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