Praying with a minyan is preferable to praying alone.  People who are accustomed to that regular practice – especially the same community regulars – develop the habits of local custom.  These include when to stand or sit, what melody to use, where some psalms are inserted and more.  Those customs can become muscle memory.
 
Just before the recitation of the Sh’ma morning and afternoon, the siddur includes the instruction that a lone worshipper should quietly recite three little words, eil melekh ne’eman.  The acronym for that brief acknowledgment of God’s faithful sovereignty is the very familiar “amen.”  I suspect, without any scholarly proof, that the custom of responding “amen” to a blessing recited by the leader is almost an autonomic reflex.  And because one should not respond with that affirmation of “amen” to one’s own blessing, this little euphemism sort of protects the individual from inadvertent error.
 
I don’t want to argue my explanation, just my point.  People become accustomed to not just the rituals of prayer, but to its habits as well.  And the understanding is well-articulated and demonstrated in the tradition that the strength of custom is frequently superior to the requirements of the law.  Custom must be considered in all matters of observance.  And sometimes, people affirm a custom that defies a certain logic.
 
Take for example the practice of covering one’s eyes when reciting the Sh’ma.  I never saw it as a kid, some sixty years ago.  When it gained popularity as time went on, it was explained as a means of blocking out distractions and focusing on its singular (no pun intended) message when the statutory recitation during the body of morning and evening prayers took place.  Today, I see most members of some congregations cover their eyes during the opening introductory prayers, the Torah service and the amidah of musaf when the six words are recited.  (As you might be able to deduce, it is not my custom.)  A moment of voluntary blindness has become an essential part of the declaration.
 
In the time when the new month was declared only by the testimony of witnesses, there were people who took that witnessing very seriously.  I make no representation about their general piety, but if they witnessed the new moon on Shabbat, they set out immediately to be available at the moment the court reconvened to testify. The Mishnah (RH 1:6) recounts what my teacher, Rabbi Rachel Ain, calls the value of the volunteer.  (This is the expanded translation from Sefaria.)
 
There was once an incident where more than forty pairs of witnesses were passing through on their way to Jerusalem to testify about the new moon, and Rabbi Akiva detained them in Lod, telling them that there was no need for them to desecrate Shabbat for this purpose. Rabban Gamliel sent a message to him: If you detain the many people who wish to testify about the new moon, you will cause them to stumble in the future. They will say: Why should we go, seeing that our testimony is unnecessary? At some point they will be needed, and no witnesses will come to the court.
 
Someone else can discuss the hierarchy of the mitzvot.  Is Shabbat more important (R. Akiva), is the willing spirit more important (R. Gamliel) or is the witnessing more important (the Mishnah itself)?  For my purposes, the critical takeaway in my theoretical agreement with Rabbi Akiva is that the legitimacy of the witnessing is not compromised by the violation of standards of Shabbat observance.  For my purposes, the critical takeaway in my practical agreement with Rabban Gamliel is that people should not be discouraged in their desire to do the right thing.
 
I was bereaved this past April.  My mother went to her eternal reward very early on the second day of Pesach and I, like so many others during this pandemic, had to find the way to mourn her without the ability to be enfolded in visitors during week of mourning and among an in-person minyan during these eleven months of daily kaddish. The erudite emergency instructions that emerged from the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards were equivocal about the nature of a virtual minyan.  Some of the synagogues I attended conducted worship on Zoom as if everyone was together in a room.  Some modified certain parts of the service – especially reading the Torah.  And some conducted the services as if it there were no minyan, eliminating the prayers that require a quorum…except for mourners’ kaddish.
 
Had you asked me before the pandemic, or even in its early days of quarantine about the “validity” of a virtual minyan, I would have been skeptical at best.  But in the best example of the remarkable adaptability of the human community, I have discovered the warmth and support of all sorts of folks in all sorts of places who remain committed to daily worship for its own sake.  Certainly, as in “regular times,” there are those who come to fulfill their obligation to kaddish.  But the thirty or more people who log on to my regular morning and afternoon-evening prayers each day are overwhelmingly there for the prayer – and each other. 
 
A new normal has been established.  Will it survive the restrictions demanded by preserving life and health?  Part of me hopes so, though I long to spend some time schmoozing with my new community over a cup of coffee and a Danish.
 
But of this much I am absolutely certain: anyone who recites those three little words before reciting the Sh’ma on a Zoom minyan does not recognize the wisdom of Rabban Gamliel.

 
On the corner of two local through-streets sits my favorite church.  Westminster Presbyterian is a local landmark.  It towers over the elementary school to its right and the firehouse to its left.  You can’t miss it.  In fact, if you fly into Reagan National Airport and the approach is from the south, its steeple is clearly visible as you land, sticking up from the canopy of trees.  The church helps to fund the annual budget by housing a cell tower up there for at least two major carriers.
 
Westminster is my favorite for a lot of reasons, including the dear friend of mine who leads it.  It is home to a remarkable group of members who were the vast majority of the last social experience I had before the pandemic forced us all into isolation.  They helped Pastor Larry Hayward, Pastor Maggie Hayward (yes, they are married; no, they are not co-pastors) and me fill two whole buses to tour Israel at the end of February.  It was our third interfaith trip.
 
The population of the church, like most religious communities in the DC area, includes lots of people doing the ordinary things that ordinary people do, and a smattering of people whose professions influence the course of the nation.  They are Democrats, Republicans, fierce independents, natural-born citizens, immigrants, wealthy and just-getting-by.  And, to a person, welcoming.
 
I used to have an almost-infallible memory for names.  But as I have gotten older and the sheer number of people I meet has ballooned, I am not quite so confident.  So to avoid embarrassing myself, I now almost always greet people I sort-of know by saying “Hi, I’m Jack Moline.”  By putting it out there that they might not remember me, my hope is that they will reply with their own names.  The ritual continues with one or both of us responding, “of course I know you.”  Mostly, it is true.
 
When it is not, it at least provides some context for the encounter.  I have been introduced to one political figure many times, and he never remembers who I am.  That’s just fine, because he meets a gazillion people a year.  But my name and my yarmulke always trigger his memory, and the conversation always turns to whatever Bible passage he has been reading that week.  It is refreshingly different from the “nice-to-meetcha” mantra that is otherwise inevitable.
 
The other result of my name game is to remind myself that I should not presume that other people know who I am.  It is a lesson in humility that is worth learning and relearning when you live a semi-public life and can be seduced by the notion that you are kind of a big deal. (I was once at a social function, standing next to my wife, when a guy I did not recognize came up and tried to hit on her.  When he asked her name, he recognized “Moline” and said, “Are you related to Rabbi Jack Moline?”  “He is my husband,” she answered.  “How is Jack doing?” he asked.  “Why don’t you ask him yourself,” she said, “He is standing right next to me.”)
 
As I said, Westminster is a local landmark.  Its big front doors open to the intersection on Sunday mornings.  The courtyard next to the sanctuary is a surprisingly effective refuge from the traffic on the street.  The parking lot across from the fire station takes up half a block and backs up to the park behind the school.  The large marquee sign planted toward both cross (!) streets usually advertises the topic of the sermon ahead, along with which clergy person will be preaching.  (Lately, it offers options for on-line and limited in-person attendance).  You can’t miss it.  If you park in the lot and enter the door that leads to the church offices, the chapel, the meeting rooms and classrooms and the best place to hang your coat on the way to the sanctuary, you absolutely know where you are going.  You would not think you were entering George Mason Elementary School or Fire Station #3.
 
But posted right next to the door is a modest sign on which are painted the letters spelling “Westminster Presbyterian Church.”  Just in case you don’t remember.  Just in case you don’t know.  Just so you know you are in the right place.  Just so you know you are welcome.
 
It is a lesson in humility worth learning and relearning.
 

I have a friend who holds elective office who called me last week to ask me an ethical question.  They were offered the opportunity to jump ahead of the line and receive the covid vaccine months before they would be otherwise eligible. 

It was tempting.  People in their family were immuno-compromised and the conduct of the office would be much easier without the constant fear of exposure to staff, constituents and others whose level of contagion was indeterminable.  They asked me as a rabbi – is it ethical?

Before I tell you what I said, let me own up to envy.  I am 68 years old and I have two medical conditions that put me in the third tier of eligibility.  Once the health care workers and nursing home residents are inoculated, I will be next. But since Thanksgiving, thanks to the expected (and realized) surge of cases, I have diligently followed CDC recommendations and kept away from just about everyone.  I haven’t gone to the grocery store, gotten a haircut, picked up my prescriptions, personally patronized the local businesses I have tried to support.  Someone else (usually my younger and healthier wife) has done all of those things for me, except for the haircut (which you would know immediately if you saw me, which you won’t). 

Each day, I get my exercise in by walking for close to an hour on a route that gives me plenty of room to stay multiples of six feet away from any other human being.  If I see someone I recognize, I wave and shout.

I have not held my grandchildren, who live just an hour away, in just about four months.  I know that still makes me luckier than a lot of people, but four months in the life of a toddler is a forever of new experiences.

My routine is routine.  It includes reading the newspaper each morning and, not unusually for someone my age, watching both local and national news on television each evening.  Even if you get your news from Facebook or Twitter, you know what I encounter every day.

The pandemic stories do not vary, but they still break my heart.  Nurses in tears because they have never lost so many patients.  Families devastated for the crime of a birthday party.  A wizened doctor pleading with people to wear a mask so they won’t die. Grandmothers sitting in mile-long lines of cars hoping for a test or a bag of food. Single moms worried that they will be evicted because the rent is six months overdue and public assistance has evaporated.

But aside from the horrifying loss of life, the worst story for me was about the clinic that somehow got hold of a few hundred doses of vaccine and made them available to members of the owners’ faith community.  Black market Moderna, as if they were starving Jews living in the ghetto.

Jews they were, as a matter of fact.  They were willing to take those doses away from the doctors who were treating strangers in ambulances, from frail elderly imprisoned in nursing homes, from EMTs and firefighters and police who were tending to the victims of belligerent bar-hopping with naked faces.  They reached out to certain respected rabbis from their community, men who were rightly embarrassed to discover that they were receiving contraband.  But they did not reach out to Catholic priests, to Imams, to hospital chaplains caring for their own broken-hearted communities.

The Talmud discusses the dilemma of two men stranded in the desert, one with just enough water to survive and the other with none.  What should they do?  If one drinks, the other dies.  If both drink, both certainly die.  The conclusion, taught by the pre-eminent rabbi of all time, Akiva, is that the person with the water must drink and survive.  Tragic though it may seem, he may not forfeit his life for another, and he may not forfeit both lives for the sake of principle.  His claim on life in a time of scarce resources is non-transferable.

Those diverted doses of vaccine were spoken-for.  The clinic owners stole life from a beloved uncle, an overworked respiratory therapist, the kid who delivers their groceries.

I really, really miss my grandchildren.
​
I told my friend that, ethically, they could not jump the line.

​There is a blessing in my tradition that acknowledges a unique transition for parent and child.  When that child comes of age – the tradition has settled on age 12 or 13 – parents recite words of praise and acknowledgment of God “who has released me from the punishment of this one.”
 
The belief system of most modern Jews gets in the way of understanding the meaning of that blessing.  Children are not a punishment, and in our times, parenting is not over as puberty begins.  Rather, a child is not considered to have moral agency until adulthood.  They may understand right and wrong, but they are considered exempt from liability for their actions until they reach the age at which they can be presumed to have the judgment to be responsible for their actions.
 
But the moral order of the universe demands that no bad deed go unpunished.  So, during those years that a parent is responsible for the moral formation of the child, Jewish tradition posits that the misdeeds of the child will be visited on the parents.  When the child crosses the threshold to being a grown-up, the parent is relieved (both theologically and emotionally) and no longer held accountable for the consequences of the son’s or daughter’s behaviors.
 
It's not the child who is the punishment, nor the raising of the child.  The parent is grateful not to be held responsible for another’s behavior.  The concept is akin to putting a ship into port; the captain, relieved to no longer be responsible for the vessel and the lives on board, expresses gratitude, no matter how satisfying the voyage.
 
I am writing this column on July 1, 2020.  In an alternate version of my life, today would have been the first day after the last day of my career as a synagogue rabbi.  The agreement I had with my long-time congregation was set to expire yesterday, the end of an arrangement we entered when I was still responsible for all three of our children, who are now in their thirties.  The details are unimportant except that the congregation and I wisely built in moments of reconsideration, and six years ago I exercised that option.  In my opinion, I could no longer provide the care and attention my congregants deserved.
 
I am asked all the time if I miss it, and the answer is an unmitigated “no.”  I think I did pretty well during close to thirty-five years, and I held myself to a standard of integrity I was no longer able to uphold to my satisfaction. Relieved of the expectations that come with leading a community, I have had the freedom to reconsider my own beliefs and practices.  They are clarified in a way that put me at odds with some of the most important responsibilities of a community’s rabbi.  I was right to retire.
 
I am asked rarely if it has been easy, but if I were, the answer also would be “no.”  Maybe I had a romantic notion of what it would be like to be a “Jew in the pew,” but it was an unrequited romance.  I did nothing to prepare my congregation to deal with a local emeritus.  They did less.  Without that guidance, my sense was that I was like (you should pardon the expression) the ghost of Christmas past – undeniable, but not especially welcome. My hopes of finding a place to contribute to and benefit from my community did not come to fruition; in fact, they were regularly frustrated.  For a long time, I was resentful.
 
A different set of emotions has taken hold during these peculiar months of quarantine.  Understanding that no amount of objection in my heart would change the decisions about my role that have become the default settings in the synagogue was an important first step.  I could argue their wisdom or foolishness, but the debate would never be settled. No one aside from me was even interested – at this point, both understandable and practical.
 
But I ask myself what my life would be like during this pandemic if I had the responsibility in the last fifteen weeks of my tenure to reimagine entirely the way to care for a congregation I had pastored for more than thirty years.  If my energy and integrity to lead the synagogue was insufficient in more normative times, toughing things out in quiet distress could have only undermined the necessary changes in this time of challenge.  Knowing myself as I do, I would have suffered from a deep sense of inadequacy and taken on myself any decline in its vitality and ethos of community.
 
Never mind, by the way, that my inclination to hold myself liable for shortcomings (yet not commendable for successes) was likely a major contributor to my exhaustion before my time.  The serendipity of my earlier choice has brought some clarity to at least some part of this specific day. I would have borne the responsibility and, in some measure, punished myself, as most rabbis do, for the sins of omission and commission during these weird and unfamiliar times.  To exploit the metaphor of the ship, I am grateful that a new captain took over in the last port, because I am not sure I would have put into this port successfully.
 
So, it seems right and proper to recite the aforementioned blessing on this day.  I can’t remember if I said it six years ago; if I did, it was in a very different state of mind.  Today, I understand it as I believe it was intended: a recognition that, having met my obligations to others, it is now incumbent upon them to meet their obligations to themselves.

My first sabbatical from my work as a rabbi came eleven years after I arrived at my pulpit.  I was exhausted, and I spent much of the first half of my six months trying to regain some equilibrium.  I began to refer to it as “emotional rehab.”

In the course of reflecting on the process, I realized that the demands on my emotions had overwhelmed them.  I was expected to take care of my congregants, to acknowledge their experiences and to support them in their passages through the reactions they felt.  I was allowed to be sad at a death, but not to be dissolved by grief.  I could rejoice at a birth, but not be carried away by it.  I was expected to be supportive of the bar or bat mitzvah student, but only very carefully critical.  As a result, I became adept at tamping down my emotional reactions; it soon became (to mix the metaphor) muscle memory.  Eventually, I was fried.  My emotions had been cauterized.

What kind of a life is one without feelings?  I was starved to experience the range of emotions as I once had.  They had to be intense to get past the scars and scabs that had formed.  And what emotion has that power?  Anger, of course.  I became an anger junkie.  I looked constantly for opportunities to feel outraged, insulted, unpleasantly shocked or infuriated. It was no way for a rabbi to be.

I recovered pretty well after six months, and I was able to recognize the signs of relapse.  I’d like to think I also became more aware of the cauterization of emotions that others were experiencing.  Not everyone reacted the same way to the need to resist being swept away and, therefore, suppressing feelings.  But when enough people do so it can have a spill-over effect on society as a whole.

That’s why I believe we are living in an age of cauterization.

There is no doubt that we are experiencing change in almost every corner of our lives.  The result has nothing to do with the desirability of that change, rather the fact of it.  Nothing is reliably the same any more.  Technology enhances and intrudes on our daily existence.  Sexuality, sexual identity, sexual orientation and same-sex relationships have become variegated notions, a challenge for people who feel uncomfortable with the very word “sex.” Weapons are presumed to be everywhere – the theater, the airport, the school, the church, the neighborhood.  Fewer and fewer people affirm what was assumed to be universal – God – and those who continue to believe dismiss beliefs at variance with their own.  Even television, which a generation ago called families to the same room at the same time (quality aside), now has splintered those who stream their preferences on multiple screens and devices.

How does a person respond?  It is simply not possible to cope with the constant anxieties and confusion that result from constant change.  Merely maintaining an equilibrium takes emotional energy that cannot be spent elsewhere.  Public figures have famously railed about “political correctness” (which is itself an expired idiom), but they offer no reassurance to those whose nerves are frayed and who fear that they will be without capacity to gain a footing in a shifting landscape.
We are afraid of love.  We are afraid of what we hear.  And we are afraid to laugh.  It seems to many that there is someone waiting to level an accusation of inappropriate, even criminal behavior.  Making ourselves vulnerable provides an opening for what we suspect will be a frontal attack.  We rehearse new words, new phrases, even new pronouns and cauterize our genuine feelings that need time and space to adjust to the changes that inundate us.

What is left to feel? What emotion has the intensity to get past the scabs and the scars?  Anger, of course.  We have become anger junkies, gathering by the thousands to cheer insults against others, mouthing personal attacks against former friends and allies, belittling the people who disagree with us rather than engaging the disagreement.  Every challenge is deemed bullying.  Every cruelty is deemed justified.  Every motive is deemed nefarious.

It is no way for a rabbi to be.  And it is no way for anyone else to be.  And it is especially no way for a nation to be.

Dr. King famously lifted up the beloved community.  The phrase has specific meaning, but never mind what it is.  Go with the very idea.  Every member beloved.  The chorus of voices and ideas both harmonious and dissonant. Every encounter, an opportunity to delight.  That’s what we need.

There are practices we can all develop that are curative – not just palliative, but curative.  If you are deliberate about pursuing three things, you will be happier and therefore less angry.

The first is love.  And by love, I also mean sex.  Physical intimacy is just as important as platonic friendship, though there is nothing wrong with that either.  The touch of another person, tender and sincere, is probably the most effective way to recover a sense of openness to the world.  Physical intimacy is not necessarily the same as intercourse or any of the variations of what is euphemistically called penetration.  A kiss, a back rub, a caress or an embrace gives each person the reassurance that they are desired and desirable.  It is a gift that may be unexpected but is always hoped for.

Of course, love must always be invited, never coerced.  And by that, I also mean sex.  How ironic that the very same acts that can bring comfort and satisfaction when desired can further fray the nerve endings when imposed. 

The second is listening.  And by listening, I especially mean listening to music.  Yes, you should show an interest in what other people have to say.  But if you are hoping to rehabilitate your capacity to feel, there is no more effective place to lose your dullness than in the tension and release that is the essence of musical expression.  I have my own preferences, and I suspect you have yours.  But you should be open to opportunities you might not initially elect.  I am always lifted by “The Blue Danube Waltz.”  Lennon and McCartney’s “I Will” is my own favorite Beatle’s tune, and my kids are still embarrassed by my air guitar to their “Birthday.”  But nothing opened my heart and my tear ducts like the performance by Yo-Yo Ma’s Goat Rodeo ensemble of an old Irish folksong, “All Through the Night.”

Not every kind of listening works for me.  And by listening, I also mean music.  Taste is a peculiar thing, very personal.  Music can reinforce your need for anger, not only calm it down.  Lyrics and volume that give expression to frustration or belligerence can serve as a release of tension or as reinforcement.  More irony – not every song soothes.

The third is laughing. And by laughing, I also mean doing so inappropriately (occasionally).  We seem to be in a period of time that disparages humor.  I can’t imagine a world without laughter; laughter requires funny; funny always comes at the expense of something or someone (even if it is yourself).  Laughter is a release, figuratively and literally.  Like music, it involves tension and release.  Most attempts to explain humor are dreary (and definitely unfunny).  My personal favorite is “the sudden realization of the unexpected.”  (I know – too Freudian.)  The biggest laugh I ever got was in a college class in which my study group presented on “What Makes People Laugh.”  We were mildly well received as we presented examples of various theories.  I was assigned the conclusion, during which my friend Bob stood silently next to me.  As I spoke, I slowly filled a pie pan with shaving cream.  The laughter built with anticipation, but when I ended with Bob still silent and my pie pan full, there was a momentary sense of disappointment.  Until I smacked him in the face with the pie.   He was “injured,” even as a willing participant.  He was exploited.  Everyone laughed.

Laughing is not always a good thing.  And by laughing, I also mean doing so inappropriately. I can’t measure where laughter leaves off and offense begins – it is a moving target.  Funny-hilarious to some is funny-cruel to others. If the purpose of funny is to cause harm, the laughter is not palliative, it is anesthetizing, which seems to me to work against the benefit.  But I encourage everyone to understanding the difference between stereotyping – not a funny word – and exploiting foibles – a very funny phrase.  Yet another irony: if derision makes you happy, you are not really happy.
​
Love, listen, laugh.  They are cures for emotional dullness and for the craving for feelings that makes us seek out anger.  As individuals, we need all three.  As a beloved community, we need all three.  The scars and scabs on our collective receptors for joy and grief, awe and compassion, kindness and resolve can be softened and healed.  And so can we.

​My summers (and even my springs) used to be filled with wondering what I would talk about on the High Holy Days when I was expected to speak to my holy congregation.  I will admit to chasing controversy during some of my early years.  But alongside my penchant for rabble rousing, another impulse demanded my attention and, eventually, supplanted my tendency to look too far afield for topics. 
 
Now I am a listener to and reader of other rabbis’ sermons.  I recognize the process by the end result, and I can almost always tell where in a career a rabbi is by the content of a couple of sermons from Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. 
 
When I was serving in a pulpit, the great pleasure of the days between RH and YK was a trip to the mikvah with my friend Danny Zemel, my favorite rabbi.  Danny and I did not know each other growing up in Chicago, but we discovered each other in DC and managed to reach across the aisle to form a fast friendship.  He is, unfortunately, a White Sox fan.  Setting that aside, we would meet at the mikvah and take turns immersing.  While one of us was getting wet, the other would immerse himself the sermons delivered (or about to be) at the synagogue we couldn’t attend.  Then we would go to lunch and talk about them. 
 
Danny has taught me a lot of things, but the most important one is how he describes himself to his congregation.  He says he doesn’t lay claim to expertise in scholarship or politics.  But he is an expert in his congregation.  The question he asks himself each year – and that I used to ask each year – is “what is the message the congregation needs to hear?”  My own gloss on this teaching is that the first place I looked was in my own life and situation.  More often than not, I discovered a clue to what everyone else needed to hear. 
 
And that’s what occupied me.  What did I need to hear?  I had to listen to my life, and I had to listen to the lives of others.  It was an obligation of the job of rabbi and one I released with dispatch in that first year of my retirement from synagogue life.  It made me like most, if not all, of my former congregants.  I arrive to my seat on the day of the New Year and of Atonement and I hope to feel a resonance with what is said from the pulpit. 
 
As I said, now I am a listener and a reader when it comes to sermons.  And being on the receiving end, I know that there is a secret some rabbis have discovered, and others have yet to find.   
 
My sermons had to gestate; while some of my colleagues already have drafts of next year’s sermons, mine emerged in necessary and painful rushes, almost fully formed as they traveled down my fingers and onto the screen (or paper back in the dark ages).  I knew I was finished only when I collapsed in tears as the last words appeared before me.  If some part of my heart did not break when I wrote my sermon, then nobody else’s would break when I spoke it.  And if there was anything in my words worth penetrating the listening heart, then it had to break just a little bit in order to create an opening. 
 
I can tell a lazy effort from a diligent one.  Rarely does a rabbi bring a borrowed or slapdash effort to his or her High Holy Day crowd, so I do not mean I can tell how much time went into preparation.  I can tell when a rabbi took the plunge into the recesses of her or his heart, and then wandered among the hopes and insecurities of the community, and then delivered a message that was personally crucial.  That sermon makes me beg to come along on the journey. 
 
And I can tell when a rabbi finds a good idea and works hard to build it into an admirable presentation.  The sweat equity is evident, but the result is almost always a disappointment.  There must be a sense of drama – in the good sense – or you might as well research it yourself if you even choose to engage. 
 
I was always overcome with doubt at the end of my sermons.  I would look for the first chance to find my wife, and she always knew what to tell me.  It was really the only opinion that mattered to me.  But she gave me the tool to gauge whether I had found the spot in people’s hearts.  In the theater, it is applause, and, in the ballpark, it is a collective cheer.  But in synagogue, it is a quality of silence, the sound of a heart healing around its break.

​Recently, an excellent Jewish web site called “My Jewish Learning” published a brief article called “How to Prepare a D’var Torah.”  It is a good guide to how to select material and to structure this kind of brief exposition of an idea from the Bible or another piece of Jewish literature.  I would like to suggest two elements that were left out, aspects of preparation that are often omitted even in training rabbis to deliver sermons and other public discourses.
 
These are the questions that the guide suggests in deciding on a topic, and they are important:

1. The actions of a particular character
2. The unexpected use of a word or phrase
3. The juxtaposition of two seemingly unrelated words or themes
4. A strange or unfamiliar concept or practice
5. A difficult theological claim.

 
Absent from the list are the considerations that are the difference between an intellectual exercise and a teaching that can make a difference in the lives of listeners and speakers alike.  They both begin with the same word.

1. Why does this matter to me?
2. Why should this matter to you?

 
Without considering these two questions, intertwined with each other, a d’var torah becomes either a display of dispassionate text manipulation – clever, but inconsequential – or a paternalistic scold.
 
This insight, I think, is far from original.  I believe it begins with an almost elementary teaching that shapes the student’s engagement with the first (and perhaps greatest) commentator on the Bible, Rashi.  (Rashi is an acronym for Rabbi Solomon, son of Isaac, and he lived in France at the end of the 11th century.)  When encountering his prolific observations, the student is supposed to consider this question: mah kasheh l’Rashi.  You may translate that simply as “what’s Rashi’s question” or more contextually as “what difficulty concerns Rashi.”  The student then delves into the kasheh, the question or difficulty. 
 
But equally important, in my opinion, is l’Rashi, the part of the challenge that identifies the teaching with the teacher.  We have a long and explicit tradition of crediting the author with his or her words, designed to maintain the integrity of original thought and “bring redemption to the world.” But considering the source of an insight keeps alive not just the teaching but the teacher by bringing the wholeness of the person to the words that express a thought.  Our common interest in this particular interpretation is, in no small way, because of our common humanity.  Words that come from the heart enter the heart. (Ironically, this profound aphorism is reported anonymously in the Talmud!)
 
There are many communities in which the answer to the question of why this should matter to the listener is “because Torah.” Yes, there is inherent worth in broadening and deepening an understanding of the sacred text for its own sake.  Sometimes (in fact, maybe often), Torah for its own sake is the beginning and end of the conversation. 
 
However, I suggest that for most listeners outside of the very rarified atmosphere of people involved in immersive study, the questions of why the speaker is motivated to speak and why the listener is motivated to listen are essential if the words are to be more than an intellectual exercise.
 
It is correct to say that if the only motivation to present a d’var torah is to impress an audience with how well the speaker can manipulate text and commentary, then the lesson is nothing more than an indulgence of ego.  Similarly, if the speaker is focused entirely on his or her internal landscape, then the words serve the self, not the Spirit.  One without the other is incomplete.
 
The guidance that the brief article offered on how to prepare a d’var torah is one hundred percent accurate, but incomplete.  Words of Torah, as the prayer reminds us each evening, are our life and the length of our days, meaning that they must be integrated into more than our imaginations.  They are not for amusement or entertainment, mental gymnastics or labyrinthine thought, mere oratory or competitive public speaking, or only rebuke or sycophancy.  They must matter.  And it is incumbent on the speaker to decide why it is that whatever narrative, linguistic or ethical entry-point becomes the focus of remarks is important enough to consider in the preparation and in the reception.
 
The speaker, rabbi or not, who does not address those two questions of “why” has only done half the job.

This short essay is the first of two on the same subject, and easily the more positive.

If you haven’t watched “Joe’s Violin,” take a short break from whatever you are doing and watch it now.  You can find it on its website.  Have a hankie or a box of tissues at hand.  If you don’t watch it before you read this, then be prepared for lots of spoilers.

This short film was nominated for an Academy Award (I think I have to put this little ® about here) but it did not win the Oscar (add another ®).  The director, Kahane Cooperman, was robbed.  After a very long run producing the “Daily Show” in the Jon Stewart years and during a longer run as my cousin Jacki’s buddy, she told a simply gorgeous story about an old man, a young girl and a violin.
 
The story can be briefly told – and this is your last warning – but not without its essential elements.  A drive to collect used but currently unused musical instruments to provide to students in New York City schools prompts an old man, Joe, who is a Holocaust survivor, to donate the instrument he bought in a DP camp after he was liberated.  He played it for much of his adult life.  It winds up in the hands of a 12-year-old girl from the Bronx.  That is the whole story, but does no justice to the telling.
 
We learn a little bit about Joe – he learned to play as a boy; his life and music were interrupted by the Nazis; he spent his entire cigarette ration to buy the instrument because he loved to play; he got old and, at 91, he had to be particularly attentive to his disabled wife.  The violin was gathering dust.  So he donated it.
 
We learn a little bit about Brianna – she is a student at Bronx Global Learning Institute for Girls; she is the daughter of immigrants; she is chosen from among all of the students to be the custodian of this particular violin (every girl in the school learns to play the violin).
 
They meet.  And it turns out that Brianna has learned the melody Joe used to play for his mother, who was among the murdered.  But, as you know if you watched the movie, everyone is crying before you find it out.
 
The story, as I said, is simply gorgeous.  But it is also a metaphor that has helped me come to terms with a surprising turn in my own spiritual life.  The music of traditional Jewish practice (literal and metaphoric) has sustained me all of my adult life. But since I left the pulpit, much of the music is gone. I have my theories about why that is.  Some of it, I am certain, is that only my own expectations impel me to observe, and my energy has waned.  Some of it is the dissipation of community that once sustained me as I tried to sustain it.  And some of it is being tired, my spiritual energy being siphoned in other directions. 
 
In fact, where I used to be an active and even boisterous participant in Jewish observance, I am now quiet, even silent.  Especially in synagogue, which I attend on Shabbat out of a sense of doing the right thing rather than nurturing my soul, it is the prayers of others that carry my spiritual aspirations heavenward.  I listen much more than I speak or sing.
 
I won’t appropriate anything about Joe other than our common humanity.  His story includes life experience I am sorry he had and I hope no one else will ever know.  But that violin that he played, practicing over and again the melody that connected him to his youth and optimism, is the metaphor for the cherished memories we all try to incorporate and preserve as we get farther and farther away from the source.  We deepen their meaning and enrich their expression, leaving our own imprint on them.  We put them out into the world for others to share, but they always mean something unique to us.
 
One of my memories that was deepened and enriched was Jewish observance.  My imprint was on my practice.  But, like Joe’s violin, what it represented has become more than it currently is. The fading clarity of those memories is not enough to sustain them.
 
Fortunately, the world is filled with Briannas, hoping for the chance to pick up the violin and bring the music to life again.  I can tell you that her musicianship at 12 years old is certainly not what Joe’s must have been in his prime.  But the promise she shows, and the promises she makes, have a profound effect on Joe.  She doesn’t play the way he played, but listening to her embrace the music and caress the violin makes it clear that what brought him meaning in the world has been passed along to someone who will cherish it, deepen its meaning and put her own imprint on it.
 
Mostly, that is how I feel in the presence of people who embrace and caress Jewish observance.  They don’t do it the way I did – the only correct way, of course – but they cherish it, deepen its meaning and put their own imprint on it.
 
Joe’s violin is no longer in Joe’s hands.  But someone very different from him will make it sing.
 
This gorgeous story is so much more than a survivor’s redemption or a pre-teen’s opportunity.  It is a gift to the old and the young and a reassurance to them both.  And to me.

CIt is August 16, 2017 and I am on a river ship sailing along the Danube River from Budapest to Vienna and onward to Nuremberg, eventually to conclude this journey in Prague.  I arrived in Central Europe the same way my father did almost 75 years ago -- on a plane.  Only he jumped out before landing.

I have watched the unfolding of the most horrendous weekend of a horrendous year from afar.  In my professional life with a non-profit, I have had much to say with the help of my team.  I do not need to comment on the dangerous man in the White House in this column; just about everything I might say has been published already.  But I do want to speak to rabbis and the people who pay their salaries.

I am reading anguished messages from colleagues on Facebook and in blogs, many of them beginning with the disclaimer that they assiduously avoid politics in their rabbinic capacities.  They continue to proclaim that the Battle of Charlottesville has alarmed them to the point that they can no longer be restrained.  And they conclude with words reminding us of the truly frightening conduct of everyone from a reckless bigot with a car to the President of the United States.

Those are the rabbis I address.  They are the ones who have held their tongues out of some combination of humility and self-preservation.  Synagogues are filled these days with unpredictable Jews; not just their convictions on public policy are unpredictable, but the bad behavior they will exhibit if they hear something about the world around us of which they do not approve.   "I'll have you fired!" has become more than an empty threat from bombastic blowhards.  It has become the sacred mission of tiny minds, right and left alike, who take the word "sanctuary" far too literally and want the rabbi locked up in it. Rabbi and congregant alike have come to the conclusion that the tradition is only about matters of theoretical ethics and internal yearnings.  Any intrusion of the world with which we interact -- the body politic --by the rabbi is considered a betrayal worthy of dismissal and an actionable offense.

All of you, take a look around you.  Do you believe that Nazis with torches materialized since January 21?  Do you think that the path to the White House chosen by its current occupant was simply a fluke?  Are you so naive as to consider yourself blameless for the frightening world that must now be explained to our children and grandchildren?

Shame on you.  This is our fault, the fault of everyone who was sanguine about society and polite about politics.  "Let me not offend, lest people turn from synagogue, from Judaism, from God!"  Every pulpit should resound with the defense of innocent citizens, including the children of African Americans or any other race, the faithful of Muslims, the people who eschew a Western faith or any faith at all, and, yes, the Jews.  No one should walk out of a kiddush or oneg shabbat without having been reminded of their responsibility to seek justice, to love mercy, to raise up the fallen and to deny a foothold to bigotry and oppression.

And if people disagree, insist that they make their case in terms of this tradition we seek to preserve.  None of this, "I come to synagogue to get away from this stuff" or "who are you to tell me what to think."  Laziness -- physicial, spiritual or intellectual -- is a betrayal of the Jewish call to activism.  What is a mitzvah if not a commandment to act in a particular way when the inclination is to abstain?  

I know that there are synagogues in which prayers and homilies could be transplants from any time in history.  Believe in God, trust in God, pray to God.  Focus on the words of prayer, on the words of the Torah reading, on the hafatrah, where timeless thoughts reside outside the turmoil of the world beyond these walls.  

The rabbi unwilling to speak to the challenges of the day is no rabbi.  The congregant unwilling to engage the mandates of the tradition is a heretic.  And both are cowards.

It is not too late to reclaim the promise of this country nor to gift America with the better angels of our tradition.  The Nazis and nationalists and narcissists who are distracting us from the real work of preserving this world in all its diversity take another step forward every time a rabbi, teacher and preacher in Israel steps out of the way.  The chasm between neighbors widens every time the sermon topic looks only backward, only inward, never forward, never outward.  The worth of our ancient and modern wisdom  is devalued when the rabbi is shackled to his desk, warned by bullies on the right or the left not to go into the streets.  That's how we got here.

Yes, it is my opinion.  It is how I have tried to live my adult life since this title was attached to my name.  I never had the courage that my father showed when he parachuted into Europe to fight the good fight.  I tried to find it  in my own way.  Rabbinic collegues, fellow Jews, open your mouths and step up.

​The only excuse left is cowardice.