From the Rabbi

All of us are guilty of romanticizing our past to various degrees. On the surface, it may seem silly to do so. Why should we attribute more hope to our past than our future? Surely, we set ourselves on a downward slope. Perhaps when our present is dark and our future is obscure, we believe a glimpse of light can shine through only in our yesterday.  In the words of John Lennon: “Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away…”

What if there were a place like that — some sort of a yesterday island? Would you want to live there? In fact, there is such a place. I first learned about Yesterday Island when I was researching a fantasy road trip from New York to Jerusalem. The only obstacle (ignoring all geopolitical elements) would be crossing the Bering Strait between Alaska and Chukotka, Russia. That part is passable only by way of a two-hour boat ride or possibly overland when the strait is frozen.

In the middle of the narrow strait, nearly kissing, are two small islands — Big Diomede on the Russian side, and Little Diomede on the American side. Since the International Date Line crosses in the middle, and although they are only 2.4 miles apart, there is a 20-hour time difference between them. They are often called Tomorrow Island and Yesterday Island. As in life, sometimes the difference between tomorrow and yesterday is a world apart, and the difference a day makes is between ancient history and a distant future. At times, progress propels us forward in retrograde motions that blur tomorrow and yesterday.

Significant progress in the world often happens because of technology — from symbols to alphabet writing, scrolls to codex, printing press to telecommunication, and now Zoom. Global communication accelerates it all. These past few weeks gave us a taste of that. While we were in the midst of events promulgated out of blunt racism, which keeps taking the entire global community back to yesterday, America sent a rocket into tomorrow’s space. Two steps forward, one step back. Sometimes in history, progress happens directly from yesterday to tomorrow. While the U.S. Supreme Court reached back to yesterday to rule against discrimination of the LGBTQ community, a situation many argued was already settled law, the court also gave a hopeful future to many immigrants who dared to “Dream.”

Perhaps this all means we are getting closer and closer to God. The tetragrammaton — the Hebrew name of God transliterated in the four letters YHWH, we articulate as Adonai,—is actually an acronym for Was, Is, and Will Be. What seems to be very far, as Yesterday Island, may not be that distant after all.

I wish Tifereth Israel’s new Board of Directors great success, with the hope that together we will learn to read correctly the signs of the time.

May we have a blessed month,

—Rabbi Gadi Capela

“Yesterday at 5 in the afternoon, we went with Mom to the grocery store, and on the way we saw that our kindergarten was closed. The swings standing between the tall trees, and the flowers seem so small and faded, because our kindergarten was closed…It isn’t very nice to see our kindergarten closed…” Every Israeli child born in and after the 1970’s knows by heart, like the National Anthem, the words to this Hebrew song, “A Closed Kindergarten,” by the Israeli poet, Jonathan Geffen. The kids that were used to seeing their kindergarten full of life never saw it sleeping. The children, not used to seeing their kindergarten in the afternoon, are surprised to see it so lifeless, even when they know it’ll be open again in the morning.

In Israel, of course, there have been various reasons over the years for schools to close, and not simply for the evening. Now, many children around the world share this notion. The closed kindergarten has become a metaphor for imagining new angles and new perspectives, in people, in places, in life.

Every time I pass by our shuttered synagogue, I think about this song. When stores or businesses renovate and put a sign, “Temporarily out of service” or “Forgive our appearance while we renovate,” they mean to say that it’s temporary, that we’ll be back better and stronger. This is only a sleep, a rest, a break — a necessary phase in any place that wants to grow. Even our bodies will get tired at certain points, and we will have to sleep.

We are in the season of reading about the Shmita, the 7th year of sabbatical for the land, and the Jubilee, the 50th year of an overall cessation in the land, a forgiving of debts, a time of reflection, and Cheshbon Hanefesh, a soul searching self-examination. Counting the 49 days of the Omer and resting on the 50th to receive the revelation of the law in Sinai on Shavuot is a similar process. It is such a monumental event that it requires a break, a time for contemplation.

But life continues in some capacity, even while access to the kindergarten, the school, or the shul is unattainable. In our case, we are maintaining all of our scheduled rituals, classes, and meetings, albeit virtually. This is actually what the Jewish people have been doing for the last 2,000 years. Since the destruction of the Holy Temple, we have been keeping a “virtual Temple” through “placeholders” of mitzvoth and rituals. Some mitzvoth that are Temple-bound, such as the sacrifices, or mitzvoth that are land-bound, such as Shmita, were still recognized through prayers and counting, despite the absence of the Temple and exile from the land. It was as if to say, “We are closed for renovation and self-reflection, but we will return one day.”

To redeem the situation and the sacrifice we are making during shutdown, we need to recognize the new opportunities that this time presents. The reality afterward needs to be much better, not just simply a return to “normal.” This year, for instance, most likely we will hold High Holiday services virtually. This provides an opportunity to customize our High Holidays, perhaps share them with more people around the world. The building is closed, but the whole world has opened. We can start to begin again. Imagine.

Being out of service is not always bad. Out of service is the Shabbat that gives us the opportunity to rejuvenate and to begin anew. “In the beginning…,” like another famous start, it was chaos, a long period of incredibility, and then a new world was created. In his collection of songs titled The Sixteenth Lamb, which includes “A Closed Kindergarten,” Jonathan Geffen also wrote “How is a Song Born?” And he concludes, “…like a newborn baby, in the beginning it hurts, then it comes out, and everyone is happy…”

Chodesh Tov and Chag Shavuot Sameach.

—Rabbi Gadi Capela

In his book, Who Moved my Cheese, Spencer Johnson, MD, describes four different ways to deal with an unexpected change in life. He introduces four small fictional characters — two mice and two little people, who know where to get their cheese. One day, the cheese is moved. The four characters, like the four children in the Haggadah, are asking “Ma Nishtana?” What has changed? Now they have to find a new way in the maze of life. According to Dr. Johnson,  the four characters are parts of all of us. Sometime we may act like Sniff, who sniffs out change early, or Scurry, who scurries into action. Hem denies and resists change as he fears it will lead to something worse, and Haw, who learns to adapt in time when he sees  that change may lead to something better.

In his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell describes the Hero’s Journey. Essentially, he teaches, there is one story in all religions, mythology, and super heroes: separation, initiation, and return. Protagonists live their lives in a wasteland — a reality they don’t fit in — and they hear a call to leave. They may be reluctant at first, but eventually they are thrust into the new reality, either by choice or by force. The earlier they adhere to the call, the easier the shift becomes. What holds them back is fear of the unknown. Once they go through the separation, they find themselves in a foreign place. Now they encounter the fear of a new beginning.

Once they cross the threshold, they discover helpers as well as challengers that will accompany them through many trials until the moment of initiation. They will no longer resist the new phase, but will be comfortable with it, master it, and even enjoy it — what Campbell calls apotheosis, climax; what Judaism calls riding the donkey. What’s left now is for the characters to return. Like the prophet Jonah, they will pass through the belly of the whale in order to be born anew and come back with new knowledge, a new message, or an answer — Teshuvah (repentance).

Some people never complete this circle, and some will do it multiple times. They will learn how to be born again and again, following Abraham our patriarch.

It seems as though all of us are now caught somewhere in-between Spencer’s cheese and Campbell’s Hero. Within the confusion, a new reality is upon us. Someone has moved the global cheese. Now it’s up to us to be the heroes for ourselves and for others, initiating a new reality. We are learning to be home, to care for each other. “And He shall judge between many peoples, and shall decide concerning mighty nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig-tree; and none shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken.” (Micha 4:3-4)

I would like to thank and applaud the many heroes in our congregation: Dr. Alice Nadel, Dr. Lewis Teperman, and Dr. Elana Sidney, who work directly with coronavirus patients, and also our members who daily offer their love and concern to congregants and community friends isolated at home. May God bless you and guard you, May God shine His face upon you and be gracious to you. May God lift up his face to you and give you peace!

Chodesh Tov,

—Rabbi Gadi Capela