Yom Kippur Morning Sermon – 2021/5782

By Rabbi Mark Glickman

There are many rabbis who choose a single theme to drive all of their Days of Awe sermons each year. I typically don’t do that – at least not intentionally – but this year, one seems to have emerged on its own. The theme: “It has been a hell of a year.”

I don’t need to recount all of the biological, sociological, economic, emotional, and spiritual factors that have made this year so difficult – you lived them all yourselves. What I will note is the frustration that many of us – particularly here in Alberta – have felt in recent weeks over the fact that this pandemic could have been far closer to its end had more of us worn masks and gotten vaccines in our arms. Sadly, as you know, some of our neighbours have refused to do so, the resistance is growing in both magnitude and volume, and we’re all suffering as a result.

I’m not a physician, so this sermon won’t tout the medical benefits of masks and vaccinations. The medical community has already rendered those benefits an established fact. I am, however, a rabbi, so I would like to share with you a few comments about this situation from a Torah perspective.

First, as the leaders of most Jewish denominations from left to right have affirmed, getting vaccinated and wearing masks are sacred religious obligations. There is a concept in Jewish law that our Temple board and staff have cited in many letters and emails to you about our COVID-19 policies – it’s called pikuach nefesh. This refers to the fact that, according to Jewish law, you break almost any commandment in order to save a human life. There are a few exceptions: you’re not allowed to murder someone or commit idolatry or incest under any circumstances, but even those exceptions (particularly the idolatry one) become a little fuzzy when these laws get applied. Overall, however, saving people’s lives – and even protecting people against a potential risk to their lives – is primary in Jewish law. In Judaism, you do anything you need to do – anything – in order to save people’s lives and protect them from danger.

Many anti-vaxers and anti-maskers these days object that masking and vaccination requirements impinge on their freedoms. To this, Judaism has a clear reply: You bet they impinge on your freedoms, because in a civilized society, you’re not free to kill people, and you’re not free to imperil their lives. We limit freedoms all over the place, because that’s how we reduce unfair harm to other people. The medical community has shown us beyond a doubt that masks and jabs save lives, and Judaism rightly points out that this renders all discussions of freedom moot.

In fact, to tell you the truth, Judaism doesn’t really care about freedom. In Canadian law, of course, we have the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and I grew up in the United States studying the Bill of Rights – for a couple of centuries now, rights and freedoms have been a common theme in Western Law. In Judaism, however, we don’t have a Charter of Rights or a Bill of Freedoms. Instead, the most widely known and widely celebrated passage of our scripture is the Ten Commandments, and we Jews spend a lot of time thinking about how to do mitzvot. Mitzvot are commandments, and Jewish scripture has 613 of them.

The central question of Jewish life, in other words, is not what we get to do, but what we should do. And particularly during times of worldwide crisis such as this, it is essential that we keep this question in mind. Clearly, Canadian law, as well as the laws of most other countries, give you the right to go around unmasked, and they give you the right not to get vaccinated…but who cares? The question we Jews should be asking – and here I’ll say the question we all should be asking – is “What should we do?” And what we should do is get vaccinated.

Uvacharta bachayyim, the Torah tells us – Choose life! Without qualification. It doesn’t tell us to choose life as long as it’s comfortable. And it doesn’t tell us to choose life as long as it’s convenient. And it certainly doesn’t tell us to choose freedom before we choose life.

Vaccines and masks save lives. Period. That, our tradition teaches, should be the end of the discussion. They are important for us all, even at the cost of a few minor elements of our personal freedoms. Get vaccinated; wear a mask. It is your sacred obligation.

My second comment comes as a result of the nauseating increase in the number of people these days who are turning to religion to justify their resistance to masks and vaccinations. Even though, thankfully, most major religious denominations have called for their adherents to get their shots and cover their faces, still there are those who resist taking these steps in the very name of religion. You see it locally, as churches and religious leaders here in town openly defy masking mandates and other COVID restrictions. They say that God will take care of us provided that we pray, as if we have no obligation to the health of our community. They say that faith rather than medicine will bring true healing. They say that vaccines bring contamination rather than safety for us all. One of these churches actually approached us here at Temple asking to rent our facilities. Needless to say, their request didn’t go very far.

Everywhere, people are seeking religious exemptions to allow their children to go to school unmasked and unvaccinated.  In fact, the state of Vermont in the U.S. used to allow both religious and non-religious exemptions for the vaccinations of their schoolchildren. Recently, however, they removed the non-religious exemption, so that the only way you could get out of having your kid vaccinated was for religious reasons. And the moment they did that – wouldn’t you know it – the number of Vermonters who had gotten religion suddenly jumped more than sevenfold, and many people rightly began wondering whether this was really about religion in the first place.

It’s almost as if, in many peoples’ minds saying that something is based on your religion is supposed to give it automatic credence – automatic immunity from all logic and ethical obligations. Because it’s your religion, you have the right to imperil me? Because it’s your religion you have the right to delay our return as a society to normal life? Because it’s your religion, you have the right to infect me with your viruses? To all of these questions I say no, and I add a request that you please stop making these arguments because they all give religion a very bad name.

Look, we can disagree about a lot with those who adhere to other religions. We can agree to disagree about what day of the week the Sabbath should be, and whether belief or deeds are most important, or even about whether the messiah has come yet. I do it all the time in my interfaith work, and I love it. But this doesn’t mean that we should give automatically give credence to every single religious view. As a teacher of mine once said, we should be open minded, but not so open minded that our brains fall out. Even in Judaism, while we don’t expect non-Jews to agree with everything, there are certain religious obligations that our tradition says apply to all people – Jews and non-Jews alike. These are the “Noachide Laws,” the seven commandments given to Noah and his descendants – to all of us, in other words. You’re not allowed to murder; there must be a community-wide system of justice; you can’t be cruel to animals. There are a few others, too. The point is that, even as we disagree, Judaism teaches that there is fundamental code of human decency to which we should hold all people accountable. And if their religion teaches otherwise – that gratuitous bloodshed is OK, for example, or that injustice is permissible, or that incest should be allowed – then their religion is wrong.

This is particularly important at a time such as this. When people argue that their religion allows practices that endanger us, when people suggest that God wants them to prioritize their own freedoms over the safety of others, when people describe life-saving vaccines as impure and unholy – then we should respond without hesitation that they and their religions are wrong.

Let me mince no words. Any religion that fails to prioritize human life is a bad religion. Any religion that encourages its adherents to unnecessarily imperil others’ health and safety is a bad religion. And any religion that demands its adherents check their brains at the door of their church, mosque, or synagogue is certainly a bad religion, too. We rightly tend to be wary of using such language, but if we can’t ever use it, then we might as well throw away the central teachings of our own Jewish traditions. If every religious idea is of equal value, then none of them are worth a damn to begin with.

So observe Shabbat on Tuesday, for all I care – if you don’t choose life, then your religion has no part in contemporary public discourse. Celebrate National Cucumber Day as your most solemn religious holiday if you want, but if your religion advocates policies that unnecessarily endanger people’s lives and livelihoods, then please don’t sully my public square with your destructive religious ideas. And if, in the name of your religion, you are going to reject science, reject medicine, and reject the great achievements and innovations of the human mind, then please know that I and people like me will oppose the imposition of your religious will however we possibly can. As a Jew who takes my Judaism seriously, I have no other choice.

Finally, most of us know people who refuse to mask or get vaccinated. What are we supposed to do in response? How can we talk to these people…especially since they so often seem to speak such a different language from the rest of us?

Well, for starters, to persuade them, I would not suggest that you share this sermon with them. Take it from me, the whole “bad religion” thing, the whole “check your brain at the door” thing…they tend not to be very effective rhetorical tools with these people.

Instead, I would suggest that you approach these people with love rather than rhetoric – with patience and sensitivity rather than with argument, for even the most ironclad arguments tend not to do much good here.

Let’s remember that even if there are no good arguments against vaccinations and masking, there are reasons the opponents feel the way they do, and we need to strive to understand them. Many who are reluctant, hesitant or refusing to get vaccinated are members of minority cultural and ethnic groups who have deep seated mistrust of public institutions. Their distrust is destructive, of course, but understanding it and being sensitive to it can be among our most powerful tools to combat it. Others are part of the majority culture, but feel threatened for other reasons, and still others find support, friendship, and solidarity in the community of their fellow mask and vaccine resistors. For them, such support, friendship, and solidarity are gifts more precious than gold. Some people suffer from skewed thinking, prioritizing freedom and autonomy over our obligations to ourselves and one another.  For them, patient and respectful dialogue will be key.

It’s difficult, of course, because, if you’re like me, your initial reaction is sometimes to scream at these people or to wring these people’s necks rather than engage in patient dialogue. Those responses might feel good for a moment, but they’re not likely to do much good.

Instead, let’s take the lead from the Talmud as to how to conduct what it called a “machloket l’shem shamayim,” a disagreement for the sake of heaven. The Talmud’s model for this was the School of Hillel, the ancient sage whose students always argued with their arch-rivals, the School of Shammai. In almost every case, the final decisions about Jewish law went with Hillel’s arguments, not Shammai’s. Why? Because Hillel’s students were kind and gracious, and because they always made sure to understand Shammai’s views completely, even going so far as to teach those opposing views before their own.

In other words, they were gentle; they listened – carefully; they argued to learn, not to preach. And in so doing, they were disagreeable, but disagreeable in a holy manner, disagreeable in just the way that God wanted.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that we need to become doormats. Arguing against and opposing bad ideas is a matter that is nothing short of life and death these days. And it’s imperative that we advocate for safety on behalf of all of our public institutions.

But with individuals, we need a kinder strategy. Let’s approach these people gently, and with open ears, minds, and hearts. Let’s approach them with love.  It’s unlikely to bring sudden change, it might not bring change at all, and whatever impact you do have will likely take a lot of time and energy.  But they too are children of God, they too have much to teach, and even though they are mistaken, demonizing them won’t achieve a thing – only humanizing them will.

It has been a hell of a year. And just when we thought things were about to get better, they got worse again. We can fix this, my friends – the virus is strong, but we can be stronger, and overcoming it will demand that we all do our parts. It is a herculean task, but I have faith that we can succeed. To do so, let’s cover our faces and get those shots, let’s resist the exploitation of God’s name for unholy purposes. Let’s thank our health care workers rather than make their lives more difficult, and let’s argue with love and respect.

On this day of awe and turning, we dare not abdicate these sacred responsibilities.

Shanah Tovah

Erev Yom Kippur Sermon – 2021/5782

By Rabbi Mark Glickman

A phrase that is reportedly an ancient Chinese curse says, “May you live in interesting times.”  Well it turns out that that phrase isn’t ancient, and it’s not Chinese, either. Rather, it was probably coined by the British statesman, Joseph Chamberlain sometime around the turn of the last century. Nevertheless, I think we’d all agree that, whoever uttered that curse, we who are alive today do live in interesting times.

I could enumerate some of the many ways these times are interesting, but I don’t think you need me to do that. Instead, all I’d like to note tonight is that while, for us Jews, these times are indeed…interesting, they are also wonderful. Yes, we face challenges – challenges galore: assimilation and apathy, rising antisemitism, growing illiteracy about Jewish topics, and much more. But amidst all of these troubles, it’s easy for us to blind ourselves to the riches of contemporary Jewish life. Yes, many Jews are assimilating, but Jewish communities everywhere are experiencing dramatic rebirth. Everywhere you look, there are Jewish camps, and schools, and organizations of all kinds. Synagogues are thriving despite the fact that nobody’s been able to walk through their doors for much of the past few years. And for the past couple of decades, there’s even been a liberal Jewish rabbinical and cantorial seminary near Berlin – Berlin! – the Abraham Geiger College, and this year it moved to a brand-new campus in Potsdam. Yes, antisemitism is rising to new levels, but those levels aren’t nearly as high as they were as recently as the middle of the last century.

And then, of course, there is one of the greatest blessings of all – the modern State of Israel.

Now, I spoke to you about Israel when we gathered here a couple years ago. I noted how difficult it is to speak about this topic. I shared the story of a very difficult discussion about Israel on the part of our congregational leaders. I encouraged you to talk about Israel rather than yell at each other about it, to remember that Israel should receive both our love and our criticism, that people who are critical of Israel don’t necessarily hate it, and that people who love Israel don’t necessarily see it as perfect, and even they can criticize it in good faith.

But still, this topic has remained a very difficult one for our congregation. Still, people pull me aside and say things like, “Rabbi, I don’t like everything Israel does…am I allowed to voice my disagreement at Temple?” Others say, “Rabbi, I am a Zionist to the depths of my heart, but lately, with everyone so down on Israel, I’m scared to sound like too much of a Zionist at Temple. My views don’t seem to fit in with everyone else’s.”

And when I hear these concerns from across the spectrum, I want to say, “But how can you still feel this way? I gave a SERMON about this – TWO years ago! A SERMON!  So shouldn’t we be done with this already?

Alas, Israel remains a difficult topic for us here at Temple, so, in preparation for tonight, I decided to give that sermon from two years ago again. Then, I thought better of that decision, but I do want to share some additional thoughts tonight. Specifically, I’d like to make three suggestions – suggestions for what I think we should all do with regard to Israel not only to render it easier to discuss, but also to help play the most effective role that we Jews in 5782 can play with regard to it.

Suggestion number 1: Love Israel. Now, I know that some of you already love Israel, and if you don’t, then my telling you to love it is likely to be about as successful as it was for me to tell my kids to love Brussels sprouts. So maybe I should amend my this and suggest instead that you appreciate Israel, and appreciate it deeply. (But in my heart of hearts, I really hope you can love Israel, too.)

Let’s remember that despite all the politics, and despite the ugliness we see about it in the news, the very existence of an independent Jewish state in our people’s ancient homeland is an astounding reality. As of 1948, for the first time in almost 2000 years, there is a country that lives according to the rhythms of Jewish time. Where Hebrew is the spoken language. Where not only the accountants and the bankers and the merchants are Jewish, but also the trash collectors and the custodians and the pickpockets, too. This has never been the case since the destruction of the Second Temple in the year 70!

Early Zionists – the dreamers and builders and organizers of the movement that would culminate in the creation of the State of Israel – disagreed about a lot, but the dream that most of them shared was of a country where any Jew could go to live in safety and security. Israel has never been completely secure, of course, but that dream of a country where Jews could live with their heads held high has largely become a reality. As soon as its war of independence ended in 1948, hundreds of thousands of oppressed Jews from Arab countries – Egypt, Morocco, Iraq, and others – moved to the relative safety of the fledgling Jewish state, and now their descendants number in the millions. In the 1980s, when famine struck the Jews of Ethiopia, there was a mass airlift of Jews from that country to Israel. After the fall of the Soviet Union, hundreds of thousands of its Jews were able to immigrate to Israel and build new lives there. Israel’s national anthem is Hatikvah – the hope – and the mere existence of this tiny country has indeed given hope to millions of Jews who might not otherwise have had it.

Think about it. Right now, because of Israel, you can get onto Netflix and download TV shows to watch at home…in Hebrew. A hundred and fifty years ago, such a thing would have been unthinkable, and that’s not just because back then there were no Net and no flicks, but more so because 150 years ago, there was no language called modern Hebrew. It didn’t get updated from its ancient form until around the turn of the last century. And even if the language had existed, the notion of dramas featuring Jewish people dealing with Jewish issues on Jewish terms wouldn’t have been seen as marketable back then. Culturally speaking, many Jews felt they had to hide in the corner back then, coming out into the open only after first shedding anything that made them openly and distinctively Jewish.

But now, with Israel on the map, that’s no longer the case. Israel has played a huge role in revitalizing Jewish culture everywhere. Jews everywhere now walk with their heads held a bit higher than they did before 1948, and among those we can thank for this is Israel.

And let’s remember, Israel’s existence isn’t a given, certainly not in its current form, and if things had gone just a little differently at countless points along the way, history could have turned out very, very differently. For example, the person who put modern Zionism on the map starting in the 1890s was the renowned, dashingly charismatic journalist, Theodore Herzl. Herzl, however, while Jewish, wasn’t a very religious man, and his vision of the Jewish state wasn’t very…well…it wasn’t very Jewish. The country he foresaw would be a state for Jewish people, of course, but he seemed to envision it as a western-style democracy, one whose citizens would speak European languages and whose government would operate similar to other western democracies thriving at the time.

In fact, he almost accepted an offer from the British to build the Jewish homeland in Uganda rather than the land of Israel. Wouldn’t that have been a different turn of events. And interestingly, the British official who brought Herzl the Uganda offer was the Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, the very same man who coined the term, “May you live in interesting times.” Interesting times, indeed.

Similarly, Israel’s existence has been threatened over and over and over again since its creation, and were it not for the skill of Israel’s diplomats, the bravery and devotion of its soldiers, and the resolute commitment of its populace, not to mention the support of worldwide Jewry, the state might not exist right now. And without it, Jews from Arab lands, Jews from Ethiopia, Jews from former Soviet Union, and others might be faring far worse now than they actually are. And, without it, the efflorescence of art, culture, scholarship, and Jewish life represented by the modern State of Israel wouldn’t have come about.

Israel’s existence is not a given. It needs the ongoing commitment of us all in order to continue to thrive and flourish. I can’t make you love it. But I can remind you of its significance and of its primary role in making this a golden age for worldwide Jewry. And I can hope you love it, because it is indeed an awesome development in the history of our people – one that I love very, very much.

Suggestion #2 is that you criticize Israel – at least when it needs and deserves criticism.  You probably know that Israel has plenty of supporters both within its borders and beyond who say that we in the Diaspora are in no place to disparage the acts of the Jewish State because we don’t live there. “It’s the Israelis’ necks that are on the line,” they argue, “not yours. And if you want to complain about what they do, move there first.”

However heartfelt that argument might be, it’s also a silly one. Israel has always described itself as the Jewish state, and as a Jewish state, all of us – both those who live there, and those bound to it by the bonds of history and love that connect us all – have a stake it what happens there. Yes, we need to defend Israel against threats to its existence, and this is precisely why we need to criticize it sometimes, for there are moments when those threats come from within its borders and from the actions of its own citizens, as well as from its enemies abroad. What? Are we supposed to defend Israel only from its external enemies, but not from its internal ones? To do so would be utterly hypocritical.

For example, let’s look at the violence that happened not long ago in Gaza. Hamas fired rockets toward Israeli towns, most of which, thank God, the Iron Dome defense system was able to intercept. Israel fired back with rockets of its own, many of which hit their targets, and some of which, tragically, killed civilians in the process. We can argue about individual targets, and about some of the details of Israel’s tactics, but many people throughout the world would deny Israel the right to defend itself, arguing that Israel should have just let Hamas kill its soldiers and civilians without responding at all. Such criticism effectively calls Israel to stand by while terrorists murder its civilians. It’s a criticism that’s unfair, and often downright antisemitic.

However, it is also true that Israel’s continued occupation under military rule of the lands it conquered in 1967 played a significant role in creating the atmosphere that led to this violence. The collective hands of the Arabs are far from clean, of course, but Israel could have done more to foster a commitment to peaceful coexistence than it actually did. Since 1967, there have been countless human rights violations in those territories, and Israeli policies of settlement of those lands have deepened the conflict at the very time that Israel could have taken steps to quiet it. Israeli steps toward peace won’t work without Arab cooperation, of course, but Israel could have done more in recent years to take those steps. And now, with a new government in place, let’s hope that this is what happens.

The point, however, is that people who love Israel should criticize Israel when they see the state doing unwise things. Holding our tongues – not criticizing – on the other hand, isn’t love, it’s just being a doormat. When my kids do things they shouldn’t (not that they ever do), they’re going to hear from me about it. They’re going to hear from me because I love them and I care about them. Now that they’re adults, they’re also going to do what they want, of course, but I wouldn’t be a loving father if I didn’t share what I think. My love for them is forever; that’s why I sometimes do what I can to knock some sense into them. The same is the case with Israel.

So, suggestion number one is to love Israel, and suggestion number two is to criticize it. But suggestion number three is the most exciting one of all, and it’s one that a few of your fellow congregants and I are going to help you keep. Suggestion number three is that you go to Israel.

So much of what we know about the Jewish state is what we see on TV, but what we see on TV are only the bombs and the violence and the conflict. Anybody who has been to Israel, however, knows that Israel is far more than that. In fact, with respect to daily life, very little of Israel is bombs and bloodshed. Instead, Israel is kids going to school every day, and moms and dads going into the office. Israel is Saturdays off and Sundays as a regular workday. Israel is walking outside the Old City in Jerusalem, picking up a handful of dirt from your path, and finding several shards of centuries-old pottery sitting on your palm. Israel is going to the Western Wall, rolling your eyes at the medieval excesses of ultra-Orthodox Jews, only to realize a moment later that you are standing at a spot hallowed by thousands of years of Jewish history. Israel is debates between its political left and its political right over what to do with the occupied territories and how to treat its Arab minorities. Israel is Yad Vashem, the largest Holocaust memorial in the world, and Israel is three-year-old kids whose Hebrew is far better than most of ours ever will be. Israel is falafel and hummus and kosher hamburgers at McDonalds. Israel is the bright colors of its southern desert, and the beautiful hues of the Galilee in the north. Israel is the only country where its basketball play-by-play features commentators saying things like “…and Schwartz passes to Goldstein, who feeds it back to Rabinovitch, who lays it up for the score!” Israel is archeology, and modern Jewish life, and a sense of Hatikvah – the hope for the future – all sitting side by side.

Israel is all these things and more. And in just over a year, we’re going to go there together. In a trip led by me, by Jeff and Helen Faber, and by Peter Driftmier, we are going to travel to this old-new land of our people, and we’re going to experience it for ourselves. We’re going to see its sights, we’re going to meet its people, we’re going to eat its food, and then we’ll eat some more of its food. We’ll experience Shabbat in the homes of Israeli citizens. We’ll go to safe areas of the occupied territories, and meet with Palestinians and with Israelis from both the political left and the political right. We’ll have some of those glorious Israeli breakfasts, and we might even sip some of its delicious wine. And those of us who go, will come back and share with our fellow Temple members some of what we learned and experienced while we were there. And you know what? We might even deepen our friendships along the way.

Helping us plan this trip is Rabbi Don Goor, a colleague of mine who currently lives in Israel and works with congregations through Daat World Travel to plan excursions such as this. (By the way, Rabbi Goor’s first pulpit as a student rabbi was here at Temple B’nai Tikvah during the 1980s.) The trip will take place in October of next year, and you’ll be getting details about it soon. I hope you’ll come with us to Israel – it promises to be the experience of a lifetime!

We live in a time in which there exists for the first time in millennia, an independent Jewish state in the ancestral homeland of our people. It is a magnificent, flawed, exciting, fearful, spectacularly scenic, and absolutely infuriating place, and I thank God that we’re here to be a part of it. It is partly because of the State of Israel that we do live in interesting times – extraordinary ones, even. Let’s support one another as we love Israel and criticize Israel, and next fall, let’s go there together. Doing all these things is the way we make the hope real.

Shanah Tovah

Rosh Hashanah Morning Sermon – 2021/5782

By Rabbi Mark Glickman

You should know that, in preparation for these Days of Awe, I usually try to write my sermons at least three to four weeks in advance. Please keep that in mind as you listen to my sermon this morning:

Welcome back, everybody! Isn’t it great for us all to be sitting together here in our sanctuary again?!?!?  There were people who doubted that we’d make it back together for in-person worship on these Days of Awe, but we showed them, didn’t we?  It’s been a long, hard pandemic for us all – thank God that’s over! 

Sadly, of course, that’s not where we are right now. We were hoping – really hoping – to be back together in person this year, but rising virus numbers, not to mention the stubborn refusal on the part of many of our neighbours to get vaccinated, has rendered that impossible. Next year, we pray, things will be different. This year, we’re playing it safe, and most of us are at home.

I don’t need to tell you that this has been one hell of a year. You know it as well as I do. Thankfully, most of us in our congregation were able to avoid the virus, but some of us got sick. Most of us know people who contracted it, many of us lost friends and family members, and all of us have suffered. We stayed at home – some of us with our loved ones, and some of us all by ourselves.  As we did, we developed new tools to do our work and our errands, often gaining newfound technical expertise we never dreamed possible. We discovered novel techniques to fill our days. We postponed vacations. We put off visits with family and friends. Parents of small children worked as never before to keep their kids active and engaged. Children of aged parents strove to make sure their loved ones were doing OK and staying connected. The economy constricted, and we all felt its pinch – some of us quite severely. Many of us had the financial and emotional resources to prevent the pandemic from hurting very much; others found the whole thing overwhelming.

And for many of us, the worst part was the isolation – not being able to get together with friends, not being able to celebrate events with other people, needing instead to stay home and isolate. We used replacement activities, but they left us wanting. A Zoom Bat Mitzvah? An online Bris? A funeral without handshakes and hugs? How have such things been possible?

I don’t know, but we made them happen. Some of us – the introverts – might have even enjoyed the alone time in some ways. But along the way, we all had difficult days. We all struggled with the many challenges that that nasty little virus imposed upon our lives.

What a year it has been. And even though we’re not out of the woods yet, it’s important to remember that there are ways in which things aren’t as bad today as they were at this time last year. Now, kids are in school. Now, carefully, we can go shopping. Now, we can even go to Shabbat services in person. And now, thank God, we have a vaccine.

The thing is that, having taken these initial steps to emerge from the gloom, none of us is the same as we were before, for this year has transformed us, changed us. Collectively and individually, we’re different now. Some of the changes have been good. We’ve seen the fragility of human life as never before, we’ve beheld the awesome potential of scientific inquiry and experimentation to better our lives, we’ve grown sensitive to the needs of others. Some of the changes, on the other hand, haven’t been as desirable. We’ve used chemicals to numb our pain, we’ve allowed our fear to make us prioritize selfish needs over shared ones, and some of us have grown very, very grouchy.

Of course, we are far from the first people – and certainly far from the first Jews – to have had to endure suffering. And as I look to the future on this Rosh Hashanah, I’m reminded of the experiences of one particular Jew of the past, and of how his encounter with pain – his own pain and that of others – might be instructive for us today.

The man I’m referring to was named Yochanan bar Nafcha, a Talmudic sage from the third century CE. A kind and erudite man who led the rabbinic academy in the city of Tiberias, Rabbi Yochanan was renowned for being healthy and physically beautiful for most of his life, which is said to have lasted for more than a century. If anyone back then had published a Rabbis-of-Ancient-Palestine calendar, Yochanan would have been its cover-rabbi.

At one point, a student of Rabbi Yochanan’s – Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba – fell ill, and Rabbi Yochanan went to visit him. Sitting at the bedside of his ailing student, Rabbi Yochanan said, “Is your suffering dear to you?” In other words, “Some people say that suffering is a good thing in the end – that it strengthens person, and that it eventually bears its own rewards. Do you agree? Is this pain what you want?”

Rabbi Hiyya’s response from his sickbed was clear. “I welcome neither this suffering nor its reward,” he said. In other words, “This isn’t what I want – not at all. People who glorify suffering probably haven’t had to do it themselves. There is nothing good about pain, and, given the choice, I’d opt out.”

Now, if you were Rabbi Yochanan, what would you have said at that point? How would you have responded to Rabbi Hiyya’s pain and despair. Rabbi Yochanan could have said, Buck up, old boy. You’ll get through this before you know it. Don’t worry, it’s not so bad. After all, who said you’re always supposed to be healthy in the first place? Just bear with it and don’t be a wuss.

Rabbi Yochanan, however, didn’t say any of those things. Instead, all he said was, “Hav li yadcha. Give me your hand.”

Rabbi Hiyya, the Talmud says, gave his hand to Rabbi Yochanan, whereupon the ailing Rabbi Hiyya stood up, and was healed.

From Rabbi Yochanan, unlike from this rabbi who stands before you here today, there were no sermons – no moralizing, no attempts at deep spiritual insight or scintillating lessons. Instead, just he just uttered three words: Hav li yadcha, “Give me your hand.” That’s all it took to heal his student.

Now, the skeptics among you might dismiss this as smacking of the faith healing you can see on TV sometimes: “Watch me place my hand over a tumor and rid this woman of terminal cancer…and please me send your money.”

But I encourage you not to be so skeptical. Because in my work, I have been blessed to see this type of healing happen over and over and over again. A member of our congregation visits an old man unable to leave his home, and after the visit, the old man sits up straighter and speaks more strongly than before, his isolation having vanished during the visit, some of his precious his vitality returned. A brother and a sister who just lost a close friend come to services to say Kaddish, and afterwards, members of our congregation hug them to provide comfort. The hugs don’t alleviate all the pain, but they sure make it more bearable.

Once, Caron and I visited a friend – a woman in her 40s in a nursing home suffering from brain cancer. We walked into her room, and found her sitting in a wheelchair, a glazed look in her eyes, barely responsive. Immediately, I prepared to slip into sermon mode – to say something very insightful and brilliant. Before I could say a word, however, Caron looked our friend in the eye, and said, “Jean, can I put some lotion on your hands.” Jean nodded yes; Caron put lotion on her hands. And for those few fleeting moments, even though Jean couldn’t speak, it was clear to me that she found a sense of peace that would otherwise have eluded her.

Hav li yadcha. Give me your hand. What words in any language could be more healing?

My friends, you are my greatest teachers of this truth. I have seen you practice it with each other and show it to other people almost every day during this crisis. You have visited. You have called. Physically or in spirit, you have sat beside those in need. You have taken the hands of other people, and the healing that has resulted has been nothing short of miraculous. You have shown me time and again that the greatest healing can come from the simple act of being present to those who need us, and taking their hand in yours.

Sometime after Rabbi Yochanan’s visit with Rabbi Hiyya, Rabbi Yochanan himself fell ill. And while he was laid up, one of Rabbi Yochanan’s students – a man named Rabbi Hanina – came for to see him. “Is your suffering dear to you?” Hanina asked Rabbi Yochanan. Is this suffering a good thing in the end? Is this pain what you want?

The question sounded vaguely familiar, and so was his answer. “I welcome neither this suffering nor its reward,” Yochanan said. Just like his student, Rabbi Hiyya, Yochanan himself found no redeeming value in his suffering. Just pain and misery.

You can probably predict what Rabbi Hanina said to his ailing teacher. “Hav li yadcha. Give me your hand.” Rabbi Yochanan gave his hand to his student, Rabbi Hanina, and promptly was healed.

The caregiver himself needed care. He had been there for his students when they needed him, and now he was the one in need. As I picture the situation, I imagine that Rabbi Yochanan might have been reluctant to have to be in this position. He was supposed to be the one attending to others, not demanding their attention. In all likelihood, I’m sure he felt exactly the same thing as many of you have said to me this past year. “Yes, this is really hard, Rabbi,” you’ve said, “but I know other people have it even worse, so I shouldn’t complain.”

When you’ve said that to me, I’ve wanted to respond “What – you think that the fact that they’re suffering means that you can’t? Don’t worry,” I’ve wanted to say, “there’s plenty of torment to go around for all of us these days.”

Even when we are taking care of other people, sometimes we need care ourselves, and that’s OK. In fact, sometimes we need that care especially when we’re attending to others. And when we see other caregivers around us doing their sacred work, one of the greatest things we can do to attend to their needs – the needs of the givers.

Here too, you are my greatest teachers. Over the course of the past year, I have received many calls from members of this community checking in with me. Sometimes, these were congregants I barely knew. “Rabbi,” they said, “you spend so much time taking care of us, I wanted to call to see how you are doing.”

Thank God, I was doing OK when they called, but the kindness they showed in reaching out to me was truly and inspiration. If I’ve succeeded in showing you kindness during these months (as I hope I have), that success is due in large part to the sacred model that they’ve set for me.

Care for the caregivers, and don’t let your own concern for others numb you to your own needs. These lessons, too, we learn from Rabbi Yochanan.

But his story doesn’t end there. In time, another one of Rabbi Yochanan’s students grew ill – this time it was Rabbi Elazar – and Rabbi Yochanan went to visit him, too. Yochanan walked into the dark room; he sat beside his student; he reached out his hand to the ailing Elazar. And as he did so, Rabbi Yochanan’s sleeve rode up his arm a little, and, the Talmud tells us, a light shone off his skin that filled the whole house with its brightness. (Remember, Yochanan was one beautiful guy!)

Elazar looked up at Yochanan, and began to weep, and this time, Yochanan did respond with words. “Why are you weeping, Elazar? Is it because you haven’t studied enough Torah? Is it because you haven’t earned enough money, or because of the suffering of your children?”

“No,” Elazar said, looking at his teacher. “I’m weeping because I see your beauty, and I know that one day, it will decompose in the earth.” Evidently, Yochanan’s beauty reminded Elazar of human mortality. All human lives come to an end – Elazar’s own life would soon conclude, and eventually, even a man as beautiful as Rabbi Yochanan would die, too. That’s what brought him to tears, and the Talmud tells us that Rabbi Yochanan wept with him. They held hands, and while for a time, Rabbi Elazar was restored to health, we know that eventually both men died, just as all of us will.

Rabbi Elazar wept when he saw the beauty of his teacher. Beauty has a way of doing that. And Rabbi Elazar wept when he realized that even this beauty would someday come to an end. Illness and death have a way of doing that, too.

Take a moment to reflect upon the people you know – the glorious lives that are part of yours. Think of the year we just had – the suffering, the learning, the death, the transformation, the magnificent beauty and terror of it all. All of it, everything and everyone we know, is so very fragile, and so very precious. And having gone through what we’ve just endured, sometimes all we can do is weep.

No, we are not the same as we were before. We’re different – wiser, stronger, sensitized, transformed. Life will always be different now on, and we’ve barely begun to realize how.

What we can say is that wherever we are in terms of this horrible pandemic, we remain in need of healing. We remain incomplete. We have yet to have restored ourselves to fullness.

And so, our hearts open in prayer. God, help us. We are grateful beyond words to have survived these past months, but we are still in need of healing. Help us, O God, to find insight. Support us as we strive to continue helping one another. Give voice to the truths we have learned and the need we have to hold one another’s hands.

O God, we pray, please, heal us now.

O God, we pray, please, heal us now.

O God, we pray, please, heal us now.

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.