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Torah (RH1 5773)

Welcome, everyone, to Shomrei Torah 5773! But more than just make you feel welcome, let me point out that WE are Shomrei Torah 5773!! Each of us individually contributes to the collective whole that is Shomrei Torah. For the non-Hebrew speakers in the crowd, and I understand that we have a few, Shomrei Torah means "Guardians of the Torah" that is what each of us here today is called upon to do, we are each of us guardians of the Torah. So what does it mean to be a guardian of the Torah? I guess the first thing we had better do is to define our terms, so what is Torah? At its most basic, the Torah is scroll in our Aron HaKodesh, our Holy Ark, which contains the Biblical Five Books of Moses.

However, that answer only scratches the surface. The Torah is also our Covenantal Document, the record of our Brit with the Kadosh Baruch Hu, with God. The Jewish people entered into a covenant, a Brit, with God standing at Sinai, when the Ten Commandments and a whole host of other laws were presented. The text reads, "and all the people answered with one voice, saying, 'All the things that Adonai has commanded we will do!' Moses then wrote down all the commands of Adonai." (Exodus 24:3-4) And then again in last week's parsha, Nitzavim, the Torah portion always read on the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah, we find, "You stand this day, all of you, before the Lord your God... to enter into the covenant of the Lord your God. (Deut. 29:9-11) The text continues, "I make this covenant... not with you alone, but both with those who are standing here with us this day before the Lord our God and with those who are not with us here this day." (Deut. 29:13-14) What does it mean to establish a covenant with those not present? According to the predominance of Jewish Torah commentators, it means future generations. That which was done by our ancestors 3000 years ago is still binding upon us today. No, you might at this point say, "Hold on there a minute! I did not agree to this and I do not want to be bound by it!" And you know what, that is your right. You don't have to bind yourself to this covenant; it must be entered into willingly. There are a great many Jews who walk away from the covenant; some of you might be sitting in this room right now. Our entire religious tradition, all that Judaism stands for and Jews believe is based on the concept of Free Will. Each of us has the option of accepting Torah into our lives or not. On Rosh Hashanah we are reminded that Torah has a lot to offer each of us.

The entire High Holy Day endeavor that we now experience is based on the idea that each of us has Fee Will. On Yom Kippur we will read how atonement is achieved in the earliest of times – two goats are brought before the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest. One he sacrifices to God as a purification offering and then he confesses all the iniquities, transgressions and sins of the Israelites upon the head of the other, the scapegoat, and sends it off into the desert to die. This ritual brought expiation to the Israelites.

But Micah Goodman of the Hartman Institute has pointed out that the Prophets had a different understanding than the Priests about sin and expiation. In Ezekiel we read, "The righteousness of the righteous shall be accounted to him alone, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be accounted to him alone. Moreover, if the wicked one repents of all the sins he committed and keeps all My laws and does what is just and right, he shall live; he shall not die. None of the transgressions he committed hall be remembered against him" (Ezekiel 18:20-22)

From this perspective, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are not just about ritual, but about repentance. So often when we think about Judaism, we think about rituals. Lighting Hanukkah candles, participating in a Passover Seder, coming to service on Rosh Hashanah, that is how we think about our Jewish experiences; but for generations the rabbis have been teaching us, and certainly Conservative rabbis teach that Jewish rituals divorced from the moral/ethical underpinnings of the Torah misses the essence of what it means to be a Jew. There are Jews that focus on rituals and there are others that occupy themselves with the moral and ethical, but without any connection to anything Jewish. We, as Conservative Jews, are blessed with a Judaism that is committed equally to both. I like to think that most of us are moral and ethical, but often we don't associate that aspect of our behavior as being particularly Jewish. And when we do Jewish rituals, we don't usually think of them as extensions of our values. Conservative Judaism is all about creating the link between the ritual and the moral.

Recently, the Conservative movement published a new book entitled, The Observant Life, I know not the kind of title that will get many people to run out and buy it. But I think it is a very important book that seeks to explicate the wisdom of CJ for today's contemporary Jews. It brings forth that unique blend of ritual and ethical that is the hallmark of CJ. We will be using this book in our Adult Education program this year and I'm confident that it will enrich the lives of everyone who learns from it this year.

When we study the Mahzor we see that the perspective of the Prophets is at the heart of the High Holy Day liturgy. In the famous, U'netaneh Tokef we are told that even though we may have sinned, repentance, prayer and tzedakah can transform our destiny. Our destiny is not written in the stars, we are the masters of our own fate. Rosh Hashanah is all about transformation and change, we can change, but first we have to want to do so; we have to be convinced that our life can be different, better; and that with an investment of time, energy and patience, we can transform ourselves.

Everything I've just presented to you is also Torah, you see the term Torah means so much more than just the scroll in the Ark, it is the sum total of Jewish learning. And that is why Torah is at the core of the Jewish experience and that is also why we have chosen "Torah" as our theme for the year. The year 5773 at Shomrei Torah is dedicated to the Torah. Torah study has been a core value in our tradition from time immemorial. Back on page 36 for those of you who have been here since before 9 this morning is a passage from the Talmud that is part of every morning service. It is a passage that reminds us of the most important tasks for us to do – "honoring parents, doing deeds of lovingkindness; attending to the house of study morning and evening; providing hospitality; visiting the sick; helping the needy bride; attending to the dead; probing the meaning of prayer; making peace between one person and another, and between husband and wife. And the study of Torah is the most basic of all of them." (BT Kiddushin 39b)

So I encourage you to make 5773 the year that you engage in some form of Talmud Torah, Torah study. It could be reading a Jewish book or taking an Adult Ed class or simply coming to services and learning more about them. Whatever you do will be good for you and good for the Jewish people, I consider that to be a win-win. We began our celebration of the Torah already at our Welcome Back Weekend. When we welcomed the Dumoff Family Torah into the Shomrei Torah family as part of a Friday Night Live instrumental Kabbalat Shabbat; I encourage you to check out one of these lively and inspiring worship services. Next up for us is a project approved by our Board of Trustees to restore our Holocaust Torah. The Westminster Trust from who we acquired our Czech scroll is encouraging every Jewish institution with a Holocaust scroll that is reparable to restore the scroll in their possession. Everyone who was here for Selichot the other night, saw a film that chronicled the journey of a Holocaust Torah from a town in the Czech republic to its current home in a synagogue in Australia and how the congregation brought their scroll back to it home town and read from it in the synagogue that still remains even though the Jews are long gone.

Our tradition teaches that there are 613 mitzvot in the Torah, the final one on the list is the writing of a Torah scroll. This year, God willing, you will have the opportunity to fulfill this mitzvah that does not come along every day. As our Holocaust scroll is restored. My wish for you is that each of us be restored in the year to come. But recognize that the message of Rosh Hashanah is that your restoration is in your own hands. So let me end with a story.

There was a cynic who approached a learned rabbi with a closed fist. "Rabbi, you are supposed to be a great sage. I have a question for you. In my hand, I hold a small bird. Is it dead or alive?"
The rabbi knew that if he said the bird was alive, the cynic would crush it and then open his hand and show a dead bird. If, however, the rabbi said the bird was dead, the cynic would open up his hand and let the bird fly away. "Dear friend," said the rabbi, "the answer lies in your hands."

Returning to parashat Nitzavim, it concludes, "I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life! (Deut. 30:19) What you do next is in your hands. May words of Torah fill your life this year and may it be a year where we are all blessed with wisdom and understanding, health and happiness and all that we chose for ourselves.
Shanah Tovah

Thu, March 28 2024 18 Adar II 5784