From the Rabbi
Rabbi Robert L. Wolkoff
Previous Messages
“Open The Gates with Wisdom”
As I’m writing this message, President Trump is wrapping up his trip to Saudi Arabia before flying (directly!) from Riyadh to Tel Aviv. The timing is most interesting — the President arriving in Tel Aviv on May 22, the same day that Israel celebrates a Jubilee—50 years since the unification of Jerusalem after the Six-Day War, which started on the 26th of Iyar (June 5, 1967). I was born into this reality, that even though Jerusalem has not yet been well integrated, still, both sides of The Temple Mount have been under Israel’s governance. Not only that, but 50 years earlier, in 1917, The Balfour Declaration permitted Jews to reestablish themselves politically in their land after 2000 years. Shouldn’t we consider this a miraculous blessing?
This Shabbat, in Parashat BeHar (in the Mount), the Torah speaks about counting the Shemita—the Sabbatical year that occurs every seven years — and then to count seven cycles of Sabbatical years. Accordingly, the 50th year becomes a Jubilee year, when all agriculture stops to allow the land to rest, when debts are forgiven, slaves are freed, and we surrender to the providence of God.
“And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants; it shall be a jubilee to you; and you shall return every man to his possession, and you shall return every man to his family.” (Lev. 25:10) This is a rest for the land, no matter who occupies it. Perhaps it makes sense, then, that when Mark Twain toured the land in the middle of the 19th century, he reported that the land was desolate.
As we are expected to count the Omer for seven weeks and celebrate Shavuot on the 50th day, to reenact receiving the Torah on the Mount, we are required to count 49 years and celebrate universal freedom in the land on the 50th. The Talmud discusses the difference between the two countings: Omer is a private counting, and Yovel is a public counting. Just as we privately climb the mountain of the Omer, we are required as a community to arrive at the top of the jubilee mountain. In both cases, we are expected to rest when we get to the top, not simply run back down. It is at that place that we take the time to contemplate the inequalities and injustices in the world. It is there that we trust God and let Him lead us. What should be the next door to enter?
Our evening prayer begins with the phrase, “Praised are you Adonai our God, who rules the universe, Your word bringing the evening dusk. You open the gates with wisdom, design the day with wondrous skill, set out the succession of seasons, and arrange the stars in the sky according to your will… You create day and night, rolling light away from darkness and darkness away from light….” Every night, we surrender our lives to God and say, “We trust You that You will lead us on the right path.” More importantly, we don’t want to miss the opportunity. The next opportunity in life, according to the cycle, may not reappear for 50 years.
Forgive me for not being cynical. I am a believer, and I believe that God puts opportunities in front of us that we may not have expected or chosen. This week I am praying that President Trump will build on the hard work of previous American Presidents, and that God will open the gates of mercy and peace with wisdom. “O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion, get thee up into the high mountain; O thou that tellest good tidings to Jerusalem, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid. (Isaiah 40, 9)
May we have a blessed new month.
—Rabbi Gadi Capela
“Forgetting is Not an Option”
More than 100 people celebrated the holiday of freedom with us this year — two Seders at our shul and two additional model Seders, one for the Greenport Ecumenical Ministries (GEM) and another at San Simeon By The Sound. Passover doesn’t mean only to pass over, but to pass over to our children the knowledge and, most importantly, the feeling, that freedom is a constant work.
Real freedom means to keep an order. Even free-spirit creativity needs order. Creativity without order is chaos. I’m often reminded of this concept when I download a new app on my phone. All of a sudden, the location of all the other apps shifts, and I have to learn the new order. That is why it’s important on Passover to change something and then ask, “Ma Nishtana” — what is the difference? That is why it’s important to know the apps and to recognize them, not just the order in which they appear. We don’t keep the order for the sake of order; we keep it for the sake of learning.
This time of year, we also commemorate the Holocaust. The juxtaposition is not accidental. The date was set to correspond with the start of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising: April 19, 1943, the 14th of Nissan, the eve of Passover — Seder night. The holiday of freedom inspired the Jews there not simply to ask, “What is the difference,” but to make a difference. The uprising failed at the time, but its message continues to reverberate today. In Israel, Holocaust Remembrance Day is called “Yom Hashoah Ve-Hagevurah,” which means “Day for the Holocaust and the Heroism.” The heroism refers to all the acts of resistance during those years, the biggest being the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto.
But since it would be inappropriate to commemorate this day at the same time we are celebrating Passover, the date was set as close as possible, on the 27th of Nissan — a week after the end of Passover. It is also a week before the State of Israel’s Independence Day, which is on the 5th of Iyar, just hours before the end of the British Mandate of Palestine on May 15, 1948.
It seems as though freedom and independence have a pattern. Consider the ancient Israelites, whom we remember on Passover. They eventually broke out of slavery, but many died in the darkness of Egypt. Others experienced years in the desert before gaining independence in the land of their dreams. Somehow, before breaking free, we go through deep darkness before arriving at “the promised land.”
At this year’s East End Jewish Community Council’s Holocaust Memorial Service, we heard Rabbi Sholom Friedmann, the director of the Amud Aish Memorial Museum, relay stories of spiritual resistance in the concentration camps when rabbis and observant Jews had to handle impossible situations while trying to adhere to Jewish law. For example, can someone sacrifice his or her life in order to save someone else? Or can one choke a crying baby in order to save the rest of the family in hiding?
We also listened to the moving story of Margo Lowry, a member of the North Fork Reform Synagogue, whose parents lost nearly all of their family and then their first child, but never lost their dignity and humanity. Margo concluded her story with the immortal words of Elie Wiesel, may his memory be for a blessing, that suggest that the first act of resistance is remembering: “Forgetting is Not an Option!”
In good hopes for the new month.
“The Sound of Freedom”
Dear members and friends,
It was nice to come back to Greenport, to budding trees and bushes. With Purim behind us and Passover ahead, it’s time for us to get ready for spring — to take off the Purim masks and begin clearing out the rising agent in our leavened selves. It’s time to remember how long the road to freedom can be and how hard it often is to navigate.
Passover is a holiday that connects generations. Although many Jewish generations were shaped by a common text, more importantly, they are shaped by the interpretation of each generation that raised them — each generation with its own challenges, each generation with only a short time to make its mark. In a Midrash on the Book of Ecclesiastes (1:13), the rabbis tell us that a person leaves this world without even half of his or her wants accomplished. Whenever I travel abroad, I’m reminded of this thought — how much we try to accomplish in such a short time.
We recently read in Parashat Ki Tisa (Exodus 32:19) about Moses going up to Mount Sinai to receive the tablets of Torah. While he was gone, the Israelites seemed to have betrayed their God by making a golden calf to worship. In response, Moses breaks the tablets; clearly, the Israelites are not ready to receive the word of God.
What should Moses have done when he found out what had occurred? Rashi quotes a Midrash that says Moses breaks the Tablets because he says to himself, “Receiving and eating from the Passover sacrifice, which is only one mitzvah in the Torah, is limited to those who are pure, here, when the Torah is like a bride,” so how can she be received by these sinners!?
What seems clear is that the tablets couldn’t be given to the Israelites just yet. However, Moses had other options. For example, he could have kept the Tablets for himself and the wise men on the mountain. God offers him a chance to forget about the people of Israel; God will start a new world with Moses. But Moses chooses to come down from the mountain and endure with his people. His message to his Israelite brethren is this: Even The Word of God, carved perfectly on stones from the top of Mount Sinai itself, is not an imitation for the real God!
Breaking the Tablets reflects Moses’s heartbreak and the disappointment of God. A Midrash says that God condoned Moses’s act. The lashes of freedom are no more hurtful than those of slavery, slavery to idols.
Freedom, as we learn on Passover, is also being together. Isolation is like being jailed. Moses decides to leave the Tablets behind and join his people. He proves the Mishpatim shebe’al peh, the oral Torah — that it’s not about revering the engraved words or images, it’s the reverent way we handle those words in every generation, and with all generations together.
There are times in life when we have to lift our eyes from the book and see life itself — life that we can’t control and in which we can’t accomplish everything. Therefore, we constantly have to make choices. Sometimes we have to make the choice to “break the tablets.” When I imagine the sound of breaking the Tablets, I hear an awful sound that goes beyond the limits of its noise. I hear Moses’s heartbreak. I hear the sound of the breaking of the matza. This year, as we break the matza, let’s also hear another sound that Moses wanted us to hear — the sound of not having to worship an engraved word. The sound of the broken tablets that is the sound of freedom.
A happy and free Passover to all.
—Rabbi Gadi Capela
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