Rabbi Harley Karz-Wagman served Temple Beth Or with distinction for 6 years, then departed in June, 2007. Here is his final column:
For my final ORacle column, I find guidance in the Book of Leviticus and in our people’s system of sacrifices and offerings. The ritual objects, whether animals, grains, or fruits are disregarded. Rather, the focus is on the purpose of the sacrifices. In ancient times, five major sacrifices were offered. These formed the basis for all Jewish prayers. The seder (“order”) of the sacrifices can vary according to our individual needs, as can the order of our prayers. For this column, the sacrifices are: the todah (“gratitude”), the olah (“affirmation of faith”), the chatat (“sin”), the asham (“guilt”), and the neder (“vow, or commitment”).
I begin with an offering of todah: gratitude. Thank you. The remarkable level of caring, openness, and warmth which Barbara and I witnessed six years ago, remains. I begin with personal thanks to all of you, for all your support, over these years. We have lived out a sacred partnership in striving to create a holy community.
Gratitude leads me to a sense of wonder, what Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel called “radical amazement,” at the potential of this congregation. I feel astonishment when reflecting on our accomplishments. A few examples are:
¤ New events—Mitzvah Days, Tu BiSh’vat seders, and Multi-Faith Holocaust commemorations. ¤ New projects—CHILD (libraries for homeless shelters) and Greening (our synagogue) ¤ New approaches—Board and Committee structure and financial oversight ¤ New learning—Adult Hebrew Reading class, our amazing k’hilot; the songs, stories, and celebrations of assemblies on Sunday mornings, new Religious School goals and curriculum, new classes for T’filot (prayer preparation for b’nai mitzvah), and a new approach to educating high school students.
I feel the same wonder looking forward to the potential of what Beth Or can, and will, do. I will miss y’all.
That todah, that offering of thanks, creates enough wonder to enable us to affirm our faith. So next we offer something that underlies most of our prayers— olah. Our prayers remind us of our astounding role in this God-created world. We are partners in the ongoing process of creating and improving our world and our lives. Every day for six years, I have been privileged to participate with Beth Or members in our share of that partnership.
In spite of all of our faith and accomplishments, our community has made mistakes, and so have I. So, we offer chatat for our “sins,” or more precisely, for having “missed the mark.” Whether unintentional or not, we need ongoing t’shuvah (“repentance”), the familiar process of confession, contrition, compensation, and commitment to do it right next time. We may be tempted to expect perfection, but that is a pretense. It is also a common form of idolatry to worship our own egos as if we were God instead of God’s partners. Instead of perfection, we are called to recognize our mistakes, and then rectify them through t’shuvah.
I will not list examples of mistakes as I did accomplishments. For our community to realize its potential, we need to focus on our strengths (please read my column in the May ORacle Newsletter)—our gifts of talents, skills, and passions. We need to overcome the Jewish culture of kvetching that paralyzes us and, in effect, multiplies our mistakes by making them our focus instead of an opportunity for t’shuvah.
Before our t’shuvah can be completed, we need to deal with that guilt, which remains, even after we have confessed and compensated. Our culture imbues us with a high sense of responsibility (thank God). So, we do not leave our mistakes easily. Superficial declarations of forgiveness, for us and for others, do not suffice. Beyond the chatat, we offer an asham, a guilt offering, to reinforce our acts of t’shuvah. After that, we might feel relieved enough (freed from the narrow places, which our Torah and prayers call “Egypt”) to move to the next offering, the neder—vow or commitment.
Our n’darim (same word as in Kol Nidrei) build on our freedom, our faith, and our sense of wonder and gratitude. They direct us towards our phenomenal potential to expand the best of Beth Or. We remain positioned to become the center of Jewish life in Snohomish County, or to become whatever our members decide we should become. For that potential, we should feel gratitude, and complete our cycle of offerings with another todah, another statement of thanks.
Of course that new todah begins a new cycle, which will be written by y’all. My writing concludes as it began, with thanks. Thank you for an astounding six years filled with wonder and honor.
