The Film 2012 and The End of The World

This past weekend a new movie came out, 2012, in which human civilization will comes to an end on December 21st, the winter solstice, in the year 2012. The film is based on an interpretation of the ancient Mayan Long Calendar. The Mayan civilization, an advanced culture in what is now Mexico, was the only group in the Americas to develop writing before the arrival of Columbus.

The Mayan Long Calendar is divided into cycles of about 400 years. We are currently in cycle number 13, which is scheduled to end on December 21st, 2012. Scholars say that according to traditional Mayan beliefs, a new cycle will simply begin, no harm done. But the filmmakers have taken creative liberties, and perhaps because it is the 13th Mayan cycle, they created the idea that the world would come to an end on 12/21/12.

The filmmakers of 2012 are not the only ones who suggest that civilization may come crashing down on a certain date. When the new millennium began in the year 2000, there was talk of possible disruption and chaos. As it turned out, the biggest problem we faced was a computer error, the Y2K bug. And even that problem was fixed in time.

There have always been people, “prophets,” who predict a specific day when human civilization will come crashing down. Often predictions about the end are religious in nature. The general belief is that our corrupt human society will be destroyed and replaced by the perfect and just Kingdom of God.

Traditionally, Judaism offers its own series of beliefs about the end of civilization. Some Jews affirm that the messiah, from the line of King David, will come, ushering in a period of heaven on earth. The messiah will reestablish the Kingdom of Israel and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. All Jews will return to Israel to live in freedom and peace. Traditional Judaism also teaches that there will be a resurrection, so that ever Jew who has ever lived will be reborn and travel to the Holy Land.

Reform Judaism has generally rejected the idea of the messiah as a person and the belief in a future resurrection. Instead many Reform Jews speak about a messianic age. It is our task to participate in tikkun olam, repair of the world, and to fix all that is wrong with our planet and our society. We must create a heaven on earth, a messianic age for all people.

While traditional Judaism states that God will bring our human civilization to an end, today there are other theories about the end of time provided by modern science. Our universe began with the Big Bang, about 14 billion years ago. Some scientists believe the universe will keep expanding forever, as it has ever since the Big Bang. Others believe in a theory called The Big Crunch.

Eventually the universe will stop expanding and start contracting, until all matter is once again crammed into an infinitely small point. Sounds painful. The good news is that none of us will be around for that, which if it happens, will place billions of years from now.

While the Big Crunch may be in store for the distant future, I do not believe that we are headed for a 2012-like event, where our society will suddenly come crashing down due to natural disaster or Divine will. In the Biblical story of the Flood, God destroyed all living things except for Noah, his family and two of each animal. After the Flood, God placed a rainbow in the sky as a sign of God’s promise never again to eliminate all life on earth.

Yet we human beings are always on the verge of destroying ourselves. Last century, there was the immanent threat of global nuclear war. There were genocides, wars, and a Holocaust, killing hundreds of millions in total. Today, global warming, a human creation, causes sea levels to rise and could create another Noah-like flood. I do not think we need to worry about prophecies, ancient calendars, or a Big Crunch. But we do have a lot of work to do to save our planet and to improve our world, so that the human race can continue to live and to flourish.

The Diva of Din and Self-Awareness

Florence Foster Jenkins was an operatic singer who performed in New York City for decades, singing her last show at Carnegie Hall in 1944. Mrs. Jenkins portrayed herself as a legitimate opera singer yet she had little sense of pitch and could not sustain a note. People came to her concerts not to appreciate her music, but to laugh at her. They called her “The Diva of Din.”

What struck me about Mrs. Jenkins was her seeming complete lack of shame and embarrassment even when people laughed directly at her. Perhaps Florence Jenkins knew that she could not sing, but had found a way to make a living and to perform, so she went with it. Or maybe Jenkins had very little self-awareness, and simply did not realize how she sounded to others.

In the Bible, King David acted based purely on passion and emotion. David lusted after Bathsheba, a married woman. He slept with her, sent her husband out at the front of the battlefield where he died, and then moved her into the royal palace. I wonder how David could justify his actions to himself. More than likely he simply did not think about the moral and ethical sides of his decisions at all.

Self-awareness for King David came in the form of a parable from a prophet. Nathan tells the king a story about a rich man with great herds and flocks, and a poor man with one small lamb. A guest came to visit the rich man for dinner. Instead of taking a lamb from his own large flock, the rich man took the poor man’s only lamb and prepared it as the meal. Upon hearing this story, David flew into a rage against the rich man, and demanded to know who it was. The prophet Nathan replied: atah haish, you are that man. You had all the riches of Israel, and yet took another man’s wife for yourself.

The prophet Nathan reminds us that sometimes we need other people to help guide us towards self-awareness. Some people are blessed with the ability to truly see themselves as they are. But most of us are like King David, or Florence Foster Jenkins, acting without self-awareness or singing off key to a laughing audience. We need a Nathan to tell us the truth about ourselves.

To his credit, King David accepted and listened to the words of the Prophet Nathan and he admitted his guilt before God. Since self-awareness often does not come from ourselves, our task is to try to be open to the input of others. Pride, ego, insecurity, these all tempt us to ignore the advice of others and block our paths to self-awareness. Yet if we can find a way to listen when loved ones are trying to make us aware of our shortcomings, we have the potential to go in new directions in our lives.

The people who laughed at the opera singer Florence Foster Jenkins only caused harm. But the prophet Nathan reproved King David with love and kindness. In our lives, if we can offer advice and criticism from a place of genuine concern, we will surely find that others are more likely to hear us. And if we can truly try to listen to the criticism of others, even if it is not offered with perfect love, we have the potential to learn and to grow.

For more on Florence Foster Jenkins and to listen to a clip of a performance: CLICK HERE

The Religious and Secular Conflict in Israel

The current religious/secular divide in the State of Israel in part came about as a result of secular Jews ignoring their religious past. The Jews who came to Palestine in the late 19th Century were determined to leave behind their history. They arrived from Eastern Europe, where the Jews lived in ghettos, could not own land, and were beholden to Christian rulers. These Israelis wanted to create new Jews, men and women who were farmers and made the desert bloom. They saw the Jews of Europe as weak and timid. An Israeli would be strong, tan and carry a gun.

The new Jew, the sabra, would also have no need for an outdated religion, a Judaism that taught faith in God rather than fighting for yourself. Traditionally, Judaism taught that a messiah would come and lead us back to Israel, and we had to wait for God to bring us back to the Promised Land. The sabras refused to wait. They rejected the religion of their ancestors, which seemed to only promote weakness and faith rather than self-determination.

By ignoring Judaism, the early settlers of Israel planted the seeds of the religious/secular divide that exists in Israel to this day. As an Israeli, you have two choices, Orthodox or secular. Each group looks upon the other with disdain. The religious/secular conflict in Israel plays itself out in strange ways. Occasionally stones are thrown at cars that drive on Shabbat through Meah Shearim, the Ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem. The government of Israel also spends millions of shekels each year to allow adult men to study Judaism in a yeshiva rather than work and support their families. These payments are made to secure the votes of the ultra-orthodox politicians.

Religiously, Israel could grow and evolve if they are willing to learn from the past rather than reject it. While secular Israelis find no use for Judaism, Reform Jews realize that Judaism must change, it must be Reformed, to make it work in our 21st Century lives. That is why Reform Judaism practices equality of men and women, and teaches that we can dress and act like Americans, and yet still practice Shabbat and the Jewish holidays as loyal Jews. Reform Judaism exists in Israel and is growing, although Reform congregations represent only a small fraction of synagogues in the Jewish State.

When starting something new, it is easy to want to be rid of the past completely. The sabras wanted to be rid of the old Judaism rather than adapt and learn from it. Yet we benefit from learning about the past, and the traditions, customs and rituals of those who came before us. My hope is that over time, Israelis will begin to explore Judaism, so that they need not reject our religion, but rather find a way of incorporating a modern Judaism into their lives.

An Extinct Trout Stream

With Fall upon us, my fishing season is nearing its end as the temperature continues to drop. On a recent fishing trip in October, I felt the chill of the water on my hands and the brisk air in my lungs. I was reminded of a much earlier fly fishing outing I took in late March. It was the first nice sunny day of the impending Spring. I was desperate to be out on the water after not having touched my fly rod in months.

I traveled to a local stream where I had success in the past. It is a well-known river that is heavily fished and each year the state stocks the stream with trout in the Spring and the Fall. Wading waist deep in the water, with the air temperature in the fifties and in the shade of the trees from the shore, I was freezing. But my desire to fish overcame my frigid bones, and I began to cast my fly across the water.

A half-hour later, I had not seen a single rise on a pool that had in the past been filled with trout. I walked ashore, and hiked up to a bridge overlooking the pool, to discover that the stream was empty. Thinking perhaps that maybe the trout had migrated elsewhere, I travelled up and down the river, to other pools, and did not see a single fish anywhere.

I had arrived at this stream too early in the season, before it had been stocked. Then I realized what that meant: out of the hundreds of trout from last year that had been put in the stream, not a single one had survived over the hot summer. I was looking at an extinct trout stream, a river could not support fish year round. The water was pure and cold, the insects were plentiful; it was good trout habitat. I had not heard of a spill or disease in the area.

I assumed one of two possibilities; the water level simply got too low in the summer to support trout or the river was over fished. I suspect it was the latter. There are simply too many people who know about this stream and keep the fish that they catch. This river was not a renewable resource; each year it died and could only be reborn with a full stocking of new trout.

In the Bible, the Garden of Eden was a paradise, a place where God took care of Adam and Eve and provided for their every need. Yet, Adam and Eve had a responsibility to care for the garden as well. The Bible says that Adam was placed in the Garden of Eden to till and to tend it. Adam could eat from the trees of the garden to satisfy his basic needs.

Yet, Adam was also required to tend to the land, to care for it, and ensure that it remained healthy and fertile. The Hebrew word that means, “to tend,” shamor, also means, “to protect.” Adam, and all of the generations that follow him, are obligated to protect the earth. We can harvest the field and fish the streams, but we also must ensure that the plants and the trout will live on.

In the months since that March fishing trip, I have fished dozens of times on many rivers, streams and lakes but I have not returned to that first river. I just cannot see myself participating in emptying the trout from a stream. My first fishing trip in March motivated me to search for other rivers in my area, streams where the fish live year round. I even managed to find places where the trout spawn and reproduce each season.

A brown trout, caught and released in a year-round trout stream

I now fish streams where the trout live all year long, because when I catch a fish and release him, I know that he will not face an immanent end in a few months. Rather my fish could swim on for years and years, growing large and fat on the insects of a healthy and ever-flowing river.

Visiting a Soup Kitchen

The day after Yom Kippur, I received a phone call from one of my congregants who invited me to the Dorothy Day Hospitality House, the soup kitchen in Danbury, CT. On Yom Kippur, one of my sermons was about the importance of being an ethical Jew as well as a religious one. Near the end of that sermon, I made my own personal Yom Kippur confession: I had given to charity, but I had not visited the Dorothy Day House or held the hand of a person in need. The very next day, I got that call from the congregant, inviting me to visit Dorothy Day, and to spend an afternoon with the homeless and the hungry.

I arrived at the Dorothy Day Hospitality House at 2 in the afternoon. Dorothy Day is literally a house, a small tudor, on a rundown block in Danbury. Inside I saw two small rooms, with tables seating perhaps 30 or 40 and an open kitchen. There were half a dozen volunteers scurrying around, serving plates of salad, bowls of tomato soup and spaghetti and meatballs.

The congregant who invited me came over and warmly shook my hand. He told me that the first Thursday of the month he and his family come to prepare and serve a meal and then clean up. The Dorothy Day House is open 365 days a year and everyday they serve around 100 meals. Some of the people who come are homeless, others are the working poor and many are mentally ill. Yet everyday they can count on a good meal thanks to the kindness of churches, groups and members of my synagogue.

My congregant told me that just as important as providing food for the needy is offering them hospitality. He said that some of the volunteers on the other shifts can be unkind or short with the people who come for a meal. This defeats one of the purposes of Dorothy Day, which is to remind the homeless that they are people too and deserve a few moments of kindness in their otherwise difficult lives.

The people who come to Dorothy Day are referred to as guests. They sit down and are served as if at a restaurant. The volunteers are their waiters. I imagine that for a homeless or mentally ill person who is so often treated poorly in society, to have a place where they are served and called guests makes them feel welcomed and loved.

I took a tray of deserts and headed to each table to offer them to the guests. Everyone was very polite and said thank you. Some people wanted a different desert than what I had, so I went back to look. There were Spanish speakers who knew little English.

As I offered the desert tray to one woman, we struck up a conversation. Terry was there with her grown adult daughter. She asked me what I did for a living and I told her, after a moment of reticence, that I was a rabbi. Terry got excited and started asking me about what I do, and how long I had to study to become a rabbi. She smiled and she thanked me for being there. She said that it was so great to see a member of the clergy reaching out and caring for people in need. I smiled and thanked her.

When I left Dorothy Day House on Thursday I felt very good about my visit. I was not alone in that feeling. When I told one of my congregants what a mitzvah (good deed) it is to serve meals to the homeless, she said to me: “I do it because it makes me feel so good.”

Which Bread Do I Cast for My Sins?

Every year on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, Jews travel to a lake, stream or the ocean and cast into the water. It is not a worm or fishing fly that we send into the stream; instead we cast our sins into the water during the ritual of tashlich.

The word tashlich means “to cast out.” Each person throws breadcrumbs into the water, representing our wrongdoings. By casting the crumbs, we symbolically rid ourselves of the errors of the past and we resolve to be better in the year to come.

In honor of the Jewish New Year of 5770, I would like to republish an email that I received from many of my congregants and friends of The Fly Fishing Rabbi blog. It answers the question: Which bread do I cast for my sins?

My two favorites from below:

“For bad jokes and puns: Corn Bread.” (Definitely applies to rabbis!)

“For raising your voice too often: challah.”

What other breads and sins would you add to this list? Please comment on this blog post with your ideas!

My best wishes for happy and healthy 5770.

The Fly Fishing Rabbi

Which Bread do I cast for my sins?

For ordinary sins: White Bread

For particularly dark sins: Pumpernickel

For complex sins: Pretzels

For tasteless sins: Rice Cakes

For sins of indecision: Waffles

For sins committed in haste: Matzah

For substance abuse: Stoned Wheat

For petty larceny: Stollen

For ill-temperedness: Sourdough

For silliness: Nut Bread

For excessive irony: Rye Bread

For telling bad jokes and puns: Corn Bread

For war-mongering: Kaiser Rolls

For dressing immodestly: Tarts

For causing injury to others: Tortes

For abrasiveness: Grits

For over-eating: Stuffing

For pride and egotism: Puff Pastry

For raising your voice too often: Challah