by Rabbi Mark Glickman

Flowers for the Future: The Blessing of a Mitzvah-Filled Life

Erev Yom Kippur Sermon
Temple B’nai Tikvah
September 29, 2017 – Tishri 10 5778

Her given name was Mildred Cecilia Harriet Sturt, and she was born in 1869. Unfortunately, we don’t know many details of her life. As is the case with many female members of the British gentry during Victorian times, most of what we know about her is what we might call genealogical information – who her parents were, whom she married, and the names and dates of her children.

We know that Mildred Cecilia Harriet Sturt was the daughter of Henry Gerard and Augusta Sturt, the first Baron and Baroness Alington of Crichel. She grew up in Dorset, England, and, in 1892, the 24 year-old Mildred married a Conservative Member of Parliament and former army officer named Henry Arthur Cadogan, the Viscount Chelsea. Suddenly, the young Miss Sturt had become the Viscountess Mildred Chelsea, a mid-level member of the British nobility in her own right. She had six children with the Viscount – five daughters, and a son – before her husband died of cancer at the age of 40 in 1908. One of her daughters married into the Spencer-Churchill family – Spencer like Lady Diana Spencer; Churchill like…Churchill. Another daughter married into the Stanley family, of Stanley Cup fame. Two years after her husband’s death, in 1910, she married a British naval officer named Hedworth Lambton Meaux, and a year after his death in 1929 she married her third and final husband, Charles William Augustus Montagu. Their wedding took place at Kimbolton Castle, the final home of Henry VIII’s wife, Katherine of Aragon. So I guess you could call her Mildred Cecilia Harriet Sturt Chelsea Meaux Montagu. She lived until 1942, when she died in London at the age of 73.

That, in short, is what we know of Mildred Chelsea’s life.

But there’s one other detail that we know about her. One day, sometime between 1899 and 1910, the young Viscountess Chelsea – then in her 30s – read a small book of poetry. It was probably a spring day, and as I imagine it, the sun was shining, she was wearing a simple but elegant white dress, and she had taken a walk on the grounds of her estate, or perhaps at a local park down by the water.

Sitting on a bench, Mildred pulled out a small, leather-bound volume of poetry, entitled Posies Out of Rings and Other Conceits, by William Theodore Peters. You may never have heard of the book Posies out of Rings and Other Conceits, and that’s probably because of what we might charitably call the “quality” of the poetry it contains. In the book, you can find such memorable compositions as this one, called “Betty’s Eyes”:

Betty’s eyes are violets
Violets where sweetness lies
Promises she may not keep
Lurk in Betty’s flower-like eyes.

And if you like that one, well then you’ll love “Star and Flower.”

The Star of Love is a flower, a deathless token
That grows beside the Gate of Unseen Things.
A daisy is a fallen star, a thought unspoken
Written by one whose wings are silver wings.

You get the idea.

For whatever reason, flowers must have been on Mildred’s mind that day – maybe because of the “Posies” in the title of the book, or maybe because of the poem reminding her that “The Star of Love is a flower.” For whatever the reason, before Mildred put that book of poetry away, she noticed that there were some wildflowers growing nearby. Getting up, she walked over to where they were, bent over, picked a small purple one, and laid it between the pages of the book where it could dry flat.

That little incident isn’t written up in her biographical record, of course. How do I know about it? I know about it because I have the book that right here – I purchased it several years ago at a used bookstore in Victoria. Here is the title page, indicating that the book was published in 1896, here is Mildred Chelsea’s bookplate, and here is the flower that she picked and pressed between its pages (the flower is what sold me on the book).

Think about it. More than a hundred years ago, a young woman – maybe without thinking about it very much at all – bent over and picked a flower, perhaps reasoning that it would be nice to look at later sometime. And now, half a world away and a over century later, hundreds of us here in this room are benefitting from her decision to do so.

How many things that you do during your life will last a century? How much of what you do will have people smiling a hundred years from now? Will any of it continue to inspire people in a century…or at least have any effect whatsoever?

Some things certainly will continue to benefit people in the long-term. If you build a building, or have grandchildren, or write a book, there’s a good chance that, in a century, at least someone is going to remember what you’ve done. But most of what we do won’t be that memorable. A hundred years from now, nobody will remember that you brushed your teeth this morning (though if you never brush your teeth, they may remember that!). They won’t remember that you bought furnace filters, or paid your electric bill, or went out to a nice restaurant with your friends.

So much of what we do is in the realm of the forgettable; so little of it is eternal.

The forgettable, of course, isn’t necessarily bad. Going out to dinner with your friends can be very nice, and it’s important to buy your furnace filters. But the question is whether we want these types of activities – the forgettable ones – to be the sum total of our existence. As you reflect upon your life, don’t you think that it would be nice if at least something of what you do during your limited time here on earth could outlast you? Wouldn’t it be nice if the reach of your life’s activities could extend beyond the years of your life? It was so wonderful that Mildred Chelsea left us that flower; wouldn’t it be great if a hundred years from now, someone, somewhere, could say something similar about something that you’ve done?

The problem, of course, is that it can be difficult to figure out what’s memorable and what will end up forgotten. After all, we never know whether the things we do in life will have staying power, or not. When Mildred Chelsea bent over to pick up that flower a little over a hundred years ago, I don’t know exactly what she was thinking, but I think it’s safe to assume that one of the things she wasn’t thinking was, “Oh look, a flower. I should press it between the pages of my book, because 110 years or so from now, a rabbi in Calgary Alberta will be able to share that flower with his congregation.” No, she probably had no clue about the power of that flower; she probably had no idea that what she was doing had left the realm of the forgettable and entered realm of the immortal.

We can’t ever know whether the memory of what we do will outlive us, but we can certainly try to fill our lives with that type of activities. Or maybe we could put it another way. There are no guarantees that what we do will be remembered – we have no control over that. But what we do control is whether our activities are worthy of being remembered. If you want, you can fill your life with the mundane – getting yourself showered and dressed in the morning, running your errands, attending that endless series of meetings at work. But if you want, you can also fill at least part of your time with things that have more eternal significance – working on behalf of an important cause, fighting for justice, committing random acts of kindness. And when you get really good at it, you can also figure out ways to transform the ordinarily mundane acts of life into deeds that are truly memorable. You’ll take a detour on your daily errands to drop off a surprise little gift at the home of a friend who’s feeling down; you’ll make something magnificent out of the time you spend in those work meetings; or maybe you’ll just be able to contextualize buying those furnace filters, seeing it as part of what it takes to create a warm, safe home for your family.

Of course, Judaism is all about getting us to spend our time on things that are worthwhile rather than on things that are trivial, but in Judaism, we use different language to describe those activities. In Judaism, we’re supposed to be holy – kadosh – rather than it’s opposite – chol – mundane, or humdrum.

In fact, we chanted words echoing this sentiment earlier tonight. Just a little while ago, we said, “V’ahavta et Adonai Elohecha, b’chol levavcha, uv’chol nafsh’cha, u’vchol m’odecha. You should love Adonai your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and [to translate literally] with all your very,” with all your oomph. How are we supposed to love God? In Judaism, we love God by doing what it is that God wants us to do. And how do we know what God wants us to do? We read our sacred texts, and there in the Torah we find 613 things that God wants us to do – the 613 commandments, mitzvot, of our sacred scripture. God wants us to give some of what we have to those in need. And God wants us to be faithful to our spouses. And God wants us to take care of the earth, and to come and worship together on Jewish festivals just like we’re doing now. And as the sun goes down on Shabbat, God wants us to light candles against the darkness.

More generally, if you read those old books, you’ll find that God wants us to create a world that is kind, and just, and compassionate. God wants us to build strong Jewish communities. God wants us to be good to ourselves and to every human being, because we each carry a spark of the divine within us. And doing all of these things are the ways we in Judaism show our love to God.

And remember, we’re supposed to love God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our oomph. That leaves no heart, soul, or oomph for anything else at all. We Jews have one thing to do in life, and one thing only, and that’s to love God. When we do it right, we love people, and we love the world around us, as well, for that’s what our tradition means when it tells us to love God.

God wants us, in other words, to do things that are worthy of being remembered. God wants us to leave flowers of all kinds for the generations yet to come.

According to Judaism, as I mentioned last week on Rosh Hashanah, every time a Jew fulfills a mitzvah, every time we do something that God wants us to do, we move the world closer to fulfilling our great messianic dream of the future, and that’s an act that is worthy of being remembered. Making the world better is a gift that can be our greatest bequest to future generations.

It is an important message, I think, and it’s particularly important for us to remember that message now. Nowadays, our fellow human beings are reeling in the wake of horrible natural disasters – in Houston, in Florida, in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere. And many of those disasters were due to at least in part to humanity’s mismanagement of the earth’s precious natural resources. Closer to home – in Waterton, in British Columbia, and elsewhere, fires have ravaged the land in recent months, and we didn’t even have to turn on the TV or read the papers to learn of those disasters. Here in Calgary, if you’ll recall, all we had to do was look at the pall of smoke that descended on our city, and smell the choking fumes that it brought. These fires, too, were partly a result of the vulnerability we humans have created by heating up the world around us.

God put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to till it and to tend it. Have we forgotten this sacred call to all humanity to take care of our world? When our grandchildren’s generation comes of age, will there be any more flowers left to pick?

Nowadays, our fellow human beings are showing up on the shores of this country and others in search of safe haven, fleeing violence and oppression in their native lands. South of us, the president of the United States rants on about building walls and closing the gates of that country to people in need of safety. Here in Canada, we can take pride in the fact that our country is more open to refugees, and yet, there are voices around us saying that we should close the gates, that we should be concerned about our own people before worrying about others…as if it’s an either/or proposition.

Sadly, some of those voices have even come from within our own congregation. We have a group of heroic volunteers who took in and supported a family of Syrian refugees, and there were those right here at Temple B’nai Tikvah who said that we need to help Jews before we help others…as if it were an either/or proposition. As a community, we should have no tolerance for such a sentiment. Yes, it’s true, to paraphrase the words of Hillel, if we are not for ourselves, who will be for us? But the second part of that statement is also true – if we’re only for ourselves, what are we? We Jews aren’t at liberty to be concerned only for our own well being. We need to be concerned about the rest of the world, too. For us, it’s never an either/or proposition. To be a sacred people means remembering that it’s always a both/and.

Nowadays, people around us continue to struggle economically; nowadays, the clouds of nuclear conflict are beginning to form over the Korean peninsula; nowadays, families around us – some right here in our own community – struggle to stay together, even as they put on a smiling façade to hide their problems from their neighbors.

Nowadays, there is a screaming, howling need for you to do devote your time and energy to sacred work. The earth needs you to heal it; people need you to take them in; families need your help in facing the mounting economic and emotional stresses that plague them.

In short, if you want your life to matter, if you want to reach beyond the mundane and truly do something of lasting significance with your time on earth, then now – especially now – you’ve got to do mitzvot. A mitzvah, remember, is not just a good deed. It is, instead, the fulfillment of a sacred commandment. To do a mitzvah is to do something holy – something precious, and noble, and sacred, and certainly beyond the mundane.

Be kind to other people. Come here to Temple and help us in any one of our many social action activities. Come to services and lend your voice to our sacred song. And when it gets really dark, then join us in lighting candles against the gloom.

Being Jewish is all about doing things of genuine and lasting significance in a world that so often gets mired in the mundane and the trivial. You should be proud to be an inheritor of such a sacred tradition. May the fires and the storms around us continue to remind you of the importance of realizing our tradition’s sacred truths.

Early in the last century, Mildred Chelsea picked a flower, and now we can all still enjoy its beauty. What flowers will you leave behind for future generations after you’re gone? Let’s turn to one another, and let’s turn to our glorious Jewish tradition, and together let us figure out how to leave precious and magnificent bouquets for the generations that will come after our own.

That way, this year, as well as future years, can truly be a shanah tovah u-metukah, a good sweet new year for us all.

Shanah Tovah.

in Sermons 0 comments
 by Rabbi Mark Glickman

What I Should Have Said Over Lunch: 15 Reflections About God and Life

Rosh Hashanah Morning Sermon
September 21, 2017 – 1 Tishri, 5778

One day last winter, a wonderful couple in our congregation invited me to their home for Shabbat lunch after services on Saturday morning. I won’t tell you who they are, but let it suffice to say that they were wonderful hosts, and that they’re in this room right now. For our purposes here, we’ll call them Bob and Ellen.

Bob and Ellen welcomed me warmly into their home that day, which was good, because I had just spent the morning teaching 7th graders, and leading services, and schmoozing with more people than I could count, and I was tired. Having a nice, quiet lunch with these kind people was going to be really nice.

Walking into Bob and Ellen’s house, I discovered that I wasn’t the only person they had invited for lunch that day. Bill and Sarah had already gotten there, as had Karen and John. I was glad to see them all. Bill, Sarah, Karen and John weren’t their real names, of course. I won’t tell you what their real names were. I’ll just say that they were all wonderful people, and that most of them are in this room right now.

Ellen had prepared a magnificent spread for lunch – there was fish, and chicken, and potatoes, and soft warm rolls, and almost every kind of salad you could imagine. Ellen, as many of you in this room know first-hand, is a very good cook. We all filled up our plates and moved into the dining room, where Bob and Ellen were sure to seat me at the place of honour – right at the head of the table – with Bill and Sarah to my left, John and Karen to my right, and Bob and Ellen down at the other end.

At first, everything went fine. We talked a little about the weather, they asked me how I liked Calgary, we schmoozed a little about Temple – it was all good. But then, John spoke up. “You don’t see me at Temple very often,” he said, “because I don’t believe in God. I like being Jewish, of course, but I’m more of a cultural Jew. My parents were Jewish, their parents were Jewish, I care about what happens in Israel. But, to tell you the truth, I don’t know how anyone can really believe all that stuff about God. I mean, really? There’s a being up there in heaven somewhere controlling everything that happens here on earth? And that being created the world in six days? And that great, awesome creator really cares about what I do on Saturdays, and whether I eat bacon, and who I choose to marry? Really?”

Then, Karen spoke up from across the table. “I believe in God,” she said, “only I don’t believe that God is an old man up in the clouds. God is a power within yourself. God is that part of me that loves my kids, and finds joy in having my morning coffee, and is kind to my friends. God’s not an old man in the clouds, God is part of the human spirit.”

From down at the other end of the table, Bob spoke up. “I guess I’m more traditional than you two,” he said. “I do believe in God, and I believe that God created the world. After all, a day back then wasn’t necessarily just 24 hours long, and you don’t have to throw out science to believe in the bible’s creation story. ‘Let there be light’? That’s just a dramatic way of describing the Big Bang. Same with the parting of the Red Sea. I read an article describing how there are tidal pools over there that could have created what the bible calls a miracle.”

“I don’t know about the bible,” said Sarah, but I just can’t help but think that there’s something out there. After all, could the things that I can see, feel, touch and hear be the sum total of all existence? There must be something more…something greater than me…something out there that makes the world tick the way it does. “

And that’s when it happened. With a genuinely inquisitive look on her face, and with kindness in her voice, Ellen turned to me and uttered these words. “Rabbi,” she said, “What do you think?”

It was a perfectly legitimate question, of course. And in fact, some might have even said that, in that context, not to have asked the rabbi to chime in would have been downright impolite.

What did I think? I remember exactly what I thought. What I thought was, “This fish is delicious; I’m tired; it’s Shabbat; I’m a rabbi…the last thing I want to do is to think about God!”

What I said was…well, to tell you the truth, I don’t really remember what I said. I mumbled something, and all I remember is that it sounded utterly unintelligible, if not downright stupid. And I remember that the people sitting around that table all nodded their heads very politely, and that someone said “Hmmm….that’s interesting,” and that that response was far kinder than my lame answer to their very good question deserved.

Since that Shabbat afternoon, that conversation has weighed heavily upon me. The people around that table asked their rabbi a very good question, and they deserved far more than I gave them. (It’s just that the fish really was so good!)

So today, at long last, Bob, Ellen, Bill, Sarah, John, and Karen, I’d like to answer your question. And the rest of you who are here, if you’re so inclined, you can listen in, too.

Reflecting upon it, I realize that my thoughts about God don’t fall into any neat organization, so instead of trying to give you a systematic theology, I’ll instead share some random observations about God, which I hope will give you some insight into my thoughts about this important question. There are 15 of them in all, and some of them might contradict one another. I’m afraid you’ll have to live with that.

1. Part of the reason that I didn’t have a ready-made answer to the question about my God-belief is that I’m Jewish, and Judaism isn’t a very theological religion.

A non-theological religion? It almost sounds like an oxymoron, but that’s what Judaism is. In Judaism, we don’t tend to talk about God very much, we just sort of assume that God exists, and then quickly move on to what we’re supposed to do. After all, we’ve got to feed the hungry, and clothe the naked, and do no less than bring the messiah. We don’t have time to sit around and talk about God very much.

Other religions are far more theological. When people study to be Christian priests or ministers, their seminaries usually insist that they take dozens of courses on theology. Do you know how many theology classes I was required to take during my five years of rabbinical school? One – just one – and many of us tried to finagle our way out of it.

We Jews don’t talk much about God, but perhaps we should. Let’s face it – maybe in this area, there’s something we can learn from our Christian brothers and sisters.

2. Many scholars, particularly during the Middle Ages, set out to prove the existence of God. With all due respect to these great sages, I don’t think that what they set out to do is really possible. I could use scientific fact and logical reasoning to prove the existence of the neutron to you, but proving the existence of God doesn’t work like that. With God, it’s different. If you don’t believe that God exists, then I doubt there’s anything I can say that will get you to change your mind. And the same is true if you do believe in God.

Does love exist? Yes. Does despair exist? Of course. How about hope, and fear, and bliss? They exist, too. Can I prove the existence of any of those things? No, I can’t. You just kind of have to know – to have felt those things or to have seen those things – to be truly persuaded that they exist. Real theology is the same – it is based on human experience rather than on logical deduction.

3. What? You say that you don’t believe in God? Tell me about the God you don’t believe in. My guess is that I don’t believe in that God, either.

4. When people say that they don’t believe in God, what they usually reject is the idea of an old man in the clouds, pointing his finger and making everything turn out just so. But that’s a childhood image of God, which, as I said, is one that I don’t accept, either. Might there be other images of God that we could and should embrace? I think there could be.

5. On second thought, no, there aren’t any such images. Remember, Judaism forbids us from making any images of God. God, after all, is infinite, and any image of God that we can get our brains around makes God finite. Our limited human brains just can’t do infinity very well. The moment we can conceive of something, we limit it, so that something that we’re conceiving of can’t be God.

The great, 12th century philosopher, Maimonides, pointed out that God is infinite, so we can never really know what God is. The thing is, he continued, that we talk about God all the time. “God is great,” we say. “God is compassionate. God is just.” Maimonides suggested that words must function very differently when we use them to describe God than when we use them in other contexts, because words try to tell us what something is, but we can’t know what God is. With God, Maimonides suggested, words must mean the negation of their opposites, but not the words themselves.

The negation of their opposites? Huh?

What he was saying is that when we say “God is good,” we really don’t know what that means, because as finite humans we don’t really understand God’s goodness. When we say “God is good,” therefore, all we can really take from that is that God is not bad. Knowledge of what God’s goodness is will always elude us. Similarly “God is great,” can only really mean, “God is not small.” The true nature of God’s greatness is beyond our capacity to know.

In layman’s terms, what Maimonides was really saying, I think, is that if you’re really religious, you’ll acknowledge that God is so great as to make God almost impossible for us to know. True piety makes a person into a reverent agnostic.

6. Judaism teaches us to experience God in time, rather than in space. The traditional Jewish question is not “Where is God?” but “When is God?” Some of the “whens” when I’ve experienced God are: at the births of my kids, seeing rainbows, standing before the ark with bar and bat mitzvah kids, singing “Ode to Joy” in the shower…in German, seeing you gather at shiva minyans, Shabbat naps, telling a good joke, teaching Torah, watching Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First” routine, and saying “I do” while standing next to Caron under the chuppah. That’s ten times when I’ve felt God’s presence; there have been many more.

7. I think that God created you just the way you are for a reason – the challenge is to figure out what that reason is. God doesn’t make many mistakes; He’s made a few, but most were in the 1970s. And even if you were alive back then, those mistakes probably didn’t have anything to do with you. Unless you wore a leisure suit.

8. In Judaism, as I said, we don’t talk about God very much. We do, however talk to God all the time. We say, Baruch Atah Adonai. Blessed are You, Adonai. If you’re a religious doubter, you might want to try it sometime. No, don’t turn your brain off, just put your questions on hold for a moment. Just temporarily, put your doubts aside, and talk to God, anyway. You might be surprised at what happens.

9. Some people are quick to point at the Holocaust and other such horrors when speaking about God. “You see,” they argue, “God must not exist. If God did exist, then atrocities such as these wouldn’t have happened.” It’s interesting to me that these people take the existence of evil to be proof that God doesn’t exist, but they usually don’t take the existence of good to be proof that God does exist. It seems to me that if you’re going to take the Holocaust as proof that God doesn’t exist, the least you should do is be fair to God and take things like kindness and compassion and courage as proof that God does exist.

Or perhaps you should say, instead, that the existence of good and evil don’t have anything to do with whether God exists. Maybe God is powerful, but not all-powerful. Maybe God created a world with good things in it, but hasn’t yet been able to perfect it.

None of us is perfect, but we still exist. Perhaps the same is true of God.

I don’t blame God for the Holocaust – I blame the Nazis.

10. God also takes a hit for evil caused by nature, as well as evil caused by humans. How can we believe in God, some people argue, when there are children who die of leukemia, or when the lives of good men and women are cut short by stroke or horrible disease, or when hurricane flood waters ravage the lives of people in Houston and Florida, and elsewhere?

Here too, I just don’t get the question. It assumes that for God to exist, the world has to be a perfect place. Maybe God is present at every moment, inviting us to work as partners in building a world that is good and kind, one that reduces suffering every day. Maybe, like a loving parent, God can’t remove our pain, but instead can help us learn to deal with it, and be there for us when pain rears its ugly head. Maybe God isn’t in the cancer or the hurricanes, but is rather in the tears we shed for our losses, in the awesome power our world has to heal, in the grand, dark, terrifying mystery of it all.

11. In Judaism, one of the most commonly used names of God is one we don’t know how to pronounce. In Hebrew, it’s spelled yod-heh-vav-hey, and it’s kind of like God’s first name. We don’t say it out loud, because we’re not on a first name basis with God. Instead, when we come across it in prayer or scripture, we use a replacement word for it – Adonai. What we do know is that yod-heh-vav-hey comes from the Hebrew root meaning “to be.” In this sense, God is the root of being, the foundation of existence. God is that which gives meaning to all that is.

12. Another name we use for God is Elohim, which means judge. God is the source of all that is just and fair in the world.

13. We use other names for God in Judaism, too. We call God, Hamakom – the place, referring to God’s omnipresence. We call God Harachaman, the Merciful One – it comes from a word meaning womb…God’s mothering presence. We call God, Avinu Malkeinu, our Father, Our King, even though such gender specific language rightly makes us uncomfortable. We refer to God as Shechina – the feminine, intimate, indwelling presence of the divine. All of these terms give us a hint of something that we can glimpse but never fully understand – God as the ultimate in justice, compassion, parental love, and all the rest.

14. We live on a little planet spinning its way through space, rotating around a little star called the sun and swirling its way through our galaxy and the vast reaches of space. Most of us will be here for only a century or less – hardly a blip in time in the ultimate scheme of things. Headstones will mark our burial places, but in time they too will crumble to dust, and within a few centuries, most of us will be forgotten. And yet, I can’t help but believe that ultimately there is some meaning to this existence of ours, that ultimately, the things I do in this tiny span of my life have some transcendent meaning, and that that meaning is somehow rooted in the existence of a being who cares about me and who cares about what I do.

Ultimately, I just can’t bring myself to believe in atheism.

15. So, yes, I believe that God exists, and that we see God in those transcendent moments of life. And I believe that God cares about what I do – that God wants me to be kind, and just, and compassionate. I believe that God wants me to cherish life deeply, and that one way to do that is through ritual – rituals like our festivals, and Shabbat, and hanging mezuzahs on my doorpost and giving regularly to tzedakah. I believe these things because I believe in God as the root of my being and the ultimate purpose of my existence. I believe that life isn’t supposed to just be lived, it’s supposed to be holy. And that has everything to do with God.

Bob, Ellen, Bill, Sarah, John, Karen, I’m sorry. I was tired that day, and the fish was really good, and you caught me off guard. This answer is far more long-winded than the one I gave you over lunch, and probably far more than you wanted. It’s not complete, but I hope it begins to respond to your very good question. Let’s continue to struggle with it, and perhaps, this year, we can continue to take some steps toward deeper understanding, and a better life for us all.

Shanah Tovah

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 by Rabbi Mark Glickman

The Real Real Thing: Judaism and the Messiah

Erev Rosh Hashanah Sermon
September 20, 2017 – 1 Tishri, 5778

If you are of a certain age, you’ll remember it well. Or to be more precise, if you are old enough to have been watching television by 1971, you’ll remember it like it was just yesterday. Your TV screen fills with an image of a beautiful, fresh-faced young woman with blonde hair and dreamy blue eyes. She sings,

I’d like to buy the world a home,
And furnish it with love.
Grow apple trees and honey bees
And snow white turtledoves.

The camera pulls back, and we see that there are other good-looking young people standing there, too. They’re from all over the world. There are Asians, and Africans, Pacific Islanders, and Europeans. Each is dressed in native garb, each is holding a bottle of Coca Cola, and each joins in as the song continues.

I’d like to teach the world to sing,
In perfect harmony.
I’d like to buy the world a Coke,
And keep it company.

“Coke is the real thing,” the song tells us, and we now see an aerial shot of hundreds of young people standing in formation on a hillside in Italy, singing to us about love and harmony, honey bees, turtledoves, and Coca Cola. [Watch the original video remastered.]

The ad caught on like crazy. The song – without the reference to Coke – soon hit the charts on its own in both the United States and Canada. A Christmas version of the commercial came out a few years after the original, and a Disney version starring Mickey Mouse was released soon after that. In 1991, there was a 20-year reunion featuring the original cast and their children. In 2006, the rapper G. Love recorded an ad for Coke Zero starting with the words, “I’d like to teach the world to chill, take time to stop and smile….” There was a NASCAR version that came out in 2010, and the year before last, it was featured in the series finale of the TV show “Mad Men.” Critics consistently rate this ad as one of the greatest commercials of all time.

It was, of course, an attempt to get TV viewers to purchase sugary brown soda water. But there was something about the way it was made that captured people’s minds and hearts. What was that something? What was the secret to the great appeal of this minute-long TV commercial?

To answer that question, it is important to remember that when the commercial originally aired, the Cold War was still raging, and the specter of nuclear destruction hung darkly over everything. The US was mired in an increasingly bloody conflict in Vietnam, people were killing each other in the Middle East, and everywhere violence seemed to flourish. Yet there on TV, we saw hundreds of young people dreaming about peace and love and harmony. The vision was as simple as it was silly: If we could all just sit down and have a Coke together, things would be great. From our perspective today, it sounds kind of foolish, but in 1971, the image of people all over the world connecting in love and harmony was downright inspirational

Of course, the folks at Coca Cola weren’t the first to provide the world with glowing visions of the future. In fact, we Jews beat Coke to the punch by centuries! “On that day, God shall be one, and God’s name shall be one,” we sing in our services – it’s a vision of the world coming together in unity under the umbrella of God’s oneness. “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they study war any more,” proclaimed Isaiah, and we’re still singing the words today – “Lo yisa goy el goy cherev, lo yilm’du od milchamah.” “Each shall sit under his vine and fig, with none to make them afraid,” said the prophet, Micah.

Yes, for centuries, Jews have dreamt of the coming of the messiah, and the visions put apple trees and honeybees to shame. In fact, the English word messiah actually comes from the Hebrew word, mashiach. Other religions might talk about the messiah a lot more than we do, but we had the idea first!

Our tradition’s descriptions of the Messiah are both vivid and voluminous. I don’t have time to share all of them here, but I can highlight a few. The messiah, Jewish tradition says, is going to be a descendant of King David. The messiah, many texts predict, will reunite all Jews. And when they say “all” Jews, some of these texts really mean it, for many suggest that the messiah will reunite in the land of Israel all Jews who have ever lived. They suggest that there will be a physical resurrection of the dead – that the bodies and souls of deceased Jews will reunite, and that they’ll rise to live together in the newly rebuilt Jewish commonwealth. This, by the way, is the reason that traditional Judaism forbids cremation and embalming. Since our bodies will be resurrected, we want to keep them in a condition as pristine as possible so that they’ll be good to go when the messiah comes.

The vision continues. According to Judaism, the messiah will enable Jews to observe all the laws of the Torah, just like in the old days. Now remember, there are a lot of commandments in the Torah – fully 613 of them, to be precise. However, of those 613 commandments, 244 of them are impossible for us to keep these days because they’re about sacrifices, and sacrifices in Judaism are only to be practiced in the Temple in Jerusalem, and the Temple was last destroyed in the year 70 CE. When the messiah comes, our tradition tells us, one of the things that will happen is that the Temple will be rebuilt, and we’ll be able to practice sacrifices once again.

Most important, Judaism says that the Messiah will usher in an era of universal peace and justice and righteousness – a time during which, as Maimonides says, “there will be no hunger or war, no jealousy or rivalry.” It will be a time when, as Isaiah taught us, the lion will lie down with the lamb, even though, as Woody Allen added, the lamb won’t get much sleep.

The point is that when the messiah comes, according to our tradition, things will become really good – even better than apple trees and honeybees and Coca Cola, if that’s possible to imagine. When the messiah comes, then, for us Jews, things will become like they were in the good ol’ days, when we had a beloved king, and when the Temple stood and we could do Judaism the way we were really supposed to. More universally, when the messiah comes, the world will become the kind of place we know it can be – a place of peace, and justice, and kindness among all people.

When I was a freshman in college, my roommate was a terrific guy named DJ, from a little town in Eastern Kentucky – hillbilly country. I think I was the first Jew DJ had ever met. One day when we were talking in our room, our conversation turned to religion. At one point, DJ paused and said, “I don’t understand why you Jews don’t accept Jesus as the messiah.” DJ wasn’t trying to convert me; he wasn’t being hostile or adversarial at all. He was really just curious why we Jews didn’t accept something he’d been taught as a fundamental religious truth.

My initial inclination was to respond by saying “Duh! Of course Jesus wasn’t the messiah. Why would we believe that?!” But this wouldn’t have been a very constructive response to a perfectly legitimate question. To tell you the truth, I don’t really remember how I answered DJ that day…I just remember hemming and hawing a lot. At the time, I didn’t have the tools to give him a clear answer. Why don’t we believe that Jesus was the messiah? Because we don’t believe that anyone has been the messiah – at least not yet. And why don’t we believe that anyone has been the messiah? Because we read the papers; and we watch the news; and we look at the world around us; and whenever we do, we see that, although the world has a lot of good in it, there’s a lot that’s not so good there, as well. There’s war, and there’s hunger, and there’s nasty gossip, and there are all kinds of other evils both large and small – so many, in fact, that we can’t help but notice that our world is a fundamentally broken place. And these times in which we live are most definitely pre-messianic in nature.

Now, a few additional comments about the messiah in Judaism are in order. First, the idea of the messiah – particularly as it’s been understood in Judaism – is profoundly dangerous. For one thing, in Judaism, the messiah, as I said, will rebuild the Temple. Actually, to be more specific, some texts say that the messiah will rebuild the Temple, whereas others say that Jews will need to rebuild the Temple in order for the Messiah to come. But remember, that Temple can only be built in one place, and that’s on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, right behind the Western Wall. The problem, of course, is that these days there are some very important Islamic shrines that sit on the Temple Mount – the beautiful gold-domed Mosque of Omar (or the Dome of the Rock), and beside it the silver-domed Al Aqsa Mosque. In order for the Temple to be built, it would have to be at the very spot where those buildings now sit, so those Islamic shrines would have to go away, and to date there is no movement that I know of within Islam to destroy those shrines. In the mid-eighties, the Israeli police caught a Jewish religious extremist on his way to the Temple Mount carrying a backpack full of explosives – he was planning to blow up those Islamic shrines so that the Temple could be rebuilt. Can you imagine what would have happened if he had succeeded? If he had, Israel would have had about a billion quite understandably ticked-off Muslims on its hands, and the results would have been utterly catastrophic. But to this terrorist, everything was OK, because he was about to bring the messiah, so even if he was caught in the process – even if he was killed in the process, the messiah would soon come and make it all right.

In fact, more generally, if I can make you believe that I’m the messiah, or if I can make you believe that I truly speak on the messiah’s behalf, then I can get you to do practically anything. Like Jim Jones did in the 1970s, I could get you to drink poisoned Kool-Aid for me. I could get you to fight for me, and live for me, and die for me, and to do all kinds of horrible things in my name. And because you would see me as the saviour of the world, you would do it, and you’d be willing to tolerate any adverse effects from those deeds, because since I’m the messiah, and you were on my side, you wouldn’t have anything to lose.

Perhaps this is why our tradition has long been a little leery of too much messiah-talk. To be sure, the Talmud expresses this leeriness quite explicitly. If you’re planting a tree, the Talmud says, and someone comes up to you and excitedly tells you that the messiah has just come, what are you supposed to do? First, finish planting the tree, then go see what all this messiah stuff is all about.

In fact, Reform Judaism shares this leeriness about traditional messianic views. That’s why our movement since its inception has rejected the notion of a personal messiah. We Reform Jews have long looked forward not to a person coming along who can save the world, but rather to the coming of the Messianic Age. We see ourselves as working as God’s partners on behalf of Tikkun Olam, repairing our broken world, so that our people’s dreams of peace and justice can somehow come to fruition.

But even though this messiah idea is so dangerous, and even though many of us are so leery about it, the other thing that’s true is that it lies at the very heart of what it means to be Jewish. That’s because the possibility that the messiah will come along and perfect the world someday is what has long given meaning to Jewish existence.

Why be Jewish? Why bother with Shabbat, and keeping kosher, and Temple dues and all of the other obligations of Jewish life? And why tolerate the expulsions and pogroms and mass murder that always looms as one of the risks of being Jewish? It’s because we have the hope that all of these Jewish things we do will help bring about the fulfillment of our people’s great messianic dreams for the future.

Think of the world as a big wheel slowly rolling along the track of history. It began way down there with creation, and one day it will get way over there to messianic times, and in the meantime, we’re somewhere here in the middle. According to Judaism, whenever a Jew fulfills a mitzvah – whenever we light candles, or study Torah, or give to tzedakah, or keep any of the other six-hundred-and-some-odd commandments of Jewish life, we roll the world one click – one tiny step closer – to the fulfillment of our great messianic dream of the future. And, conversely, whenever we transgress one of those commandments, we move the world away from the fulfillment of that dream.

Our mitzvot bring the messiah, our rabbis taught, and our transgressions delay it. Each moment, we should imagine that the world is in balance, they continued – that collectively our deeds and misdeeds perfectly outweigh each other, so that what you do right now will determine whether the messiah comes. Right now, at this very moment, the destiny of the world is on your shoulders. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to do something good and sacred that will transform the universe into something good? Or are you going to do something petty or evil and ruin it for us all? You get to choose.

In this sense, Judaism is messianism. The very reason that we do anything Jewish is to bring the messiah. That’s why being Jewish matters.

Finally, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings here, but this great dream of ours – of universal peace and justice and brotherhood and all the rest? It’s probably not going to be fulfilled anytime soon…and to tell you the truth, it might not ever be fulfilled. Maimonides taught that a good Jew is supposed to say, “I believe in the coming of the messiah, and even though the messiah tarries, I still believe.” The wording there is important – we’re supposed to say that we believe in the coming of the messiah, not in the “caming” of the messiah. In other words, a Jew is supposed to believe that the world holds enormous possibility, that it can and will become better. And never – at least not for the foreseeable future – are we supposed to believe that the world is already a perfect place. As the scholar Yeshayahu Leibowitz taught, in Judaism, the false messiah is the one who has arrived.

There’s an old Jewish story about a man named Mendel who lived in a small shtetl. There in the shtetl, Mendel’s job was to sit at the gates of the city and wait for the messiah to arrive, and for this work, Mendel was paid one ruble a week. At one point, a friend of his said to him, “Mendel, how could you do such a boring job, and for such horrible pay?” “Well,” Mendel replied, “the pay might not be great, but the work is steady.”

Even during the darkest of times, we Jews have always maintained the hope that things can and will get better. It’s that hope, that dream, that has given us the strength to endure our greatest challenges and our greatest difficulties.

My friends, in many ways, this is one of those dark periods. The smoke shrouding our city in recent weeks is in many ways an apt metaphor for the tenor of these times. These days, there are earthquakes, and hurricanes, and floods. The spectre of nuclear conflict is growing once again, and everywhere fear seems to be overtaking compassion as the primary motivating factor of humanity. Now more than ever, we need our people’s vision of a better world, and the realities of contemporary life call upon us to work for it’s fulfillment. Now more than ever, God needs us as a partner, to bring a better day for humanity.

The psalmist taught that when the messiah comes, hayyinu k’cholmim, we’ll be like dreamers. The great messianic dream of the Jewish people, you see, in in part the dream of being able to dream. That’s why that commercial was so popular. At a time when the very existence of the world seemed to be in peril, it helped thousands of people dream of a better time. It’s a lesson for us all. When people despair, we can’t always give them happiness, but what we often can give them is a dream of a better time. This is the great gift of Judaism’s messianic vision.

It is now Rosh Hashanah – the Jewish New Year. Will this be the year that the messiah finally comes and makes things better for us all? Maybe, but probably not. Still, we can dream of a better world, and we can take steps to make that dream real. Picture a time of apple trees and honeybees, and lions and lambs together, and of peace, justice, and righteousness pervading the world. Dream it. Work to make it happen. You might not finish the job, but working together with the rest of us who share that dream, maybe – just maybe – we can make at least part of it come true.

Shanah Tovah.

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 by Rabbi Mark Glickman

On the Virtue of a Bent Finger: A Challenge for the Days of Awe

At several points during recent years’ Days of Awe services, I could swear that I saw index fingers popping out all over the place:

For the sin which we have committed against You through careless speech.

An index finger comes out and points to the person sitting to its owner’s left. “Honey, remember that time when you lashed out at me a few months ago…?”

For the sin which we have committed against You through insincere apologies.

Another index finger emerges as the person on the left points to the right. “Well don’t forget about that time when you apologized for not doing the dishes, and then somehow ‘forgot’ to do them the following evening.”

For the sin which we have committed against You through gossip and rumour.

Another index finger pops out a few rows back, pointing at someone across the room. “Joe over there, he says nasty things about me all the time. Thank goodness I’m not like that.”

As the litany of misdeeds continues to unfold, the index fingers continue to appear. “This person did that,” someone whispers. “That person did this.” “That guy over there should be ashamed of himself.”

The curious thing about those index fingers is that they’re all straight, and they all point outward, away from their owners. They’re all fingers of accusation, not fingers of ownership and responsibility.

It makes sense, I suppose. We’ve all been wronged, and often those wrongs cause us pain. It would be great if we could get those who have wronged us to own up to what they did and apologize. Human nature, it seems, makes those fingers want to pop out straight.

But what’s important to remember is that all of this finger pointing is decidedly not what the Days of Awe are about. The Days of Awe encourage us not to get other people to take responsibility for their misdeeds, but rather to get each of us to take responsibility for our own. The emphasis isn’t on what they’ve done wrong; its on what you’ve done wrong.

So here’s my suggestion: During the upcoming Days of Awe, when you feel your finger starting to pop out and point at someone else – and pop out it surely will – then just bend that finger back so that it points at you. Focus your efforts not on what others have done to you, but on the ways you’ve fallen short and can improve in the future.

To be sure, that finger isn’t going to want to bend back at all, for life is much easier when we focus on other people’s misdeeds rather than our own. But the challenge of these holidays is to bend it back anyway. We must force ourselves, often against our will, to look at our own shortcomings and re-chart our course toward a better life.

Those pesky fingers are going to want to point at others; don’t let them. For only when we look at ourselves – deeply, honestly, and thoroughly – can we answer the great call of these great days. Only then can we take our first steps, however tentatively, toward return, repentance, and a better life.

During these upcoming Days of Awe, may we all find the strength to do just that.

Shanah tovah umetukah. May you and your loved ones have a good, sweet new year.

This post also appeared on the blog of ReformJudaism.org.

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 by Rabbi Mark Glickman

Blessings in the Summer

It’s summertime.

Our Shabbat School is on its summer break; there aren’t quite as many programs at Temple as there are at other times of the year; and many of us travel, spending our time far away from our beloved synagogue, the major focus of many Jewish events in our lives. For many of us, summertime is a season that’s high on recreation, but short on Judaism.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, one of the reasons that Judaism has survived throughout the centuries is its adaptability to different contexts. We can “do Jewish” at home, or when we’re shopping or at work; when we’re at the synagogue, or far away from it; when we’re with large groups of Jewish people, or when we’re alone. In fact, not only can Judaism touch our lives in all of these different contexts, it’s supposed to! Every moment, our tradition teaches, is potentially a moment of sanctity. All we have to do is open the door and let God in.

One easy way to do this is by reciting blessings. There are all kinds of blessings that we recite in Judaism – we recite blessings when we fulfill religious commandments such as lighting Shabbat candles, putting up a mezuzah, or even washing our hands. We also recite blessings during worship services.

And there’s another category of blessings that often gets overlooked. Our tradition calls upon us to recite “blessings of enjoyment” – blessings that you say upon the occasion of certain events. There’s a blessing that you’re supposed to say when you see a rainbow, another when you first put on a piece of new clothing, and another when you see the ocean.

Another blessing of enjoyment is one that we here in Calgary have many opportunities to recite – the “Mountain Blessing.” In Judaism, when you see beautiful mountains, you’re supposed to say:

Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha-olam, oseh ma’aseih v’reisheet.
Blessed are you, Adonai our God, ruler of the universe, who fashions the work of creation.

You can say this blessing when you drive to Banff, when you fly over the Rockies in an airplane, or even when you get a peek of the mountains from here in town. Whatever the context, this prayer allows us to translate into words the gasp that comes to our throat upon seeing an awesome view in the natural world around us.

Even though it’s summertime, even though you might not currently be enjoying the level of Jewish programming that you enjoy during other times of year, Jewish opportunities abound. One of those opportunities is simply that of reciting a nine-word Hebrew blessing, hallowed by our people through the ages as one way to make an otherwise ordinary moment sublime.

When you get good at it, saying this blessing only takes a few seconds. It’s easy, so why not give it a try? Who knows – saying this simple Hebrew prayer might send your soul soaring as high as the mountaintops it praises God for creating.

 

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 by Rabbi Mark Glickman

Sermon Delivered on Occasion of Installation

What an honour it is to be here. Standing here before you as your duly installed rabbi is a privilege beyond words.

Looking around this beautiful room, I find myself overwhelmed with gratitude. I am grateful first and foremost tonight to my friend, my colleague, my teacher, Dr. Gary Zola, who shared his words and wisdom with us so beautifully. I worked for Gary when I was a student, and in many ways it was he who taught me how to be a rabbi. His commitment to excellence, his love of history and of storytelling, and his deep devotion to the well being of the Jewish people continue to inspire me every day. What a thrill it is to have him here to share this moment with me.

I’m also grateful to my family who have come from so far to be here with us tonight – to my brothers, Larry and Jimmy Glickman; to my kids, Jacob, Shoshana, and Kyleigh; to my parents, Ron Glickman and Joel and Harriet Katz, a heartfelt thank you for traveling to be here tonight. Thanks especially to Caron, who travels here to be with me all the time. Her love gives me the strength to do this work, and we all owe her an enormous debt of gratitude.

Also, this moment in the history of our congregation was only made possible thanks to the efforts of scores of congregants who worked along the way in order to help us reach this juncture.  We all should be grateful to the search committee, so ably led by the woman who is now our president, Betsy Jameson. It was a joy to work with you, and I am honoured to have been the one you chose to lead this congregation.

To the transition committee – led by Roz Mendelson, and powered by the work of Katie Baker, Nadine Drexler, Deborah Yedlin, as well as that of Josh Hesslein, Andy Kubrin and Ken Drabinsky– I thank you for all of your work not only to make this Shabbat a success, but also for your ongoing efforts to ensure a smooth and successful beginning to my new rabbinate here at Temple B’nai Tikvah.

I also thank our Board of Trustees, all of whom work so tirelessly on behalf of our congregation and its sacred work. We are all grateful to you for all that you do.

Thanks too to our staff – Sheila Hart, Danny Oppenheim, and Jenny Laing…not to mention the members of our support staff – Connie Harding, and Kenny Sullivan, and David Even-Har, and Phil Horovitz. Working with you every day is a real joy, and I thank you for the privilege of doing so.

Thank you to our musicians who are playing tonight, particularly to Norm Yanofsky, Katie Baker, and Deb Finkleman with whom I work on a regular basis. You add so much to our worship, and we’re all grateful to you for all that you bring to the experience.

And most of all, I thank each of you as members of this wonderful congregation. Each of you has already played a role in making my experience serving as rabbi of Temple B’nai Tikvah into a wonderful one, and words cannot express how truly thankful I am.

I stand before you in awe of the position you have appointed me to fill. Do you realize that I am the only full time congregational Reform rabbi in Canada between Toronto and Vancouver? This might not be the largest congregation in the world, but in terms of the size of my turf, I think I’ve got all of my colleagues beat.

Of course, you didn’t hire me to be the Chief Reform Rabbi of the Prairie Provinces, you hired me to be the rabbi of Temple B’nai Tikvah, and here too I stand in awe.  I stand in awe because I know what this congregation is, and I have a sense as to what you want it to become, and I find the responsibility of leading it to be a task that is both daunting and thrilling at the same time. 37 years ago, thirteen families began meeting in the Bing’s living room with a commitment to building options for Reform Jewish life here in Calgary. Eventually, more of you came on board, and you hired rabbis to help lead you in your quest to build an active, vibrant community devoted to the ideals of Reform Judaism. All of Temple B’nai Tikvah’s leaders – rabbis and lay-leaders alike – have made their own contributions, and look at what you’ve built.

Look around you. Here under the canopy of creation, here in this magnificent building, you have already done so much of what you set out to do in the first place. Here at your temple, you conduct worship services every Shabbat and on every holiday, lifting your voices in song and prayer together. Here you study – both adults and children – learning the values of our people. And here you have created a center of tikkun olam – a place that is a source of healing and repair of the broken world in which we live.

I love this place. I love what you’ve done with it, and I love what I know we’re going to continue to do together.

I can’t help but think that it’s more than a coincidence that we celebrate this occasion tonight, for tonight is Shabbat Vayera. This week’s Torah portion opens by saying, “Vayera elav Adonai b’Elonei Mamre,” “and [God] appeared to [Abraham] at the Oaks of Mamre,” “Vayar v’hinei shloshah anashim nitzavim eilav.” “And [Abraham] looked up and saw that there were three people standing by him.”  God visited Abraham, and what Abraham saw was three people. In fact, the first thing he did when seeing these three people was to greet them by calling them “my lords,” which in Hebrew is “Adonai.” He ordered up a nice meal for them; they assured him that he and Sara would soon be parents and that God’s covenant with Abraham would be fulfilled.

Abraham saw the presence of God in the people he met. He saw clearly that these people who showed up at his doorstep weren’t just desert vagrants, but manifestations of the divine standing right before him. This is what you’ve done as a synagogue since your very inception. You’ve been a haven from the rampant materialism of the world around us, a sanctuary of humanity in a sea of despair.

And this too is what we need to devote ourselves to as we move ahead – to creating a community that continues to recognize the divine within each of us even when it seems so hidden. We do that when we worship; we do that when we learn together; we do that when we build a world that makes real our tradition’s vision of justice and righteousness.  In the few short months I’ve been here, I’ve seen you do it, and I’ve seen you strive to do it even more.

As we look ahead, let’s devote ourselves to continuing in this great tradition. Let’s commit ourselves to continuing to build Temple B’nai Tikvah as a lifelong congregation – a hub of activity for children, seniors, and everyone in between. Let’s continue to pray together, meaningfully and with gusto. Let’s continue to study. And let’s repair the world not only by tending to the needy, but more importantly, by doing what we can to bring true social change to a world that needs it so very much.

I’d like to share a story with you tonight – the story of an encounter that occurred in the summer of 1915 between another rabbi and one of his young congregants. The rabbi was a prominent man with the unfortunate name of Moses Gries – Rabbi Gries – who served for many years as rabbi of a temple in Cleveland, Ohio called, “The Temple.”

In May 1915, Rabbi Gries officiated at that year’s Temple confirmation service. It was a grand ceremony, featuring majestic organ music, a sanctuary bedecked with beautiful flowers, and several dozen white-robed 15-year-old confirmands. During the confirmation, Rabbi Gries pronounced a blessing over the young people, presented each with his or her confirmation bible, and sent them on their way, hoping to see them back again in the fall.

One of those teenagers, however, a young man by the name of Sylvester Marx, wouldn’t stay away that long.  Instead, several weeks after his Confirmation, Sylvester Marx made an appointment to come in and see the rabbi.  Sitting in the dark, booklined study, speaking with a slightly nervous quaver in his voice, Sylvester explained that he had a problem.  Evidently, Sylvester’s father had just done something that was becoming more and more common among American Jews back then – he had converted to Christian Science.  Sylvester, however, didn’t want to convert to Christian Science. Sylvester was Jewish; he liked going to the doctor!  “Rabbi,” he asked, “is there any way that a fifteen-year-old can take out his own membership in The Temple?”

Fortunately, the answer was yes. Rabbi Gries made the arrangements, and fifteen-year-old Sylvester Marx joined the Temple.

The years passed, Sylvester grew up, and in time he became a respected attorney in Cleveland. He married, had three children (the oldest of whom, Robert, would become a rabbi in 1951), and through it all, Sylvester remained a deeply religious man.  He went to services every week; he led the corps of ushers on the high holidays; and before he ever ate a meal, almost inaudibly, Sylvester would always whisper a short prayer to God.

That prayer was probably in English.  You see, when Sylvester grew up, places like The Temple didn’t use much Hebrew at all in their worship, nor did they teach much of it to their students.

And so, when in 1980, the congregation gave Sylvester Marx an aliyah to honor him for his 65 years of membership in the Temple, the family had to appoint one of his high-school-age grandsons to help him learn the Hebrew for the Torah blessing.  Afterwards, the boy razzed his grandfather a little.  “Grandpa,” he asked, “how can it be that you’ve gone to Shabbat services every week for the past 65 years, and you still can’t say “ch”?

No, I never could get my grandfather to learn that prayer very well. But we sure had a lot of fun working on it.

My grandfather, Sylvester Marx, died on Thanksgiving weekend, 1984.  I was a senior in college at the time, and when I got back to school after his funeral, I found a letter waiting for me from the Hebrew Union College, informing me that I had just been accepted into rabbinical school.

Five-and-a-half years later, when I was ordained a rabbi, one of the gifts I received was a small package containing this book.  The card was from my mother: “Dear Mark, This gift is from your grandfather. He would have been very proud of you today, and he would have loved to have been here….”

The book is an old bible, and inside the front cover it says, “Confirmation: Presented to Sylvester Marx by The Temple, Cleveland, May 23, 1915. Signed, Moses M. Gries”

One hundred one years ago, Rabbi Moses Gries welcomed into his congregation a young man who needed a synagogue, and partly as a result of that act, I stand before you as your rabbi tonight.  101 years ago, a fifteen-year-old Jewish kid in Cleveland mustered the chutzpah he needed to ask his Temple to make some special arrangements for him, because, to him, Judaism was important – it mattered and was worth the trouble.  101 years ago, in a dark, book-lined room some 3,000 kilometers from here, there was an encounter between a young Jew and his rabbi the effects of which would continue to ripple outward for many, many years.

If, as your rabbi, I can touch the life of even one person, young or old, the way Rabbi Gries touched the life of my grandfather, then my work here will be a success.  If I can inspire even one of you to see, as did my grandfather, that Judaism is something worth working for even when the work is hard or frightening, then my work here will be a success.  And if even one single act that I perform as your rabbi can ripple out through time in a way even remotely similar to what Rabbi Gries did for my grandfather, then I will consider my work with you to be an enormous success, indeed.

You see, that encounter between my grandfather and his rabbi touched eternity, and maybe, with your help, with your shared commitment to helping make Judaism live and shine here in Calgary, then together, we can touch eternity too.  And if we do, well, who knows what things will be like for our own descendants 101 years from now. Maybe one of them will stand before his or her own rabbi, pleading for the opportunity to stay connected to Judaism and Jewish life. Maybe one of them will even be a rabbi, standing before his or her congregation overwhelmed with awe, gratitude, and hope as I am tonight.

O God, I thank you for the privilege of working with these people and in this community, and I pray for the strength to be worthy of the honor.  As rabbi of this congregation, may my actions be sacred, may my words truly be words of Torah, and, in the years ahead, may I have the joy of growing and learning with this community, for we are B’nai Tikvah, the children of hope, in a world that needs the hope we offer so very, very much.

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