Education
How to Talk to Our Kids
Family Sunday How to Talk to Our Kids About God Sunday, November 5 At 10:00 am
November Sunday School Dates
11/5 9:20 Hebrew, 10:00 Class
11/12 Sunday Speaker Series
11/19 9:20 Hebrew, 10:00 Class
11/26 NO Sunday School
Hebrew School Schedule for November
11/1 School at 3, 4, & 5:00 pm
11/8 School at 3, 4, & 5:00 pm
11/15 School at 3, 4, & 5:00 pm
11/22 NO Hebrew School
11/29 School at 3, 4, & 5:00 pm
November Breakfast Schmooze
November 8 any time between 7—9 am at Select for the monthly Breakfast Schmooze.
Save the Date!
Kabbalat Shabbat: This Friday begins at 5:30 pm with refreshments followed by service at 6:00
Daylight Savings Time: Sunday, November 5
Family Sunday: Sunday, November 5 at 9:30 am
Breakfast Schmooze: Wednesday, November 8 from 7-9:00 at Select
Hebrew School: Wednesday, November 8 at 3:00, 4:00, and 5:00 pm
Kabbalat Shabbat: Friday, November 10 at 7:30 with Oneg
Minyan Service: Saturday, November 11 at 9:30 am
Movie Night: Saturday, November 11 at 7:00 pm showing Imaginary Witness
PLEASE RSVP FOR ALL TEMPLE EVENTS
Judge a Society by Its Hospitality
VAYEIRA, GENESIS 18:1–22:24
D’VAR TORAH BY: RABBI STEPHEN S. PEARCE, PH.D.
A couple is served dinner
To live in a period when public officials and private citizens demonize “the other” — immigrants, foreigners, strangers, women, individuals of different sexual orientation, and the poor — is to live in a tragic times. Whereas welcoming the outsider is the biblical underpinnning of so many Genesis narratives, this sacred principle is not always preeminent because the Bible is a human book that not only promotes ideals, but also notes the failure to live up to them. Vayeira provides such a contrast between depravity and disregard for outsiders on one hand, and kindness, generosity, and hospitality to strangers on the other.
In the account of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Torah comments: “The outcry of [za’akat] Sodom and Gomorrah — how great it is, and their crime [chatatam] — how grave it is!” (Genesis 18:20). However, this text offers no further elucidation of sins committed by the citizens of these doomed cities. In contrast, the Torah is clear that a previous society of evildoers, the generation of the flood, was destroyed because “the earth was filled withlawlessness [chamas]” (Genesis 6:11).
The remembrance of the merciless and cruel behavior of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah who were hardened to kindness and compassion is echoed in the words of the Prophet Ezekiel:
Only this was the sin of your sister Sodom: arrogance! She and her daughters had plenty of bread and untroubled tranquility; yet she did not support the poor and the needy. In their haughtiness, they committed abomination before Me … (Ezekiel 16:49-50)
With no detailed information about the sins of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Torah, Sages and scholars visualized sins of lust and sexual depravity because this opportunistic and inhospitable people treated strangers as fair game, subject to any imaginable violation, abuse, or whim. This interpretation is based on an incident in which Lot extended hospitality to two strangers, whereupon the townspeople demanded that Lot turn them over in order that “we may be intimate with them” (Genesis 19:5). However, mindful of the ancient hospitality code that demands that a guest in an individual’s home has the absolute protection of the host, Lot tried to shield the men from harm’s way by offering the Sodomites his young virgin daughters instead of his guests:
He said, “Please, brothers, do no evil! Look — I have two daughters who have never been intimate with a man: let me bring them out for you, and do to them as you please. But do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof. (Genesis 19:7-8)
Thus Lot was portrayed as both a solid citizen and a flawed human being. He not only offered his virgin daughters to the rabble-rousers in order to protect his two guests, but also two further accounts document father-daughter incest, unholy unions with his daughters that resulted in the birth of Moab (meaning “from father”) — “he is the father of the Moabites of today” and Ben-ammi (meaning, “son of my kin”) — “he is the father of the Ammonites of today” (Genesis 19:33-38). It is no wonder that the name of the ancient city of Sodom becomes synonynous with sexual perversion. Nevertheless, the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah must have been appreciably more heinous than Lot’s contemptable behavior, because he and his family were exempted from the punishment that befell all the other denizens of those wicked cities.
A further moral failure read into the limited available textual information was the refusal to extend a helping hand to those in need. The Talmud imagined that the citizens of Sodom decreed death to anyone who fed the poor:
A certain maiden gave some bread to a poor man, [hiding it] in a pitcher. On the matter becoming known, they daubed her with honey and placed her on the parapet of the wall, and the bees came and consumed her. Thus it is written, (in Genesis 18:20), “The “outrage” [za-akah] of Sodom and Gomorrah is so great, and their sin so grave! (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 109b)
The Talmud further tells how the people of Sodom offered the appearance, but not the actuality, of hospitality to strangers:
Whenever a pauper happened to come to them, each and every Sodomite would give him a dinar, and before doing so would write his name on [the coin] And, as per a prior agreement, [the Sodomites] would not offer [the pauper] bread. When [the pauper] eventually died of hunger, each and every Sodomite came and took back his coin. (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 109b)
A second text in Vayeira (Genesis 18:1ff) offers a distinct contrast to the behavior of the Sodomites. It describes God’s appearance before Abraham as Abraham sat at the entrance of his tent when three men seemed to appear out of nowhere. Abraham terminated communication with God in order to offer hospitality to these strangers. He prepared a feast and offered them an opportunity to refresh themselves. So important was hospitality to Abraham that he allowed this moment of religious ecstasy to be interrupted. He affirmed the important lesson that social responsibility must supercede religious belief and practice, later articulated in the Talmud: hachnasat orchim — “Welcoming guests is greater than welcoming the Divine Presence” (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 127a).
Vayeira contrasts the the treatment of people at the margins of society — they can be ignored or welcomed, abused or protected. Everyone benefits when hospitality for outsiders is woven into the fabric of society, an important lesson that needs reinforcement in every age, especially during this modern age when the political climate demonizes “the other,” rather than honoring and uplifting the stranger in our midst.
Rabbi Stephen S. Pearce, Ph.D. is senior rabbi emeritus of Congregation Emanu-El of San Francisco, and a faculty member of the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning at the University of San Francisco and the Beyond The Walls: Spiritual Writing Program at Kenyon College. He is the author of Flash of Insight: Metaphor and Narrative in Therapy and other articles, poems, and books.
Special Friday Night Service!
WITH GUEST SPEAKER AND SCHOLAR DR. ROB MCCORMICK REFLECTING ON THE 500TH ANNIVERSARY OF MARTIN LUTHER’S REFORMATION AND ITS IMPACT ON JEWS
Dr. Robert McCormick, chair of the Department of History, Political Science, Philosophy and American Studies at the University of South Carolina Upstate, recently published a book through I.B. Tauris & Co., Ltd. titled “Croatia Under Ante Pavelić: America, the Ustaše and Croatian Genocide.”
Ante Pavelić was the leader of a paramilitary and terrorist force, the Ustaše, who, on Adolf Hitler’s instruction, became the leader of Croatia after the Nazi invasion of 1941. “Ante Pavelić was one of the most significant war criminals from World War II to never answer for his crimes,” McCormick said. “With Allied and Vatican assistance, he successfully escaped to Argentina and ultimately died in 1959 in Spain.”
McCormick’s book, examines the relationship between the United States and Ante Pavelić from when he masterminded the assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in 1934 to his death in 1959. For much of the 1930s, extremist Croatian-Americans were important supporters of Pavelić and the Ustaše, helping to keep his Croatian nationalist message alive in America and Europe. After gaining power in wartime Croatia, Pavelić’s regime killed about 330,000 Serbs, Jews, and Roma, while operating a series of concentration camps.
After the war, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Vatican conspired to help Pavelić and many of his allies avoid arrest and escape from Europe to the safety of Argentina. Tracing Pavelić’s escape to Argentina, McCormick argues that American authorities protected Pavelić, because he was devout Catholic and anti-Communist, who held the potential to be useful in the emerging Cold War. McCormick also examines the consequences of American decisions by studying Pavelić’s place in contemporary Croatian society.
“Pavelić’s legacy was influential in the Balkan Wars of the early 1990s and continues to be a factor in Croatian politics and society,” McCormick said.
McCormick is chair of the Department of History, Political Science, Philosophy and American Studies at the University of South Carolina Upstate and is an associate professor of history. A native of North Carolina, he received a B.A. in history from Wake Forest University. He holds a M.A. and Ph.D. in history from the University of South Carolina. He has published articles ranging from reform in Macedonia in the early twentieth century to genocide in World War II Croatia to an evolution controversy in 1884 Greenville, S.C.
A Post Sukkot Creation Review: Taking Care of God’s Creation with Linda Ott Sunday, October 22
Breakfast at 9:00
Speaker at 10:00
Join us for our first of the fall Sunday Speaker Series as we welcome Linda Ott from Sustaining Way. Linda comes to the SCIPL (South Carolina Interfaith Power & Light) Director role most recently as a graduate from Columbia Theological Seminary with a Masters of Theology in Creation Care. Linda’s vocation life journey included the military, social work, business, and law. Her passion for creation care stems from her time at Drew Theological School, where she completed a Masters of Divinity and discovered her passion for understanding the intersection of faith and the care of creation.
Eden Defines the Truth About Responsibility (D’var Torah)
B’REISHIT, GENESIS 1:1−6:8
D’VAR TORAH BY: RABBI STEPHEN S. PEARCE, PH.D.
What could have possibly have been so bad about taking just one bite from a piece of fruit? But in Parashat B’reishit, the fruit Eve served to Adam was not just any fruit; it was fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and bad. Adam ate and did not ask any questions about where that delectable morsel came from. Consequently, that feast turned out to be Adam and Eve’s last supper, their last free meal, because they were expelled from the Garden of Eden immediately following dessert.
Not being just any plain garden variety of fruit, the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and bad resulted in the loss of innocence in much the way a teenager leaves the innocence of childhood behind when acquiring adult interests in money, sex, and power. But was eating the forbidden fruit the sin that earned them God’s scorn and a lifetime of sweat and toil, a punishment also passed onto succeeding generations?
Adam and Eve could not plead ignorance of the law; clearly, they had been warned, “You may eat all you like of every tree in the garden — but of the Tree of All Knowledge you may not eat, for the moment you eat of it you shall be doomed to die” (Genesis 2:16-17). Were they testing God’s warning? Did boredom lead them to seek a cheap thrill by disobeying God or was it something else?
The beguiling snake mocked God by planting doubt in Eve’s mind: “Did God really say, ‘You may not eat of any tree in the Garden?’…You most certainly will not die! … (for) God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like the gods, knowing all things” (Genesis 3:1, 4-5). Loss of innocence, failure to heed God’s word, and mistrust of God’s edict all should have been cause enough to have earned Adam and Eve a one-way ticket from Eden, but according to Rabbinic tradition, the sin that led to expulsion was different.
The paramount sin of the Garden of Eden was lack of accountability. When Adam was questioned by God about eating the fruit, he passed the responsibility to Eve: “The woman whom You gave me, she gave me the fruit of the tree, so I ate” (Genesis 3:12). Eve did not own up to her deed as well: “The serpent tricked me into eating it” (Genesis 3:13). Neither was willing to take responsibility for the misdeed, and so they were cast out of the Garden forever.
Jewish tradition is resolute in insisting that individuals take responsibility for their actions as the Mishnah instructs: “An individual is always responsible, whether the act is intentional or inadvertent, whether awake or asleep” (Mishnah, Bava Kama 2.6).
More than ever, this age, like so many others, is one in which people shrink from personal responsibility for action or inaction; all too many in the public and private sectors look for something or someone else to blame for their own objectionable behavior. Thus, the loss of personal accountability defines our age. This malaise fills our government and our courtrooms: “Don’t blame me. I’m not responsible. I’m a victim.” Some people successfully exploit loopholes in the law or launch false ad hominem attacks against others to deflect from their own misdeeds. The more this kind of behavior persists, the more it becomes accepted as “normal.”
Blame, elaborating grievances, and refining excuses are so much more convenient than is taking personal responsibility for one’s action. We’ve become a nation of whiners, always accusing someone else or some circumstance to explain away unsuitable behavior. Looking around makes one wonder if humankind has made any real progress since Eden. The fact that it hasn’t is the reason no one has ever been able to return to Eden, because only when people stand tall and take responsibility for their actions can there ever be a return to the tree of life at the center of the garden.
Rabbi Stephen S. Pearce, PhD is senior rabbi emeritus of Congregation Emanu-El of San Francisco, and a faculty member of the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning at the University of San Francisco and the Beyond The Walls: Spiritual Writing Program at Kenyon College. He is the author of Flash of Insight: Metaphor and Narrative in Therapy and other articles, poems, and books.
For more readings and information, Click Here: