From the Rabbi

 Last Friday, I returned from Israel with a small group of our congregants. During the trip, we took our time strolling throughout the land. It was a beautiful and intimate experience I am still savoring. Those who travel to Israel for the first time often are surprised to discover how hustling and bustling it is. Serious yet buoyant. The Biblical land is hidden under many layers of highways and new high-rise buildings popping up everywhere. The political landscape is also hectic and ever-changing, with elections looming every minute. This time, too, I arrived on the day of the election, and left with the group just a couple of days after the new Knesset was sworn in. Israel is like a cut diamond that can be seen from many angles, and the holiness is a natural resource to be mined. It’s under the surface. Everywhere.

I arrived back in the U.S. just a few days before taking my citizenship oath. Growing up in Israel, in our home, we had a tapestry wall rug of President John F. Kennedy that my mother had brought back with her after spending two years as a student in California. It was right at the time of his assassination. She also witnessed the discrimination of Blacks and Jews. Nevertheless, my mother always spoke favorably about America, holy in many ways. My experience was similar, from the moment I arrived at JFK airport 27 years ago, even through the loudness and commotion, I heard something in my heart that said I was home — something felt holy before I even knew what holy was. Over the years, I learned that this land is also a holy land that hides under many layers of apparent restlessness.  Serendipitously, I took the oath on November 22, the day of JFK’s assassination.

The Shabbat before the group arrived in Israel, I spent with my parents in Rehovot, my beloved hometown, where they still live. It was Shabbat Lech Lecha, when Abraham is commanded to leave his father’s home and journey to a new land that God will show him. Sitting with my father at the Yemenite synagogue and chanting the Torah portion from the scroll felt like home again but, at the same time, I realized that my journey brought me here to America, which is my home now. I linked my destiny with this land.

Yet, the citizenship oath I took here just a short while later, did not move me. The ceremony, in fact, was anticlimactic. It wasn’t just because no confetti was released from the ceiling, but mainly because for me, this rite of passage has been evolving for many years; finally, the rite caught up to me. Many people have told me how happy they are that I became a citizen. It gave them a sense of pride that I chose to live in their land. I can relate to it because when I travel with people to Israel, I’m happy to share with them the land of my birth. Some, even upon their first arrival to Israel, share the feeling they have arrived home.

In both Israel and America, the holiness lies under the surface — that under the busy, hectic, and pursuit of the everyday, we are fortunate to live in a land that ultimately seeks to elevate itself and its dwellers. And therefore, during this totally American celebration of Thanksgiving, I reiterate the words that remind us that under the hustle and bustle and the political debates, there is a holy cause and a holy land, and I say again, “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

—Rabbi Gadi Capela

Fr. RTvrdik photo

Have you noticed that everything is moving faster these days…? A year feels like a month, a month like a week, and a week is a day. It was wonderful seeing everybody on the High Holidays. It was my 11th year celebrating with Congregation Tifereth Israel, but it felt as though we were there just a month ago.

On Yom Kippur this year, I was bestowing a blessing I called “May you Fast Forward!” — to be spiritually propelled forward through the short interval of self-denial. The common greetings are “May you have an easy fast,” or “May you have a meaningful fast.” I’m not a big fan of the former because the point is not to have an easy fast, but one that is meaningful. But besides being propelled forward spiritually, it also feels appropriate to be moving faster in time.

Isaiah 60 opens with “Arise, shine, for your light has dawned; the presence of the Lord has shone upon you!”  It closes with “The smallest shall become a clan; the least, a mighty nation. I the Lord will speed it in due time.”

The Internet definitely helps in the process of the speed of light; the words flying through semiconductors. A recent story from Israel demonstrates this idea. Forty-nine years ago, during the Yom Kippur War, a shofar and a tallit were found on the battlefield, identified only with initials. Search efforts were made all this time by a fellow soldier, but to no avail. Just before this year’s High Holidays, the fellow soldier’s grandchildren suggested posting it on social networks. Through multiple sharing of the post, 49 years of search came to an end in less than an hour and a half. The owner, whose survival status was unclear until that moment, was found and was reunited with his religious artifacts.

It is evident that humanity can neither predict nor fathom the future; we can’t even imagine it. And it comes to us faster and faster. When it’s time, God says, it’ll happen like a light, like something appearing out of nothing. Last Shabbat, we started once again to read Genesis — the word of God that created something out of nothing, the way we connect heaven and earth.

There are two different opinions regarding the final redemption. One predicts that we will build the Sanctuary of God with our own hands; the other predicts that it will come prepared from heaven. Surely, we can’t really know. Until recently, I was on the earthly side, perhaps the one more rational. But this year, reality made me expand my imagination. A few weeks ago, I officiated at a wedding in the synagogue’s garden. The young couple had made their own beautiful huppah out of simple birch wood. At the conclusion of the ceremony, the couple offered to leave it for me.

Overnight, the huppah became a Sukkah in my backyard. On the earthly side, it simply saved me the time and effort to build one. But on the heavenly side, a Sukkah, which is a sanctuary, came to me prepared. It felt like my own gift from heaven, a wedding gift in the marriage of heaven and earth, like a word, a light, appearing suddenly in one instance and creating a new reality. The Lord had speeded it in due time.

In the new year of 5783, may we all fast forward.

—Rabbi Gadi Capela

With the death and funeral of Queen Elizabeth II this week, hosts of people gathered around her coffin, waiting in never-ending queues just to get a glimpse of her majesty, even if just her spirit. It was the most watched event in human history.  The “queen of the world” had passed away. People saw her as a symbol of the Monarchy, but also as a mother and a grandmother, the head of a family deeply rooted in history. She was a constant in an ever-changing world who extended way beyond her entitlement. It’s hard to be cynical about this historic moment.

Surely, there are those who do not love what she stood for. Those who see The Crown as a symbol of a dominating power, exploiting other peoples through Imperialism and Colonialism. Even though the funeral was a religious service at a church, the processions and everything in between displayed military power. After all, the queen’s coffin was carried on a gun carriage to Westminster Abbey. It was in England in 1534 that King Henry Vlll, whom the Pope titled “The defender of the faith” for going against the recent Reformation, decided then to usurp the religious authority in his kingdom for himself by starting the Anglican Church. The opposite happened in ancient Israel with the Maccabees of the Hasmonean family, who were religious leaders but seized the kingship after their victories over the Greeks. They retained absolute power that inevitably brought absolute corruption.

So, what would Judaism have to say about royalty today? Jews have a complicated history with Britain, the first country to expel Jews from Western Europe in 1290. On the other hand, the State of Israel came out of the British mandate over Palestine. Shortly after the establishment of the State of Israel, my own family walked through Yemen to arrive at Aden, the British refugee city at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, to then be flown to Israel. Would Jews, who intimately experienced the double-edged sword of the Royal British Empire, still want the kingship of the Messiah that we pray for every day? Would we want it to resemble the British model?  Is it even possible to convince the future generation that it is beneficial?  Perhaps there is a different way to unify the people and create “sacredness of something.”

When the people of Israel demanded a king from the Prophet Samuel, he warned them that the sense of security they hoped to achieve through a Monarchy would cost them dearly. The king, Samuel explained, would want to increase horses, for instance, as a symbol of power and military. Because horses are expensive to keep, the king would increase your burden, take you and your children to serve him, essentially bringing you back to Egypt. Do you want that?

In November 2003, I was in London for a short business trip, and my parents flew from Israel to meet me. As it happened, it was the day the Queen officially opens Parliament. Queen Elizabeth, who favored horses, was leading the parade in her carriage, with rows and rows of stallions. This event, which is steeped in tradition, is reminiscent of the meticulous details required “in the service of the Jewish Temple,” everything majestically prescribed.  As much as I appreciate and love the pageantry, pomp and ceremony, I’m not sure I’d like it to come back this way.

For us, God is the King, and Shabbat is the Queen — no thing and no person in the middle. More than the Jewish people have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jewish people.  Long Live Shabbat the Queen!

Shana Tova U’mtuka.

—Rabbi Gadi Capela