OJC is a Pink Synagogue All Year Long This past Shabbat morning at the Orangetown Jewish Center, our synagogue community honored Breast Cancer Awareness Month with a sermon on the prevalence of breast cancer in our congregation and the importance of support from the shul community. On Sunday, close to fifty women participated in the Gary Rosenthal Pink Glass Art Program brought to us by our Sisterhood. All proceeds are going to Sharsheret – check out this amazing organization at http://www.Sharsheret.org. Now, it is time for the work to really begin. If you are a Breast Cancer Survivor, and would like to participate in a daytime support group, contact Lydia Katz at meema@gmail.com. If you are willing to be a link in our synagogue support network, please send your name, best contact information, details about your diagnosis that you feel comfortable sharing and age to Rabbi.Drill@theojc.org. When congregants call for spiritual and emotional support, I will be able to link you and your experience and wisdom to someone just starting out. It is truly heartwarming to see that my list has already topped a minyan of women eager to help others. If you are a family member, a friend, a concerned synagogue member, or someone dealing with breast cancer, you can request a Resource Packet from Rabbi.Drill@theojc.org with websites, books and other resources about breast cancer. Have a beautiful Shabbat of health, connection and peace, Rabbi Drill

If you ask a classroom of fourth graders if it is always wrong to tell a lie, they will tell you with absolute certainty that indeed it is.  Always? What if the truth causes another person harm? What if the truth needlessly hurts a person’s feelings? What if the lie protects a person’s life?

As we get older and learn the nuances of being human, we come to know that absolutes are never really absolutes.  Lying is never okay; that is, until another absolute requires us to lie.  Sometimes telling a lie can save a life.

There is a big lie in last week’s parasha, Lekh L’kha, that is repeated again this week in Va-yera. When I told the Orangetown Jewish Center community about this lie this past Shabbat in my sermon, almost everyone was surprised. The lie is a strange story they never told us in Religious School.  And it happens three times in the Torah. Last week, taking a detour from the Promised Land into Egypt because of a famine in the land, Abraham tells Sarah to lie.  We read in Bereshit 12: “If the Egyptians see you and think, ‘she is his wife,’ they will kill me and let you live. Please say that you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you and that I may remain alive thanks to you.” This week, Abraham tells the lie himself. “Abraham said of Sarah his wife, ‘She is my sister.’” Later in the Bereshit narrative, Isaac repeats the wife-sister lie about his wife Rebecca.  It isn’t exactly the behavior we expect to see from our patriarchs.

Abraham excuses himself to the King of Gerar, saying, “When God made me wander from my father’s house, I said to Sarah, ‘Let this be the kindness that you shall do me: whatever place we come to, say there of me: He is my brother.”
Do we excuse him? Is it ever permissible to lie?  If we place the story in context, we see that God has commanded Abraham to cut off all ties to his history, from his land, birthplace and father’s house. He must go forth with faith in God Who promises the blessings of a nation, a land and a great name.  Here in these early chapters of Bereshit, however, there appears to be a great problem with the fulfillment of these blessings.  The nation is dependent on a wife who is barren, the land is suffering a famine and the man whose name will be great is a nomadic wanderer at age 75.  Can we forgive Abraham for lying on the grounds that he had a God-given mission to fulfill? Can we forgive on the grounds that we wouldn’t be here, a Jewish nation, if a jealous king had killed our patriarch?

Abraham needs to keep moving forward to follow God’s commands.  He took a detour into Egypt, but who among us hasn’t taken a detour along our journey?  We begin the story of our people with difficulty, seeming impossibility, and detours.  Yet Abraham remains filled with faith.

Aren’t our lives like that?  Can’t we be faith-filled and also doubtful?  Don’t we see promise and also famine?  It isn’t okay to lie until we have to lie.  Like Abraham, many of us know what it is to be in a narrow place and act as it seems we must. Do we do the right thing or the absolute wrong thing? Isn’t life that complicated?

Knowing that we will face absolutes and hard choices, that we will make mistakes and go to narrow places, don’t we still set out on the journey?  Don’t we fulfill the command of Lekh L’kha, go to who we are meant to be, every single day?  We need not condemn Abraham as a liar.  Instead, we can see him as a role model for living a life commanded by God in a complicated world.

Rabbi Paula Mack Drill

Sukkot is the time on the Jewish calendar that is called z’man Simchateinu – the time of our joy. As we head into the final two holy days of Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, I look back and see that it has been an incredibly joyous week here at the Orangetown Jewish Center. I could say that the joy has been thanks to the perfect weather for sukkah sitting or due to our beautiful new sukkah filled with the decorations of our children. But most of all, the joy is thanks to the amazing people of our community. The festival days were uplifting as congregants paraded for the Hoshanot with our lulavim and etrogim. The Shabbat during Sukkot was filled with happiness as we kicked off Shabbaba Shabbat [for ages 0 to kindergarten every Shabbat at 11:00] and Family Congregation [for grades 1 through 6 every Shabbat at 10:30]. When all those little ones joined the rabbis on the bima for Ein Keloheinu, it was a snapshot of the OJC community at its best.  Young families had a sleepover at the synagogue on Saturday night, and on Sunday we had a full day of Sukkot activities, culminating in our annual sukkah dinner with almost 200 people celebrating together with Amichai Margolis and the Orangetones!

During the intermediate days of Sukkoth, we say Moadim l’simcha (may your intermediate Sukkot days be joyous)and we really mean it! As I told the children of our religious school yesterday as we hopped from sukkah to sukkah in our neighborhood, these days are intended to lift us up out of our everyday lives into something more.

And then came this morning which began at 6:45 with the service for Hoshana Rabbah. Traditionally, we chant hallel, read from the Torah, and march for our final time of this Sukkot with our lulav and etrog around the sanctuary, this time seven times.

This morning, however, we had just five people; that is, half a minyan. I considered feeling disappointed, but I thought back over the many congregants who had enjoyed part or all of the Sukkot celebrations all week. I decided instead to energized and dedicated to continue spreading the word of Jewish observance and celebration. Prayer minyans and holy day experiences in a Conservative synagogue are indeed a challenge, but I know that we can continue growing as a community.

Even if I wanted to feel disappointed that we were not able to have the Torah reading or open the ark, the five of us who were together in the sanctuary felt united in the holiness of the moment. There was not room for disappointment in the midst of the joy.

One of the most curious rituals in Jewish life takes place at services for Hoshana Rabbah as we beat willow branches, shaking free the leaves. As the leaves fall, we pray that our mistakes of the past year will be completely forgiven. In our synagogue, the willow branches are collected and wrapped artfully every year by a congregant who learned to do this when he was a young boy in Lowell, Massachusetts. He wraps small bunches of willow branches binding them together with a beautiful braid of palm. He creates these ritual objects with generosity and delight. How could I think about being disappointed if he wasn’t? When we finished the Hoshanot prayers, an older member of the minyan led us in a small circle dance. Certainly, our small group of five this morning was just as pleasing to God as the 200 people gathered in our sukkah this past Sunday night.

There is something grand to be said about a vibrant community that celebrates together across the generations as we did during the first days of Sukkot. But there is also something to be said for a community that accepts its responsibility to support our minyanim day in and out. May we all continue to enjoy the privilege of rejoicing in our Judaism and accept the responsibility of fulfilling our obligations.

I hope to see everyone tonight through Shabbat evening for a celebration at the end of Sukkot, finishing the Torah and beginning again. May this holiday season bring us great joy.

Chag sameach!

Rabbi Paula Mack Drill