An Urgent Prayer for the Protection of Human Life - April 2024

composed by Rabbi Andy Vogel & Rabbi Seth Goldstein

April 2024

Download a PDF by clicking here.

(We encourage you to use the words of this prayer as you see fit; no attribution is needed.)

Thanksgiving Dvar Torah 2023: "A Thanksgiving of 'Both / And'?"

A version of this Dvar Torah was delivered by Rabbi Vogel at this year's Brookline Interfaith Clergy Thanksgiving Service, led by clergy from the Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Unitarian faith communities in Brookline, on Sunday, November 18, 2023, at First Parish in Brookline.To watch a recording of the entire service, click here.]

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As an American Jew, I have always loved the American Thanksgiving holiday; in many ways, the practice of Thanksgiving has always seemed very consistent with Jewish values. Gratitude, after all, is a central teaching of Judaism, just as it is in all other religions. We are instructed by Jewish law to say “thank you” to God 100 times day, for gifts large and small, to recite 100 prayers of gratitude every single day, to cultivate a sense of gratitude in our lives. And the act of sitting around the Thanksgiving table, to retell the America sacred myth of the Pilgrims and Native Americans giving thanks for their first harvest, which was inspired by their reading of the Hebrew Bible, has also always felt to me to be a kind of American Passover Seder that can unite us as Americans beyond many boundaries.

This year, however, coming to Thanksgiving presents us with some serious emotional challenges. The world is not right, and we are not right. This past month has shaken us to our core. The events in the Holy Land, starting on October 7, have horrified us, brought us tremendous grief, and reminded us how brutal human beings can be. There has been so much loss, terrible violence, fear, and death. Here, for many of us, it has been hard to find peace within, and hard to sleep. Some Jews have said they do not feel safe walking around Brookline, and I have heard similar fears expressed by some Brookline Muslims. This is not the way things should be at Thanksgiving.

So, we might wonder this Thanksgiving: How can we give thanks? How can we sit around our tables, with plates filled with good food, knowing of all the suffering, and feeling our grief and the pain of people we care about, in places of the world that are both near and far to us, and which are so close to our hearts? How can we come to Thanksgiving and speak of the fullness of our hearts, the fullness of abundance, when the world is so shattered, when there is so much division in our world, when there is so much anger and violence that people are directing at each other, when there is so much darkness?

What kind of Thanksgiving can there be in this moment? How can we sit around our tables Thursday night?

I look to Jewish teachings for wisdom. In the traditional Jewish prayerbook, each night, when the sky grows dark and evening comes, every single night of the year (including this coming Thursday night), Jews recite a prayer for the evening, called “Ma’ariv Aravim,” and it has some remarkable lines in it:

בּוֹרֵא יוֹם וָלָֽיְלָה גּוֹלֵל אוֹר מִפְּ֒נֵי חֽשֶׁךְ וְחֽשֶׁךְ מִפְּ֒נֵי אוֹר
וּמַעֲבִיר יוֹם וּמֵבִיא לָֽיְלָה

“God, You create day and night, You roll light away from darkness, and darkness from light, And you cause day to pass, and You bring on the night.”

And the rabbis looked at the words, and they asked: “If this is a nighttime prayer, why does it talk so much about daytime and light? We understand why the prayer praises God for creating the darkness and bringing the night, but why does this prayer keep referring to daytime, too? Morning is going to arrive in just a few hours – shouldn’t that be the time to talk about morning?”

The answer that the Talmud provides is this: that, truly, there is no place or time in which nighttime exists when daytime, too, does not simultaneously exist. Here in Boston, night may be falling, but in some place, somewhere, a place that might be beyond my awareness, it is certainly daytime there. My own experience is of nighttime – I see the sun setting, I feel the air growing cold, darkness shrouds everything that I can see – but my own experience is not the totality of everything! There is another reality that other people are living beyond me, and it is called “day.”

In that sense, the prayer takes a “both / and” approach to nighttime – thanking God for both the night, and the day, all at once.

I am invited to consider my reality, and say thank you for it, and also to bring into my that awareness which is beyond my reality, and to say thank you for it, too. The deepest gratitude is both for that which I have, and that which I do not have, but which is real to someone else. For both that which I know, and that which I do not know, but which someone else would know, because they are by definition different from me. For my night, and for their day. Even though these two things seem to be opposite, they are held together, they are seen and considered in my mind simultaneously.

“Both / and.” That’s a deep religious view of gratitude. To see the inter-connectedness of everything, even when one person sees black (night) and another person sees white (day), and to hold them in my mind and my heart together.

So, this year I am wondering: can we make this a Thanksgiving of “Both / And”?

A Thanksgiving for both that which we have and of which we are aware, and that is beyond our grasp, beyond our awareness?

A Thanksgiving for both what I have, and for what you have?

A Thanksgiving for both my identity, and for your identity? For both my narrative and your narrative?

A Thanksgiving of gratitude for both my friends and family, the people I love and know and hold and hug -- and for the people who are so different from me, the people sitting at other Thanksgiving tables, who perhaps speak different languages, have different colored skin from my own, practice different religious traditions, who have their own stories and their own ways of living their lives?

A Thanksgiving about both my abundance, and about your abundance,

which also has space for us to acknowledge both my suffering and pain and grief, and your suffering and pain and grief?

A Thanksgiving that holds together all the complexity of our world, all the humans whose claims and truths, on the surface, might seem to negate one another, but which actually exist side by side, one with the other, just like night exists simultaneous with day?

Can we, this year, hold in our hearts that Jewish exists with Muslim, that Christian exists with Unitarian, that Asian exists with African, exists with white exists with black, with brown, with male and female and trans, and could we all see God’s great Creation all one and integrated and whole and diverse and varied all at once, so that we could give thanks in our hearts, not just for ourselves and what we are, but for all of God’s Universe, in all its spectacular unbelievable sparkling and multiple differentiated Oneness? Could we do that?

Could this be that Thanksgiving? Please God, let us have a Thanksgiving of “Both / And” this year, now, here, in this church, at our synagogues and our mosques, in our homes, and at our tables, in our town, and in our hearts. Please God let it be so. Let this be the year of Both / And.

Amen.

Our whole staff at Sinai Brookline joins me in wishing you a happy Thanksgiving holiday.

B'shalom,

Rabbi Andy Vogel

Thanksgiving 2023 / 5784

How to Support Israel - October 8, 2023

The Israeli Reform Movement (IMPJ, Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism), shared this information about their important work following the massive surprise attack:

"We would be grateful for your support

"In response to the military and human emergency in Israel the Israel Reform Movement, its Rabbis, congregations and volunteers are gearing up to help the people directly impacted in the Shaar Ha Negev (Gaza Envelope) region and throughout Israel’s center and south in coping with the crises.

Our humanitarian fund, Keren b’ Kavod has begun mapping needs with authorities and partner NGO and plans to bring volunteers and supplies directly to settlements and shelters under fire.

Congregations throughout Israel are offering members homes and their buildings to provide temporary housing as well as pastoral counselling by our Rabbis to those in need.

Our group home for adults with mental disabilities in Modiin, Bayit B’Kehillah has very specific needs for activities and professional services to help the residents deal with the special challenge. In particular our Sha’ar Ha Negev congregation led by Rabbi Yael Vorgan is in need of assistance to help residents who are in trauma in so many respects."

We will be grateful for your donations to help the IMPJ provide the needed assistance immediately.

Please donate to the IMPJ by clicking here.

from Rabbi Andy Vogel & Rabbi Talia Stein: Our Hearts Are with Israel today

Message to the Sinai Brookline Community

Saturday evening, October 7, 2023

We awoke this morning to the shocking news about the massive surprise attack on Israel by Hamas, with terrorist infiltrators entering Israeli towns along the Gaza border, thousands of rockets sent by air into Israel, a staggering number of Israelis killed and the hundreds wounded, and dozens of Israelis taken hostage by Hamas. The toll is very high, and today's events are shocking.

Today was the conclusion of Simchat Torah, and this morning’s horror provided a stark contrast to our joyful dancing in the street in Brookline last night to celebrate our people’s life-affirming tradition.

Our hearts are with Israel today. We are filled with grief and mourning for the Israelis killed, and we pray for life and health for all those whose lives are in the balance, and we are especially concerned for those taken hostage. We know that today many Israelis, and we who care for them, are experiencing fear and a sense of danger, and we are praying for strength and for their safety, and for the safety of members of the Israeli Defense Forces fighting to protect them. We are also grieving for the loss of life among many innocent Palestinian civilians.

We were relieved to hear from members of our congregation who are currently traveling in Israel that they are safe, and we have also been in contact with some of Sinai Brookline’s dear friends in Israel, including members and rabbis in the Israeli Reform movement and its synagogues, as well as Rabbi Golan Ben Chorin, who has been teaching our “Building Bridges” program for the past few years, who is safe, and we continue to pray for their protection and well-being. During Shabbat, we were grateful to receive messages of support for the Jewish people from our friends in the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization and the Brookline Clergy Association.

If you, or a loved one, is currently in Israel, and we have not spoken with you, please reach out to one of us by email (rabbivogel@sinaibrookline.org, or rabbistein@sinaibrookline.org), so that we and the Sinai Brookline community can support you.

We pray that that the violence will not expand to other arenas, and that the agenda of extremists who believe they benefit from chaos and hatred will not prevail.

The Sinai Brookline community is holding in our hearts the victims and their families and loved ones, and we pray for the safety of all of the people of Israel.

Rabbi Andy Vogel

Rabbi Talia Stein

High Holy Day sermons 5784 - 2023 - Rabbi Andy Vogel

Rosh Hashanah morning sermon 5784
"Reflections on Returning from Poland"
(23 minutes)
Click here to watch.

Yom Kippur Evening sermon 5784
"on Israel and the Pro-Democracy Movement"
(19 minutes, followed by song:"L'maan Achai V'reyai"- 3 additional minutes)
Click here to watch.

To send feedback or comments, please click here to send an email.

Happy New Year!

My comments at the Chai Celebration, Friday, March 17, 2023

I am deeply grateful for the outpouring of generosity and love that marked the Chai Celebration weekend for me at Temple Sinai, marking my 18+ years (and still counting!) as rabbi of this community.

To summarize, I said: "It’s an extraordinary blessing in my life to be your rabbi for all these years... Now more than ever, we need sacred community. We need each other. ... Tonight, we’re really honoring what we’ve been building, together."

Click here to read the text of my remarks on this wonderful occasion.

Thank you!

Creation! Artwork from our "Journeys" Parent-Child Program, Sunday, October 23, 2022

In our "Journeys" family learning program on Sunday, October 23, 2022, Temple Sinai students in Grades K-6, and their parents, grandparents and caregivers studied the Days of Creation as described in Parashat (the Torah portion of) Bereshit, Genesis chapters 1 & 2. In the first hour of the program, adults studied with one another, while students also studied with their peers; in the 2nd hour of the learning event, parents joined their students and created panels, one for each Day of Creation, to express their awe and wonder at the Creative Power of the Universe. Below are photos of the resulting mural panels, which are currently displayed in our 2nd floor classroom hallway.

Thank you to Rabbi Talia Stein, who leads Journeys each month; Jen Zak, our Director of Education and creative partner with Rabbi Stein, and to all of our amazing Religious School teachers who helped foster such creative expressions from our students and their families! (Click on the photos to enlarge them.)