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254 Broad Avenue Leonia, NJ 07605 201.592.1712

  • November 27, 2019 8:41 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    This Week at Adas Emuno

    Nov. 27, 2019
       
         On this Thanksgiving I am thankful for a group of American heroes who have recently spoken truth to power.
         I will offer a tribute to them at our Shabbat evening service (7:30 PM).
         
         Political events have also been tumultuous in Israel of late, and how these events are echoes of ancient Biblical disputes will emerge in our Shabbat morning Torah study (10:00 AM).

    Shabbat Shalom and Happy Thanksgiving,
    Rabbi Schwartz

    PS- A reminder that Religious School does not meet for the holiday weekend.

  • November 26, 2019 10:48 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    So Many Ways to "Do Good"

    The end of 2019 is in sight.  Let's go out in style - Tikkun Olam style!

    • Oneg Sponsorship - 2020 - Dates through August have been added to our online sign up.  This is a special way to recognize yahrzeits, birthdays and anniversaries.  Click here to sign up - 2020 sponsors needed!
    • Mitzvah Mall - Sunday, December 8 - 11:15 am (changed from 11:30 am) - Social Hall
      • How does it work?  Make a donation to a participating charitable organization and receive a blank greeting card with an insert which describes the charity. These cards can be given as gifts to friends and family so they know a donation was made in their honor.  Organizations this year include: Operation Respect, Hackensack River Keeper, Jewish Braille International and Bergen County Animal Shelter.
    • Food Donations - On-going - The Center for Food action continues to need our support.  Current donations are important for the increase demand for aid around the year end holidays.

  • November 21, 2019 9:44 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    This Week at Adas Emuno

    Nov. 21, 2019

    Dear Friends,

      I was quite surprised to learn that my alma mater, Duke University, is embroiled in a dispute with the Trump Administration over its Middle East Study Center.
      It’s complicated, and it even relates to this week's Torah portion!
      I'll explain at our Shabbat evening service (7:30 PM).

      At our Shabbat morning Torah study (10:00 ) we'll take a close look at the foundational event that established the Jewish people—the revelation at Mount Sinai. What exactly happened there?

      I was asked to give the sermon at this year's Leonia Community Thanksgiving Service, this Tuesday, the 26th, at the Presbyterian Church (8:00 PM), 181 Ft. Lee Road. It's always a nice occasion, and a jazz band is playing.

    Shabbat shalom,
    Rabbi Schwartz

  • November 14, 2019 8:48 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    This Week at Adas Emuno

    Nov. 14, 2019

    Dear Friends,

      The saga of Abraham and Sarah is not particularly funny, but it is in the hands of the 6th grade, who will lead our Shabbat Family Service (7:30 PM).

      We revisit the epic of the Exodus at our Shabbat Morning Torah study, "Turning Points in Jewish History" (10:00 AM).

      These Biblical stories also come alive in creative ways at our weekly religious school service on Sundays (9:00 AM) and at Confirmation Class (11:00 AM).

    Shabbat shalom,
    Rabbi Schwartz

  • November 07, 2019 8:30 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)


    This Week at Adas Emuno

    Nov. 7, 2019
    Dear Friends,

      Even though Kristallnacht, "The Night of Broken Glass", the beginning of the Holocaust in earnest, occurred 81 years ago this Shabbat, our member Kurt Roberg was an eyewitness to the tragedy. He will share his vivid recollection at our Shabbat Evening service (7:30 PM).
      
      At our Shabbat Morning Torah study (10:00 AM) on "Turning Points in Jewish History" we will examine what happened when Alexander the Great conquered Israel...and the world changed forever.

    Shabbat shalom,
    Rabbi Schwartz

  • October 31, 2019 8:36 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    This Week at Adas Emuno

    Oct. 31, 2019

    Dear Friends,

         There was something about Noah (the subject of this week's Torah portion) that bothered the sages, and it has relevance to what is happening today. I'll let you in on the secret at our Shabbat evening service (7:30 PM).

         We join with our local Reform congregations for a special combined Torah study at Temple Sinai in Tenafly with guest scholar Rabbi Leon Morris on Shabbat morning (9:00 AM).

         Don't forget to have your clocks "fall back" an hour so you will be on time for religious school and anything else on Sunday.

         Do you know someone with a tot age 1-4? If so, they will enjoy our special Tot-Shabbat program this Sunday (9:30-10:30 AM). Contact Kerri Klein at kklein7304@gmail.com.

         And check out our new book club, which has its third meeting on Monday (7:30 PM).

    Shabbat shalom,
    Rabbi Schwartz

  • October 17, 2019 2:51 PM | Lance Strate (Administrator)

    YOU WILL BE FOUND

    Kol Nidre, 5780

    Rabbi Barry L. Schwartz


    Have you ever felt like nobody was there?
    Have you ever felt forgotten in the middle of nowhere?
    Have you ever felt like you could disappear?
    Like you could fall, and no one would hear?

    So sings a lonely young man named Evan in the Broadway hit, Dear Evan Hansen. His quivering voice is all too familiar; his pain all too palpable.

    His is the voice of a teen, a new generation. He echoes a famous melody of my generation, when the Beatles sang:

    All the lonely people
    Where do they all come from?
    All the lonely people
    Where do they all belong?

    How can this be? In our hyper-connected world, how can so many be so lonely?

    Two billion people on this planet use Facebook monthly; 1.3 billion use it daily. 79% of Americans are on Facebook. The average number of friends now: 338.

    Yet to the question: How many of your Facebook friends could you trust to help you in a crisis, the most recently study found: four. That is actually an increase from previous studies that indicated one or two.

    Robert Putnam, author of the famous book on the decline of civic and social engagement, Bowling Alone, once said, “People watch Friends on TV; they don’t have them.”

    Social scientists are today speaking of The Loneliness Epidemic in our country.  Just google those words and you will be overwhelmed by the number of articles on the subject.

    The US Dept. of Health has an entire section of its website entitled with that term. On it we learn:

    Over a quarter of the U.S. population now live by themselves.

    28 percent of older adults live alone, including 1 in 6 boomers.

    One in every 11 Americans age 50 or above have no spouse, partner, or child.

    Two in five Americans report that they sometimes or always feel their social relationships are not meaningful.

    One in five say they feel lonely or socially isolated.

    Loneliness and social isolation can be as damaging to health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

    Finally, in a Cigna study, it was the young who felt the loneliest; Generation Z members, ages 18 to 22, and Millennials, ages 23 to 37, sadly scored the highest of any age group.


    Another term besides The Loneliness Epidemic has been recently coined, The Happiness Recession. As reported in the Atlantic in April, only 25% of those young people rated their lives “very happy”—the lowest recorded. This summer, as I was preparing these remarks, I was so saddened to learn that suicide among teens and young adults is at a record high. The Journal of the American Medical Association reports that over the last 20 years the rate has increased 12.5% for young adults and 47% for teens.

    Why are these young people with their whole lives ahead of them giving up hope?

    Why aren’t more of them happy or very happy? Why are so many lonely or isolated?

    The Atlantic study attempted to look at the why? It came up with four broad social factors, while also acknowledging some specific current causes like the opioid crisis and cyber-bullying.

    First, marriage, and specifically: the sharply declining rates of it among young adults.

    Married couples are 75% more likely to report that they are happy. In 1972, 59% of young adults 18-34 were married. Today its 28%.

    Married couples are much more likely to engage in weekly sexual relations, factor number two, and to join a religious or social community organization, factor number three.

    The study found that the last factor, time spent with friends, stayed even over the past three decades, but could not compensate for the marked decline in the other three.

    It turns out that those two “old-fashioned” institutions, marriage and church/synagogue affiliation make a big if under-appreciated contribution to our lives.

    Both are being delayed or spurned altogether by millennials in record numbers. It hurts us older folk to see our children and grandchildren pay the steep price of the ensuing loneliness.

    But the song continues:

    Well, let that lonely feeling wash away
    Maybe there's a reason to believe you'll be okay
    'Cause when you don't feel strong enough to stand
    You can reach, reach out your hand
    And oh, someone will coming running
    And I know, they'll take you home
    Even when the dark comes crashing through
    When you need a friend to carry you
    > And when you're broken on the ground
    You will be found
    So let the sun come streaming in
    'Cause you'll reach up and you'll rise again
    Lift your head and look around
    You will be found
    You will be found….

    The co-writer of this song and the script-writer of the play are Jewish; perhaps that is why the song, though couched in general language, exudes a Jewish sensibility about never giving up hope.

    Consider how our tradition acknowledges that loneliness is indeed a basic and omnipresent human condition… that can be overcome.

    Of Adam, Genesis relates that “The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for man to be alone; I will make a fitting helper for him.’” (Gen.2:18)

    When Jacob is in despair and running away from his family, God says, “Remember I am with you…” and Jacob responds “Surely, God is present in this place, and I did not know it.” (Gen.28, 15-16)

    When Joseph is in despair, literally and figuratively all alone in a pit, abandoned by his brothers, and then all alone in a prison cell in Egypt, his faith sustains him and he later says to those brothers, “It was not you who sent me here, but God... to insure your survival and to save your lives.” (Gen.7-8)

    When Hannah, subject of the haftarah for Rosh Hashanah, is in despair, unable to conceive a child and misunderstood by her husband and by the high priest, her faith sustained her and “in her wretchedness she prayed to the Lord, weeping all the while… she kept on praying before the Lord.” (I Sam.1:10,12)


    The song continues:

    Out of the shadows
    The morning is breaking
    And all is new, all is new
    It's filling up the empty
    And suddenly I see that
    All is new, all is new
    You are not alone
    You are not alone

    God’s message’ to our ancestors and to us, over and over again is: you are not alone!
    The message of friendship and faith is: You will be found!
    Who do we know who needs to hear that message again?
    Who cries out but is not heard?
    Does not our prayer book, the liturgy that we just recited this morning ask this same thing?

    On Rosh Hashanah we reflect, on Yom Kippur we consider…
    Who shall be plagued by fear of the world; who shall strangle for lack of friends?
    Who shall be serene in every storm; who shall be troubled by the passing breeze?

    On this holy day let us proclaim:

    Who lies broken on the ground?
    You will be found.
    Who is too weak to stand?
    Here, take my hand.
    Who is overcome by the darkness crashing through?
    I will carry you.

    The story is told of young man, lonely to the point of despair, who has a dream. He is walking along a beach, with a person he does not know besides him. He looks back and sees two sets of footprints.

    Then that person disappears and he is walking alone. He looks back and sees a single set of footprints.

    The young man senses that his dream has a message. In prayer he realizes that the walk is his life and the presence besides him is God. He cries out to God, “Why did you disappear? Why did you abandon me when I needed you most?” “No, my son,” comes the reply. I never left you. I carried you. I picked you up and carried you.”

    You are not alone. You shall be found.




    You Will Be Found

    Songwriters: Benj Pasek / Justin Paul

    Have you ever felt like nobody was there?
    Have you ever felt forgotten in the middle of nowhere?
    Have you ever felt like you could disappear?
    Like you could fall, and no one would hear?
    Well, let that lonely feeling wash away
    Maybe there's a reason to believe you'll be okay
    'Cause when you don't feel strong enough to stand
    You can reach, reach out your hand
    And oh, someone will coming running
    And I know, they'll take you home
    Even when the dark comes crashing through
    When you need a friend to carry you
    And when you're broken on the ground
    You will be found
    So let the sun come streaming in
    'Cause you'll reach up and you'll rise again
    Lift your head and look around
    You will be found
    You will be found
    You will be found
    You will be found
    You will be found
    Even when the dark comes crashing through
    When you need a friend to carry you
    When you're broken on the ground
    You will be found
    So let the sun come streaming in
    'Cause you'll reach up and you'll rise again
    If you only look around
    You will be found (You will be found)
    You will be found (You will be found)
    You will be found
    Out of the shadows
    The morning is breaking
    And all is new, all is new
    It's filling up the empty
    And suddenly I see that
    All is new, all is new
    You are not alone
    You are not alone
    You are not alone
    You are not alone
    You are not alone (You are not alone)
    You are not alone (You are not alone)
    You are not
    You are not alone (You are not alone)
    Even when the dark comes crashin' through
    When you need someone to carry you
    When you're broken on the ground
    You will be found!
    So when the sun comes streaming in
    'Cause you'll reach up and you'll rise again
    If you only look around
    You will be found
    Even when the dark comes crashin' through
    You will be found
    When you need someone to carry you
    You will be found
    You will be found
    You will be found

  • October 17, 2019 2:38 PM | Lance Strate (Administrator)

    THE GREAT EXTINCTION

    Yom Kippur, 5780

    Rabbi Barry L. Schwartz


    On May 6 of this year the New York Times published a photo that broke my heart. It was a picture of a magnificent olive ridley sea turtle washed up on an Indian beach. The turtle is dead, strangled by the fishing rope still looped around its neck.

    I wondered why I had such a strong reaction. I thought it was tied to the fact that just four months earlier I had the unforgettable opportunity to swim with these glorious, peaceful animals in the Galapagos Islands.

    Then one week later Magaret Renkl, a contributing columnist to the Times, captured in stark prose our shared reaction to the striking image:

    That photo undid me. All week long I found myself coming back to it until I had it committed to memory, the shapes and the colors…. I kept being struck anew by the sorrow of that one lost creature, that one preventable tragedy. The turtle’s great head is bowed, resting on the sand. Its eyes are closed; its ancient face is drawn back in a mask of grief. The turtle’s whole body signals resignation, surrender. In the background, [people] play in the surf.

    Renkl goes on to say, “If the photo is traumatizing, the story is worse.” The Times article that accompanied the photo was about the unprecedented assault on biodiversity across our planet. Renkl entitled her own piece, “Surviving Despair in the Great Extinction”.  The tag line underneath it read, “One million species of plants and animals are heading toward annihilation, and it’s our fault. How can we possibly live with that truth?”

    Yes, the report, a 1500 page study by the UN, speaks about the coming extinction of one million species. Think about that. As Renkl writes, “That’s every individual creature in a species—times one million. We can’t possibly conceive of such a thing. We can hold in mind… the image of a single animal who died a terrible death. Devastation on this scale is beyond the reach of imagination. How could we hold in mind a destruction so vast it would take not just one sea turtle but all that animal’s kind, as well as the kind of 999,999 other species?”

    That’s what makes the scourge of eco-destruction and global warming so hard to comprehend. The scale is so epic in size and years that we can’t really see what is going on. It’s a nightmare unfolding in slow motion.  By the time we awake the damage is done and it is vast. And it is not us, but our children, and our children’s children who will suffer the most.

    Those who know me know that I have been a passionate environmentalist since I was a kid. Growing up in the beautiful Hudson River Valley made an impression on me. Visiting so many of our great National Parks with my family made an impression on me. Seeing my father leave his secure teaching position to join a cutting edge environmental education project in the 70s made an impression on me.  Working with colleagues to help found Shomrei Adamah, the first Jewish environmental organization, made an impression on me. The good fortune of hiking many of the great walks of the world on six of seven continents made an impression on me. How can I not talk about this report of the looming Great Extinction?

    It’s a terrible term, The Great Extinction. Extinction is forever. There is no turning back. There is no do-over; no second chance.  Once a species is gone the world is permanently diminished. That color of the bio-diversity rainbow is no more. The Great Extinction, the great die-off has already begun. The only question is whether we can slow it down.

    Permit me to inundate you with just some of the facts and figures from the UN report:

    The loss of species is now happening tens to hundreds of times as fast as the average rate over the past ten million years. Extinction has always happened but now is accelerating out of control.  1 million of the 8 million known species could disappear within decades, not centuries.

    The world population of 7 billion has “severely altered” 75% of the land environment and 66% of the marine environment.  Human activity has depleted the average abundance of native species by a fifth, putting at extinction risk a third of all marine mammals, a third of all reef corals, and 40% of all amphibians.  The alarming decline of bees and other insects, which pollinate ¾ of the world’s crops, could result in a half trillion dollars worth of damage.  

    The heightened destruction of coastal habitats due to floods and hurricanes associated with global warming, which we see on TV so often now, puts as many as 300 million people worldwide at risk.

    Robert Watson, one of the report’s lead authors, emphasized that drastic environmental action is not just about protecting animals; it’s about protecting people. “We are eroding the very foundation of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide,” he writes.

    Back to Renki’s haunting question: One million species are heading toward extinction, and it’s our fault. How can we possible live with that truth?

    How can we live with that truth as global citizens, as American citizens, and as American Jews, on this Yom Kippur, when we confess not only our personal sins, but our communal sins?

    Did we not recite al het shehatanu: for the sins we have sinned against You:

     For poisoning the air and polluting land and sea

     For deceiving ourselves and others with half-truths and denials

     For using the sins of others to excuse our own

    How can we live with that truth when our Torah tells us that “the earth is the Lord’s” and we are here “to till it and tend it.”?

    How can we live with that truth when our Talmud teaches us that “just as my ancestors planted for me, so I will plant for my children”?

    It’s important to note that all the scientists involved in the report argue that only transformative change will make a difference. Only a global “Green New Deal, if you will, a vast, multilateral agreement. Anything else, they say, is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

    So on this Yom Kippur, I am going to add to our list of “al hets”—for the sins we have sinned against You:

    For pulling out of the Paris global climate accords.

    For turning back the clock on automobile emission standards and fossil fuel industry regulation.

    For downsizing the precious lands we have set aside for preservation.

    On this Yom Kippur forgive us:

    For thinking nationalistically rather than globally.

    For building walls rather than bridges.

    For thinking about today at the expense of tomorrow.

    Is it too much to demand from our political leaders that a responsible Green New Deal is an ecological and economic imperative for this nation and for the world?

    Is it too much to ask that the United States turn from protectionist and obstructionist policies and become the world leader in energy conservation and innovation?

    Is it too much to hope that as we enter the third decade of the 21st century we finally awake to the perilous future of our planet?

    I close, as I opened, with another picture that broke my heart and those of people around the world. In 2007 photo-journalist Brent Stirton was in Virunga National Park, along the border of the Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. The Virunga Mountain range is the last remaining habitat of the magnificent mountain gorilla. Stirton captured the ghastly image of a funeral procession for seven of these animals, murdered by poachersthe most unforgettable image of tearful park rangers bearing the body of Senkwekue, the massive male silverback who had tried in vain to protect his family.

    There are only some 800 mountain gorillas left in the world today. That is actually a significant improvementwhen Diane Fossey worked with them in the 70s and 80s they were less than 300. But of course, one virus or another civil war could wipe them out in a flash. Males take 15 years to maturity; females 10 years, and a single baby is born to a mother once every 4 to 8 years.

    The mountain gorilla has never successfully been kept in captivitywhat you may have seen in a zoo is a western lowland relative.  The mountain gorilla is our closest primate relative, sharing 98.6 percent of our genome. Not surprisingly, their intelligence is surpassed only by our species, sometimes.

    The mountain gorilla remains on the list of critically endangered species. What a loss to the world if they become extinct.

    This summer Debby and I trekked through the Virunga mountains of Uganda and had one unforgettable hour to quietly observe these fierce looking but peace-loving, family oriented, vegetarian eating, so human-like primates.

    What a loss to the world if we lose these gentle giants of the jungle, and those gentle giants of the sea, and all those creatures, great and small, all those wild things wise and wonderful, all those beings bright and beautiful that share the planet with us.

    What a loss to the world if my children, and their children, will visit the Galapagos devoid of those turtles in the ocean and those tortoises on land, never mind the marine iguanas and the blue-footed boobies.

    What a loss if they will trek to Africa devoid of those gorillas in the mist, never mind the black rhinos and Rothschild giraffes

    An African proverb states: Let us think of our world not so much as inherited from our ancestors but as borrowed from our children.

    Amen to that. Amen.     


  • October 03, 2019 9:08 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    This Week at Adas Emuno

    October 3, 2019

       After a beautiful beginning to the New Year, it's non-stop at Adas Emuno!

       Several people have already asked to see my Rosh Hashanah Morning sermon, and you can do that by clicking this link: https://adasemuno.org/page-18091/7915250.

       It's worth spending some time looking around our newly designed website so nicely put together by Lance Strate.

       "An Essential Jewish Vocabulary, Part II-Yom Kippur" is our topic at our Shabbat Evening Service (7:30 PM), which also includes the distinctive prayers and melodies of Shabbat Shuva -the "Shabbat of Return" that takes place during the High Holidays.

      Turning Point #5, "Give Us a King" at our Shabbat Morning Torah Study (10:00 AM) could not be more relevant, as we study about the Bible's warning of the abuse of power by elected leaders!

       Of course Yom Kippur is on Tuesday evening and Wednesday, but make sure your calendar is also marked for our Sukkot "Pizza-in-the-Hut" and Folk Singing Celebration on Sunday the 13th (5:00 PM), with our Shabbat/Simchat Torah Celebration on Friday the 18th (7:30 PM).

                                                        Shabbat Shalom and Shanah Tovah,
                                                        Rabbi Schwartz

  • October 02, 2019 5:01 PM | Lance Strate (Administrator)

    WALKING TOGETHER

    Rosh Hashanah, 5780

    Rabbi Barry L. Schwartz


    On Wednesday morning, July 10 of this past summer, I came face to face with Lucy.

    I was all alone on the bottom floor of the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, during a long layover in transit from our trip to Uganda. Despite its title, the Museum in a very modest affair, with the exception of that bottom floor. It must have been a slow day.

    There she was. Lucy, perhaps the most famous hominid fossilized skeleton of all time.  Lucy, the so called “missing link” in the evolutionary chain from primate to human. Lucy, 3½ feet tall, 3.2 million years old. The first species to walk upright. Small brain: about 65 pounds, with a remarkable 40% of her bones still intact. Discovered in northern Ethiopia in 1974 by paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson. Donald celebrated with his team the night of the discovery by playing, loudly and repeatedly, the Beatles “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”. Donald became famous; Lucy became world famous.

    It was a bit surreal, just Lucy (in a protective glass case of course) and mebut it was awesome. I doubt Lucy had ever met a rabbi. She didn’t know that as a kid I remember her discovery and loved reading all about human origins.  And she didn’t know what would happen just two years after her discovery.

    In nearby Tanzania Andrew Hill was clowning around with his colleagues when he slipped and fell into a pile of… elephant dung. As he got up he thought he saw something. Right away he went to get Mary, his boss. That would be Mary Leakey, wife of famed paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey, and an expert in her own right. What they were looking at was not bones, but what appeared to be a fossilized footprint in the volcanic ash.

    Then they saw another one, by its side. Two sets of footprints. One bigger than the otherfrom a considerably taller and heavier upright walking individual. Possiblya male and female walking side by side.

    Then Mary Leakey noticed something else. There were not two sets of prints, but three. She had initially missed that fact for a very good reason. The third set of footprints was actually within the largest. They were very small and feint. Yes, quite possibly a child, literally walking in its father’s footsteps. Quite possibly a young child “trying on” their parent’s footprints, as children are still want to do on a walk along the beach. In sum, quite possible a family walking together.

    Tests later revealed that the footprints found by Hill and Leakey were 3.7 million years oldfrom the dawn of near human existence. In fact, from the age of Lucy. The footprints became known to the world as the Laetoli footprints, after the nearby gorge. Lucy and the Laetoli footprints rewrote the book on human origins. Now we had the evidence.  First our ancient ancestors walked on two feet. Then their brains expanded. Then we became recognizably human. 

    But what still gets me after all these years is thisa family walking together.

    The notion that families belong together is not a uniquely human idea; after all, it is widely observed in the animal kingdom. But it is a quintessentially human idea, because human children need parents for such a long time.

    You may have observed that human children mature slowly. Very slowly. They do not generally leave the nest for some 18 years. Or more… Sometimes they come back to the nest. They often ask for money. They ask to remain on your cell phone plan. And on your EZ-Pass. And of course, they make regular visits, so you can do their laundry.

    All kidding aside, it is as a family that we live together and walk together and face life together. Literally and figuratively we walk together.  Often side by side. Sometimes in each other’s steps. But hopefully, together, in mutual support.

    This very idea is indeed embedded in the portion of Torah we read this morning. You might have missed it in the harrowing story of the binding of Isaac. But when Isaac asks, “Where is the sheep for the burnt offering?” and Abraham replies, “God will see to the sheep for the offering, my son,” the Torah then says, va’yelchu shnaihem yachdav—“And the two of them walked on together” (Gen.22:8).

    A father and son are in a fraught relationship. They face an uncertain future. But at least for this moment they are walking together.

    I think this is why so many of us were so disturbed at the images of parents being separated from their children at the southern border of our country this past year. It just goes against something so deep; so primal in our humanity. It is not who we are as a country. It is not who we are as human beings with some sense of compassion.

    I don’t have to tell you that as Jews what we witnessed was all the more anguishing. We shudder when we see families separated. When we see crying children and despondent parents. We have been migrants more times in our collective history than we can remember. We have been refugees at “Do Not Enter” crossings time and again. Jewish refugee children were blocked from entering this country in the lifetime of some of our members here today.

    Though our government’s policy of family separation officially ended the summer before last… that is not the end of the story. Not all of the separated children been reunited with their parents. This past June the situation entered the news again when a group of lawyers who visited a Texas detention center housing migrant youth were so appalled by what they sawtoddlers without diapers, children sleeping on the floor, older children in charge of younger ones, flu outbreaks, that they alerted the media. The UN Commissioner for Human Rights said on July 8 that she was “deeply shocked” by the conditions facing these children.

    Whatever your political affiliation, is this acceptable? Whatever your take on immigration reform, is this who we are?   We want to avert our eyes. That’s what was once done to us.

     I can imagine that our African American neighbors also understand this. Part of what slavery meant in this country is that children belonged to their masters, not their parents. In 1860, one out of every ten children in America fit that category.

    I can imagine that our Native American neighbors also understand this. For decades Native American children were routinely separated from their parents and sent to boarding schools where they were supposed to learn how to become “Americans”.

    I can imagine that immigrant children of every race and ethnic group also understand this. If they were suspected of having tuberculosis or eye disease or even mental retardation they were often separated right at Ellis Island.

    We have averted our eyes too many times. Isaiah reminds us: Don’t look away! Raise your voice, like a shofar!

    On this High Holy Day, I’d like to make a final point about families walking together. Tolstoy famously said that while happy families are alike, unhappy families are unhappy each in their own way. The egregious violation of family unity by our own government calls for condemnation, but on this day let us also think about what is causing stress and separation in our own families? What is driving us apart? How can we pull together?

    In that list of personal failures that we recite on Yom Kippur in the Al Het prayer we say:

    We sin against You, O god, when we sin against ourselves.

    For condemning in our children the faults we tolerate in ourselves,

    And for condemning in our parents the faults we tolerate in ourselves.

    And later we say:

    For withholding love to control those we claim to love,

    And shunting aside those whose youth or age disturbs us.

    How can we be more forgiving of our children and our parents?

    How can we be more unconditionally loving?

    I’ll always remember a trip that we took to Cape May when our eldest, Nadav, now all grown up and married, was just a little boy. We were on the beach, with Nadav and Talia in tow. Noam had not even been born yet. We’re walking along when Nadav calls out, “Look, Abba, I’m walking in your steps.” Debby saw me turn around and then get teary eyed. “What’s the matter,” she said. “Let me tell you a story about the Laetoli footprints,” I said.

    As parents we know that our children are always watching us, learning from us, and walking with us. We would do well to remember that. Horah (parent), morah (teacher), and Torah are all from the same root in Hebrew. We parents are all teachers, role models whether we like it or not, the link between the generations past and the future whether we know it or not.

     The prophet Malachi said that the great day of Elijah, the herald of the messiah, will come when the hearts of children and turned to parents, and the hearts of parents are turned to children.

    May that great day of Elijah come.

    May it come at least a little closer speedily and in our day.

    May we walk together, arm in arm, toward a brighter future.



Cantorial Soloist

Suzy Auriel Merritt

Religious School Director

Annette De Marco

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