Category: The Jewish Year

Ask the Rabbi: Why did my bishop ban Christian Seders?

Image: A Seder in a private home. People are talking animatedly around a large silver Seder plate, books and papers everywhere. Photo by Rabbi Ruth Adar.

I recently received a very nice letter from an Episcopalian friend asking why her bishop had banned the practice of Christian Seder meals. This is my reply, with a few edits:

Dear Friend, great question.

I have mixed feelings about bans, too, but I appreciate your bishop’s support on this matter. The issue is that “Christian Seders” have become fashionable in some circles and too often are performed by people who are ignorant about Seders and Judaism and in some cases hold beliefs that are antisemitic.

Before 70 CE Jews observed Passover with Temple sacrifices. Each household traveled to Jerusalem, and each head of household took a lamb to the priests to shecht (butcher.) Some parts went on the altar for God, some went to the Temple workers, and the largest part was taken back to the hotel or camp where the family was staying. Then, as the lamb roasted, the story of Exodus was told as the family munched on greens and matzah. 

When Jesus observed Passover, that would have been what he did, too, because the Temple was still standing. 

After the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, there was a huge problem for the Jews: without the Temple we could not observe the holiday. We needed a way to keep the commandments, the intent of which was to create a learning experience that would keep the story alive for each new generation. 

What the rabbis did was look for the top educational methods of the time for models. Ultimately they chose the Greek symposium banquet as their framework. It combined learning and food and questioning. Hence the reclining, the fixed order of events, and the Afikomen. For the Greeks, the Afikomen was a dessert course accompanied by tasteful music and dancers.

Unfortunately the Romans had already copied the Greeks, but where the Greeks used it for scholarly inquiry, the Romans turned it into a gluttonous display of wealth and decadence. Each such Roman banquet ended with the Afikomen, a dessert/orgy combo. 

The rabbis carefully set boundaries on the Seder so that it would be a learning event. They composed the outline of the Haggadah to keep us on track with plenty of room for improvisation. They designated some elements to encourage questioning. Finally, they prescribed that the final course of the meal, the Afikomen, was to consist of a broken piece of matza and a cup of wine. Those, and ONLY those, would be the close of the banquet. Later, singing became part of that final course as well.

(I teach this in the name of Rabbi Noam Zion, from whom I learned about the origins of the Seder in 2002 in Jerusalem.)

For Jews, this is one of the holiest events of the year. It is the cornerstone of Jewish education. We practically deconstruct our kitchens and our homes to observe it properly. 

For someone to partially copy it feels to some of us as if this holy event has been used as a toy or a curiosity. A real Passover Seder is made in a home that has been prepared for Passover: if there’s any chametz left on the premises it has been confined and ritually nullified. The ritual is a combination of ancient traditions, family traditions, and this generation’s experiments. A real Seder requires real Jews.

(Imagine a group of non-Christians playing baptism or communion.)

Many Jewish congregations offer interfaith Seders or learners’ Seders at which participants learn about the Seder and about Judaism. Christians are welcome there. Christians are welcome at many real Seder tables. It’s only a problem when it is a pretend Seder, with no Jews involved, and especially when it is used as a vehicle for teaching a fantasy about “Jesus’s Seder.”

I’m sorry for the long winded reply; I hope I’ve answered your excellent question. 

I wish you and your family a blessed Easter!

Chametz Abatement Time!

Image: Person in Hazmat gear by MetsikGarden from Pixabay.com.

Passover is SOON, coming at sundown on April 15, 2022. If you haven’t started preparations, it’s time. If you are not sure what that means, or if it makes your hair stand on end, read this: We Begin in Egypt.

It’s a little different at Beit Adar/Burnett this year: we are preparing for Passover by getting rid of a different kind of chametz. Where usually the definition of chametz is “grain + water = chametz,” one can also look at anything in life that really, really needs to go as a kind of chametz.

This year we tried to replace the kitchen floor by laying a new floor on top of the old. It failed, partly because I use a chair in the kitchen and the wheels on the chair tore up the new nylon tile. The only fix was to remove all the old flooring, then install a sheet vinyl. But: this house was built in 1961. It was highly likely there was asbestos in at least one layer of old flooring. When we got it tested, the verdict was clear: we needed to have asbestos abatement, meaning a three-day sealing of the kitchen and people with hazmat suits cleaning out all the old flooring, plus cleaning the air. Otherwise, somebody might get cancer.

Going deeper: asbestos is like slavery in that it may seem to make life safe and predictable (“fire safety!”) but in fact it does the exact opposite. It’s a horrible poison that takes life in horrible ways. It is hidden in my kitchen floor, and if we want to do something about it, we’re going to have to make a mess.

So we are going to drag all the appliances out, eat, toss, or give away the food, empty the kitchen of dishes and pans, and seal it in plastic for the people to work. We won’t be moving back into the kitchen until the floor can be installed. Let’s hope that doesn’t actually take 40 years, but it still sounds like wilderness (and camping!) to me.

In some ways, this simplifies Passover prep — the actual grain chametz will certainly go — so it’s a good time to do this. At the same time, it’s a nuisance.

Passover is a nuisance. People won’t usually say that so plainly, but the nuisancy part of it is key to the Passover experience. The goal of Passover is for each of us to feel like we’ve personally experienced the Exodus. Leaving Egypt was a lot of trouble, and some of the people who left never stopped complaining that they hated the freedom of the wilderness.

The lesson of Passover is that freedom is hard work, and boring, and icky, and dangerous. Like asbestos abatement, acquiring freedom is a major mess, a major inconvenience, and it is expensive, too.

I wish you a good preparation for Passover, whatever that will mean in your heart and your house.

Holy moly! It’s Adar Bet.

Image: A woman lifts her hands and grimaces in surprise. By Engin Akyurt / Pixabay

It’s March 1, and Rosh Chodesh Adar Bet. If the latter term is unfamiliar, read Why Two Months of Adar?

In leap years, when we have an Adar Aleph, I tend to zone out for that month. There are no holidays, and not much happening. I reassure myself that it is a l-o-n-g way to Passover. Then come, Rosh Chodesh, I panic: what have I done about Purim preparations? Do I know where my grogger is? Have I decided to whom to send mishloach manot? When will I start the dreaded Passover preparation?

March is my birthday month, as is Adar. Now it is also the anniversary of the original Covid lockdown here in California. That means that those feelings get mixed in with everything else on Rosh Chodesh Adar Bet.

מִשֶּׁנִּכְנַס אֲדָר מַרְבִּין בְּשִׂמְחָה

“When Adar enters, joy increases” – BT Ta’anit 29a

It seems cruel to dangle that tradition before our eyes, when Adar contains anniversaries of death and destruction. However, as with many things in the Talmud, context helps:

מִשֶּׁנִּכְנַס אָב מְמַעֲטִין בְּשִׂמְחָה וְכוּ׳. אָמַר רַב יְהוּדָה בְּרֵיהּ דְּרַב שְׁמוּאֵל בַּר שִׁילַת מִשְּׁמֵיהּ דְּרַב: כְּשֵׁם שֶׁמִּשֶּׁנִּכְנַס אָב מְמַעֲטִין בְּשִׂמְחָה — כָּךְ מִשֶּׁנִּכְנַס אֲדָר מַרְבִּין בְּשִׂמְחָה.

§ The mishnah teaches that from when the month of Av begins, one decreases acts of rejoicing. Rav Yehuda, son of Rav Shmuel bar Sheilat, said in the name of Rav: Just as when Av begins one decreases rejoicing, so too when the month of Adar begins, one increases rejoicing.

First, Adar’s rejoicing comes up as a contrast in a much longer discussion of the month of Av, the traditional month for sadness and sad anniversaries. When Av begins, we curtail our acts of rejoicing because we are preparing ourselves to remember the destruction of the Temple and other disasters. In contrast, when Adar begins, we prepare ourselves to celebrate Purim.

In both cases, we are the actors. It is not, as some translations suggest, that joy gets sucked out of the world in Av, or that joy is pumped into the world in Adar. We have the power to choose how we will react to events.

Mitzvot — commandments — are given to sanctify us, to make us holy. We fulfill mitzvot in order to transform ourselves slowly over time. I cannot choose events, but I can choose how I respond to events. I cannot choose emotions, but I can choose how I will express those emotions.

This Adar Aleph, Russia invaded Ukraine. In Adar 5780, coronavirus shut down the world, and it has been sickening and killing people ever since. In other Adars, other terrible things happened. Still the Jewish People chose to do acts of rejoicing: we’ve had Purim over Zoom twice. This year I will send some of my mishloach manot budget to HIAS and the WUPJ, to feed and comfort those in the war zone.

I do not kid myself that my little donations will make for a happy Purim in Kyiv. I am not so grandiose as to think that it will make a big difference. The little difference I make in the situation will be multiplied by all the other people sending money to help. The big difference will be in me: I will not succumb to despair. I will teach myself, again, that what matters is how I react. What matters is that I will bring a tiny bit of joy into this world by an act of will.

Blessed are You, Eternal our God, who blesses us with mitzvot, to transform our hearts.

Chanukah 2021: Lights in the Darkness

Image: The rabbi, on her scooter, enjoying the Chanukah lights outside her house. Yes, she knows this is a nontraditional display.

Chanukah arrives on the 25th of Kislev as always — this year, that’s Sunday evening, November 28, 2021.

I don’t know about you, but I approach this holiday season feeling rather beat-up and disillusioned. This has been a year of personal, medical and professional crises for me, set against the backdrop of general political unrest, rising antisemitism, climate change, and pandemic. Several individuals and institutions have disappointed me deeply and personally.

So why on earth would I want to bother with a minor holiday like Chanukah? What’s the point?

Chanukah is one of the Jewish holidays I call “National Holy Days.” That is, they memorialize historical events with complicated legacies, events that temper the idealism of the Fall and Spring Holy Days.

Chanukah reminds us that in the second century BCE, the Maccabees won their war against the Selucid Empire only to find that the Temple was filthy. Greeks and Greek-minded Jews had rendered just about everything in the Temple precincts traifeh [ritually unfit.] The Hasmoneans cleaned it up, and rededicated it (hence the name Chanukah, meaning dedication.) Their joy was so great that they instituted an eight-day festival to remember the occasion.

(Yes, there’s another story about a cruze of oil. For more about the tensions between the two stories, look at Chanukah: The Evolution of Holidays.)

Periodically the Jewish People disgrace ourselves with temptations from without and within. In the 2nd century BCE, we responded to Greek culture by dividing over it — the Maccabean war was not only a war against the Greeks, it was a civil war against Jews who admired the Greeks. We thought we cleaned up afterwards, only to find that the “pure” Hasmonean rulers were far from ideal, as well.

Welcome to imperfect humanity. All we can really do is dust ourselves off, clean up the mess, and rededicate ourselves to the project that is Torah. And that’s what I’m doing for the rest of 5782 — cleaning up the mess, and searching the tradition and my heart for genuine Torah.

A Mitzvah for Shmini Atzeret

Image: A laptop covered with post-it notes. Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.

The fall holiday cycle is almost done. Today is Shmini Atzeret, and then Jewish life will settle down for the quiet month of Cheshvan. Only one holiday, Sigd, twinkles at the far end of the month — otherwise it is quiet. It’s the longest such break in the Jewish Year, and it comes at a good time, because anyone involved in putting on all those celebrations is worn out.

Your clergy and staff at synagogue are exhausted from the past two years of Covid, Israel, political upheaval, rising antisemitism, and whatever has been going on locally in your community. This is a great time to write them a note about the sermon you liked, or the beautiful music, or something that went right. They have worked very hard and any expression of appreciation will be a blessing. Notes, emails, silly homemade postcards– it’s all wonderful.

The big thing is, if you’re happy about something to do with synagogue life, this is a great time to let your clergy know. They often wonder who notices things, and who cares. They hear about what went wrong but they rarely hear “thank you.”

To the person who says, “Well, it’s their job!” I have one thing to say: no, it isn’t “just a job.” It’s a labor of love, and particularly for staff, it is often a very poorly paid job. For clergy, it is months of work informed by years of training, and it is often done in tandem with volunteers who are full of good ideas and enthusiasm that have to be coordinated into a manageable whole. It’s WORK.

I am not a pulpit rabbi. I substituted for a colleague who was injured, so I had none of the preparations to do, just showed up to officiate for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Even at part-duties, it was a big job, and I appreciated their thanks very much. In fact, those notes gave me a boost I needed after a stressful summer of other work — something of which they had no inkling. They refreshed my rabbinate more than they will ever know.

The expression of gratitude is a mitzvah: it restores the soul of both the speaker and the recipient. We are at the official end of the High Holy Day cycle. If there was anything you liked about your High Holy Days, whether it was the services, or the way the signups worked, or the call that was returned after you left a message, or someone’s cooking — this is a great time to say, “Thank you.”

What, Another Jewish Holiday Already?

Image: A family picnicing in the park. (Shutterstock, all rights reserved.)

The High Holy Days are behind us.

One common feeling at this point in the fall cycle of holidays is to be really sick of sitting in synagogue or in front of the computer screen, praying.  Yep, me too.

Sukkot is the perfect Jewish holiday for this year. The main idea is, get outdoors!

The good news is that this holiday isn’t primarily a synagogue holiday. Sukkot is celebrated in the YARD.

Or on the balcony.

Or on the roof.

You can celebrate Sukkot anywhere you can build a temporary shelter.

Or — to keep things very simple – anywhere you can put a few lawn chairs and a card table.  Or a blanket on the grass. Don’t get too fussy and spoil the fun. Enjoy!

Yes, it’s nice to have a sukkah. And if you have any connection at all to a Jewish organization, you can go sit in their sukkah, but if you want to get at the heart of the holiday, call up some friends and take them with you. Or go to the park.

This holiday is all about appreciating nature and the harvest. Yes, food. Eaten outdoors. With friends. Or strangers soon to be friends.

Maybe you can think of a friend who could also use a little outdoors time now.

The beauty of Sukkot is that whether you live in an apartment or a mansion, you celebrate it in a temporary shelter outdoors. If you don’t have a yard, take a picnic to the park. If you don’t have a sukkah the lawn chairs I mentioned above are fine. Or a beach umbrella. Just grab your stuff, pack some food, call a friend, and GO. You’ll figure it out.

The heart of Sukkot is hospitality and enjoyment, and a recognition that most of the stuff we build in this world is temporary, anyhow.

Sukkot starts on the evening of Monday, September 20, 2021. But don’t stress – it goes on for a week. There will be time.

Sukkot is the kick-back Jewish holiday. We’ve mended our relationships, now we get to enjoy them. No hurry, no worry, just share some food and enjoy the season. If it’s too hot outside, make some lemonade. If it’s too wet, stay inside by a window, or just get wet.

I’ll keep posting about the Jewishy stuff, the sukkah, the lulav, the history — that’s all interesting. But remember, the heart of this holiday is hospitality.

Prepare to enjoy yourself!

Jewish Hope

Image: A person blows a shofar against a background of clouds. ((Shutterstock, all rights reserved)

This is the sermon I gave on Yom Kippur 5782 in a Zoom service for Jewish Gateways.

We are living in times that are genuinely frightening.

We meet tonight virtually because there is a deadly virus circulating in our world, and so we refrain from gathering in person because we want to live, and we want our neighbors to live.

We are living through a time of political unrest. Whatever our individual political positions, surely we can agree that we’ve never seen times quite like these before.

We are living in a time when the world is teeming with refugees: climate refugees, political refugees, and refugees from housing insecurity.

We are facing the realities of climate change: our state is literally on fire, while other parts of the country face killer storms. We are suffering through a drought, while other parts of the country and the world, are drowning.

And personally, we each have stories of injury and loss. Our beloved Rabbi Bridget is recovering from a fall that injured her badly. Some have lost jobs. Some have lost their homes. Some need medical care but cannot access it.

Tomorrow we will read a prayer called the Unataneh Tokef, the Yom Kippur prayer that affirms that we don’t really know what may happen in the coming year, who will live and who will die, who will suffer and who will have comfort, and so on. Even in an easy year it is a difficult prayer. Last year and this year, it has a terrible resonance, because the times are so uneasy.

What’s a Jew to do?

Our tradition is actually quite clear on this, and it offers us resources. Jewish tradition does not encourage us towards empty optimism. Instead, it encourages us to remain hopeful, even in the darkest moments. Not every individual Jew will survive, but as a people, we shall work towards better times, a better world.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks z”l was the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, a major Jewish voice in the 20th and 21st century. He wrote:

“Optimism is the belief that things will get better. Hope is the belief that, together, we can make things better. Optimism is a passive virtue, hope an active one. It takes no courage – only a certain naivety – to be an optimist. It takes courage to sustain hope. No Jew – knowing what we do of the past, of hatred, bloodshed, persecution in the name of God, suppression of human rights in the name of freedom – can be an optimist. But Jews have never given up hope.”

It’s true, we Jews as a People have been through some truly terrible times over the millenia. Our Temples were destroyed – twice. We lived in exile for centuries. We suffered the Inquisition and the Holocaust.

But we have never, as a people, lost HOPE.

Hope – the belief that we can make change for the better — is baked into our tradition.

The book of Genesis begins with a statement of hope:  Bereshit bara Elohim et haShamayim v’et ha’aretz. “When God was beginning to make the heavens and the earth…”

The Torah’s first words, Bereshit bara Elohim – when God was beginning to create – Those hold Hope. The Torah tells us that creation is not finished, and God is not finished with creation. Nothing is a done deal. Change is still possible. That’s HOPE.

In Exodus, Moses asks for God’s name. God answers with a mysterious name, Ehyeh asher Ehyeh. All a translator can say for sure about it is that the Name of God is in the future tense. Some translate it, “I will be what I will be.” Again, things are not done, not finished: Judaism focuses on the future.

In the beginning of the Book of Ruth, the widow Naomi gives up hope. She says to her widowed daughters in law, “Even if I thought there was hope for me, even if I were married tonight and I also bore sons, should you wait for them to grow up?” One way to read the Book of Ruth is to say it is the story of how Naomi lost all hope of grandchildren – and then at the end, she gets a grandson. Ruth does mitzvot, Boaz does mitzvot, the people of Bethlehem do mitzvot, and hope is reborn.

Jewish hope is not mindless optimism. It looks at a difficult, sometimes cruel world and says, “We can fix this.” Sometimes it has to be very tough-minded. As Yehuda Amichai wrote in his poem Ein Yahav, “And I said to myself: That’s true, hope needs to be like barbed wire to keep out despair, hope must be a mine field.” Those are ugly images, but I think the poet is onto something important: the opposite of hope is despair, and we must guard against despair for hope to survive.

Many of the Jewish texts that speak of hope talk about hope in God. That may be very comforting for believers in a personal God, or it may be a challenge, if our idea of God is more abstract. When I read those texts, I remember that we are God’s hands in the world. God is still creating the world, but now God does it with our hands, our brains, and our determination.

How does that work? A person who lives a life of Torah does their best to keep the mitzvot, the commandments in the Torah. They are following God’s directions as expressed in our Torah. When such a person feeds the hungry, God is feeding the hungry. When such a person welcomes a stranger, God is welcoming that stranger. When a person who lives a life of Torah takes action to save the earth, God is saving the earth. No single human being can accomplish much by themselves, but we are not alone: we are part of Am Yisrael, the Jewish People, in all our diverse splendor. We are the erev rav, the mixed multitude, who left Egypt together, Jews and people who love Jews or who dwell with Jews, and all together, living lives of Torah, there is hope: we’ve got this.

So now I look out through this screen at all of you, and I feel my faith renewed. Members of this congregation stepped up this High Holidays to take care of one another while Rabbi Bridget was injured. You are continuing to do mitzvot even while your rabbi and teacher has to be out sick. You lift one another up, you speak kindly and truthfully, you do what needs to be done.

That is Jewish hope.

We have what it takes to survive difficult times, to learn what can be learned, to record what can be recorded, to remember those who need to be remembered. We can do this.

As Rabbi Sacks wrote, no Jew can be a mindless optimist, knowing what we know about how low humanity can go. But Jews – and those who love Jews – can face reality, and have a quiet resolve that we will do our part to heal this troubled world. We will not give up hope. 

So I want to finish this sermon tonight with a quotation from the end of Psalm 27, a psalm about hope,

A psalm that challenges us to keep walking forward, to keep on keeping mitzvot, to keep on doing what needs to be done in the world:

Kaveh el Adonai, hazak v’amatz libehkha, ukaveh el Adonai  —

Hope in the Eternal One;
be strong and of good courage! 
O hope in the Eternal, hope in one another.

“Chazak v’amatz” – be strong and of good courage – let’s say it together, to each other —  chazak v’amatz!

Keyn y-hi ratzon, may it be God’s will.  Amen.

Yom Kippur Greetings for Beginners

Image: Rabbi Sharon Sobel blows a large shofar. She wears a colorful tallit.

The High Holy Days have one good all purpose blessing that actually keeps working through the end of the cycle, at the end of Sukkot. We can say, “Shana tova!” [Good year!] to which “Shana tova!” is a perfectly acceptable reply.

But if you are spending any time, even online, with other Jews, you may hear some other greetings. Here are some of the choices:

G’mar tov! — (g’MAHR TOHV) — A good finish

G’mar chatimah tovah! — (g’MAHR khah-tee-MAH tow-VAH) — A good final sealing

Tzom kasher! — (zohm ka-SHAYR) — Have a proper fast

Tzom kal! — (zohm KAHL) — Have an easy fast

The good news is that all of those are answered just as they are asked. Just say them back, and it’s all good.

There are also some all-purpose greetings you may hear. They are a bit less common on Yom Kippur, given its sober tone.

Chag sameach! — (khag sa-MAY-akh) — Happy holy day!

Goot yuntiff — (goot YUN-tif) — Yiddish — Good Holy Day.

Join me for Yom Kippur?

Image: Jewish Gateways Logo for High Holidays 2021. Colorful abstract.

I will officiate at online Yom Kippur services this year at Jewish Gateways. If you still need somewhere to attend, we would be glad to have you. For information, and to register, visit their High Holidays webpage. You must be registered to attend.

The schedule for Yom Kippur Services, all times Pacific:

Wednesday, September 15, 7:00-9:00pm, Erev Yom Kippur

Thursday, September 16, Yom Kippur Day                        

  • 9:00-9:45am: Yom Kippur Family Service for children under 9 and their families
  • 10:30am-12:30pm: Yom Kippur Morning Service
  • 1:00pm: Questions and Open Discussion with Jewish Gateways community members
  • 6:00-7:30pm: Yom Kippur Afternoon Services
    • 6:00-6:30pm: Healing Service
    • 6:30-7:00pm: Yizkor • Memorial Service
    • 7:00-7:30pm: Ne’ilah • Closing Service

G’mar chatimah tovah! (May you be sealed for goodness.)

Join Me for the High Holy Days?

Image: Brightly colored logo for Jewish Gateways‘ High Holidays 2021 Logo. A pomegranate is cupped in a blue arc like a hand. A rainbow surrounds.

L’shana tova! Happy New Year! The Jewish New Year of 5782 begins at sundown on Monday night, September 6, and continues until sundown September 7.

Normally I’m a “Jew in the Pew” for High Holy Days, but this year I am pinch-hitting for Rabbi Bridget Wynne, who is recovering from an accident last week. If you’d like to join me for online services with Jewish Gateways, the registration and information for that is available on their website.

For more information about the High Holy Days I recommend reading my article High Holy Days for Beginners, 2020. The dates have changed but the information is the same.

Other ways you may hear Jews refer to these days, all correct:

  • High Holidays
  • Days of Awe
  • Yamim Noraim (Hebrew) (ya-MEEM no-rah-EEM)
  • Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (ROSH ha-sha-NAH and YOM kee-POOR)
  • “High Hols” (very informal)
  • HHD’s (in tweets and other shorthand media)

Whatever you call them, I wish you a Good and Sweet New Year. May it bring you health, healing, light, and love.

L‘shana tova! Happy New Year!