The Difference Between Greatness And Arrogance: Va'era/Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.18

The Difference Between Greatness And Arrogance

D’var Torah for Parashat Va’era—Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

January 12, 2018

Exodus, the second book in the Torah, contains some of the most dramatic and spectacular moments in all literature.  It is, after all, the story of the birth of the Nation of Israel.  Among other scenes, here we find the burning bush, the ten plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, and the giving of the Ten Commandments.  And that’s just the first half of the book!

The gripping story of the freeing of the Israelite slaves has been set and reset countless times, in song, painting and sculpture, in liturgy, spirituals, movies and even an opera.  In fact, every year, at the Passover Seder, we retell this story, often adding to it the account of our own family’s survival and how we, our parents or our grandparents, made it across deserts and oceans to our own day, to our own time and place.

Over the millennia, the book of Exodus has served to inspire and give hope to millions of impoverished, downtrodden and enslaved people in their search for freedom and dignity.  Moses, the hero of this story, has been the model for generations of people who saw in him a paradigm for their own struggles.  What makes Moses such a good example is not that he was a perfect man.  He wasn’t.  He had both physical and emotional problems to overcome.  Nor is his fame rooted in noble or miraculous birth.  He was not born to royalty.  At most one could say that his family and clan had dedicated themselves to being teachers, with their goal to foster and reinforce faith and hope.  There was no such thing as Judaism in their time.  There was no Shabbat, no Torah, no Ten Commandments, no Hanukkah or Passover.  All that the ancient Israelites had to hang on to was an age-old memory of long-ago ancestors and a promise made by God to redeem them from slavery.

It’s hard to keep hope alive when you are overwhelmed by misery.  Even as Moses reminds his people of God’s vow to lead them to freedom and to a Promised Land, they do not listen to him.  “They did not heed Moses,” reads the text, “because of anguish of spirit and cruel bondage.” But Moses is not put off by their refusal. He understands the soul of the oppressed and presses on with his message of hope.

Moses’s determination, the resolve he showed when facing Pharaoh, was equally hard won.  Power did not come naturally to him.  Not destined for the throne of Egypt, decision-making was not part of his training.  Moses was a man conflicted within himself.  A stutterer, a descendant of slaves, he somehow found himself raised in the lap of luxury, catered to by servants whose whole purpose in life was to make his life easier and more comfortable.  Fearful of the anger he felt within himself, frustrated by his own powerlessness, Moses at first flees from responsibility.  However, as the story progresses, we can see him gaining strength and confidence.  Moses overcomes his anxieties.  Learning to control his anger, he redirects it instead towards the real source of his pain: Pharaoh.

The Torah describes Moses as the most humble of men.  Not so, however, was his opponent.  Pharaoh was born to great and unquestioned power.  He could not see or understand the pain of the oppressed.  In Pharaoh’s world, he was a god.  He was the law and above the law.  He could wield power at will; he could command life and death, with nary a court or judge who would ever dare stand up to him or challenge his edicts.  Pharaoh’s power extended to the heavens as well as to the lowest depths of the netherworld.  He could do no wrong.

What were people, mere humans—let alone slaves!—to a man of such outsized ego?

Some see in the story of the Exodus a struggle between Pharaoh and God. And yes, in the larger picture, that is true.  There IS a greater law in the universe, far greater than any of us mortals can grasp or understand.  Call it entropy, call it God, call it Justice, it’s really one and the same. 

But really, this story is not about God.  It’s about people and human emotions.  It’s about power, strength, courage, compassion and faith.

Though the Torah does present God as the great force behind everything, its lessons are really for and about people. If there is one moral that the story of the Exodus holds out for us, it is that we are free to choose who we will be and what our role in life is going to be.  It isn’t your birth that determines whether you will be winner or loser, it’s the choices you make in life.  It isn’t the empire, or power, or money you might inherit from your father that will determine your greatness, but rather the strength you find within yourself to be compassionate and just, and the courage that impels you to proclaim liberty to the oppressed, even if it costs you your life.  

This week we will celebrate the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr., a man who clearly modeled himself after Moses.  Like his Biblical hero, Martin was not born to royalty, but rather to a poor sharecropper family from a farming community.  His handicap was not only his skin color, but also his lifelong depression that stemmed from the discrimination he saw around him.  The Rev. King’s oppressor, however, was more than any single person.  It was an entire culture, which saw people like him, people of color, as inferior beings.  Like many others of his generation, Martin Luther King could have acquiesced and become part of the system.  He could have remained silent and risked nothing.  But instead, he chose to rebel.  Like Moses, Rev. King summoned his faith and courage to demand freedom and equality for his people.  Overcoming fear, he stood up to an almost overwhelming institution that had existed unquestioned, unchallenged, for hundreds if not thousands of years.  Like Moses, he challenged a system that believed in its own superiority, a system that held as law—both human and divine—that some people were more worthy than others merely by reason of the color of their skin.  In doing so, Rev. King upheld the truth of the story of the Exodus—the truth that history is made by people, by individuals like you and me, who are not afraid to stand up for their convictions, who believe in the eternal laws of justice and morality and who are not afraid to challenge long-held notions of arrogance and prejudice.

This year, the convergence of Martin Luther King Day and the reading of the Exodus story from the Torah could not come at a more critical moment.  We are witnessing today a steep rise both in racism and in anti-Semitism—the delegitimization of the people, religion and Land of Israel.  Today we see a surge in the power of huge corporations and self-interest groups while the gulf between rich and poor continues to widen.  Both in our own country and all over the world, there are still many Pharaohs who believe that their word is supreme law, who subjugate their own people and oppress others out of ignorance and fear. 

The truth of the Torah is demonstrated and made evident by the actions of human beings. The course of the future will be determined in no small measure by the choices we make today.  We can acquiesce, or we can rise up against hatred and prejudice wherever we see them. My hope and prayer is that we follow in the footsteps of Moses and Rev. King, two men who showed us the path towards a future where all humankind, and indeed all life, can exist in harmony and peace, with dignity and justice for all.

© 2018 by Boaz D. Heilman

Change And Transformation: Shemot 2018

Change And Transformation

D’var Torah for Shabbat Shemot

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

January 3, 2018

The more things change, goes the saying, the more they stay the same.  Though things may seem to, nothing ever really changes.  We see the same stories repeating through the generations, the same mistakes made, with lessons still unlearned.

And yet, is it really so? Is change imaginary, something we only think we see?

The belief that nothing changes goes back to the earliest time of human thinking. Even as far back as the Book of Ecclesiastes we read, “There is nothing new under the sun.” But the Bible does not doom us to eternal boredom.  Repetition can lead you to greater understanding.  Think practicing a dance move, or perhaps the movie Groundhog Day, where Phil, the weatherman, is doomed to repeat his mistakes day after day until he finally makes a breakthrough and starts fixing things rather than breaking them.  It’s Hollywood’s version of Tikkun ‘Olam, the Jewish teaching that repair of the world is both possible and necessary.

Though history is rooted in the past, things can, and do in fact, change. Every dawn brings something new into the world, something that was never there before: New babies are born; new thoughts and new ideas emerge. New technologies arise, shedding new light on the way we see ourselves and the world around us. And we change. We aren’t merely cogs in some perpetual-motion machine, plugged in, occasionally repaired, until at last we fail and are replaced. 

Our very humanity enables us to bring change into our lives at every moment, with every breath we take.

Even our religion has changed since it first appeared, nearly 4000 years ago.  Periodically, historical events have force us to rethink and redefine our relationship with God. In Jewish history one can see an ongoing process of persecution and destruction inevitably followed by rebirth and regeneration.  Each new eon raises difficult questions that demand new answers. Our sacred texts, from the Torah through the Talmud, to the various medieval commentaries and down to the questions and answers of our own day—collectively known as Responsa—our texts serve as a mirror through which we can perceive and understand the ongoing evolution of our faith. 

Even within the Torah itself, our first and most fundamental text, we can already discern at least two distinct eons.  The first is the period of the Patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In their stories we see the struggles of men trying to figure out what it means to believe in a single God. In a benighted world where people called both objects and ideas gods, Abraham’s understanding that there is a single force that extends beyond the material world, beyond human grasp and comprehension, was revolutionary.  Freed from prescribed dogmas, the Patriarchs and Matriarchs sought for themselves and their children new, uncharted paths through the wilderness to this almighty, infinite, eternal God.

The God that this first generation of Jews perceived was a one-on-one entity.  Each saw a vision particular only to him- and herself.  In Genesis, the first book of the Torah, Israel was the name given to one—and only one—individual: Jacob. Exodus, the second book, picks up several hundred years later, with Israel now the name of an entire people.  Much else in the world had changed too.  The major power in the world was no longer Mesopotamia, but rather Egypt, and even this empire was on the verge of collapse, with a new star rising elsewhere.

Shemot—Exodus— begins with a listing of the names of Jacob’s sons.  As brothers of Joseph, who had saved Egypt from utter collapse, the brothers and their families were at first honored and respected.  However, in the ensuing 400 years their status changed.  A new power—Greece—was emerging.  The Greeks brought with them a new way of seeing the world, new philosophy, new art, a new religion, all supported by a vastly superior army.  Fearful, and for good reason, the latter-day Pharaoh issued harsh and restrictive measures meant to keep his kingdom stable.  But it wasn’t meant to be.  The ancient Egyptian empire was about to be brought to its knees, though not by an army, but rather by a single individual.

Moses wasn’t a prince by birth.  He was born to a nation of slaves, part of a clan whose role was to reinforce during difficult times, through story and song, Israel’s belief in the God who had promised to redeem them.

Pharaoh decreed genocide against the Jewish people, commanding the killing of all newborn males. However, pockets of resistance arose: Shifra and Puah, the Jewish midwives, defied Pharaoh’s orders.  Jewish mothers hid their babies. Even Pharaoh’s own daughter—unnamed in the Torah but given by the Rabbis the name of Batyah (Daughter of God)—resisted, taking her place in a secret underground railroad whose purpose was to save Jewish children, thus becoming the first recorded Righteous Gentile.

As the rebellion grew, it became clear that what was happening was more than ordinary political unrest and upheaval.  Something new was coming into the world: the Jewish People, and along with it, a new vision of God. No longer only the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, this was the God of all Israel. It was a new, improved version of the ancient religion, a Judaism 2.1. 

The Book of Exodus is thus much more than merely a story of miracles and wonders. Exodus dares us to refute the ancient belief that change is impossible. It challenges us, instead, to work to improve the world, to make life better, to be agents of change where accepted beliefs fail.

Through the Commandments, Moses eternally linked God and Israel. By transforming a nation of slaves into a Kingdom of Priests, he changed history forever.  Empowering each of us, from prince to pauper, to participate in the act of bringing holiness into the world, Moses brought freedom not only to himself, but also to his whole people and, by extension, to all humanity. 

It’s a lesson that bears repeating.

© 2018 by Boaz D. Heilman

The Quixote Principle: A Sermon For Hanukkah

The Quixote Principle: A Sermon For Hanukkah

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

December 15, 2017

In Memory Of My Father, Zev Heilman Z”L

I went to see Man Of La Mancha a few nights ago.  It was snowing all day and the roads were treacherous, but this play has a special draw for me and so I went.

Man Of La Mancha has always been like that for me, at least since I first heard the original Broadway cast recording.  I was in high school then, and the play’s idealistic—quixotic, you might say—message, told in music, hit home with me right away. Not long afterwards, I was fortunate enough to see a production of it in Los Angeles, with the original stars, Richard Kiley and Joan Diener, in a performance that had an almost religious effect on me.

The story of the play is based on one of the oldest and most famous novels in world literature (some actually call it the first modern novel), Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote.  Since its first publication 400 years ago, it has entertained, amused and inspired generations of readers in any number of languages and adaptations. I first read it in Hebrew, in a children’s, abridged, version. 

But there is yet one more level to my appreciation for this beautiful story.

When I was a child, my father was a teacher at a vocational high school in Israel.  One day—I’m not sure why I didn’t go to school that day—my father took me to work with him.  I didn’t actually go into his classroom when he was teaching, but through the keyhole I could hear him talking about Don Quixote.  I saw him waving his arms, probably imitating a windmill, bringing to life this most memorable scene from the novel.  From that moment on, I learned to be as enthralled as my father was, by the story of a man in whose imagination windmills turned into giants, and who saw in a common innkeeper’s daughter, an elegant lady to be admired from afar.

Don Quixote’s imagination runs wild on him. Psychologists have been quick to analyze the delusional and dysfunctional man that he must have been, and have even named a psychosis after him: The Quixote Principle.

But Don Quixote, the man, is far from mad.  Yes, he is a figment of his creator’s feverish imagination, but his sense of fairness, equality and justice are far from wrong.  Aldonza, the woman who, in his fantasy, transforms into the fair Lady Dulcinea, is taken, abused, and demeaned by men who are attracted to her beauty and gender.  Is rescuing her from her tormentors such a mad thing to do?

And perhaps he did see giants that he felt needed to be felled.  Does that make him mad?  I’m not even speaking of modern-day, giant corporations that prey on human frailties—for example, the food and beverage industries that tell us that sugar is yummy, that Coke is “the real thing,” and that you, too, can turn from a common geek into a sexy hunk if you just quaff the right beer. And I am not referring to supersized ego politicians who would have you believe that, if only you voted for them—no matter how bad or even criminal their past and present behavior might be—the world would be a better place.  But aside from them, there are other, real, giants in the world—disease, ignorance, prejudice and terrorism to name a few.  Does it make a person mad to fight these giants and defeat them once and for all?

Maybe Don Quixote was mad.  Maybe all the evil he saw around him did affect his brain. No matter how many times he fell, he rose and rose again---“To right the unrightable wrong,” until he could rise no more.  Maybe that is a kind of madness.

Cynics would have us believe that reality cannot be changed.  Things have always been bad.  There is, and always was, immeasurable cruelty in the world. And there has never been, anywhere, a time of peace longer than a decade or two, and that only due to one side having superior military strength. 

You might as well be tilting at windmills if you think otherwise.

In Greek mythology, heroes fall because it is their preordained, unavoidable, fate to fall.  Trying to change anything is useless. One of the most famous myths tells that, at his birth, Oedipus was abandoned to die on a barren cliff.  Why? Because a soothsayer foretold that he would one day kill his father and marry his mother.  I know—gross.  But that’s exactly what happened, at least according to the myth.  The message of Greek mythology is that defying fate and the will of the gods can only lead to misery and pain.  We might as well give in right from the start.

But in another land, at just about the same time, other stories were told.  These taught that there can be change; that justice should be—must be—pursued; and that all people deserve the benefit of dignity, equality and respect. The stories that we the Jews told were about freeing slaves and feeding the hungry. The Bible—the written record of that vision—is all about people who do argue with powerful men—the Pharaohs and emperors of the world; it’s about simple men and women who defy fate, who confront evil, who demand justice even from God, the almighty Creator of the Universe.

That the two cultures were headed toward a violent clash is therefore no surprise.  The clash took place in the second century BCE, in the form of the Maccabees’ Rebellion. More than it was about control of Israel—then called Judea—this revolt was actually about two opposing world views:  On one side, the Greek system, which demanded unquestioning submission to gods and kings. On the other, the Jewish view, which upheld that freedom is an inalienable human right.  More than the Maccabees fought for a piece of land, they took up arms to fight for religious freedom, for freedom of thought, for the freedom to question, to doubt, and to make real once-impossible dreams.

The Maccabees accomplished their mission.  They defeated the mightiest army of the day.  Under Judah the Maccabee, freedom was restored; and the Temple in Jerusalem—the temple that the Greeks had defiled by placing a golden statue of Zeus in it—was rededicated.  The Maccabees then instituted an annual celebration to commemorate the amazing victory of the few against the many, and they called it Hanukkah—the Hebrew word for “dedication.”

Two hundred years later, it was the Romans’ turn. The Romans went even farther than the Greeks:  They destroyed Jerusalem and burned the Temple that stood in its heart.  Forbidding the Jews to ever rebuild, they tried to make us forget our national roots and our history. 

But like Don Quixote, we rose, and we rose again.  For two thousand years, nation after nation tried to destroy us, but without success.  And a mere three years after the Holocaust, which saw one half of the world’s Jews annihilated, we rose yet again, and we established a new state in the land of Judea, the State of Israel.  And even though the Temple has not been rebuilt—there is a Moslem mosque standing on its ruins today—the city of Jerusalem is once again Israel’s capital, the seat of its government and the center of Israel’s spiritual, political and cultural life. 

I can see the appeal that Cervantes’s novel, Don Quixote, had for my father. From a letter that he received at the end of the Holocaust, my father learned about the tragic loss of his entire family.  Though he never quite recovered, like Don Quixote he never abandoned hope. Dedicating his life to rebuild that which the Nazis destroyed, he started a family, built his own home, and became an educator for hundreds if not thousands of pupils—me among them—teaching Jewish history and literature, Hebrew and The Bible.  Throughout his life, my father kept before his eyes the vision of the frail old man of La Mancha, a man who truly believed that, “To fight for the right/Without question or pause/To be willing to march into Hell/For a heavenly cause” was a mission well worth dedicating your life to. 

So tonight, on the very day that my father would have turned 101, I want to say, Happy birthday, Abba; I hope you know that I have not given up the quest, that I have dedicated my life to the same ideals you held high: freedom, justice and the undying love for our people; that Hanukkah for me is more than about a miracle that happened two thousand years ago.  Like you, tonight I celebrate a long string of miracles, the wondrous miracle of our People’s survival against all odds, despite all our oppressors.

And truly, I believe that the world is better for this.

May the lights of Hanukkah continue to shine brightly throughout the long, dark nights of this season; may they inspire us never to lose hope, to continue to dream, to carry on our noble quest for what is right, fair and just, and, hopefully, in our own day or in the days of our children, “To reach the unreachable star.”

© 2017 by Boaz D. Heilman

November 29: A Day To Remember

November 29: A Day To Remember

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

November 30, 2017

I know it isn’t Purim yet.  That jolly holiday of Hammentaschen (those wonderful poppy seed- or jelly-filled pastries), of make-believe and masquerades, won’t be for another three months or so. But Jewish history is filled with miracles, of days designated to be days of sorrow but which, somehow, at the very last minute, turn into joyful celebrations instead.  And this evening I want to talk about one of those days: November 29.

Though it isn’t my birthday, I owe my life to that day, and to the heroes who made it happen.

The story goes back to 1944, but before I get into the story itself, you need to know something about my mother. 

My mother was 16 when World War Two erupted and the Germans invaded Poland.  Within a month the Germans overran the entire country, including her hometown of Katowice, in the southern part of Poland, not far from Krakow.  The roundup of the Jewish population began not long afterwards.  My mother’s journey of persistence and survival took her to several ghettoes and prisons, and took nearly five years to complete.  She escaped four times from the grip of the Nazis, and finally succeeded in reaching Israel—called Palestine at the time and under the control of the British—in March 1944. 

Holocaust survival was often a matter of luck and chance, but in the case of my mother—as well as a few hundred others—there was yet another reason.  They were all members of Ha-No’ar Ha-Tzioni, a Jewish youth group that was organized yet before the war in order to prepare young men and women to make aliyah to Israel, to teach them the crafts and skills that they would need as they began a new life there. When the war broke out, however, the mission of this youth group changed drastically: they would resist the Nazis and establish escape routes for themselves and for their families.  They organized into small units, each with its own dedicated purpose: to obtain weapons, forge passports, establish escape routes and set up safe houses along the way.  My mother was put in charge of one of those units.

They called themselves Nasza Groupa—“Our Group”—a simple name that belies the complexity and greatness of who they were and what they did.

Three other members of this group were Emil Brigg, Danuta Firstenberg and Olek Gutman.  They were higher up in the group, and their mission was to contact members of the Haganah—the organization that later became the Israel Defense Force.  By then, the Haganah had set up a cell in Budapest, and from that secret location its members were coordinating rescue and resistance operations throughout Eastern Europe.

Along the way, however, the three comrades, Emil, Danuta and Olek, were given another assignment, with fateful consequences.

There was a man by the name of Victor Janikowski, a Jew who, along with another Jewish kapo—or Nazi collaborator—tricked Jewish refugees into giving him as much as $2000 a person (!) to lead them to safety.  Janikowski, however, pocketed the money and secretly delivered the refugees to the German police.  Soon his actions became known to members of the Groupa.  Emil, Olek and Danuta (with assumed Aryan names and forged papers), were assigned to find and kill Janikowski.

It was a dangerous mission, and though they ultimately succeeded, the three were soon discovered and arrested by the Gestapo.  They were brutally tortured for twenty-one days, but did not break and did not give away what they knew about the Haganah cell in Budapest and about their other contacts.  Had they betrayed their friends in the Groupa, there is no doubt that only a very few would have survived.  Only three weeks later, when they were sure that everyone else had managed to escape, did the three finally give up the information sought by the Nazis.

“You will all die tomorrow,” a Nazi officer informed them.  They were even shown chalk marks drawn along a brick wall, where they would be made to stand and be shot the next morning, the morning of November 29, 1944.

But that was not to happen.  Around midnight, these Jewish heroes of the Nasza Groupa heard the rumble of tanks driving past the prison.  A few hours later, more tanks, going in the other direction.  Then a complete silence, broken sporadically by scattered machine gun fire.  As morning broke, still more tanks arrived.  Looking through a window set high up in the cell, Emil saw that these were Russian tanks. They were saved.  It was November 29, and it also happened to be Danuta’s birthday.

A day designated for sorrow had turned instead into a day of liberation and celebration.

But the story of this date does not end here.

Exactly three years later, a vote was held in the United Nations.  On 29 November 1947 (70 years ago almost to the day), the United Nations General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into two states:  A Jewish state and an Arab state.  The Jewish government accepted the decision; the Arabs rejected it, but the State of Israel was now on legal footing, and half a year later David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, would declare its independence, reestablishing for the first time in 2000 years a Jewish homeland, in its historical birthplace, for the dispersed and dispossessed Jewish People.

Perhaps—as some believe—certain days were designated by some higher power to be special days.  If so, then November 29 must be one of them. 

On the political stage, the Partition vote is still source of debate and contention, perhaps even more so now than it was then.  But the date is also marked annually by survivors of the Nasza Groupa and their descendants, who for several decades now have been gathering every year on or around November 29^th to celebrate and retell the miracle of their survival. 

There is an epilogue to this story: After making his way to Israel, Emil Brigg joined the Israel Defense Force and, following the 1948 War of Independence, was awarded the army’s highest award, Gibbor Yisrael, “A Hero of Israel.”  He passed away in 2002.  May his memory be a blessing.

For two years, Olek Gutman, who changed his name to Alex Gatmon, conducted revenge operations against SS officers.  Later, after serving in the Israeli Air Force, he joined Israel’s fabled secret service, the Mossad, and helped capture Adolf Eichmann, the mastermind of the Nazi Holocaust.  He also was instrumental in the clandestine rescue of 35,000 Jewish refugees from Morocco, bringing them to safe harbor in Israel. He died in 1981.  May his memory be a blessing.

Dina Gilboa—the Hebrew name Danuta Firstenberg adopted in Israel—lived a long life and established a thriving family.  She died last year.  At this year’s Nasza Groupa reunion and commemoration, held just earlier today in Tel Aviv, Israel, Dina’s daughter, Shuvit, spoke about her mother.  May her memory be a blessing.

L’havdil—to make a thousand separations— with God’s help we will celebrating my mother’s 95^th birthday this coming January 1.  Last month, her eldest great-granddaughter, Opal, now 17 years old, went on a school-sponsored trip to Auschwitz and other extermination camps.  The airport she landed in was—of all places—Katowice, my mother’s hometown.  Way to close a circle!!!  She—fourth generation survivor—also spoke at the commemoration today, relating her experiences and reactions to what she saw, heard and learned.

And so it was that a day, the 29^th of November, had turned from sorrow to celebration, from devastation to renewal.  It could have ended otherwise, but instead it became the beginning of a new life—not only for me, but also for the State of Israel and for the entire Jewish People.

On Purim we hail Esther as the great hero who saved our people from imminent destruction.  The truth, however, is that we are here today because of so many heroes, so many who gave their lives so that we could be here; so many men, women and children who endured untold torture and suffering to ensure the survival of our people.  May their lives and deeds become a testament to human endurance in the face of devastation, and may we be worthy and deserving to carry forward the great responsibility they passed on to us: the continuity of the Jewish People and its epic legacy.

© 2017 by Boaz D. Heilman