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This Week’s Torah Reading

Lekh Lekha

God commanded Abram to leave his father’s home for another land. God lead him to Canaan and said that this land would be for Abram’s heirs. A famine forced Abram to leave and go to Egypt. Abram told his wife, Sarai, to pretend that the two were brother and sister so that none should kill him to obtain her. When Pharaoh innocently takes Sarai for himself his household is afflicted with plagues. Realizing that the plagues were due to Sarai, Pharaoh chastises Abram for the ruse. Abram leaves Egypt exceedingly wealthy. Both Abram and his nephew Lot owned so many flocks, one plot of land could not sustain them. The two separate with Abram remaining in Canaan and Lot traveling to Jordan. Lot was taken captive during a local war. When Abraham hears this, he musters 318 servants and goes to war. He is victorious, returns stolen property to their rightful owners and rescues Lot. Abram, nevertheless, is sad for he is childless. God assures Abram that his progeny would be as numerous as the stars. God reveals to him our enslavement in Egypt as well as the exodus. God makes an eternal covenant with Abram in which He promises all of Canaan to him and his descendants. Sarai gives Abram her maidservant, Hagar, as a concubine. Hagar becomes pregnant. Sarai is distressed over this development and treats Hagar harshly. Hagar flees. An angel tells her that she shall give birth to a son, a wild man, who will have many children. Hagar returns to Sarai. God changes Abram’s name to Abraham and Sarai’s name to Sarah. God instructs Abraham to circumcise himself and his household as a sign of the covenant. Abraham circumcised Ishmael at the age of 13 and he circumcised himself at the age of 99.

A SHABBAT THOUGHT

No one can make you jealous, angry, vengeful or greedy— unless you let them.

~~ Joseph Joubert ~~

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THE ANNUAL REVIEW OF MIDWAY’S HIGH HOLIDAY SERMONS

This week, we feature the Yom Kippur sermon of Rabbi Burton Visotzky. Rabbi Visotzky, our rabbi in the parallel service, is the Nathan and Janet Appleman Associate Professor of Midrash and Interreligious Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City--

"And then I told the Pope" or: Count your Blessings

Rabbi Burton L. Visotzky

Some of you might have noticed that on Yom Kippur, we daven a little longer than usual. On a regular week day morning when we pray, there is one (and only one) opportunity to do the Amidah – the Standing prayer, also known as the Shmonah Esreh or Eighteen benedictions – which embody not only rabbinic prayer, par excellence, but try to express our concerns and daily desires to God: for wisdom, for forgiveness, for the Jewish people, for mercy, and for peace. On Shabbat, when we have a bit more leisure to linger in the synagogue, we actually add a second Amidah, cleverly called Musaf, "the Extra" Amidah. That prayer adds specific benedictions extolling the Sabbath. On Rosh HaShannah, we pray even longer – because at Rosh HaShannah Musaf, the extra prayers include three extra sections: Malkhuyot – prayers and sentences of scripture exalting God’s Kingship; Zikhronot – prayers and biblical verses imploring that God remember our and our ancestors’ good deeds that they may count toward our merit; and, finally, Shofarot – blessings of praise and lines of the TaNaKh that recall the sound of the Shofar as an audio cue to God’s mercy.

As I said, some of you might have noticed that on Yom Kippur, we pray a little longer than usual. On Yom Kippur, and especially on Yom Kippur that is also SHABBAT, we pray and then we pray extra, and then we pray even more. On Yom Kippur there is the normal evening service which is lengthened by Kol Nidre, and the Morning service, and the extra, the Musaf service. And there’s the afternoon service – but, as a special Yom Kippur bonus just for you…there’s another service entirely – Ne`illah!!!

There are so many ways to look at the seemingly endless variety of prayers we invoke on Yom Kippur. We implore, we beseech, we invoke, we pray. But since we do it in Hebrew, what we do is offer BERAKHOT – blessings. This requires some explanation, because I think that Jewish blessing is somewhat unusual. Normally, we think of blessing as a bestowal of some good upon another. But in Jewish tradition, the regular forms of our Berakhot actually are praise by us of God – the Source of all blessing. So, when we say Kiddush, for example, WE do not bless the wine, but rather we thank God FOR the blessing of wine which God gave us. When we bless the bride and groom, we are not ourselves sanctifying the marriage, but invoking God’s blessings upon the couple. And when we stand for the duchan during the Birkat Kohanim – when the Cohen/priests of the congregation stand before us and chant – they are not so much blessing us, as they are channeling God’s blessing upon us. All blessing comes from God. Our prayers are recognition of that fact.

In Jewish tradition, indeed, according to the Bible, God is the source of EVERYTHING: Good and evil, reward and punishment. That is, of course, what makes Yom Kippur such a Day of Awe – Yom Nora’. For God judges us on this day, weighs our deeds, and – as the sages imagine it – God judges us for the year to come. No one likes being judged, and all of us have some trepidation about the notion of being judged by the Judge of All the Earth, whatever our theology may be. And our tradition is demanding of us: we bless God whatever befalls us: as the Mishnah teaches: we are obligated to praise God (mevarkhin) for our ills as well as for the good things. When you hear good news, there is a blessing to say. AND when you hear bad news, there is a blessing to say. The rule of thumb in the rabbinic Berakhah manual is this: Give thanks for what has past, and cry out for the future.

Indeed, there seem to be blessings thanking God for just about everything. There are the well-known blessings we say here in the synagogue. There are blessings to be said before and after food, like Motzi and Birkat HaMazon. There is a blessing for seeing the Mediterranean, a blessing for when you see someone again after a long hiatus, a blessing for seeing rainbow, for seeing a beautiful woman, for seeing a great Jewish leader or a Head of State. I recited that last blessing: Barukh…shehalak mikevodo lebasar vedam, when I had the privilege of meeting the President ten years ago, and recited it again this past May.

Which leads me to my annual report. Those of you who have heard me speak to you during the High Holidays before know that I always like to share something from my own experiences during the year. It is a sermonic version of "How I spent my summer vacation." Over the past 5 years I have spoken to you about my time in Moscow and Egypt. This past year, Barukh HaShem, I had a sabbatical semester from my teaching at the Jewish Theological Seminary, during which I was blessed to be able to do something really unusual. Right after Passover this past Spring, on April 15th to be exact, I left for a grand adventure in Italy. I had been chosen to serve as the Master Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

Allow me a moment of explanation: The Gregorian is a graduate school of the VATICAN, a Jesuit university that serves as "the jewel in the crown" of the papal university system, which consists of dozens of Catholic higher-education institutions around Rome. The Greg was founded in 1551 by Ignatius Loyola. It was granted the status of a papal university in 1584 by then pope, Gregory xiii. Since the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960’s, the Gregorian University has offered courses in both Judaism and Islam. Today it has four full-time faculty teaching Muslim studies and one full time Jewish Studies professor. To supplement the Judaica offerings, each year the Greg brings a European or Israeli visiting professor of Jewish Studies and, for the last seven years, an American professor to serve as the Richard and Susan Master Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies. This past April to June, I was privileged to spend seven glorious weeks in Rome in that chair.

I taught one class, "Judaism and Christianity in the First Five Centuries." This required that I teach BOTH rabbinic literature of the period, as well as New Testament and Church Fathers. Teaching rabbinics is, of course, my bread and butter. Teaching Church literature to Jesuits was, I confess, somewhat daunting. My class was mixed – most were Jesuit priests, but I also had some Masters students, one PhD, and a couple of auditors. My students were from all over the world. Members of the class came from India and the Philippines, Italy and the United States, England and the African countries of Ghana and Burkina Faso. In addition to the Catholics, I had one American Protestant, one Italian Jew, and most fascinating of all, two Turkish Muslims.

Right before I traveled to Rome, the priest in charge of my program e-mailed telling me that as a Papal University they were capable of opening doors most tourists would find closed. Was there anything I thought he might help me with? I wrote him back in a display of New York Jewish Chutzpah with a list of my three wishes: I wanted a private tour of the Vatican Museums, I wanted to visit the JEWISH catacombs, and I wanted to meet the Pope. As I said, "chutzpah." He replied within the hour: "Done."

As it turned out, one of my students was a Vatican tour guide. The visit to the catacombs was harder to arrange, but I managed to visit two of the ancient Jewish burial sites. Like the Christian tombs that dot the outskirts of Rome, the Jews of Rome buried one another in catacombs from the second through the fourth centuries. Inside the maze of tunnels, graves were dug into the walls; and there Jews found their final resting places. Sometimes, a family opened a vault of graves and decorated it with frescoes. The Christian catacombs have been open to tourists for decades. The Jewish ones have never been properly excavated or prepared for tourists: they are barely lit and poorly ventilated. Visits were discouraged for reasons of health and safety. But the catacomb doors, as it were, opened to me and I gratefully entered the graves.

For one catacomb, our tour guide was the electrician charged with assuring that the old cables that lit the path did not short and burst into flames. He walked us among the memorial plaques and graves, the frescoes and bones (that’s right – the bones remain in these grave sites – unlike those of the tourist friendly Christian catacombs). The second catacomb tour was given to us by the original archeologist, a Roman Jew now in her late seventies. We each carried flashlights to illuminate our paths. When we came to a family burial vault, she directed us to shine our lights upward. There in the ceiling vault were frescoes that seemed as fresh as though they had been painted yesterday. And while I at first was put off by the creepy presence of bones, I soon came to feel the privilege of being able to visit these Jews at their graves – something rarely done for the past 1800 years. I said a communal el maley rachamim – much as we will do at Yizkor, and thanked God for the opportunity to perform the Mitzvah of honoring the dead.

Finally, there was my opportunity to meet the Pope. When the Pope is in Rome, he gives a public audience in St. Peter’s square every Wednesday morning. As many as 50,000 people attend these audiences. I got my tickets the evening before from the office of Cardinal Kaspar – the bishop in charge of Vatican-Jewish relations. They patiently explained that while I would be in one row, there was a seat for my wife in the row behind me and two more behind her for my daughter and her friend. As it turned out, my seat was in the first row, a few feet away from Pope Benedict. During the public audience, he lifted his hands in blessing as each group of Pilgrims was introduced by their local bishops. This procedure reminded me very much of the priestly blessing that we do at our service – the duchening. Like our Cohanim, the Pope focused his blessing on a specific area or group, or even upon individuals and photographs of their families. Unlike our Cohanim, who channel God’s blessings, the Pope is understood by Catholics to be God’s representative on earth. He bestows blessings.

After the public audience, the Pope turned to personally greet the attending cardinals and bishops, and then, the people in my row! As he met with each person, they kissed his ring, briefly chatted, and were left with a rosary he had personally blessed. As I watched the Pope work his way towards me, my head was crowded with questions: what to say, what language to talk in, and whatever would I do with a rosary blessed by the Pope? Just before he came to me, I cleared my mind of confusion and quietly pronounced the Berakhah for seeing a head of State: Barukh…shechalak mikevodo lebasar vedam – Praised are You, God, Who has shared Your glory with flesh and blood. An appropriate blessing for the titular head of the world’s one billion Catholics.

When my turn came to speak with Pope Benedict, I opted for English and said, "I bring you blessings from the American JEWISH community." The Pope looked up at my yarmulke and replied in perfect English, "AH, rabbi. Please convey my blessings to the Jews of America." I happily do so now.

Obviously, the Pope had been prepared that a rabbi would be on the line. In fact, they were so well prepared that I did not get a rosary – instead I received a papal medal, conspicuously lacking a cross. The Pope was relaxed, gracious, and clearly enjoyed meeting all who came to the audience. Unlike the austere German that I expected to meet, I met a man who loved what he was doing and exuded warmth and grace. There is what to be said for being the guy who dispenses blessings. Blessings are God’s grace on earth – and they are something we need to embrace. If I might refer to another Jew who confronted the Christian world, allow me to quote from Irving Berlin, as he wrote for the 1954 movie White Christmas, "When you’re worried and cannot sleep, just count your blessings instead of sheep, and you’ll fall asleep counting your blessings."

I think we all need to learn to recite quiet berakhot all day long – for the sip of water we take, for the cookie we nibble in the office, for getting up in the morning, for putting on our shoes, our tallis, our belts. When we recite a blessing, as it were, we stop and smell the roses (there’s a berakhah for that, too). In the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel, we experience the wonder of God’s creation. And we daily give thanks to the Creator that we are here, that life is good, that even the hardships we endure – and they are plenty – even these are a gift of God – for every breath we take and every moment we say, Barukh Attah Adonai – praised are You, God…

We must learn to count the blessings of food and drink, of clothing and shelter, of community and family, of good health and love in our lives. We must nurture these blessings, and with them, pursue the one blessing that assures them all: the blessing of peace.

Today is Yom Kippur, the time of our judgment. It is a good thing to reckon our lives in this season, to decide what wrongs we have committed, to resolve to do better – to do Teshuvah, to change. But we also need to reckon the other side of that scale – to value our lives, our families, our accomplishments. When we can dwell on the good that God has bestowed upon us – no matter what else has befallen us – we gain strength to move forward into the year to come. That strength is also a blessing – it allows us to say, as we do at the outset of Yom Kippur, Barukh Attah Adonai Elohenu Melekh HaOlam, Shehecheyanu, Vikiyimanu, VeHigiyanu Lazman Hazeh – Thank you God for keeping us alive, for sustaining us, and for bringing us to this moment together.

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