How Did Etz Chayim Cope While I Was On My Sabbatical?

On Rosh haShanah day I spoke of what I did during my Sabbatical. In order for me to be on Sabbatical, the board, the active doers, and the staff of this congregation had to make it possible for me to be away. They filled in for me in many ways, from leading services, organizing people to lead services and read Torah, and arranging for (and donating to) adult education,. They did all this, as well as coped with my absence while planning for the congregation's new website and upcoming year's activities. So a few public thank-yous are in order.

First, I would like to thank the board that approved this Sabbatical in my contract five years ago, and this board for implementing that board's decision, which allowed me to take this Sabbatical.

Next, I thank Gary Hammer took over as president, breathed new life into the Israel Action Committee, and oversaw so many many more areas which he is also breathing new life into. And we thank Gary's wife, Xenia, for picking up the slack that allows Gary to do all he is doing!

Now, let me most heartily thank my Personal Assistant, Sharon Lenox, for keeping all the balls I usually juggle flying in the air. She was the central address for making sure that all that I usually do got done by somebody. She even compiled a list of who did what from which I excerpt:

• 24 lay service leaders led 11 Friday night services, and 11 Saturday morning services; 10 members gave the talks at services; and 4 Etz congregants served as Gabbais, as Jonathan Salzedo is doing on these High Holyday, checking and assisting the Torah Readers. Yasher Koach!
• Torah study continued not only for the entire 11 weeks, but also through the usual summer hiatus through the end of August. It was led by a combination of congregants, and by professional teachers, who were funded by a generous grant from an anonymous congregant.
• The Adult Education program continued on for the 14 weeks, and many congregants either led sessions or arranged for speakers.
• The Etz Book Club continued reading and talking, and the Shabbat afternoon discussion group continued its discussions.
• Jonathan Salzedo continued to teach our congregants to chant trope.
• Judy Rattner and Laurie Wertheimer successfully launched the Women of Etz which has tapped a deep well of need, and thus, of participation.
• Our Festivals were planned by Brian Burns and the Festival Committee.

And last, but not at all in any way least, I thank the High Holy Committee, ably and foresightedly chaired by Elissa Wellikson, without whom these services, childrens's activities, onegs, open house, Torah readers, Aliyot, set up and take down, sound and lights arrangements, extra room arrangements, printing, ushering, and so many other aspects of these days that most people, who have never served on this committee, think I can call into existence by just saying a blessing.

Well, I can't make them reality by myself. But I can say an appreciative blessing. I will adapt the Gomeil blessing, which many of you will come forward tomorrow morning during the Torah Service to say in appreciation and gratefulness for the Divine Providence that kept you alive last year.

B'ruchim kulchem, Chavrey Etz Chayim,
she-gomlim l'chayaveem tovot, she-g'malani kol tov.
bashanah she-avrah.
Bless all of you, Etz Chayim members,
Who do so much good for those who cannot repay it,
Just as you did so much good for me this past year.
Amen.

What I Did On My Sabbatical, part 3:

Back Talk or, A Thousand Natural Shocks

Now let me make a seguë by also thanking those whose cards and prayers and meals sent because of my surgery this summer made my recuperation that much better. As those who have been on the receiving end of the largesse of our Mitzvah Chavurah, currently headed by Liz Shane and Sue Weber, can attest, the love brought over in each meal is the best medicine for the illnesses and grief we suffer. May you never need our congregants' love in this way. But should you, please know that we are all here to help you through whatever misfortune you are going through. Do not be shy to ask. Misquoting what Rabbi Tina Turner famously sang,

"You don't need to worry, if you got your troubles
People at Etz Chayim are happy to give…"

Maybe we'll do that at another Folk Rock Service.

For those of you who don't know, I have degenerative disk disease of the lower spine, complete with sciatica. If you haven't met anyone with that particular disorder—and since I developed it, I found people coming out of the woodwork who have it—degenerative disk disorder means that the disks in your spine, which, when you are young, are springy and full of a hydraulic moisture, begin to lose their elasticity because they lose some or all of that moisture. Bones then press the nerves that go from your spine to your legs, causing leg pain. Also, as you age, small growths of bone and scar tissue can begin to impinge on those nerves.

I first felt this pain about the time I started with Etz Chayim, and, no, that was not the reason! It is degenerative, meaning that it just happens with age, slowly. I am 2 inches shorter now than when I joined Etz ten years ago!

About 5 years ago my back pain got bad one Rosh haShanah evening. Dr. Peter Mazonson noticed it, and that morning brought me the medicine to get me through that long day. 2 years ago, less than a week before I was to lead a congregational tour to Israel, my back went out and I lost feeling in my left leg. Thus began the most painful trip I ever took to Israel.

I have been dealing with this same issue for the last two years, though the pain and numbness has migrated from my left leg to my right.

Most of last year I was unable to stand through a service without pain, so I would twist myself to stretch my spine and ease the pressure on my leg nerve. I still do this, because the surgery was not 100% successful. I will need at least one more, because the doctor was only able to remove 2 of the 4 bone spurs I have. Ultimately I may need a disk replacement. Vey. But this is not going to be a list of my aches and pains. Yom Kippur is a time of soul-searching, not body kvetching. And thus, I want to make a few comments on what my back issues have meant to me, in the light of Yom Kippur.

When I started being seen for my back, all the medical forms asked me if my injury was "work related." I knew that this was not the result of any one injury, not from just one trauma, but from a lifetime of regular use and abuse of my body and my back..

Some of it was related to all the rabbi'ing I'd done, from all my 31+ years of setting up chairs and tables for Hillel and Etz events. But it was also from all the general purpose grocery shopping and shlepping I've ever done:

• Every kid and thing I have ever picked up or lugged somewhere;
• All the being a Dad I've ever done;
• All the jumping and sports I've ever done;
• All the heavy backpacking I've ever done;
• All the heavy suitcases
  • I'd ever ever schlepped,
  • that I'd raised up into the overhead racks,
  • or raised off a crowded baggage carousel in awkward positions,
  • or had hauled upstairs and down, step by straining step.

It was also from all the moving from one apartment or home to another I've ever done. I moved ten times in my first ten years out here before Joy and I got married and bought a house.

It's also from all the growing older that I'm doing, from a lifetime of bad posture, and from every massive thing I did not pick up correctly.

Al chet she-chatati l'faneycha Ad0nay
For the blunder I erred while facing Y0u, Y0universe,
Knowingly and unknowingly,
Wittingly and unwittingly,
Carefully and carelessly,
I admit, confess, own up, plead guilty, and acknowledge,
And accept the inevitable consequences of my actions.

We can atone for every mistake in deed and judgement, but we cannot undo all the consequences of what we did. Only in games and computers can you undo and reset to default settings. Backs don't reset.

Kids say, when we confront them with the broken this or bruised that that they did—especially when it really was an accident— "I didn't mean it," as if that makes a difference in what broke, or who has to fix it.

Consequences happen, no matter whether we meant to screw up, or we just accidentally did it. It doesn't even matter if it is only normal wear and tear. As Rabbi Colin Powell said before the US invaded Iraq, "You break it, you own it." If it breaks on your watch, then you own the consequences. You have to deal with it. You get to pay.

Consequences happen, just by living. Shakespeare, through Hamlet, complained of "the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks/That flesh is heir to." I always understood that line intuitively. I knew it when I was 20 and was climbing rocks with some friends. I jumped off a rock and felt a bolt of white light pain in my lower back, and I said to myself, someday that's gonna come back to haunt me." I remembered that day for 30 years, and damn if it didn't come back to haunt me.

Consequences happen.

Whether we meant to do something or not, sometimes, just by living our life one way or another, we create consequences. Sometimes we blithely go through life assuming that nothing will happen to make our lives difficult. We may say to ourselves before making a choice we know is stupid, "Oh, just a little bit won't matter." But we know it will matter.

Maybe, in different circumstances we might have opted to do some things differently. One joke about situations like these is that once Democrats get mugged, they turn into "law and order Republicans." Or, once Republicans find their jobs lost and their health insurance gone, they turn into "universal health coverage Democrats." Those two "jokes" show that it's a shame that universal health insurance and effective policing have degenerated, sound bite by sound bite, like my bad back, into partisan issues.

How do we get our elected representatives and political parties to stop demonizing each other and, instead, begin working together in reason and civility? One way may be to stop listening to and supporting any who engage in this shortsighted, society-shredding behavior. Besides that, I don't know. But I can tell you that I am sick to death of listening to the bluster and lies and knee-jerk blaming and mischaracterization of the "other" that passes for political leadership. I have ceased to belong to either party, I am so sick of it. I will vote in November, for people who have lied and overpromised the least. Were I to vote for those who neither lied nor mischaracterized at all, I would almost not be able to vote for anyone at all.

Unfortunately, short-sightedness born of a quarterly bottom-line and weekly poll numbers, in politics and in business, has made long-term civil planning and national commitment impossible. Most everything political and business leaders do have long-term effects, but these folks feel that they may be in power then anyway, so they don't act on anything long-term. We seem to have, as a nation, Degenerative Democracy Disease.

And, like them, we act on our bodies' short-term urges and lusts, snacking on fats and sugars now and hoping to hell that it won't come back to haunt us later. How do we keep the consequences of the bad decisions we made in our health and morals from descending upon our children, our grandchildren, and our great grandchildren? There is a quote from the Book of Exodus in our Machzor on page 37, that tradition truncated, only mentioning that G0d will extend parents' good deeds to their children for a thousand generations. In its fullness, the quote reads this way:

"Ad0nay, Ad0nay, G0d, merciful and gracious, long suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, 7. Keeping mercy for thousands (of generations), forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but (Wh0) will by no means clear the guilty; accounting the sin of the parents to their children, and upon their children’s children, to the 3 rd and to the 4 th generation." This means that the consequences of our bad actions will affect our children and grandchildren, and their world for three or four lifetimes.

Are we making our world unlivable for them and for our descendants? Do we set examples for our children of exercise; of diet; of recycling; of not overusing the world's resources; of restraint in buying toys for them and for ourselves; of restraint from gossip and from being foul mouthed. Do we set examples of respect for elders; of self-respect? Do we have Degenerative Parenting Disease, or Degenerative Adult Role Model Disease?

The hope in this verse is that any good we do should last a thousand generations, or, basically, longer than the years that have passed since Abraham and Sarah gave birth to us!

Consequences happen.

How do we deal with Iraq without making a bad situation even worse? I don't know. Maybe we're damned if we do and damned if we don't.

How do we as Americans preserve the liberties we have enshrined, and still stay alive on airplanes and on trains? How do we protect the liberties that make us a free nation without, day by day, legislation by legislation, leaving us snooped on from cradle to grave? I don't know. It seems we have Degenerative Freedom and Privacy Disease.

How do we set a moral beacon for the democracies we wish to create when we set such bad examples? Our democracy is being bought and sold by the lobbyists of K Street, because the addiction of Congress to money is worse than any drug addiction. Degenerative Lobbying Disease.

Our "democracy" has been torturing people in secret prisons while Senators debate the meaning of "torture." If the last Administration lied about what "is" is, and then got caught with its pants down, this one lied about and then got caught with its hand on a whip in a dungeon. Is that whip what they want to replace the beacon in Lady Liberty's hand? It seems our country suffers from Degenerative Morality Disease.

Consequences happen.

How do we as Jews ensure that our children care as much as we do or more about living proudly as Jews when the world is turning colder to us as people, as a religion, and as the "Jewish State?" We live in an area where 1/3 of Jews belong to one Jewish organization or another, from the Jewish Community Center to one of the Congregations and Day Schools. This is the highest rate of anywhere in the country, shared with a few large East Coast communities. It is up from the 20% it was when I first moved out here, but still, for every Jew you meet in a congregation, there are 2 who do not belong to anything. When I talk with Bar/t Mitzvah kids about the meaning of being part of a Chosen People, I tell them that their parents chose them to be chosen. And then I tell them the statistics I just told you, so they should know that they really are one of the choosing Chosen few. 2/3 of all Jews receive no formal Jewish training, no Jewish mental adulthood, in their lives. Degenerative Judaism Disease. Take it seriously, folks, because every Jewish act we do or don't do makes our Jewish spine that much less supple. But we may not be alive to see it then, so why should we care?

Consequences happen.

How do we ensure that our actions on behalf of liberty and equality for all peoples and for all forms of Judaism in Israel do not aid those who would kill us, as people, as a religion, and as the "Jewish State?" Is there anyone here who thinks that the United Nations does pass more statements against Israel than against any other three countries put together? And, is there anyone here who, when looking at Israeli democracy, and seeing all the aspects of it that are unjust to its Arab and Liberal Jewish minorities does not wish they could fix it? We who read about Israel's social and political ills wish we could find allies who could help us influence Israel's leaders.

But at what cost do we align ourselves with those who wish to kill us? There are many Arabs and Muslims who sincerely believe in peace and a two-state solution, and I work with them all the time to try to create the conditions for reason among our peoples so that we can bring two safe and sane states, Israel and Palestine, side by side, to reality.

But there are others, with whom many of our people march, so angry are they at Israel, that they do not so much want to solve Israel's problems as to dissolve Israel. They believe dissolving Israel would be done, by their Arab and Muslim and European Liberal and American anarchist allies, without much bloodshed. They are wrong.

I do not know the way out of the Middle East morass, but I do try to act, to ally with those whose vision and whose ties to reasonable people, on all of the many sides to the conflict, are based on a real sense of living together and forming common economic and political relationships. I do not want even one Jewish death, nor the death of any Israeli, much less of the State of Israel, even in part, on my hands. No Degeneration of Israel, vertebra by vertebra, by my words or deeds. Yes, I do think it is that serious.

Consequences happen.

Every Jewish child and adult knows the phrase, "Never again." We assume, when we are young, that the world learned its lesson when it killed us off in Europe, and would never let it happen again. When we get older, however, we learn that the world is only too willing to let peoples kill other peoples, especially dark-skinned peoples who live in countries with few television stations, or where those stations are run by the killers.

Local news shows us lots of blood—as they say, "If it bleeds, it leads"—especially if it is "live, late-breaking, and local." But if it goes on day after day and far away, who cares? Let's give 10 minutes to a pothole in Portola instead of one minute to the millions dying in Darfur.

Many of us, raised on "Never Again," believe that all we have to do is be Jewish and we'll have done all we need to do to help those going through suffering anywhere in the world. I have given some credence to that misconception in our congregation, as well. I have not been the thundering voice for social justice that the rabbis of my youth were. They led social justice movements, marched with Martin Luther King, marched against the Viet Nam war, and told us over and over that the first job of a Jew was and is to live according to the visions of our prophets, by which they meant stirring prophetic phrases of social justice.

By the time I became a rabbi, their job had been done well. All Jews were imbued with the spirit of social justice, and we marched and met and donated to improving the lot of our fellow Americans and others who lived in poverty or under oppression. But I became a rabbi to a generation of Jews who did not know much at all about the words and rewards of living a mindful Jewish life in ritual, in song, and in inspiration. My generation of Jewish adults were socially conscious, but Jewishly uneducated, so I devoted most of my time as a rabbi, to leading Jews to gems of spiritual awakening within the Torah's pages, and to how like paradise Shabbat can be. I did not spend as much to what living a life of tzedakah in deed as in donation meant.

Now a new generation has arisen who know neither Judaism nor Jewish rationales of giving. I still have to make the choice whether to be a social justice rabbi, or a Torah teaching rabbi, for I barely have the time to be one. I am trained it teaching Torah, so I reluctantly delegate the social justice agenda to the able lay leadership of Etz Chayim, to Jeremy and Carolyn Siegel, Mark Lee, and Margaret Golden. You could join them. Remember, the world has already forgotten Never Again, and we are forgetting who we are as a generous people, and that our word, Tzedakah, means Righteousness in doing, not just doing and giving because we are randomly, spontaneously motivated.

The flesh is heir to a thousand natural shocks. They begin the day we are born, and each day we live we suffer another little shock. Some of them may be remedied by promptly applied medicine, followed by right living. Some of the shocks will wear our bodies down, day by day, nonetheless.

We can't undo a long life of little shocks to our bodies or to our body politic, as a family, as Americans, or as Jews. We can atone and ask forgiveness for our errors, but the consequences will still happen, shock by shock. Remember, there is no magic undo button: we will live out the consequences of our mistakes. Each little action adds up over a lifetime.

Each little shock takes its toll,
to the body, to the mind, and to the soul.

As we live out this coming year, remember, yes, there are calories in broken cookies, and yes, even little actions do matter, if they are done, one after another, in the long run.

Act III, Scene 1