Rabbi Barry A. Kenter2013-06-19T02:28:26-04:00Rabbi Barry A. Kenterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=rabbi-barry-a-kenterCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Rabbi Barry A. KenterGood old fashioned elbow grease.Hanukkah: Not Quite the Jewish Christmastag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.11210772011-12-06T13:05:24-05:002012-02-05T05:12:01-05:00Rabbi Barry A. Kenterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-barry-a-kenter/
How very different from an ancient midrash to the effect that at time of the destruction of the first Temple, young priests seeing the Temple in flames ascended to the top of the walls surrounding the Temple, acknowledged their failure to be worthy custodians and in a gesture of contrition, threw the keys to the Temple skyward, cried out to God in defeat and resignation, "Here, You take these!" A hand appeared to extend from heaven to receive them; the priests fell from their perch to expire in the flames engulfing the Temple (Babylonian Talmud Taanit 29a).
Compare this story with the account in I Maccabees 4:36-60, following the defeat of the Seleuid Greeks and their allies:
And Judas and his brothers said, "Now that our enemies are crushed, let us go up to purify the sanctuary and rededicate it." And the whole army gathered together, and they went up to Mount Zion... he appointed priests that were without blemish and adherents of the Law, and they purified the sanctuary and carried out the stones that had defiled it to an unclean place... And they took whole stones, as the Law required and built a new altar like the former one... And Judas and his brothers and all the congregation of Israel decreed that the days of rededication of the altar should be observed at their season, every year, for eight days, beginning with the twenty-fifth of the month of Kislev, with gladness and joy.
Of course, there is the more familiar story in the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Shabbat 21b, telling us of the priests entering the Temple precincts and finding but one cruse of holy oil marked with the seal of the High Priest and miraculous eight-day flame in the menorah. What vital piece of information is missing: Just who was it that hid the cruse? And why did he or she hide and protect it? Could it be that he or she (or they) saw himself or herself (or themselves) as holding the future of Judaism in trust, quite literally in their sacred possession?
How is it that we view Judaism and Jewish history? Some would leave it all up to God, others would have it dependant individually and collectively on Jews. "Ayn somkhim al ha-nes" teach our Sages, "don't depend on miracles." While there are miracles that daily attend us, it is our responsibility to care for Judaism and assure the future of the Jewish people, to watch over it, to guard it and protect it, to know that it is safe. To each and everyone one of us in entrusted the sacred task of caring for the cruse that will yet illuminate the world.
By extension, how do we view our world and our place in it? Do we depend on miracles and leave everything to God? Or, while heeding Solomon Schechter's advice to "leave a little to God," do we work to make a difference?
In the Hanukkah ritual, there is a candle called the shammash, the "helper candle." On each of the nights of Hanukkah, the shammash is used to kindle the lights for each successive night. Well in advance of Michael Cronon, Lab126 and the branding of the best-selling Kindle, we Jews have been commanded to kindle the lights of Hanukkah. As the shammash touches each successive candle, the flame from the helper merges with as yet unlit candle; the flame rises higher. One on one, person to person, we are to light and ignite, to fuel and to turn on those with whom we have contact -- we are all shemmashot, we are all helper candles. Our job is to set others on fire, to spark and kindle within them all that can be done to make a difference and transform the world. And in so doing, we do not need to be like everyone else. As I wrote for our nursery students:
Sometimes I like to be like everyone else
- and sometime I don't.
Sometimes I like putting on my blue shirt, because my friend Sam is wearing a blue shirt - and sometimes I don't.
Sometimes I like to drink apple juice -- and sometimes I don't.
Sometimes I like to eat my lunch -- and sometimes I don't.
Sometimes I make a lot of noise -- and sometimes I don't.
Sometimes I like to wear a red shirt and drink orange juice
and eat my lunch and not make noise.
Sometimes I do what everyone else is doing -- and sometimes I don't.
Sometimes I like to be not like everybody else.
Sometimes I like to be different.
Sometimes I like to light two Shabbat candles.
Sometimes I like to light more candles.
On Hanukkah I light candles every night for eight days.
The lights get brighter and brighter and brighter.
Every night is different.
Being different is OK.
Every night is special.
I like Hanukkah.
]]>Approaching Tishrei: Rain, Rain, Don't Go Awaytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9545522011-10-10T14:37:24-04:002011-12-10T05:12:02-05:00Rabbi Barry A. Kenterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-barry-a-kenter/
Rosh Hashanah, perhaps the most universalist of the Jewish holidays, celebrates the creation of Adam and Eve, and inaugurates a period of deep introspection, reflection and personal accountability (heshbon ha-nefesh), leading to Yom Kippur, a day of at-one-ment with one's God and one's fellow human beings. Five days later we celebrate z'man simhateynu, the season of our joy. It is a celebration marked by liturgy and choreography taking us back to the agricultural origins of the Jewish people. Our Sages suggest that the 70 bulls offered in the ancient Temple in Jerusalem on Sukkot represented each of the then-known nations of the world. Prayers were offered for rain to fall as a blessing in its proper season.
For an agrarian society, highly dependent on rainfall, Sukkot marked the end of the annual harvest: the barley of Passover, the wheat of the Feast of Weeks, the vintage in anticipation of the fall festivals. Only for the festival of Sukkot does the Torah mandate joy three times: "You shall celebrate in your festival ... and you shall have nothing but joy" (Deuteronomy 16:14, 15) and "you shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days" (Leviticus 23:40). There is not even one command to rejoice on Passover, and there is only one command to rejoice on Shavuot seven weeks later. A fifth-century rabbinic compilation, the Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana, suggests that on Passover, the beginning of the harvest cycle, we do not know whether crops will be plentiful or not. On Shavuot, while field crops have been brought in, we do not know whether our fruit harvest will be successful. Since we are more anxious about our lives than our possessions, there is no command to rejoice on Rosh Hashanah, the traditional Day of Judgment. Having received pardon on Yom Kippur, the Day on Atonement, field crops have been gathered, as have fruits of the tree. The harvest year has come to an end: we rejoice either in its plentitude and abundance or in the awareness that the next agricultural cycle may be more productive. In either event, we rejoice. As we became more urban, the Jewish community lost sight of the vital connection between the New Year, the Day of Atonement, personal accountability and the prayer for rain that concludes the sacred days of Tishrei, on Shemini Atzeret, the eighth day of solemn assembly.
Long before the Star of David came to be associated with Jews, the arba'at haminim -- the four species of the lulav (festive bouquet of willow, myrtle and palm) and the etrog (citron) -- were among the quintessential Jewish symbols in the rabbinic period. They still are to be found on the mosaic floors of late antiquity synagogues and in the Jewish catacombs of ancient Rome. Most of the oldest liturgical choreography continues to be practiced during Sukkot, with the ritual waving of the lulav and etrog, and festive processions around the synagogue, culminating in a seven cycle procession on the last day of Sukkot, Hoshannah Rabbah. As worshippers sway with the festive branches, singing the words of Hallel, psalms of praise, it is not difficult to imagine one's self intimately and intricately tied to the natural world.
Each item in the bouquet requires differing degrees of water: the palm requires very little; the willow a great deal, myrtle suffices with rainwater, the etrog depends on human irrigation. On Sukkot, at the turn of the season from dry to rainy, we emphasize the importance of water and its impact on how things will grow. A prayer for rain is inserted into the liturgy, imploring that rain will fall at its proper time. On Shemini Atzeret, the Eighth Day of Solemn Assembly, the concluding festival of Sukkot, Jewish tradition inserts a prayer for rain as we add the phrase "Who causes the wind to blow and rain to fall" to daily prayer. Congregation and reader ask for rain as blessing, not curse; for life, not death; for abundance, not famine. Witness the devastation of the Midwest this past summer, the devastating rains, winds and floods of Irene and Lee, cycles of drought, wildfires burning out of control across parched, once-verdant farmland -- evidence of climate change above and beyond El Niño and La Niña. While much can or may be ascribed to natural quasiperiodic fluctuations, pattern and recurring patterns, it seems increasingly clear there is more than passive human intervention and involvement in the warming of our planet.
Sukkot reminds us of our connection to God from whose universal design the rains come, and the need to acknowledge personal responsibility in assuring that the rains come in season. Among the interpretations given to the arba'at haminim is that the myrtle represents the human eye, the willow the mouth, the etrog the heart, and the palm the spine. With but a slight variation, Sukkot and its festive bouquet serve as an annual reminder of the need for head, heart, soul and spine, using that which animates us to animate others in active stewardship of this planet we call home.]]>Tisha B'Av: For Our Sins, We Were Exiled from the Landtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9222572011-08-09T12:54:58-04:002011-10-09T05:12:01-04:00Rabbi Barry A. Kenterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-barry-a-kenter/mishkan, as the culminating moment of God's Creation, many saw Solomon's Temple as a microcosm of the geo-concentric universe. The destruction of sacred place and sacred space, resulting in exile and dispersion came to be viewed by many as the result of communal sin: mipnei hata-eynu galinu m'artzenu, for our sins were we exiled from our land.
"The heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool. Where could you build a house for Me, what place [makom] could serve as My abode? All this was made by My hand, and thus it all came into being" (Isaiah 66:1-2).
Simultaneously, the created universe is sacred space and sacred place. The Hebrew word makom is used to refer to God, connoting the space and place of the whole universe. Because makom is everything that is, place and space count. The world we inhabit is sacred. We are its stewards and guardians. Because of our sins, our desecration and despoliation, we witness in our own times the destruction of a universe. Mipnei hataeynu galinu m'artzenu, for our sins were we exiled from our land.
Traditional imagining suggests that the Third Temple will descend from a heavenly fire. Not so for the restoration of the created universe into which we were born. A rabbinic commentary on Ecclesiastes teaches, "When God created Adam, He took him and showed him all the trees of the Garden of Eden and said to him, 'See my works, how beautiful and praiseworthy they are. Everything that I created, I created for you. Be careful not to spoil or destroy my world -- for if you do, there will be nobody after you to repair it'" (Midrash Kohelet Rabba, 7:13).
Mipnei hata-eynu galinu m'artzenu, for our sins were we exiled from our land. There will be no replacement for what we have done and what we continue to do to our world. Perhaps, then, it would be both appropriate and fitting to acknowledge our sinfulness with the creation of an annual fast on or near April 21, the day before Earth Day, on which to lament our actions and our deeds; for the loss of sacred space and place and to seek the wisdom necessary to repair what we can and must.
A fast refocuses and redirects, turning our attention to ways in which we have failed to hit the mark. The Hebrew word for sin, het, reflects the roots from which it emerged. Originally an archery term, het means to miss the target, forcing us to take aim yet again. As we anticipate an annual fast, we must identify the environmental targets we set and reset for ourselves. As the environmental debate seemingly no longer occupies our elected officials, it is our homes, churches, mosques, synagogues and sanctuaries that must set an example for environmental responsibility and sensitivity, identifying ways in which we raise the bar for our families and our communities, responding to environmental imperatives. As God's agents and partners we can do no less.
Hashivenu Adonai v'nashuva hadesh yameinu kekedem, "Turn us to you, O ADONAI and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old" (Lamentations 5:21).
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