At the 2017 convention of the National Association of Retired Reform Rabbis, Rabbi Connie Golden honored me by asking me to officiate at her installation as the president of the organization. These are the thoughts I shared about this remarkable human being.

 

When I first met Connie and Jerry Golden, our seats were together on a plane to Jerusalem for the 1988 Central Conference of American Rabbis convention. For most of the eleven-hour journey Jerry slept while Connie and I talked.

“I wanted to make more people happy.”

On that flight I learned that in her pre-rabbinic life Connie had worked first in publishing and then as a casting director for stage and television productions. Her unease in that role was one of the factors that moved Connie toward the rabbinate. “As a casting director,” she said, “I could make one person—the one who got the part—happy, but it meant making fifty or sixty others unhappy. I wanted to make more people happy.”

A Beautiful Love Story

I learned on that flight also that Connie and Jerry had met while she was providing extraordinary pastoral care to Jerry’s first wife, who was dying of cancer. His wife had told him about a woman rabbi who had been visiting her, and as a bereaved widower Jerry sought counsel with the rabbi who had done so much to ease his wife’s final journey. So began a beautiful love story.

Probably the most important thing I learned on that flight, though, is that Connie is the perfect example of the famous teaching: “God gave us two ears but only one mouth so that we would listen twice as much as we speak.”

In fact, by the time we landed I was sure that God had blessed Connie Golden with a third ear, one attached to her heart.

Whether in a huge congregation in Memphis or a tiny one in Meridian, Mississippi, whether at a hospital bedside or on a cruise ship, Connie’s ability to really hear what others say and feel is extraordinary. No wonder the CCAR entrusted her with the most sensitive issues involving colleague misconduct by putting her on the Ethics Committee, where she served for 8 years.

Yes, Connie listens, but when she expresses herself—as her many published poems attest—she does so with skill, precision, empathy and eloquence.

Those who have studied with me, or read my books or web page essays, know that for me the most vital reason to study Torah is to find ourselves in the biblical text.

So when I study the parashah, Vay’hi, at the end of the Book of Genesis, I know beyond doubt that it is “The Connie Golden Story.” Like Connie, Joseph listens with an ear that hears more than the words his brothers speak. Joseph knows that when his brothers approach him, they are afraid, thinking “loo yist’meinu Yosef? what if now that Pop is dead, Joseph takes revenge on us? (Genesis 50:15)”

In the brothers’ fright, they tell Joseph a tale of how Jacob, before he died, told them to urge Joseph to forgive them. Yet surely Joseph would have known that if Jacob had wanted to say such a thing he would have said it to Joseph himself. But no matter.

Joseph responded to his brothers’ understandable anxiety the way Connie responds to us, with empathy and love: “Vay’nacheim otam vay’dabeir al libam. He comforted them and spoke tenderly to them. (Genesis 50:21)”

Thus the Book of Genesis ends the way this Convention ends. All issues are dealt with, all conflicts resolved, and “they all lived happily ever after.” So enjoy this moment of joyous felicitations, Connie!

Now if that were truly the end of the story we would not have to ask the Eternal One to bless Connie at this time. All we would have to do is say, “Mazal Tov!” But “The Connie Golden Story” will continue, just as does the story of our People. As we know, the “happily ever after” at the end of Genesis turns, as Exodus begins, into the avodat pareich, the hard labor, of Presidential responsibility. Beginning soon—maybe even tomorrow—Connie, the phone calls, texts and emails will begin, and the privilege of the Presidency will meld into the duties and responsibilities which we know you will deal with so capably.

Yes, as surely as Genesis turns to Exodus, Connie, you will indeed need the help of the Eternal One to deal with the many burdens we shall lay before you. For that reason, I ask our colleagues to rise and join me in asking God’s blessing upon you:

Y’varech’cha Adonai v’yish-m’recha

Ya-er Adonai panav eilecha vichuneka

Yisa Adonai panav eilecha, v’yaseim l’cha SHALOM!

Amen

 

 

 

 

In “He Won the Election So Give the Guy a Chance” I pleaded that we should try to start the new administration on a note of good will and cooperation rather than confrontation. Many expressed anger at my suggestion. The most gentle of the critiques call my idealism, “Naïve.”

The gist of the criticism is, “Trump’s past actions and statements are so egregious and his appointments so frightening that it is beyond belief to think he will ever change and govern with the goal of compassion, equity and justice.”

I get that.

I was a vocal opponent of Donald Trump for eleven months leading up to the election. My anti-Trump web page essays were read by thousands more people than have read any of the other 383 essays that appear there.

But the fact is that none of the outrage so many of us expressed changes the reality that he is now President of the United States.

I believe it is in our selfish best interest to engage rather than estrange the new president.

To paraphrase him: “We have nothing to lose,” because all the protests and marches that we can organize will not remove him from office.

But there is another reason for my “naïve” position. I am a passionate believer in the lessons of our Torah.

For me the truth of Torah has nothing to do with, “Did this really happen?” For me the truth of Torah lies in the ability of its stories to influence how we live and how we think.

One of the Torah’s most important “truths” is that people can change! Here are three examples:

Jacob

• Jacob was the worst sort of miscreant. He exploited the fact that his own brother was tired and hungry to extort the birthright from him
• Even worse, he stood shamelessly before his blind father and proclaimed not once but three times that he was Esau in order to steal the blessing Isaac wished to give his first born.

Despite these disgraceful episodes, Jacob grows and becomes worthy enough in God’s eyes Yisrael-Israel, the one who gives his name to our people.

Joseph

• He tattled on his brothers.
• He lauded over them the fact that he was his father’s favorite.
• He eagerly told his brothers of his grandiose dreams that he would rule over them.

But Joseph grew and changed. He finds it in his heart to forgive his brothers for selling him as a slave and leads Egypt through a horrible period of famine.

Judah

Judah callously convinced his brothers to throw Joseph in a pit and then sell their hapless brother as a slave. But Judah learns well the lesson taught him by his daughter-in-law Tamar (Genesis 38). Judah, like Jacob and Joseph, grows to eschew venal self-interest and demonstrate inspiring leadership.

Benjamin, Jacob’s favorite son since the loss of Joseph, was caught—although he didn’t do it—stealing the Egyptian overlord’s (Joseph) special divining cup and sentenced to slavery. But Judah, in perhaps the most eloquent address in all of literature, offers to remain a slave to spare his father from suffering the loss of his beloved Benjamin.

I am a passionate believer in the “truth” of Torah that people can change.

If people who did things as horrible as Jacob, Joseph and Judah could change, then I am holding out my “naïve” hope for Donald Trump.

That is the most important reason I am giving him 100 days to prove himself worthy of the office he now holds. I am hoping, and I am praying.

And the clock is ticking.

 

There is nothing that I have seen anywhere that compares to Shabbat morning when we have been in Jerusalem. 

There are fewer cars on the road on Shabbat than other mornings and an aura of holiness envelops the city.  Vickie and I walk leisurely to synagogue and wish everyone we see a “Shabbat Shalom!”  Some return our greeting and others do not. We pass by residents of the city and others from other parts of Israel and the world. There are religious and secular. And one can always know the visitors who gaze in awe at the beauty of the city confirming the rabbinic teaching that the Almighty gave ten measures of beauty to the world of which nine were allotted to Jerusalem.  (Babylonian Talmud)

The secular are out walking, jogging, and biking and there are the religious of all types in their Shabbat finery on their way to or from worship.

In the Diaspora we all know too well what divides Israel’s Jews, but we rarely dwell on what they have in common and what makes them a people in their own land.

Our Shabbat mornings brings our shared beings and for us reaffirms our reason for being in Israel: to join the struggle for our rights as Progressive Jews in our own country.

It is this task that seems so hard to grapple with every day of the week, but on a glorious Shabbat morning walk that difficulty tends to fade as we share our Shabbat with others in this way. On Shabbat morning what divides us is so less urgent than what brings us together.   Clal Yisrael, our oneness, pushes aside our weekday concerns.

We are all charged by the Almighty in Genesis to:

• “Be a blessing.”
• Walk in God’s ways and strive to be worthy of them!”
• And to  “keep the way of the Almighty” and teach our children to practice “Tzedakah v’mishpat –righteousness and justice.”

We are all obligated by the covenant G-d made with Abraham to use our talents in every way to fulfill the prophetic vision of a day when, “everyone shall sit under their vines and fig trees with none to make them afraid.”  (Micah 4:4)

In his best-selling book, The Gifts of the Jews, Irish Catholic author, Thomas Cahill, noted that among our greatest gifts to humanity is the idea of Shabbat.  It is a day to refresh our souls, and to remember our covenential obligations.  Shabbat is also the day that lights our way for the rest of the week.

Progressive Jews can do no less than use the transforming powers of Shabbat in Jerusalem to attempt to connect Jews around the world to one another and to make them one with this blessed land.