FROM “ROCK OF AGES” to PLYMOUTH ROCK THERE IS SO MUCH TO BE THANKFUL FOR!

What a display at HOME DEPOT! A WALL of Giant Turkey Fryers accompanied by gallon containers of CRSICO!  Normally, I would have just walked by but “WAIT” I said to myself.  Could it be?  Would this be the best way for my family to celebrate the convergence of Thanksgiving and Hanukah? I had a momentary vision of Deep Fried Turkey sharing the sideboard with potato latkes (or sweet potato latkes!). The Festival of Oil suddenly took on a new meaning!  And then I snapped out of it.

How wonderful to have Hanukah arrive so “early” on the secular calendar, running head on into Thanksgiving! Our Thanksgivakah tables will be decorated with dreidels, menorahs, and a traditional fall cornucopia. Think of it as Blue and White meets Orange and Brown.  Malka Stewart meets Martha Stewart.  

How wonderfully refreshing it will be this year not to hear the term  “The December Dilemma,” as Hanukah and Christmas traditionally “butt heads” every year, bringing about children’s books with titles like “It isn’t the Jewish Christmas.” Hebrew Schools are strong on the Judah Maccabee beats the Syrian Greeks and rededicates the Temple in Jerusalem.  They are a little weak on the other part of the story, the fight against Jewish assimilation into the Greek lifestyle that had seduced so many Jews of the time.  Maybe that message strikes a little too close to home!

 But it is November, and this year, finally, Baruch Hashem (bless God) we finally have the RIGHT convergence of holidays!  Thanksgiving, a festival of religious freedom combined with Hanukah, a festival of religious freedom!  I wish we could schedule the holidays to coincide every year!  Imagine a tradition of going around the dinner table and alternating one Jewish thing you are thankful for with one American thing you are thankful for!

The Pilgrims, those men, women and children who survived their first year, and who celebrated the first Thanksgiving, drew their strength from their strong religious convictions and a belief in God. Even after their first year of hardship in the new land, and the loss of friends and family members, they sat down to thank God for their survival, and for the ability to practice their religion as they saw fit. In a spirit of peace and rededication they sat down to a meal modeled after the biblical Festival of Booths, Sukkot.

As you sit around your Thanksgiving/Hanukah table, make sure to reflect on the theme of Religious Freedom.  The Pilgrims paved the way so that our grandparents and great grandparents would have a safe haven where they could be Jewish without persecution.

Yes, the Pilgrims’ voyaged on the Mayflower and landed on Plymouth Rock, so that our families could, over the  course of the next three hundred years, come to America on a later boat.

A Note to My Congregation - LAST SHABBAT WE WERE ALL SMILES! – So What’s JEWISH about SMILES?

There were smiles abounding last Shabbat!  It was apparent from the energy in the room that some amazing dynamic was going on.  Granted, we don’t usually get a chance to smile much on Rosh Hashanna or Yom Kippur, the two days when most Jews are likely to show up for services, but last Friday’s Shabbat Dinner and Service was a “Smile Fest!” I’ve gotten e-mails and phone calls to tell me how “happy” the evening was!

I think we can credit the phenomenon to the infectious nature of smiles.  The most “contagious” of these was that of the head of our “SUNSHINE COMMITTEE”, Nancy Lagasse, who literally SHONE as she and her service dog ARKIN greeted each arriving person.  We had so many new people last week! Our “regular” congregants went out of their way to make them feel welcome and in short order we had fifty-five very happy folk smiling, eating, talking, singing and praying. (They were even happy as they cleaned up!)

Judaism has something to say about EVERYTHING, so why not SMILING? In the Mishnah (Pirkei Avot – the Ethics of the Fathers 1:15) We are guided by the great teacher, Shammai, to “Receive everyone with a cheerful face!” Elsewhere, in Pirket Avot (4:20) we are instructed, “Always be the first one to greet every person.”  “Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai said, “Never did I meet anyone in the street who greeted me before I greeted them.” Rav Dessler admonished a pupil, who was walking around wearing a long face, saying: “You are like a thief! You are depriving your fellow human beings of the pleasantness of a cheerful face!”

To smile is innately human.  There is evidence that babies smile in the womb.  We know that smiling at an infant almost always elicits a smile from the infant.

So, what’s in a smile that makes us feel so good?   Biologically, we know that smiling is good for us.  Smiling releases neuropeptides, tiny molecules that allow neurons to communicate.  They facilitate sending messages to the whole body when we are happy, sad, angry, depressed, or excited. The “feel good” neurotransmitters dopamine, endorphins and serotonin are all released when a smile flashes across your face. A study published in the journal Neuropsychologia reported that seeing an attractive smiling face activates your orbitofrontal cortex, the region in your brain that process sensory rewards. This suggests that when you view a person smiling, you actually feel rewarded.
It is apparent that the Rabbis were on to something long before the biologists and the psychologists got in on the action.
Have you ever wondered about UNSMILING people?  In an interview in WIRED.com, Marianne La France, an experimental psychologist at Yale, who has written a book on the subject of smiling,  Lip Service: Smiles in Life, Death, Trust, Lies, Work, Memory, Sex and Politics, was asked: “What is it about unsmiling people that is unnerving?”
Her response? “People convey by their faces that they acknowledge us, that we’re alive, that we matter, that we are not just objects to be dispensed with.”
And that, I believe, is what the rabbis were trying to get at. Smiling is a gift, a God given gift.  A gift meant to be given away, not hoarded. I know, first hand, what a day can be like without giving away a smile.  Twenty years ago, I developed Bell’s Palsy, a paralysis of the facial muscles.  I couldn’t smile for months. The inability to smile was so disconcerting that, when the Palsy finally dissipated, I made a promise to myself to make it a point to do what the rabbis had suggested, “to greet everyone with a smiling face.”
I’m not sure what the rabbis would have said if they could have looked into the future, a world in which a graphic symbol called an “emoticon” would take the place of human smiles and laughter.  That is why we, in order to retain our humanity, need to take every opportunity for face-to-face interaction. Our lives are rich in “communication devices, yet miserly in face-to-face communication.
God willing, as the congregation expands, so will your circles of friends, acquaintances, people of similar interests, those you need to care about. Relationships build congregations. When we meet again, at Sunday School, at services, at Book Club, or Adult Ed, in the temple kitchen, at the supermarket, or volunteering in the community, I hope there will be a smile on your face; the gift that keeps on giving.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Rose

A Touching and Meaningful Moment Caught for Posterity

As history moves further and further into the past, first hand witness accounts by those who were “there” are fewer and fewer. But, historian David McCullough noted, history wasn’t “history” the day it was lived. And so we are extremely fortunate when a “living legacy” can fill in the details of a history making moment.

I recently read a touching, true, eyewitness  account set in Selma, Alabama in March of 1965.  On 25 March,1965, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led thousands of nonviolent demonstrators to the steps of the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama, after a 5-day, 54-mile march which originated in Selma.  Marching with him was one of the greatest rabbis of all time, Abraham Joshua Heschel.  Heschel was a close personal friend of Dr. King and they marched, side by side, arms linked with other important faith leaders, in solidarity.

For Heschel, the march was not just a political statement, it had spiritual significance. He wrote, "For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying."

So here is the story of one eyewitness to history.

This past year, while preparing to officiate at a Bar Mitzvah in Selma, Alabama, Rabbi Marshal Klaven was approached by an elderly African-American woman who asked, “Do you know a rabbi by the name of Abraham Joshua Heschel?” Momentarily taken aback, Rabbi Klaven responded, “I didn’t know him personally, but who doesn’t know his enduring words from this very town, where he marched with Dr. King. In recollecting on that moment, he said his “feet were praying.”’

“Well”, Ms. Jackson responded, “when his feet weren’t praying, they were resting in my home.  I hosted him for the night and the next morning I saw one of the most amazing sights these eyes of mine have ever seen.

“The Rabbi came into my living room, where the Russian Orthodox Priest (also staying in our home) was sitting.  They nodded to one another in reverent silence.  Then the Rabbi put his prayer book on my mantle and recited his morning prayers.  All the while, the Priest listened intently, prayerfully.  When the Rabbi finished, he closed his book and took a seat.  Then, the Priest stood up, went to the mantle, laid out his religious items and opened his prayer book.  He too recited his morning prayers, while the Rabbi sat there, intently, prayerfully, taking it all in.” 

This was her account of a wordless moment in history that still speaks volumes.

Rabbi Klaven was mesmerized by her voice and his mind conjured up a picture of the historic scene.  For a moment both were silent. Rabbi Klaven’s reverie was broken when Ms. Jackson added in a firm voice: “So, don’t tell me religions can’t get along!”

History is filled with voices that reach out and lift the spirits, and Jean Jackson’s  story brings us such a voice, a voice that enriches a moment in history.

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I’d like to conclude with a quote from David McCullough’s 2003 National Endowment for the Humanities Lecture,

 “There are, of course, great sweeping tides in history -- plague, famine, financial panic, the calamities of nature and war. Yet time and again, more often than not history turns on individual personality, or character.”

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were just such  men; men of integrity, men of character, men of faith who shaped the events of their day; their day, which we now call history.

May we continue to see the importance of and strength in interfaith relationships as key building blocks of our communities.  I hope, that as we enter into interfaith alliances in our community, that we are moved by the actions that day of both Rabbi Heschel and the Russian Orthodox priest… and by Jean Jackson’s prophetic words.

Rabbi Rose