Drashot

My father used to tell me a story about how he escaped the Nazis in 1939. He was living in Prague when the Nazis entered in March 1939, they immediately moved to expel all the Jews to Hungary. My father and a few of his friends fled over the mountains and snuck into Poland instead and made their way to Warsaw. But a voice in my father’s head told him, “Get out of Europe. Don’t stay here.” He listened to that voice and with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society was able to get passage to England, where he arrived in June 1939. Two months later in August, the Germans invaded Poland and WWII began. Had he stayed in Poland, as most of his friends did, he probably would have perished. Something, intuition, who knows what, made him act. That action saved his life. 

In this week’s Torah portion, the Israelites are trapped between the sea and Pharaoh’s army. It seems they will be carried back to slavery in chains before they have even left Egypt. At that moment God says to Moses, ““Why do you cry out to Me? Tell the Israelites to go forward.” (Exodus 14:15)  According to our Sages of blessed memory, at this moment of deepest crisis, that a leader of the Tribe of Judah, Nahshon ben Aminadav leaps into the sea, and when he does the Sea of Reeds begins to part (Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael 14:22). 

There are moments when we need to think, there are moments when we need to pray, and there are moments when we need to act. For the Israelites their freedom depended on it. Or, in the case of my father, our lives may depend on it. 

God is our partner, but that means God cannot make things happen in this world without us doing our part. 

~Rabbi Dean Kertesz

The practice of putting on tefillin, small leather boxes which contain the Shema and the Veahavta, is not common among Reform Jews. Traditionally, Jews put on tefillin before the weekday morning service. So much of our prayer is intellectual or mental; we do most of our praying from the neck up. But the practice of putting on tefillin is tactile, it is physical. We put on a physical prayer apparatus that we can feel. It is something I do and I can testify that it changes the experience of prayer for me. It grounds me in my body, not just my mind. 

In this we week’s Torah portion we discover the first time this commandment is given, “And this shall serve you as a sign on your hand and as a reminder between your eyes—in order that the Teaching of the LORD may be in your mouth—that with a mighty hand the LORD freed you from Egypt.” (Exodus 13:9) This commandment immediately follows the command to hold a holiday each spring to remember the Exodus and to eat unleavened bread for seven days. In other words, the practice of tefillin, is to remind that God liberated us from slavery. 

The liberation from slavery and the imperative of human freedom is so central to Jewish religious belief that we are to remind ourselves of it six days a week, excluding Shabbat. Commenting on this verse, Nachmanedes (14th Century Spain) wrote, “The meaning thereof is that you are to inscribe the exodus from Egypt [in the tefillin] upon your hand and between your eyes, and remember it always.” 

Perhaps just as the shackle and the scars from the slave master’s whip are physical reminders of slavery, tefillin are physical reminders of human freedom. Think of them as empathy boxes. Just as we were once slaves and now are free, we think of others who are currently enslaved and help them find freedom.

~Rabbi Dean Kertesz

Have you ever wondered what is God? Not whether God exists or not, but what is God? Is God the transcendent creator of all existence? Or, is God a personal God who cares about each of us individually? Or is God the prime mover or the source of all morality? God is possibly all of these things and each one has a name. The transcendent creator God is El Elyon. The personal God is El Shaddai. In this week’s Torah portion, we learn a new name for God, יהוה, as we read in this week’s Torah portion, “God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am the LORD. I appeared (vaera) to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make Myself known to them by My name יהוה.” (Exodus 6:3) Our sages teach that this name of God could only be pronounced by the High Priest and since the Temple was destroyed we have lost our ability to pronounce this name. But we can still unpack its meaning. Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey is related to the Hebrew verb to be. This connects back to last week’s Torah portion, where Moses asks God, when the Israelites ask for your name what shall I tell them and God replies, “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh.” Ehiyeh-Asher-Ehiyeh can be understood as meaning, I am who I am, or I will be who I will be. In other words, God is both present reality, with all its joys and problems and future potential with all its possibilities. Thus the name Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey implies that God is an unfolding process, and the next line shows that we are partners with God in that process, “I also established My covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners. I have now heard the moaning of the Israelites because the Egyptians are holding them in bondage, and I have remembered My covenant. Say, therefore, to the Israelite people: I am the LORD. I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage.” According to this interpretation, the answer to our question is that God is the force for human freedom and dignity and we are God’s partners, covenantally bound with God in this unfolding historical process. What a great reason to believe!

~Rabbi Dean Kertesz

This week we begin the central story of our people, the liberation from Egyptian slavery. This story contains so much, let me suggest three critically important themes that begin in this week’s Torah portion and continue throughout the Book of Exodus. 

First, God cares deeply about the human condition and despises oppression. One of the central messages of the Book of Exodus is that God acts in history on behalf of the oppressed. No one is lower in society than a slave. God intervenes in human history to free the Israelites from slavery. In Exodus God humiliates Pharoah and elevates the Israelite slaves. We would be well advised to remember this when we look at our own society. 

Second, we must discover who we are and our purpose in life. Moses is the central character in the Book of Exodus and throughout the rest of the Torah. He begins his life as an adopted member of Pharaoh’s household and is raised as an Egyptian prince. In the Book of Exodus he goes on a journey of discovery to find his true identity, as an Israelite. Once he learns who he is, he can then find his real purpose in life. This is true for each of us as well. The courage to explore who we genuinely are is the key to finding our purpose and calling in life. 

Finally, commitment to Jewish identity is the key to Jewish survival. Our Sages of blessed memory, say that one of the reasons God heard the Israelites cries and helped them achieve freedom is that they never forgot their Hebrew names, they never became totally assimilated into Egyptian society. 

Like Moses, finding our Jewish identity and celebrating it is a source of freedom and growth. These three themes continue to play themselves out throughout Jewish history: a commitment to social justice, a commitment to finding our personal identity and calling, and a commitment to living an authentic Jewish life.

~Rabbi Dean Kertesz

Reconciliations are messy and often incomplete. This Shabbat we end the Book of Genesis, which is filled with troubled relationships, sibling rivalries, inter-family squabbles, jealousies and murders. Right from the start Cain murders his brother Abel in a fit of jealous rage. Abraham mistreats his sons, Jacob cheats his brother Esau and deceives his father Isaac. Jacob picks a favorite, Joseph, from among his children and Joseph’s brothers first plan to kill him but sell him into slavery instead. Throughout all of these stories women are rarely present and given little or no agency. Yet, there are also moments of reconciliation. Ishmael and Isaac come together to bury their father Abraham. Esau and Jacob embrace in tears after 20 years of conflict. In this week’s Torah portion, Jacob blesses his sons, while Joseph’s brothers ask for forgiveness and Joseph grants it. Still, each of these reconciliations is incomplete. Much is left unsaid and it is never clear whether these relationships are ever fully healed. The Torah is laconic. It leaves much unsaid, inviting us to fill in the gaps in the narrative and seek our own lessons. As we end the book of Genesis this week, we can see that this narrative, like our own lives, is messy. We are often in conflict with others, often those we love the most. We, like our ancestors in the Torah are proud, jealous, and self-righteous, justifying our own behavior while easily seeing the fault in others. We are slow to apologize and, at times, unable to forgive others or ourselves. In that sense we are much like our ancestors in Genesis. Before the Mourner’s Kaddish we always say, zichronam l’vracha, may the memory of our beloved dead be a blessing. Perhaps we can learn from their struggles and their suffering to find a way to be kinder, more understanding, more forgiving and more humble in our interactions with others. Then their lives and ours would truly be a blessing. Shabbat shalom. ~Rabbi Dean Kertesz

Hanukkah, which comes during the darkest time of the year, reminds us of the power of light, to drive away darkness. The central “miracle” of Hanukkah is of oil that burned for eight days when it should have lasted for only one day. As miracles go, this one is pretty bland. But the image of the oil that would not be consumed, that continued to burn when it should have gone out, is a metaphor for the Jewish people who, despite the challenges of our history, have never given up our faith in God or our commitment to a world that can be made better through human effort. 

Another central idea of Hanukkah is the power of a small group of dedicated people to change history, as the Maccabees did. Although small in number they challenged the power of the Helenistic empire and won freedom for the Judean state around 170 BCE. 

This year, the first day of Hanukkah coincides with the secular date, November 29th. On November 29, 1947 the United Nations approved Resolution 181 that partitioned Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. That resolution was the culmination of 50 years of hard work of the halutzim, the Zionist pioneers, to build the institutions of Jewish statehood. Although accepted by the Jews of Palestine and rejected by the Arabs, Resolution 181 paved the way for the establishment of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948. 

Israel would not secure its existence until winning the War of Independence after 18 months of bitter fighting, where the Jewish Yishuv defeated the combined armies of the Arab world. Once again, a small dedicated group changed the course of Jewish history. 

In this week’s Haftarah, the prophet Zecharia describes the rebuilt Temple and the candelabra that stands in it, with a constantly burning flame. This is the menorah that required the sacred oil, which is the miracle of Hanukkah. This menorah is also the symbol of the modern State of Israel. 

In this week’s Haftarah, in the story of the Maccabees, and in the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel, we see how a small group of people, with spirit, vision, and courage can change history. A little light drives out a great amount of darkness. Hanukkah reminds us to have hope and courage and to remember the potential to change the world for the better is always within us..   ~Rabbi Dean Kertesz

Our lives unfold before us each day – we rarely know the impact of the choices we make or the actions we take until much later. It is frequently not until we are much older that we see the pattern or purpose of our lives. 

So it is with Yosef. Our sages calle him Yosef Ha Tzaddik, or Joseph the Righteous. But he hardly seems righteous as we are introduced to him in this week’s Torah portion. He is the favored son of Jacob, the first son of his beloved, late wife Rachel. He is spoiled and arrogant. 

But he is also an obedient son and trusting and naive regarding his brothers. Finally, he is a visionary, with insightful dreams that describe his destiny. 

Like all of us, Yosef is a mass of contradictions, visionary and blind, trusting and arrogant. Beginning in this week’s Torah portion he suffers profoundly for his arrogance and blindness, when thrown into a pit and sold into slavery by his brothers. 

Over the course of his life he will grow through his suffering, with his weaknesses falling away and his strengths coming to the floor. In the end he will save Egypt and his family. Perhaps this is why he is called Yosef the Righteous, because he learns from his mistakes and grows throughout his life, consistently refining his character. 

May we all follow the example of Joseph, learning from our mistakes and growing to be better people.

~Rabbi Dean Kertesz

In the climactic scene in the 1992 film, “Scent Of A Woman,” Al Pacino who plays a cynical, retired Army colonel, speaks in defense of a young man about to be expelled from a private school and says, “Now I have come to the crossroads in my life. I always knew what the right path was. Without exception, I knew. But I never took it. You know why? It was too damn hard. Now here’s Charlie. He’s come to the crossroads. He has chosen a path. It’s the right path. It’s a path made of principle — that leads to character.” 

Our patriarch Jacob has been a trickster his whole life. Whenever he faced a challenge, he took a shortcut. He deceived his father and stole his brother’s blessing. He fled from his brother’s wrath, rather than face it. He fled from his father-in-law Lavan, rather than confront him. Now, he is returning to the Land of Israel and to a meeting with his brother, who he has not seen in twenty years. 

Alone, camped by the river Yabok, he wrestles with a being for the entire night. Our Torah does not make clear who or what this mysterious being is. It could be an angel, it could be a demon, it could be Jacob’s shadow self or his guilt. We don’t know. 

The fight is close but Jacob prevails and the mysterious blessing gives him a new name,  “Said he, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with beings divine and human, and have prevailed.” (Genesis 32:29) 

Rashi (11th Century Germany) says that Jacob means “to supplant,” but Israel means “to struggle with.” After this night of wrestling, Jacob is a different man. He is no longer the trickster who takes the easy way. He is a person of character, who faces his struggles head on and grapples with them until they are resolved. 

We are not called b’nai Yaakov, the Children of Jacob. We are called b’nai Yisrael, the children of Israel. Our name challenges us to make the right choice, the hard choice, the choice of character. When we next stand at the crossroads, let us remember our ancestor Israel and do the right thing. So that we may be a blessing by our behavior.

~Rabbi Dean Kertesz

The great gift of human consciousness is perception, the ability to see. We are blessed with excellent sight. Yet, how often do we realize later that what we thought we saw was not accurate, that our first impressions are wrong, or that we only see a portion of the picture, not the whole thing. Eyewitness testimony is often inaccurate. Our perceptions of others, of our world, and of our reality is often painfully inaccurate.
But Jacob seems to be blessed with a deep perception of the hidden spiritual realities hidden within day-to-day existence. At the beginning of this week’s parsha, Jacob is fleeing the Land of Israel to escape his brother. He lays down to sleep, and dreams of a ladder with spiritual beings ascending and descending the ladder. Upon awakening he says, “Surely the LORD is present in this place, and I did not know it! Shaken, he said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the abode of God, and that is the gateway to heaven.” (Genesis 28:16-17)
As he passes out of the Land of Israel, he perceives God’s presence and the Land’s holiness. He marks it with a stone and calls the place Beit El, the House of God. At the end of the parsha, after 20 years of servitude to Laban, his father in law, Jacob confronts Laban for his unfair treatment and negotiates a pact of peace. He makes another stone marker and calls this place mizpah, the place where God sees.
We are called the Congregation of Jacob, and the Children of Israel, not the Children of Abraham or Isaac. Perhaps this is because Jacob had the ability to see things as they truly are; to see the holiness in life, and God’s workings in the world. May find the ability to see the holiness in our lives and sanctify God’s presence through our actions.

~Rabbi Dean Kertesz