Hockey and Shabbat: A Match made in Heaven and MJC

I grew up in Michigan and in Michigan we are really big hockey fans.  We love our hockey more than we love many things.  I have often joked that I have two religions: Judaism and Hockey.  Here in New York we are big hockey fans as well.  We have the Rangers and the Islanders to follow and we enjoy their incredible legacies of success.  We also have an incredible group of Jews who truly revel in being Jewish and connecting with other Jews.  I thus saw a natural entry to bring people together.  Early on here I began to hear from countless people that we should play some Hockey.  But we all know how the time gets away from us and we fail to put these projects together.  But this year I said it was now or never, and so we have created the MHL, Midway Hockey League.  Each Shabbat we gather in our parking lot and we set some tables on their sides and we create a street hockey rink.  We have had as many as 10 people playing at once and they range from teens to people with kids in college and beyond.  We have also begun to attract a fan base and they are becoming loyal enough to show up in the heat.
But there is something funny happening.  I am constantly being asked how this is possible.  I am being asked how we can play hockey on Shabbat.  And I want to share not only why it is permissible, but why it is important and crucial to do it.  Shabbat is more than a day to come to shul and communicate with God and our community.  It is more than a dinner of chicken and soup.  It is more than challah and it is more than taking a nap.  Shabbat is a taste of olam haba, the world to come, and it is something that more Jews can see the beauties of.  I realize that it is not a very compelling case for Shabbat to simply sell it as a day in services.  I realize this because it is not what gets people into Shabbat... Shabbat is compelling because it is a day where a person gets the opportunity to look back and look ahead.  It is a day when a person gets to reconnect with people and God. And it is a day when a person gets to stop creating and begin appreciating all that is around us.
The prohibitions of Shabbat are only 50% of the observance of Shabbat.  When a person refrains from doing the prohibited acts of labor they are halfway there, but what of the positive?  What of the pleasure?  To begin lets understand the prohibitions of Shabbat.  There are 39 (or as the mishnah calls it 40 less 1) prohibited acts of labor on Shabbat. Those acts are all derived from the various activities that went into the construction of the mishkan/tabernacle in the wilderness. Those 39 acts of labor are all creative acts.  They are acts that manage to change the world in a way... that bring about something new that might not have existed beforehand.  We refrain from those acts because we need to spend one day content that the world that we inherited is good enough without us adding to it.  We need to accept that our role is to sometimes put our egos to the side and rest knowing the world will keep rotating without our creating new things. Not one of the 39 says hockey is forbidden.  There is no prohibition against physical strain, against shooting a ball on net, against wearing skates or anything else.  There are two issues that are already resolved. One of the acts of labor is to not carry from one domain to another.  From private to public or other combinations.  I could carry my Hockey stick from my house and thus break shabbat.  However, I leave it at the synagogue before shabbat.  But this is a moot point because we live within an eruv in our community and the eruv was a rabbinic method to prevent people from feeling trapped at home on Shabbat and allow for them to carry things out of their houses.  This was extremely important to women who were left at home to care for kids.  Without an eruv they would never leave.  The other legitimate issue about hockey and shabbat is the risk of something needing repair.  We are not allowed to repair things on shabbat and so we should really stay away from doing things that could put us into a situation that would lead us to repair something.  Rollerblades do need maintenance, but you could argue that this is not "fixing" anything at all.  However, this is also a moot point as we do not really permit any types of repairs of our equipment at our games.
People want to paint Shabbat as some ancient archaic practice that chains us to not using modern day conveniences.  I feel bad for those people because they will need to remain on the periphery while those of us in the game of Shabbat will enjoy our relationships with God and our fellow people which we nurture and strengthen on Shabbat.
Our shabbat hockey game has become a social outing for kids and adults alike.  People bring their kids and the kids bring their own skates and sticks and shoot around on an extra net.  The kids visit our nursery school playground and play.  Our adults socialize and cheer us on.  The whole experience really is the ultimate shabbat experience. We might not pray and we might not have challah and wine... But we bring  to life the greatest goal of shabbat: oneg shabbat/sabbath joy.  We end each game by wishing one another a shabbat shalom and mention seeing each other the next shabbat.  This is in an essence the reason why I think we must do this.  I think this is what makes Shabbat here a piece of the world to come, and this is why I think you must come participate.  We meet most shabbats at 3:00pm in our parking lot.  We will not be there this shabbat, July 21 as I am on vacation. We will resume on July 28.

Go Team MJC  

A week of equality

Three things happened this week that make me very optimistic about our world heading into Shabbat.  Every day we watch the news we grow more negative and pessimistic about our world, and yet there are always rays of hope.  My first ray:

http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=271869 

I have a long standing reason that I provide for people when they ask me why I do not move to Israel: there is no job for me there.  To be more accurate, the Conservative Movement in Israel has very little money and as a result many rabbis are not able to make it there.  You might ask why the Orthodox are able to do so much better.  Part of the answer is that they are funded by the government.  Their clergy receive part of their income from the government of Israel.  And this has been forbidden for the non-Orthodox world for many years.  But just this week it was announced that the barrier is beginning to fall, and that non-Orthodox rabbis are beginning to receive rights.  This is not a 100% victory, but it is a step in the right direction.  It is interesting to me that the opposition to this from the Orthodox is filled with words about how this will harm Judaism, and how the non-Orthodox world has created their own religion.  I have long believed that one of the greatest aspects of the Talmud is that it preserves the disputes and does not hide them.  I have long defended the Orthodox philosophy and mode of Judaism as a valid expression of Judaism.  I have done so because I do not believe in a world where only one way can be the right way.  I do not believe that only one stream of Judaism can hold the path to God.  It is entirely plausible for us to be right side by side with people of opposing views and they are correct as well.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/31/us/massachusetts-same-sex-marriage/index.html?iref=allsearch 

The second great accomplishment of the week was a Massachusetts based Federal Court struck down components of the Defense of Marriage Act which denied the rights and privileges of marriage to people of the same gender.  Watching homosexuals and lesbians being denied the same rights as me and my wife has long been a moral stain that I am too aware of in our country. The basic idea of calling a law, the "Defense Of Marriage Act," should make us question what is being done.  A claim that two men creating a lifetime commitment to one another is somehow threatening heterosexual marriage is absurd.  In what way is your marriage threatened?  In what form are you afraid of your way of life? To deny a segment of the population the equal rights of all other people because of the way they are wired, the way they were born, because of their chemistry is discriminatory and does nothing to move our world forward, and everything to move us back.  

http://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/sites/default/files/public/halakhah/teshuvot/2011-2020/same-sex-marriage-and-divorce-appendix.pdf?utm_source=Passed+Teshuvot+Alert&utm_campaign=Convention+2012&utm_medium=email 

The last thing is something that will not be as well known, this week The Conservative Movement approved the ceremonies for marriage/commitment and divorce for homosexuals and lesbians. This brings to a close the process that began in 2007 when our movement began to recognize gay and lesbian rabbis, and to in theory recognize their lifelong commitments to their partners.  We were left without a standard way in which to make and dissolve these unions.  Now we have it.

So what is all of this about.  Last week we began to read the book of במדבר/Numbers.  It begins with a very important census that is divided into all of the tribes which make up the people of Israel.  The people of Israel would not have been the people of Israel without the Danites, without the Benjaminites... They would have been something else.  As Jews we can never allow ourselves to believe that elements of the Jewish community are not in it.  That there are outsiders in our midst.  We cannot discriminate because we are all there, we all are puzzle pieces in the puzzle of Judaism.  The same is true of the United States.  We are not a melting pot of assimilation, we are fruit salad of acculturation and that fruit salad tastes better because all of the flavors put together.  America is not only for heterosexuals, only for men, only for Christians, only for whites... America is for Americans and visitors and immigrants and anybody who loves freedom and values equality for all.  This is not just some lofty goal, it is in a nutshell what makes us exceptional and makes us unique.  I understand that this sounds so idealistic, and a bit ridiculous patriotism, but I truly believe that this is the purpose and the mission of our country and of Judaism and we have lost our ways many times.  This week we took some giant steps back on the path to where we belong.

Shabbat Shalom

Resolution: Years in the making

I have always been a fan of symmetry.  I have always liked stories that stick to a theme and that begin with a presentation of a conflict which is ultimately resolved in the end.  I have always liked this because it is neat and clean and it provides us with a way in which to frame our studies.  But life is seldom this simple.  Life is often complicated and we cannot depend on putting everything back in its place and to have our bookends lineup.  It is for these reasons that I tend to be taken aback by the times when the scenario is neat.  Such is the case I would like to discuss right now.  The story of Ruth.  In order to understand the story of Ruth I would like to first discuss another Biblical story: Judah and Tamar.

A tribute to MCA Adam Youch

This past שבת/shabbat, we read פרשת אחרי מות - קדושים.  I love the two names of this double פרשה/portion: after death and holiness.  If we put the two titles together and add in the next words of the second portion we get אחרי מות קדושים תהיו, after death you shall be holy.  Judaism is not about death, or death being a sanctification.  We are all about life and this world. We believe very deeply in living in this lifetime and making the most of it.  SO then how do I explain those words?  After death, you shall be holy.  It is all about how we respond to death and loss.  It is all about the capability to continue and to sanctify the lives of those who came before us through living lives they too would have been proud of.  We become holy by being the next link in the chain and by keeping the world a beautiful place as it was when our loved ones were here.

I grew up in the 80s and 90s and if I was to create a soundtrack to my life I would have to include the Beastie Boys.  I have always loved their music, and I have always enjoyed their fun lyrics.  Trying to find a way of honoring one of their members who just last Friday lost his battle with cancer is not easy because the substance of their lyrics is never clear, and more often is an exercise in rhyming.  With all of that said, there is one song that sticks out to me right now in summing up the world in their eyes, and a positive way for all of us, Alive.  "Dip dip dive so-socialize, Open up your ears and clean out your eyes, If you learn to love you're in for a surprise, It could be nice to be alive."  This is the refrain throughout the song that addresses their political views and their love of diversity and NYC.  What I think is significant about this line is the similarity between love and live.  We get in ruts at times, and begin to feel lost.  We look for light and do not find it.  When things are tough we don't see any positive.  And then we learn to love the simple things, the diverse things and the world, and we realize how nice it is to be alive.  There is a Yiddish saying about a man who cried he had no shoes, until he saw a man who had no feet.  We allow ourselves to walk around feeling low, and what we must do is walk around and embrace the majestic world that God has given us.  The tragedy is that we spend to many of our moments feeling and doing things that we would never be happy knowing it was our last.  We spend too much time and too much energy on hatred and separation.  We spend too little time coming together, and too much time growing apart.  MCA lived to be 47 years old... That is far too young.  People die at all ages... Few people are ever ready for death because they have failed to see what it means to be alive.  This world is ours to make work and make beautiful.  The next time you are left with a choice to love/embrace or hate/push aside, ask yourself what your decision says about you and the way you see being alive.  "Open up your ears and clean out your eyes, if you learn to love you're in for a surprise, it could be nice to be alive."  

Firing Teachers for Having Children

In reviewing the news yesterday I learned of a teacher in Indiana who had been fired for utilizing IVF in order to realize her and her husband's dream of having children.  Click on this link to see an article about it: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/04/catholic-school-teacher-claims-she-was-fired-for-using-ivf/1#.T5q7gKumiSo.  This case is quite involved and while I want to be on one side i find myself understanding the other.  

Lets begin.  In the eyes of the Jewish faith we are commanded to procreate.  One of the earliest commands given to humans was פרו ורב, be fruitful and multiply.  This is found in the 28th verse of the entire Torah. Our tradition has understood this strange repeating of the same concept to be an allusion to the view that Judaism sees sex for both procreation and for pleasure to be valid and to be blessings from God.  The issue for me is that this verse says: 

וַיְבָרֶךְ אֹתָם, אֱלֹהִים, וַיֹּאמֶר לָהֶם אֱלֹהִים פְּרוּ וּרְבוּ וּמִלְאוּ אֶת-הָאָרֶץ 

Or in the english language: And God blessed them and said to them "be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.  That blessing is lacking in far too many people today.  1 in 8 couples are plagued, not blessed and they feel a deep lacking in them that cannot be filled in the same ways that it is filled for the other 7/8 of the population.  To have your work and your religion then turn around and tell you that you are unwelcome, and that the various modes of realizing that blessing are to be forbidden to you seems to be a great betrayal.  I want to be careful here because I am not a Catholic and I am not intending this to be seen in any way as bashing the Church.  I am calling on them to revisit this issue and to try to find a way to at least support those going through this.  I am not asking that they give their blessing, I am asking that they perhaps find new and innovative ways to deal with it.

I asked myself the other day if I would be in favor of firing a teacher at a Jewish Day School who did not keep kosher, and the answer was no.  However, I could see that being a valid decision of another leader, just not my own.  The problem is that the two are not comparable to one another.  A couple trying to attain the blessing of parenthood and a Jewish person eating at McDonalds are not comparable in the magnitude of what they convey and what they mean.  You see to the Jewish people keeping kosher is central to our identity and our tradition, and yet the request that leaders adhere to the dietary laws is not so intrusive on the lives of the leaders.  But the opposite is partially the case in the IVF conundrum in the Catholic Church.  The Church's view on questions of life and when it begins and ends is central to who they are today.  But asking that all of their leaders and teachers adhere to every one of their positions in all cases is as intrusive as it can get.  I pray that Emily Herx and her husband are able to realize their blessing of parenthood soon and with as little emotional trauma as possible.  I pray that they can understand that this is not a simple decision made by the school in which Emily taught.  But I also pray that the Church can soon revisit this issue and see that the tradition which is the foundation on which their tradition was built, has made it a point to try to being this blessing into fruition for as many of our people as possible and try to find a way through which they can help bring that blessing to their people as well.

ברוכים הבאים ושלום - Welcome and Hello

Friends,

We are so excited to have this new website and all of the great features that come with it.  Just as we are celebrating the birth of the Jewish People at פסח, we are also celebrating the building of our own new people online.  The time between פסח and שבועות we call the עומר period during which we slowly work our way from being newly freed slaves to being free people to serve God.  During this time of growth please stop by our new site and our blogs to watch us grow.

If you want to see past blogs they are still available at http://ravhearshen.blogspot.com.

All the best,

RJH

אוכל–Create a new food for חנכה

Create a new food for Chanukah. We all love latkes and jelly donuts, but we need new foods as well. As a family. create a new food that is representative of the holiday of חנכה. Think beyond the oil, or focus on it, it’s all up to you.

ישראל–Israel

Israel is a central part of modern Judaism. We are deeply connected to our Homeland, but do we know what is happening there all the time? On this last night of Chanukah we will examine the שם/Sham, “there,” from the “Great Miracle Happened There,” on our dreidles. There are many ways to connect with this one: read some newspaper articles about Israel or go to the store and by products made there.

צדקה–Justice

It is better to give than to receive and on this holiday when so many of us receive so much it is all the better to remember for one night that we too can give. On this night nobody in the house receives gifts, but gifts will be given… Choose any charity and donate the money that would have been spent on all of the gifts for that night and donate the money to that charity. You could also participate in one of the many needy children’s gift donation programs.

מרשם משפחתי–Family Recipe

We connect with our tradition in many ways. One of the most beloved of ways is through our stomachs. On this night choose a family recipe (one that your grandmother used to make) and make that delicious dish together as a family for dinner.