Old Man Rabbi & Chayei Sarah

You know that you’ve made it on Social Media when people start insulting you.

Recently, I started making YouTube videos (@Juliet the Rabbi is my channel).

As a backdrop for the videos, I sit in front of a large painting on the wall of my office. I guess you could say it’s a family heirloom.

The painting is called, “The Rabbi.” The artist is Ben Zion, a famous Jewish painter. It depicts an old man with a long white beard. He’s sitting barefoot on the floor with a tallit, a prayer shawl, draped over his head and shoulders as he gazes down at a Torah scroll he’s holding in his gigantic, male hands.

I used to see him hanging in my aunt and uncle’s house growing up. As the child of Communists, I had absolutely no context for this old man, so I had no idea what it was about.

Last week, my viewership for my Spanish YouTube videos exploded, and I started getting subscribers. I even got some beautiful comments.

But one comment was typical of the license people take on Social Media to express any insulting, stupid thought that comes into their minds.

It said, “The painting behind you is really ugly and you should sell it at its liquidation price”—with a thumbs up emoji.

I just had to laugh, it was so ridiculous.

I was telling some friends, a group of women I got together to form a group of Jewish clergy comprised solely of women. This was a final “capstone” project for my rabbinic studies.

The idea came as a counterpoint to the overwhelming representation of male clergy in the world.

I had personally experienced this dominance, and the competition among women that results from it, especially in the tiny Jewish world.

My group is an effort to support and empower each other as women clergy while offering something unique.

Yesterday during our weekly meeting, I told the group about what had happened with the YouTube comment.

One of the women said strongly, “You’re going to have to change your backdrop, Juliet. That painting doesn’t represent who you are as a rabbi. It’s a leftover image from the past that we’re trying to change.”

Others agreed. I listened, my heart sinking.

“Or maybe you should put a band across it,” someone else said, “like you’re banning this antiquated image.” (I’m paraphrasing.)

I was disturbed, partly because I’m attached to the painting.

But the more I thought about it overnight, the more I realized it felt like “Cancel Culture.”

The truth is, by sitting in front of Old Man Rabbi, I actually feel like I’m defying the wider culture and Jewish stereotypes.

I also don’t feel the need to erase the past.

The past is a part of my story, like my grandfather lovingly laughing at my desire to wear a yarmulke as a girl child, something beyond his imagination.

Though my grandfather wasn’t a rabbi, there’s a sense that he’s watching over me, marveling at the fact that I am carrying out his cherished desire for me to love Judaism by becoming a rabbi myself.

I bet he’s laughing at the irony of it now.

But I’m sure he’s also marveling at the fact that, as a woman, I have that choice.

Every year when I read the parsha, Chayei Sarah, The Life of Sarah, I marvel at the character of Rebecca.

I wonder how she had the strength—and the faith—to agree to marry a man she’d never seen, knew nothing about, in a far off place, and to leave by the very next morning, without even flinching.

Though she had little choice in her life’s trajectory, she might have protested in some way: begged for more time, pleaded with her brother and mother not to be sent away forever.

She might have cried.

But none of this happens. In fact, it’s her family that begs for a little more time with her.

When she leaves, she simply takes her maid, her personal belongings, and her family’s blessings with her, and goes on her way, perhaps never to see them again.

Perhaps she started with a good solid sense of faith.

Perhaps Abraham’s servant’s faith also feeds hers.

The servant sent by Abraham is on a mission to seek a wife for his son Isaac.

He has strict instructions to find a woman from among his family, not from the local Canaanites.

He must swear to Abraham that he will secure one who will agree to return with him; under no uncertain terms is Isaac to go live in her land.

The servant takes his oath very seriously, and prays to the god of Abraham to help him.

At the same time, he knows that Abraham’s god has sent an angel before him to lead the way and help him—because Abraham has told him so, and he believes it without question.

The servant imagines the kind of girl he is looking for and the conversation that will ensue—one generous and kind, quick to help a thirsty man and his camels after a long trek in the desert.

And when his prayers are fulfilled, he marvels that what he had imagined is exactly what comes true. So excited is he that he refuses to eat until he has told the tale of his mission to his hosts.

This servant has a deep faith.

He knows he is not alone on this journey—that there is a god who cares.

I was listening a few days ago to Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks talking about the importance of faith.

He says that as humans, we are made to have faith, just like we are made for connection to each other; without faith in something greater than ourselves—something that cares about us—there is no hope, and life has no meaning.

Faith, he says, is closely tied to religion, and our modern American society is also founded on religion’s (specifically Judaism’s) moral principles.

Although religion can and has been manipulated, abused and abusive (my words), Sacks says that when we lose a collective sense of faith, and there are no agreed upon moral principles, when everyone is on their own to make and find meaning in life, personal and collective tragedies increase, as in suicide rates (and mass shootings).

—Because meaning is not something we do on our own.

We are like individual letters that have no meaning except if joined together to become words, that likewise come together to form sentences, then paragraphs, in order to make meaning.

We can not make meaning alone.

Thus, society can not live healthily without a shared understanding and purpose. This is called anomie.

In the same way, though many would like us to believe it, science can not stand alone, without religion.

Sacks says that the skepticism that science has promoted, and that has infected our society, is a “very bad mistake.”

Moreover, it has become a widespread idea that religion is a way of explaining things we couldn’t explain before.

But-—"Science can tell us how things work, though not why; technology gives power, but doesn’t tell us how to use that power; democratically elected governments can stop us from harming other people, but they do not/can not tell us how to live; the market gives us choices, but doesn’t tell us what the good choices to make are, and what are bad.”

And—“There are three questions that science can not answer: Who am I? Why am I here? and How then shall I live?”

Sacks continues: “We have affluence and choices our grandparents couldn’t have imagined. Yet, the despair has increased.”

He is amused by those he likes call, “the angry atheists,” who argue that there “probably” is no God, and wrote as much in ads posted all over London buses some time ago.

I ask: what was the probability that Abraham’s servant would find exactly what he was looking for, and that it would happen exactly as he imagined and hoped?

Our tradition teaches, from Psalm 23, "I will not be afraid, for You are with me.”

When Rebecca approaches the place of her future home, she sees Isaac. Without knowing who he is, she falls off her camel—obviously overcome simply by the sight of him.

And Isaac loved her—only the second reference to love in the Bible.

Rebecca didn’t have many choices—they were either marriage or harlotry.

What she did have was faith.

Yet, what was the probability that Rebecca would find love with a man she’d never even seen—or that he was would be handsome to boot?!

Still, the possibility of love gives us hope.

Love and connection bring meaning to life.

We don’t know why. These things belong to the part of life whose explanation defies logic or science.

And they are part of our story.

My inheritance is part of my story—a story I am playing a part in changing.

If I didn’t have faith that I could make a difference in making Judaism less dogmatic, more inclusive and egalitarian, I wouldn’t have bothered investing so much in studying for the past seven years.

In itself, having faith is counter-cultural to the United States.

That faith is rooted in something that I believe cares about me, about us, and, as my tradition teaches through our prayers, I should never be ashamed of that faith, or of Judaism.

Tragedy, a Greek word that has no equivalent in Hebrew, means “bad things happen because of the way the world is; the Universe is blind to our existence, deaf to our prayers, it couldn’t care less whether we exist or not. But Judaism says otherwise”—as Rabbi Sacks says.

As I said last week, all the great leaders of social movements have shared a deep faith.

Atheists who look to them for guidance tend to disregard or forget this fact. Meanwhile, it is this faith that drove them to fight for the possible, not the probable.

I love the following letters and words strung together by Rabbi Sacks:

“Jews have proved in every age that faith is the defeat of probability by the power of possibility…

“Judaism, through its great heroes and heroins, has shown us what we might achieve, and by challenging us to great heights, lifted us to greatness. May we be lifted to greatness, and may [God] bless all that we do.”

I add to this blessing:

May we each continue to strengthen our faith through our ancient stories; may we find strength in our faith, and may we play a part in the counterculture of faith for the good of all humanity.

And say Amen.