Earlier this week, the employee helping me in a store used my name.  I was taken aback and asked how he knew my name.  He smiled and told me he remembered it from the last time I was there.  I don’t go to that store very often and hadn’t been there for a while. I was impressed that he remembered my name, but what made an even stronger impression on me was the power of the feeling that was generated just by his using my name.  It created an instant connection and made me feel like a person, not just a generic customer.  He doesn’t even know it, but his smile and use of my name brightened my day and energized me more than the cup of coffee he handed me.

Rav Elimelech Biderman relates that someone once asked Rav Avigdor Miller how he should prepare for the judgment of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Rav Miller replied, “Smile.” He then explained: “How does smiling grant someone a good judgment? I will explain with a mashal: Someone owns a chain of stores. At the end of each year he takes inventory, and decides what changes have to be made for the upcoming year. Some stores will need more advertising, some employees will be laid off, and so on. The proprietor’s advisor said, ‘Even if you let go of some employees, don’t fire this one. He always has a smile on his face, which gives the consumers a good feeling. There are people who come to the store just to see him and be greeted by his smile.  We need him around.’

 

Similarly, at the end of the year Hashem takes inventory of His world to make determinations for the year ahead.  If someone always has a smile on his or her face, bringing joy to others, he or she has positioned themselves as an indispensable asset to the world, and Hashem will take that into consideration when making a determination for the year ahead.”

 

We are blessed to live in a large, vibrant community.  Our greater BRS family is comprised of more than 830 families, which translates into thousands of people.  On the one hand, that affords us countless opportunities like diverse friendships, multiple minyanim, extensive programming, and more.  At the same time, however, the larger our community gets, the harder it is to know others and to feel you matter.

 

In advising large religious institutions Rick Warren, describes our mission as growing larger and smaller at the same time.  We grow larger by attracting more people and families who share our vision, our values and our mission, but we must simultaneously grow smaller by providing programs, opportunities and experiences in which people know each other, feel they belong, and connect with others.

 

Towards that end, we are very excited to present two brand new initiatives this Shabbos.  First, based on an idea by Rabbi Moskowitz, our Young Leadership Committee is coordinating our first annual Name Tag Shabbaton.  As people attending any of our eight minyanim enter BRS this Shabbos morning, they will be given a name tag to wear around their neck, making it easy for all of us to learn and use one another’s names.

 

Additionally, on Shabbos afternoon, instead of coming to a class at BRS before Mincha, each development on Montoya Circle will host a dessert reception for their neighborhood, which will include a dvar Torah delivered by one of their neighbors.  (Those living off the circle are invited and encouraged to attend any of the receptions.)

 

In the Kelm yeshiva, a sign would hang during the month of Elul:

 

In theory, we should have to recite Birchas HaGomel, the blessing on surviving a life-threatening situation, after the Yamim Noraim, since traversing this time of the year is no less dangerous than crossing the desert.  However, we cannot know with certainty that in fact we have made it through and so we cannot recite the bracha.  What is the strategy to come out on the other side healthy, safe and secure?  The strategy is the same as necessary to survive a trek across the desert.  People who cross a dangerous area need to travel in groups, rely on one another, and support one another.  Similarly, to triumph in these days of awe, we need to recommit to togetherness, unity and mutual support and love.

 

A parent is especially flexible and forgiving towards a child when they see that child show devotion to his or her siblings.  The same is true with Avinu Shebashomayim, our Father in Heaven. We will soon stand before Him, imperfect with shortcomings, failures and disappointments.  We will ask forgiveness and pledge to do better to be attentive to His needs and more compliant with what He wants from us.  Like a father, He will be quicker to forgive and more generous with His love and affection if we show our dedication and devotion to His other children, namely, our neighbors and friends.

 

You can’t spell community without unity and you can’t have a thriving community without the people who comprise it committed to unity with one another. Please make an effort every Shabbos, but especially this week, to greet everyone on your way to and from shul, to say good Shabbos, offer a smile and even use someone’s name when talking to them. If you see a new face or you are sitting next to someone you don’t know, introduce yourself.  Your warmth and effort will have an enormous impact, not just on the other person, but on you and Hashem’s determination for you for the coming year.

 

Moreover, we should take the lessons we develop and practice this Shabbos and incorporate them into our interactions with the world. When you say thank you to the person bagging your groceries at Publix, look at name tag and thank him by name. Learn and use the name of your office building’s custodian or security guard.

 

Smile at your co-workers and your family members. Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a physician at Harvard Medical School, authored a study that concludes that happiness is contagious.  The same way when one person yawns it affects others, when one person smiles or is happy it leads to others’ happiness and smiling as well. Be the person who sets off the chain reaction of smiles and make yourself indispensable to Hashem this Yamim Noraim season.

 

As we grow larger, we cannot also grow smaller without everyone’s help.

 

 

In the climactic scene of Erich Segal’s classic 1970 novel “Love Story,” the protagonist Oliver says what have become iconic words: “Love means never having to say you are sorry.” Though Segal was the son and grandson of rabbis and went to yeshiva himself, this approach to love is in fact very far from our tradition.

The Mishna (Yoma 8:9) teaches that if one hurts another person, he or she can’t achieve atonement, even if compensation is made, without requesting forgiveness from the injured party.  Caring about others, showing love, means that you are willing to say you are sorry.

 

Too many people are unwilling to say they are sorry.  They lack the humility, self-awareness and remorse to take responsibility and to make amends.  But lately, on the opposite end, it feels as if it is becoming popular to say sorry and ask for forgiveness for things that one has nothing to apologize for.

 

The New York Times had a question posed to their advice columnists last week that I genuinely am struggling to determine if it is real or just satire:

 

I’m riddled with shame. White shame. This isn’t helpful to me or to anyone, especially people of color. I feel like there is no “me” outside of my white/upper middle class/cisgender identity. I feel like my literal existence hurts people, like I’m always taking up space that should belong to someone else…I donated to Black Lives Matter. Yet I fear that nothing is enough. Part of my fear comes from the fact that privilege is invisible to itself. What if I’m doing or saying insensitive things without realizing it?

 

Does one now have to apologize for being white, or simply for being and taking up space? I cite this as an extreme example, but the trend calling for apologies has infiltrated our own heritage. In a recent column in the Forward, a mother writes:

 

As parents of young Jewish children, we’re taught to pray on Shabbat that our daughters be like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah. It’s never occurred to me to question how literal we’re meant to be. I can’t say I’d wish the fate of any of our Matriarchs on the young women in my life, much less on my own little girl… I give the blessing as a tribute to the Matriarchs’ faith and forbearance, not to the lives they led or the choices they made, which feature plenty we find morally repugnant today.

 

The author is embarrassed by our tradition and uncomfortable with the idea that we bless our daughters to emulate our sacred Matriarchs.  Maybe we should offer a collective apology to our daughters throughout the millennia for holding out the wrong role models for them, ones who made “morally repugnant” choices?

 

Yet in other news, the Israeli Reform movement has decided to expunge Aleinu, a central prayer of our Siddur that has been recited by Jews for thousands of years, over concerns that it is offensive.  Throughout history, our adversaries censored the siddur from language they found disparaging, including editing parts of Aleinu.  For maybe the first time in history, we Jews are censoring ourselves, ironically in a siddur being produced to be used in the Jewish homeland.

 

According to a Reform leader who teaches at their Hebrew Union College’s Jerusalem campus, “This is a historic procedure for the movement, we tend to replace the prayer that is formulated with negative language to a prayer that is formulated with positive language.”

 

And lastly, some reactions to Israel’s recent Nation State Bill, which reflect a certain sense of shame and embarrassment that Israel would be defined as the “national home of the Jewish people,” are quite troubling to me.  It is perfectly understandable to be concerned with the impact of some of the language and the law on minority populations in Israel. One can respectfully debate the timing and value of the bill as well.

 

However, I shudder imagining what God thinks when, after 2,000 years of exile and our longing to come home, He sees many of our own people apologetic and defensive about calling Israel a Jewish state. A mere seventy years after miraculously transitioning from living with absolutely no place in the world to find safe haven, to having a land and state of our own, could there be a greater act of ingratitude to God than proclaiming that His gift to us, His people, isn’t really ours?

 

The very first Rashi on Chumash tells us that Hashem begins the Torah with the story of creation so that if anyone challenges the Jewish right to Israel, they will be reminded that God Who created the world also designated that special land to the Jews.  Would those who deny the Jewish right to the land really care how the Torah begins?  Sadly, we see that Rashi’s insight is not directed necessarily at our external adversaries.  Rather, the Jewish people from within need to be reminded that this is our land.  We need never apologize or be defensive for proudly proclaiming and even legislating that Israel is the “national home of the Jewish people.”

 

It seems to me, in this season of forgiveness, the one deserving some of these apologies is the Almighty, for how, in the interest of political correctness, we sometimes put His agenda second and our eagerness to be loved and to integrate first.  If He created us a certain race or ethnicity, we aren’t taking up anyone else’s space, and while we must always carry ourselves with sensitivity and concern for others, we must not apologize for our existence or for being ourselves.

 

Aleinu was composed by Yehoshua thousands of years ago upon our entry to the Land that God promised us.  When he encountered pagan religions and idolatrous practices, he reacted with a sense of gratitude of being “chosen” to model an authentic, mission-driven religious life.  To edit the siddur to conform to our contemporary sense of comfort is an affront to our ancestors who said those words throughout the millennia and to God who transmitted its themes to us in the first place.

 

Neither you nor I would let anyone dishonor our grandmothers by describing them as people who made morally repugnant decisions, and we shouldn’t tolerate someone disparaging our great Matriarchs that way.  They, like our Patriarchs, were not perfect.  But even with the ideologies and “isms” of our time redefining gender roles and opportunities, we can still only dream that our daughters have the righteousness, kindness, faith and tenacity of our holy Matriarchs, whom we continue to draw from for inspiration and hold up as role models.

 

Indeed, there are plenty of apologies we should be offering this time of year.  There are affronts, hurts and injuries for which we must make recompense.  But perhaps among them we need to apologize for being so apologetic about our Jewish values, practices, and beliefs.

 

The very first law in the Shulchan Aruch, our code of Jewish practice states: “One should strengthen himself like a lion to get up in the morning to serve his Creator…And one should not be ashamed because of people who mock him in his service of God.”

 

Our measure and metric for whether or not to hold a belief, pursue an action, recite certain words or have specific role models is not contemporary culture, the latest fashion or fad, or the ideology of our day.  It is what does Hashem want from us, what has He dictated to us and what does He expect from us.  Instead of the passing notions and beliefs, we would serve ourselves and our existential purpose best by being proud and unashamed of our Jewish values, beliefs and practices.

 

The Talmud (Shabbos 31a) states: “Rava said: When a soul appears before the Heavenly tribunal to be judged, he will be asked: ‘kavata itim la’Torah,’” literally translated as, “Did you set aside time for the study of Torah?”  Rav Soloveitchik encouraged us to read it differently: kavata itim l’Torah or kavata Torah l’itim?  Did you interpret the times through the prism of Torah or did you try to make Torah conform with the interests of the times?

 

We are positively informed and inspired by the world in which we live, but we must measure its value and influence by its compatibility with Torah, not the other way around.  We have not survived and thrived against all odds through an ever-changing world by adapting to, and adopting from, values and visions that are in conflict with our own.

 

In this season of apologies, let’s be careful not only for what we apologize for, but what we need not be apologetic about.  Jewish continuity will be served by pride in who we are and what we represent.

 

When it comes to our loyalty to Hashem, love means never having to say we are sorry for our Jewish values.

 

This week marked the fourth yahrzeit of Eyal, Gilad and Naftali, the three boys tragically kidnapped and murdered in the summer of 2014.  Their disappearance and subsequent deaths united our people, not only in Israel, but around the world.  Jews in communities across the globe felt connected, bound by a shared history and destiny.

For eighteen days, our differences and disagreements didn’t matter, our diverse opinions and interests didn’t divide us.  For a short time, Jews of various backgrounds, philosophies and denominations felt as one, all pained by the episode and all invested in what this meant for our people, our country, and our future.  None of us will ever forget the experience of being glued to the news, desperate for an update in the search for the boys and holding out hope for good news.  When the news arrived and it was the worst possible outcome, we remained united in grieving, mourning and in our outpouring of support for the people of Israel and members of the IDF defending them.

 

In an effort to capture the feelings from that summer, and to perpetuate them going forward, the three families collaborated with Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat and the organization Gesher, instituting the Jerusalem Unity Prize and inaugurating the observance of Unity Day.

 

While unfortunately most of the Jewish world has since returned to the disunity that characterized the days before the summer of 2014, the Unity Prize seeks to recognize those that maintain a commitment to Jewish unity and work to spread the values and practice of Jewish peoplehood.

 

This year, we are immeasurably proud and honored that the Boca Raton Jewish community has been awarded the 2018 Jerusalem Unity Prize. An interdenominational delegation of rabbis and community leaders will travel to Israel this week to receive the award at the home of Israel’s President, Ruvi Rivlin.  While I truly wish I could travel among them, the ceremony conflicts with my daughter’s high school graduation and the father prize comes first.

 

Why has our community of South Palm Beach County been singled out for this distinction?  Matt Levin and his team at our Jewish Federation and Rabbi Broide and his amazing work at the Deborah and Larry D. Silver Center for Jewish Engagement have played a critical role in bringing our diverse communities together to collaborate on projects, participate in dialogue, and work together.

 

There is no question there are critically important, foundational, and fundamental issues we disagree about.  Torah, halacha and mesorah are immutable; they are non-negotiable.  A fidelity to our tradition demands that we reject the legitimacy of distortions or misrepresentations of it.

 

So how do we maintain our beliefs and stay true to our principles and at the same time practice unity and peoplehood?  The answer is rather simple and straightforward.

 

In 2003, as a young Assistant Rabbi at BRS, I served as one of the rabbis on the March of the Living, a teen trip to Poland and Israel.  At the time, I didn’t have relationships with rabbis of the other denominations in Boca and hadn’t worked with them on any projects.  The foundation and formation of my connection with them came from a shared experience, a profound journey through the darkest period of our people’s history.  Following the emotional march from Auschwitz to Birkenau with thousands of teenagers, we took a three-hour train ride to Warsaw.  I found myself sitting with Rabbi David Steinhardt of Bnai Torah, Rabbi Bob Silvers of Bnai Israel, and Rabbi Broide.  Though exhausted, we spent the entire time in deep conversation.  We reflected on the experience we had just shared, we spoke about our families and backgrounds, we compared our interests and hobbies and we formed a friendship that has only grown in the years since .

 

When I became Senior Rabbi at BRS, working with them did not come from my seeking an intentional exercise of unity with other denominations, and it didn’t take work or effort, it was just natural to want to connect with friends on common causes that didn’t compromise any of our core values.  Over the years, I have formed similar friendships with many other colleagues with whom I have gone out for coffee, met for lunch, or played a round of golf.  The common denominator of all these interactions was that the agenda was not debating the origin of the Torah or the nature of halacha.  The sole agenda was to develop a relationship, to form a friendship.

 

This past year at AIPAC policy conference, I participated on a panel with Rabbi David-Seth Kirshner and Rabbi Denise Eger, conservative and reform rabbis with whom I traveled to Israel on the Leffel Fellowship trip.  When we finished the panel and went behind the stage, a very high-ranking Member of Knesset remarked, I wish the rabbis in Israel could get along like the three of you.  I told him we get along because our relationship didn’t start with having to work together or trying to solve intractable issues together, it began with a shared experience and a good time.

 

I believe the key to Jewish unity is to focus on friendship, not philosophy, especially while forming a relationship. Love fellow Jews as members of the same family, not as counterparts or colleagues.  When you have someone in your family with whom you disagree about politics or sports or religion, in an effort to remain unified and loving, you avoid those topics and instead connect through things you have in common and that you both care about.  There is no greater concern you share then your family’s well-being, safety and security.  The same is true for our Jewish family.  Unity begins not with debating or seeking to resolve differences, but with a shared experience, a cup of coffee, or a round of golf.  Unity blossoms when we work together on protecting our shared family, our homeland and the values we have in common that are near and dear to our hearts.

 

If the foundation of the relationship is strong, then when issues of conflict arise, which inevitably they do, the person who sees things differently or advocates for different policy is not just “the other,” a faceless adversary whom you speak about vociferously and insensitively, but they are a friend, a member of the family whose feelings you care about, even while you differ with their opinion or behavior and advocate for an alternative to their position.

 

This formula for unity—first friendship and only then philosophy—is not only true for the rabbinate, it is critical to many arenas of our increasingly polarized world.  Imagine if members of Congress from opposite sides of the aisle got together more often for drinks, a meal, a softball game, or a Bible study. How much more productive would they be and how much more could be accomplished if they knew each other’s families and cared about one another as people.  Not only would they find more ways to work together, but even when they couldn’t they wouldn’t demonize one another, call each other names or model the very behavior we tell our toddlers is reprehensible.

 

Our Parsha includes the command to Aharon to light the Menorah, the candelabra in the Mishkan, the Tabernacle.  The many branches of the Menorah and its base were fashioned out of one single piece of gold.  The commentators point out that the vehicle for light, the instrument of illuminating the world, had to be unified, united and made from one.  It isn’t a coincidence that it was Aharon who kindled that light.  The Mishna in Avos instructs us to be students of Aharon – to love all people and bring them close to Torah.  Aharon, the person of ahavas Yisroel, loving all Jews, lit the Menorah, the utensil that lit the world and dispelled the darkness.

 

I don’t know if we can ever recapture the feelings Jews around the globe had for those 18 days.  Even while a hundred rockets rained down on our brothers and sisters this week, Jewish disunity continued.  I hope and pray we can develop the friendships and feeling of family that can form the foundation of a relationship that can transcend our differences and enable us to navigate our important divides.

 

Applaud your Rabbi for his relationships across denominations and encourage him to have more.  I promise you the trickle-down impact on the total community will be felt and celebrated.  Ask your elected officials to connect with those on the other side of the aisle and to care about them.  Our entire nation will benefit as a result.

 

On the one hand, our South Palm Beach community can be and should be proud of being awarded the unity prize.  We have worked hard to overcome differences, to develop friendships and to focus on peoplehood and we have more work to do.  On the other hand, we have done nothing special, practiced nothing extraordinary.  We have simply acted like a family, sometimes with disagreements or debates, but ultimately, always with loyalty and love.  We long for the ultimately prize for Jewish unity, the arrival of Moshiach, speedily in our days!

 

Mazel tov!