“The Quest for Authenticity”

The following is the sermon that I delivered on Friday, February 15, when the gimel Hebrew class (6th graders) led the Shabbat worship service.

I love telling stories. We possess a treasure trove of stories that I can tap into. But there’s a catch: almost all of them are based on the Old Country: Eastern Europe … Russia’s Pale of Settlement.

They are not based in other parts of the world, such as Spain, North Africa, Near East. And very, very few occur in the United States in the 20th century.

With the Old Country, we learn about beloved rebbes, rabbis; loving husbands and wives; petty merchants with wares to sell and songs to sing; tightly knit communities. The nostalgia runs deep, and these villages are idealized.

By telling these stories, I have fallen into a trap concerning the Old Country. I am presenting Judaism as it should be; I elevate the Old Country as a model for Jewish community. I have inadvertently perpetuated a myth about this period of Jewish history. I do not use the word “myth” in a negative sense.

“Immigration revisited”

I previously wrote a bulletin article about my assessment of Oklahoma’s immigration law and my view of what to do with our nation’s millions of undocumented workers.

A related article in the most recent The New Republic provides an excellent view of how Americans view immigration in general and undocumented workers in particular. I think you will be fascinated with the results. It appears that those in states who have relatively small numbers of immigrants and undocumented workers are the most concerned with how they will adversely affect their lives.