Facebook and Easy Teshuvah

This was my column in Congregation Beth Am's Digest this month. I thought others might find it interesting or useful, so here it is...

It’s that time of year again—the time when I’ll see something on Facebook, repeatedly, which is done with a good heart and the best of intentions, but bothers me, nonetheless.

I’m talking about Facebook status updates and messages such as, “If I have offended any of you this past year, please forgive me.” They don’t happen only on Facebook, of course, but they do seem pretty common there. As I said, these are offered with great sincerity, I’m sure, but I think they’re terribly misguided.

Our sages tell us that teshuvah, repentance, is a multistep process.  As part of it, we have to confess what we did wrong, and we have to do it in detail. No just saying, “I was greedy.” Instead, we have to say, “I was asked by so-and-so to give to such-and-such cause, and I didn’t because I wanted to go out for dinner that night,” or something like that. And then, if we harmed someone with our misstep, we have to apologize to them, openly and explicitly. We have to repair any damage, if possible, and only then do we have the right to ask for forgiveness from them, or from God.

Teshuvah is more than an apology. Teshuvah is a serious, deep process which is meant, ultimately, to lead to self improvement. That's why our sages teach that a person knows that his or her teshuvah only when he or she doesn't commit the same sin again. The ultimate goal of teshuvah is not to obtain forgiveness from someone else, or to wipe away our sense of guilt. The ultimate goal of teshuvah is to become a better person — the kind of person who would never do such a thing in the first place.

I have a hard time believing that, however good the intentions behind it might be, typing "Please forgive me if I hurt you" into our browsers has any chance of creating that kind of change. In fact, I suspect that, if anything, it might make it less likely to happen, because we will have given ourselves the illusion of having done teshuvah, and so we won't feel the need to do anything else. Why go through the truly difficult, painful work of true teshuvah when we can so easily accomplish it with our keyboards?

The truth is that although Facebook might be quite new, this conversation isn't. The ancient version of easy Facebook teshuvah is actually Yom Kippur services, themselves. There have always been people who think that the words that we say on Yom Kippur are teshuvah. But, the sages of old were clear that just isn't the case. The Day of Atonement does not atone unless we have first made peace with our fellow human beings.

Teshuvah is powerful. Teshuvah is transformative. Teshuvah is beautiful. But, teshuvah is never, ever easy. If it is, then it wasn't teshuvah.

May your Yamim Noraim, your Days of Awe be filled with meaning. And, may they be so because you made the effort to bring meaning to them.

L’Shana Tova u’Metukah – a good and a sweet year to you.

Swab A Cheek, Inscribed For Life

On Yom Kippur, food is not allowed to go in your mouth. But cotton swabs are, and that’s important, because that (along with a bit of paperwork) is how you register to become a potential bone marrow donor.

Like many other congregations in our movement, Congregation Beth Am is partnering with Gift of Life to try to get as many people as possible registered in the National Marrow Donor Program. For many who are suffering from blood cancers or certain genetic diseases, a bone marrow or stem cell transplant is their best, or only, hope for a cure. By registering to become a donor, you might actually save someone’s life. On the day when we plead with God to include us in the Book of Life, we can be an active part in keeping someone else’s name written in that book. There is, quite simply, no higher mitzvah then this.

You might be surprised that there is no blessing for this act of potential life-saving (although some have been written in recent years). That’s not an oversight — in Judaism, we say many blessings, but none of those blessings are for moral deeds. They’re all for rituals. Is that because Judaism places a greater emphasis on ritual than it does on morality? No — it’s because of exactly the opposite.

When we say a blessing, we are attempting to elevate an ordinary act into a sacred one. Rather than just light a candle, I’m going to say a blessing first. And now, this candlelighting has become a moment of holiness. I can just eat a piece of bread, and enjoy it. Or, I can pause for moment, say a blessing, focus on how wondrous the simple act of eating bread can be, and thereby elevate that moment into something transcendent. Blessings are our tool for turning the ordinary into the holy.

But, you can’t turn a moment of helping another person into a holy moment, because it already is one.

When we register to be a bone marrow donor, or an organ donor, or when we give blood, or when we give tzedakah, or when we do any other act, large or small, which helps another person, we are doing something which is, inherently, holy. Trying to make it holy would be like trying to make the ocean wet. It’s already wetter than we can ever make it. Registering to potentially save someone’s life — that’s already holier than any words we might utter can ever make it.

We spend so much energy in synagogue trying to connect with the holy parts of our world. It would be an enormous shame if we missed this most sacred opportunity—the opportunity to save someone’s life. On the holiest day of the year, it will almost certainly be the holiest thing you will  do.

G’mar Chatimah Tova—May you be inscribed in the Book of Life.

This is my column in CBA's September Digest, hitting your mailbox soon, if you're a Congregation Beth Am member. But, I wanted to get this out today, too. You see, today, Sam Sommer is getting a Bone Marrow Transplant. Sam is the son of my dear friends Rabbis Phyllis and Michael Sommer. You can read all about him, and his fight against cancer, at SuperManSamuel.blogspot.com. May he be inscribed in the Book of Life for many, many years to come.

Why do we fast?

As we get ready for our Yom Kippur fast, I came across this brief article, asking why, exactly, we fast. The author lays out 4 different explanations, all of which find support in our tradition (one one constant in Judaism: there is never only one answer to any question!). But, there is only one of them, he claims, which finds Biblical support:

Isaiah's prescription for the fast that God desires addresses precisely these elements: when you gather in the town square to call out to God, think of the people who sleep there at night because they have no home. When you feel the pangs of hunger after not eating for a day, think about those for whom this is a regular occurrence. When you don your sackcloth and ashes and take off your comfortable shoes, remember that there are those who do not have what to wear. The point of fasting is to sensitize us to those for whom such denials are a daily occurrence, and not by choice.

The entire point of our fast is to sensitize ourselves to those who are in constant deprivation and need, so that we will be more likely to help those people, when our fast is over. Which means that our fast is judged not by how hard we pray during it, but by how hard we work to help others, when we're done.

Funny. That's almost exactly what I'll be saying tomorrow morning. Hope to see you there, so you can hear all about it (out of towners - I'll post it after the holiday, so you can read it, too!).

G'mar Chatimah Tova - may you be sealed in the book of life.

What is religion good for?

Rabbi Larry Hoffman* is one of the leading thinkers in the synagogue-renewal world. He's probably done as much as anyone in recent history to get Jews (and members of other religions, as well) to think seriously about how their synagogues (and churches, etc.) function, and how they need to change. He recently wrote a piece on his blog which gives an excellent, brief overview of Liberal Religion, and does a wonderful job** of explaining why so many synagogues seem a bit lost, right now.

* he is probably one of the three rabbis whom I quote, and from who I unabashedly steal, most often. Take him, Rabbi Larry Kushner and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, and you've got my rabbinic All-Star team!


** it's not a long piece, so if you're interested, it's definitely worth the click-through to read the whole thing. The comments on his page are pretty interesting, too!

To Hoffman, it all starts in the late 1700's with the then-revolutionary idea that Judaism is a religion. What, exactly, is a religion?

For Jews in Christian countries, religion was a system of belief that was operationalized in worship

That's actually a fantastic definition of "religion," which is one of those words that we all use, but would struggle to define. The problem is, since Judaism hadn't evolved as a “religion,” in that sense, it never really took. And so, our attempts to build synagogues which were essentially modeled on Protestant Churches were destined to fail (or, at least, not succeed fully). So, rather than close up shop (which institutions almost never do, voluntarily) we set about finding other reasons to continue to exist.

We tried relying on anti-Semitism as a reason to be. That was, ultimately, unfulfilling. We claimed to be a place which valued family like no other, which led in large part to most synagogues focusing on lifecycle events, and we expanded that idea, to say that our main purpose was “community,” which has its own failings:

The evidence, however, is against our being able to do this very well. Except for synagogue clergy, professionals, and the “regulars” (the self-selected “insiders” for whom synagogue really is community), most synagogues are not seen as communities that care, nurture, and provide whatever it is that beleaguered boomers want. At least life-cycle celebration is something we are good at. Community, apparently, is not. And the next generation, the boomers’ children may not even want it.

All in all, it's a pretty dim view of synagogues (and all the more painful because it rings so true). But, thankfully Hoffman isn't out just to depress us. Instead, he suggests there might be another purpose which synagogues can fulfill: spirituality.

You know, it's a funny thing. For a long time I've resisted the term “spiritual.” Partially, that's because it's so overused, and is often used in a very amorphous way—almost as if the point is to not talk seriously, and instead have a conversation in generalities and feel-good bromides. I've also resisted it because it came with certain connotations. A “spiritual person” was a particular type of person–ethereal, touchy-feely and so on. It might be an understatement to say that I have never been that type of person, and I've never really wanted to be (nothing wrong with those who are; it's just not me).

But, the reality is that, either through a process of aging and (God forbid) maturation, or maybe through the study I've done over the years, I've come to realize that spirituality really is one of the absolute primary components of a religious life. And (I'll fully admit—I'm proud to have had this realization before I read Rabbi Hoffman's piece) it might be exactly the one thing which synagogues can offer which few others can (notice—I didn't say no others can; I actually don't believe that this is the sole province of organized religion).

We don't need synagogues by default like we did half a century ago (we're fine if we never join or attend a synagogue). We don't need synagogues to provide our primary community, anymore (lots of places can do that, and as Hoffman suggests, studies suggest that the next generation might not care so much about “primary community” anymore). If we're going to survive (by "we" I mean synagogues, not Judaism more broadly) we have to be able to offer something vital, something powerful, and something not easily obtainable elsewhere. And that thing might be a serious, profound connection with some One greater than ourselves. Synagogues might have to start taking spirituality more seriously than we have in a long time (also worth nothing - this isn't a new insight; plenty of synagogues already are). We might have to start defining success by how many people's spiritual lives we can deepen.

This is all just a little bit of musing, to show you where my mind has been, of late. But it's also a bit of a preview of a new program we'll be starting after the High Holy Days. For those who are members of Congregation Beth Am, or just those who are in the Tampa Bay area, keep your eye out for a monthly Shabbat morning program called “Making Prayer Real,” based around the book by the same name. In brief, it's going to be an attempt to seriously examine our own prayer lives, and our own spiritual selves, in the hopes of making our prayers (both personal and communal) more intense, more powerful and more meaningful. It will be before services on the 2nd Saturday of each month, starting in the fall.

I doubt that we'll be seeing our current synagogue structures replaced by the Jewish equivalent to ashrams, anytime soon. At least, not in large numbers. But, I'm excited, as well as being a bit nervous, I'll admit, about seeing where this goes. And seeing what happens to us, and to me, if we really start putting our spirits at the center of our lives.

Now on Facebook!

I've just learned that you can add a blog to Facebook, so if that's your preference, check it out at http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/blog_am/

(ok, it seems that the functionality ain't all there yet. But, if I get a few "fans," we'll get it partially, at least!)