5 Elul, 5776

It’s Not You, God, It’s Me

I listened to my first podcast recently.

It happens to be the creation of one of our Elul Thoughts contributors, Rabbi Eric Linder, and his colleague Reverend Craig Topple, and it is called God in the Grit. In it, they discuss theology and life from the point of view of two spiritual leaders of different faiths. Toward the end of their first episode, Reverend Craig says, “When someone tells you what they think about God, it tells you less about God than it tells you about them.”

This struck a chord for me. As someone who speaks often about God, I will often remind people that in a room of 25 people, there are at least 25 different views on who or what God is. We cannot expect someone else to have all of our same tastes, so why should we believe they would share our theology? How we connect to God is deeply personal, and

As we prepare for the High Holy Days, may we learn to accept others when our opinions differ, as we would want our own opinions to be accepted.

4 Elul, 5776

Personal Reflection

A rabbi was stopped by a Russian soldier while he walking in his shtetl. The soldier aims his rifle at the rabbi and demands, “Who are you? Where are you going? Why are you going there?” Completely calm and unfazed, the rabbi asks, “How much do they pay you?” A bit surprised, the soldier responds, “Twenty-five kopecks a month.” The rabbi pauses, and in a deeply thoughtful manner says, “I have a proposal for you. I’ll pay you fifty kopecks each month if you stop me here every day and challenge me to respond to those same three questions.”

We can and should ask ourselves on a regular basis:
·       Who am I?
·       Where am I going?
·       How am I going to get there?
Even though the answers may change, asking the questions regularly serve to affirm the path that we are on or can motivate us to choose a different path if we cannot take pride in our answers.

3 Elul 5776

Dr. Paul Kalinithi writes in his memoir When Breath Becomes Air, that “You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.” (An asymptote, if you don’t remember from middle school Geometry, is a line that continually approaches a given curve but never meets it.)

Judaism inspires us to strive for perfection while understanding that we are inherently imperfect beings. Elul provides us a structure to look inward in preparation for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. As you go through the month, try to target an asymptote toward which you strive for the coming year. Think about that asymptote during the High Holy Days and draw connections to it through our liturgy.

2 Elul 5776

2 Elul/September 5

Elul, written in Hebrew Alef, Lamed, Vav, Lamed, is often explained as an acronym for the phrase Ani L’dodi V’dodi Li - I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine.

The Zohar teaches that we enter Elul achor el achor - back to back - in our relationships. But by the end of Elul we are panim el panim - face to face. During the month of Elul, it is our responsibility to turn towards our loved ones in empathy and compassion.

Soul singer Leon Bridges sings:
“What can I do? What can I do?
To get back to your heart
I'd swim the Mississippi river
If you would give me another start”

Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur offer us a fresh start, as long as we are willing to put in the work during Elul. Wishing you strength, patience and empathy on your swim.

1 Elul 5776

The Hebrew month of Elul is the last month of the Jewish year. As such, it is considered a month of spiritual preparation for the High Holy Days. Special meditations are added to the daily service for some, known as S’lichot, or penitentiary prayers. (*The Saturday before Rosh Hashanah is also known as S’lichot, and it is used as a night of contemplation and study.) For several years, a group of Reform rabbis has collaborated on a series of Elul Thoughts, shared with our congregations in a daily email, and accompanied by a daily Tweet. We are happy to share them with you.

This year’s Elul Thoughts include contributions from Rabbi Brad Levenberg of Temple Sinai in Atlanta, GA; Rabbinical Student Alex Kress of HUC-JIR Los Angeles; Rabbi Eric Linder of Congregation Children of Israel in Athens, GA; Rabbi Daniel Treiser of Temple B’nai Israel in Clearwater, FL; Rabbi Alan Litwak of Temple Sinai in North Miami Beach, FL; Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker of Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, TX; and Rabbi David N. Young of Congregation B’nai Tzedek in Fountain Valley, CA. You can follow any of us on Facebook or Twitter.

If you have missed any of these daily emails or want to go back and remember something from earlier in Elul, feel free to read them all at http://tinyurl.com/elul76.

1 Elul/September 4

Today we are celebrating Rosh Chodesh Elul, the first of the month of Elul. Elul is the month that precedes Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. In many ways, this month is as important as our High Holidays themselves. During these 30 days, we are meant to engage in introspection and t’shuvah.

This makes me think of the Summer Olympics (happening as I write this). The athletes compete for medals and accolades, and sometimes the competition is as short as just a few seconds (I’m thinking of Usain Bolt’s 100 meter run.) But we know that the real work of the athletes did not happen in Rio. The real work took place during years of intense training and discipline.
As we move through the 30 days of Elul, I hope that each of us is able to do the personal “training” necessary to ensure that the High Holidays are a meaningful coda to the work that we’ve done.

Educating Our Current and Future Leaders

by guest blogger Sam Backer, CBT President

A significant benefit of Congregation B’nai Tzedek’s membership in the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) is that we have access to information, people and resources from the governing body of the Reform movement.  We have low and no-cost opportunities to participate in various programs that enable our professional staff, Board and other lay leaders to learn and grow as they serve the congregation.  All we have to do is ask for help.  We did that and this month the current Board as well as incoming trustees will be participating in an on-site workshop.  A URJ facilitator will travel to CBT – at no cost to us – to help the Board work to further define goals and leadership responsibilities.  It’s a win-win for the Board and the congregation.

Sometimes the request for help comes from the URJ when it reaches out to its member congregations.  It did so recently when it asked for congregations to apply to participate in an Emerging Leaders Pilot Initiative.  Of the 900 congregations in the movement, 200 applied including CBT.  We were one of 21 congregations selected to participate.  This is a great honor for us!

The Emerging Leaders Initiative is a collection of stand-alone modules created by the URJ that will introduce a full range of topics and skills important to leadership and decision-making in a synagogue community.  Topics include visioning and creating a mission; general leadership skills; synagogue governance; personal leadership styles; and our own congregational community.  The specific modules we will pilot will be assigned this month by the URJ.  We seek to create a new cadre of leaders with the interest and potential to take CBT into the future.

We will meet once a month for about two hours per session beginning in June.  There will be four or five sessions.  Since we are piloting this program, the URJ has asked that every participant complete a survey about this program by November so they can make adjustments for the success of future participants.

Several congregants have been invited formally to participate in this program because they specifically have expressed interest in being part of CBT’s leadership or they have been identified as good candidates to be future leaders of our congregation.  However, the opportunity to participate is open to all members of CBT.  If you are interested in taking advantage of this program, be sure to email Rabbi Young at rabbiyoung@cbtfv.org.  Space is limited so be sure to get your name in for consideration as soon as possible.

From the Board workshop this month to the Emerging Leaders Initiative Pilot starting in June, we are fortunate to have such incredible learning opportunities offered by the URJ.  I look forward to further growth by our current leaders and to cultivating and working with those who will lead CBT into the future.

L’shalom,

Sam

Let My People Go This Passover

Tonight is Shabbat Hagadol, the Shabbat before Passover. On Passover we are reminded again and again about the slavery we suffered in Egypt. We are commended to remember it. We are commanded to feel as if we personally had been freed from Egypt. We are surrounded by symbols of bitterness, tears, and sweat so that we can remember the slavery in Egypt.

Throughout the Torah we are commanded, and slavery in Egypt is attached to the reasoning behind the command. The first of the Ten Utterances (misleadingly known as the Ten Commandments), says, “I am Adonai Your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exod. 20:2). We are commanded to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread during the month of Aviv, “because in [that month] you came out of [slavery in] Egypt…” (Exod. 23:15). God regularly self-identifies as, “Adonai Your God who brought you out of Egypt.” And there are countless times we are reminded not to oppress the widow, the orphan, or the stranger, for we were strangers in the Land of Egypt.

We can read from all of these reminders of our slavery in Egypt that we should have empathy for those who are enslaved, who are strangers, who are captives. Even those who are captive because of their own mistakes—those who are imprisoned justly by the courts, who should still be treated with justice while they are serving their time. 

Some of you are aware that I met with Governor Jerry Brown this week.

On Wednesday afternoon, 25 California rabbis from across the denominations met in Hollywood with he governor, so he could explain his initiative to help reduce prison overcrowding, save money for California taxpayers, and prevent the revolving door so many prisoners are subject to. It is called The Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act of 2016, and I encourage you to look it up on line and get informed about it when you get home. governor Brown needs one million signatures by mid-May to get this Act on the ballot in June, and he has approached faith leaders across the state to help him with this important initiative.

What does the Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act do? (Boldface lines are directly from Governor Brown's  web site or from comments he made at our meeting.)

• Authorizes parole consideration for people with non-violent convictions who complete the full sentence for their primary offense. This means that offenders are eligible for parole after one sentence is served, instead of after a string of consecutive sentences. With the parole board in place to take each person into consideration, it takes away the sweeping, long-term sentences that currently exist in our state.

• Incentivizes people in prison to complete rehabilitation and education programs. The governor reminded us that in prison there are many choices. A prisoner could join a gang, get involved with drugs, learn violent and abusive behaviors, become a victim of said behaviors, or rise above and get educated, get physically and mentally fit, go to counseling or rehab. If they choose the right path and do what Governor Brown calls “Good Time,” they might be rewarded with early parole.

• Requires the Secretary of Corrections to certify that the regulations implementing these policies protect and enhance public safety. This means correctional officers would get extra training to know how to handle those making good choices but making mistakes, and helping them learn to positively reinforce good behaviors, and use the carrot more than the stick. We were told the story of a prisoner who was working hard to get his GED. He struggled with behavioral problems and slipped up from time to time, and a prison guard was punishing him by taking his books away. Guards would be trained to recognize that punishments like this end up punishing everyone, not just the prisoner. Helping the staff make better choices is just as important as encouraging good time for the inmates.

• Requires judges rather than prosecutors to decide whether a youth as young as 14-years-old should be tried as an adult. This would take a large population of very vulnerable prisoners out of prison and put them in juvenile detention centers. It also mandates a judge carefully review all of the circumstances of a youth's crime and life before making a decision on whether that young person should be charged as an adult.

• Saves taxpayer dollars by reducing wasteful spending within our correctional system. Lowering the prison population lowers the cost of taking care of its inmates. In 2012, the US Supreme Court mandated that California reduce its prison population to 137% of capacity, which at the time was 200%. In the last three years, Governor Brown’s policies have help reduce prison spending by just over $1 billion, but there is still a long way to go.

• Keeps the most dangerous offenders locked up. Those who do not make good choices, including violent offenders, will stay in prison. This is important to note, because the bill does not suggest any sort of blanket treatment of prisoners, but to treat each person individually, as the person they are.

On Passover this year we will begin our “Let My People Go Initiative.” Starting next Friday, there will be petitions available for us to sign to get the Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act on the ballot this June. There will be petitions available at CBT’s Second Seder next Saturday evening, and they will be here in the office throughout the week of Passover. Our goal is to get 100 signatures from CBT by May 20, and if we run out of petitions, we will order another 100. 

May we work toward making positive change in our prison system in California, because we were prisoners in the land of Egypt.