Blessings come in so many different forms that most of the time they pass us by with little notice at all. We wake up grumbling and out of sorts because we went to bed too late and now, without enough sleep, have to get up earlier than we would like in order to get to work on time or get the kids out of bed, cleaned and fed so they will get to school on time. We sigh and pray for the day when we can sleep in, when the kids are off at summer camp or staying overnight at a friend’s house and it’s our day off and work isn’t demanding our presence or attention. We look with a jealous eye on friends or family who are already free from the daily burdens we shoulder.

And then one day we get one of life’s dreaded phone calls and suddenly are faced with the stark reality of someone we love dying and the realization that they will never greet another sunrise, never wake up to another hassled or hurried morning, never hear the whining of two siblings fighting over the bathroom again, never grumble at another morning whether winter, spring, summer or fall. Those are the moments when we discover the miracle of the ordinary, the miracle of the everyday, what I have come to understand as “the miracle of the grumpy morning.”

After all, every grumpy morning is so much more than simply the feelings of irritation we so often experience when we haven’t had enough sleep or the day before didn’t meet our expectations for success, or someone we love was out of sorts and we were put off by their sullenness. Of course it is true that life is indeed all of that for most of us on a regular basis. Yet the miracle of the grumpy morning for me is the opportunity to recognize every single day in our lives as a divine gift, grumpy or not. It is the realization that every morning is an irretrievable blessing that only comes once in a lifetime (our lifetime), a never-to-be-repeated opportunity to hold someone we love in our arms, to speak words of encouragement and love, to revel in the blessing of friends who care about us, family who love us, and work that helps give purpose and meaning to our lives.

Yes, grumpy or not, there will never be another “this” morning for the rest of our lives. What greater blessing can there be in life than to recognize each morning as a gift, each day as an opportunity to find our true purpose in life and live as if every day truly matters.

In this week’s Torah portion we are given an ancient Hebrew formula that started out as a blessing for Jewish civilization and then, through its adoption by Christianity, became a blessing for most of the Western World. It’s called the “Priestly Benediction,” and the formula contains three sentences of 3, 5, and 7 words (in Hebrew). “May God bless you and keep you. May God’s radiance illumine your life with graciousness. May God’s face be lifted up to shine upon you and bring you peace.”

These ancient words remind us that even from biblical times our ancestors recognized that God’s blessings result from the words and deeds of fellow human beings with whom our lives are blessed. May each of us wake up every day with an attitude of gratitude that reminds us that, sleep-deprived our not, our lives are filled to overflowing with the blessings of the everyday.

(Check out www.rebreuben.com , www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

A young woman called asking if I would be willing to visit with her 95-year-old grandmother. She seemed to be slipping away from life more and more each day, and had been asking to speak with a rabbi. I didn’t know the woman or her family, but I figured anyone who lives to be 95 years old deserves to have a visit from just about anyone she wants (besides, I’ll go anywhere to meet with anyone who actually asks to see a rabbi). So I went.

When I arrived at her home (of some sixty years) she was sitting up in a wheelchair waiting, and immediately got down to the business of telling me her story. She told me of her active, fulfilled life with her husband (a physician, now deceased) and son, and of her many travels around the world.

In the midst of her life story, she suddenly stopped and began to cry. As I held her hand and asked what she was thinking about, she looked up at me with profound emotional pain and despair and simply said, “My son.” “What about your son?” I asked. And with tears continuing to fall she slowly shook her head and replied, “I need you to help me with my son.”

“He married a second time not too long ago, to a woman who isn’t Jewish, and he vowed never to step foot in a synagogue for the rest of his life. Please help me. Will you call him? Will you tell him what the results will be of marrying someone who isn’t Jewish?”

“How old is your son?” I asked. “Seventy-one years old,” she answered, “and his Bar Mitzvah experience was so lacking in meaning that he said he’d never go into a synagogue again, and he hasn’t.” I must admit that for the first time in a long time I was speechless. Nearly sixty years had passed, and they were both still living in the aftermath of a bad Bar Mitzvah.

I wasn’t sure exactly what she was asking of me. But while I was ruminating on the uncomfortable image of delivering a lecture to her son on the impact of his marriage on the larger Jewish world (and the pain it and his vow were causing his mother), she turned to me and in a barely audible whisper said, “I want him to leave this world as a Jew. I want him to leave this world as a Jew.”

There it was. A lifetime of Jewish regret and pain and life-cycle moments unfulfilled. Now I had tears in my eyes as I thought of all the missed opportunities for meaningful Jewish experiences, study and celebration that somehow managed to pass right by this man and so many, many others.

This is really what this week’s Torah portion, Bemidbar (“in the wilderness”), or Numbers in English, is all about. For in the very beginning of the first chapter of Numbers Moses is told to command the Israelites to take a census of “the whole Israelite community.” A census is the opportunity for individuals to stand up and be counted as part of the community and say, “Here I am, willing to take my place and be a responsible part of the society in which I live.”

Over 3,000 years later, there I was standing in the home of a frail, 95-year-old woman as she asked me to do something similar to what Moses had done so long ago: find a way to have her son counted as part of the community of the Jewish people. It reminded me that my challenge as a rabbi is to help both youth and adults discover the meaning of life itself through the inspiration of Judaism. Then perhaps they will all stand up to be counted with pride.

(Check out www.rebreuben.com , www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

Waiting for freedom to come takes many forms.

It is understandable that when I write about freedom most people may immediately think of traumatic political situations around the globe, such as the tragedy of Darfur or the long-running struggle for independence from the Chinese that the Dalai Lama and his Tibetan followers have experienced for decades. Obviously, I am personally involved politically in numerous similar causes and would not for a moment diminish the pain and deadly seriousness of those and other struggles for political freedom around the world.

But as I read the Torah portion this week my mind, as it often does, wandered back to my childhood and what symbolized the ultimate expression of freedom in my youth. How could I not remember the ache of anticipation that I and all my 15-year-old friends felt day after day as we approached our 16th birthdays and what we considered the grand prize of teenage-hood: a driver’s license. It was without question our ultimate symbol of freedom and liberation, and waiting for that freedom to come was an excruciatingly slow process for us all.

Naturally we did everything possible to prepare for the big event – first talking our parents (usually our dads) into taking us out on deserted roads or large, empty parking lots and teaching us the basics of what to do behind the wheel. Then we had to take “driver’s education” classes, and in those days we all learned how to drive a manual transmission. And then? Then all we could do....was wait.

Indeed, freedom never seems to come soon enough for those with longing for liberation in their hearts. I lived through the heyday of the ’60s and knew all too well that “real” freedom wasn’t about my driver’s license (I turned 16 in 1965), but about the struggle for civil rights, freedom rides in the South, marching against the Vietnam War, protesting against the powerful interests of agribusiness in California by joining with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers in their grape boycott. Powerful issues. Life-changing moments.

I learned firsthand during that era as a student leader of protests and marches and sit-ins what standing up for freedom was all about – from late-night negotiations with the administration of my college about divestments from South African apartheid, to small delegations of activist students who met in protest with Governor Reagan in his office in Sacramento, to organizing rallies in support of the “People’s Park” in Berkeley. And I know that this passion for freedom in all its manifestations – from the most public and political to the most intimate and personal – is a fundamental aspect of our very humanness.

This, after all, is why in the Torah our ancestors were wise enough to depict God himself (sic) not only as the source of creation but even more importantly as the power of liberation. We celebrate the Exodus every day in our prayers. We sing the song of crossing the sea from slavery to freedom at every Jewish religious service. We echo the cry of “Let my people go” in every generation, and we know in the essence of our beings that whatever power in the universe animated life itself is the same power that has placed the seeds of redemption within every human soul.

So this week, as we read in our Torah portion that stirring phrase that is inscribed in the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia – “Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” (Leviticus 25:10) – may it resonate to the very core of our being and may we never give up faith until every human on earth can experience the same intoxication of freedom that Martin Luther King so beautifully captured in his prayer-filled cry, “Free at last...Thank God almighty we are free at last.”

And of course, never forget that for some of us of a certain age it is still the lure of sitting behind that wheel that represents the greatest symbol of freedom that our young brains can possibly imagine. I remember and I smile.

(Check out www.rebreuben.com, www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

“It’s not fair!” I heard a child yelling at his playmate on the synagogue playground the other day. “It’s not fair!” And it reminded me how fundamental our innate sense of fairness and ethics truly is.

Even a child knows that the world ought to be fair. Even a child knows that the way one person is treated ought to be the same way that the next person is treated, that the gifts one child receives or the punishment that one child is given ought to be equal to the kind of gifts her brother gets or the kind of punishments his sister got for the same offense.

“Fairness” is a quality that doesn’t have to be taught by any parent or teacher to any child – they all get it automatically. Of course the reality is that “That’s not fair” is probably one of the most often heard phrases of childhood because the world, taken as it comes, is certainly not fair by any stretch of the imagination, and the unfairness of it all is seen as a moral affront to almost every child I have ever met.

When I have conducted parenting seminars in various communities or schools, I inevitably get questions from parents about “the fairness doctrine” in parenting and how they ought to apply it when it comes to rewarding or disciplining their children. I get so many questions about the subject because most parents really want to do the right thing when it comes to their children and they are painfully aware of how impossible it is to “be fair” all the time, especially when their children are so different and unique.

Of course, when it comes to parenting and discipline, my own writing has led me to reject the notion of “punishments” altogether and to embrace the idea of “consequences” as a much more relevant and useful parenting principle.

“Punishments” are what capricious parents inflict upon their children in response to a specific incident or behavior that the parent didn’t like. It may vary from month to month, day to day or even moment to moment depending upon the whim or emotional state of the parents. “Consequences” are what children bring into their own lives as a result of their own actions and behavior. When consequences are clear, consistent and uniformly applied for both positive and negative behaviors, children are empowered to learn the crucial lesson of personal responsibility for what happens in their own lives. Furthermore, they are able to experience that life often does reflect a fundamental fairness when there are consistent consequences to behavior that they can count on.

In this week’s Torah portion we are introduced to the controversial Biblical idea popularly known as “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Although it has been derided over the centuries by misinformed readers for its seemingly harsh demands of absolute retribution, it was clearly intended as a humane innovation in human history designed to limit the retribution of one individual or family or clan against another to a clearly defined, limited and fair response.

In the biblical world, the retribution for one person injuring another depended upon who did the harm to whom (a slave to a master, a citizen to a stranger, a poor person to a rich one). Someone in the weaker social category could be killed for causing almost any degree of injury to someone of a higher social class. The biblical authors boldly stood up for equality before the law, fairness among all in society and ultimately for substituting monetary compensation (much like insurance does today) in place of physically harming the guilty party.

Beyond the notion of limiting the damages one could exact upon another to the monetary equivalent of the damage inflicted, the law of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” was an innovation of ethical law as well. It was rooted in the Jewish notion that all human beings are created in the image of God and therefore must be treated with dignity and respect regardless of their social status, gender, or economic standing in the community.

We are taught that God made each of us unique, and therefore each of us has his or her own unique divine plan to carry out during the course of our lives. That is why this Torah portion also contains the admonition to the priests of the Tabernacle to keep fires burning on the altar day and night as an eternal sign of God’s presence among the people. As the light burns every day and every night, so we are to remember when we rise and when we lie down, and throughout the day in every interaction we have with others, that we are challenged to see the world, and even those who cause us harm, through the eyes of God’s compassion and fairness.

(Check out www.rebreuben.com , www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

This is an historic week in the life of Kehillat Israel and, naturally, the Torah portion is a perfect mirror of just how remarkable this week truly is, not only for KI but for people of faith and hope throughout Los Angeles.

Sadly, as I write this commentary the news is filled with the horrific bombings that took place at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing and wounding scores of innocent men, women and children. It represented the very worst of the human spirit, the cruel and heartless ability of too many of us to kill and maim other human beings all in the name of a religious or political or social ideology that is somehow twisted into justification for something that is morally bankrupt. There is no religious tradition or political ideology that can ever justify murdering innocent bystanders, and yet we humans seem to have an unending proclivity to self-justification and self-righteousness that allows for the very worst in our nature to rear its ugly head year after year after year in cities and countries across the globe.

The irony of Monday’s senseless bombings in Boston comes in the midst of a week that we at KI, in partnership with UCLA and Loyola Marymount University, have declared “Los Angeles Week of Civil Discourse.” Ironic, senseless, cruel, and terrifying, which is exactly the point of terror in the first place. I can only imagine what this will do to this year’s New York City Marathon and subsequent marathons throughout the country.

But for us, it merely points out how right we were to sponsor this special week, how important it is to have the faith and courage to carry on and to reach out to those with whom we disagree, those whose politics or religious traditions are different from ours, and extend the hand of civil discourse that can ultimately heal these discordant notes and bring harmony to our world.

We have sponsored talks in all three of our institutions this week by Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, author of “I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity.” Dr. Abuelaish is one of the world’s leading humanitarian voices, a doctor of the soul and spirit as much as the body, and a healer of human suffering on every level.

When Didi and I first heard him speak two years ago, we were moved to tears by his story: the death of three daughters and a niece by the mistaken dropping of Israeli shells on his home during the last Gaza war; his decision to embrace peace and reconciliation, not hatred, and to start a foundation in memory of his daughters that continues every day to improve the lives of young women throughout the Middle East. I spoke to Dr. Abuelaish at that time and immediately vowed to bring him to KI to share his powerful story and to remind us of the best that lies within the human heart.

This week’s Torah portion contains the famous Biblical challenge: “You be Holy because I Adonai your God am Holy.” It is the prime directive of the Jewish people and the ultimate spiritual challenge for every human being. Act in such a way that if the whole world were to emulate you today, the world would be filled with more love, more joy, more healing, more forgiveness, more compassion, more justice, more peace. That is what “be holy” truly means. It is our challenge, each of us, to embrace this spiritual mandate and join hands in creating the world we long to inhabit. Hearing Dr. Abuelaish is an inspirational experience. Though a devout Muslim whose sacred text is the Koran, he speaks with the voice of our ancient Hebrew prophets who called upon us all to turn our swords into ploughshares and our spears into pruning hooks. Ken Yehee ratzon: May it happen one day in our own time.

(Check out www.rebreuben.com, www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

My mother shared with me the other day a report she saw on television about a community in Central America where they take care of women who give birth in a remarkable and communal way. Every woman is given the first two months after giving birth to simply be with and bond with her baby while the community as a whole takes care of her and her family. They provide her with food, clean her house, and take care of the everyday needs of the rest of her family.

Imagine what that would be like. Instead of being thrust immediately into the hustle and bustle of everyday life — having to learn to be a mother, nurse your baby, clean your house, worry about your husband (or partner), and split your time, energy and attention between your new baby and everyone else in your life — all you had to do was simply be with your newborn. For two whole months.

When I heard the story I couldn’t help but think, “Yes, this is what real community is all about: being there for each other in the most important moments of life. It’s not just that childbirth has always been a scary, life-threatening experience for women, which it has. It’s not just that practically 100 percent of the responsibility of tending to the needs of and raising children has, throughout history, fallen on the shoulders of women, which it has. It is the recognition that life is a series of challenges from birth through death and that one of the greatest blessings any of us can have is a deep and abiding connection to a community that will be there to support us during all the ups and downs of life.

As I heard about this unusual Central American custom, it reminded me of this week’s Torah portion as well. Not that the Torah exactly commands the children of Israel to take care of women after childbirth in the same way, but there is a rather striking similarity that, until I heard this particular story from my mother, simply never occurred to me before.

Our portion begins by talking about childbirth and the consequences for a woman if she gives birth to a boy or a girl. It declares that if she gives birth to a boy she will be, in biblical language, “spiritually unclean” for 33 days. If she gives birth to a girl she will be “unclean” for 66 days.

Although it is hard to know exactly the intention of the biblical writers of over 3,000 years ago, it is clear that being in a state of ritual uncleanliness meant that the mother and baby were taken out from the everyday world in which they lived and given time to develop a one-on-one relationship with each other for either 33 or 66 days, depending on the gender of the baby. Following this time of spiritual separation they would bring an offering to the sanctuary and be declared spiritually clean and whole once again.

Regardless of the way we think of such things today, thousands of years later, the fundamental role of sacrifices and offerings was to bring people closer to God, to make a physical connection between the human being and the sacred. I can’t help but think that our ancient ancestors understood that, in the midst of the life-changing and frightening experience of childbearing, taking a month or two to allow the mother and child to be alone together, setting the mother apart from her normal, everyday life, and giving her a way of experiencing a sense of spiritual healing and wholeness, was a wise and appropriate communal response to life and death and the experience of birth itself.

Every birth is a miracle, and to sanctify that experience with a special ritual in the ancient world was to acknowledge the mystery of life and the divine gift that it represents.

(Check out www.rebreuben.com , www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

Didi and I traveled to Sacramento for the first night of Passover this year, as we do each year, to share the seder with my parents and extended family. Every year we take some time during the seder to point out that even though we are free, there are millions in the world, even now in 2013, who remain enslaved. At each place setting and on the seder plate in Sacramento was a piece of chocolate that had been produced free of the slave labor that still plagues so many of the cocoa fields of Africa.

Holding up the chocolate like any other of the Passover symbols and talking about our need to continue to work for a world of freedom for all reminded me of our experience more than a decade ago when we were privileged to visit South Africa and spend the day on the infamous Robben Island.

Robben Island is a place known the world over for banishment, exile, isolation, imprisonment, and institutional brutality. As we gathered to celebrate freedom after 400 years of slavery in Egypt, I remembered that for the same length of time – 400 years – Robben Island played cruel host to unwilling inhabitants, from slaves to leprosy sufferers, the sick, the poor, the mentally disturbed, French Vichy prisoners in World War II, common criminals, and, most recently, political opponents of the apartheid regime.

After spending the day on Robben Island, I would never be the same. Never again would freedom seem so commonplace. Never again would I be content with the clichés that came so easily to my lips and my teaching and my sermons. A decade ago, just before the start of Passover, we were standing in front of the tiny cell in the maximum security prison where Nelson Mandela spent 18 difficult years of his life on the long road to freedom. (He was imprisoned for a total of 27 years.)

Our “tour guide” was a man named Elias Mboto, himself a former political prisoner who had spent 12 years imprisoned on Robben Island for speaking out against the racism of apartheid. It was nearly a decade since the last political prisoners were released from the island, but Elias’ words were haunting. “I still can’t sleep at night,” he said. “There are always the nightmares.”

And like prisoners everywhere, from Vietnam to Nazi Germany, the simple stories of survival and the indomitable emergence of the human spirit against all odds became the most powerful symbols of what it ultimately means to be human. Elias told us of the many prisoners who came to the island illiterate but who, with the help of an underground prisoner system of “each one teach one,” left with the equivalent of high school diplomas or university degrees. He told us of tearing small strips of cloth from their blankets, painting them with polish and turning them into small candles. They would secretly read all night, lying on the floors of their cells with a straw mat and blanket pulled over their heads to hide the candlelight.

We are the Jewish people, the “people of the book,” the people who have always cherished the words of the philosopher Ahad Ha-am, who said, “Learning, learning, learning – that is the secret to Jewish survival.” I think of how cavalierly so many of us treat the preciousness of our educational opportunities and know that we could learn much from Elias Mboto and his fellow prisoners about education’s true value.

Elias told this haunting story: “When they released me from the island, they transferred me to Kimberly in the north of the country to live, even though my whole life I had lived in Cape Town. I had to report three times a day to a prison official and was forbidden to be in the company of more than two people at any one time.

“One day I was walking down the street and another man was walking past me. Our eyes met for a moment and we both stopped and looked at each other. Then he asked, “Are you from Cape Town?” and I said, “Yes.” And he asked, “Were you on the island?” and I said, “Yes.” Then I realized he had been a guard on the island. And for some inexplicable reason both of us, at the same moment, reached over and hugged each other, and then silently moved on.

“I walked away shaking my head in wonder. I had just hugged a guard. What made me do that? What was going on? And then I realized this is what life is about: We are all prisoners; we are all guards. And if we are to live in this world together, we must be able to extend the hand in tenderness and not in brutality and fear. We must hug each other. We must.”

Elias Mboto and an anonymous guard. Searching for and finding their common humanity. In spite of all the nightmares of the past, still searching for a common dream. Didi and I listened to his story in awe – told so simply, so quietly that we had to strain to understand the words. No bravado. No boasting. It was the quiet inner strength of rightness and knowing, forged in the harsh and bitter flames of racism and cruelty.

And if Elias and the anonymous guard can transcend their fear of one another and the pain of their shared history, how can we do less? Parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, co-workers, boss and employee, teachers and students, Spanish and English speakers, Israelis and Palestinians – our challenge remains the same as it ever was.

In the quiet, dignified words of Elias Mboto, “My aim is to teach that I am simply a human being, born as a child of God like everyone else,” he said. “My skin color is black, through no fault of my own, and that is all. What did I learn here? Here I learned about cruelty. And now it is time, instead, to learn about each other simply as human beings.”

Each of us is guard, each of us is prisoner, each of us is master, each of us is slave. That must be why the Hasidic master once taught, “Each of us must free ourselves from Egypt every day.” Indeed, may each of us have the strength and courage to walk away from our own Egypts and find our own personal Promised Land of freedom this year.

(Check out www.rebreuben.com , www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

The 11th-century Jewish philosopher Ibn Gabirol once wrote, “In seeking wisdom, the first step is silence, the second is listening, the third remembering, the fourth practicing, the fifth teaching others.” When I was President of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California I had the extraordinary opportunity to moderate a panel discussion with four other rabbis discussing the question, “Who wrote the Torah?”

Following the advice of Ibn Gabirol from hundreds of years ago, we listened to each other, remembered that above all what drew us together was a love of the Jewish people and the wisdom we discovered in our Torah, and we practiced the ideal of love and respect reflected in the Torah itself, when it teaches us in Leviticus to love our neighbors as ourselves. And ultimately, we became each other’s teachers.

In the end, it reminded me of why I am a Reconstructionist Jew. One of the more traditional members of the audience remarked that what was important was how, as the chosen people, we interpreted what God wanted us to do, and implied that because God wrote the Torah it was the only truly sacred book. I was glad to be part of a movement that teaches instead that all people choose their own unique paths to answering the same ultimate questions of life, that we were not exclusively chosen by God, and that all people, religions and cultures have created their own equally sacred literature.

And I was most proud to share an insight that I gained from teaching KI’s 10th-grade Confirmation class. When I told the kids I would be moderating a discussion with a group of rabbis on the topic, “Who wrote the Torah,” one bright young woman responded, “I think that’s the wrong question. I think the most important question isn’t ‘Who wrote the Torah?’ it’s ‘Why was the Torah written?” Good point. The answer that she gave was that the Torah was written to answer the fundamental questions of life.

In this week’s portion we read that the priests were commanded to keep a fire burning on the altar at all times. The rabbis teach that it was a symbol of that same search for meaning, purpose and God’s presence that we engage in today. For just as God first appeared to Moses from the midst of a fire in a burning bush that burned yet was not consumed, each of us is to nurture that same burning passion within that listens for the voice of God. We are to keep our inner spark burning so that the holiness of God’s presence in our souls never goes out either. That is why the rabbis taught that the best road to nurturing the divine flame within is to occupy ourselves with the study of Torah. Indeed, perhaps that is why the Torah was written in the first place.

(Check out www.rebreuben.com , www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

Didi and I were in New Orleans earlier this week (along with Rabbi Amy) participating in the annual Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association Convention. As always, it was a source of inspiration to see all those men and women who have dedicated their lives to serving the Jewish people in so many different ways.

Some, like Amy and me, are spending their careers serving congregations of all sizes throughout North America and Israel; others are working with college students in Hillels or as campus rabbis and teachers. Some work in senior-living settings or serve in hospitals as chaplains to bring comfort and spiritual support to those struggling with physical pain and crisis. Other rabbis work in a wide variety of agencies, both Jewish and secular, advocating for social justice or providing support for communal organizations such as Jewish Family Service, MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, and Jewish community centers and federations across the country.

Being a rabbi is a unique spiritual calling and to be with other colleagues who have taken on similar challenges and found similar fulfillment in their life’s work, as I have, is always a source of spiritual nourishment and inspiration to me. Most people don’t usually think of being a rabbi as “a calling.” That phrase more often conjures up images of the Christian ministry and evangelical preachers. But I, for one, have felt for most of my adult life that serving the Jewish people is not only a privilege and a tremendous gift, but a calling that I heard deep within my soul.

No, it’s not that I heard a divine voice speaking to me out of a burning bush, but I have felt a calling that has resonated with that part of me that feels most authentic, most alive, most profoundly real at every moment when I connect deeply with any other human being in the pursuit of their own sense of meaning and purpose in life. The yearnings of their souls to touch something deeply meaningful calls to that part of me that has been engaged in my own life-long spiritual journey.

Throughout this week’s rabbinical convention, I thought a lot about this profound sense of being connected to other human beings as they undertake their own spiritual journeys. And I believe it isn’t merely coincidence that this week’s Torah portion is called “Vayikra,” “And God Called” – because struggling with the important questions of life, wrestling with the challenge of hearing the still, small voice of God in the midst of the clashing and clanging of modern society, is the very work that is the essence of being a rabbi or being anyone who reaches out to another in pursuit of the sacred. I believe all of us are “called” by the divine, within our hearts, to search for the holy, to discover that which inspires us to become the best version of ourselves that we can be, and to share the gifts of our own hearts with the world.

“Vayikra,” “And God Called” – may the divine voice that calls to each of us in our own unique way echo through the searching of our souls every day of our lives.

(Check out www.rebreuben.com , www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

There is a famous story of the man who walks by a large construction site in the middle of a hot summer day. “What are you doing?” he asks some of the workers at the site. One worker responds, “I’m sweating and dragging my body around in this awful heat, day in and day out, laying bricks.” A second worker answers, “I’m working as part of this team to build a building according to the designs of the architect and successfully complete this project.” Then a third worker pauses for a moment, gazes at the work before him and replies, “I am helping to build a Temple to God!”

What it means to have a religious perspective on life is to see the miraculous in the everyday. It is to wake up each morning and feel moved to offer prayers of gratitude for the blessings of life, for the unfathomable miracles of the human body and its trillions of cells that all work in harmony to allow us to greet each day as a divine gift. It is to discover every day untold opportunities for experiencing the fundamental connectedness of the entire universe, to feel the privilege of being born as a creature who can experience love and wonder and mystery and celebrate what theologian Max Kedushin once called the “ordinary mysticism” of life.

The Torah this week tells us that Moses invited everyone from among the Israelite people “whose hearts moved them” to become part of the building of the Sanctuary to God in the wilderness. Everyone was given the opportunity to contribute whatever they could. Some brought gold, others silver, others cloth or rings, or purple and crimson yarns, or copper bowls, or wood for the building. Those who could spin cloth would do so, others who could work with their hands would join in the work of creating a sacred space within which the people could experience God’s presence in their midst, and those who could simply afford to contribute financial resources would do that.

It was the most extraordinary and successful “capital campaign” in Jewish history. The Torah tells us that morning after morning people brought the offerings of their hearts and dreams and passions until, within a short time, the builders came to Moses and said, “The people are bringing more than is needed for the work that God has commanded to be done.” Moses then declared to the entire community, “Let no man or woman make further effort toward gifts for the Sanctuary,” and the people stopped because their efforts had been more than enough for all the tasks to be done.

That is every rabbi’s or minister’s dream. That every church and every synagogue and every spiritual sanctuary in every religious community on our planet has to turn to its members and say, “We have more than enough to fulfill the spiritual tasks that have to be done.”

I have always had a philosophy that a synagogue is a communal institution and not a private-membership club. I remember when I first read about Mordecai Kaplan’s ideas about what he called an “organic Jewish community” that was able to serve everyone regardless of income, regardless of worship style or level of ritual observance or particular interest or passions. It was a vision of a kind of democratic, participatory community where, just like in the Torah portion, everyone gave what they could (kind of a Karl Marx vision of Judaism, I suppose) according to their ability and therefore there would always be enough to support the entire community.

That’s the way it’s supposed to be, but we so often fall short of that vision. I have always insisted in my own congregation for the past 27 years that we have an official, stated policy that anyone can join KI for any amount of money and that income and financial ability are never barriers to full membership or participation or to a Jewish education for any child.

I’d like any Jew who wants to be part of my synagogue to be able to join without thought to what it costs. But I know that’s not really what happens. People do think about the money and most of them do feel uncomfortable if they aren’t able to pay what others are expected to pay.

So I still dream of the day when people don’t shy away because they are embarrassed by their own financial situation. That would be the day when every child celebrates Jewish life, getting the best Jewish education that creative minds can provide from birth to death, and every adult finds meaning, purpose and spiritual fulfillment through participation in the life of a synagogue community because they know that there are enough financial resources to provide the most dynamic and vibrant Jewish experiences imaginable.

Of course, the wisdom of the Torah this week is to remind us that ultimately it’s not supposed to be about resources or the economy — it’s supposed to be about heart. Heart and soul. It’s about our hearts being moved by the passion for doing holy work, about the spirit of inspiration touching our lives, about seeing the world as abundant and not impoverished.

Think about this week’s remarkable Torah tale: Even a rag-tag group of former slaves who had only recently been redeemed from the degradation and poverty of enslavement in Egypt discovered — when their hearts were truly moved by the power of God’s challenge to bring holiness into their world — that even they could find the resources to create a sanctuary in the midst of the desert.

If they could create that spiritual magic in the middle of the terrifying wilderness, imagine what we can create in this, the most abundant civilization in the entire history of humanity, when our hearts are as moved as theirs.

(Check out www.rebreuben.com , www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

It was just a couple of Friday nights ago when Didi and I were privileged to share Shabbat with two of our favorite congregants, Andie and Mark Miller, in the beautiful city of Lisbon, Portugal. Andie and Mark decided to throw caution to the wind this year and give their 13-year-old daughter, Savannah, the adventure of a lifetime by taking her to live in Portugal for a year.

It has already been an amazing experience for her, meeting new friends from all over the world, learning new languages (she’s studying both Portuguese and French), playing competitive sports that take her throughout Europe, and discovering her inner strengths and abilities to cope with such dramatic changes in her life.

Mark and Andie are having their own adventure at the same time of course, learning to live in a foreign country, appreciating the depth of culture and history that Portugal represents, and experiencing the constant challenges of learning to be both strong and flexible, open to new experiences and finding ways to stay rooted in both the American and Jewish civilizations that that are so important to them as well.

So there we were spending Shabbat in Portugal at the end of our sabbatical month, after driving through Spain and experiencing the ancient and modern cities of Madrid, Toledo, Sevilla, Valencia, Alicante, Cordoba, and Granada. In every city we visited one magnificent palace and church after another, most of which had been built on the site of a synagogue or mosque that was previously there and that the church destroyed. The 700-year rein of the Moorish kingdom ended in 1400 CE and of course the Jews were expelled as part of the Spanish Inquisition in the 15th century as well.

As a rabbi it was a poignant experience to realize that the once great Jewish civilization of Spain was brutally ended by the Spanish Inquisition, and all that is left are a few monuments – “Maimonides Square” in Cordoba, plaques announcing a building that was once a synagogue in the 12th century in Toledo, and the Sefardic museums in Toledo or Cordoba.

Frankly, I couldn’t help but think about Hitler’s own plans for exterminating all the Jews of Europe and leaving only museums with Torah scrolls and other Jewish artifacts on display to show those in the future what he hoped would be the extinct Jewish civilization that once lived in Europe. There in Spain and Portugal it actually happened – the Jewish community that was is no longer, and all that’s left are the artifacts and museums.

So there we were in Lisbon on Friday night, in a small restaurant that held just 20 people total, listening to traditional Portuguese Gypsy Fado music played by two men with beautiful guitars and locals who drop in each night for the privilege of singing three songs each. The music was haunting, moving, inspiring and an authentic experience of Portuguese culture.

At the end of a long and wonderful night (somewhere around 1:30 a.m.), with only a few patrons left in the restaurant, Mark and Andie decided to announce to the crowd, “Before you end for the night you need to know that he plays guitar and she sings.” So the owner of the restaurant (and one of the guitar players himself), simply handed me his guitar and everyone sat back and waited for us to perform.

As most of you know, neither Didi nor I are particularly shy and, after all, it was Shabbat and far, far from home, so I picked up the guitar and began to play a melody I wrote more than 30 years ago to words from the Torah found in this week’s portion. For more than a thousand years these words have also been part of every Friday night Erev Shabbat service. There in this tiny restaurant in the Fado district of Lisbon, Portugal on a cold winter night, I played and Didi sang these ancient words from the Torah: “Veshamru v’nai yisrael et ha-shabbat, la-a-sot et ha-shabbat ledorotam brit olam.” “And the Children of Israel shall keep the Shabbat throughout their generations as an eternal sign between Me and the Children of Israel. For in six days God created the heavens and the earth and on the seventh day God created Shabbat as a time to renew our souls.” As
Didi sang those ancient words, I couldn’t help but think, “Yes, even here, more than 500 years after the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition, Am Yisrael Hai – the Jewish people continue to live.”

(Check out www.rebreuben.com , www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben)

I officiated at a baby-naming on a recent Friday night for a baby boy whose mother was born and raised in the Palisades and attended our synagogue and whose grandparents and great grandparents had been active members of KI in their own time. The mother and her New Zealander husband flew all the way from Tasmania, on the other side of the world, where they are now living, just to be able to stand in her own Sanctuary, in her own family synagogue and have her rabbi and cantor bless her child and welcome him into the covenant of the Jewish people.

How amazingly cool was that? It was fantastic! It was such a thrill to see her back here in her spiritual home with her sister and parents celebrating the birth of her new child in the midst of the community where she was raised. It reminded me of how powerful the pull of tradition can be, how Judaism and Jewish identity is so much more about belonging than it is about belief, and how the customs, rituals and traditions that have been handed down to us from previous generations have a weight to them that helps give a sense of meaning and purpose to life no matter how far some of us might roam from home.

There we were at services with Jews and non-Jews alike, from differing religious traditions and spiritual backgrounds, as we are at our synagogue every Friday night. Some were there celebrating a Bat Mitzvah (the Bat Mitzvah family, coincidently, had recently relocated to L.A. from Australia); some were gathering with family and community to mourn the loss of a loved one; some were there merely for the comfort of a Shabbat community itself; others came as part of their own spiritual search for meaning. But all of us gathered for that extended moment in time as one sacred community, looking into that baby’s bright eyes and wondering at the everyday miracles that surround us constantly.

We welcome children at namings, as we do adults at conversions, by bestowing upon them a “tribal” Hebrew name that signifies they belong to the Jewish people and have become part of Jewish civilization. The name chosen for their child was “Ohr,” which is Hebrew for “light.” What a perfect name to signify the bringing of new life into the world, for each of us has our own unique sacred light that glows from within, visible in the sparkle of our eyes. Jewish tradition understands this to be the very light of God shining within us all.

In fact, light itself has forever been a powerful symbol of the presence of God, ever since the beginning of the Biblical Book of Genesis where God began creating the universe by creating light. “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” is a phrase known to anyone who has ever read the Bible. Jewish tradition even taught that it was from this divine light itself that God created everything else in the universe, so everything, including each of us, is literally composed of light. And during the forty years when our ancestors wandered in the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land they knew God was with them because every night God would appear in a pillar of fire, lighting up the night sky.

On the memorial wall of our Sanctuary is a phrase from the book of Proverbs that says in Hebrew, “Ohr Adonai nishmat adam,” “The soul of the human being is the light of God.” So it’s no surprise that we learn from this week’s Torah portion that one of the most important roles of the priests in ancient biblical times was to use pure beaten olive oil to light the sacred lamps that were to burn continually on the altar day and night as a “Ner tamid,” an “eternal light,” for all time. The priests were to keep the light burning so that the people would always see the light and know that God’s presence was with them as well.

Even today, every synagogue in the world has its own Ner Tamid, its own “Eternal Light,” to signal the presence of the divine among the people whenever they gather for prayer, for song, for celebration or for learning. As we bestowed the name “Ohr” – “light” – on that baby, we were silently praying that one day it would be his own unique light that might make the world a brighter, holier, more sacred and meaningful place for us all.

(Check out www.rebreuben.com , www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

I was sitting today gazing at a beautiful picture of our late rabbi, Sheryl Lewart z”l, as she sat in her garden surrounded by the trees and flowers and foliage that she loved. Her beloved mountain was in the background, sparkling sunlight was reflecting off the numerous mobiles, spiritual art and amulets hung from trees and placed throughout her peaceful garden paradise. For Sheryl, that garden that she created, cherished, nurtured and loved so much was her personal sanctuary. It was her own intimate sacred space where she meditated, contemplated the meaning of her life, studied the sacred writings and wisdom of the Jewish past, shared her unique loving soul with students and friends, and quietly wrestled with the challenges of the health issues that ultimately overtook her life.

Sheryl and I had worked together, prayed together and created our professional relationship together for twelve years in the sanctuary of Kehillat Israel. But it was in this personal sacred space, this special Sheryl “sanctuary” that I sat with her last and shared stories of our life and work together, laughed at all we can never control in life and cried together about what was to come.

I have been privileged to travel throughout the world and visit temples of every kind and every spiritual tradition, cathedrals so grand they took my breath away. Yet with all my travels no sanctuary was ever more powerful or filled with a greater sense of holiness and sanctity than that intimate, personal sanctuary that Sheryl had created in her own home.

Every religious civilization and tradition creates special sacred spaces in which its adherents can worship, where they connect with the holy ground of Being in the universe, and invoke blessings of faith and gratitude to help create sacred community together. In Pacific Palisades alone we have a Lutheran church, a Catholic church, a Presbyterian church, an Episcopal church, a Mormon church, a Methodist church, an Evangelical Christian church, the Hindu Self-Realization Center, Kehillat Israel Synagogue, Chabad Jewish Center and we used to have an Ayervedic Meditation Center and a Church of Christian Science. Every one a sacred structure dedicated to the pursuit of the holy, to finding God’s path in one way or another, to the creation of a sacred community of shared belief and belonging.

It seems to be human nature to long for the sacred, to feel compelled to build sanctuaries of every kind in an attempt to capture the holy in an identifiable space where we can gather, either together or alone, hoping to touch the face of God. But with all the magnificent physical structures dedicated to the pursuit of the sacred in our world, not only my personal experience with Sheryl and her beautiful garden, but this week’s Torah portion itself teaches us that to search for God only in the physical edifices of our religious traditions is perhaps to be looking in the wrong place altogether.

This week we read the famous commandment from God, inscribed on the dedication plaque of Kehillat Israel and so many other synagogues throughout the world: “Build me a sanctuary that I might dwell among you.” (Exodus 25:8) It is a form of biblical mind twister, a kind of Hebrew koan (the Buddhist paradox forcing the mind to think in new directions like “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”), because God commands us to build a “sanctuary” where God might dwell and in the same sentence reveals God’s presence is found not in sanctuaries at all, but “among you” instead. We may indeed create beautiful sacred spaces, towering cathedrals or quiet meditation gardens, but ultimately the Torah reminds us that where we really find God is deep in the sparkle of the human eye, in the love of the human heart, that unexplainable magic of love that connects us one to the other with such profound joy and fulfillment that here, and here alone, is truly revealed the real meaning of life.

“Build me a sanctuary,” says God, and when you gather together I will dwell not in the physical structure but the spiritual space created by your very gathering as one people with common dreams and visions.

(Check out www.rebreuben.com , www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

Fifty-one years ago this week I celebrated my Bar Mitzvah by reading this week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim. I often find myself telling the Bar or Bat Mitzvah students I work with, “Your Torah portion is yours for life.” And so it was with me as well; I always think of Mishpatim as “mine.” Literally for the last half a century, whenever I have heard the name of the portion, or taught it to my students, or seen the word written anywhere, it has instantly evoked a special bond, a sense of ownership, a special connection that is different than any other part of the Torah.

I love that I feel so intimate with Mishpatim. I love it because here I am, 64 years old in the year 2013, feeling a unique and inseparable link between myself and a book that is more than 3,000 years old. It’s amazing, really. The power of the Bar or Bat Mitzvah experience, the power of feeling that I belong to a community that stretches back thousands of years, the deep connection to an ancient past where, out of the remarkable creative spiritual mind of my own ancestors, there are ethical challenges that still echo with powerful relevance today.

The authors of the Torah seemed to have an absolute command of human psychology. They understood that our natural inclinations and the “normal” human response to those we think of as enemies is not only to stay as far away from them as possible, but to do whatever we can overtly or covertly to undermine them, defeat them, vanquish them any way we can. That’s why the Torah is filled with commandments that are put into the mouth of God (to give them clout and universal transcendent credentials). These commandments actually challenge us to act in ways that completely go against human nature and our natural inclinations.

It’s human nature that if you were to see your enemy’s ox wandering lost, you would smile with glee and either encourage it to get even more lost or perhaps simply open your own gate and let it “wander” in and become yours. That’s what anyone would do. So the Torah has God command us instead, “When you encounter your enemy’s ox or ass wandering, you must take it back to him.” Bummer. Who would want to do that? Really no one. Our natural instinct is to delight in the misfortune of our enemies, to even help their misfortune along if we can.

But Jewish ethics demand a different reaction, claim a higher standard, force us to do the right thing in spite of ourselves. As if returning lost items to our enemies wasn’t hard enough, the Torah then goes on to make an even more difficult and emotionally challenging demands. “When you see the ass of your enemy lying under its burden and would refrain from raising it, you must nevertheless raise it with him.” (Exodus 23:5)

Not only are we commanded by God to help lift the burden from our enemy’s animals, we are commanded to “raise it with him.” It’s the “with him” part that really gets me. You mean it doesn’t even count if I do it quietly so no one sees that I’m helping my enemy? It doesn’t count if I do it on the sly, do it anonymously, secretly give aid to his animals without having to actually stand with the guy I hate and offer my help? Ugh. That is simply asking too much.

And yet, that is exactly what the Torah (and through the Torah what God) demands of us every single time. The highest virtue clearly isn’t to help our enemy in secret as an “anonymous donor.” It’s to step up in public, extend our hand to help the very person we would least want to help in the world. What a remarkable psychological insight – those geniuses who wrote the Torah so many thousands of years ago knew exactly what they were doing.

How do you really heal the world? What does “tikkun olam,” the Hebrew phrase for “healing the world” really look like? It looks exactly like this: one enemy extending his (or her) hand to another and helping ease his (or her) burden in life. Now that takes courage. That takes inner strength. That takes self-restraint. That takes faith that your enemy won’t attack you or cause you harm, or reject your offer. The Torah doesn’t care, it simply commands us to ease the burden of our enemy’s animals together.

It’s so simple, and so brilliant, and so difficult to actually do. Why must we do it together? Because the rabbis were convinced that the surest road to reconciliation among human beings who disagree or differ is to join together in a common challenge and help each other. The Talmud reads this passage and comments that God’s intention in this mitzvah is that, in the process of working together, enemies become friends. Recognizing the common sanctity in another human being in spite of our differences is the Torah’s formula for redeeming the broken fragments of our world.

Imagine if instead of always looking for ways to undermine and get advantage over each other, all the “enemies” on earth had to work together helping each other in common cause instead. What if Democrats and Republicans, Israelis and Palestinians, Christians and Muslims, Americans and Iranians, Indians and Pakistanis, and every other group that sees another as “different,” or “wrong” in what they believe or because of the color of their skin, or the language they speak, or the culture they embrace instead lived according to the Torah’s commandment? We wouldn’t have to continue praying for the coming of a messianic age, for we would be living it already.

(Check out www.rebreuben.com , www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

For some people the three hardest words in the English language to say are “I was wrong.” For most of us it starts as early as pre-school. Almost immediately we quickly learn from experience that there are “right” and “wrong” answers to questions, “right” and “wrong” ways to draw, “right” and “wrong” ways to talk and act with teachers and peers, and the kids who get the most hugs, smiles, privileges and rewards are the ones who get things “right” more often than they get things “wrong.”

As children, our very sense of reality and existence itself is almost completely dependent on the feedback we get from others. We experience ourselves as worthwhile or worthless, loved or unloved almost entirely due to how the adults in our lives react to what we say and what we do. Those of us who somehow consistently got the message from parents or teachers that we were constantly doing it ”wrong” found ourselves questioning that we were even lovable or valuable at all. Such an experience can truly be devastating.

I have joked about it often over the years, but the fact that to this day, at 64 years old, I still remember as clearly as if it happened yesterday that I “failed” nap in pre-school – more than 60 years ago – says something profound about how fragile a child’s sense of self-worth can be.

It may start in pre-school for many of us, but for nearly all of us the drumbeat of judgment, the chorus that chants “right” or ‘wrong” after every decision we make, every answer we give, continues relentlessly through every grade of school and into our work and personal lives as adults. We learn to judge ourselves in relation to others and how they judge us as well. Sometimes I think it is miraculous that any child grows up with a shred of spontaneity or creativity at all, given the rigid standards that most of us are exposed to through our schooling experiences.

By the time we reach adulthood it is little wonder that so many of us find it difficult to utter those simple words, “I was wrong.” And so it is all the more remarkable that, in this week’s Torah portion, the greatest leader in all of Biblical history, Moses, the man who defeated Pharaoh, the most powerful king on earth, admits that he was wrong. This is Moses at his best, in a sacred text that teaches us that the greatest quality a leader can have is humility not certainty, modesty not arrogance.

And that’s not all. This is the story of Moses wrestling with the difficult challenges of what it means to be a leader. Moses, whom we are told was the only human being in history to be so intimate with God that they spoke panim el panim, “face to face,” doesn’t turn to God for advice, but to his non-Jewish father-in-law, Jethro, for the wisdom he needs to learn how to govern.

I love this story perhaps most of all because it anticipates the brilliance of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan and the philosophy of Reconstructionism by thousands of years. In a world both then and now that is filled with religious self-righteousness, where practically every religion (not just ours) is filled with triumphalist notions of being God’s “chosen people,” Moses turns for advice and counsel to a Midianite priest, a holy man from another religion, a practitioner and leader of another spiritual tradition.

What an amazing role model for us as leaders, as teachers, as parents, as Jews, as human beings. “You are taking on too much,” said Jethro. “You are acting like you are the only one on earth who can do the job, the only one on earth who can answer your people’s questions, make decisions when there are disagreements, resolve disputes or provide support to your community.” Of course, every time I read this story I realize that I have been there myself.

I love being a leader. I love helping others. I love being there for people, giving them counsel, listening to their problems and traumas and the tremendous feeling of value and worth that I receive for the privilege of serving others. And I know that sometimes I actually get carried away with my own “importance” in the lives of others and forget that it’s just me and there are lots and lots of people who do what I do, as well or better, every single day. There are times when I suddenly realize I have been acting as if I am somehow indispensable, impressed by my own PR.

That’s why the Torah is such a gift. I read this story of Moses and Jethro and I can’t help but remember that so many others around me are just as good, just as talented, just as nurturing, just as helpful, just as able to step in and do the job – and often do it better than I ever could. Moses teaches us that all we can do is the best we can do, and real leadership, real greatness lies in the humility to accept that all of us need help, all of us need encouragement, all of us need the advice and counsel of others and there is no such thing in the world as a totally self-made man or woman.

Each of us needs a Jethro in our lives. In this story, the Torah had the wisdom so many thousands of years ago to teach us the exact same powerful lesson that the rabbis of the Talmud taught, when they said, “Who is wise? The one who has the humility and wisdom to learn from everyone.”

(Check out www.rebreuben.com, www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

How did all the different cultures of the world come to be? Why did they develop the rituals and traditions, songs and stories that have evolved within each of them so differently over the many hundreds and even thousands of years of their cultural evolution? And in spite of the profoundly different attitudes and perspectives on life and the world that are found in different countries, languages and civilizations, what are the values and attitudes that transcend our differences and ultimately bind us together as part of the same human family?

I think of these questions each time we travel and always come away with an ever deeper appreciation for the mysteries of life and the fundamental similarities of the human drama.

In nearly every culture on earth there are stories of heroism and courage, of sacrifice of the individual for the larger common good, of struggles for meaning and purpose and a connection with the transcendent oneness of the universe. And inevitably there are stories of the struggle to be free to follow one’s own destiny.

This week, as we read the story of our ancestors’ flight from the slavery of Egypt and the crossing of the Sea of Reeds to freedom, we are reminded that in Jewish tradition “freedom” is one of God’s most precious and essential names. “There are 70 names for God” the rabbis taught in the Talmud, and after “Creator” perhaps the most powerful of all is “Redeemer.”

The story of our collective redemption is couched in language that tells the story as a drama of faith, commitment and perseverance. Our ancestors were redeemed from slavery not by way of a magic carpet ride or a Star Trek-like beaming-up from Cairo to Jerusalem, but rather by the difficult, painstaking effort of putting one foot in front of the other, one step at a time with enough faith to step into the sea and trust that the waters would part and freedom would be ours.

In every generation and in every culture throughout the world we are called upon to reaffirm that same faith in the essential promise of God’s freedom. Everyone seeks to be free. Everyone longs for the privilege of taking that same journey even when it is difficult and challenging.

So no matter how far any of us might travel around the world, it’s important to still remember that the story of our own people’s struggle from slavery to freedom is a universal drama that we find echoed in the truths of all people. Every day when we offer prayers of gratitude for the life we live we are also reaffirming our faith that one day all people everywhere will be able to tell their children, as we do each year, that once they were slaves and now they are free.

(Check out www.rebreuben.com, www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

Imagine how scary it must have been for our ancestors in Egypt that night. Imagine what they must have been thinking as they watched one plague after another strike the land - from blood flowing in the rivers to frogs and lice overrunning the countryside, to animals dying all around them; from a sudden outbreak of boils to out-of-season thunder and hail in the midst of spring to a plague of locusts swarming in, and over, and under everything.

And if that wasn’t scary enough, this week’s portion begins with the terrifying plague of darkness that covered the land. There is a reason that nearly all of us, at one time or another in our lives, have been afraid of the dark. After all, the very creation of the universe itself begins in our sacred Torah texts as the emergence of light out of the darkness, order out of the chaos of the infinite cosmos.

And so when darkness suddenly fell like a giant curtain over all of Egypt, except the land of Goshen where the Israelites lived, it must have been terrifying indeed. “What power is this?” they must have wondered. “Who could possibly control such a power? What if it suddenly turns on us as well? Where will we hide? Who will protect us? Where can we go to be safe?”

These were people who had lived as slaves for hundreds of years. They were deprived of the opportunity to make decisions for themselves, deprived of the ability to keep their families together, to be responsible for themselves and their lives – emasculated, abused, oppressed and heavily crushed under the physical and psychological burdens of slavery. Suddenly they felt like pawns in a cosmic arm-wrestling contest between Pharaoh, who held the power of life and death over them for their entire lives, and this invisible God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who Moses kept claiming was the unseen source of these daily terrors.

It was not a pretty picture for them, more like a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” kind of situation. And yet, in this week’s portion, in the midst of their fear, trepidation, insecurity and terror, Moses demands that they take sides and choose. Remaining passive and on the sidelines as mere witnesses to the Moses-Pharaoh drama is now not an option anymore. So imagine how scary it truly must have been.

I have always been amazed at how the story turns, how the promise of liberation from slavery, from oppression, from the crush of domination and Egyptian cruelty ultimately depends not on the power and magic of Moses, but on the slaves themselves being willing to stand up and openly defy Pharaoh and the Egyptian way of life.

It is particularly fascinating to me since the success of Joseph in Egypt in the first place involved adopting Egyptian customs, dress and way of life. Now as they prepare for liberation, they need to publicly reject the ways and beliefs of the Egyptians and put their faith in the values, principles and God of their own ancestors.

That is why the most powerful moment of the liberation drama comes when the Israelites are challenged to smear the blood of lambs on their door posts in public defiance of the Egyptian way of life. This is the moment of truth, the moment to demonstrate their faith in the future and the physical act that demonstrates their commitment to follow Moses and the invisible God of the Jewish people.

I wonder, what would I have done had I been there? I wonder each time I read this story what the moments are in my own life when I am challenged to stand up and be counted for what I believe in, and to demonstrate the courage of my convictions that Judaism matters and is worth passing on to the generations yet to come.

Of course, in a very real sense I feel as if every single day is such an opportunity. Every morning when I awake and say a prayer of thanks for being alive to greet the dawn, I feel as though the simple act of reciting that morning prayer in Hebrew is an act of defiance against every despot who dreamed of wiping the Jewish people from the face of the planet in every generation. My simple morning prayer is an affirmation of Jewish identity, Jewish survival, the triumph of Jewish civilization over the power of evil that has forever longed for our extinction. Reciting that prayer each day is, in a sense, my way of smearing the blood on the doorposts of my life as well.

(Check out www.rebreuben.com, www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

Every year when this week’s Torah portion comes around it reminds me of elephants. I think about the famous story of how they train elephants in the circus. They take them when they are still small and tie a strong rope around their necks and attach the rope to a secure pole. The baby elephants naturally try to walk away and are stopped by the rope. They pull and push and twist and turn and eventually figure out that they just aren’t strong enough to break free of their shackles, so they stop resisting and just stay where they are.

The next time they tie up the baby elephants they try to break away once again, pulling on the rope to see if they can go free. When they figure out that once again it is futile, they stop pulling and settle down and stay where they are.

The same thing happens over and over until eventually, when the rope is put over their heads, they no longer pull and push and try to break free because they know it is futile. That is why in captivity you can walk by a circus and see giant elephants standing passively with a rope tied around their necks that isn’t attached to anything at all.

The elephant becomes so accustomed to being held back by the rope, that merely the rope itself keeps the animal in check. If only they knew how powerful they really are. If only they realized that by the time they have grown up, even a rope “secured” to a pole can no longer contain them. Then they would know what true freedom is. But they don’t.

Moses tells the same story in this week’s portion. God tells Moses that God has heard the cries of the children of Israel in their slavery to Pharaoh in Egypt and to tell them that God will rescue them from under their burdens, rescue them from their toil, redeem them with an outstretched arm and give them as God’s people the land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. “And Moses spoke this to the children of Israel and they did not listen to Moses because of shortage of spirit and because of hard work.” (Ex. 6:9)

Here was God offering them liberation. Here was Moses offering them redemption. They were so beaten down and accustomed to slavery that, like the elephants, they simply couldn’t see it right before their eyes.

The Hebrew says they wouldn’t listen to Moses “mekotzer ruah,” which is usually translated as “their spirits were crushed” or “shortness of spirit.” But I believe a better translation would be “narrowness of vision.” They weren’t able to see the liberation that was right before their eyes because they lacked vision, both literally and figuratively.

Literally, their eyes were those of slaves – cast upon the ground, avoiding eye contact, unassertive, not aggressive, non-threatening, without real vision. Figuratively, they had been slaves so long they simply could not imagine anything better, bolder, brighter, bigger for their lives. They lost the ability to dream, to visualize their lives as free men and women, to embrace a vision of a better life and a better them.

So they didn’t, or couldn’t, listen to Moses and his promise. They just couldn’t do it.

One of my frustrations in life as a rabbi is to see so many who still live like our ancestors in Egypt. They are fearful to have a vision of their lives that exalts them and could set them free. What this week’s portion teaches us is that just as the elephant could set himself free if he only chose, we can do the same for ourselves.

So often in life the real difference between slavery and freedom is vision. It is recognizing that it is ours to choose; that the chains with which we are held are mostly in our minds and not around our ankles. It took the children of Israel a long time to realize what most of us must learn as well - that freedom is ours to take, hope is ours to embrace, and meaning and purpose in life are ours to envision at any moment in our lives.

Years ago, when I was still working as a rabbi in New York, I got a phone call from the president of the congregation in California where I had grown up. He informed me that their current rabbi would be moving to another pulpit at the end of the year and he wondered if I might be interested in applying for the position.

Even though it happened thirty-five years ago, I remember the first thing that automatically came out of my mouth as if it were yesterday. Without a moment’s reflection I said, “I can’t possibly be the rabbi of a congregation where people who knew me when I was just a child will be constantly coming up to me and calling me ‘Stevie.’”

At that moment, as I heard myself responding to the offer, I realized that names matter. What we call something is often a measure of how we value it, how we understand its meaning and role in our lives. I just couldn’t picture myself functioning successfully as a rabbi, being able to minister to the spiritual and emotional needs of a community with many older long-time members who would still look at me and see “little Stevie Reuben” who used to run around the synagogue as a child making noise in the balcony and being sent to the principal’s office during religious school.

Now I am certainly known as one of the most flexible, easy-going, non-judgmental and informal rabbis around. But even I couldn’t imagine “Rabbi Stevie” working for anyone. So I told the synagogue president (who, by the way, happened to be my first cousin) that I appreciated the offer but didn’t think it would be a good idea.

Names are important. When we are upset or angry with someone, we might call that person a name just to upset him or her in return. People take names seriously, personally, intimately. Names can humiliate and names can be sources of pride and self-respect.

Jewish mystical tradition teaches that there are at least seventy names for God. The mystics derive the number seventy from the word “Shema,” noting that if you divide the word in Hebrew into two, the first part, “shem,” means “name,” and the remaining letter, “ayin,” equals “seventy” in Hebrew numerology. Hence, God has seventy names.

Each of those seventy names represents a different quality of holiness, an aspect of divinity that we are to emulate in our own lives if we want to exhibit qualities of godliness in what we say, how we act, and who we are. In fact, imitating God through the adoption of godly qualities like justice, compassion, mercy, love, and peace is one of the ways that we prove to ourselves and others the fundamental truth in the biblical notion that human beings are created in the divine image.

By imitating the qualities represented by God’s names, we become living testimony that we do have the power to reflect holiness, which is one of the interpretations of what being “created in the divine image” really means.

This week’s Torah portion is called “Shemot” – “names.” It begins with a recitation of the names of the sons of Israel who went down to Egypt with Jacob and whose progeny became the children of Israel who went forth from slavery to begin the world-transforming forty-year trek through the Sinai wilderness.

The importance of names is driven home most poignantly by the famous Biblical phrase, which follows immediately in this week’s portion, that “A new king arose over Egypt who knew not Joseph.” Whereas for many years the name of Joseph was a key to safety, security, power, affluence and influence for the children and descendents of Jacob, as soon as the name was forgotten and no longer meant anything to those who ruled over the land, the Jewish people became enslaved.

What we want in life is for our names to mean something, for them to be symbols of the fact that who we are matters. We want others to associate our names with qualities that we are proud of, acts that reflect the best that lies within us, and words that inspire others to know that they can make a difference in the world as well.

In reality, we are known by different names to different people, depending upon the circumstances of our lives. So this Shabbat, when we read “Ve-ayleh shemot” – “These are the names...” – perhaps it will remind us that the real challenge of life is to make names for ourselves, in all we do, that those who come after us will remember with pride.

(Check out www.rebreuben.com, www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

One of the saddest aspects of being a rabbi in congregational life, is being witness to the many painful emotional struggles that people experiences with their own families. Bar and Bat Mitzvah celebrations, weddings, baby naming, all of which ought to be moments of great joy and gratitude are often clouded by the pain of family dynamics that include past hurts, rejections and even estrangement.

I can’t even count the number of times people have come to me to “warn” me about one relative or another whom I might encounter at the upcoming event, or shared a painful story of rejection or disconnection that often goes back decades between them and another family member with whom they never speak. It is as if my work itself becomes a constant reminder of the power of forgiveness to transform lives and families, and the pain and tremendous loss that comes with being so committed to the hurt and “being right” that we hold on to our angers and resentments and never let go.

I see people like this as they gather for the bar or bat mitzvah, and sit on opposite sides of the sanctuary. I see them as I prepare for funerals and have to go first to one home and then to another to speak with members of the family about a loved one who has died, because they are unwilling even in grief to sit together in the same living room and share their tears and memories.

I see it at weddings and naming ceremonies where people’s feelings are so easily hurt unintentionally by not being mentioned, or mentioned enough, or mentioned with proper honor and respect, with the result that grudges are held sometimes forever.

I see all this, and hear all the stories of family disharmony, jealousy, and hurt, and it breaks my heart. Perhaps that is why every single Biblical family in the Book of Genesis reflects a tale of disharmony, envy, and anger, with brothers fighting and parents taking sides. Perhaps these stories were told because they so directly touched on the emotional lives of everyone who heard them and read them.

If so, then surely there is also a reason that every single story of family upset and dysfunction ends with the ultimate reconciliation of brothers and reunification of the family in one form or another. And perhaps that is why the Book of Genesis itself comes to its dramatic conclusion with the death of Jacob/Israel, who is the father of the Children of Israel, of the sons (and grandsons) who will compose the twelve tribes of Israel and through them the entire Jewish people.

When Jacob dies, his sons still carry with them the guilt of having sold their brother Joseph into slavery so many years ago. They are afraid that since they have never forgotten their evil deed, perhaps Joseph, too might be harboring resentment toward them that has built for all these years and was only waiting for their father to die to exact his revenge.

All of us who are the readers of the story can understand their fear. We know what they did to Joseph and the position of power he now occupies. We know how easy it would be for him to take his revenge and what a natural human desire that must have been. Perhaps that is why one of the most touching and beautiful passages in the entire Torah comes at the end of this week’s portion, after Jacob has been buried and the brothers turn in fear to face Joseph once again.

Joseph provides a poignant and powerful lesson to us all. He turns to his brothers and says simply, "Don’t be afraid." And then the Torah tells us, "He comforted them, and spoke to their hearts." (Genesis 50:21)

It’s an incredible story. Joseph comforts his brothers - the same brothers who once sold him into slavery in a fit of jealousy and rage - and instead of carrying on the hurt and anger from one generation to the next, speaks to their hearts and stops the cycle of pain and retribution forever. Perhaps true strength of character is the strength to forgive those who are closest to us when they hurt us. Perhaps the courage and strength of Joseph can be our personal model when others hurt us as well. For greatness comes in many forms, and the courage to forgive another, is one of the greatest of all.

(Check out www.rebreuben.com, www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

"I am Joseph your brother." Amid tears and astonishment, fear and disbelief, few phrases in the entire Torah carry as much emotional power and impact as these.

We read the story of Joseph as viceroy of all Egypt reuniting with his brothers who once sold him into slavery in a rage of jealousy, and we can't help but see the story through the prism of our own sibling and family experiences. Every family has its jealousies. Every family has its moments when children feel unappreciated or unloved, and just like real life the Torah doesn't shy away from depicting families in disarray and dysfunction.

As a father, Jacob has not had a very good track record. His obvious favoritism for Joseph and then Benjamin fuels the anger and resentment of his other children. It sets up the selling of Joseph and subsequent deception whereby Jacob believes Joseph was eaten by a wild animal and goes into shock, depression and deep mourning for the twenty years that lead up to this week's portion.

We read his story and can't help but feel that his pain and suffering are the direct result of his own inability to be an effective parent. In a profound way throughout the narratives of Genesis, the Torah reminds us that life isn't merely capricious and the quality of our relationships with parents and children are not simply the result of forces beyond our own control.

We learn over and over again that what we do and what we say ultimately is the most important factor in determining the direction of our lives. Joseph gives God the credit for his success and soothes his brothers' feelings of guilt by telling them that in his mind though they meant evil for him God used them and him for a higher purpose.

Each time I read this portion I think that the real lesson seems to be that each of us has the power to re-evaluate our lives and re-experience the past in ways that help us to make sense out of our experiences. It reminds of when someone once told me, “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.” We can choose to remain embittered by the past, replay old hurts ad family jealousies over and over again, or use the wisdom of our years and experience to mend emotional tears in our family and bring healing to the hurts of our past.

With the simple words, "I am Joseph your brother," twenty years of sorrow, anger and guilt were healed. Joseph had a choice of how to act and what to say - and in that choice his true character was revealed. Even though to the very end of his life his brothers continued to be plagued by the guilt they bore at what they had done to him and the harm they had actually intended in the first place – for Joseph, the forgiveness was clearly a personally liberating act. And therein ultimately lies the true power of forgiveness – whether or not it transforms the other, it has the potential to bring healing, wholeness and an openness of heart to us. Like Joseph in this drama, we, too have that same choice every day to hold on to our regrets and angers and resentments, or to let go and live fuller, more vibrant and grateful lives.

(Check out www.rebreuben.com, www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

"All dreams follow the interpreter." Talmud, Berahot 55b

Everyone has dreams. Some of us dream of heights we intend to scale, battles we intend to win, glories we intend to capture. Some of us dream of love, or riches, or fame, or the quenching of our deepest desires. Some dreams are vast, and deep, and dramatic, and others are simple, and quiet, and modest. But regardless of their size or nature, we all have had dreams that inspired our actions and gave a sense of urgency to our lives.

The insightful philosopher James Allen once taught, "Dream lofty dreams and as you dream so shall you become; your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be." Allen realized that the most powerful thing in our universe is the power of our minds. In fact, almost everything that has ever been created on earth began as a simple idea in someone's mind.

It is from the power of our minds that nations are built, empires fashioned, and inventions spawned that have transformed our very universe. "As you dream so shall you become" is a fundamental truth, because each of us becomes what we think about. It is our thoughts and the power that they generate within us that gives conscious and unconscious direction to our personalities, our behavior, and our character.

For thousands of years wise teachers of every religious tradition have reminded us of the power of attitude to determine reality. If you want to become a gentle, caring, loving human being they teach, fill your mind with gentle, caring, loving thoughts. If you want to be a violent, angry, frightening person, fill your mind with violent, angry, frightening thoughts. "As you think, so shall you become" – even though life isn’t exactly as simple as that, it is still a profound reality that our thoughts give impetus and creative direction to our lives.

So this week in the Torah we read about Pharaoh and his disturbing dreams. We read the well-known hero tale of Joseph who while languishing in prison is successful in interpreting the dreams of Pharaoh's baker (predicting he will be killed) and cup-bearer (predicting that he will be reinstated to his royal position). It is this very cup-bearer who brings Joseph to the attention of Pharaoh after the magicians of his court are unable to satisfactorily interpret the dreams that have disturbed his sleep.

For thousands of years the rabbis of Jewish tradition have taught that the power of a dream lies with its interpretation and not with the dream itself. For when Joseph hears of the Pharaoh's dreams of seven lean cows eating seven fat cows, and seven thin ears of grain swallowing seven fat ears of grain, he could have come up with any number of interpretations. Instead, he chose to interpret the dreams in a way that would make his own counsel invaluable to Pharaoh and insure a place of power for himself in the royal court.

It is like the ancient fable of the king who asks a soothsayer to tell his future. The soothsayer replies, "O King, I see all of your children dying before you." The king was so upset by this prediction that he had the soothsayer killed on the spot. Then he asked the local rabbi to come and reveal his future. The rabbi said, "O king, I see you flourishing in your kingdom, happy, old, and wise - in fact you will live such a long life that you will even outlive your own children."

The king was so pleased with this prediction that he gave the rabbi a gift of enough gold to last a lifetime.

The facts were the same; the difference was in the interpretation. So it was with Joseph and the wisdom with which he interpreted Pharaoh's dreams. Perhaps when the king refers to Joseph as "ish asher ruah elohim bo" - "A man with the spirit of God within him" we can learn that one of the things we mean by "God" is the power that inspires within us faith in ourselves, faith in the future, and faith in our own abilities to use our minds to make our dreams a reality.

(Check out www.rebreuben.com, www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

This week in the Torah, we begin the remarkable Joseph story. It's a long, winding tale of sibling rivalry and intrigue, slavery and redemption, temptation and unjust retribution. We learn that the consequences of arrogance can be tragic and devastating and that life can be filled with its own plot twists and turns that are often beyond our own ability to comprehend or understand at the time they are unfolding.

The Joseph story is, in essence, a novella all its own. It provides the link between the last of our patriarchs, Jacob and the evolution of Am Yisrael, the Jewish people who ultimately emerge out of the descendents of his twelve sons.

Sometimes it seems as if the famous French expression, "The more things change the more they stay the same," was written to reflect our Biblical ancestor's apparent inability to learn from the tragic mistakes of their own parents. From Abraham to Isaac to Jacob, the parental sin of playing favorites between one's children seemed to have been passed down from generation to generation like an unconscious parent virus.

Perhaps that's why we are reminded in the Torah that the sins of the parents are visited upon their children even to the fourth generation. We humans just seem to be very, very slow learners. After all, how could Isaac not have learned the lesson of the price of parental favoritism, as he watched his brother Ishmael cast out into the wilderness by his own father? And yet he favored Esau over Jacob, which contributed to setting up the conditions under which Jacob had to flee for his life and go into voluntary exile from his father's home for twenty years.

How could Jacob not have learned the same lesson of how destructive parental favoritism is to family harmony from the traumatic experiences of his youth? And yet we read in this very Torah portion, "Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children...and he made him a coat of many colors. And when his brothers saw that he loved him more than all of them they hated him and they could not speak peaceably to him." (Gen. 37:3-4).

Sadly, over three thousand years later, I still see the same thing in my rabbinic life nearly every day. In spite of thousands of years of evidence and the personal experiences of us all, parents continue to demonstrate preferences for one child over another.

One of the hardest things in life for us to master, is the ability to be open to learning important life lessons second hand, without having to go through the original experience ourselves. Human beings seem to resist learning any way but the hard way - by first hand, head on, direct experiences that are ours alone.

And yet perhaps that is the entire point of studying Torah itself and assuredly why we keep studying the Torah year in and year out, reading the same portions over again and again. It is so that every week we will have another opportunity to use the lives of our own ancestors as role models both of what to do and what not to do. Jewish tradition believes that we are not condemned to repeat every mistake that others have made. In fact, we are not condemned even to repeat our own mistakes. And that is why we study Torah each week, and that is why the Talmud tells us to "Turn it, turn it for everything is in it." The rabbis claim that this challenge refers not only to the Torah text itself, but to the story of our own lives as well. For as we examine our own stories, delve into our own behaviors of the past, we can discover that the past is only descriptive and not prescriptive of future behavior.

After all, the Joseph story is ultimately the story of personal redemption, family redemption and faith. For in the end when Joseph has risen to the greatest power in the land of Egypt next to Pharaoh and is reconciled with his brothers and father once again, he believes that his life is proof of the Yiddish expression, "Human beings plan and God laughs." We just never know how things are going to turn out. Perhaps we can end by using the story of Joseph as a beautiful example of the redeeming power of faith. Faith that the meaning of our lives will ultimately become clear, and faith that by believing in ourselves we will be able to share our own dreams with others.

(Check out www.rebreuben.com, www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

(Check out www.rebreuben.com, www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

(Check out www.rebreuben.com, www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

I spend a lot of my time as a rabbi helping others cope with death and dying, grief and loss. I know both from my work and my personal life experience that the death of a close family member just isn’t something that you really ever “get over.” You move on, you learn to put the raw emotions and unanswered questions in a place somewhere inside where they can be held at a distance and examined with enough detachment to feel almost like someone else’s problem.

And yet one of the most universal truths about death and grief is that even death can carry its own blessings. On the one hand I know that my own childhood loss gets reactivated each and every time I sit with someone else’s child who is grieving for a dying parent or sibling or friend. On the other hand, I know that it makes me a much more sensitive, empathetic and effective human being and rabbi because of it.

Childhood traumas last a lifetime, it’s true. But so can childhood successes and blessings. It’s easy to focus on the dramatic traumas of life, because they evoke sympathy from those around us and give our lives a vague heroic quality to them. But true maturity and growth in life is the ability to accept total responsibility for the quality of our lives regardless of the circumstances we encounter along the way, whether good and bad. I believe that we know we have reached maturity when we can say “Who I am is up to me, and me alone. And every single day of my life it is truly in my power to choose the life I lead, the person I am, the quality of my relationships and the attitude with which I create the world in which I live.”

I know firsthand from my own life experiences that our lives are what we make of them. Blessings abound in life if we are open to experiencing the miracle of our own possibilities each year. We become what we think about, who we choose to become by the choices we make each day we live.

This week’s Torah portion is called “Toldot,” “Generations,” and it chronicles the history of our Patriarch Isaac and the generations that he and his wife Rebecca created through the birth of their twin sons Jacob and Esau. The story that unfolds is a dramatic, unsettling tale of family disharmony and sibling rivalry that results in Esau selling his birthright to Jacob who then turns around and steals the blessings that his blind father thought he was bestowing upon Esau on his deathbed.

We learn of the destructive power of parental favoritism that pits one son against the other. In the end we are not at all surprised when the fruit that this horrendous parenting model yields is the bitterness in Rebekah’s mouth as she is forced to send her favorite son, Jacob fleeing into the night for fear that his more powerful brother Esau will kill him in an act of personal revenge for his treachery.

Each year I can’t help but read this story and shake my head at the lost opportunities for family love, affection, and togetherness that were thrown away by the Biblical characters. How could they not see how precious their time with each other was? How could they not appreciate that every day with family, every day you are privileged to share with your father and your mother, your brother or your sister is a sacred gift, not to be squandered or bartered away or discarded as trivial.

How often I sit with families in counseling and am struck by how much time they waste on silly arguments and foolish disagreements over nothing. So many times when I have watched families as they bicker and fight with each other, what I most wanted to tell them was, “Stop! Look at each other. Recognize the blessing that you are in each other’s lives. Embrace each other, kiss each other, be profoundly grateful for every single moment, every single breath that you share - for time stops for no one, life is achingly brief, and our loved ones inevitably slip away from our lives.”

So as you sit at your family table this Thanksgiving, pause just enough to look deeply into each other’s eyes, give each other a hug and a kiss and then thank God out loud for every single person whose life has been given to you as a precious blessing this year. If Jacob and Esau, Isaac and Rebecca had done the same, perhaps the entire course of Jewish history would have changed for the better.

(Check out www.rebreuben.com, www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

(Check out www.rebreuben.com, www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

Everybody bargains with God. When I was a kid I used to bargain for test grades (“Dear God, let me get a good grade on my math test and I’ll do all my chores at home without having to be asked for the next month”). It never worked. People have told me over the years about bargaining with God because a loved one is sick (“Please God let my wife get well and I promise to go to synagogue every month for a year,”) or when they face their own mortality (“Let me live long enough to see my daughter’s wedding and I promise to include the synagogue in my will when I die.”)

Bargaining with God is indeed an ancient and venerable tradition which in Jewish civilization traces its root to very this week’s Torah portion. In it God reveals to Abraham that God intends to destroy the city of Sodom because it is filled with violence and lawlessness. In one of the most powerful ethical challenges in all of ancient spiritual literature, Abraham without a second thought immediately demonstrates why Jewish civilization can only be understood as fundamentally “communitarian” in nature.

Abraham’s response to God in this week’s portion is contrasted by the rabbis of Jewish tradition to the lack of response or apparent concern for anyone in the world beyond his own family that characterized Noah in his story of just a couple of weeks ago. When Noah was told by God that the world was about to be destroyed and was given instructions on how to build an ark to save his own family and all the animal life on earth he never once raised a question to God about the justness of wiping out all human life on the planet. He simply went to work to save his own family.

Abraham, upon hearing God’s death decree for an entire city (let alone the entire planet), immediately challenges the justness of God’s decree. “Shall not the judge of all the earth do justly?” Abraham asks. “Would you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?” Abraham challenges. After all, the world is a complex, messy place, prone to shades of grey and ambiguity, rarely presenting a clean and simple picture in black and white. Abraham recognizes that what it means to be a conscious human being is to be responsible for the welfare of others and not merely oneself. In challenging God and bargaining as he does (“If there are 50 righteous in the city will you save the city for their sake?” “How about 40?” “30?” “20?” “10”), Abraham sets the tone and moral compass for all of Jewish history, theology and ethics ever since.

Abraham’s willingness to stand up on behalf of total strangers who were not his family and argue that God should treat them with fairness, justice and compassion, set the stage for the bold commandment found later in the Torah that challenges all of us regardless of who we are or where we live, and is particularly poignant this week: “You shall not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor” (Leviticus 19:16)

Over 3,000 years after the Torah was written, Abraham’s cry to God on behalf of the strangers of Sodom seems all the more remarkable today. How many times must our own human indifference and unwillingness to stand up to evil allow genocide after genocide to visit it’s brutality on the innocent of our world? Whether a single individual or entire populations like the Jewish victims of the Holocaust or the Tutsi’s and Hutu’s of Rwanda, Jewish ethics teach us that there is no such thing as an innocent bystander. We are part of a larger community, connected one to the other, created in God’s image and as such responsible to protect the sanctity of human life, all human life above all other mitzvot. That is why Judaism teaches us that we cannot be an “innocent bystander,” because if we stand by while an injustice takes place and do nothing, we are not innocent at all. We are collaborators with the injustice. We are enablers of brutality. We are accessories to the crimes we witness and from which we turn away.

That is why it is Abraham and not Noah in the Torah who becomes the father of the Jewish people. That is why Abraham is told by God that his task and therefore our challenge as well, is to be a blessing to all the families of the earth. What God doesn’t say is that we are to be a blessing only to our own family, only to our own people, only to our own community, only to our own religion or those who speak our own language. No, it is Abraham who is our ultimate moral model – the one who champions the stranger, who stands up to God and challenges the fundamental justice of the world, and who opens his heart and spirit and is willing to bargain for the good of all.

(Check out www.rebreuben.com, www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

(Check out www.rebreuben.com, www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).

You have probably heard the story about the time when God spoke to the leaders of all the world’s religions and told them that in 30 days there would be another flood that would destroy the world and everything would be covered with water. The Pope sent word to all the Catholics that they had 30 days to repent from their sins so that they would be gathered to heaven when the flood came and be welcomed into the love of Jesus. The Imam of Mecca sent word to all the world’s Muslims that they had 30 days to reaffirm their loyalty to Mohammed as the only legitimate prophet of Allah so that they would inherit paradise (and we all know what comes with that...) when the flood would come upon them. Finally, the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem then sent word to all the Jews of Israel and the diaspora telling them, “You have 30 days to learn how to live under water.”

Such a Jewish story! If we are good at anything as a civilization, it is adaptation, evolution and flexibility. For over 4,000 years we have continued to survive as the evolving religious civilization of the Jewish people because in spite of the our status as a minority in every country in which we have lived except Israel, we have learned from the surrounding cultures and adapted Judaism to meet the emerging needs of each and every generation. Regardless of what language we needed to learn, what culture we needed to integrate, or what values and way of life we needed to adapt into the essence of what Judaism needed to become, we have risen to the occasion and it has enabled us to survive generation after generation.

That is why we are still here after all these millennia of existence, in spite of the unfortunate reality that in every era there are those who would seek to destroy us, wipe us off the face of the earth and erase us from the stage of history. In spite of it all, in spite of the inquisitions and holocausts and terrorists that seek our demise, we have endured and survived while other cultures and people have faded from the world.

With seven billion human beings throughout the world and less than 15 million Jews, we are such a tiny fraction of the world’s population that we should be indistinguishable from any other human beings on the planet. No one should even know we exist. And yet, the contributions of the Jewish people have been so significant, so influential, so impactful on science, technology, philosophy, theology, medicine, art, music, theatre, and the entire entertainment industry that we are forever in the forefront of the world’s consciousness. And if all those contributions weren’t enough on their own, the very existence of the state of Israel, which has more startup companies than any country other than the U.S., more PhDs and books published per capita than any country in the world, more remarkable innovations and contributions to the quality of life on our planet than any country in the world with ten times its population, insures that it is simply impossible to ignore the role and impact that the Jewish people have day after day on our entire planet.

This week we read in the Torah the famous story of Noah and the Ark. We are told that Noah was “righteous in his generation.” To this accolade Jewish tradition has responded that in any other generation he might have been overlooked, but that all he had to do to be the one God picked to continue the human race was simply be the best in his own generation. That is our challenge as well – to simply be the best we can be, do the best we can do and live our lives in such a way that we continue to make our own unique contributions to the world regardless of how anyone else chooses to act. Our job is to live our lives such that if everyone else were to emulate our choices the world would be healed from its brokenness. Then the violence and exploitation that prompted God to bring a flood upon the world in our Torah story of this week would be found only in ancient tales from the past, exploitation of one human being to another would cease and we would live in the world we dream of creating together. Every year as we read the story of Noah we pray that perhaps it will be this generation that will finally learn the lesson that the wisdom of the Torah has been trying to teach us for the past 3,000 years.

(Check out www.rebreuben.com, www.becomingjewishbook.com and www.interfaithrabbi.com for more commentaries, articles and books by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben).