From the Rabbi

The period of seven weeks, from Tisha B’Av to Rosh Hashanah, is the time allotted to us to rebuild and start anew. This year is different. Even the rock bottom of Tisha B’Av is still wobbling and not stable enough on which to build. Perhaps this is the meaning of the opening of Psalm 24: “The earth is the Lord’s and all that it holds, the world and its inhabitants. For He founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.” Like many rabbis, I decided to dedicate these seven weeks to preparing for the High Holidays and to talking about them to my students and congregants. So what message is appropriate for this year?

Rosh Hashanah is naturally associated with the beginning – the first covenant, with Abraham. This gave birth to the idea of dedicating each of the seven weekly Lunch and Learn sessions to one of the three patriarchs or four matriarchs — Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah. Perhaps we can find a message there. What guided each of them and propelled them to perpetuate their relationship with God and to build the Jewish people?

So far we’ve discussed Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac. One of the clues about their journey is that they lived their lives with a sense of mission. They, and therefore we, believe in a destination — going from one point to another. Even if that point is allusive, we continue forward. Furthermore, our forbearers teach us that, as each of them, each of us has a unique covenant, a unique conversation with God. It is up to each of us to trod our own mysterious path.

As we begin the month of Elul, the month of repentance — Teshuvah — “I return to My beloved, and My beloved returns to me.” As we read in Isaiah 54, the Haftarah for the fourth week of consolation leading to Rosh Hashanah: “For the mountains may move and the hills be shaken, but my loyalty shall never move from you, nor My covenant of friendship be shaken —  said the Lord, who takes you back in love.” Basically, the covenant with God is a marriage that may experience a period of separation but will never result in the breaking of the matrimony.

In the next four weeks, we will continue to explore the paths of the matriarchs and patriarchs, to study the contribution each offers to the Jewish continuum and, moreover, how each shows us how to view our own individual contributions. Once a year, we see an ingathering of all types of Jews — the Abrahams, the Sarahs, the Isaacs, the Rebeccas, the Jacobs, the Leahs, and the Rachels. We welcome them all.

This year, we will celebrate the holidays mainly online. With the help of God and Zoom, we will overcome the inherent obstacles, and enjoy the benefits of expanding our space. And although we will meet differently, we will still meet to affirm our covenants — all of them.

Looking forward to seeing all of you with us in the new year — 5781.

Shana Tova.

—Rabbi Gadi Capela

On May 31, the media announced the passing of Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm. Rabbi Lamm was the iconic president of Yeshiva University, beginning in 1976, and he went on to become chancellor in 2003, serving in that capacity for the next 10 years. In an incredible bit of timing, the very next day, on June 1, the Jewish Theological Seminary announced its pick for a new chancellor to succeed Dr. Arnold Eisen, who had served in that role for 13 years. Dr. Shuly Rubin Schwartz, who started her tenure in the beginning of July, is the first woman to occupy the office. The timing of the passing of one chancellor and the appointing of another stirred me to look closely into the two, as they represent the two flagship Jewish educational institutions in America — two denominations, two genders, yet both tell the Jewish story. I was privileged to be part of both.

In January 1997, I sat in at my first Talmud class at Yeshiva University. It was a life-changing move from secular life for me. Growing up, I had studied the Bible in school, but this was different; this was Torah. It was not studying anymore; it was learning. Chancellor Lamm was then the president. He was eloquent and wise, and he left an indelible impression on me. I didn’t really understand what he was preaching; it went over my head. At that time, I was just beginning my learning and still surveying my way through the tenants of Torah and Judaism and where I fit in. I wasn’t informed enough to absorb his philosophy, but I knew that he knew.

As many students in orthodox yeshivot, I learned the beauty of following a rabbi, trusting that he knows. Rabbi Lamm, who had a Chassidic flavor, was focused on the Yeshiva, while having to defend it from the right, remaining true to the synthesis of a yeshivah with a progressive, modern university. When I finally understood the convincing philosopher with the soft voice, I totally bought into the ideas, and I still do. Yeshiva University was established to create a modern orthodoxy, responding to the Judaism that focused only on the particular and that mainly looked inward. The Torah Umadda philosophy tried to balance Torah learning in the yeshiva, and the Madda — sciences in the university. Torah is particular to the Jewish people — revelation, while sciences are universal — creation. This philosophy, which embodies the idea of the “light unto the nations,” fashioned my Judaism.

In August 2008, I was sitting in at my first Talmud class at the Jewish Theological Seminary. It felt different. It was quite a move from Yeshiva University. While women and men study separately and shomer negiah (don’t even shake hands) at YU, at JTS it was all egalitarian, all equal. It was the way I lived my own life, except when it came to worship. It felt out of place to pray next to a woman. Here too, it is all about marrying the universalism of the sciences and the particularism of Torah, but perhaps in an inverted way. Progressive modernism is a given, but the Torah must provide the answers on how to balance the two. The challenge here is to defend from the left.

The two schools, both of which were founded in 1886, reacted in their own spirit over the decades to the challenges of the times. While YU reacted to ultra-Orthodoxy, JTS reacted to the Reform Movement which, in that view, was consistently marginalizing Jewish particularism; the “Trefa Banquet” — the non-kosher feast — in its first rabbinic ordination in America was the last straw. The two were much closer when they were founded, but grew further apart in the middle of the 1980’s. While JTS began ordaining women, YU was moving toward “black hat” orthodoxy in its Yeshiva side. Both had to deal with the place of women and ultimately with the question of homosexuality. By ordaining LGBTQ rabbis and now choosing Dr. Shuly Rubin Schwartz as the next chancellor, JTS had come full circle in response to both questions.

Perhaps polarization is a natural movement of finding your own, like-minded people. But I vacillate between the two chancellors. Both represent true communities that ultimately share the same story. It was not the invention of language, but the invention of the story that moved humanity ahead, and it would be both leaders who would keep moving the Jewish story forward.

In this month of Av, let’s hope the Jewish people find commonality between the two chancellors, and that they can build together. Let’s find the balance between revelation and creation to find redemption.

Chodesh Tov,                                                                                     —Rabbi Gadi Capela

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