Parshas Tazria Metzorah Iyar 3 5770 4/17/2010 Jaron Mendels Bar Mitzva

Jaron just finished a beautiful davening. I know he would like it to keep on going. Jaron let me tell you something. We would like it to keep on going also. You know the old joke about the synagogue that had a problem with mice. The rabbi came up with a brilliant idea. He Bar Mitzvad them. So let’s talk about how we preserve this beautiful moment. Let me share an experience I had earlier this week.


From Yad Vashem in Jerusalem to Greenwood Cemetery in Atlanta, from the White House to local Boards of Commissioners, observances were held and proclamations issued this past week in commemoration of the Holocaust. Dekalb County was gracious enough to invite me to deliver the opening invocation for their Tuesday session and then lead a Holocaust memorial service. After delivering the invocation I took my seat and waited for the Holocaust memorial. We were scheduled third. First the county issued a proclamation honoring the activities of governmental and private groups who are working to curb child abuse and neglect. Proclamations were read, speeches were delivered and pictures were taken. Next was National Library Week. The outgoing director of Dekalb library system stepped up with a group of librarians. They seemed to be the same ones that were at the library when I was a kid. Proclamations were read speeches were delivered and pictures were taken. Then the Holocaust memorial group was called up. Proclamations were read speeches were given. Six candles were lit and pictures were taken. As we walked out the president of the commission was reading the days agenda. It was all well and good and certainly better to have it than not but it left me feeling strange.

Let me be perfectly clear. Child abuse is horrible. We should all do anything we can to obliterate it. Let me make another thing perfectly clear. I love libraries. I have always been and remain an avid reader. I remember fondly the library I used to go to on Olsen Hwy. It has since made it on the national register of historic buildings. But in my mind the Holocaust is different. Not just because it was bigger and not just because it happened to my people. I believe that the Holocaust was part of the advancement of the world toward the goal that G-d has in store for it. I don’t know exactly how it fits but I believe that the events that swirl around the Jewish people play an indispensable role in G-ds plan. This is obvious from a cursory reading of the Torah, study of the Talmud and Midrashim and it is the foundation of all Kabbalistic literature. And while the county of Dekalb might view it as a bad thing like child abuse or illiteracy I know in my heart that the fate of the Jews is a very different issue.

That was Tuesday. On Thursday Steve and I were discussing the upcoming Bar Mitzva. Jaron is clearly blessed with a beautiful voice we all hear that. In addition he has wonderful character and has really embraced the formidable task of reading two difficult Torah portions as well as leading services. Jaron revels in the task as he should. The past months have been full of trips to and from Bar Mitzva lessons. The house has been full of the sunds of Torah reading it has felt good. How do we continue Steve asked.

That is a very good question one that many parents of Bar Mitzvas think about.

I would like to share with you how one parent tried to ensure that it would continue.

My friends Jonathan Rosenblum whose columns are regularly carried in the Jerusalem Post and other periodicals tells a story he heard from a friend who is a Rebbe in a Yeshiva. One of this Rebbes students lost his father. The Rebbe went during shiva to comfort his student, and as was his custom, he kept the discussion centered entirely on the niftar (deceased). His talmid told him that his father had never had much of an opportunity to learn Torah. At a young age, he had arrived on one of the kindertransports from Germany to England. Because he came all by himself, without any family members, he was eventually sent to Palestine from England. Upon arriving in Palestine, he made his way to Petach Tikva.

Though he had never learned in a yeshiva, he remained observant, and, in time, became the initiator of almost everything that took place in the Great Synagogue of Petach Tikva. He arranged the various shiurim (classes) in the shul – shiurim which he faithfully attended himself. And he was the one who took responsibility for the upkeep of the shul.

While still at the shiva house, the Rebbe asked the older of the sons what was the secret of his father's success. How did someone with little formal learning and all alone in the world from a young age grow to be so dedicated to his Jewishness. Certainly factors would have indicated a different outcome. The young man replied that he had only recently thought about the question for the first time. Until then, his father was just his father, and everything about him was just the way it was. But when the question of how his father had remained faithful to his Judaism, while so many from ostensibly more favorable circumstances had not, finally occurred to him, he had asked his father. His father answered with a story from his own childhood.

As a young boy, less than ten years old, he was sent by his father to Germany from the town in which they lived in Austria. For some reason, only he was allowed to cross the border. Father and son sat in the early morning darkness waiting for the train that would separate them forever. Neither spoke.

Finally, the lights of the train appeared. As the father lifted his son onto the train, he broke the silence. "Zei a gutte Yid – Remain a good Jew, " he told his son. As the train began to pull out of the station, the father ran alongside yelling, "Zei a gutte a Yid." The train gained speed, and the father kept running after it, screaming, "Zei a gutte Yid." As he ran, the father tripped and fell prostrate on the station platform. That image of his father running after the train and then falling, as he desperately tried to implant the message to be a good Jew in his heart, remained with the young boy the rest of his life. And he lived up to it, under the most adverse circumstances.



Jaron if your parents have articulated it verbally or not I don’t know but their lives are telling you “zie a gutte yid”. Their involvement in your school and shul tell you zie a gutte yid. Your father is Past President of this shul and your grandfather is Past President of Beth Jacob. As a matter of fact I want to share my early experience with the Mendel family. When a young rabbi moves to Atlanta from the Northeast the first thing you find out is that you are going to need a second car. The second thing you find out is the Hame Herb Mendel. So off I went and met a man who dedicated his time to helping other Jews. Also behind the glass handling the paperwork I met Marlene o.b.m. A woman of uncommon wisdom and common sense. Now when a rabbi moves to Atlanta he meets Steve a man who is dedicated to helping other Jews. The Mendels have many interests but first and foremost is their dedication to being a good Jews.

So parents stop and think for a moment. What would you tell your child? What do you tell your child? As important as it would be I don’t think you would holler out ‘stop child abuse’ or ‘support the library’. Jaron, I know what your parents tell you. This morning I am proud to welcome you, a gutte yid, into the community of gutte yidden. Zie a gutte yid.

Last Day of Pesach - Yizkor 5770 April 6 2010

There is a Mishna in the Ethics of the Fathers (Chapter 5)  which lists those things that Hashem created on the Friday afternoon of the week of Creation at twilight.  Some items on the list are famous, the ability for Bilaams donkey to speak, the power of Moshes staff, the manna etc.  Others seeingly more mundane  such as the first pair of tongs. How do you make tongs?  You heat a piece of iron in a furnace then take it out and hammer it to shape.  How do you take it out of the furncace? With tongs.    In essence the Mishna is teaching that even His creation is not immutabl only His will is immutable. One of the items on the list is haKsav / the writing.  Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik notes that this item seems out of place in the list.  What is so supernatural about writing that would place it on a list together with a talking donkey and manna?  (many offer that the writing reffered to here is the writing on the tablets that could miraculously be read when viewed from any direction.) Rabbi Soloveitchik offers that writing and by extension telling (the word sofer scribe and sippur story have the same root) has the ability to transport the listener or reader to another time and place and experice an event as thought they had personally been there.  He recalls how in his youth he was so absorbed in the naarative of the Torah that when reading of Jacobs tricking his father Issac for the blessing he almost blurted out "hurry Eisav is coming". This capacity is a great and miraculous gift of Hashem.

As we stand before Yizkor our thoughts turn to our parents and mine have also.  I was particularlly thinking about my father and what it was that he bequethed to me.  Of course he gave me life and I need not go further nonethelees he gave me much more.  The gift I appreciate most was how he related to me his lifes experiences. Listening to him describe vignettes of his youth I came to know people who had died before I was born and experienced events of worlds that no longer exist.  With this quality I was able to relate to many people in many different times and places.  Their experiences became mine.  How did my father do this?  Because he experienced the things that he saw.  They became him and he shared himself with me. 

In every genereation we are obligated to view ourselves as though we personally left Egypt.  Why not just tell over the story ?  It seems to me that if it is not my story I can't transmit it.  If it is me I can pass it on to you and it becomes yours. Some people can do this well others have much more difficulty.

I think that this may explain a phenomenon that I observe and in truth distresses me. Many people here have made life altering decisions.  Rejecting values that thye were raised with and embracing others.  Changing lifestyle has had unestimable impact of our financial and social lives and our very identities.  Yet I walk down the street on shabbos and see a child of this congregation not wearing a kippah dressed casually and i realize that he dosn't get it.  Do you know what your parents have done.  Do you understand the soul searching courage that it took them to come to this place.  Obviously you do not or you wouldn't so casually dismiss it.  So I ask you why don't they get it?
Perhaps it is because the parents are not telling their story.  Perhaps we need to share our experiences.  Not demand, harraunge, direct or thereaten.  Just share our story.  Our Exodus from Egypt. Share it to the point that they can feel it.  Share it as only the one who experiences it can share it.  Share it so that it will become their experience.  So that they were there and now it will be their experience and they can say I view myself as though I personally left my parents Egypt.

Shabbos Chol Hamoed Pesach 5770 April 3, 2010

The ideas were inspired by Rabbi Matisyahu Solomon in his work Matnas Chaim (vol. Moadim, Iyan emes vemunah / galus ugeulah paragraph 7.)


An observation:

Did you ever notice that when someone draws a picture of a strange creature from outer space it usually contains features of earth creatures organized differently that we normally find them? A big eye on the top of the head and sixteen arms and elephant type skin. The reason is that we cannot imagine anything that we don’t have a point of reference to in our personal experience. Science fiction always imagines one step ahead but not many steps ahead. Jules Verne imagined a submarine but not the internet. That is because where he was coming from there was no point of reference to imagine the internet.

A related observation: Why do we have the features that we have? Why don’t we have a compound eye like a fly which would enable us to see ultra violet light and changes in air flow? Why do we have an opposable digit on our hand but not one on our foot? Of course evolutionists would explain that when we came down out of the trees and started walking on the Savannah we lost our opposable toe. I don’t know about the Savannah or Augusta or Macon for that manner but our question is why did G-d make us the way he did.

Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato known by his acronym Ra*m*cha*l addressed this question in his work Daas Tevunos translated under the title The Knowing Heart (Feldheim Publishers). He says that Hashem gave us everything we need to know Him. He gave us eyesight so that we could conceptualize the concept of hashgacha divine providence. Hashem sees everything we do. How would we ever conceptualize that if we did not have eyesight? No matter how vividly you describe it a blind person can never really conceptualize watching on a screen what someone is doing on the other side of the world. Cameras, satellite images etc. it’s all beyond them. This is also true from an emotional perspective. We are given the capacity to feel kindness so we can conceptualize Hashem kindness with us. All of the other traits are similar. We look around us and see the traits of Hashem at work. Nowhere is this most evident that in the most sublime of human traits the capacity to love. The rhapsody, tenderness, excitement and euphoria of a person in love are completely foreign to one who has never experienced it. Only one who has experienced the love and intimacy of marriage can imagine the ecstasy of intimacy with the Divine. This is the Song of Songs Shir Hashirim that we read this morning. Characterized by Rabbi Akiva as the Holy of Holies this book more than any other directly describes the sought after intimacy with the Divine and it does so in human terms which are part of our experience. The joy the longing the heartache the anticipation the ups and downs of the relationship all are there.

Just as we need an experiential reference point to appreciate something, without a reference point we can’t appreciate it. Some people are naturally positive others negative. The negative people think that the positive people are phony. How could they be so upbeat about everything? Liars can’t believe that there are people who would never tell a lie. Even when they come to know someone who never lies they never really trust them because they assume they are just choosing to tell the truth but would lie if conditions call for it. Trusting people can trust in Hashem. Those who are always doubtful and suspicious can’t really have faith in Hashem.



Some of us wonder about people who really enjoy keeping the mitzvos or learning Torah. We can’t understand what they are getting out of it. We assume they must be faking or trying to please the Rabbi or they had a lobotomy or something. Perhaps they are experiencing something that is currently outside of our frame of reference. To close that gap I invoke the mantra of Rabbi Dave Silverman who has been encouraging participants of his beginner’s minyan for twenty two yours. “If you don’t know the words fake it”. Perhaps we will create a point of reference. After all that is why Hashem made it.