Drash for Shabbat evening

Light rail in Jerusalem

The Torah Train Awaits

We Jews love to laugh at ourselves.  Nothing brings a smile to a Jewish face faster than a good Jewish joke.  We tell them to one another with glee.  We receive them from our friends on e-mail.  We forward them to our friends on e-mail.  We frown and take umbrage when a gentile tells one.

Most of the jokes are at least mildly self-depreciating.  They speak of people who feel the sting of exclusion.  Who wish for better times.  Who feel powerless to help themselves overcome tides of events.  Who are clueless about male-female chemistry.  They speak of an angst about everything in life.  We can complain about all these things, so why not laugh about them?

If you know me, you know that I enjoy a good joke as much as the next guy.  And that includes good Jewish jokes.  At least, if told by Jews.  But I don’t have much patience for endless complaining, neither by Jews nor by gentiles.  And we Jews love to complain; we do it with the best of them.

It’s true that our history, especially the last 2,000 years, includes endless displacement, marginalisation, and persecution.  But the truth is that the last 2,000 years haven’t really been so kind to any of the peoples of the earth.  Misery loves company, and we Jews have not been alone in our suffering at the hands of others.  Life on earth has been no Garden of Eden since…well, the expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

It’s said that a clergyman’s job is to comfort the afflicted…and afflict the comfortable.  Tonight I’m going to do both, because in our own schizophrenic way, we’re both too afflicted…and too comfortable.

Judaism is going through an interesting, and challenging phase shift in this generation.  It is transitioning from a religion largely transmitted by heredity, to one adopted, chosen, by individuals.  And that’s a good thing; if it weren’t for that transition, we would be doomed to extinction, and not too far down the road. 

We can see why.  We make very few babies.  How many couples in this congregation have only one or two children?  Look, I’m not throwing stones; you know that Clara and I also have only two children.  Collectively, we aren’t even producing enough offspring to replace ourselves.  And many of our children have in effect quit Judaism.  Look around this room.  This is an ageing congregation.  Our children have largely opted out.  They mostly don’t belong, and those that do belong don’t attend.  Not because they’ve chosen another religion.  Contemporary society is such that one can comfortably live without religion altogether.  Just as young gentiles are dropping out of their respective religious faiths, young Jews are dropping out of Judaism.  And why shouldn’t they?  By and large, we have not made a compelling case as to why they need it.

Clara and I were talking the other day and agreed, in this congregation, Jews-by-choice make up a large proportion.  Probably larger than any other community we’ve served.  As I stand in this pulpit and look out over the room, I see a number of you whose lives’ spiritual paths led you to Judaism.  And a number of you who are now in the process of jumping through the various hoops that we place in your path if you want to convert.  A good portion of my time and energy on the job is devoted to those who are choosing Judaism.  Between teaching, and counselling, and befriending, I spend a lot of time guiding you along.  And this is not a complaint; guiding Jews-by-choice is one of the most satisfying parts of my rabbinate.

In the past month or so, I have begun working with no fewer than four conversion candidates who are starting their journeys.  This week alone, I have fielded no fewer than three enquiries from potential candidates who contacted me to express their interest and seek guidance.  Each story is different, but most are similar.  Each one rejected the faith in which they were raised, which for a variety of reasons did not ‘work’ for them.  Each one, as they read and considered, ultimately came to decide that Judaism sounded like the best ‘fit’ for them.

  So pointing to this trend, I want to comfort you.  Instead of shreying gevalt because we Jews are dying off, let’s rejoice that others are looking at what we have and saying, I want it, too.  And I’m willing to stand up to the challenges of getting it.  Because it’s worthwhile.  Yes, Judaism is worthwhile.  And no, not because we have some secret handshake that opens doors to riches and opportunities.  Except the ‘riches’ of the Torah.  If God is God, and the Torah is Truth, then becoming a Jew is a worthwhile quest.  And as you can see, many are deciding that it is a worthwhile quest.  So stop feeling alone.  Stop thinking that the world would rather we just go away.  Sure, there are those in the world who would rather we go away.  I have some definite thoughts on why that’s so, but that’s also another sermon, for another day.  Tonight, take heart that there are plenty in the world who see what we have and would like to be a part of it.  Despite all the ‘hardships’ we endure.  Because maybe the gift of Torah makes the ‘hardships’ endurable.  Or perhaps, maybe the ‘hardships’ are largely in our own minds.  So don’t worry…be happy!

Are you comforted?  I hope so, because now I want to afflict you.  These Jews-by-choice, they’re not flocking to our doors because they want to eat smoked salmon.  As you well know, the shelves in any supermarket are full of smoked salmon.  Do you think it’s Jews who buy and eat all that smoked salmon?  Of course not.  One does not need to be a Jew to eat smoked salmon.  And in truth, that’s why the under-50 crowd is largely absent.  Because we have, by and large, reduced Jewishness to eating smoked salmon.  And gefilte fish.  The under-50 crowd gets it that they can eat all the smoked salmon they want, even with cream cheese, without having any kind of meaningful connection to Judaism.  And gefilte fish?  Let’s just say that gefilte fish is not any kind of draw.

So smoked salmon, or any of our other quaint customs, cannot make Judaism compelling for our kids.  But Torah can.  And yet, Torah is the last thing on most of our minds.  Perhaps because it requires a commitment.  A much bigger commitment than smoked salmon.  And our Jews-by-choice know this.  And embrace the commitment that Torah presents.  When we think there are no Jews-by-choice listening, we shrey gevalt over that, too.  I mean, about how our Jews by conversion embrace the covenant with gusto, making the rest of us look more than a little diffident.  Some of us wish that Jews-by-choice would just chill out and take Torah for granted…as so many of us do.  That would solve the problem of the dissonance between the Jew-by-birth and the Jew-by-choice.

Or, there’s another way to ‘solve the problem’ of that dissonance.  And that is for us Jews-by-birth to stop taking Torah for granted!  We should rejoice that we have something precious.  So precious that gentiles would jump through multiple hoops to get a piece of it.  And we should allow ourselves to let their eyes open ours to how precious it really is.  And allow ourselves to take delight in it.

Because it’s about far more than eating smoked salmon.  And not eating prawns.  You can see Torah as a burden.  Or you can accept it as a precious gift.

This week, our reading of the Torah brings us to the start of the book of Devarim, Deuteronomy, its fifth and final book.  Deuteronomy is largely a summation of the experience of the People Israel from the exodus to the point of beginning the conquest of the Promised Land.  We come to the conclusion of a great adventure, as we prepare for yet another.  The train moves inexorably forward.  It’s not like the Goldlinq (the new light rail system, under construction on the Gold Coast), thus far accomplishing little more than snarling traffic in our city.  Perhaps a few of us will ultimately ride the Goldlinq.  Hopefully, we’ll all at least give it a try once it’s in operation.

For the Torah train we need not wait.  Although it’s constantly on the move, paradoxically it is also ever in the station, waiting for us to board.  At every moment in our lives we can give it a try and take a ride.  How about this moment?  All the Jews-by-choice among us have tried it and have bought lifetime passes.  We Jews-by-birth already have our passes.  How many of us let them sit in the drawer, unused and collecting dust?  Let’s dust them off and use them.  Let’s let the presence of Jews-by-choice in our midst remind us how precious is our legacy.  And let’s let it motivate us to take delight in it.  Shabbat shalom.