Dear CBO Family,
How many times do you go into a room and forget what you were looking for? What about getting someone’s attention and then forgetting what was so important to say? Jacob, in Vayechi, experiences something similar. We’re told: “And Jacob called his sons and said, Gather around and I will tell you what will occur to you in the end of days” (Genesis 49:1). How exciting! According to Pesachim 56a, Jacob was alluding to a verse in Daniel, “But you, go on to the end; you shall rest, and arise to your destiny at the end of the days.” He knows how the story of the children of Israel will end, but he falls short right before telling his sons and changes the subject. The rabbis ask, “what happened?!” They imagine that the Shechina, the Divine Presence leaves Jacob because he suddenly fears that his children will not follow in his footsteps. The Talmud tells us: “His sons said to him: Hear Israel, our father, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. They said: Just as there is only one God in your heart, so too, there is only one in our hearts.” Jacob was afraid of something that plagues us and the rabbis, that there will be no Jewish future.
We look at rates of assimilation and we look at the various influences in our lives and not only do we fear for the next generation, but we fear for ourselves. Sometimes, we do not do what we know will fill us with the strength and comfort of belonging. We decide to stay home instead of going to Shabbat services, or sending that meal to the person who is ill. We also fall into the trap of disengagement. Our Portion and Talmud give us a starting point. It tells us, “recite the Shema.” We can begin each day with those 6 words and end each day with them. It is our creed.
We see it in the show, Northern Exposure, about a young Jewish doctor living in a small town in Alaska. In one episode, the doctor, Joel Fleischman, needs to find ten Jews to form a minyan so he can say Kaddish. When one candidate appears before him—a rough and tumble looking guy in an eskimo suit—the doctor doubts that the man is Jewish. To test him, the doctor asks him to recite the Shema. It is the “Jewish test” in the show, but it is so much more than that in real life.
The Shema is our rededication, our reminder of our roots, the larger (sometimes dysfunctional) family that we belong to. The Shema represents our past, present, and future. If we feel like we have lost our way, let’s start with reciting the shema at night, calling on the God of our ancestors, Who has held our people through the worst of history, to hold us as well in this moment of our lives. Add the Shema to the morning and start one’s day with a dedication to the idea that there is great diversity in the world, yet there is one interconnectedness. We are never truly alone, because we breathe the same air and belong to the same system of not only the Jewish people, but the entire world.
Sometimes, we need a starting point to the type of Jewish engagement that we are seeking. Try the Shema. Tonight, after you and I recite it, let’s imagine Jacob, as the rabbis of the Talmud do, saying, “ ברוך שם כבוד מלכותו לעולם ועד,” “Blessed be the name of God’s glorious realm for ever and ever.” Perhaps we will remember what we’re looking for.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Bernstein
Affiliated with United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism