From the Rabbi
Rabbi Robert L. Wolkoff
Previous Messages
“Back to School”
It had been raining all day last Thursday, but nothing could wash away my excitement. It was my first day back on campus after nearly a decade. The precipitation made me feel like a fish returned to the water. When I started at CTI, I was about to finish a second master’s degree at the Jewish Theological Seminary, this time in Modern Jewish Studies. But things got busy, and I was unable to complete the last two courses.
A perpetual student, I have been in and out of school most of my life. My August 31 birthday in Israel, where school always starts on September 1, provided my direction from the get-go. In second grade, I was already helping first graders. In college, it was a dual curriculum. A few years later, while working, I was back in school to get a master’s in Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy at Yeshiva University. And then rabbinical school. And another master’s. The past ten years have been the longest I’ve been away from an academic institution.
It was like a reunion — a few professors, the librarians, a couple of guards — I never forget a face. I saw an “Aviva” and an “Adam” that reminded me of my long-ago classmates. The campus was the same in some ways, different in others. JTS has gone through a major renovation and architectural changes; it is gorgeous. Déjà vu, but not quite. As Mark Twain famously said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.”
From my early days in New York City, I loved traveling uptown to walk around Columbia’s campus. The five years at JTS’s beautifully cloistered campus on the edge of Columbia University were a pleasure. As JTS students, we could use Columbia’s libraries and other facilities, and I used every opportunity to walk among the stately old buildings patterned after those of the Italian Renaissance, to stroll the tree-lined walkways that connect the many libraries, including the centerpiece — Low Memorial Library. The combination of a campus steeped in history yet imbued with young energy creates an academic electricity. It pushes one to want to be immersed in education.
Education is light. In the beginning, God said, “Let there be light…And God saw the light that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.” Education means to be brought out of darkness into the light. The Latin word “educare” means to bring out, to lead out. Out of darkness. It’s the theme of JTS — the Burning Bush that never fades — and it is the motto of Columbia in Psalm 36:10: “For with You is the fountain of life; in Your light we see light.”
The course I’m taking this semester is about the history of Jewish migration. Even though many times it was a forced migration, migration of humans is a natural phenomenon, like the migration of birds. The soul is like a bird that needs constantly to move, otherwise it dies in its cage. The wandering Jew is a metaphor for the learning spirit we possess.
The spirit of learning is the humility of the soul. Going back to school is a mindset, a way of life, a gym for the mind. Going back seems to say, “I am thirsty, I need to drink, please give me water.” I feel certain I’m going to do well. I’m hungry for knowledge and thirsty for wisdom. Keeping the mind wet and ready to be reformed, you always want to go back to school.
Happy month of Shevat, the month of growth.
—Rabbi Gadi Capela
“Rebel Rabbi”
This month, we lost an amazing man — Rabbi Elliott Spar. Elliott was a colleague, a friend, and a mentor. One of his children, Ari Spar, is a member of our shul. For almost four decades, he was the rabbi of the Temple Beth Shalom congregation in Smithtown, the same pulpit for his entire rabbinate. He retired here in Mattituck.
I first met Elliott as my student, when Dr. Don Russo and I began our Project Genesis interfaith lecture series at the Universalist Unitarian Church in Southold. I had heard his name, but I didn’t know that the balding, yarmulka-less man sitting in one of the back rows was Rabbi Spar. For several years, I resisted recording our lectures, an inadvertent inaccuracy on record forever.
Finally, I agreed to do it, but I was extremely nervous. Somehow, this man knew to come over to me a minute before the “cameras were rolling.” He introduced himself, and complimented me on my work and the interfaith initiative. In one second, my anxiety dissipated.
We became instant friends, and I came to understand that I was not dealing with an ordinary rabbi.
As described by other friends and colleges, Rabbi Spar was a maverick, anything but conventional and predictable. He was involved in interfaith before it was popular, inviting church groups to his services. At his grandson’s bar mitzvah at our shul three years ago, he surprised everybody by inviting a gospel singer with whom he had secretly practiced for months. He was also ahead of his time regarding women’s
participation in services, and also at officiating at same-sex marriages.
One of the stories told at the shiva for Rabbi Spar shocked me, but didn’t surprise me. The story concerned a bat mitzvah girl with whom he had traveled to Jerusalem. The morning of the event at the Kotel, he told her to dress up in pants, gather hair under a baseball cap, and put on a tallit. And there you have it — Spar’s version of Yentl celebrating her bat mitzvah in the men’s section.
Sometimes you need a rebel with a cause to move the wheels of progress forward. When the needs of the people are knocking at the gates of tradition, someone has to open the door. As the Talmud tells us in some famous halachik turning points, “See what the people are doing.” Sometimes you need to love tradition enough to change it.
Is it worth it to be rebellious? In many ways, you pay high prices for that. But being a rebel is an essence, not a choice. In fact, before his death, Elliott had just finished an autobiographical account titled Rebel Rabbi, which will be published soon. As readers will learn, he was able to be a rebel with respect to all. To be a rebel that brings about change is a talent. One of his assistants wrote that Rabbi Spar epitomized Rabbi Israel Salanter’s aphorism, “A rabbi whose community does not disagree with him is not a rabbi. A rabbi who fears his community is no mentsch.”
As a testimony to that, hundreds of people attended his funeral, and many more wrote letters and made calls to his family to express their gratitude. May his memory and courage inspire us for many years to come.
And may we all enjoy a peaceful 2023.
Rabbi Gadi Capela
“Finding the Holy in the Land”
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
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