Rabbi Claudia Kreiman, receiving
ordination tallit from Prof. Ismar Schorsch, Chancellor of the Jewish Theological
Seminary, at the Schechter Institute graduation in Jerusalem. |
January
2003 News:
Sermon delivered by Rabbi Claudia Kreiman in
New York, Bnei Jeshurun Synagogue - Shabbat Shuva, Parshat Haazinu 5763
“Elohim
met, ki im lo, lo hayu piguym” –“
God is dead, otherwise, there would not be terrorist
attacks”. This was one of the answers I
received from a project at Camp Ramah Noam, in Israel,
this past summer where I worked as the Rosh T’filah
– the director of prayer. We called the project:
“Tzeirei Noam dorshim Elohim”- “Youth
of Noam are asking for God”. The idea was
to give Israeli children, from seventh grade up
to college age the opportunity to write about God,
about what they feel and think about God. Every
three or four days we changed the questions, and
all the time we received many different answers.
We asked whether they believed in God; and if they
didn’t, what did they believe in. We also asked
them if they had a spiritual experience, and if
they thought that God cared about what happens with
us.
The
fear these children and youngsters feel was present
in many of their answers. This answer: “Elohim
met ki im lo lo hayu piguim”- “God is
dead, otherwise there wouldn’t be terrorist
attacks”, came in different words: “Elohim
met ki im lo, lo hayu mechablim”- “God
is dead, otherwise there wouldn’t be terrorists”,
“Elohim met ki im lo, lo hayu aravim”
– “God is dead, otherwise there wouldn’t
be Arabs”, “Elohim met ki im lo, lo hayu
ieladim metim” – there wouldn’t
be so many children dying.
These
youngsters were talking from the bottom of their
hearts, from their deepest fear. From the fear of
not knowing how the day is going to end, if they
are going to hear about another pigua near
their homes, or near their friends’ homes.
I
feel that way sometimes. I feel that when I wake
up in the morning with a phone call from my aunt
asking me if I took the bus today because there
was an explosion in the bus I take sometimes. When
I hear the ambulances… and without asking anyone
I know what happened. When I watch the hadashot
– the news, and it seems like a scary movie,
but it is a true story that is happening right now,
where a terrorist is inside a house with a family
with children and babies. When there is someone
who looks suspicious in the bus and I don’t
know whether to stay there or not.
It hit me especially
hard when I was at the offices of the Masorti Movement,
four or five months ago, in downtown Jerusalem,
at Ben Yehuda street, and I heard a huge explosion,
a block away, and then the sirens, and I knew that
only because my meeting was longer that I planned,
I was still in the office and not in the street,
on my way home, in the corner where the explosion
took place.
It happened
also when I saw the pictures of Marla Bennet and
Ben Blustein from Machon Pardes; friends of my friends
who died in the explosion at Hebrew University,
and when I thought about people very close to me,
that studied during the past year everyday at Hebrew
University.
I know about
the suffering of the Palestine People. I know that
they are living under curfew in the West Bank, and
in Gaza. I know of the children who die because
they can’t get to the hospital, but my pain
and my fear is so great that I can barely identify
with their pain. I’m afraid of Arabs, and when
I see one in the street, either a women or a man,
I cross to the other side. I hate to be afraid of
them; I can’t tolerate this feeling.
I was raised
to love people. I love people, I love life, and
I hate not to be empathetic. This is not how it
was supposed to be.
I’m
talking from the place of a regular Israeli citizen,
living in the heart of Jerusalem, living a block
away from the “Shuk Machane Iehuda”-
the Central Market, and working next to Sbarro
Pizza, at King George street, and asking myself,
are these children who wrote “God is dead”
right?
I’m
talking from the place of a regular Israeli citizen
that received a couple of emails from the different
minyanim I frequent in Jerusalem, asking to bring
guns, not machzorim, but guns to the services
of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.
I’m
talking from the place of a regular Israeli citizen,
who decides to send clothing to the Arabs in the
territories and at the same time presents to the
soldiers- chayalim serving at the front in
the territories.
When
we read in Parshat Haazinu, God said to the
People of Israel, through Moses in this song: “Vaiomer
Astira Phanai Mehem, Erhe Ma hacharitam”
(Deut 32:20)- “And He said, I will hide
my face from them. I will see what their end will
be”.
What does it
means? God will hide His face from His people, but
He will see the end? What is the end?
A commentator,
Shem Mi Shmuel said about this pasuk: “I will
hide my face from them; Even if I hide my face from
the Jewish People and leave them to their own devices,
that will be only in the present. I will see what
their end will be. My eyes will nevertheless remain
open to ensure their future and their eternity.
As far as Israel’s destiny is concerned God’s
divine Providence exists eternally” (Torah
Gems, Volume 3 page 325).
Even if we feel
that God is hiding from us, even if we feel that
God is dead, we can know that God is with us and
will be with us eternally. But how? How can we know
that, if we feel His/Her absence? It is so hard
to understand, to accept!
The
Haphtarah, that gives the name to Shabbat Shuva,
starts with the words: “Shuva Israel ad Adonai
Elohecha” – “Return, O Israel, to
the Eternal your God”(Hosea 14:2). Return,
Shuva, Lashuv, means to come back home as it is
written in the book of Shmuel: “Utshubato
haramata ki sham beito.” (Shmuel Aleph,
7:17) – “Then he would return to Ramah,
for his home was there”.
The
prophet Hosea asks us to go back to our God, to
keep searching for God. Even if it feels that in
our personal life, in the land of Israel, and bechol
ioshvei tevel - all over the world - God is
gone. What we have to do is keep searching for God,
because God is telling us in the parashah “Erhe
Acharitam” – “I will see what their
end will be”. I’m not leaving you…I
know that you can’t feel my presence right
now but I’m here and you should keep searching.
So… how
we do that, how do we bring God to our life, to
our land, to our world? How do we continue living
in this world of war, of terrorist attacks, of hate,
of madness. How do we continue living after September
eleven?
I’ll tell
you the truth… I don’t really know the
answer to these questions. I can not tell you how
to bring God to your life. I cannot tell anybody
how to feel God in the darkness.I can only tell
you that this is my personal struggle every day
and every morning when I wake up.
In 1994, my
life changed forever. An explosion for me is a personal
matter, and a siren for me is a personal scream.
Eight years ago my mother was killed in a terrorist
attack. She was killed in the bomb in the AMIA building
in Argentina.
My mother was
under the rubble seven days, which became an eternity.
In those days, my sisters, my father himself a rabbi,
and myself, we all prayed on her behalf. On the
seventh day she was found.
My question
then and my question now was not and is not “how
did God allow this to happen?” but rather,
“how can we bring God to earth, so that this
does not happen again?” I knew and I know that
human beings were responsible for this atrocity
and not God, and I know more and more that only
we, human beings, can make a change, so this does
not happen again.
I could choose
to escape from God, but I choose to look for Him/Her.
I choose to look for meaning in life, and I choose
to transform pain and engage life. I choose to keep
falling in love, to keep singing and dancing (you
don’t know how much I love to sing and dance!!).
I choose to commit to life and friendship, to commit
to Judaism and Education.
Believe
me: this is not the easy way, and sometimes I am
exhausted, but I do it because this is how I understand
the deep meaning of the word Lashuv, to return
to God. But more than that, to return God
to this world.
The
words of the Psalmist: “Gam ki elech b’gay
Tzalmavet lo ira ra ki atah imadi”-“ Even
though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil for You are with me”,
remind us that in the gay Tzalmavet, in the
valley of the shadow of death, God is present, and
our job is to find Him/Her always.
In
the streets of Jerusalem, in the streets of Jenin
and Gaza, we have to find God, we have to bring
Him/Her back. Because if we succeed, God will return
to us as well, as it is written in the haphtarah:
“Erpah Meshuvatam, ohavem nedava” (Hosea
14:5)-“ I will heal their affliction generously
and I will I take them back in love”.
So… How
we do that?
Before
Yom Kippur, every one of us should ask him/herself
what we could do to not feel the absence of God
in the world. How we can bring the Shkinah back
- to ourselves, to humanity, to these children who
wrote “God is dead?”
The
Esh Kodesh, Kolonimus Kalamish, The Piazene Rebbe,
who was the Rabbi in the Warsaw Ghetto, and perished
in the Shoa, said, during the Shoa, that isurim-
suffering, torture, are not the hastarat panim-
the hidden face of God, but rather, how we live,
how we deal with the isurim. If we are able
to find in our deepest and most terrible pain, the
hand of God, certainly we won’t feel any more
the Hastarat Panim.
It
is hard to understand the meaning of the words of
the Esh Kodesh, it is so hard to believe deeply
in what he believed. But when I think about the
Esh Kodesh giving a Dvar Torah in the Ghetto, and
knowing that he will be taken, I can learn from
his amazing words: that it is in our hands
to change the “hastarat panim”-
The hidden face of God, to “iastireni beseter
ohalo”- “God will conceal me in the concealment
of His/Her tent”, as we read in Psalm 27
from Rosh Hodesh Elul until Hoshanah Rabah.
We have to find
the way to bring God back to these children, who
feel a deep fear, and write that God is dead. We
especially have to bring the Shkinah to our own
lives, to the Land of Israel, to our world. I believe
the way to do that, is as the Prophet Micah said:
Hagid lecha
adam ma tov, uma Adonai doresh mimcha. Ki im Asot
mishpat, chesed, veatznea lechet im elohecha”-
“He has told you O Man, what is good, and what
God requires of you: Only to do justice, and to
love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God”
(Micah 6:8), and to try to believe that “God
will conceal me in the concealment of His/Her tent”
- “iastireni beseter ohalo” (Psalm 27.)
This
is Shuva Israel.
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