Posted on

Sukkot – Dwelling in a House of Dreams

Our holiday of Sukkot – part harvest festival, part historical reenactment – is the holiday of insecure dreams. We are commanded to build a shelter for ourselves, but only the most flimsy, temporary shelter, to remind us of our own fragility, the transitory nature of life, and what it was like to be refugees from Egypt, with only the good will of a great power to sustain us. But then we are commanded to dwell in it. We are to welcome guests: our neighbors, the poor, and even our wandering ancestors, to be with us. And then, ideally, we sleep in it, the star visible above us. And we sleep with  the promise God made us in the desert, the promise that a more permanent home awaits us in the future, a promised land. No longer landless, stateless, we sleep knowing we are headed toward a better future. We sleep with a dream in mind before we even lay our head upon our pillow.

And knowing that, we are commanded to rejoice. Sukkot is meant to be our happiest holiday – not joyous like Passover, or riotous, like Purim, but a holiday of contentment, knowing our harvest is secure with us for the coming winter.
Continue reading “Sukkot – Dwelling in a House of Dreams”

Posted on

I’ll Follow the Sun (with apologies to Lennon and McCartney)

Did you hear the one about the fellow who stayed up all night wondering where the sun went? It finally dawned on him.

The sun. It’s easy to take it for granted, even to resent it, living in Texas. But of course it’s a start point for everything on this planet that interests us. Without the sun constantly bombarding the surface of our planet with energy, life on earth would not have been able to defy the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and evolve into the magnificent diversity we see and know today. Think of the things you don’t take for granted: trees? No sun, no trees. Kittens? No sun, no kittens. Hawaii? No sun, no Hawaii. No us.

Which brings me to a something Jewish. Jews bless the sun – the birkat-ha-Hammah. Many Jews are aware we have a blessing for the moon. It’s well known because it’s recited once a month. The blessing for the sun, by contrast, is off our radar screen because it’s only recited once every 28 years. That makes it a once, twice, or with excellent timing, a thrice in a lifetime event. It’s the Halley’s Comet of Jewish prayer.

Continue reading “I’ll Follow the Sun (with apologies to Lennon and McCartney)”

Posted on

Spiritual Grandeur

I have this theory. It goes something like this: You can gauge the way people feel about God by the way they feel about inclement weather. As for me, I appreciate storms. Windy days invigorate me, and volatile weather — lightning storms, torrential rains, blizzards — enthrall me. Even though they make me uncomfortable or frighten me, I am moved by the display of power; storms remind me of my relatively humble place in the cosmos.

Others, I know, dislike violent weather. They have a marked preference for moderate, serene, and placid climates. A few people I know go even further – if it were up to them, nature would remain at a constant 72 degrees with a 3 MPH wind.

And I suspect, if I were to do a poll, I would find that people feel about the same way about of a disturbance in God as they do about a disturbance in the weather. For those of us moved by the power of nature, the idea that God becomes righteously indignant at the behavior of people does not trouble or offend us. On the other hand, I imagine that those who are disturbed by intemperate weather are likewise uncomfortable with the idea that God get angry.

Continue reading “Spiritual Grandeur”

Posted on

Signs and Wonders in Denton County

A Christian vandal? Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? Yet Congregation Kol Ami has had to deal with just that. In response to the ongoing crisis in New Orleans and Alabama, like churches and synagogues around the nations, CKA went into tzedakah (“charity”) hyper-drive. As part of that, we posted a new message on our roadside marquee board in front of the synagogue:

CHARITY SAVES FROM DEATH  –  PROVERBS

TZEDAKAH HELP ALA MISS LA.

Past postings on our board have included such zingers as UNDER THE SAME MANAGEMENT FOR 3500 YEARS and HAPPY CHALLAH DAYS, so I thought what could be more innocuous then a Scriptural quote? Yet Monday morning when I came in to help deliver a load of charitable donations to Jewish Family Services for distribution, I found the sign had been altered to read:

CHRIST SAVES FROM DEATH

SHAZAM.

Continue reading “Signs and Wonders in Denton County”

Posted on

And after the fire, a small still voice (I Kings 19)

The German Philosopher Ludwig Wittenstein declared, “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.” So what are we to make of something that leaves us speechless? Something so incomprehensible, so alien, that words fail us? Such an otherworldly event seems to have overtaken America on Tuesday when, in coordinated attacks, suicide terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon, crashed airplanes filled with travelers, and massacred as yet untold numbers of innocent people. And to add to the horror (is it possible at this point?) is to realize how the killers actually used, not only themselves, but also many of their victims as weapons to kill others. It seems otherworldly in its evil, truly diabolical in the root sense of the word – the work of demonic forces.

On reflection, However, these actions are all too human. When my wife said to me, “It’s like something out of a Schwarzenegger movie,” I was shaken out my dumb horror. Of course, as Hollywood shows us in movie after movie, human imagination can conjure up such a plan, and human ingenuity can make it real. The sobering truth is, infernal fires burn brightest in the human heart. Alas, poor humanity.

Continue reading “And after the fire, a small still voice (I Kings 19)”