From the Rabbi
Rabbi Robert L. Wolkoff
Previous Messages
“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
“49 days from Passover to Shavuot”
Dear Members and Friends,
As we count each day of the Omer from Passover to Shavuot, we are reminded of an essential (if not the most important) Jewish concept — learning to separate and set aside. We count 49 days from Passover to Shavuot, separating and setting aside each day. After all, that’s how God created the world — separating light and darkness, water from water, and six days from the seventh. So being godly is to know how to separate. But can we take it too far? Separation is a hard concept for the modern ear to hear, mainly because it’s often associated with discrimination. So where do we draw the line?
We recently read Parashat Emor, which takes this idea far. “The Lord spoke to Moses, saying ‘Speak to Aaron and say: Any man of your offspring throughout the ages who has any defect shall not be qualified to offer the food of his God… No man who is blind, or lame, or has a limb too short or too long. No man who has a broken leg or a broken arm, or who is a hunchback, or a dwarf, or who has a growth in his eye, or who has a boil-scar, or scurvy, or crushed testes… He may eat of the food of his God… but he shall not enter behind the curtain or come near the alter, for he has a defect.’” (Leviticus 21:17-23)
This is extremely strict, no doubt — setting aside only a particular class of people, all perfect. One of the oddities here seems to be that the perfection speaks only to the physical side of the candidates and nothing regarding their mental or spiritual qualities. In an age of pluralism, this seems to go against our grain. However, we can still see many places where similar practice is maintained. For example, joining elite units in the military requires one to be in perfect shape, in many cases still only men. In many religious institutions, Jewish and others, only a particular group is qualified to serve in the house of God. I was also reminded of this separation on my visit to Vatican City a few months ago when I observed the Swiss Guards surrounding the plaza. The most diverse detail about them was the color of their uniforms. Otherwise, they all seem to fit a similar frame.
One of the ideas behind this religious restriction relates to the Kohanim — the priests — who are sacrificing on behalf of the people; similar to the sacrifices, they themselves have to be perfect. Being less than perfect may give people the impression that their sacrifices are not being channeled perfectly. Being less than perfect may even affect the priests themselves who, when they bring the sacrifices, are aware of their own imperfections. They would feel awkward and would not be able to serve appropriately.
But what if the world came to a time when people would not feel awkward about being short or tall, black or white, man or woman? There will always be places where some type of uniformity should be maintained. (Would the Rockettes be so spectacular if they were not uniform?) But where it can, this should change. Can it change in the House of God?
I am writing this message while attending the annual convention of the Rabbinical Assembly of Conservative Judaism, this year taking place in Manhattan. Last night, we honored the class of ‘66 — rabbis who have been serving for 50 years. Representing the class was Rabbi Joel Meyers, who gave a compelling speech. On the stage behind him were sitting his distinguished classmates. All of them were pretty much the same age, pretty much all with facial hair and —you guessed right — they were also all men. My classmate Rabbi Dahlia Bernstein and I were quickly doing the math to determine when women would sit on that stage. If you are wondering, that will occur in 2035, 19 years from now; the first women were ordained in 1985.
The Torah does not contain punctuation. The difference between a Biblical verse and a grammatical sentence is that the former does not have a period. And there is a reason for that. It’s true that learning to separate is central to Jewish life and to living a holy life, but quoting a beautiful phrase: Let’s not put a period where God might have only intended for a comma. While Rabbi Meyers was speaking, I couldn’t avoid taking the photo accompanying this article. Equally as beautiful as his words were the faces of the little girls sitting on the stairs below wearing yarmulkes, looking up at him, looking up to their future.
Happy Lag BaOmer.
—Rabbi Gadi Capela
P.S. Look who I found at the convention…
Good friends get together…
Rabbi Myron Fenster and his wife, Ricky, met up with Rabbi Gadi at the Rabbinical Assembly of Conservative Judaism convention. Rabbi Fenster served our congregation during the four-year interregnum prior to Rabbi Gadi’s arrival.
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