This Shabbat's Drashot

The Waldo Canyon Fire burns the Mountain Shadows neighbourhood on Colorado Springs' West Side.

On the Brink of Disaster
A Drash for Parashat Chukat
Friday, 29 June 2012
Rabbi Don Levy

This week, many of us have been grousing about the cool and wet weather we’ve had, which is generally uncharacteristic of our home here on the Gold Coast.  But as we all know, things are different in other places in the world.  Since it is winter here in the Southern Hemisphere, we know that in the Northern Hemisphere it is now summer.  There are places in the world where, right now, it is neither cool nor wet.  There are places where it is hot and dry.
                Such a place is Colorado, the state in the USA where I lived until just a few weeks ago.  Colorado Springs, my home until recently has a very dry climate.  Its region is essentially a desert a high desert since the city is 2,000 meters above sea level.  But it doesn’t look like the stereotypical desert.  Trees cover the mountains and foothills.  Various species of pine, and fir, and aspen thrive at the higher elevations where moisture is scarce and seasonal.  The winter snowfall waters the trees enough to keep them alive during the hot, dry summers.  But things can very easily go out of balance.  During the hot, dry summers the forests carpeting the mountain slopes provide ample kindling for sometimes-tremendous wildfires that rage across the landscape.  This is especially true during exceptionally dry summers which follow winters of light snowfall.  Sometimes, natural causes such as the lightning of summer storms start the fires.  More often, human negligence starts them.
                This summer, the one that is underway right now as we weather the winter down here, has so far been an exceptionally hot and dry one following a dry winter in Colorado.  In Colorado Springs there is a huge wildfire that started last Saturday at midday and has spread quickly.  It was caused the evacuation of most of the West Side of the city, about 32,000 inhabitants, including the neighbourhood where we lived.  Our home is still standing as far as we know, but we cannot reach the family renting it – they’re probably in a shelter somewhere, or staying with friends.
                My purpose in mentioning this, is not a desire for sympathy because my house may burn down.  If that shall be the case, that shall be the case.  That’s why we have insurance.  Rather, the looming disaster on the other side of the world reminds me of the fragility of our lives.  It reminds me that, in a short moment, a relatively quiet and secure life can be turned upside down.  It reminds me to savour the quiet and secure moments, the stress-free times we have to share with one another.  We never know how long such moment will last, and what will follow.
                Last week I talked about how we all prefer different sections of the Torah.  But all parts of the Torah provide keen insights for life.  During the season when we read the Book of Genesis, we learn powerful lessons in family and personal relationships from our reading of the saga of the ‘Abrahamson’ family – the original one, not the one here on the Gold Coast!  When we finish Genesis and swing into Exodus, we get a chance to reflect on the value of freedom and its true nature.  We learn about faith, about the necessity to live by faith.  We learn about the costs of tyranny.   During this time of the year, as we read from the Book of Numbers, we get interesting insights into the challenge of leadership and community dynamics.
              This week’s portion, Chukat, gives us glimpse of supernatural phenomena: the story of the Red Heifer, and of how Moses cured those beset by serpent bites.  The plague of serpents is occasioned by the peoples’ grumbling over their circumstances.  The people Israel, who have been shown in the narrative to be so blessed by G-d’s favour, descend time after time into kvetching over their circumstances during their sojourn.
             Each part of the grand narrative, the saga of our people has something special to teach us.  So does the life we live; we enjoy moments of calm and are beset by moments of storm.  We sometimes enjoy blissful happiness and are sometimes challenged by crisis.  Are of these are woven together to form the tapestry that is our lives.
            May G-d watch over the people of Colorado Springs and save them from disaster.  And may He save each one of us from our own disasters, whether of our own making or not.  May we learn to appreciate all the times of our lives, the torpid and the turbulent.  May we always take time to reflect and be appreciative of the many blessings we enjoy.

The Appeal of Magic

A Drash for Parashat Chukat and my
Induction as Rabbi of Temple Shalom
Saturday, 30 June 2012
Rabbi Don Levy

I’ll never forget when J.K. Rowling began cranking out the Harry Potter books.  The first one, The Sorcerer’s Stone, came out in 1997.  I only heard of the book, and its growing number of sequels, when we went to live in England two years later.  The series was not yet very popular in the US then.  When we moved to England we heard about what a phenomenon the books were, but that news did not touch me in a personal way.  At some point a paperback copy of The Sorcerer’s Stone found its way into the house; after all, we did have a six and a five year old in the house at the time.  I remember picking up the book to read it…and finding the text difficult to relate to.  After a few pages I put it down, wondering what the fuss was all about.
                Fast Forward to the summer of 2011; my children and I eagerly awaited the release of the second and final instalment of the movie version of the Last Harry Potter book, The Deathly Hallows.  By this time we had hardcover editions of all the books in our home, all dog-eared from repeated readings, and the DVDs of all the films that have been released in that format.  Ma’ayan had already demanded my assurance several times that we would buy the final instalment when it came out in DVD:  this, before we have even seen it on the big screen.
                There are a number of reasons for the incredible success of the Harry Potter series.  First and foremost, they were masterfully written by an author who rose out of obscurity to well-deserved fame and fortune with the series.  The stories are many-layered as all good children’s stories are, understandable on a variety of levels.  Thus adults can read them and see things that go over their children’s heads, and multiple reads will produce new insights each time.  And the films remained remarkably true to the books, managing to convey the essence and details of the stories in the time-limited medium.
                In our family, we enjoyed the language of the stories.  The British-isms of the dialogues come through in the books and, of course, the movies.  They reminded us of the simpler times of our residence in England when our children were just beginning their school years.
                But it cannot be argued that a large part of the series’ appeal is the magical context.  People love magic and extra-ordinary phenomena.  The idea that the ‘laws of nature’ can be violated if one only knows the secret of how to overcome them, is strangely attractive to so many of us.  Children especially, find the idea of being able to do just about anything if one knows The Secrets, attractive.  Children are limited in their ability to act independently by the nature of childhood.  They therefore latch onto magical tales, and superhero stories, and daydream themselves into a world where they can loom large and accomplish superhuman feats.  But magic appeals to adults as well.  Perhaps all of us feel, to some extent, unfairly bounded by the realities of our existence.  Although rationally, magic and superheroes belong in the child’s world, we Big People revel in such feats as well.  Whenever I go to the cinema to see such films, I see adults who are not escorting children.  And even those who are, often clearly enjoy the films as much as their offspring do.
                In this week’s Torah portion, we read a narrative that reflects the use of magic, of a sort.  The people have been groaning once more about the conditions during their desert sojourn.  They are again demanding to be taken back to Egypt.  A plague of serpents strikes the people.  At some point, G-d decides to end the plague.  At G-d’s bidding, Moses wraps a copper serpent around a staff, at the top of which is a likeness of a seraph. mounted on top, and anybody who has bitten by a real serpent who sees it, recovers.
                This apparatus built by Moses and described here, became the model for both the Caduceus and the Rod of Asclepius.  Both of these items are found in Greek Mythology.  But both are clearly variants of the rod described as being fashioned by Moses, to cure the people of serpent bites, in the portion of the Torah we’ll be reading tomorrow morning.  The Caduceus has a winged figure on top but has two serpents wrapped around the staffs, as opposed to Moses’ one serpent.  The Rod of Asclepius has only one serpent, but lacks the winged figure on top.  Both are used, interchangeably, as symbols of the practice of medicine.
               In earlier days of medicine, it was definitely considered magical.  It therefore makes sense that the symbol popularly associated with medicine, is a variant of the object found in this account of Moses’ magic, popularized in Greek mythology.  Today we understand medicine to be more a science than an art.  We still have great respect for physicians and other healing professionals, but we don’t assume they have magical powers.  That is, until we are personally in need of magic for our own healing.  Then, if our doctor cannot apply magic we wonder; “What’s wrong with this guy?”
                The rabbinate is like that.  On a rational level, you all accept that I have no magical powers.  And yet, on a different level, some of you will expect me to have them.  You will expect me to increase attendance and energy at Shabbat services, without making you feel obligated to attend.  You will expect me to know you are in the hospital and visit you, even before you notify me of your condition.  You will expect me to imbue your children with a passion for Judaism, without making you feel obligated to bring them to cheder and services.  You will expect me to draw in new members, without making you feel obligated to go out of your way to welcome them.  On a certain, emotional level, you will expect that I can lift up some device like a caduceus and, if the demons that beset this congregation see it, their bite will be for naught.  But I am not a magicion, only a perfectly ordinary man, and I wield no such powerful device.  And as such, I am the perfect man for the ‘job’ of leading a congregation of perfectly ordinary men and women.
                It is human nature to not think of oneself as ordinary.  We spend our lives fighting the sting of ordinariness, of wanting to see ourselves as exceptional.  Our communities resemble Garrison Keilor’s mythical Lake Woebegone, located somewhere in America’s Upper Midwest, where “all the women are beautiful, all the men are successful, and all the children are above average.” We caricature the ordinary man, to prove that we, our families and our close associates are anything but.  Ordinary people are like the Dursleys in the Harry Potter series:  unattractive, sounding ridiculous and producing bratty offspring.
                But I’m here to tell you that there is freedom in ordinariness.  If we are ordinary, we can forgive one another our failings.  And we can forgive ourselves our failings.  We can develop a tolerance for our neighbour, as we pray that our neighbour will be tolerant of us.  We can revel in, and celebrate our small triumphs, even if in the greater scheme of things they seem trivial.    
                So let’s accept that we are a congregation of perfectly ordinary men and women, led by a perfectly ordinary rabbi.  But that does not make our congregation ordinary.  Temple Shalom is anything but!
                So how can that be?  If we’re all ordinary, how can our congregation be extra-ordinary?  Has this ‘ordinary’ rabbi lost his mind?
               The reason is, or course, synergy.  The word synergy means that the force of two or more combined agents exceeds the force of the individual agents.  To put it differently, the total is greater than the sum of the parts.  Temple Shalom is extra-ordinary, because of the synergistic effect of its members’ contributions.
                Those contributions have kept this congregation alive and even thriving during difficult times.  Thriving beyond all ‘reasonable’ expectations.  Despite a number of deep disappointments, and difficult conflicts, you did not walk away because Temple Shalom means so much in your lives.  The commitment of ordinary people, multiplied by the number of such people in this congregation, adds up to something beyond the ordinary.
                So I’m here to be a part of the extra-ordinary congregation.  To lend my ordinary talents to making this congregation rise even farther above the pack.  To help us, together, to end our ordinary weeks with extra-ordinarily peaceful Shabbats.  To join together to lift the ordinary moments of our ordinary lives to extra-ordinary levels of holiness.  To take ordinary lives and make them something that transcends ordinary by connecting them to G-d through the rich tapestry of the Jewish tradition.
                What is extra-ordinary about this congregation, to Temple Shalom of the Gold Coast, is the specific collective energy that you bring to the mix.  The synthesis of talent, of regard for one another, of need for Jewish connection her in your little corner of the world. 
                I stand before you today, more than a little nervous, thinking about the immense possibilities of what we can achieve together.  And thinking about the not-inconsiderable challenges that lie ahead.  It is my deep-felt prayer that, over time, I will prove worthy of the expectations you have expressed in bringing me here.  It is nothing short of awesome to consider the responsibility of leading a holy congregation.  I pray that G-d will bless me with the strength, with the insight, with the creativity to accomplish the tasks we have set before us.    
                So a successful relationship of rabbi and congregation is not dependent upon magic.  It involves no lifting up of a likeness of a serpent, to heal the people of their demons.  It involves no potions, nor spells, nor superhuman powers.  It’s like a marriage, where success doesn’t hinge upon a fairy tale wedding.  Success in marriage hinges upon waking up every morning, looking at the person you married with messy hair or a morning stubble.  And then you smile and tell yourself: “This is the one I’ve chosen to spend my life with.” Likewise, the successful relationship of rabbi and congregation hinges upon seeing one another day after day, with all of one’s flaws, on grumpy days when one is distracted by family matters, when one has a cold and the Hebrew in the service doesn’t flow that way it should.  It can survive the interminable board meeting where everybody snipes at one another.  It can survive these things, because it is rooted in a deep regard for the qualities and dedication of the other.
              Let us drop our contempt for the ordinary, and embrace our ordinariness, and thus lift up our temple and make it continue to be anything but ordinary.  With G-d’s help and not relying upon magic, together we shall build something wonderful here on the Gold Coast.