Early next week, my family and I will board an airplane for Israel, where we’ll be vacationing together and where I’ll attend a rabbinic study conference.  This will be the first trip to Israel for my young daughters, and our first as a family.  As we begin to pack our suitcases for our big trip, we read in this week’s Torah portion how the Israelites got their first glimpses of the Land of Israel, sending twelve spies into the land.  As their tour guide, Moses gives them this instruction: ““Go up there into the Negev and on into the hill country, and see what kind of country it is.”  (Numbers 13:17ff).  When the spies return, two of them, Caleb and Joshua, offer enthusiastic reports, but they are overwhelmed by the other ten spies, who express deep ambivalence about the land, saying that although it is a land rich with resources, it is also a land “that devours its inhabitants” (Num. 13:32).
      

These verses in the Torah raise for me the question of what our relationship with Israel is as American Jews who willingly live outside the land.  Heirs to two identities, one Jewish, one American, we live in both worlds.  We strive to bridge the gap between the two cultures, one Israeli and one American and Jewish. The 1999 Statement of Principles for Reform Judaism expresses this dualism this way:  “We affirm that both Israeli and Diaspora Jewry should remain vibrant and interdependent communities.  As we urge Jews who reside outside Israel to learn Hebrew as a living language and to make periodic visits to Israel in order to study and to deepen their relationship to the land and its people, so do we affirm that Israeli Jews have much to learn from the religious life of Diaspora Jewish communities.” 
     

My wife and I can’t wait to share Israel with my young daughters, so that they will have as deep a relationship with Israel as we do, and so that we can we may all grow as Jews.  We’ll share our stories with you when we return!
-       Rabbi Andy Vogel
 

Sinai Update – Week of June 7-13, 2009
Parashat B’ha’alotecha (Numbers 8;1 – 12:16)
Reflections on the Jewish World – Rabbi Andy Vogel

Forty years is a long time to wander through the wilderness – how did the Jews manage to endure it?  The Hasidic rabbis give us an idea as they interpret the opening verses of the portion.  God gives this instruction to Aaron, Moses’ brother: “’When you light up the Menorah [each day in the portable desert Sanctuary], let the seven lamps give light at the front of the lampstand.’  And Aaron did so.”  (Numbers 8:2-3)  The Torah commentator Rashi taught that Aaron’s great accomplishment – worthy of mention in the Torah – was that for 39-plus years, he performed this task every day, without changing a single detail. 
     

But the Hasidic rabbis, including Menachem Mendl of Kotsk, were less concerned with Aaron’s scrupulous faithfulness to detail than his ability to “ignite” within himself a spiritual sense of newness each time he would light the Menorah (Itturei Torah, vol. 5, p. 51).   Aaron’s spiritual strength was in experiencing each moment anew, even when performing tasks repetitively, with the same joy he felt discovering them for the very first time.
 - Rabbi Andy Vogel

Sinai Update – Week of May 31-June 6, 2009
Parashat Naso (Numbers 4:21 – 7:89)
Reflections on the Jewish World – Rabbi Andy Vogel

The diversity of our American Jewish community grows in another new dimension this week, when the first female African-American rabbi will be ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati.  Alyssa Stanton, born into a Pentacostal Christian family and converted to Judaism in her 20s, will be ordained as a rabbi this coming Shabbat morning at HUC-JIR, and will move to North Carolina to serve a Reform congregation there.  (For a 2-minute video clip, click to http://www.local12.com/mediacenter/local.aspx?videoid=39920@wkrc.dayport.com )
   

With this event this week, we at Temple Sinai celebrate the changing face of American Judaism.  Rabbi-to-be Alyssa Stanton says she has already overcome stereotypes and xenophobia within parts of the Jewish community.  Our on-going challenge is to continue to find ways to open the doors of our community to welcome all those who seek a Jewish journey and to find their place within our tradition and our people.  If each one of us brings our own “Torah” into the world, our own way of telling our unique story and living our Jewish life, each with our own background and approach to God, then surely, Torah grows and expands as we rejoice at this historic first for the American Jewish community.
- Rabbi Andy Vogel