Memorial Day and Shavuot

May 25, 2012

4 Sivan 5772

 

My Dear Congregation,

 

Once in a very long while our holiday of Shavuot intersects with the celebration of Memorial Day. While our ancestors stood in a sacred moment at Sinai to receive the Torah, Memorial Day was originally created after the Civil War as a sacred moment, called Decoration Day, to remember the dead who fell in that great battle. Ultimately its purpose came to be a sacred remembrance of all who have died defending our country throughout all the wars.

 

There is a Midrash that teaches that all the Israelites who were alive had to be standing at Sinai in order for God to give the Torah. Similarly, our country's freedom has been obtained through the sacrifice of each and every son and daughter who has died for our freedom, our existence. Each offering of body and soul has meaning and purpose. Judaism teaches that without Torah, without law there is no freedom. From its origin, America has embodied this central Jewish tenet. There is something special in the intersection of Shavuot and Memorial Day.

 

This Monday, that day of intersection, I shall include in our Yizkor service, the recitation of the names of Jewish military personnel who have died in Operations Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom and New Dawn, even as we keep in our hearts the sacrifice of all men and women who have died in this service to our country and to the world. I realize that the attraction of sales and barbeques is strong, but I hope that that the draw of Torah and memory is even stronger.

 

On Sunday, the first day of Shavuot will read the actual portion of Torah of the giving of Torah at Mt. Sinai. Tefilot on both days begin at 10:00 A.M. I invite you to join us in the Divine glow of the Main Sanctuary for these very special days.

 

I extend personal congratulations to the Confirmation Class of 2012 as it takes it place in the long chain of tradition here at Temple Beth-El, and to our 'children' who have graduated high school and university. May you all ascend from strength to strength and bring blessings to yourselves, your families, our people and to God.

 

Please accept my best wishes for a meaningful Shavuot and Memorial Day celebration.

 

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach,

 

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

 

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

Temple Beth-El

3330 Grove Avenue

Richmond, VA 23221

Phone 804-355-3564

Fax 804-257-7152

www.bethelrichmond.org

Ruth Teaches Us to Welcome Those Who Seek Judaism

Ruth Teaches Us to Welcome Those Who Seek Judaism

From the Heart

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

 

My class in Discovering Judaism is open to all, member/non-member, Jew/or not/ seeking/just exploring/no particular reason. My life has been most richly blessed by these people who have chosen to spend Tuesday nights with me in a comprehensive study of Judaism. We go a mile wide and more than an inch deep. Often whatever I think to accomplish is usurped by questions that cannot be denied. Except for my years on Long Island where we had a communal class, I have been doing this every year of my Rabbinate. Each participant is different. Each brings something special to the table. Each brings their own questions. As many as I have been asked, there is always something new. They learn, and I learn, too. I am grateful to them.

 

Often the participants come because they are searching for Judaism. While marriage, to a Jew, either in the future or in the past, sometimes instigates this search, ultimately, each person must accept the faith to be their own, completely and unquestionably. There are many difficulties that exist. I hope that our conversation assists them in overcoming the potential stumbling blocks. I welcome, I embrace tightly, I love completely, these men, women and the children they bring, who relinquish their past to embrace us, to adopt Judaism as their faith and the Jewish people as their own. This is a tremendous leap. Our people, from its very beginning of our history, has been infused with people who have transcended any barrier, to become Jews, to be Jewish, to "walk the walk" much more than just "talking the talk."

 

I feel compelled to reiterate this theme, on which I have written in the past, for several reasons. First, it was a significant issue that the Rabbinical Assembly Convention that I attended this past week. For over five hours, more than a hundred Rabbis sat discussing intimately, with pain, pathos, hope, and anticipation, the issues of intermarriage and conversion. This column does not afford the space to review all of the components of our conversations. But this much is certain:

 

The Jewish people have grown quantitatively and qualitatively because non-Jews have always, throughout our history, sought to become Jews. Great Rabbis in the Talmud were converts to Judaism. These who choose Judaism might not have our past, but they are us in the present and we are one in our destiny. Once a person converts they have only one title: Jew. Just like us. For ever and ever.

 

Secondly, this year's class is soon to conclude, with a number of the members coming to the mikveh for the ritual of conversion, and then membership into our congregation. Year after year we have been enriched and blessed. Respecting their privacy, I don't publish their names, but they are our members and their children are in our Religious School. They stand on the bemah as Ben and Bat Mitzvah. They swear allegiance to our God.

 

On Shavuot we read the Megillah of Ruth. She was a Moabite. While originally part of the family, the people of Moab became an archenemy of Israel. And yet, Ruth left her family, people, land and god, to join the Jewish people and accept the God of Israel as exclusively hers. And she becomes the grandmother of King David, and thus the ancestor of the Messiah.

 

We welcome them into our people, our faith, our synagogue, our community, these children of Abraham and Sarah. Thank you for blessing us. B'ruchim Ha-Ba'eem. I love each and every one of you. Now and from all the years.

 

 

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

Temple Beth-El

3330 Grove Avenue

Richmond, VA 23221

Phone 804-355-3564

Fax 804-257-7152

www.bethelrichmond.org

Why I Am A Jew

Why I Am A Jew

From the Heart

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

 

Despite all my classes in my Seminary years, all the classes that I have taught, and  all the groups that I have hosted, I was not prepared for the following scenario and its question:

 

A local Christian day school brings me their third and fifth grades every year to acquaint them with Judaism and the synagogue. There is a set curriculum for me to fulfill. I always enjoy these opportunities. I firmly believe that we make a better world by more and deeper understanding and appreciation of every faith. At one point I mentioned that we also had two representatives of current Jewish history as part of the synagogue artifacts, the six light candelabra and the Holocaust Torah, representing the murder of the six million Jews in the Shoah. These were fifth graders. After a basic explanation of history, that this was but the latest event but that there were earlier ones, one child asked:

Why did everybody hate the Jews?

What would you have answered?

 

This was mine.

 

The most important teaching of Judaism is: everybody is holy. This means that everyone, of every faith, of every age, of every ability, of every position, of every ethnicity is holy. Everyone. Jew, Christian, Muslim, young, old, abled and disabled, of every country, of every faith, are holy. We are all God's children. It doesn't matter what we believe differently, we are still, all of us, are holy. Being holy means to somehow, in a mysterious way, reflect God in us. Being holy means that everyone is deserving of respect. Being holy means that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity. Living in a holy way means that we don't hurt each other; that we don't attack each other; that we care for each other; that we try to do the best for each other. The most important sentence in the Torah is: Love thy neighbor as thyself.

 

As Jews, no matter how observant we are or aren't, just by being Jews, wherever we are, we proclaim this message to the world. The world has not wanted to hear this message and live by this message. Nevertheless, we continue to represent it and embody it. God gave the Jewish people a tough job to do in the world, and we are still doing it. It is counter to the way the world runs. Check the daily newspaper. People have not liked us – hated us – for this message, every dictator, every despot knew that if they wanted to extinguish the message they had to extinguish us. We are still here. We still declare this message to the world. As Helen Zimm says: "Forever and ever."

 

That's why I am a Jew.

 

 

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

Temple Beth-El

3330 Grove Avenue

Richmond, VA 23221

Phone 804-355-3564

Fax 804-257-7152

www.bethelrichmond.org

 

We Are Holy Beings

We Are Holy Beings

May 4, 2012

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

 

Some time ago at the daily afternoon minyan I mentioned that we don't count people to see if there were the prerequisite ten for the minyan. We had discussed this previously in the Talmud class. I remember growing up in shul that someone said:  "nisht eine, nisht tsvei" "not one, not two" and so on. Later I learned that we use the verse "Save Thy people, and bless Thine inheritance; tend them, and sustain them forever" which in the Hebrew is exactly ten words. The first ten people each was designated by a word, not a number. We live in a world that is all numbers. Even Skype, with live pictures and voice, is nothing more than numbers. We communicate with banks, stores, and our credit and debit cards just as an assortment of numbers. And there are those using numbers trying to detect and steal our numbers. And being numbers, we are able to be flooded by emails, even if they have some importance, and certainly spam which has none. I remember being told that I was only worth an amount created by the values of the chemicals of my body. The world we live in reduces us to numbers. Judaism does not. We are people. We are individuals. We mean something in our individuality. Our being makes a difference in the world. I am not known by my social security number. I am known by my name. To Ruby, my mother and my aunt, I am Gary. To my children I am Abbah. To my grandchildren I am Sabbah. To the rest of the world I am "Rabbi." It became my name, too.

 

In the Torah the months of the year do not have names. When the holidays are explained, it states that they occur on such and such a day in the numbered month. Only during the Babylonian exile do the months receive their names. Beginning with the narrative of creation in the Book of Genesis, we learn that the days are numbered, "first, second…" When the Torah needs to do a census of the Israelites, several times during the Wilderness period, each person gives a half shekel. These are tallied and thus the number of the Israelites is deduced.

 

The Jewish world view is so different, so at variance with the world you and I live in. We are reduced to numbers. Yet in Judaism, we can't be numbers. We are always our own person. Perhaps it was never clearer than through the prism of the Holocaust wherein the Nazis attempted to reduce each person to the number tattooed on their arm. In Israel, the original museum to tell the story of the Holocaust and extol the honor of our dead, its name was borrowed from the prophet Isaiah with the idiomatic Hebrew "Yad VaShem" which literally means hand and name. Today, there you can look up your family by their name. Judaism strives against seeing the human being as a statistic, as a number. We may count the days of the Omer, but do not lose sight of human beings. We never relinquish our being, our dignity, our individuality.

            I am not a number. I am a name.

            I am not a numeral. I am a person.

            I am not a statistic. I embody the image of God.

            From tomorrow's Torah portion, we are kedoshim, we are holy beings.

 

Perhaps because I am generally sensitive to the use of numbers, because we are counting the Omer, and because of my extremely heightened sensitivity to gun violence since our member's murder in December, it all intersected with the editorial in today's Times-Dispatch about April being the bloodiest month in Richmond. I have cringed reading the daily paper. I read every article and it is extremely painful. This editorial used the language "deviation from recent trends." That is the language of numbers. Judaism talks about souls, about lives, about people, about being holy, about being in the image of God. Numbers don't feel pain. Human beings do. The illustration of the police tape saying "Police Line Do Not Cross" did not do the editorial justice.

 

I wonder how people would feel, would it make a difference, would it change anything, if instead of words, bar graphs, or pie charts, they took a whole page of the Times-Dispatch, turned it on its side, and used the pictures of people to portray "trends," indicate "averages." Show me people, not numbers!

            Would people pay any more attention?

            Would handgun advocates see the havoc?

            Would the sellers, the makers, the distributers of guns do anything differently?

            Would it stop the bloodshed?

 

It has been interesting to watch the commercials by Bennett's Funeral Home on TV. They show a snap-shot of an individual and thumb-nail sketch of the person. I can relate to that. It speaks to me of their humanity. I am touched.

            We need to be touched and not hardened.

            We need to be preeminently human and not denigrated into being numbers.

            We need to be advocates to reduce violence and elevate civility,

                           to diminish cruelty and promote respect.

            We need to reveal the image of God that is embedded in each of us.

            We need to show the world that "We Are Holy Beings."

 

Shabbat Shalom.

 

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

Temple Beth-El

3330 Grove Avenue

Richmond, VA 23221

Phone 804-355-3564

Fax 804-257-7152

www.bethelrichmond.org