Rabbi Heidi Hoover's blog

Shpizi at rest. These photos are not entirely gratuitous--11yo needs them for a school project, and I put them here so she would be able to get them.

Shpizi asleep.

Shpizi curled up.

Shpizi with her eyes open.

Shpizi upside down.

D'rash for Parashat Shemini

Last week was a difficult week for our congregation and for me personally--after a 16-month struggle with liver cancer, our congregation's president, Lawrence Frost, died. This is the d'var Torah I wrote for that Friday evening:

This week we observed Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. For many of us in our congregation, that day may have been largely overshadowed this year by our more immediate loss, the loss of our temple president, Lawrence Frost, who died on Tuesday, and who we buried on Wednesday. This was very much on my mind when I turned to this week’s Torah portion, Shemini. In Shemini we read about the first sacrifices made in the newly-completed Tabernacle. After they are made, God’s Presence appears to everyone, and Divine fire consumes the sacrifices. Immediately afterward, Aaron’s sons Nadav and Avihu make an offering of incense on their firepans. The text tells us that they offered “eish zarah”—alien fire, “which was not enjoined upon them.” Then they are consumed by the same Divine fire that consumed the sacrifices on the altar.

That’s three kinds of death that we’re thinking about this week. The murder of millions through torture, starvation, gas, guns, and more. The death of someone important to our congregation after 16 months of illness, at the age of 63. The sudden, unexpected deaths by fire of Nadav and Avihu.

What all three of these situations have in common is that we don’t understand. We don’t understand how God can let millions of people be murdered, and why some survived while others did not. We don’t understand why some people die of cancer before their time and others do not. We don’t understand the reason that Nadav and Avihu deserved to be consumed by the fire.

We try to find order, to find comfort in the idea that there is some reason, someone in control, that somehow things make sense. There are those who say the Holocaust was a punishment for sin, perhaps the sin of assimilation (of course, this explanation tells us more about the mindset of the people doing the explaining than anything else). That explanation is one that fits the attitude of much of the Bible—if something bad happens, it’s a punishment from God. Most of us who are liberal Jews find that abhorrent. We don’t believe that God punishes us directly in that way for our sins. And even if God did, goes another response to the idea of the Holocaust as punishment, what in the world could the Jews have done to deserve that?

Even more abhorrent is one of the rabbinic explanations for Nadav and Avihu’s death. That explanation is based on Avihu’s name, which, literally translated, means “he is my father,” and uses that to say that Nadav and Avihu were killed as a punishment to Aaron for the Golden Calf. That a child would be punished for the sins of the parent seems very unjust.

That explanation is only one of many that our rabbis give for what happens to Nadav and Avihu. A few others:

• Some say it’s a punishment because they made a sacrifice that was not what God told them to give. They should not have gotten carried away in spiritual ecstacy, but worshipped God only in the way God told them to.
• Some say they were drunk, connecting this episode to an instruction to Aaron given a few verses later, which says that he and his sons must not drink wine before entering the Tabernacle.
• Others say God took them precisely because they were close to God, that that is why God punished them severely for what was a very small infraction.

There are still more explanations, and we could, I’m sure, come up with some too. But the fact remains that it’s all speculation. We don’t know why it happened.

Why do we grope so desperately for explanations?

• Because if we can explain it, perhaps we can protect ourselves and our loved ones, and keep it from happening to us.
• Because it feels better to feel that there is a God that is thinking about us, even in a negative way, than to feel that if there is a God, God doesn’t care one way or the other.
• Because it feels better to think that there’s some order, some system to the universe, than to believe it’s all random.

All of these reasons are about control. Feeling out of control, powerless, can be terrible. It can be even worse when we feel that no one is in control. Finding a sense of order in the world, in the things that happen to us, seems to be a human drive. Religion is what has developed to try to answer these questions. But religion, whose thinkers are all human too, doesn’t have the answers.

So, we might ask, what’s the point? The point is that religion—in our case, Judaism—gives us the chance to be together as a community with the questions. Judaism gives us the chance to support each other when the inexplicable strikes. We find God in the embrace of others. We find God in the people who sing the prayer for healing with us every week. We find God in the people who set up the food for our shiva and hand us a cup of hot broth when we walk in the door, back from the cemetery where we left someone we love.

In the Bible, Job cries out to God in anguish, asking for an explanation for all the terrible things that happen to him, refusing to believe that it is punishment for some sin. He doesn’t get an explanation, but a reminder that the workings of the universe and of God are beyond our understanding. They will always be beyond our understanding.

And so we go forward: doing our best, loving each other, supporting each other, trying to remember to value each day and make the most of it. May we always be grateful for all we have and for all we had and for all the loving people who are in and who have been in our lives. May we never forget those we have lost—in the Holocaust, and in past days, weeks, months, or years. May the memory of our loved ones be for a blessing. Amen and Shabbat shalom.

D'rash for the 7th Day of Passover

We are coming now to the end of Passover, our joyful spring holiday. At our seders, we asked questions, we learned, we discussed how we were slaves in the land of Egypt, and how we were freed from that degradation and pain by the strong hand and outstretched arm of God, who took us to be God’s people, and who we continue to acknowledge as our God. It is a journey from slavery to freedom, from sadness and despair to rejoicing.

On this day, the last day of Passover, we traditionally read—as I read from the Torah today—about the crossing of the Reed Sea and the song of celebration the Israelites and Moses sang on the other side. Some Jews, particularly among the Chasidim, have a tradition of pouring water on the floor and singing and dancing to remember the crossing of the sea.[1] But during this same service, we recite Yizkor for our loved ones who have died.

In the midrash[2] some of our rabbis suggest that not all of the Israelites left Egypt in the Exodus—some say one-fifth did not leave, or one in 50, or one in 500, because they died during the plague of darkness. (Rashi and Ibn Ezra, in the JPS Miqraot g’dolot p. 100, say it the other way—only 1/5 or 1/50^th or 1/500^th of the Israelites left. This seems to me to be a translation issue.) This adds a different element to the Israelites’ flight—they weren’t just leaving slavery and oppression, they were leaving loved ones behind.

This brings to mind another escape we read about in the Torah—Lot and his family’s flight from Sodom and Gomorrah as it is destroyed. Lot and his (unnamed) wife escape with two daughters, and they are warned not to look back. Lot’s wife does look back, and is turned into a pillar of salt. But who could blame her for looking back? They had other daughters who were married, and who did not leave with them. They weren’t just leaving a place full of evil and depravity, they were leaving loved ones behind.

As we go through our lives, we go through changes. Relationships begin and end. Sometimes we are forced to leave people behind because they die, and we live on. Sometimes we are forced to leave people behind because in order for us to live on in a positive way, we must end relationships that are damaging to us. Sometimes circumstances force us to leave people behind even when we don’t want to, but we are not given a choice. And even when there is joy ahead, even when we are better off, there is pain in the change, there is loneliness in being without those whom we have left behind. Even when the relationships have been difficult or damaging, it is hard to make the transition, because even though those people have been part of our lives in negative ways, they are part of us in some positive ways too.

When we are children, if we are fortunate, Passover is fun and joyful, maybe kind of boring. The rituals and traditions become a valuable part of the fabric of our lives. It becomes important to do things the same way as last year. My own children already look forward to and insist on having the matzobrei they eat for breakfast only during Passover, and my 7-year-old checked with me before our seder to make sure we were going to continue incorporating the Afghani Jewish custom of whipping each other with scallions while singing Dayeinu.

As we grow older, we begin to experience the impact of loss in the midst of our holiday celebrations.

Marge Piercy, a novelist and poet, has written a book called Pesach for the Rest of Us, in which she suggests new rituals and interpretations to incorporate into the Passover seder, encouraging everyone to make the seder their own, which is indeed what our rabbis intended. In her book, Marge Piercy offers this interpretation of the dipping of the karpas, the spring greens, in salt water at the beginning of our seder:

The karpas is a reminder of spring, which renews the earth. But the sparrow that returns may not be the one that left the previous fall. Our lives have rhythms of what returns and what does not return. We come to the seder every year, but we may not all be there. Friends move away, friends die, grandparents die, children leave home. People we cherished can be, one way or another, lost to us. There are empty places not only for Eliyahu, but empty places for those we have lost. We dip the symbol of spring and renewal into the symbol of pain and regret, the salty water that is akin to our blood and our sweat. We are largely made of slightly salty water; it never hurts to remember that.[3]

So we take time on the seventh day of Pesach to remember those whom we are missing, those who were not at our seder table this year, who perhaps have not been at the table for many years, or with whom we never shared a seder, but with whom we have shared our lives and our hearts, and who we look back to even as we go forward in our lives.

We must not allow our looking back at the past to turn us into pillars of salt, paralyzed by what has happened or by what we have lost. Rather, we dip into our salt tears, we allow them to flow, acknowledging their place in our lives, the place of memory, the impact of those who are no longer with us. We recognize that loss is part of life, and that even in times of happiness there can also be sadness. And so, on this day of rejoicing, may we all make the memories of those we love a blessing that sustains and enriches our lives today, tomorrow, and always. Amen and chag sameach.

---

[1] Michael Strassfeld, The Jewish Holidays, p. 27

[2] Mekhilta de-Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, p. 82 of W. David Nelson’s 2006 JPS edition.

[3] Adapted from Marge Piercy, Pesach for the Rest of Us

August 28: heading for home

I'm at Ben-Gurion airport now, waiting for the plane that will take me home. This morning I finished packing and cleaned my bathroom and room. (I didn't leave it completely clean, but it's certainly cleaner than it was when I moved in.)

I went to my new friend Bonnie's place in Haifa, with all my luggage, to spend the afternoon with her and have shabbat dinner (she normally wouldn't do the blessings, but since I was there she wanted me to do them, so it was a proper shabbat dinner).

From her place I got a sherut (a shared van) to the airport. It's been a long time since I've been here, and I think security is even more formidable than when I was here last, or at least more high-tech. There are many layers of security checks. At the first one, where you put all your luggage through an x-ray machine (before you check your bags), I got flagged for some reason and sent for a thorough search of my bags.

They opened my suitcases and started taking stuff out, asking me questions. (This was the second round of "Why were you in Israel? Have you been to Israel before? Are you married? What's your husband's name? What are your parents' names? Have they been to Israel?") So I'm answering all the questions: "What were you doing in Israel?" "Ulpan at the U. of Haifa." "Why?" "I'm studying to be a rabbi." "You are?! Really?! Wait here a minute."

She goes and gets someone else, possibly a supervisor, who starts really grilling me. "Have you visited Israel before? When? Why? You're shaking. Why are you shaking?" "I have a tremor. My hands shake. That's what I do. Also, you know, I'm a little nervous." "Why would you be nervous?" "Because this all makes me feel like maybe I did something wrong. Which I would like to emphasize that I did not." (That's our Heidi, always telling more of the truth than necessary, especially when nervous. At least I managed not to be a smartass.)

She continues. "Are you involved with a synagogue? Which one? What synagogue before that? And before that? What about when you were a child?" "Well, I wasn't raised Jewish. I'm a Jew by choice." "Why did you convert to Judaism? How did you fall in love with Judaism? It's strange for someone raised in one religion to convert to another." I give the briefest of brief versions of the story. "And now you're studying to be a rabbi? It's strange that someone who's going to be a rabbi is flying on Friday night." Ah, there it is. So now I'm explaining the theology of the American Reform Movement. She takes my passport and goes off with it (this is the second time an aiport security person in Israel has taken my passport and gone off somewhere with it, and this always makes me nervous). She has a conversation with another security person, comes back, and says, "OK, it's fine, you can go." I'm wondering if they've never had a Reform rabbi come through the airport before, and I know that's not the case. At any rate, they didn't seem to know what to make of me.

At the next security check, it seemed that they hadn't made the appropriate notation on the sticker they put in my passport. "Did you talk to security?" I am asked. "Yes I did," I respond, possibly a little more fervently than strictly warranted. Another person wanders off with my passport, but comes back after a while, makes the note on the sticker, and I'm on my way.

Then another security x-ray of my carry-on stuff (even though it already was x-rayed once), and at least they seem to be done asking me questions. Passport control, and now I'm finally at the gate, boarding in about 15 minutes. Can't wait to get home. I will say there's no messing around with taking off your shoes or pulling out your bag of liquids in Israel. I guess they figure they've got it covered without having to smell everyone's shoes. I think they're right.

This concludes the diary of my month of ulpan in Israel. It has been a good experience, and while I didn't get everything out of it that I had hoped, that is more because my hopes were too ambitious than because the program and the trip were not good. They were both very good. I'm glad I did this, and we'll see what happens from here.

August 27: ulpan last day

Had the final exam today. It was very very difficult. I took almost the whole 2.5 hours to finish it. There were lots of words I didn't know. I'm not sure we learned them, because I studied the words we were given, and some of these words didn't even look familiar. I'm certain I passed the exam, but I don't know how well I did.

Anyway, the ulpan is over now and I'm heading home tomorrow night.

August 25-26: ulpan days 22-23

This is it. The final exam is tomorrow. I put in a solid five hours studying for it today, so I'm about as ready as I'm going to be. I'm not feeling too anxious about the exam, though I'm sure I'll be nervous tomorrow.

I've learned a remarkable amount in the time I've been here. I'm not satisfied, but I recognize that I've come a long distance in a very short time. I'm proud of that.

I am starting to get anxious about the trip home, true to form. The plan is that I'll pack and take care of some loose ends tomorrow afternoon, then on Friday I'll take all my stuff and go to my new friend Bonnie's place in Haifa. I'll spend the day with her, then take a van to the airport in the evening, since my flight isn't until 11:50 pm.  I tried to book the van tonight, but the guy said call tomorrow. Someone told me people are having trouble getting seats in the vans, though I'm not sure of the veracity of that.

Tonight Mike told me he talked to the girls, and they're doing well at their grandma Karol's house. He told Shoshi (age 4) that she and Hannalina would be coming home on Friday, and the next day I would come home. She got very quiet. He asked her if she was okay, and she said, "Daddy, when you talk to me about people who aren't near me, it makes me feel sad." Awww. Can't wait to get home to my family.