Draped in a deep, earthen-red shukah, adorned with circles of brightly beaded necklaces and head-to-toe with body paint made from ochre and sheep fat, the Masai warrior keeps a silent vigil in the midst of the relentless equatorial heat of East Africa. His life is a mission from his god, Ngai, to protect and care for his herd of cattle and the earth itself.
I am writing this column while sitting in an Internet cafe in San Jose, Costa Rica. This Shabbat I will be officiating at the bar mitzvah of Eduardo Lev, a 13-year-old Costa Rican Jew whose parents are members of Congregacion B\’nei Israel, the only liberal synagogue in the country.
\”Don\’t wish for fish, fish for fish.\” These words of sage advice were taught to me by my Grandpa Manny. He was a man of action. He was filled with exuberance for life with a twinkle in his eye and a word of encouragement and inspiration for everyone.
As we watched that dark Australian night, the words of this week\’s Torah portion came into my head. \”Yesh adonai bamakom hazeh, veanohi lo yadati,\” said Jacob. \”God was in this place, and until this vision, I had no idea.\”
When I was a junior in college, I spent the year in Jerusalem, studying at the Hebrew University. That year in Israel, more than any other single experience, determined the direction my life would take. I found myself taking every Judaic studies class I could, and I loved them so much that I decided to go to rabbinic school and spend my life immersed in the excitement and meaning of sacred Jewish texts.
When I was 16, I was elected president of my synagogue youth group. I will never forget that feeling of euphoria that accompanied the victory. But I also remember how I felt the very next day after the excitement and thrill of the victory had already started to wear off. I was suddenly struck by an overwhelming feeling of fear and near panic. \”Oh my God,\” I remember thinking, \”now I am the one responsible for whether this entire program and youth group is successful or not. How am I going to know what to do?\”
A young woman called, asking if I would be willing to visit with her 95-year-old grandmother. She seemed to be slipping away from life more and more each day, and had been asking to speak with a rabbi.
We still don\’t like to talk about it much. The idea of Jewish domestic violence makes most of us nervous.
I remember the argument like it was yesterday. There I was, a 10-year-old kid growing up in a Reform congregation in Santa Monica, arguing with my best friend (another 10-year-old from the same synagogue) about the laws of kashrut for Pesach.
God spoke to me once when I was 12 years old. Although it happened years ago, I remember it as clearly as if it were today. Revelation is a tricky thing. I am reminded of the Midrash that when God gave the commandments at Mt. Sinai, God speaks to the Children of Israel in a divine voice so powerful they are too terrified to hear anything beyond the very first word of the first commandment. Since even that was too much to bear, God arranged it so they only heard the first letter of the first word. The first word is Anohi (\”I am\”), and the first letter is an alef, which is silent. So the rabbis teach us that what the Jewish people heard when God spoke was the Divine Silence of the mitzvot. Within that Divine Silence, each woman and man experienced her or his own unique divine revelation.