always people who, for their own purposes, are willing to take advantage of our over-reactive nervous systems by intentionally creating outrage. It has reached the point now where we are exposed constantly to images, news stories, and provocative statements that are designed to trigger our impulse to indignation. We are being manipulated. Our proclivity towards outrage is being used to drive our society apart.

Outrage like this tends to provoke equal and opposite reactions until everyone is angry, pointing fingers at each other, casting blame. We are all so busy being infuriated that no one actually tries to solve the underlying problems.

The examples are obvious:

The recent outrage over the separation of children from their undocumented immigrant parents provoked an opposing outrage from people who believe that immigrant families are taking advantage of our society and draining our resources. As a result, everyone is angry, and very few people are actually promoting bipartisan solutions to our country’s broken immigration policies.

Gun safety advocates say their opponents are responsible for the violent deaths of children. Gun rights advocates say their opponents are conspiring to strip the civil rights of law-abiding citizens. Compromise solutions are muted by attention-grabbing headlines.

Abortion opponents say their political rivals seek the murder of innocent children. Reproductive rights advocates accuse their rivals of causing the death of women who must resort to back-alley, clothes-hanger abortions. Emotions and beliefs on both sides are so extreme that our society has become incapable of having any true dialogue on these issues.

How can a society not tear itself apart when it is divided by such intense vitriol, accusation, anger, and demonization? It has led us into an age of bloodless civil war. (Which, by the way, is exactly how all actual bloody civil wars get started).

Now, believe me, I am not saying that neither side is right in these debates. I have been a partisan myself on all of these issues. I, too, have used strong language in speaking out against those who oppose my point of view. Yet, we have to recognize that believing that we are right on an issue does not require us to be so outraged by those who disagree with us that we must declare them to be unfit for the human race. Remember how easily people were provoked into saying that the laughing man at the ballpark should be banned from baseball for life? Remember how foolish such claims looked after we took the time to suspend our immediate, instinctually anger and considered all the facts from a wider perspective?

Yom Kippur is a day to consider how, sometimes, the best part of us leads us to our worst behaviors. We have all had moments when we have been overwhelmed by our self-righteous certainty. We have all had times when we thought that we, surely, were on the side of the angels and that those who disagreed with us were the very devil incarnate. Yom Kippur reminds us to follow the words of our Sages who taught, “Make your Torah study a permanent fixture of your life. Say little and do much. And receive each person with a pleasant demeanor” (M. Avot 1:15). Our tradition teaches us not to be sucked so easily into the outrage machine. Rather, we are asked to take the time to learn, to see things from a broad perspective. Our tradition teaches us to be more concerned with finding resolution to address the world’s ills than with words of accusation and denunciation. It teaches us to cultivate an instinct toward kindness, pleasantness, making peace, and seeing the best in other people.

It is not always an easy thing to do, especially when we live in a world that has so much to arouse our anger and outrage – especially when so many are intentionally trying to keep us in a state of perpetual outrage. In the end, though, the path of compassion and kindness is the path that leads to real solutions, real understanding, and real healing for a world that is as battered and bruised as it is.

This Yom Kippur, make yourself a person who takes the time to reflect, consider, and to know the facts. Don’t be the one who launches the angry tweet without thinking. Be the one who says little, does much, and brings healing to the world.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah. May you be sealed for a good year.

This is the sermon that I delivered at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island, on Kol Nidre night.

​Did you ever see a bad baby? I mean, outside of a horror movie, did you ever see a newborn that just seemed evil? An infant with the look of malice in her eyes?

We have all seen or heard about babies who are difficult, temperamental, or emotionally volatile, but have you ever seen a baby that was truly and intentionally hurtful? I don’t think so. Despite the things people sometimes say about people who were “born to be bad” or “wicked from the womb,” I think that we have an intuitive understanding that nobody really is born bad.

The qualities we associate with human evil – thoughtless anger, vindictiveness, willed hostility, hatred, resentment, and jealousy – these are all learned behaviors. The forces that make people engage in bad behavior are a complex mixture of experience, environment, and temperament, but, for the most part, bad behavior is product of hurtful experiences and hurtful circumstances. People learn to be bad when they are forced into difficult situations, when they are treated badly, or, when they don’t have their basic needs met. That is what makes people bad.

And though it might be tempting to think that human beings are neutral from birth – neither good nor bad – there is actual scientific evidence to suggest that people are naturally good. In 2007, researchers at Yale University set out to discover if infants had a preference for good over evil. They showed six- to ten-month-old babies a simple puppet play. One of the characters in the play started at the bottom of a hill. The babies watched this character struggle to climb up the hill over and over again.

Then, two other characters were introduced. One character helped the first one go up the hill by pushing up from behind. The other new character tried to hinder the first character by pushing down from above. The babies watched these scenes repeatedly with enough time for them to recognize the different characters, to process what each character was trying to do, and to decide what they thought about it.

Then, the researchers presented each baby, one at a time, with a choice to reach to touch either the helping character or the hurting character to see which one the baby preferred. The babies overwhelmingly chose the helper. Fourteen out of sixteen ten-month-olds, and twelve out of twelve six-month-olds, chose the helper character and not the hurter. (“Social Evaluation by Preverbal Infants,” Nature. Vol. 450, 22 November 2007).

Even more compelling to me is the evidence from studies that look at the way we respond to seeing other people in pain. Did you ever watch someone get injured and flinch as if the same thing were happening to you? MRI brain scans show that when we see another person in pain, it stimulates the same parts of our own brains that are stimulated when we are injured ourselves. We all have specific cells in our brains, called mirror neurons, that help us feel what other people feel. Some scientists see this as evidence that our brains are hard-wired for empathy.

When the Torah instructs us to love other people as we love ourselves, it is a reflection of a neurological reality. Caring for other people, feeling their hurt as if it were our own, is part of how our brains are supposed to work.

Is that the same thing as goodness? You might argue that our preference from infancy for pro-social behavior and our neurological programming for empathy are just examples of how evolution has made us social animals who care about others for our own benefit. You could argue that it’s not really pure altruism – pure goodness – because each individual benefits from being part of a group in which everyone cares for each other. But, isn’t that what goodness really is? Acting for the benefit of others – no matter what the motivation – is also a choice against selfish behavior that benefits only ourselves. We have a choice between good and bad behaviors. From an early age, and in ways that are intrinsic to our physical construction, we have an inborn preference to choose to be good.

This scientific understanding of our natural tendency toward benevolence is parallel to the dominant beliefs of Jewish tradition. Judaism generally teaches that people have both an inclination to do what is good – yetzer ha-tov – and an inclination to do what is wrong – yetzer ha-ra – but that in the interaction between these opposing forces, we always have the capacity and the innate preference to overcome our bad inclination with the good.

The traditional blessing that Jews recite upon waking in the morning says, Elohai neshamah shenatata bi, tehorah hee, “My God, the soul that You have placed within me is pure.” We may develop bad and hurtful behaviors in our lives – and we all do, to one extent or another – but this prayer, and rabbinic Judaism, says that our deepest essence, the person we are at our core, is fundamentally pure. We are born to be good.

I should note that this is an idea that is a contrast to the beliefs held by some Christians, especially evangelical Protestants. The belief in original sin, the idea that every human being has a fundamentally sinful nature from birth, derives from idea that Adam and Eve sinned in eating the forbidden fruit and that all human beings inherited that sin from them. Judaism rejects this interpretation of the Garden of Eden story. While some Christians believe that humanity needs to be saved from a sinful nature, Judaism believes that humanity needs to save itself by embracing and expressing a nature that is intrinsically good. The Torah teaches that the goodness of the world, which God declared in the creation of the world, still stands. It is still part of who we are.

But Judaism also has this additional observation about the nature of our goodness: Our tendency to be good may be innate, but it is not necessarily permanent. Every time we engage in good behavior, we strengthen our natural tendency to do what is good and right. But every time we engage in bad behavior, we weaken that tendency and we actually train ourselves to misbehave. Or, to put it another way, being good is a habit. The more we do it, the more we want to do it. The less we do it, the more we wean ourselves away from goodness.

The preeminent example of this in Jewish tradition is Pharaoh. Several times in the book of Exodus, we read that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart against Moses and the Israelites, making him more and more determined not to free the slaves every time Moses said, “Let my people go.” The rabbis are troubled by this. They wonder, did God deny Pharaoh free will by hardening his heart? If so, by what right did God punish Pharaoh for doing something that he was not free to choose?

In the midrash, Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish answers the question by saying, “When God warns a person once, twice, and even a third time, and the person still does not repent of bad behavior, then God’s heart narrows against that person’s ability to change his or her behavior” (Sh'mot Rabbah 13:3).

I think that we can understand the theological explanation in the ancient midrash with the language of psychology we use today. The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart was an ailment that Pharaoh chose for himself. Every time Pharaoh said “No” to Moses, Pharaoh became more deeply inured to his own cruel behavior. After he had made evil choices so many times, he rendered himself incapable of behaving any other way. It is not that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart in order to change his behavior. Rather, God’s compassion was exiled from Pharaoh’s heart by the choices Pharaoh made himself.

There is a lesson in this for us. Be careful about the choices you make. Choosing behavior that goes against your own awareness of what is right makes it harder for you to make good choices in the future. If you behave in ways that are morally compromised, lacking in integrity, cruel or hurtful, you may make yourself incapable of making any other choice. Good or bad, sinners or saints, we are the choices we make. Being good is not about the lofty hopes or wishes we think about but don’t act upon. Being good is only about what we actually do. We are only as good as our actions.

To turn this observation around and put it in positive terms, we should all remember that we are – deep to our core – really good. None of us was born bad, not a single one of us. It is within us to be good and to make ourselves better through good actions. Each one of us has the capacity within us to be as righteous as Moses. We were made to be good.

On Yom Kippur, when we are called upon to atone for our bad behavior and to engage in repentance, we can know that we are truly returning back to our natural state. That is why we call repentance t’shuvah. The word in Hebrew literally means “returning.” In making atonement, none of us has to go to a place we have never been before. Turning toward God is returning to the place we all came from. Turning to God is going back to the person we were before we were derailed by life’s difficult circumstances, by the suffering we have endured, and by our unmet needs. Making atonement is an act of repairing the damage of our past. When we atone, we are really healing ourselves, loving ourselves, coming to terms with our remembered pain, and becoming more than the just the product of our past suffering.

Know this, my friends. You are good. You were born to be good. Even more, you were born to help make the world good, just the way God intended the world to be from the very beginning. You already have it within you to repair the mistakes you have made, the hurt you have done, and the hurt you have experienced. You have everything you need. It is what you are here for. It is why you are on earth. This Yom Kippur, make it real. Return to who you really are.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah. May you be sealed for goodness.

This is the sermon I delivered at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island, on the first morning of Rosh Hashanah 5779.

You probably have had this conversation before. Probably more than once. You are talking with a person – a person whom, for the moment, we will call “a curious non-Jew.” In the conversation, the curious non-Jews asks you about the fact that you’re Jewish. The curious non-Jew summons up the courage (because it takes courage to ask questions that you fear might cause offense) and asks, “So, what exactly do Jews believe in?”

There is an awkward pause. At first you thought that this might be a good chance to demonstrate how great it is to be Jewish, but after a moment you realize that you’re not sure how to answer. What do Jews believe in? It’s a hard question.

The curious non-Jew tries to fill the silence by adding, “I mean, do you believe in the Bible? Do you believe in heaven and hell? Do you believe in life after death? Do you believe in Jesus? Do you celebrate Christmas?”

If the follow-up questions were meant to make it easier for you to answer, they actually make it harder. You consider taking on the questions one at a time, but you’re not sure that you even know all the answers, and, really, you don’t want to get into a heavy conversation about religion in the office break room, or while you’re watching your kids at the playground, or during your weekly bridge game. You now wish that the curious non-Jew had never asked the question in the first place.

So does the curious non-Jew.

If you are brave, though – and I know you want to be brave – you go back to the original question – “What do Jews believe?” – and try to take it from there. You might say, “Jews believe in one God who is loving and just. Jews believe that the purpose of human beings is to try to make the world a better place. We are supposed to do mitzvot, the good things that God wants us to do – treating people with dignity and respect, loving our neighbors, taking care of the earth, standing up for justice, celebrating Shabbat and the holidays with our families and our community, learning about the Torah and our tradition, and just basically being a good person.”

“Oh, and we don’t believe in Jesus or celebrate Christmas, but my kids go over to my sister-in-law’s house every year to see their tree because it’s so pretty.”

If you managed to say something like that, congratulations. You did great. You affirmed a basic truth: Judaism does stand for something. Judaism does ask us to believe in something. That may not sound like a radical statement, but it is. If you look at the way Jews and Judaism are portrayed in the press and other media, you will see that Jews are often shown, first and foremost, as a people who are interested in themselves – their own history and culture, the state of Israel, the Holocaust, and defending themselves from anti-Semitism.

You have to respect the curious non-Jew who asked the question about what Jews believe in, because, for the most part, Jews are portrayed in popular culture as not believing in anything other than what’s good for the Jews. So, I’m glad you asked your question, my curious non-Jewish friend. Yes, Jews do believe in something more than just themselves.

Now, mind you, I am not saying that Jews should not be interested in Jewish culture, Jewish history, in the Holocaust, in combating anti-Semitism, and in the state of Israel. Those things should all be important to us. But, remember Hillel’s famous teaching: “If I am not for myself, who is for me? But when I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” (Pirke Avot 1:14). We do need to care about ourselves as a people, but we cannot be concerned only with ourselves. The core of Judaism is a call to courageous action to repair the world. It is a system based on core beliefs.

Judaism believes in justice. The Hebrew word for justice is tzedakah, and it means so much more than charity. Tzedakah means that no matter the circumstances of your birth – whether you are black, brown or white; whatever nation you are from; whether you are rich or poor; whatever religion you adhere to; no matter whom you love; whether you are male or female, transgender, or non-binary – you are a human being created B’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), and your life matters.

That means that you do not have to accept harassment or lower wages because you are a woman. It means that you do not have to tolerate being stopped or scrutinized by police because of the color of your skin. It means you should not be branded as a criminal because you are from another country. It means that you should not be denied the essentials of living – food, housing, healthcare, education and a living wage for hard work – just because you are poor. Judaism stands for justice.

Judaism believes in and stands for love. Judaism stands for the idea that the world can only be repaired when human beings truly and deeply care for each other, know each other, and seek peace with one another. V’ahavta l’rei’acha kamocha – “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). Our tradition teaches us to be more interested in allowing different people to live with each other in kindness and acceptance than in keeping them apart out of fear. Judaism stands for a society grounded in awareness that we are all our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers – every one of them. Judaism stands for love.

Judaism stands for reverence – a sense of awe before our Creator, and the awareness that we are not the center of the universe. V’yareita mei’Elohecha, ani Adonai, “You shall revere your God, I Adonai” (Leviticus 19:14). Judaism teaches that we have an obligation to the greater good and not to think only of self-interest. That requires humility – the humility to recognize that we don’t have all the answers and that we need to listen to each other with open hearts.

Our tradition teaches us that when we disagree with other people, it is not an invitation to insult and hate them. It is an invitation to engage in sincere inquiry, discussion, mutual respect, and genuine connection. Judaism stands for reverence.

I know. These are pretty thoughts and ideas. However, they don’t mean anything if we don’t live them. That is why Judaism is also about action. How do we turn our ideals into an action plan?

Step number one, always, is to live our values in our personal lives. Be the person who embodies the world as it should be. Think of every person – those you interact with in your daily life, and those you hear about in the news – as another human being, like you, created in the image of God. Command yourself to treat the suffering of others as if it were your own suffering. Bring compassion and caring to people in need. Make your life an example of forgiveness, acceptance, generosity, respect, and awareness of your limitations and limited experience. Rejoice in the variety of humanity and in the lives of people whose circumstances are wholly different from your own.

But the action plan for living Judaism requires more than just a personal attitude adjustment. Judaism teaches that each of us is more than an isolated individual. We belong to each other and we are at our best when we act together as a community to make our world a better place. Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh, “All Jews are responsible for one another” (B. Shevuot 39a). Judaism stands for something, and we make it real when we do it together.

This summer, a group of Temple Sinai members organized our Outreach Group, which we are calling Bikur Cholim, the Hebrew phrase that means “Visiting the Sick.” People like Phyllis Solod, Ellen Gourse, Sheila Land, and Abby McLean have volunteered to visit elderly people and people living with disabilities in our community who are in need of lovingkindness, care and support. Bikur Cholim is a way to make our Judaism real through the simple act of being with people who need love and attention. I’m asking you today to consider being a part of Bikur Cholim. Help us organize our community to do something for the people who need us.

Bob Haiken and Elaine Land are two of the leaders of our Sandwiches at Sinai group that meets once a month on Sunday mornings to make simple meals, including peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We deliver the meals to “Be the Change,” an organization that serves dinners for the needy at the West Warwick Senior Center. I’m asking you today to consider joining Sandwiches at Sinai on Sunday mornings and helping to feed people who are hungry.

This winter, I am organizing a day for our community to go to the State House to talk with lawmakers about the values of justice that Judaism stands for. I ask you to consider being a part of that experience, too. We will tell our representatives and senators that justice demands that we address Rhode Island’s affordable housing crisis so poor people can find a home they can afford. We will tell our legislators that justice demands that we give immigrants a chance to be successful in America, and that they be treated with fairness and respect. We will tell lawmakers that justice demands that women receive equal pay for equal work.

How will we do that? We will do it in the way that our tradition asks us: We will do it in a spirit of holiness. We will listen. We will be respectful. We will hear what others have to say. We will do our best to serve justice kindly, lovingly, and with humility, and we will do it with determination.

If Judaism means enough to us to come together to pray on Rosh Hashanah, it should mean enough to us to do something about our broken world. If Judaism means more to us than just celebrating being Jewish, then we have to show it with our actions. We have to live in a way that acknowledges that Judaism calls us to moral action on our ancient principles.

We need to be able to tell that courageous and curious non-Jew – the one who asked what we believe in – that our Judaism stands for something. We need to show that we are willing to be courageous, too. Because, you know, you do need to be brave to be a Jew. You need to have the courage to live for something, to stand for something, and to stick with it even when it would be easier not to. You have to be brave to be a Jew. You have to be willing to take risks. That’s what our ancestors did to make sure that Judaism would be handed down to us, and it is what we have to do to make Judaism relevant to the lives of our children and grandchildren. There is no easy way to be a Jew.

And know this, too: It’s not just that one curious and courageous non-Jew who wants to know what Judaism stands for. It is the whole world. For thousands of years, our people have seen ourselves as the conscience of humanity – Or goyim, "a light to the nations" (Isaiah 49:6). The whole world needs to know what Jews are willing to do for the sake of justice, love, and true reverence. The whole world, whether it knows it or not, is waiting for Jews to live up to the values that our prophets proclaimed in the Bible. The whole world depends on Jews being Jews. If not now, when?

Be brave. Be courageous. Be a Jew who stands for something. Make waves. Make a difference. Help to heal the world.

Shanah tovah um’tukah. May you have a good and sweet new year.

The Passover seder is the most complex ritual in Jewish tradition. The seder, including the meal, requires many hours of preparation and dozens of symbolic actions and objects that all carry multiple meanings. The seder plate is the central location for many of these symbols and there is no item on the seder plate that raises as much uncertainty and confusion as its simplest item: a piece of lettuce.

You may have wondered what that piece of lettuce is doing on the seder plate. What is that for? Where does it go on the plate? The answer to these questions all comes down to a little-understood problem – Missing Maror Syndrome.
​
Maror, of course, is the "bitter herb" that was introduced by the biblical commandment: "They shall eat [the Paschal sacrifice]…with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs" (Exodus 12:8). You probably knew that already. However, you may not know what herb (or vegetable) we are supposed to eat to fulfill the commandment. If you say that it's horseradish, I have some disturbing news for you.

Horseradish is not bitter and it's not an herb. Think about it. You know what bitterness tastes like – it is the taste of foods like coffee, unsweetened chocolate, and tonic water. It is a taste that many people find unpleasant, so it is often offset by sweeteners like milk and sugar in your coffee and chocolate.

Horseradish, in contrast is "sharp," not bitter. The experience we most associate with eating horseradish is that burning and tearing sensation you get in your mouth, eyes and sinuses. It is the result of an enzyme that is released when horseradish root is cut or grated. (The enzyme is called allyl isothiocyanate, if you want to get all scientific about it). It's a powerful sensation … but it is not bitterness.

Furthermore, the word "herb" in English usually refers to an aromatic leaf of a plant, either fresh or dried, to give food added flavor. When you think of herbs, you probably think of dill, mint, oregano, basil and parsley, which all come from leaves. You don't usually think of horseradish, which is made from the root of the plant. So, again, horseradish is neither bitter nor an herb.

The real bitter herb on your seder plate is that piece of romaine lettuce. It is specifically mentioned (as chazeret in Hebrew) in the Mishnah (Pesachim 2:6) as the best option for fulfilling the mitzvah. The Mishnah also mentions the names of four other vegetables, but it is uncertain which specific species are meant. The words are ulshin (endive), tamcha (another kind of endive?), charchavinah (field eryngo?), and maror (bitter coriander?). Endives can indeed be used as the bitter herb for the seder, and some people do, but romaine lettuce is the more popular choice.

Why is lettuce considered so ideal to eat as the bitter herb? There is a compelling answer in the Jerusalem Talmud (Pesachim 2:5) which says that lettuce is sweet when it first sprouts but the leaves gradually grow bitter as the plant matures. This is symbolic of the way that, initially, the Egyptians were very welcoming of the Israelites, but over time they gradually "made life bitter for them with harsh labor."

The Jerusalem Talmud's recommendation of romaine lettuce for maror is symbolic of one of the central meanings of Passover. Repeatedly, the Haggadah reminds us that there have been many versions of Pharaoh throughout history, and more will certainly come in the future. We must always be on guard against being seduced into slavery again, in one form or another. Romaine lettuce reminds us of how the sweetness of insincere hospitality can turn into bitter oppression.

So, how did horseradish (which, again, is not bitter, and is not an herb) take the place of lettuce as Passover's bitter herb? Well, for one thing, people today do not often think of lettuce as being a very bitter plant. That is, in part, because modern cultivars of lettuce are much less bitter than the wild lettuces eaten in ancient times.

It also has to do with availability. Jews living in Poland, the Ukraine, and Russia in premodern times had to eat what they were able to grow and only when it was in season. In early- or mid-April, lettuce was still months away from harvesting in these northern countries.  Most Jews could not afford to purchase foods from far away and, without refrigeration, perishable foods like lettuce were not available at any price. Using romaine lettuce as the bitter herb was just not realistic. That was the Missing Maror Syndrome. They needed to find something else to put on their seder plate.

If you were a Jewish peasant living in Russia in the 15th century, the only vegetables you had to eat in April were those you had stored in your root cellar from the previous year's harvest. There you would find the inevitable answer: horseradish root. It may not have tasted exactly bitter, but it made you cry when you ate it, so it seemed to fulfill the commandment to eat it in remembrance of the bitterness of slavery. You sliced up the root, or ground it into a paste, and you placed it on your seder plate as the bitter herb. Syndrome solved.

Once the practice of using horseradish was established by necessity, it soon took on legal and religious authority. By the 17th century, rabbis from northern Europe (places where lettuce does not grow in springtime), were stating that horseradish was, in fact, a the best vegetable to fulfill the mitzvah. One Polish authority (Rabbi Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller) even justified the use of horseradish by claiming that it was the true meaning of the word tamcha in the Mishnah, despite the fact that horseradish was unknown in the ancient Middle East. 

Over time, Jews in northern Europe began to make the association in their minds: "bitter herb" equals horseradish. When the language of Modern Hebrew was developed in the late 19th century, the word chazeret, which originally meant romaine lettuce in the Mishnah, came to be used to mean horseradish. 

Today, in a time when lettuce can easily be transported in refrigerated storage on trains and ships, most Jews follow both traditions and include both horseradish and romaine lettuce on their seder plate. The lettuce is often used for the korech, the so-called "Hillel Sandwich." 

There is still confusion, though, about where to place the romaine lettuce on the seder plate. Should it go on the spot labeled maror, or on the spot labeled chazeret? Both are correct, because romaine lettuce, which the Mishnah calls chazeret, is the ancient rabbis' favored variety of maror. You can put the lettuce in the spot marked chazeret and the horseradish in the spot marked maror. However, if you speak Israeli Modern Hebrew, you will probably do the opposite, placing the horseradish in the spot labeled chazeret, because that is what the word means to you. You will then put your lettuce in the place marked maror. 

Either way, have a sweet and kosher Passover, one that brings to mind the bitterness of slavery and our faith in God's promise of deliverance and freedom.