31) Sermon Audio

Torah Portion: Bo – Ex 10:1-13:16, Jer 46:13-28

TnT – Torah ‘n Tefilah

January 27, 2009
7:00 pm	to	8:00 pm

Attendance limited to Beth El members and invited guests:

Torah (teaching) and T’filah (Prayer) have been going on every Tuesday in Manhattan’s Upper East Side for the last 14 years. Come be a part of New York’s longest enduring Messianic Jewish (Two-Testament) congregation. Tuesday Bible studies are for members only, because of the deeply personal nature of intercessory prayer. Come and explore the adventure of Scripture study and prayer! Info@bethelnyc.org or call (212) 772-7500

“Knowing” (2009/01/24) Sermon Audio

Torah Portion: Va-Era – Ex 6:2-9:35, Ezek 28:25-29:21

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The Irony and The Ecstasy: Thoughts on the Presidential Inauguration Of Barack Obama

FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS IS TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE MILESTONE

Barack Obama being inaugurated as the first African-American President of the United States evokes many streams of thought and feeling deserving consideration by the nation and world facing an era under his leadership; but surely, first must come a deep and heartfelt sense of congratulations to the African American community for the achievement and feeling such an ascent puts into their hearts. As a Jew, I face a world in which the likelihood of my own descendants being able to rise into the highest office in this land seems still far in the distance, so great is the ongoing prejudice against Jewish people, the international misunderstanding of Israel, and the assumption-set similar to the hurdles Catholics faced before John F. Kennedy shattered their previously impassable prejudice barrier. All people of good will can acknowledge the joy the African-American community must feel today.

ELECTION WAS THE OPPOSITE OF DR. KING’S DREAM

Yet, ironically, Obama was not elected fulfilling the stated dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: ” … people judged, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Obama’s percentages of majority in communities of color and young voters were larger than any Presidential candidates except heroes like Washington, Grant, and Eisenhower: men whose executive and command abilities had been proven through terrible wars. Obama has no track record of any kind in executive or military command responsibility to generate such an approval based on his known deeds: he was a first-term senator who began running for President early in his first term. How did such an overtly unproven person with what journalist Eleanor Clift had the courage and perspicacity publicly to call ” a scant resumé” obtain such massive approvals as a mostly unknown quantity? The uncomfortable truth, by process of elimination, seems to be – by prejudice. Voters of color appear to have chosen him because he is one of their own, and youth appeared to choose someone who looks more like themselves than their parents or grandparents. The former is called racial prejudice, and the latter, age prejudice. The African American vote went 95% for Obama. Ninety-five percent! (see www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#USP00p1) And – unless I am missing something, neither being of color (nor being young) has anything to do with ability or character. So, ironically, Obama’s acquisition of the Oval Office appears not to have come through fulfillment of Dr. King’s famously stated dream, but from the very prejudice mechanism he dedicated his life to undoing: only the target of the prejudice changed. Ironies in this quirky world abound – and this milestone day is no exception.

A MIND IN THE CHAIR

There is, however, a side to Barack Obama’s election that I feel is indisputably healthy. After “9-11,” there were people from the middle of the USA having expressed the following thought I actually heard spoken in an interview, ”Well, this may take them New Yorkers down a peg. Now maybe those East Coasters will be jus’ plain folks like us.” The middle of America elected George W. Bush – a man with a mind not capable of consistently generating grammatically correct English – to the most powerful office in the world, in great part to show the elite East Coaster Democrats like John Kerry and Hillary Clinton that they think jus’ plain folks can do a better job than those Ivy League uppity-ups who think they’re so much better than the rest of us. The fact is, with the sole exception of George W. Bush’s success at keeping our country safe from a replay of 9-11, it must be acknowledged that most of the requirements of the Presidency were simply beyond him. No criticism can invest a person with abilities they simply do not have. Harry Truman confounded critics of his plain spoken style by showing a political savvy and command ability hitherto not seen in him, but revealed by the office: George W. Bush entered the office with the potential to do the same, but was mostly unable to wrap himself around the bulk of the job. I say this with the profoundest of gratitude for his achievement in securing the nation, and during the election, I felt badly for him that his own party needed to run so far from him due to his low numbers, that they could not say openly and often, “Thank you Mr. President, for keeping us all safe these last seven years.” I hope America does find it in its heart eventually to say that particular thank you to George W. Bush in a befitting way.

Now, in Barack Obama, we see a genuinely dynamic mind at work. As a Harvard law school classmate said of him, “Attaining the presidency of the Harvard Law Review is an achievement of intellect and ambition I can scarcely imagine.” Take away from Obama what you will, we now have a President who thinks through matters and generates original thought on matters to great degree. The positive potential is that of a President like Thomas Jefferson or John Kennedy: once-in-a-generation combinations of intellect and political ability that inspire confidence. This is balanced by the irony (remember I said they abound), that the Harvard Club of Washington DC basically got us into the Viet Nam War; which Harvard’s Robert McNamara who served as Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense acknowledged not long ago in a series called “The Fog of War” was a war built greatly on miscalculations. Rene Descartes said, “Where intellect is great, the potential for great error exists also.” That said, with the number of crises the world presently faces, it is somewhat cheering to know there is a great mind in the Oval Office; and that the world’s problems will have the attention of a profound and capable thinker. Jus’ plain folks are not the need of the hour. Extraordinary powers are the order of the day.

UNTESTED

There are, however, many still living editors of the Harvard Law Review walking around, and that achievement did not put them on the short list for Leader of the Free World. If we are honest, we must look at the difference between John McCain and Barack Obama on the level of testedness (sic), and acknowledge that of McCain, we know he would rather put himself into certain torture and possible death rather than do a morally repugnant deed (obtain through political connections his freedom from Vietnamese prison ahead of others who had been there longer). We are not guessing whether McCain has that kind of character because McCain has been genuinely tested, and proven a hero. Obama can lift his arms higher – McCain’s soul could not have lifted itself higher. Obama is a rock-star: McCain is a rock, period. He stands at the pinnacle of morality defined by the Messiah from Nazareth, Himself: “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his companion.” We still know nothing of what Barack Obama can or cannot do, will or will not refuse, when under the most extreme of pressures. America’s communities of color and of youth chose to put into the Presidency one of their own whose nature in the arenas of battle command and moral fortitude is a complete blank. We must simply have the audacity to hope that in addition to eloquence and political aptitude, there exists strong bedrock character in the man. As of now, we simply do not know.

WOMEN AGAIN MUST WAIT

Black men got the right to vote some eighty years before women did. In this past election, Hillary Clinton started out with a momentum of some twenty years building to be the shoo-in Democratic candidate. A woman obviously capable of the job, 2008 was going to be the year women broke the glass ceiling in gender prejudice and saw a woman as the Leader of The Free World. And then came Barack Obama; and again, women learned that the world is more ready to enfranchise men of any color than women. My heart genuinely went out to Hillary Clinton’s supporters, who must have watched with absolute bewilderment as the momentum of two decades drained away and their brilliant, long-serving sister was made to take a back seat to the charismatic newcomer representing the hopes of another community seeking the fullest measure of enfranchisement America has to offer – the Oval Office. The heroines of the Suffrage Movement must be, in eternity, nodding their heads in maternal comfort to Hillary and her crew, saying, “Our time will come. Do not give up hope.” Hillary’s acceptance of the post of Secretary of State actually sets her up well for a second run at the Oval Office, if her health holds up for the next eight years. With the premiere international statesmanship responsibility in the land added to her considerable legal mastery and domestic issue portfolio, she will be an even stronger candidate for the Presidency than before. Only time will tell. Although I have been less than a fan of the woman, I acknowledge this Yalie always does her homework, and I will be surprised if she does less than a stellar job in her new role.

SUCCESS TO OUR NEW COMMANDER IN CHIEF

I wish our new President all the success in the world. I am on his side. He is, by law, our President: he is my President, too. I rejoice in the broken barriers his election betokens, embedded ironies notwithstanding; and I affirm and take some significant comfort from the gifts he brings to the office. I am on his side. I sincerely pray for his success and well-being.

However – I do so with my eyes wide open – and with an unsurrendered perception of nuance in a world very seldom monolithically made of black or white.

20 January 2009

TnT – Torah ‘n Tefilah

January 20, 2009
7:00 pm	to	8:00 pm

Attendance limited to Beth El members and invited guests:

Shabbat Services

January 24, 2009
10:30 am	to	12:30 pm

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Podcast of Rabbi Bruce L. Cohen

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“Yad VaShem” (2009/01/17) Sermon Audio

Torah Portion: Shemot – Ex 1:1-6:1, Isa 27:6-28:13, 29:22-23

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Justice On Offense – For A Change

As I watch the drama of Israel’s present military operations in Gaza, an aspect that almost never seems to be discussed in the Western press stands out to me.

It has always been remarkable to me that evil relies upon goodness to be good so evil can do its work. People doing evil actually factor into their plans the unwillingness of good people to do certain things that evil people are quite willing to do.

America has the capability to destroy utterly the civilization and population of anyone attacking us, without endangering a single American soldier’s or civilian’s life. How? We have the H-Bomb, the Neutron Bomb (which kills people with a radiation burst, but leaves no blast imprint, thus sparing all the enemy’s goods for us), nerve agents and biological agents, and the accurate, long range missile-delivery systems to send them wherever we want without needing to put American military personnel into harm’s way. If America ever actually did wage war the way those who fight us wage war (using their resources to the utmost limit of their destructive powers) – no one could survive a war with America. Every war with America would be over in a matter of hours – and the toll would be excruciating, as were Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In the words of Harry S. Truman, the only American Commander-in-Chief to order the use of our full powers, “We dropped the first bomb and heard nothing. We dropped the second bomb and they capitulated.” Truman had sent the Imperial Japanese Government a message saying “If you do not unconditionally surrender, we will send a rain of destruction on you from the skies that has up to now never been imagined by the human mind, and it will utterly destroy your civilization.” Where was Truman’s goodness? It is little known that America actually only had two working bombs, called “Fat Man” and “Little Boy.” Once they were used, it would have been quite some time before any other bombs were available. However, Truman knew what the effect of the second blast would be: Japan would be convinced America could – and would – destroy every city in the Japanese empire. Surrender was the only option other than utter annihilation. Why did Truman choose to destroy two cities, causing over 200,000 casualties, mostly civilians? Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war-industry cities, and the people working in them were sources of equipment and personnel for the Japanese war machine – knowing every bit as well as the Germans working in Hitler’s war industry cities, what the meaning of their work and their products were. If America had used conventional military means to attack the Japanese islands, the death toll on American soldiers was estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands, and casualties over a million. The Japanese military and the civilian reserve militia, numbering over a million combined, were prepared to make a defense of their homeland to the last man, and their initial defenses in places like Iwo Jima had been savage, and extremely costly in American lives. Truman did the math, and chose to save American lives. If memory serves, Truman said he never lost any substantial sleep over the decision; and added with the subtlest of wry grins, “I still have never heard an apology for Pearl Harbor.”

Israel has the H-Bomb and the Neutron Bomb, as well as other horrifying military tools at its command. Israel has means at its disposal to annihilate utterly its enemies in Gaza, Damascus, Riyyad, and anywhere else.

Why do America and Israel not do what their enemies would unhesitatingly do?

One of the most compelling photographs I have ever seen is from back in the 1980’s, when Yasir Arafat’s PLO was the prime source of terror to Israel and Jews worldwide. It is a picture taken by an Israeli sniper in Beirut, a covert operative who had Arafat in the sights of his rifle – and took the picture instead of the shot. The picture was intended to show the PLO – we always have you in our reach, and can do whatever we want to you whenever we choose. The only reason you are alive is because we allow you to live.

Why did the Israeli not pull the trigger?

Why does America not just “drop the bombs?”

Why do both not simply give the order, ”Take them out.” to all their armed covert operatives standing within mere feet of their targets, and able to assassinate them at will?

The definition of “good” in our ethical structure is not “anything that advances our interests.” We protect our interests as we protect our citizens – but there is a limit to how far we will go when we are on either offense or defense. Where we stop is defined by something other than whether every one of our enemies has been destroyed. Some values go far deeper than utter victory.

Machiavelli’s formula, “the end justifies the means” – which basically entitles one to do any evil if one believes the evildoing will result in good” – does not work for the most part for anyone having a significant conscience operating.

Israel now tastes the irony of America, just as since September 11, 2001, America has tasted the agony of Israel. Israel cannot do all she is able – and still, doing a restrained fraction of what she could do, incurs the world’s wrath for protecting her citizens with a small sliver of her might. Israel has committed herself to do what she must, within moral bounds, in order to remove entirely the daily rain of rockets on her citizens. The Gazans who elected Hamas – a political machine maniacally bent on Israel’s destruction, and motivated by an antisemitism positively pre-medieval in its content (“It is true that Allah changed Jews into pigs and apes.” – Nizar Rayyan, lecturer in Islam at the University of Gaza) – are tasting now the folly of putting a Nazi-like regime into power.

The commander of the Imperial Japanese navy in World War II, upon learning their Pearl Harbor sneak attack failed to destroy many of the US Navy’s most powerful aircraft carriers and destroyers, told his staff after the attack was over, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant, and fill him with a terrible resolve.” (Diary of Isoroku Yamamoto, per E.Williams & L. Forrester)

To awaken a sleeping giant, and fill him with a terrible resolve.

Let the native fear of the idea sink in.

Hamas has awakened in Israel a giant-killer. The soul of King David sleeps within Israel, until onslaught awakens it. The warrior king’s character is revealed in his Psalms. David wrote, “I pursued my enemies and did not turn back until they were entirely destroyed. I wounded them so that they could not rise again. I have crushed my enemies as fine as dust before the wind. (Ps. 18:37-42).” King David would rather have sung songs and worshipped in the temple: but when the time came for war, he was like Shakespeare’s King Harry: “Such as we are, we would not seek a fight; but such as we are, we will not shun one.” And when he waged war, he destroyed his enemies so they could not rise to make war again.

What is an acceptable outcome to Cast Lead? Zero rockets launched from Gaza.

Any conclusion other than that asks Israel again to accede to the world’s demand that Jews”make peace” by accepting that more of our number will die from randomly dropping Gazan rockets.

May peace come soon and in our days.

And may it come without the price being acceptance of still more Jewish deaths at the hands of unreasoning hate committed to our destruction.

TnT – Torah ‘n Tefilah

January 13, 2009
7:00 pm	to	8:00 pm

Attendance limited to Beth El members and invited guests: