Author: Nicole Feldman

Carrie, Galit and I arrived back home this week from our month at camp. Ayelet will be there for another month since it’s her last year as a camper. I want to thank you so much for allowing me the opportunity to go to camp each summer. It might sound crazy to have a rabbi in his mid-forties spend four weeks each summer at a summer camp, but it’s so important. Each summer, I’m immersed in a laboratory of Jewish life. Each summer, I get to experiment and learn new approaches to Jewish prayer, teaching and observance. Each summer, I get to connect with colleagues and deeply connected lay leaders. Over our time together we brainstorm, problem-solve, and explore how to make our communities stronger and more connected. Each summer I have the chance to learn and prepare for the upcoming year. I spend a great deal of time at camp strategizing for my year of speaking and teaching. In addition to all these professional gains I amass each summer, I’m also able to spend a great deal of time on my own growth as a person and as a Jew. I get to work on my spirituality. I get to learn for the sake of learning. I get to connect with friends. I get to create art, climb the climbing wall, hike, swim and more. I also have the opportunity to spend meaningful and irreplaceable time with Carrie and Galit. And while Ayelet is in a cabin each summer, I get to see her every day and spend precious moments with her as she continues to grow and develop into her own Jewish person. All I can say are two important words: thank you.

In פרשת חקת/Parshat Chukat we witness the beginning of the end of a legacy. Towards the beginning of the פרשה/Parsha we see the death of מרים/Miriam and towards the end we see the death of אהרן/Aaron. The three siblings, מרים, אהרן, and משה/Moshe had been leading our people since the days of our enslavement. This week, we start to see the beginning of that ending. With the death of מרים at the beginning, and the death of אהרן at the end, we no longer had them to lead us. In-between their deaths, we also learn of the eventual demise of משה. Our ancestors were complaining about not having water to drink and God told משה and אהרן to talk to a rock to get water from it. Instead of doing that, משה struck the rock twice with his staff. God told משה that because he didn’t have enough faith in God, he would not get to cross into the Promised Land. With that, we learn of the transition of our leadership from one generation to the next. The proper way to transition is displayed when there’s a public transfer of the power of the High Priest from אהרן to his son. This act is necessary to show that we are part of a continuing chain of tradition and legitimacy.

Each year at camp I witness the continuation of this process of generation to generation. We continue to transmit our legacy from one generation to the next. I watch as all my fears of the future are abated by the full display of joyful Judaism that Jewish Summer Camp gives us. My fears are brushed to the side each year when the campers return and say “hi Rabbi Josh” and show me I’m making an impact and transmitting my legacy to them. Each summer I’m reminded we have a bright and sunny (pardon the pun) future in our youth. We always have this same opportunity with or without summer camp. Each of us has the chance to transmit our legacies to future generations. Each of us has the opportunity to pass along the gifts we’ve inherited, or chosen, to those coming after us. This is the greatest and most attainable form of eternal life and one we all must seize the chance to have.

Click here for a video message from Rabbi Hearshen.

Wilderness and Desert are the two English words we use to translate the word במדבר/BaMidbar. Well, more accurately, in the wilderness or in the desert. Why do the Israelites spend so long wandering in the desert or the wilderness? Why does our history begin in a place that lacked so much? It’s as if we began our story with a blank canvas and have painted it ever since.

This week, we begin the fourth book of the תורה/Torah called במדבר. Again, our story only happens when we’re in a place that we have to fill with experiences and meaning. Our story only begins when we’re in a place where we can transform without others. It’s in the wilderness where the magic happened.

Sunday night we’ll celebrate the transformational moment in the wilderness where we went from being newly freed former slaves to a people in a covenantal relationship with God. We’ll stand together as we receive the תורה anew. As Jews, the תורה “wasn’t” given, but rather it “is” given. The תורה is continuously given to the Jewish people on a daily, minute by minute basis. Revelation is continual and eternal. While we celebrate the giving of the תורה on שבועות/Shavuot, it needs to be seen as the beginning of Revelation, but not the entirety of Revelation. All of this took place at an ordinary mountain in the wilderness.

I’m often asked why I spend a month every summer at a summer camp. I’m asked about why I spend “time-off” working. The answer is there’s no greater laboratory of Judaism than Jewish summer camp. There’s no better place to experience the Jewish People and Judaism than summer camp. To begin with, we transplant city dwellers into the wilderness. Every day we’re with the trees. Every night we’re with the stars. Our services are held in spaces not designed by humans, but decorated by God. We have the opportunity to experience the closest thing to the wilderness that our ancestors were in when our people formed.

Last summer, the holiday of שבועות/Shavuot fell a bit later than normal and this meant we celebrated Shavuot at camp. We were concerned about what this would mean for the campers and their fun and enjoyment, but what we actually discovered was that it was an enormous opportunity for all of us: campers and staff. On the first day of שבועות last year when we arrived at the תורה reading, I led all the campers up the mountain at camp for the תורה reading. We ascended the mountain to receive the תורה and it was majestic. Not everyone appreciated my creative flourish, but those of us who leaned into the experience were blessed with a new way of celebrating שבועות.

As I prepare to leave for my month at camp, I want to remind you that I’m just two hours away and continue to be available by email. I won’t be able to respond as quickly as I’d like to, but I will work my way through my emails as the days move along. As summer begins, I want to encourage all of us to take time outside to connect with the wilderness. Connect with the sunrises and sunsets. Connect with the stars and trees. Connect with the world as God created it, and through the creation, connect with the Creator.

Living in the Atlanta Jewish community, we’re blessed to have access to the incredible services of the Consulate General of Israel Southeast USA. Whenever we need anything at all, we make one phone call or email and it magically happens. The Consul General, Anat Sultan-Dadon, and her staff have been so incredible to OVS and the broader Jewish community. We’ve had the Consul General at numerous programs, and when she was unavailable, they sent other high placed officials to join us.

As Jews, we recognize from our earliest memories that our experiences in America are not the same as those of our non-Jewish neighbors. We recognize the risks we take when wearing Jewish identifying jewelry that no one wearing a cross would deal with. We know what it means to show up to a synagogue or Jewish institution and wait to be buzzed in or go through security screening. The same is seldom true of our non-Jewish neighbors. We know what it means to forego many items in our institutional budgets because of the excessive costs of security we must have. I’ll again assert that few of our neighbors and their organizations deal with this in their budgeting process. To be a Jew is a gift and it’s also a constant realization that the age-old hatred called antisemitism is, has always been, and will likely always be, part of our national experience.

Last night before going to bed, I was sitting at my computer trying to figure out an article for this week. I went to a news website to clear my head and there was the report that there had been a shooting at the Capital Jewish Museum. As the hours moved on, we learned the two victims had been murdered at close range. As the hours moved on, we learned the two victims were staff members of the Israeli Embassy. As the hours moved on, we also learned they were a couple, preparing to build a life together beginning with an upcoming trip to Jerusalem to get engaged. As the hours moved on, we learned the name of the murderer who came from Chicago to kill Jews. As the hours moved on we found out he waited for police to arrive while he was being comforted by the unknowing attendees of the event and when the police arrived he admitted to being the shooter and that he did it for Gaza and Free Palestine.

We’ve all attended events with staff members from our local consulate. We’ve walked through the security. We have all shaken hands. We always know that security is not just there as some sort of prop, but are there to protect since we are all targets. The security that’s present is there because our world has been unable to shake its oldest hatred. It’s been unable to come to terms with the Jewish people having its own country in our ancestral homeland. The world has yet to be able to come to terms with our people who refuse to accept the world as it is and demand that it be better.

As the hours will move on, they’ll turn into days and those days will turn to weeks, and then months, and then years. Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim won’t be here with us as that time moves on. They won’t be able to marry, they won’t have children, and they won’t watch those children grow up. Their families will grieve and mourn and wonder why. Their families will be inconsolable and they’ll demand answers. The world will move forward and Sarah and Yaron will tragically become a political fight. They’ll lose their personhood and become symbols of what hatred and violence has brought upon us. We all must know better. We all must know the people who work on our behalf as workers for the State of Israel. Each one of them is a person. Each one of them has a name. Each one of them is someone who’s bravely defending what we love.

May we never lose sight of who these beautiful people were and who they are. May we never accept the enemy’s false narrative that Israel is the evil murderer. May we never allow their hatred to move us from our mission of being a light unto the world and driving away darkness. And may we always hold on to the greatness of hope and never give into despair.

It must have been very difficult to be a prince. Think about all of the immense amount of wealth you would have had. Think of all of the privileges you would have been given. It must have been so hard. There’s a reason that, with the advent of enlightenment, we began to see the diminishment of the monarchy and all their power and privilege. It was a corrupted system that reeked of unfairness and inequality.

One not so well-known aspect of life for some princes was the institution of the whipping boy. When a prince misbehaved, it was forbidden to harm him because he was… well… the prince. So there needed to be a stand-in in his place and that was the “whipping boy”. This unfortunate child would be beaten/whipped in place of the naughty prince. This way whenever the prince misbehaved, there would be corporal punishment, just not inflicted on him. One should wonder if seeing the other boy being hurt caused the prince any pain at all. One should question if the prince’s behavior was bettered by the fear that another could be harmed in his place.

The institution of the whipping boy has an antecedent in this weeks פרשה/parsha/portion in the form of the scapegoat. The ritual involved two goats being placed before the כהן גדול/Kohen Gadol and he would designate one of them for God and the other for עזאזל/Azazel. The first goat, designated for God, would be sacrificed and its blood was sprinkled. The second goat, designated for עזאזל, had the sins of all of the people of Israel confessed upon it and was then sent off into the wilderness where it was presumed to be killed in some way. The idea was that the goat for עזאזל absorbed all of our misdeeds and took them away from us. The goat suffered on our behalf. The goat was the “scapegoat.” This ritual is recalled each year during the מוסף/Musaf service on יום כיפור/Yom Kippur when we describe all the intricacies of the day. The purpose of יום כיפור is to earn atonement from our sins and find a way to move forward in a better way. This ancient ritual worked for our ancestors, but might leave us feeling a sense of lacking in current times. Today we’re deeply connected to personal responsibility and we understand people owning up to their actions and not pinning the blame on others, human or otherwise.

It’s a bit ironic that our faith birthed the concept of the scapegoat since we as a people have become the eternal international scapegoat. In every generation it seems we are there for the world to blame for all that’s wrong and bad in this world. When diseases ran rampant, we were to blame for the illness. When money was in short supply, we were to blame for the failures of businesses and banks, not to mention the governments. Following the crushing defeat of The German Empire, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, The Ottoman Empire, and all their allies in World War I, the allies leveraged an enormous amount of reparations upon the defeated entities. These reparations were catastrophic to the defeated and led to enormous problems for all of their citizens. In Germany, they found a group to blame for all of their pain: the Jews. Adolf Hitler and his National Socialists rose to power by selling this version of scapegoating. It wasn’t Germany and its allies’ fault they were suffering, it was the fault of the Jews and their allies. This lie led to the murder of six million Jews. It led to the suffering inflicted on the world with World War II and the deaths of 54 million people. This was because people couldn’t learn to look inside themselves for what was lacking and instead looked outside to place blame.

It would be wishful thinking to believe scapegoating disappeared with the end of World War II and the Holocaust. Unfortunately, we remain the convenient scapegoat around the world for all that’s wrong. Ask the college students demonstrating against us. It’s not about those suffering in Asia, South America or Africa. It’s only about the Gaza Strip. It’s not about Hamas stealing humanitarian aid for themselves or extorting Gazans to get some that they’re selling. It’s about us trying to end this war. It’s not about the hostages being tortured and killed, it’s about us trying to bring them home. Israel has become the new scapegoat. Well, perhaps we never stopped.

One day we’ll find a way to look inside of ourselves and our families and our communities and our countries. We’ll find what needs to change and be made better, rather than looking at others and blaming them. One of these days we’ll find ways to improve ourselves rather than denigrating those in our midst.

Bob Dylan wrote “Neighborhood Bully” in 1982 following the 1982 “Operation Peace for the Galilee” that left Israel occupying the south of Lebanon. The invasion took place to stop the constant attacks across the border. Israel had no choice but to take the fight to the enemy to allow for Israelis in the north to live in safety and peace. The invasion ultimately had many problems, but it was started because Israel needed to be able to defend itself from the terrorists all around it. The words of this song could have been written today because the world has learned nothing from the past. They still say “he just likes to cause war” as if Israel is the cause of all problems in the world. Israel remains the “boogyman” for the world to blame for everything. Maybe someday this song will become obsolete. Please click here to hear the song.

Well, the neighborhood bully, he’s just one man

His enemies say he’s on their land

They got him outnumbered about a million to one

He got no place to escape to, no place to run

He’s the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully he just lives to survive

He’s criticized and condemned for being alive

He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin

He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in

He’s the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land

He’s wandered the earth an exiled man

Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn

He’s always on trial for just being born

He’s the neighborhood bully.

Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized

Old women condemned him, said he should apologize

Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad

The bombs were meant for him. He was supposed to feel bad

He’s the neighborhood bully.

Well, the chances are against it, and the odds are slim

That he’ll live by the rules that the world makes for him

‘Cause there’s a noose at his neck and a gun at his back

And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac

He’s the neighborhood bully.

Well, he got no allies to really speak of

What he gets he must pay for, he don’t get it out of love

He buys obsolete weapons and he won’t be denied

But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side

He’s the neighborhood bully.

Well, he’s surrounded by pacifists who all want peace

They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease

Now, they wouldn’t hurt a fly. To hurt one they would weep

They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep

He’s the neighborhood bully.

Every empire that’s enslaved him is gone

Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon

He’s made a garden of paradise in the desert sand

In bed with nobody, under no one’s command

He’s the neighborhood bully.

Now his holiest books have been trampled upon

No contract that he signed was worth that what it was written on

He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth

Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health

He’s the neighborhood bully.

What’s anybody indebted to him for?

Nothing, they say. He just likes to cause war

Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed

They wait for this bully like a dog waits for feed

He’s the neighborhood bully.

What has he done to wear so many scars?

Does he change the course of rivers? Does he pollute the moon and stars?

Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill

Running out the clock, time standing still

Neighborhood bully.