Rabbi David E. Greenberg
Rabbi Greenberg is the founding Rabbi of Temple Shaaray Tefila. He became the Temple’s spiritual leader as a student rabbi in 1976, and under his guidance our congregation has grown from approximately 25 families to more than 900.
The following is a column from the May/June issue of Temple Topics, our congregation’s bimonthly newsletter:
It was at a Bat Mitzvah a few days ago when I referred to a song that our choir had just sung. The song included words that express “our hope for peace for all children and people of our world.” And I couldn’t help but think: what other religion expresses such a universal hope for all people without any “qualifications?” No, you don’t have to believe in this “messiah” to gain salvation! No, you don’t have to pray five times a day facing Mecca to earn the eternal reward! Rather, for Judaism, we share the prayer and vision that the people of our world will yet learn how to live together, and thereby bring peace and prosperity to our world.
And how do we attain what Judaism calls “the world to come?” Our tradition declares, “The good and righteous of all peoples have a share in the world to come.” In other words, do kind deeds, act upon the compassion you feel for other people, and live the holiness that is doing your part to help fix some of the brokenness of our world. The brokenness that is hunger and poverty and loneliness and the various cruelties that persist in our world (as much of the world turns away).
At that Bat Mitzvah service, I referred to something that I had read just that morning - a recent news story with which you might be familiar. Recently, an Iraqi immigrant living in Arizona ran over and killed his twenty year-old daughter because “she had become too Americanized.” It’s called an “honor killing” and we know of other such murders throughout our world. And I said: “that’s not religion; that’s insanity! Such action is a perversion of everything that Islam or Christianity or Judaism stand for. It’s a perversion of what it means to be a parent, and what it means to be human!”
Yes, this is a very complex, yet hopeful time for our world. In country after country, we see people arising in protest against oppressive governments that have kept their people ignorant and powerless. And so often this depressed condition has been maintained in the name of religion. In so many places, and not only in ancient times, hatreds and tribal feuds persist, wars are waged, and honor killings are practiced - all in the name of religion.
I try to impress upon our children and adults that to be Jewish is a great gift. It is the gift of a religious heritage that is rooted in a quest for justice, morality and kindness. It is a religion that has always taught that the highest service to God is to reach out to “God’s children” who hurt and who are in need. Or, as Elie Wiesel teaches, “The purpose of Judaism has never been to make the world Jewish. Rather, our purpose has always been to make the world more humane!”
One of our great thinkers, Rabbi Abraham Heschel, wrote the following about fifty years ago. (Please read these words twice as I think they speak a profound message to our world.) “Religion as an institution, the Temple (or the mosque or the church) as an ultimate end; or, in other words, religion for religion’s sake, is idolatry.... Parochial saintliness may be an evasion of duty, an accommodation to selfishness.”
Our Jewish goal: To create kind, righteous people who hold fast to the vision of fixing our broken world.
