February 9 & 10 Service Times
Friday Evening Service is scheduled for 7:30 pm
Saturday Morning Service is scheduled for 9:30 am
We hope to see you there!
Friday Evening Service is scheduled for 7:30 pm
Saturday Morning Service is scheduled for 9:30 am
We hope to see you there!
February 2 & 3
Friday: Kabbalat Shabbat 6:00 pm
Saturday: Minyan Tisch 9:30 am
February 9 & 10
Friday: Service 7:30 pm
Saturday: Morning Service 9:30 am
February 16 & 17
Friday: Kabbalat Shabbat 6:00 pm
Saturday: Morning Service 9:30 am
February 23 & 24
Friday: Soup & Salad 6:00 pm
Saturday: Morning Service 9:30 am
Join the Rabbi February 14 any time between 7—9 am at Select for the monthly Breakfast Schmooze
MISHPATIM, EXODUS 21:1−24:18
D’VAR TORAH BY: RABBI SARAH BASSIN
Religion is the source of most atrocities in the world. Religion makes us better people.
Well, which is it? You can look to almost any sacred text in any tradition, and find those passages that condone and even encourage violence. And you can also find those that compel us to strive to help others, and live more compassionately. Religious apologists often pretend that the texts of terror don’t exist. New atheists1 often pretend that the texts of compassion don’t.
It becomes harder to ignore one kind of text or the other when they are right next to each other. We find examples of both texts of terror and texts of compassion in this week’s Torah portion Mishpatim. On the one hand, we are instructed not to mistreat or taunt the stranger (Exodus 22:20). On the other, we are told that God will drive out the inhabitants of the Promised Land little by little (Exodus 23:30). (Later in Torah, the story is a bit modified in that we are the ones who will actually be doing the driving out. But nonetheless, point taken: the other nations must leave).
Love the stranger. Kill the nations. Parashat Mishpatim reminds us that our tradition isn’t as neat as we want it to be. But before we get discouraged that this renders religion largely useless, perhaps an even deeper truth lies within this juxtaposition.
When we are told not to harm the stranger, we are talking about one person. We have to watch out for one person. That sounds about right, doesn’t it? We have the capacity to hold compassion for a single individual. After all, we can know this person. One person has a face and a story. She may have made some missteps along the way, but she has a good soul. A single person is complicated, after all.
A group of people, however, is easier to write off. That group of people is violent. That group of people is lazy. That group of people is good at math. That group of people is (fill in the blank).
When we come face-to-face with a single individual, we can take in all of his or her complexities. When we face a group our capacity for compassion overloads, and we rely on the part of our brain that simplifies and categorizes. We may see a group, but we fail to see individual people.
A person is a story. People are statistics.
Parashat Mishpatim sets before us a choice: will we see people as the stranger we are obligated to protect, or will we group them together and see them as a collective that we are sanctioned to separate from for our own protection?
Both impulses exist. Both serve a purpose. In an open and pluralistic society, we may prefer the rhetoric of the stranger over the rhetoric of wiping out the other nations, but we cannot ignore our need for security. If we don’t embrace some preservationist tendencies, we leave ourselves vulnerable to attack. It’s a sad truth that our people know well.
But if preservation becomes the totality of our identity, what is it that we are preserving?
By placing these two commandments to care for the stranger and to destroy other nations so close in proximity, our tradition owns its contradictions.
It oversimplifies to claim that religion is all about compassion (as the apologists argue) or that religion is the primary reason for evil (as detractors do). And these extremes miss the point.
In most cases, we don’t need religion to tell us what is good and what is bad. We all know plenty of secular humanists who don’t need God to live moral lives.
Instead, I would argue that religion in general (and Judaism in particular) provides us with the context to wrestle with our own impulses. It lets us check our gut — to ensure that our gut isn’t misleading us in an increasingly complex world.
Judaism gives us the opportunity to check ourselves against millennia of tradition. Sometimes, we strive to be better than our ancestors. Sometimes, we have trouble just keeping up.
Our Torah functions less as an instruction manual and more as a mirror. We are compelled to look at ourselves in the context of a long conversation and to gauge how our voice will be heard not just today but in generations down the line.
In providing us with contradictory moral teachings, Parashat Mishpatim forces us to hold a mirror up to ourselves and ask not only how we want to relate to foreigners, but also who we want to be. Do we want to treat them as (we’re bid to treat) the stranger and come with compassion? Is it more prudent to see them as dangerous nations and circle the wagons? Can I learn something from the Sages that preceded me? Or does their perspective seem too limited to be helpful?
The answers don’t come easily because the questions aren’t easy. But rather than congratulating ourselves for whatever initial decision our gut has made, perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to hold up a mirror and engage with tradition as an opportunity to really look at ourselves. No religion is perfect. But religion can be extremely effective when we need to be reminded that we aren’t perfect either.
1. Note: I put “new atheists” in a very different category from the vast majority of secular humanists who simply find their spirituality and morality without the need for the concept of God. In my mind, new atheists embody exactly the same kind of simplistic fundamentalism that they rail against existing in religion.
Rabbi Sarah Bassin is the associate rabbi at Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, in Beverly Hills, CA, and former executive director and board member of NewGround: A Muslim-Jewish Partnership for Change.
Please join us for a 5:30 social and Shabbat Service at 6:00 pm Friday evening.
We will have a special Minyan Service beginning at 9:30 am Saturday morning followed by an Oneg provided by Hadassah.
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BY RABBI EMMA GOTTLIEB 1/25/2018
Science can now confirm that hugging trees is good for you.
If the idea of hugging a tree makes you a little uncomfortable, rest easy. You don’t have to hug them to derive benefits. Just being in their vicinity can positively affect your health.
In a recently published book called Blinded by Science, author Matthew Silverstone explains that the vibrational properties of trees can improve many health issues, including concentration, reaction times, depression, stress, and other forms of mental illness – even headaches!
Although the term “vibrational properties” sounds complex, it’s actually quite simple: Everything vibrates, and different vibrations can affect our biology. Thus, when you touch a tree, or spend time in close proximity to one, the tree’s rate of vibration – which differs from your own – can affect you in positive ways.
It’s pretty fascinating. What’s even more fascinating, though, is that science is only recently understanding what religions have known for thousands of years.
In Jewish tradition, a tree is one of the most potent symbols we have. Trees symbolize a bridge between heaven and earth, as well as Torah, human beings, and God’s Divine structure.
But it is now clear that trees are more than just symbols of power. Trees have power – transformative power.
Even the first humans sensed this. Adam and Eve were drawn to the Tree of Knowledge long before anyone could scientifically explain why.
“Once upon a time,” writes Rabbi Daniel Swartz in an article about Judaism and nature, “we knew less about the natural world than we do today. [Yet] we understood that world better [for] we lived ever so much closer to its rhythms.” Rabbi Swarz reminds us that the Bible is a story about people with intimate knowledge of the land, knowledge that is reflected in the language and poetry of our prophets, psalmists, and wisdom literature.
When Isaiah compared Israel to a terebinth oak in the fall, his audience could immediately appreciate the double-edged nature of his metaphor, for while the terebinth is at its most glorious just before all its leaves drop away, it is also one of the hardiest of trees and can even re-sprout from a stump. To our modern ears, though, the metaphor is lost. Most of us aren’t intimately familiar with the characteristics of the terebinth. We live among trees, if we’re lucky, but how many of us really take the time to learn about them? And how many of us stop to notice whether or not we feel differently around them?
Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, in the 18th century, knew that he felt differently when surrounded by trees. He wrote this now-famous prayer:
May it be my custom to go outdoors each day among the trees (and) enter into prayer…may all the foliage of the field – all grasses, trees, and plants …send the powers of their life into the words of my prayer so that my prayer and speech are made whole through the life and spirit of all growing things…
Rabbi Nachman knew the transformative power of trees. They transformed him and his ability to pray and connect with God. They transformed the prayers themselves.
We know now that Rabbi Nachman, a great teacher, scholar, and spiritual seeker, struggled with mental illness throughout his life. He experienced mood swings and bouts of paranoia – but under the trees, it seems, he felt better.
How many of our daily aches and pains, how many of our daily sorrows and woes, how much of our unhappiness, could be alleviated by spending a little more time around trees?
Rabbi Swartz writes, “We have set ourselves apart from the world of the seasons, the world of floods and rainbows and new moons…”
But our Torah, our very own Tree of Life, urges us to engage with nature, to care for trees and to learn from them. In a war, we can destroy just about everything except for fruit trees, and even if the Messiah himself arrives, should we be in the middle of planting a tree, we must finish planting before going to greet him.
That’s how important trees are! Adam and Eve knew it. Our psalmists and sages knew it. Rabbi Nachman most certainly knew it. Children know it. Maybe you knew it, too, once?
Rabbi Swarz questions whether “we can move from our discord with nature to an informed harmony with this, God’s universe.”
If we can, it begins with hugging trees.
May each of us, at this Tu BiSh’vat – the New Year of the Trees – refuse to be complacent in accepting the ills and sorrows of our lives. May we seek out ancient and modern cures alike – and may we begin with the trees.
Rabbi Emma Gottlieb is the director of education and family programming at Makom: Creative Downtown Judaism in Toronto, Canada.