July 30-31, 2022

Temple David loves Cross Roads!

What good work you do and what a pleasure it has been to get to know Pastor Lindsay. How lucky you are! How lucky the Monroeville Interfaith Ministerium is! How lucky we in Monroeville are!

It was at one of our First Watch breakfast meetings – that doesn’t mean early in the morning, that means the restaurant First Watch – that Pastor Lindsay and I decided to have this pulpit exchange…Then came the hard question: What would the theme be? We decided on “One God, Two Lenses.”

Let us pause to recognize that that was the challenge: deciding a theme. That meant that there was no difficulty in: Partnering together. Being present at one another’s worship. Opening our doors to one another. Recognizing and honoring our differences. Building on Temple David and Cross Road’s shared past and knowing we have a shared future.

One God, Two Lenses.

It is interesting because “lenses” refers to sight and sight brings us to the beauty that God is everywhere and the difficulty that God cannot be seen.

Over and over in the Torah, including in the 10 Commandments – the second commandment the way the Jewish community counts – we are commanded not to make images and elsewhere in the Torah, we are commanded not to bow down to idols, not to look up to pillars.

Judaism’s interaction with God is not through sight, it is through hearing, through listening. God created the world through speaking: “Let there be light.”  And there was light.In the words of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (z”l), the former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain:

God is to be found not by looking but by listening. He lives in words –

the words He spoke to the patriarchs and matriarchs, prophets and priests;

ultimately in the words of the Torah itself – the words though which we are to interpret all other words.

Why is God revealed in words? Because words are what makes us persons.

Language makes homo sapiens unique. Because we have language, we can think. We can stand back, reflectively, from the data provided by our senses.

We can ask questions. Human beings are the only species known to us

in the universe capable of asking the question, Why?

Because we can speak as well as see, we can imagine a universe unlike the one we have seen every day until now. We can dream dreams, imagine alternatives, sketch utopias, formulate plans, construct intentions. Because of language – and only because of language – we are free and therefore morally responsible agents.

(https://www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/reeh/seeing-and-hearing/)

Elsewhere, Rabbi Sacks writes:

The God encountered by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, by Moses in the burning bush, and by the Israelites as they stood at the foot of Mount Sinai,

came not as an appearance, a visible presence, but as a voice –

commanding, promising, challenging, summoning.

(https://www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/eikev/the-spirituality-of-listening/)

God’s voice is “commanding, promising, challenging, summoning.” Therefore, God’s voice is a reflection of Godself. Ours is the God of Creation, Redemption from Egypt and Revelation. Ours is the God who invites us into partnership through the commandments.

In Hebrew the word for “commandment” is “mitzvah” and it refers to 613 times in the 5 Books of Moses that we hear “You shall” or “You shall not”…

As in: You shall honor your father and mother. You shall pursue justice. You shall leave the corners of your fields for the poor and for the stranger. You shall keep the Sabbath.

And: You shall not bear false witness. You shall not oppress the stranger.

I have heard it said that Judaism is a religion of law and Christianity is a religion of love. Let’s face it: Judaism doesn’t come out so well in that comparison…There is a saying in our tradition: “Turn it, turn it, for everything is in it” (Pirke Avot) meaning: keep looking at texts and situations from every angle. So let’s “turn it.” Yes, Judaism is a religion of law – meaning commandments from God and halacha, law from the rabbis’ interpretations, which continue to this day. They are laws that guide us far beyond the narrow definition of religion as holidays and rituals to the vastness of a guiding us on how to live moral, compassionate, just lives.

One of our evening prayers, Ahavat Olam, begins: “Everlasting love You have offered Your people Israel by teaching us Torah and mitzvot, laws and precepts.”

Judaism’s laws guide us in the world of love:
Love of family
Love of the community
Love of strangers
And all encompassed by God’s love of us by giving us the Torah and our love of God by accepting the covenant.

The watchword of our faith, the Sh’ma as we call it, is found in Deuteronomy 6:4: “Listen Israel, Adonai is our God Adonai is One.”

It continues: “You shall love Adonai your God, With all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your being.

I know that in the Gospel According to Mark, chapter 12, when Jesus was asked what was the most important teaching, he said this one and added: Love your neighbor as yourself, found in Leviticus 19. On this, Temple David and Crossroads agree: He was a star student at religious school!

Let us use this shared teaching as a guide to “seeing” our one God through the Jewish lens. I recognize that translations within Jewish sources and within Christian sources differ.

Love Adonai your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your being.

Love Adonai your God with all your heart…

Nowadays, we see our hearts – whether romantically or patriotically as we cover it for the Pledge of Allegiance – as the source of emotion. In biblical times, one’s heart was seen as the center of intellect.

We read the 5 Books of Moses, over the course of the year including from the Torah scroll on Shabbat and holidays. But it is not enough to read – or see – the words.

Before we study, our blessing is: Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, who sanctifies us with commandments and commands us to engage with words of Torah. And so we do! We engage! We dissect it and question it and turn it over. We bring our lived experience and our modern values to challenge. We answer a question with a question. After all, since the time of Jacob wrestling with the angel before his reunion with Esau, we are called Yisrael – Israel – God wrestlers.

Some Jews believe the Torah is literally God’s word; Others believe it is written by humans over time, inspired by God, others believe that it is sacred because it has been handed down through the generations. When we study Torah, we do not avoid difficult texts, we dig in. As with an onion, we peel back layer upon layer using different translations, commentaries, and midrashim to better understand. As Torah is revealed, for we see revelation as ongoing, we evolve, as it were.

Thanks to Muslims, in the Koran Jews, Christians and others are called “The People of the Book” out of respect for our sacred books. We love that title!

Love God with all your soul.

Let us note that the Hebrew word for breath and one of the Hebrew words for soul is n’shama. We believe that upon birth, God breathes our souls into us.

In our morning blessings, the prayer Elohai N’shama begins: “My God, the soul You have given me is pure. You created it, You shaped it, You breathed it into me.”

In a creative version of our prayer, we say these words:

My soul came to me pure,
drawn from the reservoir of the Holy.
All the time it remains within me,
I am thankful for its thirst
for compassion and justice.
Let my eyes behold the beauty of all creatures;
let my hands know the privilege of righteous deeds.

(Mishkan T’filah)

Our souls come from God and to God they shall return. And, God-willing, in those decades of time, we will have repaired the world a little. That is what God wants of us; that is what God breathed into us.

How do we love God with our being?

Here is a creative reading from our prayer book (Mishkan T’filah):

Show love with your wealth;
Put your resources toward good purposes;
Serve the Most High with everything you possess. (Talmud)

Those who reject all material possessions;
Who spurn comfort and wealth; who deny the body –
They lose their ability to appreciate life’s value.

Poverty and suffering do not cultivate the love of God.
Rather: learn to love life, live fully;
cherish the world and enjoy its treasures.
Then you will gain a full measure of love.
Then will your heart expand with gratitude.
And only then will you give with a joyful heart.

The way we love God is a reflection of God’s love for us: God gave us the Torah,
God breathed life into each of us, God wants us to use our means and talents to fix the world, or as we often say, to be God’s partner in creation.

One God, two lenses.

Two clergy – female in case you didn’t notice! – one focus. May we continue to learn from one another and to celebrate our similarities and our differences.