Rabbi Susan Grossman: October 2007 Archives

Like most rabbis, I get frustrated at what I wish we could accomplish in our religious school. I wish I could get parents to let the students use the skills they are learning in school--like kiddush and Havdallah--more regularly in their homes. I wish I could get a larger percentage of parents to bring their kids to Shabbat services. I wish I could get the funding we have been searching for to develop our Hebrew language retention program that would give teachers and parents who are not fluent, the tools to reinforce the vocabulary and grammar our kids learn with our two Hebrew specialists (but then forget by the next week because they don’t have enough opportunity to use it).

However, I am also encouraged by the advances I have seen over the last 10 years at my synagogue school:

* Almost every one of our Bnai Mitzvah can lead the entire Shaharit service thanks to our innovative tefillah curriculum. Most important, graduates tell me they feel comfortable as part of the Jewish community wherever they travel and that they have little patience for services that skimp on the traditional Hebrew liturgy!

I haven’t had a chance to read Rabbi Jen Krause’s book yet, but I agree with her that the rabbis were the first self-help coaches. I would add that was so because they had the first self-help manual: the Torah.

If you think about it, the Torah is really all about two things: relationships and finding balance. The Torah covers relationships with parents, siblings, spouses, kids, our neighbors, the poor and vulnerable, people we do know and people we don’t, and even those who want to hurt us or others. It deals with finding a balance between being productive and regenerative, between taking care of yourself and others, between being successful and living generously, between using resources and protecting them, between having and sharing, between doing and being. This is the stuff of most self-help manuals! Torah means teaching. Every letter and verse contains a teaching for how we can lead a better, more fulfilled, satisfying, and good life.

Last Shabbat we read about how God commanded Noah to collect an ark load of the Earth’s biodiversity and ride out the mother of all storms, which cleansed the earth. When Noah and his family finally emerged from the ark to a fresh new world, God makes a covenant with them and seals it with a rainbow.

This covenant is often misunderstood as a promise that God will never again destroy the earth and all that lives upon it. But if you read the text carefully two things become clear: First, The Bible states that God promised never to destroy the Earth again. God never says God will stop others from destroying the Earth.

Presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain caused quite a stir recently when he stated--in a video interview on Beliefnet--that he believes the Constitution establishes America as a Christian nation.

His comments should have caused a stir for a number of reasons.

First of all, it is scary to think that a presidential hopeful knows so little about the Constitution he would be sworn to uphold, if he won. He was not asked about an obscure point of law but about the values espoused in one of the Constitution’s most famous passages, the First Amendment that specifically states Congress cannot establish any religion as the official religion of the land.

If the Jews are so smart, why is it we bundle five holidays together in a row, one on top of the other, through an entire month in the fall?

Of course, every month, except one, does include a Jewish holiday. The exception is Heshvan, the month that follows these fall holidays. I guess even God realized we would need a break. There is only so much partying even the most dedicated of us can take.