From the Rabbi
Rabbi Robert L. Wolkoff
Previous Messages
“Twin Towers of Faith”
In a couple of weeks, at our annual Journal Dinner-Dance, we will celebrate Tifereth Israel’s 115th anniversary. The event will be held this year on Sept. 11, at the Sound View Restaurant. We will see many familiar faces, and we will remember those who are no longer with us. One of the strengths of our Jewish community in general, and one of the main reasons for its survival, is our memory. The People of the Book have a collective memory, and we continue to document historic events, both sad and happy. We recently commemorated the tragedy of the 9th of Av — the saddest day on our calendar, and just a few days later, on the 15th of Av, we celebrated the Holiday of Love — the happiest day on our calendar according to the Talmud’s Tractate Taanit (p. 30).
The Torah constantly commands us to remember many things. One example occurs in Parashat Vaetchanan in the Book of Deuteronomy when Moses commands the people to not forget what their eyes saw and to not forget what they learned from Mount Sinai. The commentator, Kli Yakar, says that if people forget their learning, they risk their lives because then God will forget them. The verse in Hosea (4:6) confirms that: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you, that you shall be no priest to Me; seeing you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.” Tractate Taanit then concludes that only a person who mourns for Jerusalem will be able to see its rebuilding. Like a good friend who will not invite you to his wedding if you didn’t visit him when he was sitting Shiva. If you do not take the time to acknowledge the low point of the destruction of the Temple — the house of God — you will not be able to experience the heights of the holiday of love.
As you know, our Journal Dinner-Dance this year will take place on Sunday, Sept.11. Before we can rejoice in our anniversary celebration, we will take the opportunity to remember those sorrowful moments 15 years ago. We will also welcome representatives of the first responders, and acknowledge our appreciation to them for the work they did then and continue to do now. Then we can move forward, can aspire to build closer relationships in our community and among the greater human family.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank our president, Alan Garmise, and his wife, Rochelle, this year’s synagogue honorees, for their hard work and energizing spirit. This is the first year Tifereth Israel is honoring a sitting president, but as I see it, since Alan never sits, the old tradition is maintained. Needless to say, my work as a rabbi can be done effectively only if there is an effective support system. With my background in organizational work, I recognize the quality of Alan’s labor and his dedication to our purpose. Of course, Alan would not be able to be an effective president without Rochelle’s support and her willingness to share the burden. One of the most important ideals Alan and Rochelle embody is an understanding of the words of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: “In Judaism, power must always be subordinate to purpose…the why matters more than the how.”
Please join us on Sept. 11 as we remember, build and celebrate.
—Rabbi Gadi Capela
“Imperfect Union”
Dear Members and Friends,
It was a great honor to share the stage with Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor at the Orient Annual Heritage Day on July 3. Her words, said on the little porch in front of the Old Point Schoolhouse on Village Lane, are still reverberating truth. The event took place shortly after last month’s vigils for the Orlando victims and before other terrible acts of hate occurred here in America and around the world. Speaking about America, Sotomayor said, “It’s not a perfect union yet.”
During my invocation, I mentioned that, for me, the United States is where different people come together to find a united cause. I also commemorated Dr. Elie Wiesel, who had passed away the previous day. For several years, I sat behind him at the Fifth Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan. Both of us being Levis, each year at the High Holidays, we would wash the hands of the Kohanim together. These were miraculous moments. I would think how amazing it was that we had come from different backgrounds, different generations, and yet we had come together, united in that place and time.
Wiesel, who died at the age of 87, was a Nobel Prize winner and a looming literary figure. He became a moral compass, one of the few people to keep the reality of the Holocaust a part of humanity’s collective memory. In one of his most famous speeches, he said: “The opposite of love is not hate; it is indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness; it is indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy; it is indifference. And the opposite of life is not death; it is indifference.” A result of hateful rhetoric against the Jews brought out the worst in many people — too many others were indifferent.
Recent events in this country and abroad, whether defined as terror or otherwise, were motivated by hate. Humanity still has a long way to go before we can once again call ourselves Adam — the one integrated human being, before he succumbed to the divisive cynicism of the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
All of this is magnified, of course, because we live in a time when we become immediately aware of events taking place around the entire globe. I often ask myself whether human beings are designed to know everything that is happening all over the world. As difficult as it is to process sometimes, I believe the answer is yes.
In the first chapter of Genesis, after God creates Adam — a male and female human being — He blesses them and says to them: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth…” Many commentators interpret this to mean to procreate and have as many children as possible. The Ramban takes a different approach. He says “to fill the earth” means to diversify, to divide into many nations in different parts of the world. Perhaps we could look at it another way. Could it mean that we should be aware of everything that is going on in the world. If this is the case, the world also fills us. In this relationship with the world, we decide how we let the world fill us and what rhetoric we fill ourselves with.
We have filled the world and diversified. We have also filled our awareness of the world through technology. In this time of political unrest in America and beyond, we need to be careful what we say. In this world, not knowing is not an option, and indifference is an option we can’t afford. The only option is to work on the imperfect union and try to become one Adam again.
God bless America.
—Rabbi Gadi Capela
“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints”
Dear members and friends,
“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.” (Ps. 116:15)
It’s been a week on an emotional rollercoaster. While we were celebrating the holiday of Shavuot — the time when we reaffirm the Ten Commandments in the synagogue, commemorating the highest point in humanity’s spiritual mountain of Sinai; while we were receiving the most fundamental law of the land for conducting a civil society, someone was making a point to desecrate the name of God. While we were announcing: “Thou shall not murder,” someone massacred 49 people, bringing us from the highest to the lowest — an act by a terrorized soul, a man who couldn’t make peace between his apparent homosexuality and his intolerant religious environment. How dark was his world to bring him to do such a thing?
It was impossible to avoid the symbolism, having just finished counting the 49 days of the Omer, the seven weeks from Passover to Shavuot. We take 49 steps from the great darkness of Egypt to the great light of the Torah in Sinai, a darkness we are commanded never to return to. Immediately upon leaving Egypt, Moses tells the Israelites: “…the Egyptians whom you see today you will never see again.” (Ex. 14:13) And again before his death, Moses cautions them: “…the Lord has warned you, you must not go back that way again.” (Deut. 17:16) Yet, there is always something or someone who tries to pull us back.
The Nazarite and the Priest
The Shabbat following the shooting, we read Parashat Naso, which discusses the Nazir and the Kohen — the Nazirite and the Priest. The Nazirite and the Priest are closely connected in the Torah. They are similar in some ways but different in others; essentially, they represent two different ways to deal with the complexities of life. The Torah tells us: “If anyone, man or woman, explicitly utters a Nazirite’s vow, to set himself apart for the Lord, he shall abstain from wine and any other intoxicant… Throughout the term of his vow as Nazirite, no razor shall touch his head… Throughout the term that he has set apart for the Lord, he shall not go in where there is a dead person…”
Much like the Nazirite, the Priest has to abstain from wine and touching a corpse; however, as opposed to the Nazirite, the Priest must always be groomed. The difference in the hair reflects their respective positions, one within the community and one to himself. While the Priest is constantly active in serving the community, the Nazarite is separated from the community, contemplating and introspecting. The Talmud, which dedicates a whole tractate to the study of Nazir, opens by explaining that a person who sees a sotah, a woman suspected of having an extramarital affair, should immediately take the Nazirite’s vow, abstaining from wine because excessive wine drinking surely caused the licentiousness.
Maimonides, in his Laws of Repentance, (Hilchot Teshuvah), explains that a person who sinned is obligated to cure himself by going to the opposite extreme, with the hope that this temporary extremism will bring him ultimately to the ideal middle path. Becoming a Nazirite is definitely extreme. As clergy and as communities, we are responsible to make sure to balance the Nazirite with the Priest. At Mount Sinai, the Israelites announced to God: “Na’aseh VeNishma”—we will do and we will listen! We will do like the Priest, and we will listen like the Nazirite. Upon witnessing such brokenness, we are obligated to become Nazirites for a minute — pause to contemplate, remember, hold vigils, and try to understand why. But we have to remember that “doing” comes first. Right after the vigils and moments of silence, we must return to being Priests, involved in the community and committed to action, committed constantly to climb the 49 steps from the darkness of Egypt to the light of Sinai. 49 steps with 49 names.
—Rabbi Gadi Capela
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