A Last Jerusalem Shabbat - Parashat Devarim

שמחו את-ירושלים וגילו בה, כל-אוהביה; שישו איתה משוש, כל-המתאבלים עליה

Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all that love her; rejoice for joy with her, all that mourn for her.                                                                                                           Isaiah 66:10

A Last Shabbat in Jerusalem, not ”The” last but “A” last…

as a visitor, as a foreigner.

A last Shabbat in Israel with a temporary address, a temporary home.

Anticipation grows as:

A last Shabbat siren draws near, a last Friday sunset, a last Kabbalat Shabbat.

My last Shabbat before Aliyah, before fulfilling the Mitvah of Yishuv Ha’Aretz (settling the land), before ceasing to be a stranger, a wanderer.

The last Shabbat without a teudat oleh or a teudat Zehut.

A last Jerusalem Shabbat brings time to thank so many for the blessings of the year:

To the staff of The Tamar Suites, my home away from home, for making me feel comfortable and part of the family this year.

To the Grand Café, owners and employees, for welcoming me so warmly and for delivering great food and customer service

To my friends at Gehtz Li, where I get my laundry done,

To the fruit guys on the corner of Bet Lechem and Esther HaMalka, and

To the great folks at Bet Lehem for wonderful conversation plus cheese and bread recommendations,

Thank you to the staff and teachers of The Fuchsberg Center and our Youth Hostel.  You all do exceptional work and it is a pleasure and privilege to join you.

To every cab driver who gave me a “Kol HaKavod” upon hearing our Aliyah intentions, and who engaged me in honest conversation about co-existence and friendship.

To all who hosted me for a Shabbat meal, a meal during the week, or a cup of coffee.  I look forward to inciting you to our new home on Qorei HaDorot.

To our long-term, dear friends and to the new friends I discovered this year for everything.

To thirty-five years of Shlichim for contributing to the inspiration leading to our Aliyah, from

The shaliah I only met once who, after a talk I gave at kibbutz Shefaim, stopped me and said, “Rabbi Sykes, you are such a Zionist.  Why don’t you live here yet?!” to...

Shlichim who started out as employees at camp and became dear friends and mentors.

To my wife, Becca, who took the brunt of the stresses this year in the US, who handled most of the logistics leading to our Aliyah; And

To Elan, Mira and Amalya who are making this journey, each in their own way.

To The One who promised this land to our ancestors and grants people the strength to return home.

A last Shabbat in Jerusalem, before a First Shabbat here…

As a citizen, a contributor, a participant in the greatest endeavor in Jewish, democratic sovereignty, in over 2,000 years.

Thank you Jerusalem and Israel.  

See you again, as an Oleh Hadash, on August 20.

Shabbat Shalom.

Zakhor - Remembering and Doing

One of the beauties of reading and rereading Torah is how our understanding of specific narratives, laws and even sentences or words can change annually.  Take this Shabbat, the one immediately preceding Purim, for example.  Known as Shabbat Zakhor, we read a special Maftir Aliyah, one that reminds of what the Amalekites did to our ancestors as they wandered in the desert.  They did not confront Israel from the front where, presumably, they were strongest.  According to Torah, Amalek came from behind, killing those who moved slowest, who were most vulnerable.  As a result, Amalek becomes the paradigmatic enemy of the Israelites and of Am Yisrael throughout history.  The end of the special maftir this Shabbat commands us to wipe out the memory of Amalek from beneath Heaven.  In wiping them out, we are also commanded to commit them to our eternal memory.  What does it mean to blot out the memory of Amalek?  To not forget?  How is it possible to wipe out all memory and to remember at the same time?

Rashi understands our maftir literally: We are to eliminate any and all evidence of the Amalekites existence: the humans, the property and even the animals.  Rashi’s reading is based on Samuel where King Saul ultimately loses his throne to David due to his failure to carry out God’s instruction.  Saul leaves the King of Amalek alive and the people to keep the animals, purportedly to make offerings to God.  There is something visceral both about the original text in Torah and in Rashi’s explanation.  Our modern mindset rejects the active, physical, complete nature of this understanding.

I have to admit: there were times when my own discomfort with literalness of the command to eliminate Amalek gave way to a desire to see the haters of Israel and the Jewish People disappear ,in a very real way.  Sitting in a “sealed” room during the First Gulf War, wearing my gas mask, knowing there were people around the world dancing on their rooftops in celebration of our being attacked, part of me wanted them to be blotted out, to be erased.  And, frankly, there is a part of me that always remembers that feeling.  Even though reason gives way, my modern sensibility prevails and my humanity returns, hatred breeds hatred and there is a little part of me that wonders what would have happened if Amalek really was completely wiped out long ago.

Ramban and the Pesikta Rabbati, however, can be interpreted to read the passage figuratively.  If the literal reading of the text is one of vengeance and murder, the figurative approach lets us consider what Amalek represents:   the impulse to hate, to take advantage of the weak, the forgotten, the easy target.  It also demands us to act in opposition to Amalek: To love Humanity, to sanctify God’s Name in this world, to care for the widow, the orphan, the stranger.  Defeating hatred and evil required greater emphasis on love, on understanding, on communicating, on building.  Ramban argues that as long as Amalek is present in the world, God’s name and God’s Holy Seat remain incomplete.  Obviously, once Amalek disappears from the world, the unification of God’s Name and Seat in this world are completed.  That time is what we call The Messianic Era, the time of Eternal World Peace.  The question is:what are each of us doing to bring about this Era?

This week, I sat in Jerusalem with an exceptional Rabbi who suggested we start a Gemach, A Loving-Kindness Fund, together, one that will bring something real, something good, to individuals who need it.  On my next trip, we are going to choose an area not currently being taken care of, a population not being cared for, and start collecting so we can help.  One possibility, based on models of Gemachim in Israel that collect wedding dresses for brides who cannot afford them and projects in the US that collect prom dresses for girls who cannot afford them, is to collect bat mitzvah and bridesmaid dresses and make them available to those in need.  It is small but concrete and is the anti-Amalek: it supports those in need rather than taking advantage of them.  

This Shabbat, as we hear the words of the Maftir of Zakhor, we must take time to think, in very concrete terms, about what we are doing to be the antithesis of Amalek.  What are we doing to increase good in the world?  What are we doing to support those who fall through the cracks, who fall behind, who are attacked for no other reason than they are weak and forgotten?  And how can we do more?   

As soon as the focus of our Gemach is determined,  I hope you will join us in the effort.  I hope you will be inspired, as I was this week, by my friend, colleague and teacher, Rabbah Tamar Elad Applebaum, who suggested the idea of a joint-Gemach.  Similarly, I hope you will be inspired by my teacher, Danny Siegel, to find ways you can be the anti-Amalek and contribute to bringing about the completion of God’s Honored Throne in this world.  Finally, please share with me your own projects so I can spread the word and invite others to join you.  In so doing, we will all eliminate the memory of Amalek - of hatred, of suffering, of advantage-taking - and eternally remember the needs to bring more love and humanity into God’s Divine creation.

Shabbat Shalom.

Wearing New Shoes...

From the drive to the food, from the people to the shoes, everything feels different.  The world feels different.  I feel different.  This time, I know I will be back again and again and again, all year long.  More than just a visit, this is the beginning of a journey to citizenship, back to the motherland, to the State, Land and People of Israel.  What is most amazing though is that I feel the differences the most in the small things.  Perhaps my senses are heightened or maybe, just maybe, I am different.

דוגמא ראשונה:

The drive from Ben Gurion Airport to Jerusalem in a taxi is one I made a hundred times before.  Like Persimmon Road in Clayton, Georgia or Buckatabon Road in Conover, Wisconsin, I can drive this with my eyes closed.  On previous trips, I quivered with the anticipation of a tourist.  Now, I look forward, excited, with the eyes of a soon to be citizen.  Rather than visiting, I feel the pulse of coming to a new home.  My taxi driver, Lazer, asks why I am here.  I tell him about my new job and our Aliyah in August 2013.  Like most Israelis, he wants to know why in the world I am leave America, The Goldeneh Medinah, to come here where everything is so hard.  In fact, he tells me that he is thinking that 25 years in Israel, coming from Tajikistan, is enough.  He is considering moving to America.  By the time I am done with my personal, and perhaps naive,  Zionist narrative, he is saying: "Kol HaKavod! Who am I kidding?  This is my home. I can't leave."

דוגמא שניה:

My Achilles' tendons have been bothering me for months. A visit to an ankle specialist in the US, six months overdue, sends me to a physical therapist.  At the end of my visit, she looks at my gym shoes, tells me they are not right and hands me a list of shoes and styles that will be better.  She tells me that the more I can walk around barefoot the better.  The next best thing, in her opinion, are sandals.

"Flip flops?" I ask, my arch-enemy as a camp director.
"No!  Good sandals." She replies.
"Have you ever heard of Teva, Naot?" I retort, fully prepared for a "no" as the therapist is not a Hebrew speaker, an Israeli, or Jewish for that matter.
"That is exactly what I mean.  They form to your feet. Great for your ankles."

I don't ever recall wearing sandals as regular shoes.  In fact, other than wearing them on Shabbat at Ramah Darom making my way down to the pool, I cannot remember wearing sandals at all.  I don't even like walking barefoot.  Sandals?  She might as well demand that I eat okra every day.  But, as soon as I got here, I met our friend Zahava for coffee and she accompanied me to buy my first pair of sandals.

Now, I walk to and from the office more conscious of my gait and posture, trying to stand straighter and look ahead rather than downward.  My heightened awareness leads to noticing small things along the way: how the flowers on Emek Refa'im/Keren HaYesod smell different in the fall than in the winter when I usually visit;  the Eritrean weddings, replete with elaborate costumes, taking place in the park next to Yemin Moshe on Shabbat Mornings;  and even the way my feet feel as they strike the floor in the Shuk Mahane Yehuda as I go eat at an Indian vegetarian restaurant that is giving up its kashrut certification rather than conceding to the near extortion mashgichim are demanding by forcing them to buy vegetables from only four stands in the shuk.

And, wouldn't you know it, in the end my feet feel better.

דוגמא שלישית:

Coming to visit, to interview and, later, to train shlichim, I always felt the need to eat fleishigs (meat) as much as possible.  While there are a few good kosher meat restaurants in Chicago, they are a schlepp from the city and the variety is limited.  Here, however, I can eat kosher Indian, Thai, Moroccan, French, Italian and virtually every other cuisine you can imagine. As a visitor, I wanted to be so fleishig that upon return to the US, I would feel fleishig for months.  Moreover, most meat restaurants in Israel have excellent desserts which I used to dutifully eat at the end of each meal.

This time, I find myself making different choices.  I eat fish as often as I eat meat.  I eat smaller portions.  I am more conscious of what I order.  I almost never eat dessert.  I eat more vegetables and fruit and they taste sweeter and richer than anything I buy back in Lakeview.  These differences  may seem silly but for me, they represent the shift from tourism visits to home building, from guest to resident, from foreigner to citizen.

I walk past the Old City of Jerusalem, in my sandals of course, and see The Dome of The Rock sitting on The Temple Mount.  According to tradition, The Beit HaMikdash was built on the spot where Abraham took Isaac, bound him to the altar and almost offered him up as a sacrifice.  At the last moment, God intervened through the voice of an angel and Abraham spotted a ram caught up in a thicket and offered it up in place of Isaac.  The midrash teaches that this same spot, on the top of Mount Moriah, is where two brothers bumped into each other to discover that they had been helping one another anonymously.  Mt. Moriah is the place of brotherly Peace, of human-Divine connection, of שלימות and שלום.  As I walk, looking at The Temple Mount, it looks different and I feel different.  I won't have to take in the vision so that it will sustain me for another year.  I will be able to walk by any time I want to catch a glimpse.

Today, Mt. Moriah looks different.  It isn't different. The eyes that look toward it are different.  I am different.  I, and my family, are about to become part of the first experiment in Jewish sovereignty since 70 C.E.  We will be part of all of the blessings and the challenges.  Things that used to bother me but that I refrained from commenting  on or working to change precisely because I was not a citizen will now be my problems to speak up about and act to try and change, like eating at the Indian restaurant.  Laws that I found problematic in theory will now be problematic in reality. It will be my job to join others to insure that Israel is an אור לגוים, a light unto the nations.  And the things that I love about Israel, that fill my soul, that heighten my spirit will be here every day to invigorate me with a greater sense of purpose.

This trip is different.  And, more importantly, I am different too.

Shabbat Shalom.

On Names and Beginnings

Shabbat Shalom, 

The building blocks of creating community begin with names. This is true for camp and for life in general.

The first days of camp are filled with learning new names. Chanichim (campers) learn the names of new friends. Madrichim (counselors) learn the names of chanichim. Roshei Aidah (division heads) learn the names of all of the chanichim in the aidah. Specialty and education counselors, as well as department heads, learn the names of all the campers they see during the day. Every person has a name with a meaning. 

Walking around camp on arrival day, I saw circles of happy young campers playing name games. Their madrichim created all kinds of fun, silly, energetic games to help campers meet one another, learn names and make first friendships. These games build strong esprit d’corps in the tzrif (cabin) and make it a safe place for everyone to be himself or herself, to belong and to feel included.  Every person has a name they like to be called. Now, for the first time, they get to choose what name they want to be known by in camp.  

During these first days of camp, the limudei Yahadut (Jewish learning) staff, led by our new, fantastic rosh, Tamar Cytryn, initiated a creative program for campers to learn about their own names. Based on a work by the Hebrew poet, Zelda, the new program is titled, "L’kol ish yesh shem," "Every Person Has a Name". Over these first days, campers are discussing BIG, name-related questions. Big questions, in distinction to hard questions, are those that lead to conversation and storytelling; require no expertise in order to join the conversation; and have no right answer. Some of the questions campers are thinking about during Yahadut classes at the start of camp include:

What is the meaning of your birth name?

How did you get that name?  

How does a person “earn” a name?

Are there names that you are called that you really like?

Strongly dislike?

By what name do you want to be known this summer?

What name do you want to earn for yourself this summer? 

What kind of person will you need to be in order to earn that name?

Today, when campers met in their limmudei yahadut classes, they created name collages that will become large murals in their chadarei ochel (dining halls). I have not yet seen the paper quilts they are creating but I know that they will be incredible to examine. On the wall, we will see the initial ways that campers view themselves at the start of the summer. We will see images of how they want to contribute to the camp community. We will see in pictures and words their personal goals for the summer.

On Friday of each week during limmudei Yahadut, campers will engage in what we call Cheshbon Nefesh, personal reckoning or accounting. They will think about how they did the previous week in achieving their goals, whether or not the person they were during the week matched up with the person they wanted to be, and they will create a new paper image of the name they want to earn for the quilt. At the end of the summer, I believe we will see a magnificent quilt of personal reflection and achievement, of growth and soulful beauty, of the reflection of God’s image in each member of the Camp Ramah in Wisconsin community.

The beginning of our parashah, Shlach Lekha, deals with names, some infamous and some famous. The opening narrative is about the spies that Moshe sends to investigate the Promised Land. Most of the names become infamous because they are spies who return, present a beautiful image of the land, and an incredibly pessimistic outlook about the ability of the Israelites to conquer the land. Only two spies, Joshua and Caleb, become famous in a positive way for they represent the opinion that the Israelites, with God’s help, will conquer the land of Israel. The Torah does not tell us anything about the mindset of the spies as they set out on their mission. The Zohar speculates that the princes were concerned about their own standing in the future, that they would be replaced once the land was conquered, so they came back with a negative report in order to preserve their own power. The Midrash HaGadol believes that Joshua and Caleb did not travel together with the other spies because they believed from the outset that the mission was achievable and did not need to see the land at all. Regardless of their goals for the week, all but two of the spies ended their trip with negative names. Joshua and Caleb, on the other hand, came out of the experience viewed as better people.

The concept of doing a weekly Cheshbon Nefesh, taking a weekly reckoning of the names that we earned and the names we want to earn, is a process that all of us can and should do. As our children are thinking about what names the want to be known by at camp, Hannah the Brave, David the Kind, etc, we can do that for ourselves. We can ask our children at home what names they want to earn in the coming week, and, at the end of the summer, we can ask our children what names they hoped to acquire during the summer and hear the stories of their achieving success.

Shabbat Shalom.

To read the poem by Zelda in English, go to http://www.hebrewsongs.com/song-lecholishyeshshem.htm

To read the poem in Hebrew, go to http://info.oranim.ac.il/home/home.exe/50302/50303

Vayakhel - Bringing Gifts

During three nights over the past week-and-a-half, I sat in a room at different congregations in Chicago having individual conversation with eager, enthusiastic young adults. Partly nervous, partly excited, each one had their own story to tell. While most of the narratives I heard had many individual elements, they were all united by a single characteristic: a passionate love for their Jewish summer home: Camp Ramah in Wisconsin. It is junior counselor interview season, and Jacob Cytryn (A huge Mazal Tov to Tamar and Jacob, by the way, on the birth of their son!) and I get the privilege and pleasure of listening to people talk about all the ways they love camp:

“Camp changed my life!”

“Camp made me who I am today!”

“Because of camp, I chose one college over another because there is a better Jewish community there.”

“I am going to Israel for a gap year program because of the Israelis I met at camp.”

“My best friends in the world are from camp.”

“I got so much from camp and now it is my turn to give back and to give to the next group of Ramahniks.”

You can’t help but walk home with a smile on your face at the end of such days. They are long and listening is an exhausting activity if done well; yet, it is also exceptionally filling for my own soul and reinforcing for a sense of hope for the future of the Jewish People.

Vayakhel speaks of the building of the Mishkan, the portable Tabernacle, where Israel encountered God while traveling in Sinai. For the past few weeks, we learned of the mitzvot associated with building and we heard God dictate the design, appearance, specifications, and procedures for that building. For the next two weeks, we read about the actual construction and completion of The Sacred Space. There, we are told:

קְחוּ מֵאִתְּכֶם תְּרוּמָה, לַיהוָה, כֹּל נְדִיב לִבּוֹ, יְבִיאֶהָ אֵת תְּרוּמַת יְהוָה: זָהָב וָכֶסֶף, וּנְחֹשֶׁת.

Take from among you gifts to the Lord; everyone whose heart moves them shall bring them, gifts for the Lord... Exodus 35:5

וְכָל-חֲכַם-לֵב, בָּכֶם, יָבֹאוּ וְיַעֲשׂוּ, אֵת כָּל-אֲשֶׁר צִוָּה יְהוָה.

And let all among you who are skilled come and make all that the Lord has commanded.
Exodus 35:10

The gifts to which these verses refer are not only “things,” such as gold and silver, cloths, etc, but personal, individual gifts - the skills that they have as craftspeople, as artists, as creators. The verses refer to the specific items and structures to be built. When the Torah here says, “...all that the Lord has commanded,” it is referring to these specific things. At the end of the two week process, there will be a new building, a new meeting place, and a new relationship between B’nai Yisrael and God.

During this period, we are in the process of the building of our own mikdash me’at, our personal small sanctified space. This year, we are not building new buildings but we are building new souls, those of our campers and those of our staff. We are building the next generation of Jewish lay and professional leaders and the next generations of participants in Jewish life. The high school seniors, the college and graduate students, and the post-university veteran staff are all coming and bringing their own unique gifts to the endeavor and they are coming to make “...all that God commanded:” to learn and teach, to preserve and to do, and to uphold” future Jews and themselves. Their stories may be similar but they are individual gifts. And whether or not they articulate it, they bring these gifts out of love not just for Camp but for Judaism and the Jewish people as a whole.

This summer, we look forward to watching everyone, camper and staff member alike, bring their individual and special gifts to the construction of our Divine summer home on the shores of Lake Buckatabon.

What special gifts are you bringing to your community to inspire more contact with God and the world? Something to think about at your Shabbat Table.

כן יהי רצון

Shabbat Shalom.