October 2019
Scott Musoff: Yom Kippur 5780/2019
As my co-president Susan Arovis eloquently stated at Rosh Hashanah, we are truly blessed, privileged and honored to have our third opportunity to address this congregation over the High Holidays. I thought I would use this opportunity to talk about why a strong, vibrant and financially secure Kol Ami is so important to this community and beyond. In the margins of our regular green covered prayer books, appears a passage of Mark Twain’s Consideration of the Jew in which Twain says “the Jews constitute but one quarter of one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of.”
Why is that? I don’t purport to have a definitive answer but I sincerely believe that in the modern diaspora the answer lies at least in large part in robust, active, pluralistic synagogues like Kol Ami. Perhaps the best way to support that theory is based on the evidence around me — the evidence that I can see standing right here on the Bima.
I will start right behind me with the Torah scrolls sitting in our Ark. The Torah is rather unique in the history of the world’s civilizations. In one place, we have the blueprint for an entire society. Part history — known as the greatest story ever told; part constitution and set of laws to govern society – there is a reason the Ten Commandments adorns the inner walls of the US Supreme Court; and part overall guidebook for life – the first self-help book ever written with a focus on meditation, mindfulness, gratitude and joy. And this thousands of years before Oprah’s Super Soul Sundays.
As Rabbi Shira Milgrom noted last week, what may be most remarkable is that these thousands of years later, it’s still the exact same — hand scribed onto animal parchment with a quill and vegetable ink. All 304,805 letters. The same passages read by our B’nei Mitzvah each Saturday on this Bima were read the exact same week by some Shepard boy becoming a bar mitzvah so many eras ago. I can even picture the montage, pictures of the boy with his goat, with a sling shot and even floating in the Dead Sea wearing mud.
Kol Ami provides for this continuity — from one generation to the next — L’dor V’dor — the continuity that has allowed the Jewish people — otherwise statistically insignificant — to survive and prosper despite slavery in Egypt, persecution in Persia, the destruction of the Temples, the Spanish Inquisition and the Shoah.
The next evidence I see are two flags. To my right the United States flag and to my left the Israeli flag. And when I look out at these flags, I don’t see dual loyalty. I see proud American Jews. As Rabbi Tom Wiener said on erev Rosh Hashanah, we Jews have perhaps never had it better than we have had it here in this Country. But recent times have awakened us from this slumber, in my short tenure as co-president, we’ve stood right here following Charlottesville, Pittsburgh and Poway comforting and uniting our community. We’ve led way too many board meetings focused on security instead of services. But we don’t give in or give up. The antidote to this pernicious hate is to grow stronger as a community – to bolster our strong synagogue life.
Now to my left is the Israeli flag. A symbol of a revived homeland, of a country that reinvented hope — 25 years younger than this synagogue. In those 70 years, it’s beyond words to even imagine what Israel has accomplished. But we live in complicated times, so while Kol Ami stands strongly beside Israel we’re also not afraid to stand up to Israel defending women at the wall and reform Judaism in Israel. Looking at these flags side by side, I sincerely believe that American Jewry could not survive without Israel and Israel could not survive without American Jewry. And American Jewry could not survive without sacred places like Kol Ami.
Next I turn to the stain glass windows from the origins of Kol Ami when the synagogue was formed on Sterling Street. They represent the immediate generations before us — not the biblical figures — but the real life people whose grandchildren and great grandchildren still belong here — and who recognized the importance of creating a vibrant reform synagogue in Westchester County. Without them we would not be here today and without us the next generations won’t have the opportunity to benefit the way do we here. L’dor v’dor – the continuity of the Jewish people.
And now the final and most important piece of evidence. You, all of you, filling row after row, are the quintessential evidence of the importance of Kol Ami and the need for a strong Kol Ami. I look out and see baby namings and Bris’s, B’nei mitzvahs and confirmations, weddings and anniversaries and birthdays, and yes, hospital visits, funerals and shivas too. We celebrate the simchas and comfort the sorrows. I see the study sessions and mahjong games, the Synaplexes and trips to Israel, I see the support groups and the Bethelight social justice initiatives. I see a community that draws from 20 different school districts – yes 20. We are the anchor for reform Judiasm in Westchester that serves as a bulwark against the waves of assimilation and anti-Semitism. So whether you are here two days a year or two or more days a week, you are Kol Ami – we are Kol Ami.
So now on this day of awe it’s time to recite the Four Questions. Consider it a taste of spring. These are four questions that I have been asked since Rosh Hashanah.
First question, when are you going to ask for money? Answer, now. And I don’t do it with it reservation or trepidation. I ask from the bottom of my heart unabashedly and filled with pride. We simply can’t survive without your generosity. I ask you to make Kol Ami a priority in your charitable and philanthropic giving. Give something that is meaningful to you. There are a lot of great causes out there but I challenge you to reflect upon your giving and see if your giving truly reflects the importance of being Jewish to you – of continuing the tradition.
Second question, why do we need a new Torah? We just watched several Torahs paraded through the congregation. Why in the world would we need one more. The answer is actually quite simple. Out of all the Torahs we have accumulated over our 95 year history, we actually only have two working Sefer scrolls. One in the Chapel in the Woods and one here. The others are brittle and frail and can’t be scrolled or are historic such as our torah saved from the Holocaust. Our last Torah fundraiser was 20 years ago. And we need a new, usable Torah from which we can study, chant and celebrate holidays and B’nai Mitzvah and continue traditions.
Third question, how can I give to Kol Ami during this time. There are actually three ways. The first is by donating to the Annual Fund. The Annual Fund is necessary for Kol Ami’s short term needs. We simply can’t make our budget without the generosity of all of you who give to the Annual Fund. Our dues do not cover all our operating expenses. Fundraising closes that gap. But as successful as we’ve been the last few years, there is plenty of room for much higher participation and we urge you to give.
The second way to give is through the Torah project led by Lisa Borowitz. You will all shortly be receiving information in the mail and through other communications that will detail the giving opportunities – from letters to verses to passages to whole books. Anyone who donates will have an opportunity to actually inscribe a letter into our Torah. This project is geared towards our longer term needs both in creating a Torah to use for decades to come but also with the additional fundraising to help ensure our future. Be part of this once in a generation opportunity – a chance to both connect with the past and express hope for a better future.
The third way to give is, well, to do both. Whether to the Annual Fund or to the Torah Project or both, whether it’s $36 or $36,000, please give something that is meaningful to you.
And the fourth question I’ve been asked since Rosh Hashanah is what are you serving for break-fast. But since we’re all hungry, we’ll skip that one and move on to announcements.
G’mar Chatima Tova – May you be sealed in the book of life.
What to Say When a Friend Has a Loss? ” Hineini!”: Rabbi Tom Weiner, Yom Kippur 5780/2019
The Gift of Shiva
A little story about being fully present:
A young man left his younger brother’s room in the hospital and headed home for some desperately needed rest. He had been at his brother’s bedside for 48 hours straight. The worst was hopefully over. His brother’s condition had been critical but was now, thank God, stable. Time for some rest.
He had felt helpless and frustrated the whole time he was in the hospital because there was nothing he could do to help. All he did was sit there. He couldn’t even think of anything useful to say. He just sat in the chair next to the bed, held his brother’s hand and murmured, “I’m here, I’m here . . .”
Early the next morning he returned to the hospital and found his brother smiling, sitting up, with good color in his cheeks. The worst truly was over. The younger brother looked up at him and said, “Thank you, thank you so much!”
“What’d I do?” he asked his brother. “I didn’t do anything.”
The younger brother answered, “You were here. You were here with me. I knew that. And that made all the difference.”
An ancient story of being fully present: The Binding of Isaac. When God calls out to Abraham at the beginning of the saga, before even knowing what it is that God wants, the old patriarch replies, “Hineini.” “Here I am.”
Hineini – a contraction of the words, “I” and “here”. It’s a challenge to translate because it means much more than the simple statement of the fact, “I am physically here.” Because it is never used casually. If the teacher is taking attendance and calls your name, “Hineini” would be a bit over the top.
It’s a word used only 12 times in the entire Tanakh, throughout the entire Hebrew Bible. Half of the time it is used by God, and half of the time by human beings.
When God says, “Hineini”, it is never casual. God uses the term only at the most important moments. In the story of Noah, just before the great flood begins, God declares, “Hineini, behold, here I am, I am about to bring the flood upon the whole earth.”
When the word is used by human beings, it is likewise never casual. When God called upon Abraham, and Abraham answered “Hineini”, he was saying, “All of my being, my love and my faith, and my full attention are here for you now.” And when, later in the story, the boy Isaac – obediently following his father up the mountain, curious about the true intent of their journey, he asks, “Father?” Abraham replies, “Hineini b’ni”, “here I am my son.” That is, “I am here for you with all of my heart and all of my being.”
In the hospital, when, for all of those hours, the older brother was fully there for the younger brother. That was a time of profound Hineini.
One of the most beautiful ways that we as human beings and as Jews can embody the essence of Hineini with the simplest of actions: making a shiva call.
As rabbis and cantors one of the unique circumstances we encounter is that to and from funerals we are often sitting quietly in front seat of the limousine. And that means we hear some very sweet and moving conversations from the seats behind us.
The subject of the conversation in the back seat is almost always the same: Who came, who was there, who took the time to show up for the funeral or the shiva.
They don’t talk about what people said to them, or what people brought or what they wore. They are deeply moved by those who took the time to be present. And that brings much comfort.
This is what you hear in the shiva home when everyone leaves:
- Did you see Cousin Fred drove overnight from South Carolina? That’s so special.
- How sweet that Jordan’s college friends drove from school upstate to be at his grandpa’s funeral.
- Uncle Dan was there, even though his sciatica is really bad these days. He didn’t have to do that.
- Look at all the people who came from work?
We are simply so moved by the people who show up.
There’s wonderful wisdom in our traditions of mourning. During the few days following a funeral it’s so important to have these guidelines and this structure to provide the many ways for people to be there for us; and to keep us busy and occupied.
To just come home after a funeral alone; or to just go right back to work or school the next day, gives us no time to mourn. And people have to mourn.
Those first few days are so critical; we’re often so vulnerable, emotional, confused, overwhelmed, in denial, angry, numb . . . or most likely some combination of all of the above.
Joseph Telushkin, in his book on Jewish Ethics gives us a straight forward definition: “According to Jewish law, seven days of intense morning, Shiva – from the number 7 – is observed by the deceased’s seven closest relatives: mother and father, sister and brother, son and daughter, or spouse.” (Pg. 116-7)
The guideline is 7 days; but for some one day is sufficient, and for others 3, and for some, the entire 7 days.
And for some of our families, 7 will make perfect sense. People coming from faraway places; family tradition; having different nights in different family member’s homes who may not live close to one another. The 7 of Shiva can make sense.
For some of us, based on the make up of our families and where we all live, 3 days may be perfect.
And in other circumstances, 1 may be just what we need. (Shira, David and I are more than happy to help you navigate that question if the time comes.)
Whatever its length, gathering for shiva brilliantly provides a loving embrace by our friends, family and community, so that we might manage those first few days; those first few tentative steps forward into our new reality.
Shiva is so important; Shiva is so healthy; and it’s so wise.
Sometimes though we get in our own way and prevent ourselves from either helping others in their mourning; or from letting others help us in our mourning.
The reasons are understandable. There are some very real concerns that can get in the way of making that important visit.
These are some of the reasons we may hear:
- Things about death make me nervous.
- I don’t know what to say.
- What if I say the wrong thing?
- I’ve never been to one before and I’m not sure what to do.
- I’m not Jewish, should I go?
- Do I need to know Hebrew to make a shiva call?
- I’m not sure I know the family well enough to even go?
Maybe tonight can help us overcome some of those concerns.
Do you have to be Jewish to make a shiva call? Of course not. The power of your presence knows no specific language or religion. You don’t have to know Hebrew or any Jewish prayers. During the short service that takes place, you are participating in the most beautiful way possible, just by being there.
The biggest worry is usually “What am I supposed to say?” “It’s so awkward!” “What’s the right thing to say?” “What’s the wrong thing to say?”
Don’t be so hard on yourselves. There are no right words. Somebody just had a death in their family. They are going to be sad for a while. There’s nothing you can say that will make go away. You are greeting them in their sadness. No magic words exist. And the mourners aren’t expecting any.
As a matter of fact, having nothing to say is often the best move. Silence. Just a hug or a nod.
Joseph Telushkin explains (Pg. 119-20) “The tradition of not having to speak at a shiva call comes from the Bible in the story of Job’s three friends who come to comfort him after the death of his children. The Book of Job says, “Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar ‘met together to go and console and comfort Job. When they saw him from a distance . . . they broke into loud weeping; each one tore his clothes and threw dust onto his head. They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights. None spoke a word to him, for they saw how very great his suffering was” (Job 2:11–13)
What mattered was that Job’s friends were fully with hm, not that they tried to comfort him with words at the time he felt anguish beyond words. Their Hineini was silent.
Telushkin shares another more recent story of silence at a time of shiva: “Rabbi Jack Reimer was with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel when they heard of the death of Rabbi Wolfe Kelman’s sister. Rabbi Heschel insisted that they go to visit Rabbi Kelman and his family immediately: “We went to the airport, we flew to Boston, got into a cab, and went to the house. Heschel walked in, he hugged the mourners, he sat silently for an hour. He didn’t mumble a single cliché. He just sat there for an hour. And then he got up, hugged them, and we left.” (pg. 120)
So, if there are no words, what can we do? During that period of time, the friends and community and co-workers of the mourner can do so much to relieve the mourner of everyday tasks and worries.
- We can make sure meals are taken care of,
- When we pick up a relative or one of their kids from the train station.
- When we clean up after a meal.
- If we are a coworker and we make sure the office won’t bother you for those few days.
- If we are a neighbor and we put their trash cans on the curb for pick up.
- We can offer to print up copies of the directions to the cemetery to hand out at the funeral service.
- When we help take care of your little ones.
You don’t need Judaic scholarship or any expertise to help.
Lisa Borowitz heads our wonderful – but I must say small – team of people who do an amazing job of leading shiva services in people’s homes when we rabbis and cantor are spread too thin. Lisa recently shared with me and Shira and David, that fewer people than in the past are observing shiva services in their homes following funerals.
That’s such a shame because shiva services are so helpful.
We can get a little confused about the mood of this Shiva thing. Sometimes you hear a lot of laughter and food is being served and sometimes there’s liquor. People often ask themselves, is this supposed to be a party?
But when you gather for Shiva, some laughter can be quite lovely and even helpful. Certainly, if the laughter comes from a wonderful story about the deceased, or you’re remembering what used to make them laugh.
So, if it’s feeling a little party-like, a beautiful balance occurs when we pause for the 10 or 20 minutes for the service. Because then there is a clear focus as to why we’re all here, why we’re all gathered in that living room, in that home. The service embraces everyone into the same emotional locale. And it is indeed comforting for the family.
I know hundreds of you have had this experience.
Let me end with a story from a shiva that took place in our Kol Ami community in early August. Our congregant Stephen Weisglass had lost his mother. He gave me permission to share this.
I was invited to the home to lead a Shiva service.
If I or any one of the many friends who gathered at his home were not exactly sure what Shiva is all about, Stephen helped us to see its essence that evening.
When Stephen greeted me at the door, with perfect honesty he said, “You know I don’t really think we need to do a Shiva service tonight. Besides,” he continued, “you know I don’t really consider myself a religious person. But tell me what you have in mind.”
That was up to him. I told him that I could drone on for a couple of hours, if he wanted. I did go to rabbinical school, after all. I’m a professional. (That didn’t seem to be what he had in mind.)
I told him a shiva service is usually very brief.
And that if he wanted, we could pause in the middle of the service for anyone in the family to share a story about his mother.
Though he didn’t necessarily feel connected to the worship part of the experience, he said he’d give it a shot. And he added that he probably would not be sharing any comments.
When everyone was gathered in the living room, we had begun our Shiva minyan. After a few minutes there came the time for anyone from the family who wanted to share.
There was a moment or two of quiet, with Stephen sitting on the couch looking around the room filled with friends who really care for him and were there for him at that important moment in life.
And in that silence, you could hear this big beautiful “Hineini” emanating everyone there.
Then, Stephen stood up to speak.
“All of you know that I’m not exactly a religious person. You know I didn’t have great experiences as a child in Hebrew school. Pretty much the opposite. They didn’t seem to want me there and I didn’t want to be there either.
Everyone in the room smiled and understood.
Then he choked up a bit, and his eyes filled as he looked around at his many friends and his precious family.
He continued: “Now you know that it doesn’t have anything to do with Judaism or religion, but I can’t tell you how moved I am, and how much it means to me that all of you have come to be here with me at this difficult moment, with the passing of my mother. Having you as friends and having you here means the world to me. I can’t thank you enough.”
Everyone in the room was silent. Everyone in the room was powerfully present and listening and hearing. And Stephen clearly felt the warmth and embrace of that loving circle of family and friends.
Stephen, I disagree with you on one point; that it all had nothing to do with being Jewish.
I think that’s exactly what Shiva. Over many centuries the Jewish people have wisely and lovingly molded that moment to be exactly what it was for you.
And I thank you so much for so beautifully articulating the essence of Shiva at that evening in your home.
“The brother had felt helpless and frustrated the whole time he was in the hospital because there was nothing he could do to help. All he did was sit there. He couldn’t even think of anything useful to say. He just sat in the chair next to the bed, held his brother’s hand and murmured, “I’m here, I’m here . . .”
“Hineini.”
The younger brother answered, “You were here! You were here with me. I knew that. And that made all the difference.”
Amen
I Want To Go Home: Rosh Hashanah 5780/2019
“We come on the Sloop John B
My grandfather and me
Around Nassau town we did roam
Drinking all night
Got into a fight
Well I feel so broke up
I want to go home.
So hoist up the John B’s sail
See how the mainsail sets
Call for the Captain ashore
Let me go home, let me go home
I want to go home
Well I feel so broke up
I want to go home.”
On August 1, 1492, when Christopher Columbus set sail for the New World, Jews were on the move over land and sea. Jews had lived for centuries – more than 500 years – under Muslim sovereignty in what is known as the Golden Age of Spain. But now, with the Christian Reconquista, ethnic cleansing was the order of the day. Of the 250,000 Jews still alive in Spain, faced with the choice between conversion or expulsion, more than 100,000 converted under duress to Catholicism. Some embraced Catholicism; others went underground with their Judaism, becoming crypto-Jews. The rest left Spain, escaping to Holland, North Africa, the Ottoman Empire and the New World. Aboard Columbus’s ships were known Jews, and hidden Jews.
Some fled to Portugal. Abraham Zacuto was among them. Already prominent in academic circles (he was a mathematician, physician, professor of astronomy, historian and rabbi of his community – somewhat like my own credentials), he was invited by King John II of Portugal to the court and nominated as Royal Astronomer and Historian, a position he held until the Inquisition erupted with all its ugliness in Portugal as well. The navigational instrument that Zacuto invented and created, the astrolabe, was carried by Vasco de Gama and Amerigo Vespucci, among so many others, in their explorations of the far seas and their search for a passage to India.
“So hoist up the John B’s sail
See how the mainsail sets
Call for the Captain ashore
Let me go home, let me go home
I want to go home
Well I feel so broke up
I want to go home.”
Jews and Muslims both were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula, and together, a group of them established a town in the Rif Mountains of Morocco. Chefchaouen, established by these Jewish and Muslim exiles from Spain in 1471, prohibited any Christian from entering the city until 1927 – so great was the lingering fear of the Inquisition.
Stories of crypto-Jews are everywhere. You have heard about our encounters in Missoula, Montana – in Izmir, Turkey – in Santa Fe, New Mexico – even in Jerusalem. Two years ago, David and I traveled to northeastern Portugal to see for ourselves the village of Belmonte. I need to remind you that the tentacles of the Inquisition were long and vicious. Jews – in particular hidden Jews – were searched out by the Inquisition, interrogated, terrorized, tortured, publicly tried, and burned at the stake. Even remains of Jews were exhumed and burned – and their property, bequeathed to survivors, confiscated. No one quite understands how the small Jewish community of Belmonte survived. Known by their neighbors as different Catholics, they kept apart, married one another, attended Mass weekly – and secretly preserved and passed on their particular customs. Lighting candles on Friday inside clay buckets; eating unleavened bread during Easter Week, and fasting at a time in the fall, near (but not on) Yom Kippur. Some kept a light burning in their homes in the seven days following a death in the family. They lived in isolation and secrecy – among their neighbors, who never turned them in – for 400 years. A Jewish Galician mining engineer, Samuel Schwartz, working in Belmonte in 1917, suspected that they might have a Jewish story. They refused to engage him in any conversation. Secrecy, after all, was an essential part of their identity. It was only when he recited the Sh’ma – Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad – it was the word Adonai – that they first realized that they were not the last Jews on earth. On December 5th of 1496, Portugal issued its own Edict of Expulsion. 500 years later, on December of 1996, Belmonte dedicated its new synagogue. The plaque in front of the synagogue, Bet Eliyahu, reads:
“Here in this place, the chain of our tradition has not been severed… As a result of government decrees, the Jewish residents of this village, like other Jews throughout Spain and Portugal, were forced to publicly deny their Jewish religion. But they maintained their Judaism in their homes. Here the candle of Jewish light was never extinguished. For a period of 500 years… in the homes of this village the Jewish commandments were secretly performed, the tradition was transmitted from parent to child in hushed tones, the Sabbath was sanctified in hiding while Sunday was celebrated before the eyes of the neighbors. They made blessings over the halla and the wine and mumbled words of Hebrew prayers in the darkness. Here the Jewish soul was never lost. Here the Jewish soul remains forever…”
Not all crypto-Jews went underground in quiet secrecy. Some vowed revenge. They had witnessed the terror of the Inquisition. Their parents, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, had been hunted and tortured. And they sought revenge. The age of exploration gave them a different route through the high seas: they became pirates – can you imagine that, Jewish pirates -and they set out to sink the Spanish Armada.
- Sinan sailed under the Ottoman flag of Haryeddin Barbarossa. Fighting against the Spanish, he was known as the famous Jewish pirate.
- Samuel and Joseph Palache would go from commanding pirates to building the Jewish community of Amsterdam.
- Moses Cohen Henriques, a pirate of Portuguese Sephardic Jewish origin, operating in the Caribbean, helped the Dutch West India Company capture the Spanish treasure fleet in the battle of the Bay of Mantanzas in Cuba.
- In the early 1600’s, the fledging Jewish settlement in Jamaica conspired with England and Holland to overthrow the Spanish, in exchange for religious freedom. Tombstones in the old Jewish cemetery still carry signs of the skull and bones.
- The Jewish pirate of New Orleans fame, Jean Lafitte, raised by his Sephardic grandmother, always carried with him the Hebrew Bible she had given him. On the flyleaf he wrote, “I owe all my ingenuity to the great intuition of my Jewish Spanish grandmother.” Raised on stories of the Inquisition, Jean Lafitte vowed, “So long as I live I am at war with Spain.” [Jean Lafitte’s original manuscript of his journal (in French) on display at the Sam Houston Regional Library and Research Center, Liberty, Texas]
“We come on the Sloop John B
My grandfather and me
Around Nassau town we did roam
Drinking all night
Got into a fight
Well I feel so broke up
I want to go home.
So hoist up the John B’s sail
See how the mainsail sets
Call for the Captain ashore
Let me go home, let me go home
I want to go home
Well I feel so broke up
I want to go home.”
Where does this drive come from? The drive for religious freedom? The belief in human dignity? The dream of a world redeemed and perfected? And the willingness to fight for it.
This dream has been bequeathed to us through the gift of Torah. Written by hand by a scribe, with a feather quill, in ink composed of vegetable dyes, on animal parchment, this scroll contains the stories that changed human history and shaped our destiny. You might think that this mighty scroll would belong to a privileged few, to an elite group of scholars or rabbis. But no! It is the provenance of each of us, the critical rite of passage of every Bar and Bat Mitzvah, as they in turn read from the Torah and claim it as their own.
Every Bar and Bat Mitzvah.
Joachim Joseph, born in Berlin and raised in Amsterdam, had watched with interest as older boys in his neighborhood celebrated their bar mitzvahs. His father, a lawyer and businessman, was not religious, but several uncles were, and they frequently took Joseph and his younger brother to synagogue.
Then the Nazis came to power.
“The family was sent to a Dutch prison camp, Westerbork, late in 1942. A year later, the Josephs were brought to Bergen-Belsen, the concentration camp in the Lower Saxony region of Germany where 50,000 died, including Anne Frank. Joachim’s father and mother were sent to different sections of the camp. He and his younger brother ended up in a barracks with Simon Dasberg, a 42-year-old rabbi who had been deported two years earlier, when he was chief rabbi of the Netherlands.
“When Rabbi Dasberg learned that Joachim was 13, the age of bar mitzvah, he asked if he could teach him to read from a miniature Torah he kept hidden in the barracks. They studied together secretly at night.
“The bar mitzvah took place before dawn on a Tuesday, in March 1944, deep inside a barracks at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
Those men who were strong enough covered the windows and doors with blankets, and stood watch to make sure the SS guards weren’t coming. Four candles, scrounged from somewhere, gave off enough flickering light for Rabbi Simon Dasberg to unfurl his tiny Sefer Torah — the five books of Moses, handwritten in Hebrew on a parchment scroll only 4 1/2 inches tall.
“Thirteen-year-old Joachim Joseph chanted the blessings just as the rabbi had taught him, and he chanted aloud from the ancient text in the [beautiful Torah chant that you know well] that has been passed down for hundreds of years.
“There were people listening in the beds all around,” Joachim recalled as an adult, describing the narrow, triple-decker bunks where the Jewish men and boys were forced to double up. “Afterwards, everybody congratulated me. Somebody fished out a piece of chocolate that he had been saving, and somebody else fished out a tiny deck of playing cards. Everybody told me, ‘You are a bar mitzvah boy now. You are an adult now.’ And I was very happy.
“And then everything was taken down, and we went out to morning roll call.”
Dasberg also gave Joachim a gift: the miniature Torah scroll, covered in a red velvet wrapper and tucked into a small green box. “He said: ‘This little Sefer Torah is yours to keep now, because I’m sure that I will not get out of here alive. And you maybe will. I give this to you on one condition,’ he added, ‘that you must tell the story.”
“Joachim used rags to wrap the green velveteen box that held the Torah, and stuck it deep down in his pack. It stayed there, undetected, as conditions in the camp grew grimmer. As he approached his 14th birthday, he weighed just 42 pounds. His feet, protected only by rags, rope and two chunks of an old tire, froze in the winter cold.”
A series of miracles led to the freedom of both brothers and their parents, all emaciated and near death, and they made their way out of Germany on a convoy with Allied POW’s whom the Germans hoped to exchange for their own prisoners. They made their way to British Mandate Palestine – now Israel.
“For the next four decades, Joachim said nothing about his experiences. He wanted to stop the nightmares he kept having. He wanted to move on.
“I screwed it down, deep down,” he says. “I managed to forget it.”
He studied atmospheric physics, receiving a doctorate in 1966. He pioneered experiments in how dust particles in the atmosphere affect the climate.” Working with him on these experiments was fellow scientist and astronaut, Ilan Ramon. Ilan spotted the small Torah on Joachim’s shelf, and Joachim told him the story. Ilan (whose own mother was a survivor of Auschwitz) asked Joachim if he might take the Torah into space with him, to honor his country and his people.
Rabbi Dasberg had given the 13-year old Joachim the tiny Torah on the condition that he tell the story. And on January 21st of 2003, that story was told to the world when Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon held the scroll aloft during a live teleconference from the far reaches of space, aboard the Columbia Space Shuttle
“This,” Ilan Ramon said to the world, “was given by a rabbi to a scared, thin young boy in Bergen-Belsen…It represents more than anything the ability of the Jewish people to survive. From horrible periods, black days, to reach periods of hope and belief in the future.” [excerpted from Debbi Wilgoren, The Washington Post, February 19, 2003] This little Torah had flown from the depths of despair to the heights of the universe – to the heavens.
To the heavens. Eleven days later, on re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere, the Columbia space shuttle exploded and disintegrated – killing Ilan Ramon and the other six astronauts aboard. The Torah, too, was destroyed. But not the story.
On that cold March morning in 1944, the morning of Joachim Joseph’s Bar Mitzvah in Bergen Belsen, as Rabbi Dasberg handed that small Torah to Joachim Joseph, in a barracks nearby was another young boy, a red-haired, freckle-faced six year old, my cousin Henry Fenichel. In another story of miracle and escape, a story I hope that he will tell you himself this year, Henry made it out of Bergen Belsen with his mother. What are the chances? That he too survived. That he, too, became a physicist. That he, too, received a gift later in his life – a tiny Torah, sister to the little one that went up into space with Ilan Ramon. Henry, whose family went from Europe to Palestine to America, began in earnest to tell his own story only in these last decades – bringing together Jewish and non-Jewish children, anxious to teach them about hatred and its consequences – about tolerance, about courage and hope. On a chance video conference between Israeli and American children, connecting the two continents, Henry was on one end in his Cincinnati home – and sitting with the Israeli children was Rona Ramon, the widow of Ilan Ramon. Her eyes fell on the little Torah sitting on Henry’s shelf that she could see so clearly on the screen. Henry said, “When Rona learned that yes, there was another little Torah, belonging to another child survivor of Bergen Belsen, who also became a physics professor, she requested permission from me to allow my Torah to be sent on a flight into space, in order to bring some closure to that part of Ilan’s mission”. [Richard Tenorio, Times of Israel, December 20, 2016] She asked with hesitation. Knowing the risk. Knowing that it might not return.
He didn’t hesitate.
That little Torah soared into space in September of 2006, circling the planet 187 times, traveling 4.9 million miles, landing back on earth thirteen years ago today, Rosh Hashanah.
Torah gives us a language of dreams. It gives us a way to “proclaim liberty throughout the land”; it calls us to tithe our earnings and leave the corners of the field for the poor. It gives us the poetry of suffering and even the language of the broken heart. The motel in Memphis from whose porch Martin Luther King was assassinated bears a plaque with a single verse from the Torah (from the story of Joseph and his brothers): “For lo, here comes the dreamer. Let us kill him for his dreams.”
Torah gives us the language of dreams. The language of justice, of sorrow and pain, of compassion. Written by hand by a scribe, with a feather quill, in ink composed of vegetable dyes, on animal parchment, this scroll contains the stories that changed human history and shaped our destiny. We will watch this story literally unfold before us this year, as we are giving ourselves the gift of a new Torah scroll. With your help, we will have one of the rare Torah scrolls in the whole world written by a woman. Our scribe, our soferet Julie Seltzer, is one of five women world-wide trained and certified to write a sefer Torah. You will have the chance (if you haven’t already) to meet her in the Atrium outside. Introduce yourself. Tell her about your own relationship to Torah; she will tell you about hers. You will have the chance this year – if you take it – to write with her a letter in this Torah. Yes, to write a letter. To write yourself into this story.
Torah gives us language for justice; it gives us a poetry of sorrow. Torah also gives us a mandate for joy. “V’samachta b’chagecha – v’hayita ach sameach. You shall rejoice in your holiday…and you shall have real joy.” [Deuteronomy 16: 14-15] Torah – the study of Torah – like Jewish life, needs to connect us to joy.
“We come on the Sloop John B
My grandfather and me
Around Nassau town we did roam
Drinking all night, Got into a fight
Well I feel so broke up
I want to go home.
So hoist up the John B’s sail
See how the mainsail sets
Call for the Captain ashore
Let me go home, let me go home
I want to go home
Well I feel so broke up
I want to go home.”
Those Jewish pirates of the Caribbean.
1 ounce mint leaves
2 ounces fresh lime juice
1 and half ounces white rum
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
Crushed ice
4 ounces club soda
Shake, serve with a lime wedge.
And study Torah.
Mojitos and mezuzahs.
It turns out that each Jewish home has a tiny Torah. Not the whole Torah. One magnificent section. Sh’ma yisrael Adonai eloheinu Adonai echad. The Sh’ma – the verse that gave the Belmonte community of hidden Jews the clue that they were not alone. The Sh’ma and the following paragraph. We invite you to gather with friends this fall – old friends or new ones – to connect in the joyful study of Torah, the text of the mezuzah.
Torah will renew in us the dream of justice. Torah will connect us more deeply to joy. Torah will connect us with our past and with our destiny. Torah will bring us closer to one another.
Torah will bring us home.
“So hoist up the John B’s sail
See how the mainsail sets
Call for the Captain ashore
Let me go home, let me go home
I want to go home
Well I feel so broke up
I want to go home.”
[For this Rosh Hashanah day, the Torah will be unfurled in front of us – a magnificent white sail and a sea of black letters. Please remain seated.]