For 10 years I was the rabbi of a bustling congregation, and I often had the opportunity to counsel young people who were considering or planning a wedding. When I asked them why the wanted a Jewish wedding, they would often tell me that they were doing it because of an aged grandparent or some other relative, or because their family went through the Holocaust. As a way of honoring their relative or their history, a Jewish ceremony seemed the appropriate thing to do.
What still strikes me about that response is how few responded with some personal connection that was solely through their own experience. Few told me that they wanted a Jewish ceremony because that’s what God wanted, or because they found that the most moving, or because it expressed best who they were. Most of the time, the young couple provided a reason that linked them to their families and their history: because that’s how they were raised, because they wanted to please a parent or grandparent, because their family was Israeli or went through the Holocaust.
At first, I was deeply troubled by this kind of response. After all, Judaism is not merely a history, it is also a brit kodesh a sacred covenant that links every Jewish soul with the Holy Blessing One. As a rich path of spirituality and wisdom, Judaism has so much to contribute to the lives of every Jew. So why, I wondered as a rabbi, didn’t Jews ever respond in that context? Why always connect it to family, ancestors, Israel, or history?
As I’ve explored that commitment with so many couples over the years, however, my respect for their answer has deepened. While I still try to make explicit the spiritual abundance that Judaism provides, I marvel at their intuitive recognition that Judaism is far more than just a religious path. They know that being Jewish is a destiny, a people, and a shared past as well.
Today’s Torah portion speaks of that tenacious history in a fascinating way. Moses tells the Jews listening to his “Farewell Address” that they are standing, that day, before God. He urges them to “enter into the covenant with the Lord your God, that the Lord your God is concluding with you this day… to the end that God may establish you this day as His people and be your God.”
Rashi comments on this verse from God’s perspective: “To such an extent has God taken the trouble in order to establish you as a people in God’s presence.”
It isn’t easy being Jewish, and it never has been easy. What Rashi highlights is the difficulty and persistence that Jewish identity has always required. Even for God, the survival of the Jews takes great effort. And if God has to work at it, how much moreso do we!
Think about the effort God put into Jewish survival—taking us from Egyptian slavery, bringing us through the wilderness to the Land of Israel, establishing our homeland with Jerusalem as our capital, enabling our people to survive and even flourish in the many diasporas through which we have wandered, the miracle of our surviving the Nazi murderers and the miracle of the renewed State of Israel after two thousand years, and a reunited Jerusalem, and the miracle of a contentious and energetic Jewish community in North America and elsewhere.
As Jews, we train ourselves to see the hand of God in the commonplace. In the case of the survival of an ancient people and the tenacity and profundity of our ancient faith and way of life, it is virtually impossible not to acknowledge the hand of God.
And if God takes so much trouble for the Jewish people, it must be because God still has a purpose for our existence. Just as in the biblical period, God still needs Jews to embody a vision of sanctity and righteousness, of justice and compassion. God still needs Jews to perform acts of love and kindness in the world, to fashion sermons, not of words but of deeds, and testify thereby to the wisdom of the Torah and the greatness of God.
In an era in which sex no longer necessarily implies love and commitment and prestige has little to do with decency and wisdom, the world needs Jews to remain faithful activists on behalf of God, Torah, and righteousness.
If God has taken (and still takes) such effort on our behalf, can’t we also put some effort into the survival of Judaism and the Jewish people?
The world may depend on it
Shabbat Shalom.