Dvar Torah Upon Being Installed as Rabbi of Congregation Netivot Shalom

Rabbi Menachem Creditor

Birshut Ishti Morati (my wife, my teacher), Avi Rabi uMori (my father, my rabbi, my teacher), my dear Savta (grandmother), Rabi Rei'I uMori Rabbi Artson (my rabbi, my friend, my teacher), cherished friends and teachers, Kehilati HaK'dosha (my holy community):

There is no honor higher for me than being partner in love and life with my precious Liz, and in being father to Ariel Shlomit, Moshe Tzvi and Raya Meital. In their arms I am full. And in touch with the Divine.

The only calling in my life that can compare to that one is an unconditional love for and commitment to the Jewish people, and in adding health and justice to the world we share.

And in this sacred home, the loving community known to the world as Netivot Shalom, all my loves live together.

My friends, it was exactly one year ago this week, during Parashat VaYak'hel-Pekudei, that I came with my family to explore a possible relationship with Congregation Netivot Shalom. I remember that Shabbat very well. We had almost three children and so many dreams. So very many dreams.

One year later we have been blessed by God beyond our dreams with our three precious children, and are blessed by God beyond our dreams to call this community our family. From the very first day we arrived, we have been loved and held and supported.

And what makes us happiest is that, despite my public role, here at shul we are a family just like any other, joyful to be with our community, a community that spans every generation and starting point. We are a holy community that celebrates each other unconditionally. Jews and non-Jews call this holy place home. We celebrate our diversity of race, the spectrum of sexuality, the incredible blend of spirituality and personality each of us brings. There is no prerequisite to being part of our community here at Netivot Shalom.

The message I brought with me one year ago was my personal dream for the holy shul community I has always thirsted for. I didn't know I was simply holding up a mirror, already speaking as part of the dream of Netivot Shalom with a message I craved and continue to crave so deeply.

The very end of this week's Parasha contains an exquisite, painful description of the dedication of the holy desert sanctuary, the Mishkan: "...When Moses had finished the work, the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the Presence of God filled the Mishkan. Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting, because the cloud had settled upon it and the Presence of the God filled the Mishkan... over the Mishkan the cloud of God rested by day, and fire would appear in it by night, in the view of all the house of Israel throughout their journeys. (from Ex. 40:33-38)"

These are the last words of Shemot (Exodus). The person who wishes most to be near God can't find the room. Feels uninvited. The holy places closes him out.

The very first word of VaYikra (Leviticus) contains a peculiarity. In the word "VaYikra/And God called", the letter "Aleph" is smaller than the other letters. This might escape notice for some, but when I first entered the sanctuary of Netivot Shalom I looked up and saw the Aleph of the Ner Tamid, our Eternal Light. God's Call for our community is one of tzimtzum (contraction), of making room in our holiest place for those yearning for comfort, safety, and holiness.

That Aleph, that small Aleph is both God's contracting and our glorious gift to the world.

The mishkan wasn't complete until God did tzimtzum, thereby granting Moses his own place. My heartfelt plea is that we should recognize that our precious Mishkan here, our holy community will only be complete when we remember to perform acts of Chesed, an indescribable emotion that can perhaps best be translated as overflowing, boundless, love. And Chesed is the way we will - we must - continue to share our space with all those who seek the comforting presence of God.

I was, for my whole life, a rabbi's child always looking for a sacred home to call my own.

Today I am rabbi of that very sacred home. I am your rabbi. And I am home.

I will work with all my heart, all my soul, and all my might to live up to the intimate and lofty dreams we share. We can make it happen. And we must.

I stand before you humbled, my precious community.

I am proud to be your rabbi.

I am humbled be your rabbi.

May we only grow and health and peace together. May the things we do here bring holiness and peace to the world. May we never stop dreaming.

Amen.

--
Rabbi Menachem Creditor
-- www.netivotshalom.org
-- www.shefanetwork.org
-- menachemcreditor.org

Congregation Netivot Shalom
1316 University Ave, Berkeley, CA
www.netivotshalom.org
510.549.9447

Links for "Living a Mythic Life 1: Mythic Time"

Shalom Chevreh,

Here are the links I mentioned in our discussion today, "Mythic Time", the first part of our Living a Mythic Life series.

● Time is not Fact (Creditor)
● An Ode to Remaining Broken: In a New York State of Mind (Creditor)
● Overcome, if only... (Creditor)
● The Problematics of Myth (Gillman)
● The Resurrection of the Dead (Jacobs)

Kol Tuv, and Looking forward to learning Torah together again!

Rabbi Creditor

Time is not Fact

© Rabbi Menachem Creditor

Time is not Fact.

Though many-layered glass may separate a person from the sun,
still there is warmth.

So too is the limited power of the passage of time.

A scent makes decades evaporate as parent rebecomes child.
A glimpse transforms the beholder.

Distance is an illusion.

One Rabbi's Reflection

One Rabbi's Reflection
© Rabbi Menachem Creditor

I love being a rabbi.

At any given moment, a thousand urgent things can happen. And sometimes I can do some reading. In any interaction, what was casual conversation can explode with profundity. And sometimes heavy conversations are lightened by friendship. Every day is its own experience with unpredictable questions and interpersonal navigation. And sometimes those three things spontaneously lead to the One. When it is a difficult day, it is difficult because it is a reflection of life. And when it is a lighter day, that is life too. Being a rabbi is living life intensely, walking with awareness.

I love being a rabbi because I am supposed to be a rabbi. But it is also so powerful to be a rabbi because anyone can. The conversations I have with people are not hierarchical – they are honest, open-ended reflective conversations, even when I am required to provide an answer. And those very answers are birthed from my soul's weddedness to Torah as lived and learned – and I don't own the totality of this journey. I get to live it, revisit it - and share it - frequently and with newness.

Every intense moment carries something of God, something exquisitely inclusive of both Infinity and mortality. We each are that.

Being a rabbi is being in love.

Shmot 2007/5768: "A World Without Children's Voices"
© Rabbi Menachem Creditor

The very beginning of Shmot/Exodus includes the following familiar narrative:

"A certain man of the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw how beautiful he was, she hid him for three months. When she could hide him no longer, she got a wicker basket for him and caulked it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child into it and placed it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile. And his sister stationed herself at a distance, to learn what would befall him. (Ex. 2:1-4)"

The power of Moses' birth is largely lost when read in the context of his rescue by Pharaoh's daughter. Once we realize that his birth immediately follows Pharaoh's declaration that every male child born be thrown into the river (Exodus 1:22), the act of a certain man and woman of Levi gains in significance.

In fact, says the Midrash:

"... when Moses' father Amram learned of Pharaoh's order, he immediately divorced his wife Yocheved (their names, as well as Miriam's, are absent from our text). Miriam said to her father, "Father, your decree is worse than Pharaoh's! Pharaoh only issued a decree that the males should die, while your decree applies to both males and females. Pharaoh decreed that the children's lives be terminated only in this world, and you have decreed that they not live both in this world and the world to come. Pharaoh is wicked, and the likelihood is that his decrees will not be fulfilled. You are righteous, and your decree will certainly be fulfilled!" (Ginzberg, Legends of the Bible, p. 287)"

Miriam's prophetic chutzpah led to her parents' brave decision to bring a child into a threatened world.

During this Winter vacation week, I visited both a mall and the Boston Children's Museum and considered both their very different environments and the very similar people who frequent them. The noise of each was almost deafening, with voices ricocheting off walls and windows. Both places contained "hands-on" and protected areas. Both were protected from the elements beyond their defined boundaries. And both were with omnipresent children and caregivers.

It occurred to me, as I watched young face after young face pass by, that every child's face was also the emerging face of a potential parent. The training provided to these future parents' in each space was vastly different. The mall teaches that acquiring things is exciting. The museum teaches that interacting with the world is fun. The variety of colors and flavors at the mall is actually a barely-hidden mask of material uniformity. Every thing has a label. And a price. The inability to avoid looking at someone else in the museum while experiencing newness is more deeply experienced as an explicit statement that learning alone is less than learning together.

Both the museum and the mall serve as gathering places. But the mall leads me to escape the noise. The museum encourages me to listen and learn from the sounds.

Having recently read Cormac McCarthy's novel "The Road" and viewed Alfonso Cuarón's film version of P.D. James' novel "Children of Men", I feel renewed urgency when I hear children. Almost desperation. I am afraid of the observation one of the characters in the film shares: "As the sound of the playgrounds faded, the despair set in. Very odd, what happens in a world without children's voices." It's not my spiritual perspective as a father that prompts these thoughts. Nor is it my fear that either McCarthy's devastated landscape or James' youthless world will actually come to be.

I am simply concerned that we adults all too often miss our obligation and opportunity to see our children as emerging parents. When we program for Shabbat morning, do we nurture the caregiver aspect of our children's development? When we pass by a homeless person, do we remember that they too were one of those noise-making children? Do we acknowledge the bravery of today's parents, who struggle so often with infertility, and who have chosen to bring children into an uncertain world, answering every dark headline with the birth of new soul?

Just imagine for a moment what our world would be without our Miriam's. We'd forget how to be parents. This is not the world for which we work.

Our world, our precious fragile world of dreams and laughter will only be realized when we remember to learn from children and publicly celebrate our parennts. Childhood lasts such a short time today, with omnipresent media and commercialism. Let's not miss it by creating separate space for our children. Let's find ways of dancing together to the noise of their laughter.

Then Miriam's redemptive chutzpah will be fully present again.

VaYigash 5768/2007: "Closer, Come Closer"
© Rabbi Menachem Creditor

An often overlooked message of the Joseph stories is the theology implicit in the way he explains the story to his brothers upon disclosing his identity. Joseph says:

"Then Joseph said to his brothers, "Come forward to me." And when they came forward, he said, "I am your brother Joseph, he whom you sold into Egypt. Now do not be distressed or reproach Yourselves because you sold me hither; it was to save life that God sent me ahead of you. It is now two years that there has been famine in the land, and there are still five years to come in which there shall be no yield from tilling. God has sent me ahead of you to ensure Your survival on earth, and to save your lives in an extraordinary deliverance. So, it was not you who sent me here, but God; and God has made me a father to Pharaoh, lord of all his household, and ruler over the whole land of Egypt. (Gen. 45:4-8)"

In other words: The brothers shouldn't be worried that Joseph will exact revenge - they were not to blame.

What is the theological implication? That this criminal act, perhaps all crime, is ultimately God's design. What then of accountability, consequence? Free will? Now, of course, we've "read the book, and we come out on top (a la Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical midrash)", but Joseph was abducted, assaulted, jailed; Jacob lost his son - are we to encounter the story as detached readers, convinced throughout of God's Plan as the justification for the suffering endured by others? What then might we say of the Sho'ah being part of a plan that led to the State of Israel in the same way that the Egyptian slavery is to be understood (according to the biblical authors' understanding of history through Joseph's mouth) as the means towards Sinai and freedom? Are we to see death and suffering as justifiable, as acceptable means to ends? Even read into history after the fact (especially then, since many readers are then survivors of the trauma), this text is incredibly difficult. even offensive.

We can perhaps use the text of this Parasha itself to reapproach the God known described in one way therein.

According to many translations, Joseph calls his brothers to "Come forward." But the Hebrew text of "Geshu na eilai, vayigashu" teaches that Joseph called his brothers, saying "Come close to me. And they came close" The context informs us that, before disclosing his identity to his brothers, he sent all the courtiers out of the room. This is paralleled by a rabbinic read of Judah's actions in the beginning of our Parasha for which the name "VaYigash" derives. The typical translation of Judah's action is "Then Judah went up to him", but the Hebrew word "VaYigash", from the same root as teaches that Judah "Came close". A midrash suggests that Judah positioned himself in between Joseph (whose true identity was still secret) and the courtiers. Intimacy was the goal - not navigation of system and hierarchy.

God is more than the biblical text, and one definition of God cannot suffice. The difficulty of navigating the layers of Jewish tradition associated with every piece of Torah is exacerbated when the text feels like an impenetrable system. But that's not what the layers are. Every attempt to explain the text is truly an act of relationship, a coming closer for the reader, the authors, the content, and the ultimate goals. For a Jew (and for others), this means that by desiring to come close to God through Torah, multiple relationships are fostered - with the biblical authors, with the generations of readers and commentators, with self, and hopefully with a community of fellow readers/seekers.

Torah is more than the word, and God is more than Torah. Our particular path can be incredibly compelling, and freeing. All we have to do is be brave enough to "come close."

Channukah 5768: "Contagious Flames"

© Rabbi Menachem Creditor

On the eve of the Seventh night of Channukah, these thoughts are shared in hope that the many internal conversations in our communities continue and ignite a healthy flame in the world around us. The circle perhaps begins in every individual, touching our shul community, our local neighborhood, state, our Country, Israel, and the world. As our Channukah experiences have likely contained many moments, both joyous and sad, I pray that all our homes be filled with increased light.

One classic source for an understanding of Channukah is found in the Talmud, in which we read:

"Our Rabbis taught: The mitzvah of Channukah is one light for a person and their household. The 'beautifiers' (Mehadrin) kindle a light for each member of the household. The 'extreme beautifiers' (Mehadrin min HaMehadrin), — Beit Shammai maintains: On the first day they light eight lights and thereafter they are gradually reduced, but Beit Hillel says: On the first day they light one candle and thereafter they are progressively increased (TB Shabbat, 21b)."

This text teaches us that a Mitzvah can be performed according to its requirements, or can become beautified. The basic requirement for Channukah candles is one candle each night per home, and our contemporary practice of lighting one candle per night, per household member renders us 'extreme beautifiers.' And we are. We make the performance of the mitzvah more beautiful than we might.

And so I ask us to consider what it means to take an expected role and elevate it? What can it mean for any of us to confront a requirement and make it even more beautiful? Do we ever do that without realizing it, as we might do through the ritualized (expanded) fulfillment of our Channukah lights?

Classic disputes happen in Jewish tradition when words or ideas have multiple possible meanings, such as in a later interpretation of a phrase in the Mishnah "…a blessing is not said over the light until it has been utilized (M. Berachot 8:1)." The Gemara suggests that:

"if one could see a flame but could not use its light, or if could do something by the light but see no flame, she should not say the blessing; one must both see a flame and be able to use the light (TB Berachot 53b)."

A light is a light is a light, right? The Gemara suggests that an act performed can remain incomplete. It is possible, the Gemara proposes, to use a light without seeing the flame if the flame is hidden around the corner. But in what situation could we see the flame and not be able to make use of the light? The rabbis of the Gemara suggest that:

"it is when, for instance, the flame keeps on flickering… Our Rabbis taught: We may say the blessing over glowing coals but not over dying coals. How do you define 'glowing'? — Rabbi Chisda replied: This means coals from which a chip, if inserted between them, will catch of itself."

A mitzvah-flame that is lit, performed as required, that can only sustain itself is not enough. To be unaware "extreme beautifiers" is not enough. In order to transform the flickering candle into a glowing coal means to harness our fire and share it, so that if a fellow candle is brought close to us it will become illuminated.

This is our task, and I am overwhelmed and in awe and scared and excited and joyful and trembling. We are a home for so much goodness, and that is not enough. We learn Torah, comfort others in times of trouble, and respond to needs as they come up. But that doesn't make us "extreme beautifiers."

If a newcomer to our shuls does not feel ignited by the experience, which can only be communicated by the person sitting next to them – or who makes it a point to sit next to them and welcome them - we have not performed the act of community building enough.

If we are to truly become Mehadrin min HaMehadrin, Extreme Beautifiers, we are called to make these abilities and commitments contagious in the world around us, person by person.

May we be brave enough to light the lights we can - and then reach a bit deeper to light those still waiting.