From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life

Allegra Goodman recently published a collection of short stories called This is Not About Us. The irony is that the book is very much about us. She describes the Rubinstein family of Greater Boston. The kids went to Maimonides. Much of the action takes place in Brookline. There are stories of day-to-day life in Boston, and in Jewish Boston, that will feel deeply familiar. I felt I was reading about us. One of those stories, Redemption Song, is about how a family does Passover together where they have very different approaches to the holiday. The patriarch, Irving, was a Holocaust survivor and ran a stern, joyless Maxwell House seder that scarred his young sons, Dan and Steven. When they grow up, both living in Brookline, they have very different approaches to the seders. There are vegans and pot roast lovers. There are Maxwell House adherents—just read what is in the Haggadah—and innovative voices that put oranges, bananas, and other objects on the seder table to represent various oppressed peoples. There are family members who don’t believe in instrumental music, and others who love to sing and play guitar. There are people who love deep conversation about deep topics, and others who just want to get on with it. The title of the story comes from the last song that Bob Marley composed, Redemption Song, while facing his own mortality, contending with advanced cancer. His song tackles this question: how we can achieve freedom from the forces that constrain us? How do we achieve redemption? Allegra Goodman’s story ends with the younger generation singing this song. Please read the story. Please listen to the song. What do the story and the song teach us about how we can achieve our Redemption Song at our upcoming seders and in the world at this hard time?

If you have ever been married, or if you have ever walked an adult child down the aisle, think back to the energy, the electricity, the excitement of the wedding day. All that love in one sacred place. Pure magic.There was a young, bright, beautiful Israeli couple looking forward to their wedding day. The bride and the groom were getting married in the backyard of the bride’s parents. Joyful and magical. Except for two small details.The date of their wedding was Thursday, June 12, 2025. The couple was getting married that night. Israel’s war with Iran, what would become known as the 12-day war, would begin at dawn on Friday, June 13. And the groom is a fighter pilot for the IDF. He flies F16s. The groom knew the war was coming imminently. He knew that he would be flying an F16 into Iran. He was scheduled to be the first pilot of the first F16 into Iran. Which would have required him to be at the base at the time he was to be under the chuppah. So he asked the IDF if he could be the second pilot into Iran. The IDF said yes. That allowed him to stand under the chuppah with his bride. Before the chuppah, he had borrowed his grandmother’s car. It was an hour’s drive from where he would spend his wedding night to his army base. The car was packed and ready to go. The bride and groom got married. On their wedding night, a loud and scary siren reverberated throughout Israel that was the nation’s signal that war with Iran was at hand; and that was the groom’s signal that his wedding was over, it was time to take his grandmother’s car to the base, to get into an F16, and to fly into Iran. Within mere hours of smashing the glass under their chuppah and kissing his bride, the newly minted husband was in the F16 flying into Iran. During the 12-day war, he would fly an F16 into Iran, and back to Israel, day after day. Roll the film forward. The couple, now newlyweds, moved to Cambridge. She is now a first-year business school student at Sloane, MIT’s business school. And liking it. He is working for an Israeli start-up. And liking it. They are together, happy, happy. And then January, and the build up to the war with Iran, again. To be an Israeli fighter pilot, one needs to fly their F16 at least once a week. He was no longer certified to be a pilot, because it had been several months since he had last flown. He could have stayed in Cambridge. He could have stayed with his still newlywed wife. But he knew that if he did not fly the F16 into Iran, someone else would have to do it. He felt a duty to his country. He felt a duty to his people. He felt a duty to his fellow fighter pilots. So, again, he leaves his new bride, in mid-January he goes back to Israel, he gets back in his F16s, he gets recredentialed as a seasoned and qualified fighter pilot, and he has been flying mission after mission into Iran this past week. Meanwhile, she is living by herself, again, in Cambridge.Interrupted wedding night. Interrupted newlywed year. It just is.Why am I telling you all this? When the war broke out, I had thought that American Jews, certainly the ones I know and love at Temple Emanuel, would be uniformly and unambivalently in support of this war. Of course war is hell. Of course we prefer peace. Of course we pray for peace. Of course war unleashes unpredictable and uncontrollable outcomes, so many of which are destructive. And yet, the Islamic Republic of Iran is, and has always been since its very inception, openly and unapologetically genocidal. Its motto “Death to America” is genocidal. Its motto “Death to Israel” is genocidal. What it did in Argentina in the 90s, killing innocent Jews twice, is genocidal. What it did through its proxy Hamas on October 7 is genocidal. The clock in Tehran promising the end of Israel by the year 2040 is genocidal. Given all this, I had expected uncomplicated support of American Jews for this war. Boy, was I wrong.

Last Shabbat Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, of Park Avenue Synagogue in New York, a preeminent Conservative rabbi of a preeminent Conservative synagogue, gave a sermon telling his congregants not to vote for Zohran Mamdani for Mayor of New York.His opening paragraphs: “To be clear, unequivocal, and on the record, I believe Zohran Mamdani poses a danger to the security of New York Jewish community.Mamdani’s refusal to condemn inciteful slogans like “globalize the intifada,” his denial of Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state, his call to arrest Israel’s Prime Minister should he enter New York, and his thrice-repeated accusation of genocide in Thursday’s debate—for these and so many other statements, past present, and unrepentant—he is a danger to the Jewish body politic of New York.”I could not agree with Rabbi Cosgrove more on the merits. But his passionate sermon raises the question: Should rabbis talk about politics on the bimah? If you think Rabbi Cosgrove was right to do so, what about talking about national politics? If it is right to talk about Zohran Mamdani on the pulpit, is it also right to talk about the President and his policies on the pulpit?To date, we have studiously avoided talking about American politics in order to preserve Temple Emanuel as a place where all of us, regardless of politics, feel that 385 Ward Street is our spiritual home. We learn with, we sing with, we pray with, we have Kiddush with, people who see the world very differently than we do. That is rare. And precious. Where else do you find it? To preserve it, we avoid the divisive issues of our day. But Rabbi Cosgrove’s courageous sermon, his moral clarity, invites us to reexamine our posture.It is good to preserve peace. But does not confronting hard national issues in the name of preserving peace mean we are failing at another important value: moral clarity in the face of moral issues? We will examine these hard questions through two lenses in our weekly Torah readings: Noah, who builds the ark to save himself and his family but does not act to save the dying world, and Abraham, whose mission God tells us is to do righteousness and justice and who acts to save Sodom and Gomorrah.Preserving peace vs. moral clarity in the face of moral dilemmas. Our synagogue as a refuge from our troubled world vs. our synagogue as giving us courage to repair our troubled world. Hard questions. No simple answers. Would love your voices.

Loving critics. The phrase feels like an oxymoron. In fact it is a willed double entendre. Perhaps it means that critics are loving. Their words of critique flow from a place of love. In fact, they feel that suppressing their critique, going along to get along, would undermine that which they love. Perhaps loving critics means that people who are not critics should nonetheless love and appreciate people who are critics. Perhaps they have something to say that we and others need to hear. Should we become loving critics? If we have never before been fans of critics, should we reevaluate and gain a new respect for loving critics? Perhaps loving critics might be helpful for this current fraught moment in America and in Israel. Tomorrow we will examine three sources from two thinkers. Elana Stein Hain recently taught the two texts we will encounter from Martha Nussbaum, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Chicago from the Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin, to a CJP Mission in Israel. And Larry Bacow wrote a piece in Harvard Magazine entitled Loving Critics, from which the title of this class comes. How do we love the lands we love in their winter of discontent? Complicated.

May 10, 2025

A woman in Israel approached her rabbi with the following dilemma. When she was a younger woman, she was not religious. She had relations with a man and got pregnant. She had an abortion. She then became religious. She did teshuvah, repentance. She committed herself to learning Torah, doing mitzvot and joining an observant community. She moved to a new town, where she was not known, met a young yeshiva student who did not know about her past. She did not tell him. They got married. She got pregnant and delivered a healthy baby boy. Her husband wanted them to do a special ritual ceremony called pidyon haben, redemption of the first born, where they thank God for the gift of their first-born. Under Jewish law, however, the family could not do this ceremony because of her prior abortion, which the husband did not know about. So this wife and new mother approaches her local rabbi to ask: Should she now tell her husband about her past, that she had had an abortion, and that this baby was not eligible for this ritual? Doing so would have spared her husband from saying a prayer at the ritual that he should not have said, a ritual infraction known as a berakhah le’vatala, a blessing made in vain? But doing so might also have endangered their marriage. Or should she permit her husband to say a blessing in vain which would preserve the marriage and family peace, even though doing so perpetuates the omission?

God is always confusing. We never know what to think. But that is especially true now in this fraught theological season between commemorating the Shoah (April 24), honoring soldiers who fell in Israel’s wars and victims of terrorism on Yom Hazikaron (April 30), and celebrating the birth of the State of Israel on om Ha’atzmaut (May 1). Tomorrow we are going to study a modern Jewish philosopher that we have never before studied, Rabbi Irving Greenberg, who came up with a new scheme: the Three Eras of Jewish History.It is new. It is thoughtful. It is engaging. It gives us what to talk about.But does it work? After all, the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel happened within three years of one another, very much in the same era.We will also look at the special insertions in our Amidah for Yom Hashoah and Yom Ha’atzmaut to see what statement they make on God’s relationship to the Jewish people and to history in 1941-45 and in 1948. We will also examine an important text from the Talmud that shows our sense of God’s presence or absence is very much affected by what is actually happening in the world. Spoiler alert: it’s not about the answers. There are none. It’s about the wrestling. One other alternative: Who needs God? Since there are no answers, since the wrestling never leads to an answer, are we better off if God is not all that important to us—which, by the way, is what the vast majority of Temple Emanuel members will say about how they actually lead their lives. “I’m not a God person. I am here for the community.” Maybe that is the wisest posture of all?

In 1987 Oprah Winfrey read a book that changed her life. What happened to her as a result of reading that book, the unanticipated lesson she learned, remains fresh and urgent for her 38 years later.The book, by author Toni Morrison, was a novel called Beloved in which Morrison attempts to show what it was like to be a slave. What did slavery do to the enslaved person’s inner life, to their psyche, to their soul? How did slavery shape not only the enslaved person, but also their descendants—even when slavery was over?When Oprah Winfrey first read the novel, she fell in love with it. She just knew that she had to make a movie based on this book. Toni Morrison had never allowed any of her novels to be made into a film, but the author succumbed to the charms and persuasive powers of Oprah Winfrey.Oprah worked on the film Beloved for more than ten years. She herself played the lead. She used her power and influence to get the film made. The film was 3 hours long, was intense, hard, and sad—and did not have a happy ending.How did the film do? Alan Stone, a professor of law and psychiatry at Harvard Law School at the time, saw the film in Harvard Square when it first opened. He wrote:Ten minutes into the film, I began to hear audible groans from my two companions, who subsequently predicted Beloved’s demise at the box office. They hated the film: they could not follow it…Baffled by the narrative…they like most filmgoers, missed the experience that Oprah wanted them to have.Alan Stone’s friends would prove prophetic. The film cost 80 million dollars to make. It took in 22 million dollars at the box office. The first weekend it came out, even with Oprah’s star power, the film was beaten at the box office by a horror movie called The Bride of Chucky. It took ten years to make. It was pulled from the theatres after four weeks.Oprah had been completely invested in this project. She worked on it for more than ten years. She believed in it. She really cared. And after all that personal care and investment, her beloved film Beloved did not land.The failure of her film devastated Oprah. When she learned that Beloved got beat at the box office by Chucky, she shared that stayed home and ate a prodigious amount of macaroni and cheese, and she experienced a major depression. She observed: “It was the only time in my life that I was ever depressed, and I recognized that I was depressed because I’ve done enough shows on the topic. ‘O, this is what people must feel like who are depressed.’All of which happened in 1998. Why am I bringing it up now?Author John Maxwell observed that life’s greatest lessons always come from our failures, not from our successes. The more painful our failure, the more important it is to extract a life-enhancing lesson from that failure. That is just what Oprah did.

In 1992 Rabbi Joseph Telushkin published a book entitled Jewish Humor: What the Best Jewish Jokes Say About Jews. While he dedicated the book to his three daughters, the first chapter is about how hard it is for generations in a Jewish family to understand one another; how easy it is for frictions and misunderstandings to grow. Chapter one is entitled “Oedipus, Shmedipus, as Long as He Loves His Mother.” This is the first joke in his book.Three elderly Jewish women are seated on a bench in Miami Beach, each one bragging about how devoted her son is to her. The first one says: “My son is so devoted that last year for my birthday he gave me an all-expense paid cruise around the world. First class.”The second one says: “My son is more devoted. For my 75th birthday last year, he catered an affair for me. And even gave me money to fly down my good friends from New York.The third one says: My son is the most devoted. Three times a week he goes to a psychiatrist. Hundreds of dollars an hour he pays him. And what does he speak about the whole time? Me.You might think that parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, are natural allies. That the natural energy is for the generations to get along easily. We share so much. We share a past, present, and future. We share family history. We share values. We share genes. We share a home. We sleep under the same roof. We share dreams. Your success is my success. In fact, I am happier for your success than for my success. What is so complicated? What could go wrong?And yet, it is complicated, and it often does go wrong. That is not only evidenced by the jokes in Telushkin book. The inevitability of generational tension is the backdrop for the climactic passage in the special Haftarah from the prophet Malakhi who imagines that someday, in the future, there will be a yom Adonai hagadol v’hanorah, a day of the Lord that is great and awesome—that is how today became Shabbat hagadol. What will happen on that great and awesome day of the Lord? God “shall reconcile parents with their children and children with their parents.”

This week, I was speaking with a member who has been struggling with an intense family situation and was heading into a tense and painful meeting. She was riding in a Lyft. The driver was playing Christian radio quietly in the front. A few minutes before they arrived at their destination, she heard something on the radio that piqued her interest. "Can you turn that up?" she asked. The hosts of the Christian radio show were discussing a verse from the book of Joshua where God says to Joshua, "I will be with you as I was with Moses. I will not fail you and I will not forsake you." Just then, the car stopped at her destination.She shared that as she was riding in the Lyft, she was feeling deeply afraid and alone. Hearing that verse gave her strength. As she put it, “how freaking amazing to get that message from Christian radio of all places in the exact moment I needed it….[and] of all the verses they could possibly be discussing, they are not only discussing verses from my part of the Bible as a Jew, but they are also discussing the exact verses that I need to put my faith in right now.” When she got out of the Lyft, she stood taller and stronger, fortified by the wisdom of Torah echoing through Christian radio.Now, let’s just pause for a moment. Think about this: What if our member had just been in that car, stressing about her meeting, messing around on her phone, tuning out the world? That would have been a totally reasonable response. In a stressful situation, it is so tempting to disconnect. It is so tempting to lose oneself in music, social media, reading and entertainment, or in chemical substances. But she was sitting in that car with her phone put away, looking out the window, listening to a random radio broadcast in her Lyft. Because her eyes and ears were open to possibility, that's how she received the wisdom she needed for that moment.

Robert Housman established Yad Chessed so he could help his neighbors struggling in Boston’s Jewish community. In the early years, he ran it by himself, with help from his wife Sue, as he worked full-time as a computer programmer. He directed Yad Chessed until the summer of 2012 when he became a member of its Board of Directors.