Category TBT Blog | Temple B'nai Tikvah

September 25, 2021October 20, 2023 by Rabbi Mark Glickman

A New Year for the Birds

Erev Rosh Hashanah Sermon 2021/5782

By Rabbi Mark Glickman

For reasons I’m sure you can understand, I’ve spent a lot of time this past year sitting out on my back deck. Now the back deck of our house, if I do say so myself, is a wonderful place. Perched on the ridge overlooking the city from the west, we have a panoramic view of the University, a couple of hospitals, and in the distance, we can even see all the way across the city to the airport. Through the trees to the right is the city skyline, and closer in to the left is the Hart mansion, whose dungeon was the training place of many leading lights in today’s pro-wrestling world. Even closer, are trees and grass and brilliantly coloured flowers that Caron and our neighbours keep in deck-top planters.

We loved that view from the moment we first walked into our new home, but it wasn’t until this year – until COVID restrictions led me to spend so much time out on the deck – that I connected with a dimension of activity out there I’d barely even noticed before. It turns out that this quiet backyard of ours is home to a constant thrum of activity. We see squirrels looking for acorns back there, and rabbits hop through, as well. We’ve seen a mama bobcat come through with a couple of very cute, playful, and carnivorous cubs alongside her. There’s a family of deer that visit us regularly, and we often see coyotes, as well…although, curiously, we never see the deer and the coyotes back there at the same time.

And then, of course, there are the birds. There are constantly birds behind our house – usually, you can see them, but you can always hear them.

Most omnipresent, as you might guess, are the magpies. Before, moving to Calgary, I had heard of magpies, but I don’t think I had ever seen one – they just didn’t live in the places where I did. They’re so common here that we sometimes take them for granted, but I remember the first time I really stopped to take a close look at one of them. I was sitting on my deck, and a magpie landed just a few feet from me and started pecking at the lawn. I was struck by its vivid colours – the snow-white of its underbelly, shoulders and wingtips; its jet-black head; the blue of its wings and tail.

After watching that particular magpie feeding on whatever it was finding in the lawn, I took out my phone and started to research the species. Magpies, it turns out, are remarkable birds. Related to crows, they are able to use tools and even to mimic human speech (maybe that’s why the ones in my backyard seem to stutter sometimes). The magpie is among the few species of North American songbirds whose tailfeathers make up more than half the length of its body. And because of what magpies do to crops, some people call a group of these birds “a mischief of magpies,” or “a gulp of magpies.”

The type of magpies that we have here are black-billed magpies – you can find them living from Alaska all the way down to the southwestern United States. They are usually monogamous, and they mate for life, sticking with their one partner through thick and through thin. In fact, scientists who studied magpies in South Dakota found that they have a divorce rate of only about eight percent. And given human divorce rates these days, this means that South Dakotan magpies have a thing or two to teach our species about how to maintain a marriage.

But the eight percent divorce rate among the magpies in South Dakota doesn’t tell the whole story. That’s because it turns out that another group of scientists studied magpies here in Alberta, and found that the likelihood of magpie divorce up here isn’t eight percent like it is for their cousins in South Dakota. Here in Alberta, the magpie divorce rate is 63 percent – about eight times what it is south of the border.

Think about it. If you were a married magpie, and you moved with your beloved magpie spouse from your treetop home in, say, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to another treetop home here in lovely Calgary, your marriage would probably be doomed. In fact, if you were a married magpie from anywhere, your marriage would be unlikely to last here in Alberta. Sadly, the majority of magpies you see around here, are divorced.

I looked again at the magpie pecking around all alone in my backyard, the poor guy. Or maybe it was a poor gal – I couldn’t really tell the difference. And come to think of it, maybe the unfortunate partner was the ex-spouse of this magpie I was looking at, and maybe this magpie was the philanderer, or the one who was lazy around the nest. Maybe this was the one who deserved to have the blues.

Looking at that solitary magpie and imagining its ruined marriage, I reflected on life’s solitary moments. Another magpie landed a few feet away, and it started pecking at the lawn, too. “Look over there,” I wanted to say. “He seems nice. And from the the looks of it, you two like to do the same things. Why don’t you go over there and check him out?

Caron came out with some snacks, and I shared with her what I had learned about our Alberta magpies. We looked friend on the lawn, all black and blue, and I began to think about how different his – I’ll assume it was a “he” – life would have been had he been a South Dakota magpie. In that case, he might still be married – I hope happily so – and pecking around the lawn with his spouse. There’s something about living here in Alberta that devastates the success rate of magpie marriages. Is it the cold weather? Something in the prairie air? Alberta politics? I have no idea.

What I do know is that we tend to think that our lives are completely of our own making – that we, and we alone, determine our destiny. But if that was the case, then every one of us in every community would be the exactly same. Not only would magpie marriages in different places have the same chances of success, but so too would people’s lives be identical. Rodeo would be as popular in Nova Scotia as it is in Alberta; voters would be as conservative in Vancouver as they are in Calgary, and poutine would be as popular in Brazil as it is in Canada.

But the fact is that, although we each certainly play a major role in forming our own identities, each of us is very much a product of our environment and of the others around us, both now and in the past. That’s because our lives – our selves – are not impermeable. They touch and are touched by others who come near us. What makes us us is not only our own will, but also our context. Those around us have a hand in making us who we are just as much – and sometimes more – as we do ourselves. Because I know you, I’ll always carry a little bit of you in me, and because you know me, for better or for worse, you’ll always carry a bit of me in you, too.

Think about this from the perspective of being Canadian. In most places in the world, the term “residential school” means just that – a school that’s residential, where people live. But to you as a Canadian, that term means something very different, and simply hearing it makes your stomach turn (or at least it should). As Jews – people who are a part of the wonderful community and people to which we all belong – we have a particular outlook on things such as justice, a special concern for our people wherever they live, and unique insights as to what makes a good corned beef sandwich.

Many people say that you can be whoever you want to be, but I think that might be a bit of a conceit. You are partly what you make of yourself, but you’re also partly who we in your environment make you. I think this might be why God created us male and female in the creation story that many synagogues will read tomorrow. God wanted us to complete each other, and knew that the best way to become complete would be to have a partner who was different. Nowadays, of course, we know that differences can originate in varying genders, and from countless other sources, as well. But the point is that we tend not to partner with people who are identical to us, but instead with people who are different, and who can have a hand in helping to complete us.

Adam and Eve were so very different, and thank God they had each other. For magpies, men, and women – we’re all the product of both self and other, of both identity and context alike.

The magpies weren’t the only creatures flying around my backyard. Soon, a robin landed near where the magpies had been. The robin chirped enthusiastically, or at least it seemed enthusiastic. It was hard to tell, of course, because faces with beaks aren’t very expressive.

I soon discovered that, sure enough, bird experts refer to this song of the robin as its “Cheerily Carol.” It says, “Cheerily, cheer up, cheer up. Cheerily, cheer up, cheer up.” Why are they so happy? It turns out that the robins who sing the happy song I was hearing aren’t doing so gratuitously. They’re doing it, I learned, because here in Alberta, robins are in their breeding grounds, their mating grounds. They are happy, because to a robin, Alberta is the land of love!

The American robin, which is the kind of robin we see here in Calgary, can be found all year long in much of the United States. It winters in Mexico, but it doesn’t breed there, so robins in Mexico are sad ones indeed. Mexico might have good Mariachi music, but you won’t hear any happy robins singing happy songs there. Here in Canada, however, is where the robins breed. So that robin I saw in my backyard? He was one happy guy.

Lonely Mr. Magpie, eat your heart out. Our robins in Alberta, unlike our magpies, are joyous birds. They know that life is at its fullest during our moments of connection, and that’s why they sing their songs.

Compare that to our own experiences during recent months. So many of us have been isolated, disconnected from meaningful human contact. We’ve learned that while online conferences are sometimes necessary, they certainly don’t cut it in terms of forging the bonds we need with other people.

And what’s the opposite of isolation? Love! Not love as a feeling, but love as an act. Doing things that connect us – connect us passionately – with other individuals. And if you’ve ever been in love, you can understand that robin’s song.

Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah, teaches that the Messiah, waiting for his or her time to come, has a wonderful little bird, and when the time comes for the messiah to arrive, that bird sings a song that is so vivid, so magnificent, so melodious, that nobody – not even God – has heard such a tune before. The bird sings that song, the Messiah arises, and the age of goodness and unification begins.

I think I heard the robin sing that very song of salvation in my backyard that day. And in fact, there have been moments during the past year when I think I’ve even sung it myself. Because even during these months of isolation, there have been moments of love. I’ve had great talks with my wife; I’ve Zoomed with my kids and my grandchildren; I’ve celebrated and shared special moments with you even in these restrictive circumstances.

Many of us have had such moments. Difficult though this year has been, many of us have still found a way to enjoy our own chorus of love songs.

One day shortly after the beginning of the pandemic, I had a Zoom meeting with a conversion student. It was a beautiful day, so I brought my laptop out onto the back deck to speak with him there. As we spoke, I saw a gull fly overhead – I barely noticed it. Soon, another gull came, and then another, and then several more. And within just a couple of minutes, the whole sky was filled with them. Hundreds of birds swirled around above my head. “Conversion shmonversion,” I said to the student. “You should see what’s going on over here!”

Some gulls flew by so closely I could almost touch them. Others were hundreds of meters in the air, so small they were barely visible. These were smallish for gulls, white against the blue sky, with black crowns and wingtips.

What I later learned about these birds made me amazed that they had the energy to swirl. They were Franklin’s gulls, it turns out, and Franklins gulls are migrators. They go south for the winter, and I’m not talking Lethbridge here. No, Franklin’s gulls fly over the 49^th parallel (for them, the U.S. border is open), over the United States, through Mexico and Central America, along the South American coast, and winter in Southern Chile. Every year. And then, they come back here to Canada, only to repeat the cycle once again. They have been known to live for as long as nine years, each of them flying tens of thousands of kilometres just in migration – I hope they get frequent flier miles.

At the time I saw those gulls, of course, we humans were locked down. We couldn’t get on a plane to Kelowna, let alone fly to Santiago. But those gulls were world travellers. Now, whenever they fly overhead, I think of all they’ve seen – all the journeys their lives have taken. Soaring above me, they’ve come from the other side of the earth.

It reminds me of a bird ritual from Jewish scripture. The Torah tells us that when a person contracts a certain skin disease called metzora – a word usually translated as leprosy, but which probably refers to something more like psoriasis – that person is to be removed from the camp and isolated until he or she gets better. And after that person’s condition clears up, the Torah prescribes an elaborate ritual that involves placing the blood of a bird on that person’s ear, thumb, and big toe.

It’s a strange ritual, but looking at those gulls, I think I understood it…at least a little. Birds travel. They cross borders. They are worldly in a way we could never be. And they always return. These magnificent creatures are both rooted a certain place, and transcend it. They are local and international, Calgarian and Chilean. They have loyalty to their home, but aren’t limited by it.

Being at home and yearning for distant horizons? That’s something to strive for, even and especially during a lockdown.

It’s September now. The mornings have turned chilly, and for our people, the New Year has begun. But I still sit out back, and I still watch the world unfold from there on my deck-top perch. And one of the things I’ve learned this year is of the value of doing just that. Sitting. Watching. Learning. Reflecting. Those birds have taught me much this year. The power of community; the importance of love; the value of being home and taking magnificent journeys.

Those are some important lessons, and those are just the ones I’ve learned from the birds – we haven’t even started to talk about the insects yet.

Alas, the bugs will have to wait for another time. For we all have some reflecting to do on this Rosh Hashanah, for even here at Temple, or from in front of our screens at home, we can sit, watch, listen, and reflect. And when we do, we very well might soar to places we’ve hardly yet dreamt of.

This year, in 5782, let’s do just that, for surely we will all become far richer as a result.

Shanah Tovah.

September 30, 2019October 20, 2023 by Rabbi Mark Glickman

Israel and Zionism: An Invitation to Talk

Rosh Hashanah Morning Sermon
Temple B’nai Tikvah
5780/2019

Rabbi Mark Glickman

I’d like to tell you about a conversation that happened several months ago just down the hall from here, a few meters from where we now sit. It took place at a Temple board meeting in our library this past spring. The topic at hand was whether to add an option to our Temple membership forms that would allow you to pay five extra dollars to become members of ARZA Canada, the Canadian branch of the Association of Reform Zionists of America.

A long discussion ensued – it was a board meeting, after all – and at times, believe it or not, the discussion became somewhat…spirited. “Of course, we should support our nation’s Reform Zionists,” one board member said. “Israel is besieged these days – sometimes literally, but always politically. Israel needs all the help it can get.” “Well,” said another board member, “I’m not so sure. Does joining ARZA implicitly mean that we support all of Israel’s policies? If so, I’m not so comfortable with it.” “Do we have the right to ask our congregants to stand behind Israel these days?” asked one board member. “We’re Jews. How dare we refrain from it,” replied another.

Then, a board member we’ll call Amy spoke up. “I’m all for Israel,” she said. “I only want the best for it. But ARZA – the Association of Reform Zionists of America – is a Zionist organization,” Amy said, “and to be honest, I’m a little uncomfortable with the word ‘Zionism.’”

Across the room, another board member we’ll call Bob responded with a jolt. “You’re not comfortable calling yourself a Zionist?” Bob asked. “How could you say such a thing? How could any Jew say such a thing these days? Especially after the Holocaust? As Jewish leaders, we need to stand with our people. We should wear the Zionist badge with pride. We need to! I can’t believe that a Jew today could dare not call themselves a Zionist!”

At this point, a wave of tension swept across the room. It was palpable. You could cut it with a cheap plastic oneg-knife.

Sadly, this was far from the first time that Israel has become an item of tension for us Jews. And sadly, this was far from the first time that Israel has become an item of tension for us here at Temple. Other board meetings have become difficult when Israel-based topics have come up, and many of us are scared to even bring it up. Some of you have come into my office to tell me that you feel lonely here because you don’t feel like your fellow congregants are supportive of Israel. Others – many others – have also come into my office and said, “Rabbi, I have to tell you that I’ve become critical of Israel lately, but I don’t dare say anything out loud around here about how I feel – they’ll run me out of the place!”

Talking about Israel these days has become difficult. In fact, for many of us, the very notion of talking about Israel – even and especially within the Jewish community – has become downright scary. And to tell you the truth, it’s even become frightening for us rabbis. I know for a fact that many of my colleagues have become scared to preach about Israel lately for fear that whatever they say is going to get them into trouble with one group or another. I can also tell you that my own computer hard drive overflows with fully written sermons about Israel that I never delivered, and instead simply scrapped, for fear that they’d create more heat than light.

More often than not, speaking about Israel has become like speaking to a large group of people standing on the face of a clock with moving hands. You don’t know what’s going to happen; all you know for certain is that somebody is going to get ticked off!

But the discussion at that board meeting troubled me, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. As a result, today I’m going to break my pattern of letting my Israel sermons say safe inside my hard drive, and I’m going to share some thoughts with you about Israel, instead. In fact, I’m going to share five of them.

My first point is the simplest and most fundamental – Jews should care about Israel. There was a time, of course, when I wouldn’t have had to say that to a room full of Jews. Israel, as many of you know, was established as a state in 1948, when the smoke of the Holocaust still hovered dark and new over world Jewry. To Jews everywhere, it had become clear that our people needed a safe haven, and they thanked God that the time of Jewish political powerlessness had come to an end. Plus, for years, Israel was a dangerously imperiled country, its borders constantly violated by terrorists, its citizens living under the ongoing specter of terrorism and military incursions. At the time, there was a worldwide Jewish consensus – not complete, but certainly widespread – that the existence of the State of Israel was crucial for the Jewish people, and a blessing that we must protect at all costs.

That consensus lasted for the most part, for about 25 years – until the Yom Kippur War, back in 1973. At that point (for complex reasons that we don’t have time to go into today), something about Israel shifted in the eyes of many Jews. Israel, in the wake of the Yom Kippur War, was no longer an imperiled David; to many it had become a ruthless Goliath. For many, the youthful shine of the fresh young state had worn off, leaving a flawed, imperfect country behind.

And since then, of course, things have gotten really problematic for many of us. Yes, Israel has remained a haven for oppressed Jews, but it also occupies lands inhabited by people who don’t want it there. Yes, Israel as laboratory of Jewish independent life in modern times thrums with vitality, but for many it is also a place of religious intolerance and oppression. Yes, Israel is an island of democracy in a sea of Middle Eastern totalitarian repression, but it is also a place of palpable and very concerning antidemocratic threats.

In short, Israel has gotten so complicated these days, and through it all, it has become easy for us to forget what an amazing blessing the State of Israel truly is. Despite all of its faults, despite everything that can make thinking about Israel so confusing, the fact remains we Jews in the post-1948 era live in a era when, for the first time since the destruction of the Second Temple in the Year 70, there is an independent Jewish state in our ancestral homeland. Now, as has never been the case for almost 2000 years, Jews living under oppression have a safe – or at least safer – place to go, and Israel has been able to welcome millions of our people from places like the Former Soviet Union and Ethiopia, not to mention countless Arab countries where they had been living with great difficulty. Now, moreover, there is a place where it’s standard to stay home from work and school on Shabbat and Jewish holidays, where you can write the Jewish date on your checks, where the citizenry might not agree whether buses should run on Friday nights, but at least they need to ask the question, and they get to debate it as Jews living in their own country and as people in charge of its own destiny.

At the very least, Jews should be concerned about Israel because it is home to the largest Jewish community in the world. More than six million Jews live there – our people – and we should hold their safety and security and wellbeing in our hearts. When bombs fall on Jewish cities and towns, it’s our brothers and our sisters and our cousins that they’re falling on. When Israel comes under threat of widespread attack from its neighbors bent on the demise of the Jewish State, it’s our people whose lives are imperiled. And as Israel struggles to figure out what it means to be a modern Jewish democracy in a region populated by countless people who feel threatened by all three of those adjectives – modern, Jewish, and democracy – it’s our people who are undergoing that struggle.

So, without necessarily addressing all of the complexities of Israel today, let’s start by reminding ourselves how lucky we are to be alive during a time when once again, the Jewish people is literally on the map, in a country committed to guaranteeing the safety of our people, and where, once again, Judaism has the opportunity to face the challenges of modern life on its own terms and in its own way.

For the reality of modern Israel, we should feel profoundly grateful; for the wellbeing of the state and its citizens, we Jews should feel deeply concerned.

Second: Not all criticism of Israel is antisemitic. Israel, as we know, is a modern country, replete with all of the complexity and confusion that being a modern country involves. It has a right to exist, it has a right to ensure the security of its borders and the safety of its citizens, and sometimes, like all countries it makes mistakes. And sometimes, like all countries, it embraces misguided policies, not to mention a misguided leader or two. And sometimes, like all countries, it falls short of what it can be.

And today Israel faces a lot of difficult challenges. What should it do with the occupied territories? How can it be a Jewish state if its Orthodox Jews feel it should be run one way, its secular Jews feel it should be run another way, and its growing Reform and Conservative movements feel differently still? How can it both guarantee its safety while also embracing the Jewish values of its people’s history.

This isn’t the place to delve into these difficult questions in detail, and I’m not sure I’m the best guy to do the delving. What I will say, however, is that thinking, reasonable people who care about Israel can differ on these issues. As a result, even people who love Israel can be critical of it. In fact, sometimes, people who love Israel need to be critical of it. Just as I’m not going to stand by silently when I see my family members doing things that bring harm to themselves, so too will I speak up when I see Israel doing something I think is wrong. Certainly, the stakes for me aren’t nearly as high as they are for the people who actually live in Israel, but nevertheless, loving Israel doesn’t mean agreeing with its every move. Loving Israel means helping it be great and speaking up when it goes astray.

Third: Sometimes, criticism of Israel is antisemitic. To criticize Israel alone while tolerating or staying silent about worse abuses in other countries; to suggest that the world boycott, divest from, or sanction Israel as a veiled way of delegitimizing the entire state; to use antisemitic tropes to undermine Israel’s legitimate security concerns – all of these and many more are ways in which people who hate Jews channel that hatred into attempts to undermine the legitimacy of the Jewish State. Not all criticism of Israel is antisemitic, but nevertheless, some criticism of Israel certainly is.

Fourth, lately, the political right has kidnapped Zionism. In the old days – like, until just a few years ago – it used to be easy for political liberals to be openly Zionist. Lots of Zionists were socialists; the Israeli government was leftist; in North America, most of the liberal political parties were ardent supporters of Zionism and Israel. It was the Republicans in the States and the Conservatives here in Canada who were opposed to supporting Israel. Lately, however, the landscape has changed. Now, many of Israel’s most ardent critics in the West are liberals. Think of the four American congresswomen who were recently so outspoken in denouncing Israel. And, on the flipside, in North America, the people who are most outspoken in their support of Israel are often those on the political right. When he speaks to Jewish groups here in Calgary, Jason Kenney inspires standing ovations galore when he proclaims support for the State of Israel – support that is, by all indications, quite genuine. And in the United States, there’s a certain leader who insists that he’s the best friend that Israel has ever had, and he implements policies with which he tries to prove it. That leader will remain nameless here, but his name rhymes with “Donald Trump.”

As a result, supporting Israel these days has come to sound a lot more conservative than it once did. And for liberals – liberals like Amy at the board meeting and many others here today – that makes them feel uncomfortable. “I don’t want to call myself a Zionist,” people think. “Being a Zionist means not caring about Palestinians, and being in favor of settlements in the Occupied Territories, and being deaf to the plight of oppressed peoples. Being a Zionist is so…Trumpy. I guess I’m pro-Israel,” they say, “but please don’t even think of calling me a Zionist.”

If you are a liberal who falls into this camp – if you’re a person who is reluctant to be identified as a Zionist for fear that it will put you in bed with people whose politics you reject – then I have something to say to you: Please don’t do it. Don’t cede Zionism to people whose politics you reject, because that way, they win. Instead, claim Zionism as your own. You can be a lover of Israel, a passionate Zionist who cares about the future of the Jewish state, in a way that affirms rather than denies your core values. There is room for you within this thing called Zionism.

In other words, to say that Israel should and can exist as a safe and secure state alongside an equally safe and secure Palestinian state – that’s Zionism, just like being opposed to territorial compromise is Zionism. To say that every time Israel treads on the human rights of its non-Jewish citizens, it destroys a part of its own soul – that’s Zionism, just as the desire to wall off the occupied territories is Zionism. To argue that Israel mustn’t ever close its borders to refugees, or close its gates-of-entry to non-Orthodox converts, or close the Wall to women wearing tallises – that’s Zionism, too…as are countless other ways of showing love for the Jewish state.

Of course, your Zionism might not always be Trump Zionism, and it might not always be Netanyahu Zionism, and it might not even be the Zionism of the person here in Calgary wearing an Israeli flag pin on their lapel, but none of those people own Zionism. Not Trump, not Netanyahu, and not the Israel supporter down the street. The Jewish people owns Zionism – all of us, including you.

Fifth, finally, and perhaps most important: Folks, let’s make build an atmosphere – here at Temple and elsewhere – in which it’s safe to talk about these issues. If you’re frightened to share your views about what’s going on, I want to encourage you to share them anyway, even if they’re at odds with the people across from you. Not to do so would be to let the other views carry the day unchecked. I know it can be scary, but it’s important that we put this stuff on the table. I may or may not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll go to the barricades to defend your right to share your thoughts. And if you hear views with which you disagree, please don’t pounce. Don’t attack. Instead, listen, probe, challenge, learn. That’s the way we grow as a community.

My dream is to build a spirit in this community in which we can have discussions about topics that came up at that board meeting down the hall that aren’t permeated by waves of tension – in which disagreement can be a welcome opportunity to learn rather than an intolerable threat to us all, in which our discussions – even and especially when we disagree – can be spirited, and affectionate, and challenging opportunities for us all to learn and grow.

My friends, we do live during an amazing time – a golden age in the history of the Jewish people. Part of that gold is what we create here at our synagogue and at countless others around the world. And part of the gold is the result of the amazing revival of Jewish life in a small country halfway around the world from here. When we do it right, we and they can engage in a relationship of push and pull and learning and support and growth for us all. Let’s keep talking about how to make that happen, for when we do, this age for the Jewish people can only become more golden for us all.