Why I Go to Shul

My Dear Daughter,

It is early in the morning, the day after my Yom Kippur fast.  I am thinking about our conversation of several days ago about going to shul on the High Holy Days, specifically, my stated dislike for it.  I believe my exact words may have been at bit more robust.  Our conversation gave me something to think about during those long hours of the Yom Kippur service.  Why do I go?  Like all of your queries, it was a difficult and challenging question.

The truth is that I don’t broadly dislike going to shul, rather, I find parts of it objectionable and other parts boring.  To begin, I find the commercialization of spirituality through the selling of tickets, and use of the High Holy Days as spiritual extortion (no admittance unless you’ve paid your dues) exasperating.  As someone who has spent a good portion of his life seeking to advance and enhance Jewish identity, it seems so counter-productive.  In an era when synagogue and Jewish institutional involvement is shrinking, why are we creating barriers at the one time of the year when families are drawn to connect and participate?  We had to display our tickets at two checkpoints before being permitted entry to the sanctuary for High Holy Day services. Really? We’re trying to go to Kol Nidre not the NSA. While I understand the economics of the situation, if Jews are motivated to come to synagogue once or twice a year, why create literal and metaphorical blockades, and degrade the experience by monetizing it? 

For me, few parts of the service speak to me on a personal level or enhance my sense of spirituality or connection to the Divine.  Among the prayers that do resonate with me is Kol Nidre.  Each year, I am reminded of our responsibility to engage in a personal moral accounting. Unfortunately, any sense of spirituality that the prayer evokes is immediately shattered by the droning of the ensuing annual Kol Nidre appeal. 

Thus, I am reflecting on why do I go to shul. Being Jewish, it is hard to omit guilt from the equation.  In this context, being in synagogue on the High Holy Days becomes something akin to an episode of religious “Survivor”, with the sole objective being to endure on as long as possible.  Perhaps, there is an unstated equation involved, what is the earliest I can leave shul without feeling guilty?

Thus, beyond guilt, what are the reasons I go to shul?  To begin, it is where my community is. There is a sweetness that comes in seeing my friends and members of my community.  We are all together in one room, we all sing the same prayers.  We share updates on our families and, perhaps, furtively share photos of our kids and grandkids on our I-phones.  We sit, laugh, talk politics and provide updates on our families.  It is a wonderful affirmation of community and reminder that I am part of a community.  I still have such vivid childhood memories of the High Holidays at the Jewish Center of  Bayside Oaks. That community sustained and nurtured my family for over twenty years – including painful, difficult times.

There are parts of the service that link me to Jews around the world and across the generations. There is something deep and satisfying in uttering the same words, singing the same cantillations that are being recited in synagogues around the world and that have been sung for centuries.  That connection links me to the millennia of our Jewish history and heritage.  It is about the Holocaust and my responsibility to, not simply to recall it as history but embrace it as memory. But it is also about the golden age of Spanish Jewry, the rich traditions of the Shtetl and the rebirth of the State of Israel. I am linked to the passion of Moses and David Ben Gurion, the brilliance of Maimonides and Albert Einstein, the wisdom of Hillel and Nachman of Breslov and the kindness of Ruth and Rebecca Gratz.

The service links me to the pride I feel about our Jewish values and our Jewish consciousness. On Yom Kippur we read from Isaiah:

This is the fast I desire:

To unlock the fetters of wickedness,

And untie the cords of the yoke

To let the oppressed go free;

To break off every yoke.

It is to share your bread with the hungry,

And to take the wretched poor into your home;

When you see the naked, to clothe him,

And not to ignore your own kin.

How core these words are to my values. As my daughter, I hope you have seen this, and I hope that you have observed as I’ve sought to live it. 

There is a pure and mystical quality to Kol Nidre that, through its words and its haunting melody, causes me to reflect on who I am, who I have been, where I have gone wrong and what I can do better.  And, surrounded by my friends and community, I recognized that I am not alone in my flaws and failures. We all chant the words together and I am comforted by the thought that we all are flawed, we all have erred and that those around me, and those Jews around the world are also reciting the words, reflecting on their deeds and will also seek to address their limits and do better in the year ahead.

On Yom Kippur I say Yizkor for my parents. But I also say a memorial prayer for my cousin Jonathan who passed away too young and my friend from high school Bobby Bauer, who was the best of us and who killed in a car accident at age 18.  I think your grandfather, “Pop-Pop” and Uncle Stewart. There is melancholy but there is also a quiet sweetness. I have been so lucky to have known and to have learned from remarkable people.  As I age, I think of my own mortality. And in those moments, I think of all of my blessings; on the top of that list is my family.

Perhaps it is those boring moments, where the prayers seem to drone on, where I don’t understand what is being said and where time seems to go backward that going to synagogue can become most meaningful. The meaning of the service isn’t given to us, it is up to each of us to find meaning within it.  It is the same with life.

Later today, I will begin the annual process of schlepping the aluminum frame, canvas walls, and bamboo poles from the garage to the back porch.  Tools in hand I will begin to assemble an odd structure with flimsy walls and a questionable roof.  We will eat in it for seven days – at times in sweltering heat at other times donning multiple sweaters. Mosquitoes, moths and ants will join us. Eight days later we will reverse the entire process and return the components to the garage.  Like many of our Jewish customs, building a Sukkah also makes very little sense.  But each year we do it again with joy and with thankfulness. 

© David Raphael, 2017

We All Need More Bina

"How much better is it to get wisdom than gold! and to get understanding (Bina) rather to be chosen than silver.” Proverbs 16:16

One of my favorite Jewish jokes speaks of the difference between the Jewish pessimist and the Jewish optimist.  Says the Jewish pessimist: “Things are terrible, they can’t get any worse.”  Says the Jewish optimist: “Things are terrible, but they can always get worse.”  Thus, my reaction to the current national and geopolitical dynamic along with growing climate instability is that it is hard not to be a Jewish optimist, comforted, in our uniquely Jewish way, that everything can always get worse.

In an era where there is so much that is troubling and frightening, we all need more Bina. In Hebrew, Bina means “wisdom”, however, in Jewish tradition, ‘Bina’ goes beyond knowing – it is knowledge based on understanding, tempered by contemplation and reflection. It is knowing how to employ all we have learned with thoughtfulness and framed with humanity.  Linguistically, ‘Bina’ is linked to boneh or l’vnot – builders and the act of building.  Thus, we learn that to truly have Bina, our knowledge must be built and built collectively.  Conversely, we cannot build a society and a world of purpose and of values without Bina.

I am struck that, in a number of African languages, “Bina” means to sing and to dance, as well as the quality of freshness.  In Hindi, Bina is a musical instrument.  And, again, in the context of today’s challenges, we all need to sing and dance more and seek the qualities of newness and freshness in ourselves and in others. 

This summer, our family was blessed by the arrival of Bina Mazal

– Jo and my first grandchild, daughter of Keith and Nomi Adams, and niece to Alya and Jacob.

Neith, Nomi and Bina

My daughter Nomi spoke beautifully at the Simchat Bat:

“I can understand her desire to stay in. For her last couple of months in there, she was getting a steady supply of pizza bagels and chocolate ice cream, and the outside world seems like a pretty scary place right now. There’s a lot to be afraid of. I would be lying if I said that I had no worries about raising a child in our current times. There are so many unexplainable things going on that she’s going to want to be explained to her, so many changes we need to work for. But at the same time, that’s what’s exciting about bringing a new life into the world. We have the opportunity to raise a woman who will hopefully be kind and caring, who will work for change, who will fight for what she believes in, and who will love as much as we love her. 

I cannot be more proud of my daughter Alya, who said:

“For Bina, I wish the same things for you that I wished for your mother before she had you. I wish you joy and I wish you love.

I wish you curiosity. The desire to explore the world and to learn new things and meet new people 

Alya and Bina

and hear new ideas, secure in the knowledge that you have this family and home and community always waiting and supporting you.

I wish you grace. In this world of increasing uncertainty and unkindness, I hope you walk through life leaving peace in your wake. I hope you bring light to those around you.

And of course, to echo your name, I wish you wisdom and I wish you luck. The wisdom to listen to all sides and come to the right choice.”

Finally, I share my wonderful son-in-law Keith’s, words: “So, with this name, may our daughter be grounded in her self-determination and may she also find her way to respect and protect our ultimate collective inheritance -- this earth and its inhabitants, one and the same, engaged in a unity for peace.”

Jake and Bina

At a time of great change and challenge, all of us will benefit from curiosity, the desire to explore, and the support of others.  We will benefit from grace and the wisdom to listen to all sides and make the right choices.  We share the responsibility to raise children and to elevate ourselves to be kind and caring, to work for change, fight for what we believe in, and love and be loved. Let us all find the way to respect and protect our ultimate collective inheritance -- this earth and its inhabitants, one and the same, engaged in a unity for peace.

Now is not the time for optimism or pessimism, Jewish or otherwise.  Now is the time for Bina.

My fondest regards to you, your family and your friends for a Shanah Tovah U’mitukah – a happy, healthy and sweet New Year.

Thoughts on My Mom from Bina Mazal Adam's Simchat Bat

Zeh hayom asah Adonai, nagilah v'nismecha vo".  "THIS is the day that God has made, let us celebrate and rejoice in it

My Mother’s English name was Beulah.  On multiple levels, this puts her on the “B” list for baby naming opportunities.  But everybody called her “Billie”.  Her Hebrew name was “Bracha”, which, in Hebrew, means “blessing”.

Like her granddaughter and grandson-in-law, my mother loved music.  We had a piano in our living room and she used to delight in playing and singing.  She performed the lead role in a number of Jewish Center of Bayside Oaks musical performances.  If you like, I can sing you a couple of stanzas.

When we were children, she would play a movement from Mozart’s Piano Sonata #11 – and we would whirl and dance across the living room like dervishes, then collapse on the floor. She would wait a couple of seconds and then start again.  Alya and Nomi are probably thinking that this explains a lot.

Like Nomi and Keith, my mother loved children and children loved her.

She was a pre-school teacher for approximately 25 years and the beloved camp mother at camp K’far Masada in New York for many years.

I still remember children at camp following her around shouting with great delight: “Billy, Billy,”.

That memory came to life about 13 years ago when Nomi was a counselor at Camp Moshava.  As we arrived for visiting day, we spied her coming towards us with children hanging on her arms and legs; all shouting “Nomi, Nomi”.

My mother’s life wasn’t always easy.  She was 43 when my father died and she also lost a second husband to cancer.  But she both sustained and was sustained by her family.  Nothing gave her greater joy than her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  I wish she could have been with us today at the Simchat Bat of her 39th great-grandchild.  Three more are on the way.

My mother lived in a time when families were closer – not necessarily emotionally closer but physically closer.  She lived within walking distance of all her cousins and, in fact, one of her cousins live in her home.  When I was growing up, we lived in driving distance of all of our cousins and we saw them every week.

It’s harder now.  Jo, Jacob and I are in Atlanta. Alya and Esteban are in San Francisco. Nomi, Keith and Bina are in Baltimore. Nomi, Alya’s and Jacob’s cousins stretch from New York to Jerusalem. We have come to deeply appreciate Facetime and Skype, although it is not the same.

But Jo and I are so comforted that Nomi and Keith have such a wonderful family of friends here in Baltimore.  Jo and I are so grateful to everybody here for taking such good care of Nomi, Keith and Bina.  True friends are a wonderful Bracha.

Thank you all for being our extended family, for joining us today, and sharing this wonderful simcha.