Parshat Re'eh Saturday Morning 2011

1. Shabbat Shalom

2. Parshat Re'eh begins by offering us a choice, blessing or curse; a blessing if we observe the Mitzvot and a curse if we do not. This is one of the verses upon which the sages declared the principle of free will. We always have the choice to do the will of God or not, and if we choose not, then we will have to suffer the consequences of our decision.

3. Of course, if we pause to think about this choice, it really is not much of a choice at all. It is more like “Do what I say ...or else...! One would have to be either very foolish or very wicked to choose to disobey God and risk facing the curses, curses that will be described in very gory detail in Parshat Ki Tavo in just a few more weeks. Clearly the Torah is telling us that the wise choice, the only real choice, is to choose to obey the commandments of God.

4. In the Mishna, in Pirke Avot, the collection of wisdom from the Sages of the Talmud, Ben Zoma, asks a series of very strange questions. He asks “Who is Wise? Who is Strong? Who is Rich? and Who is Honored? The questions are strange because we already know the answers to his questions. The answers are obvious. We all know the definitions of wealth, strength, wisdom and honor. Wise people are those who have many degrees from prestigious universities. They are the people we turn to when we don't know what we are supposed to do. The strong person is the one who can lift the most weights and has the largest muscles. The rich man is the one who invests with Berkshire Hathaway, and who makes money even in a down market. The one who is honored is the one who gives up his or her life on behalf of others.

5. What makes the teaching of Ben Zoma so interesting is that he does not answer the questions the way we expect. His definitions of Wisdom, Strength, Wealth and Honor are not at all what we expect, in fact they are virtually the opposite of the definitions we are so sure of. According to Ben Zoma, the wise person is not the one who knows the most; wisdom comes when we are prepared to learn from everyone else. Strength does not come from lifting weights; but real strength comes when we are able to overcome our evil impulses. Wealth is measured not by how much money we control, but how happy we are with what we already have. Honor does not come from others; it comes when we honor others.

6. When we think about what Ben Zoma is teaching, we realize, of course, that what he says is true in a deeper way than the definitions that we first contemplated. We don't have to think too hard to find people with many degrees who still act foolishly. How many athletes can we think of who are strong physically but underdeveloped morally. Rich people seem to only want to get more wealth but a poor person, who is happy is wealthier in the ways that really matter. Real honor comes from humility in our public service, not from a sense of getting what we deserve.

7. What Ben Zoma is really saying is that in each of these four areas, what we first thought of as a blessing, can really be, if we are not careful a curse. If we are too full of ourselves, too enamored of our abilities and believe that we are better than anyone else, then no matter how smart we may be, how strong we may be or how rich we may be, we are, in the end without any resources at all. All that we own is not enough, and it will never be enough if we don't learn how to control ourselves and our impulses.

8. We like to think of Wisdom, Strength, Wealth and Honor as the blessings of life, but for all too many people, they are not blessings but a curse. Many smart people were duped by Bernie Madoff. Baseball, football, basketball and even golf have seen star performers fall to sex and drugs. Martha Stewart went to jail because she lied about a stock trade that involved an amount of money that, compared to her vast wealth, was pocket change. She just couldn't let it go, no matter how insignificant the amount was. We may honor those politicians who have served this country as President of the United States, but that is an insignificant honor compared to the honor we show to people like Nelson Mandela and Mother Theresa. They earned their honors by giving honor freely to others.

9. Clearly, when our Parsha is talking about blessings and curses, it is not giving us the choice of following God or not, it is telling us that everything that we do can be a blessing or a curse, and the final determination is made not by others but through our own actions.

10. Take the Mitzvot, for example; we can do Mitzvot because we want to feel honored. We like the way our observance makes us feel pious and righteous. We like it when we are honored for our commitment to Judaism and Jewish traditions. Ben Zoma would tell us, however, that this is not the path to true piety. This kind of piety is a kind of curse, and it is why so many people who seem so pious are discovered to be not so pious in the privacy of their own homes. True piety, Ben Zoma would say, comes from a love of God. If we do what God commands because we love what God stands for and want to bring the understanding of God out into the rest of the world; if we act at every moment to bring honor, not to ourselves, but to God, then we won't need to worry if our public life and our private life are the same. Both are the result of a mind set that makes it impossible to act in a hypocritical manner.

11. We may be proud that, over the course of our lives, we have never received a traffic citation. not one speeding ticket, not one accident; we never ran a red light. It is not that we never speed or cut corners in traffic, it is just that we are too smart to get caught. We may even be proud that we got a reduction in our car insurance because of our “spotless” record. But the fact that we may have never been caught does not mean that we are a safe driver. In fact, we may be responsible for creating dangers for other drivers who have the misfortune to be in the same intersection with us. Our daredevil driving may be unknown to Law Enforcement but it is still a curse in our lives and in the lives of others. Why should we drive safely? Because it is the right thing to do. It is better for preserving our life and the lives of others.

12. We may even be proud of our thriftiness. We make very dollar go the full distance for us. We bargain with every sales person, and get reductions even when the sign says that there are no discounts; that we have returned items we don't need even when it says that there are no returns. We like to brag around the pool that we got a better bargain on the TV, the car, on our eggs and on our produce. But if we are leaving in our wake, angry, frustrated and hurt sales clerks, what have we really accomplished? We may be proud of our savings but we are reviled when we return to the store for all the trouble we have caused. Our actions may be our curse if we leave in our wake people we have bullied into submission. Is saving a few cents worth the anger and resentment we leave behind? True blessings come when everyone leaves a deal happy, not just the buyer.

13. The sign may say, “The person who dies with the most toys, wins” but it is a false winning. The people who are long remembered are those who are the kindest and most compassionate. I have done thousands of funerals but at the top of my memory is the funeral of the father who left this memory to his children. They told me that one day the father saw a homeless man who had no shoes. He stopped his car, and asked the man to tell him his shoe size. The man told him he was a size nine. The father turned to the children in the car and said, “Who here wears a size nine?” and he then took the shoes off the feet of his son to give them to the homeless man. The boy had other sneakers at home. But he never forgot that one act of kindness of his father. And to this day I have never forgotten it either.

14. If our lives can be a blessing or a curse, it will only be because of the way we act every minute of every day. If we bring blessings into the world, our life will be a blessing. If we work for our own gain at the expense of everyone else, then our lives will be a curse, not just for others but for ourselves too. We will know, deep in our hearts, that we are not anywhere near the kind of person we want to be. Every decision we make will add to the total, whether our life will be a blessing or a curse.

15. That is not to say that we have to be perfect. Nobody is perfect. Every one of us has slipped from time to time and been a bit selfish, careless and maybe a bit cruel from time to time. We don't really mean to be that way but there are so many reasons that spoil our best intentions. A momentary bit of greed, an unintentional slight, or a morally questionable decision. Some of these sins may be accidental. Some, we are ashamed to admit, were done with intention. This week, as we begin the month of Elul, the final month of the Jewish year, we get our chance to repair these sins. Each day of Elul we blow the shofar to remind us that the end of the year is coming and we need to apologize, repent and resolve to do better in the year ahead. This season tells us that we don't have to be perfect, we only need to try harder to do the right thing and to leave our bad intentions behind.

16. The blessings and curses in life are of our own making. The choice we have is to do the right things for the right reasons. The Torah gives us the reinforcement we need to overcome our evil inclination and stay on the path that will bring us true wisdom, strength, wealth and honor. We don't need anything more than Ben Zoma to remind us that all we value can be either a blessing or a curse and it all depends on how we feel about what we are doing and the memories that we are leaving behind.

As we said just a few minutes ago during the prayer for the new month, “May God bless us in this new month with life and peace, joy and gladness, deliverance and consolation and may we have these blessing every day of every month of the year as we say... Amen and Shabbat Shalom

Ekev 2011s

Parshat Ekev Saturday Morning 2011

1. Shabbat Shalom

2. In this week's Parsha, Moses reminds the people of Israel that, no matter what they may think about their enemies and the military that is arrayed against them, no matter how many people the Canaanites may put in the field to oppose them, even if their opponents are the eight foot tall giant Anakites, no matter what the Israelites might see in battle, they should never forget that God fights with them and that, as long as they are faithful to God, God will be faithful to them and they will achieve victory.

3. This is the core promise behind the idea of a “promised land”. It is the promise on which the modern state of Israel was founded. Israel was the land and the Jews were returning home. As the theme song from the movie “Exodus” reminded Americans, “This land is mine; God gave this land to me.” For two thousand years the few Jews who remained in the Promised Land were despised and persecuted. They suffered bigotry and attack as well as famine and disease. No matter who conquered that land, Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders, Arabs, Turks or the British, the land promised to the Jews remained a difficult place to live, and to earn a living. Over the centuries the other nations used up the soil and denuded the mountains of their trees. They took all the resources and left precious little for anyone who remained behind to use to earn a living.

4. But from the beginning of the twentieth century, when the Jews began to return to the land, suddenly it was possible to drain swamps and plant forests. Suddenly new cities could be founded and farms could produce food not only for the country but to export to Europe. The Jews who returned to their Promised Land found that the land was not a desert and a swamp; it was fertile land waiting for those with vision to restore her to her beauty and glory. When the State of Israel was founded, the land was already well on its way to be the miracle that it is today.

5. But in 1948, and even as early as 1929, there were those who wished to derail the miracle. There were people in Europe and in the Middle East who wanted to see the Jews fail. They attacked Jewish settlements forcing the Jews to fight back. There were civilians killed, doctors and nurses ambushed and a university under siege. But the Jews in Israel understood that if they failed in their determination to settle the land, there was no place else for them to go. World War II made it very clear that Jews were not welcome anymore in Europe. Israel was the nation that just had to be a success, where every other nation who tried to settle there, was not.

6. In 1947, the British were in charge of the “holy land”. But the fighting between Jews and Arabs continued to get worse. The British took the side of the Arabs so the Jews began to fight against the British. Many soldiers and even civilian administrators died in that conflict. Great Britain finally had enough of the fighting and told the United Nations to sort out what they should do with this land of conflict. The UN came and held public meetings. They interviewed British, Jewish and Arab leadership. They created a partition plan; they would divide the land between the Arabs and the Jews who wanted to live there; a two state solution that was adopted on November 29, 1947 and was set to take effect on May 15, 1948. The Arabs and the British tried many tactics to undermine the Jewish side of the state. Both of them were resentful of the Jewish success in the land and their inability to push them out like others had been pushed out before.

7. In 1948 the Jewish part of the state came into existence. The Arab state never came to be. The Arabs were so intent on stopping a Jewish state that they never prepared at all to create the Arab state mandated by the UN declaration. Arab refugees found themselves in refugee camps unable to win control of the land from the Jews and no other nation would take these Arabs in. Many of these refugee camps from 1948 are still in operation today. In 1946 and 1947, it was the Jews who were in refugee camps in Europe. None of the nations there wanted them so they founded their own state and left Europe behind. Could you imagine what Europe would look like today if there were still Jewish refugee camps from World War II?

8. I remind everyone of this history because in the next few weeks, sometime in mid September, the refugees from the war of 1948 who have lived in refugee camps these past 63 years finally will go back to the United Nations and ask for a state of their own. Why the long delay? Why did they wait so long to take their case to the United Nations? Why ask for a new nation, why now demand what they once refused? The answer to that question is very important.

9. To this day, the Arab refugees, who have become known as Palestinians, have never accepted the State of Israel. They have worked for over 50 years to destroy Israel by war, by terror and by increasingly audacious demands. Israel has survived every attempt to undermine the country and undermine the government. In spite of all of this, of all the nations in the Middle East, Israel is clearly the most prosperous and democratic. Through it all, Israel has demanded that if there is to be a two state solution, it has to be a Palestinian state that is not a threat to Israel and the Palestinian leadership have to negotiate the details of the peace with the Israeli government. Other countries can help, support and push along the process, but in the end, the issues are between Israel and the Palestinians and these two parties must resolve their differences in order that the two states will be able to live together in peace.

10. This is why the unilateral declaration of independence is opposed by almost every western government, including the United States. In order for there to be a credible country, it has to be born of credible negotiations, not unilateral declarations. The Palestinian leadership, unable to bring themselves to accept the State of Israel wants the world to recognize their own state while they still refuse to recognize the right of Israel to exist. The declaration is a ploy to further evade meaningful negotiations. The fear in Israel and the United States is that this declaration will become like many of the other resolutions of the United Nations, another one sided document that will have to be pushed aside when the two parties finally gather to negotiate. It is an artificial negotiation strategy that takes fictions and makes them into facts that will make future negotiations more complicated. It does not resolve any of the important issues of Jerusalem, refugees, borders and settlements. In fact, this UN resolution may actually undermine previous peace agreements between the Palestinian leadership and Israel.

11. For this reason there is a petition going around that asks Americans to oppose this unilateral declaration of the Palestinians and to support the position of Israel and the position of the United States (affirmed unanimously in both houses of Congress and by President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton) that the UN is not the place anymore for the Palestinians to demand a state. The petition affirms that the Palestinians should sit down to negotiate a peace plan with Israel in good faith. We do not seek to deny the Palestinians their right to their own state, only that the path to that state begins in the Middle East and not in New York. The petition has been created by the Jewish Community Relations Council in New York and is being presented to all the counsel generals who have embassies in this country, asking them to affirm that the Palestinian dream of homeland depends on their willingness to open meaningful negotiations with Israel.

12. Please go to the petition online, either at home or at the public library, or come into our office this week and put your name on the petition. It is not often we are called upon to do something this easy and this important to help our Jewish state. Since 1948 everyone has known that there will eventually be a Palestinian state in the Middle East. But it will be born of direct negotiations and not through unilateral declarations. Our goal is peace in the Middle East and this declaration will take us further from that goal. Sign the petition and put your name on the line demanding not a unilateral declaration but meaningful negotiations in order to bring peace and prosperity to all. Arab and Jews living in peace; that is a dream worth becoming a reality. This declaration, coming to the United Nations in September, will not bring us closer to realizing our dream.

13. May God help us make peace with our neighbors the old fashioned way, through building trust, negotiating the issues and making the difficult decisions with our enemies. The blessings come from conversations and compromise. May these be the blessings that bring us to peace as we say.... Amen and Shabbat Shalom

devarim 2011s

Parshat Devarim

Sermon Saturday Morning

2011

1. Shabbat Shalom

2. What do you say at a retirement party? You are presented with a gold watch; the boss says lots of nice things about you and your work. Your colleagues and co-workers share wonderful anecdotes about how they enjoyed working with you and then you have a chance to say a few words of your own.

3. That must be how Moses felt as he stands, one last time, in front of the people of Israel before he leaves them to enter the Promised Land and he prepares to travel to a different Promised Land. Moses will soon die. His leadership will be transferred to others; his place in history is secure and he will ride off into the mountains, into the sunset. What should he say? How should he say it? What should be the last words that his followers will remember when they think of Moses and his legacy? The answer is the book of Devarim, this final book of the Bible, the last word and testament of Moses at the end of his long and extraordinary career.

4. There is another ending this week. In just a couple of days we will observe the great black fast of Tisha B'Av. The date that we mark the end of Israelite history and the beginning of the Judaism we know today. Israelites were led by a hereditary priesthood that officiated over animal sacrifices in the Temple of Jerusalem. Judaism is led by rabbis in synagogues and they officiate over prayer and life cycle rituals. What did the people of Israel say when the only religion they knew was destroyed and their Temple burned to the ground? They wrote the book of, Eicha, Lamentations, a collection of eulogies for Judea and the Temple. What is remarkable about their laments is that along with their cries of agony and pain, they included at the end, a verse of hope for the future. The ending of the Temple and the sacrificial service was a trauma that we today can only guess at, but through their trauma, they still held out hope for tomorrow. That is not too bad a lesson for us to take away from our observance of the Ninth of Av, this dark day on Judaism's calendar. What would we have said if we were the survivors of such a great catastrophe? Israel speaks words as the Temple burns and they conclude their eulogy with words of hope. Moses speaks words at the end of his life and he ends with words of hope. What would we say as the end of life as we know it is at hand? Could we speak words of hope as our last words?

5. Don't think that this is a rhetorical question. Moses is not just speaking to the people he once led, he is speaking to us. What he says is not just important for Jewish Law, what he says is important for our lives as well. His words are important for two reasons. First of all, there is good reason to believe that Moses did not write these last words. That the book was composed later, much later, as someone's idea of what Moses would have said had his words been recorded. Almost like a modern historical novel, the book of Devarim is a mythological account of what the people of Israel thought about when they thought about Moses. This is why the whole series of speeches seem so larger than life. Hundreds of years after his death, Moses had indeed become larger than life and this is how later Israelites viewed Moses from the vantage point of history. It is an amazing book and I think that is why it had to be included in the selections that would eventually become the Torah that we study and teach from today.

6. But I believe, as I have said many times, that the questions of the Torah are questions for us. If the Book of Devarim asks what we would say if we were Moses; if Devarim is about how our ancestors saw Moses at the end of his career; then this is also a chance for us to comment on the endings that we encounter in our lives. The Torah here is calling to all of us to contemplate the end of our own lives. Not to be sad that we will be gone, but to help us focus, like Moses, on what kind of a legacy we will leave behind.

7. There is a famous poem by Linda Ellison about how we should contemplate our lives. She calls her poem, “The Dash”

The Dash Poem

by Linda Ellis

I read of a man who stood to speak
At the funeral of a friend
He referred to the dates on her tombstone
From the beginning to the end

He noted that first came the date of her birth
And spoke the following date with tears,
But he said what mattered most of all
Was the dash between those years

For that dash represents all the time
That she spent alive on earth.
And now only those who loved her
Know what that little line is worth.

For it matters not how much we own;
The cars, the house, the cash,
What matters is how we live and love
And how we spend our dash.

So think about this long and hard.
Are there things you’d like to change?
For you never know how much time is left,
That can still be rearranged.

If we could just slow down enough
To consider what’s true and real
And always try to understand
The way other people feel.

And be less quick to anger,
And show appreciation more
And love the people in our lives
Like we’ve never loved before.

If we treat each other with respect,
And more often wear a smile
Remembering that this special dash
Might only last a little while.

So, when your eulogy is being read
With your life’s actions to rehash
Would you be proud of the things they say
About how you spent your dash?

8. Devarim however, does not just call upon us to think about what wisdom we might share at the end of our lives, Devarim implies that there are other endings we can contemplate as well.

When I talk to a family about a loved one who has died and I want information about their life for a eulogy, I often ask about their career. Some people work in several different careers over the span of their lives. Some work in the same place for over 40 years. Some children can define a father or mother by the career that they chose, and others say that the career was just an interruption in their real love of being a parent, friend or community activist. It can be telling how the skills used in a career can also be transferred to other aspects of life as well. It is also telling if we are defined only by the way we earned a living. What would we want our children to say to the Rabbi about how we managed the boundaries between our personal and professional lives?

9. Are there other times in our lives when we realize that a door has closed and that part of our life is over? What about when we sent our last child off to college? What about when others danced a Mazinka for us as we married off our last child? What did we say to ourselves, our spouse or our friends as we sat shiva for our last parent and realized that we were now orphans in the world? What did we say at these turns of life? Did we slip away in our pain or did we find words to give us hope?

10. Not all endings are sad, however. Do we remember the day we quit a job to go out on our own in a new business? There was the anxiety of not knowing the future and leaving behind a secure and reliable past. Do we remember the time when we realized that our bodies, once so young and vibrant, bodies that we believed, in the innocence of youth, were indestructible and eternal, that our body would now need medications and support to get us through the rest of our lives? What about the day we went in for important surgery, and we stood between illness and health and wondered what the future had in store? What did we say when we went in for that important test that would tell us once and for all what we had and what we would be able to do about it? What about the day we were told we would need a cane in order to walk, or a hearing aide in order to hear? Did we speak words of worry and concern or did we speak words of hope?

11. In less than 60 days, just eight weeks from today, we will, God willing, stand at the entrance to another new year. In just three weeks we will hear the first calls of the Shofar reminding us that we need to examine our souls as we prepare to transition from 5771 to 5772. What do we plan to bring with us into the new year and what baggage do we intend to leave behind? The time we have to contemplate the passage of time is growing short. I know rabbis who use this time to consider how our lives have changed over the course of this year. What new inventions and new ideas challenged us and what tragedies and disasters plagued us? Some rabbis bring out a list of obituaries of those famous people who did not make it to the Jewish New Year. It is all an attempt to get us to focus on how quickly time passes and why it is so important not to waste even a moment in time.

12. Soon we will be having the retirement party for 5771. Each of us has lived this year in different ways. What are we prepared to say about it as it comes to its end? Was the past year kind to you? Were you kind to others in the past year? Was the past year full of joyful moments? Were you a joyful person to your friends and to strangers in the past year? Was the past year filled with tragedies? Did you, in the past year, comfort those who suffered tragedies? What do you have to say about the past year and what does the past year have to say about you?

13. As Devarim unfolds we see all the facets of Moses' life. The good moments, the moments of anger, the times of frustrations and the stunning moments of success. We don't see Moses as a superhuman hero, we see him in all his beauty and flaws. And yet Moses ends with words of hope. Tisha B'Av has unfolded as a day of many tragic moments in Jewish history. Each time tragedy struck, who could blame us if we wrote verses of pain and sorrow? And yet Eicha ends with words of hope. Another year is coming to an end. It was a year of remarkable success and of indescribable disasters. What does this year mean to us and will we do all we can to have it end with words of hope? Moses and our ancestors never let a story end on a sad note. We should learn from their example and always find the words of hope when a door closes, a life closes and when a year closes.

May we learn and grow from all our experiences in the year that is ending and may God help us as we assess this year, to find not just good times and bad times, but always a reason to look to the future with hope as we say....

AMEN AND SHABBAT SHALOM

Parshat Maasai

Parshat Maasai

Saturday Morning

2011

1. Shabbat Shalom

2. As the Torah winds down to its end, as the Book of Bamidbar lists the many stops along the way for the People of Israel, we begin to see that there is a transition taking place. The leadership of Moses is ending. This Parsha is a review of all that Moses has accomplished with the understanding that there will be no new accomplishments for Moses. It will now be Joshua's turn to lead the people. The future of Israel and all the history that is yet to be written, will be about Joshua and not Moses.

3. While the Torah seems to indicate that Moses makes a gracious and elegant exit, appointing Joshua and giving him a charge on how to lead in the future, there are some signs that Moses will not “go quietly into that dark night”. In the Book of Devarim, Moses recounts how he begged God to change the divine mind and let him enter the promised land. It is recorded there that God replies “My mind is made up. Don't even bring up this topic again.” This exchange between God and Moses opens the door for the Rabbis to speculate on Moses's attitude as the end came near.

4. The Midrash has an extensive account of the last days of Moses. It has Moses drawing a circle in the sand and refusing to move until God annuls the decree of death for Moses. God then shuts all the entrances to Heaven so the prayer of Moses cannot enter. Moses pleads with all of nature to speak out on behalf of the prophet, but each one cites a verse from the Bible as to why their plea will not be heard by God. God tells Moses that God wanted to destroy both Moses and the People of Israel but Moses convinced God to save the people of Israel and now he can't have it both ways. He saved Israel but he will not be able to save himself.

5. Then there is a fascinating exchange where Moses asserts that if Joshua is to be the leader, that God should let Moses go into the Promised Land as the servant of Joshua. As I read this section I almost felt as if God was humoring Moses. God allows Moses to be the servant of Joshua. The next day Moses gets up early to serve Joshua. The people come to learn from Moses but he is gone. They find him with Joshua and want Moses to teach them but he tells them that it is forbidden and they have to learn from Joshua. The people refuse until God comes and tells them to learn from Joshua. Moses sits at Joshua's right hand as he teaches.  When the lesson is done, Moses follows behind Joshua as he goes toward the Mishkan. The cloud of God descends and Joshua has a conversation with God. When it is over, Moses asks, “What did God say to you?” Joshua tells him, “When I served you, did you tell me everything that God said to you?” At that moment Moses says, “I would prefer to die 100 times rather than have one moment of envy. Rebono Shel Olam, until now I sought life, but now my soul is surrendered to You.”

6. God teaches Moses a valuable lesson about letting go. There are things that are worse than death. The legacy of Moses is eternal. There is no more that Moses could ask from life. It is time to let go and leave the leadership to Joshua and Aaron's son, the High priest Eliezer. It does no good to envy their new positions. Moses has done it all and now is the time to let others lead.

7. There is a lot of discussion among the commentators of the Torah about why Moses had to die before entering the Promised Land. Why was it so important that he die in the wilderness? God clearly states that the reason is because of the way he acted at the rock in the wilderness where he was supposed to talk to the rock but he struck the rock with his rod instead. Some say that Moses's sin was disobeying the instruction of God. Some say it is because he belittled a miracle. Some say it is because he lost his temper. Some say that the sin of Moses was that he insulted Israel, God's chosen people. Modern commentators take a different approach. They see the incident at the rock showing how Moses was so impatient with the people. We have seen this kind of an attitude from Moses before and we will see more of it as we read in the coming weeks from the book of Devarim. Moses does have a temper. Moses does get impatient. Moses has a long history of pointing out the flaws of the people. Moses may be a humble man but he has a short fuse and the people often take the brunt of his anger.

8. So what makes this rock different from all the other times Moses gets angry? The problem here is that he is not talking to the same people he is used to reprimanding. Those former slaves in Egypt are now all dead. Except for Caleb and Joshua, and Moses, that entire generation has died in the desert. Moses keeps seeing them as if they were their parents. Look at last week's parsha. He gets angry that the people bring the women back from the battle against the command of God and refuses to even hear the explanation from the soldiers as to why they spared their lives. Moses gets angry again when the tribes of Reuvan, Menashe and Gad explain that they want to stay on the east bank of the Jordan River in the newly conquered territory. They have to calm him down before they can suggest a compromise. According to the modern commentators, the reason Moses has to die in the wilderness is because he is a wilderness leader. When the people will enter the Promised Land, they will need a new leader who will lead them as a general, who will lead them in battle and not an old leader who does not have the skills needed for the battles ahead.

9. My friend and colleague, Rabbi Howard Siegel of Santa Clara, California recently wrote, “Among the most difficult tasks in life is “letting go” Whether it is sending children into the world as young adults or retiring from a job that defined one's existence for so many years, we all have to eventually “let go”. Everyone says how wonderful it will be to move on in life, begin anew, face new challenges, set out for new horizons. Unfortunately, these are only words. Too often our actions, like those of the biblical giant, Moses …. betray our words.”

10. If there were a modern example of this fear of letting go, we need only think of the Green Bay Packer football team and their famous quarterback, Brett Favre. He was one of the most successful quarterbacks in team history. Several seasons ago he announced his intention to retire from football. It was time to let younger quarterbacks take the field. Then, suddenly, Brett Favre changed his mind; he did not want to retire. But the team did not want him back. They had decided to move on without him. Brett had such a hard time letting go that he went on to play for Green Bay's rivals and he would retire twice more before he “really meant it”. Bret Favre had real problems letting go.

11. I am told that the hardest transition in the world is going from President of the United States to being the Past President. It is the custom that past presidents of this country do not comment on the politics or the policies of their successor, no matter which party may win the White House. It is not that George Bush does not care about what is happening today, nor that he is unconcerned about his legacy. George Bush understands that he needs to let go of his former job, as commander in chief of the greatest army in the world, as leader of the free world and the man with his finger on the nuclear button, in whose hand is the fate of the entire world. It is not that George Bush was a failure nor has his political skills faded. He has accepted his place in the world, and someday they may even ask him to serve this country again, as his father and Bill Clinton have done. But all three of these past presidents understand that the world has now moved on and that they need to move on as well.

12. Yes, it is hard to step out of the lives of our children. It is hard to let them make the mistakes and suffer the consequences of their choices. I cried all day after I left my daughter on her college campus. She asked me, “Why are you sad? Did you not prepare me to live my own life?” I answered her, “Of course I know that you are not only capable of living your own life; I know that you are more prepared than many other young adults to make the difficult decisions about life. I am just sad that you will no longer have the same presence in my life.”

13. It is hard to let go of our parents as well. No matter how sick or feeble they may become, we always want just one more day with them. We want them to be present in our lives. But we all have to let go of our parents as well. We have to internalize their lessons and continue to grow without them.

14. It is hard to retire and let others take on the responsibilities of our work. We know all the tricks of the trade. We know all the quirks of the customers and how to get them what they want. How could someone else ever fill in for all the experience we have in our work? But now we have computers and smart phones. Now we market on social media and on websites. Customers are not just in town but all over the globe. We need to let go and let others tackle this new world in which we live.

15. If our congregation wishes to have a place in the Jewish world of tomorrow, we also will need to tackle the realities of the Jewish world. A world in which a young retiree is in his mid 70's and not his mid 60's. A world where retirement is extreme sports and exotic travel destinations. A world in which families stay in touch on Skype and Google chat. Who are the leaders who will see this congregation into the years ahead? The answer depends on our ability to let go and let new leaders take us into the future. This does not mean that our past presidents are no longer useful. It only means that their role in synagogue life will change. Everyone needs the wisdom of experience. But, like Moses, we have to admit that a new world needs a new generation of leadership. If we don't let go, the young leaders will go elsewhere, to a place where others have made room for them, and we will be forever stuck in the past.

16. I understand very well the difficulties of moving on. For Moses, it was the green monster of envy that convinced him to let go. For Brett Favre, he had to tarnish his extraordinarily reputation with several losing seasons before he understood it was time to retire. It is not easy for the man who was once President of the United States to go back to being just another citizen, but if they love this country, they learn to step aside. We can only teach our children so much before they have to learn to walk for themselves, and we have to bite our lips and say nothing as they learn the hard lessons of experience. It is very hard to give up a seat on the bima, our name on the stationary, and our seat on the board. Who else could lead this congregation into the future? But just as Joshua followed Moses, so too will we find new leadership to guide us into the future.

17. Letting go is one of the great gifts that we can give to the future. Not because we are useless, but we need to continue to grow with new challenges and learn to leave the old ones to the generation just behind us. I have often said that it is better to leave and have people wish we would stay than to stay and have people wish we would leave. How else will future leaders know of our extensive wisdom in life, if we can't show them we are wise enough to move on?

May God help us serve our community wisely and may God give us the wisdom to graciously make way for others to serve when our time to let go arrives. As we say, Amen and Shabbat Shalom.