“Ella’s Jewish Identity”

Rosh Hashanah 5767/2006
Rabbi Jeremy Barras

Erev Rosh Hashanah 5767

Dear Ella,
On May 31 of this past year, you came into this world and changed the lives of your mother and me forever. We could not believe our eyes when you emerged so beautiful and perfect, so wonderfully pure in every respect. You have added infinite joy to our lives, and implanted within us an appreciation of our partnership with G-d in creating you.

I will never forget how long it took for your head to pop out, but then how quickly the rest of your body flew right out into the hands of the doctor. All of a sudden I looked at you for the first time, and saw the miracle of your birth and the spark of divinity within you. I will never forget that moment when I saw you for the first time, as you took your first breathes in this world. What an extraordinary spiritual event that was for your mother and me!

Ella, every day you are growing bigger and bigger, doing new “tricks” and gazing curiously with your big brown eyes, exploring the world around you. Soon you will be walking and talking, and as the years go by you will grow and start to make decisions for yourself, and the next thing you know you will be thinking about what you want your role to be in this world. Everyone keeps telling me how fast babies grow up, and so I am savoring every moment that I get to spend with you. As you grow, you will learn that you are Jewish, and I pray every day that you will take great pride and joy in that identity, and that you will use it to guide you towards a purposeful and spiritually fulfilling life.

Ella,
One of the difficulties that I know you will face will be the challenge of living “Jewishly” in a non-Jewish world, as you realize that most of the people around you do not share your Jewish faith. You will live in a world that considers Friday the beginning of the weekend, not the beginning of Shabbat. Many of your neighbors and friends will consider Easter and Christmas the holiest days of the year. They will wonder why you do not celebrate Christmas, and will have only a vague idea of the meaning of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. You will be challenged to maintain your spiritual pride in your Judaism, and you will be challenged to refrain from taking part in the religious celebrations and customs of many of your friends. And you will be challenged to stand up for your faith and preserve your own identity. Ella, it will likely be much easier to follow the crowd and do as they do, but what is “easy” is not the same as what is meaningful and worthwhile.

Ella,
As you grow, you will find that it sometimes can be difficult to always think of your Judaism first. You will have to make decisions between Hebrew school and soccer games, between school dances and holiday observances, between study of Torah and leisure time with friends. And you will have to battle societal urges to put your Jewish identity under wraps and pay attention primarily to the never-ending schedule of demands from the secular world.

But I plan to teach about what is missed when a Jew becomes submerged in the secular world. I will help you learn about the majesty of our traditions, and how we as Jews find beauty in the world around us. I pray that you will not hide your Jewish identity, but will be live openly as a Jew. This is a privilege that our ancestors did not always enjoy, and that we dare not take for granted. In Europe for example, during the Middle Ages, as a result of rabid anti-Semitism and the evil and immoral mission of the Inquisition, Jews were forced underground and were forbidden to identify as Jews, or to adhere to any Jewish custom or belief. The practice of the Jewish religion was considered a crime punishable by death. Some Jews, known as Marranos, continued to live as Jews in secret, but their pride in their Jewish expression was severely curtailed by the reality of their situation.

One of those brave Jews living in secret was Rabbi Leon of Modena, who lived in Venice, Italy in the 17th century. In 1637, without his knowledge and his consent, a book that he wrote in private about Jewish life and customs was found and published in France and was eventually circulated in Catholic Italy. Rabbi Modena was terrified because he knew if the Inquisition were to get hold of the book, his fate would be sealed. In a letter written years later, Rabbi Modena reflected on those days when he learned about his book’s publication:

“I was worried, terrified, and very greatly distressed. Among my many troubles I never experienced anything like this since I saw the light of day, in spite of the fact that almost daily I have had too much to cope with. I was startled [when I heard about the publication] and went to examine the copy which I had retained after I had written the book. I found four or five specific things of which one was forbidden to speak, much less write, to say nothing of printing, without permission of the Inquisition. Then I cried out in anguish and tore out my beard.”¹

Ella,
We are so fortunate not to know the pain that Rabbi Modena and his contemporaries suffered because they did not have the freedom to express their Judaism. But we learn a very important lesson from their sad history – When a Jew cannot openly practice his faith and proclaim his love for being Jewish, then his world cannot fully become spiritually fulfilled. Ella, I plan to teach you to be proud of your Jewish identity in public and in private, so that as you make decisions in the world, you will always be guided by your Jewish beliefs and ideals.

Ella,
Over the course of our history, we have been forced to conceal our Judaism, to live isolated behind the ghetto walls, and to exist constantly in a state of fear. Many Jews were not allowed to practice their Judaism openly, and eventually their religious identity was swallowed up by the cruel and unsympathetic world around them. The Midrash warns us of the power of assimilation when it teaches how 80% of the Jewish population in ancient Egypt refused to leave Egypt with Moses and head into the wilderness. They preferred to stay in Egypt and assimilate into their pagan society rather than go forward out of the darkness towards Sinai and the Promised Land. They were unwilling, just like many Jews today, to openly proclaim their Jewish identity and the uniqueness of their faith.

A well –known contemporary rabbi, Rabbi Yaacov Haber, once taught on Kol Nidre, “Today in America, although there are no such persecutions, there are still Marranos [Jews living in secret]. We are not under pressure by the church, but simply by the environment in which we live. Our inner souls are cloaked with external garments that are just not ours. We walk, act, and talk in ways incongruous to our Judaism.”

Ella, I pray every day that as you grow, you will never harbor your Jewish identity within you, but that you will express it outwardly with great joy and pride.

Ella,
As a result of our emancipation from the persecution our ancestors faced in the Middle Ages and in other dark times, new opportunities in the mainstream society have been opened up to us. And we have taken advantage of it. Today we are living in an age when Jewish secular knowledge is at an all time high. There are no universities or colleges that bar Jews or have Jewish quotas. There are no longer guilds that bar Jews from entry. And there are no professions where Jews have not entered and excelled throughout the world. Between the years 1901-2005, 171 Jews have been awarded the Nobel Prize, accounting for 23% of all individual recipients worldwide (including one to your great, great uncle in the field of astrophysics). We have multitudes of Jewish doctors, lawyers, professors, authors, politicians, and we nearly had a Jewish Vice President. Someday a Jew may even run and win the Presidency in our country. But while we have succeeded in all of these disciplines, and as our worldly knowledge has reached un-chartered territories, our Jewish knowledge has plummeted to an all time low. Ella, your great great-grandfather, Dr. Oscar Janowsky, one of the most prominent thinkers in the study of Jewish education, was often noted for his expression that Jewish education in America today is “a mile long and an inch deep.”

Ella,
I have already warned you about Jews who inwardly nourish their Jewish identity but are fearful of revealing it in public. I am worried for them and pray that you will never know that dilemma. But now I want to warn you as well about those Jews who are proud of their Judaism outwardly, but fail to nourish their identities inwardly.

I used to be one of them in many respects. After I finished 7th grade at a Jewish Day School, I was mainly interested in pursuing secular knowledge in high school and college, and neglected my Jewish education. The fact that I had forgotten a lot of what I learned in my religious school classes and that I had not kept up with my Jewish education became quite evident during one particular experience while I was in college.

My college tennis team was headed down to Venezuela for training and some practice matches to get ready for the upcoming season. As our plane began to descend into Caracas’ International airport, one of the plane’s wings caught on fire. We were all terrified as the plane began to teeter and the fire became more and more visible. We truly thought that we were in danger and that our lives were in jeopardy. At a time like that, many people would be tempted to pray and call out to G-d for protection. For whatever reason, I felt that only authentic prayer in Hebrew could save me. Unfortunately, because it had been so long since I had studied any Jewish prayer or thought, the only thing I could remember in Hebrew was my Bar Mitzvah Haftarah portion and the Motzi.

So there I was, staring out the window as our wing was on fire. Other members of my team were panicked and pale-faced, and wondering why we had to risk a crazy trip to Venezuela to prepare for the season. And, at that terrifyingly poignant moment, I was thanking G-d for bringing forth bread from the earth, and signing my Bar Mitzvah Haftarah portion, “Vayishlach, Yehoshua ben Nun, min ha-shittim…….”
I am sure the angels in heaven had a good laugh at my expense that day! Eventually we landed safely and no one was hurt, but I remember vividly that helpless feeling of having no idea how to truly relate to G-d at a time when I needed G-d’s presence the most.

Ella, there are so many Jews out there who are proud of their Jewish identity but really do not know anything about their Judaism. In bookstores, you can always find books about “Famous” Jewish athletes and Jewish politicians. You can find websites on the inter-net about Jewish rock stars and entertainers, and many of them do not hide their Jewish identity. But how many of them are active in their synagogues? How many are regulars at Shabbat services? Just because these accomplished individuals have Jewish parents does not mean we should take great pride in their fame. Just because they wear a Chai necklace when they pose for magazine shoots, despite the fact that are not involved with the life of the Jewish people, does not mean they deserve our admiration. Ella, I pray that you will wear such a necklace, but not simply to proclaim your superficial connection to the Jewish people, but because you cannot possibly separate your identity from your Jewish being.

In the Talmud there is a story of the Roman crackdown on Jewish life in the 1st century CE. The Roman government in Israel issued a decree forbidding the Jews to study and practice the Torah. One day a certain Pappus ben Yehuda came and found Rabbi Akiva publicly studying and teaching the Torah, and asked him: “Akiva, are you not afraid of the government?” Not long afterward, Rabbi Akiva was arrested and thrown into prison, and Pappus ben Yehuda was also arrested and imprisoned with him. When Pappus saw the rabbi in the cell, he proclaimed: “Happy are you, Rabbi Akiva, that you have been seized for studying and teaching the Torah! Woe unto Pappus who has been seized for busying himself with nonsense.”

Ella, Rabbi Akiva could not bring himself to forsake his Jewish knowledge or his Jewish identity. He understood that a Jew’s best recipe for spiritual success is – a proud Jewish identity backed by a sound, and ever growing base of Jewish knowledge.

Ella, we descend from that courageous 20% who followed Moses and eventually settled the Land of Israel. Our family, just like all the others seated in this sanctuary, are descendants of those Jews who maintained their identities and strove to keep the flame of the Jewish spirit from being extinguished. And we descend as well from Rabbi Akiva and his school of followers who understood that without a proper grounding in Jewish wisdom, the Jewish identity could not persevere.

Ella,
Your mother and I are going to raise you to appreciate your Jewish identity and to understand your place as a recipient and guardian of the values and ideals of your people and your faith. We will teach you Torah along with its interpretations, and enable you to think critically about G-d’s relationship with the Jewish people. We will teach you Hebrew so that you can understand the liturgy of our faith, so that you will be familiar with the words of the Torah, and so that you will be able to communicate with Jews around the world that are connected through the bonds of our Jewish culture. We will take you to Israel over and over so that you realize the importance of the Holy Land, and the vital role the State of Israel plays in the contemporary Jewish world. We will celebrate with you the magnificent achievements of our brothers and sisters in Israel, and we will the feel the pain of our fellow Jews all over the world when they suffer at the hands of our enemies. And we will immerse you in Jewish custom and practice so that Jewish tradition becomes part of your spiritual makeup.

We want you to explore the sciences and humanities of this world, and to learn everything and anything you desire from the various scholarly disciplines. But we never want you to become disillusioned with your Jewish faith. It has only goodness and warmth to offer you, and we never want your pride in your Judaism or your knowledge of your faith to diminish, or to ever stop growing.

Ella, on May 31st, your mother and I partnered with G-d to bring your physical being into this world. Now we will work to make sure that the soul that was placed inside of you is cultivated and nourished, and given every chance to blossom into a proud, knowledgeable Jewish woman.

Kein Yehi Ratzon. May it be G-d’s will.
Amen.
 

¹ Jacob Raeder Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval Word: A source Book 315-1791, p. 406-7.