Congregation Netivot Shalom

Parasha Miketz
Genesis 44.1-44.17
Delivered on December 3, 1994 / 30 Kislev 5755
Peter Strauss

In honor of his Bar Mitzvah and Sixty-First Birthday

According to the Soncino Bible, " the visions of the Book of Zechariah contain the promise of a new Jerusalem as the City of Peace, with God as her only rampart; they predict the downfall of the heathen empires; they express the need of Divine forgiveness; they emphasize the reality of sin and declare the power of God to banish it from His people and portray the harmonious rule in the nation under their spiritual and temporal leaders."

The date is approximately 520 BCE. The people have returned from the Babylonian exile, and Zerubbabel embarks on the project of rebuilding the Temple. Zechariah has a vision of what we now know as the Menorah. He asks the angel/interpreter of his vision what are the two olive-trees? The angel says, "You don't know?" Zacki says "Nope". And the angel says something very strange: He says, "This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying: Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." For Zechariah, the goal was not the reestablishment of Jerusalem as a temporal capitol. His concern was for the establishment of God's Kingdom on earth. It's not enough to rebuild by brute force. This is not about a city, or about a building, or about walls, or defenses. The Soncino commentator continues: "(Zechariah) is a preacher of spiritual religion, and reminds the people that the return of God to the Temple must be preceded by the return of the people to God. Return unto Me, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will return unto you. First things first.

Given what has been happening and is happening currently in and around Jersusalem, these words have a particular poignancy for us today. We have been trying, by might and by power, and it does not seem to be working. Perhaps it's time to try something else. Wouldn't it be remarkable if we got up one morning soon and saw in the Chronicle a headline: ANGEL SAYS NOT BY POWER!

About 400 years after Zerubbabel's time, in 167 BCE, the Syrian king, Antiochus IV, had ordained that Jews must terminate their loyalty to their Torah, and adopt pagan cults which he would devise and impose. In a hill town an old priest named Mattathias killed a Jew who was about to sacrifice to Zeus. Mattathias fled to the hills with his five sons, and died two years later, in 165. Judah, his youngest son, took command of the rebels who had sprung up in the aftermath of Mattathias' act, and amazingly, they triumphed. On the 25th day of Kislev, in the year 164, the Jews celebrated the rededication of the temple sacrificial service. A new seven-branched candelabrum was lit, and according to a later legend, although there was only a one-day supply of oil, the candelabrum stayed lit for eight days.

Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.

Thus the beginning of Hanukah (the first festival not sanctioned by Biblical law).

Now, I want to turn to more recent history.

I want to say something about how I got here, and why, as it relates to this business of God's words to Zerubabel.

First, some graphics: Picture: 1939: a group of 5 or 6 year old boys, playing in someone's back yard in a mostly Gentile suburb of Boston. As young boys are apt to do, this group decides it's time for them to compare body parts. They all look pretty much the same, except for one. While this one is wondering why the difference, one of the others says, "That means you're a Jew, (he says it like a curse), you killed Jesus, so God punished you and cut some off." The other boys start jeering, threateting to hurt him,and the little boy runs home, humiliated and scared. He asks his mother what it means, is he a Jew, and what does that mean? She says something about ancestors, and that to her and his father it doesn't mean much at all, and why doesn't he go somewhere and play. That scene is etched in my memory as deeply as any memory I have.

Picture: 1943: a different neighborhood, different children. By this time, the boy, now 9 years old, knows that in addition to being Jewish, he is also German by descent. Some of his peers, in a peculiar sort of distortion, now taunt him additionally for being a Nazi. On any one of many possible afternoons, we see him standing in his front yard: he is angry at one of his playmates who has offended him in some more or less typical 9-year-old-boy way, and wants to say something very nasty to him, to hurt him back. He yells at the child, "You're a dirty rotten German Jew!" The other boy, who happens to be Irish and Catholic, and muscular in the bargain, beats the boy up severely. This time when the boy goes into his house, he knows not to try and explain to his mother: there will be a morals lecture, and no sympathy. That etching also persists in vivid detail, ineradicable. In the next few years, there will be many more beatings, many unprovoked by anything except the fact of his being Jewish, and the self-hatred will deepen exponentially.

Let us now fast-forward to the summer of 1993. I shift narrative mode to the first-person singular. ((Background: In the intervening years, I have acquired a book written by my grandfather, telling of his grandparents. He writes of his grandfather in turn, one Simon Rosenthal, a Hebrew and music teacher in the little village of Lichtenau, a mile or two from the Rhine, in the vicinity of Baden-Baden, in southwest Germany. Although not an ordained cleric, Grandpa Simon leads a congregation too poor to afford a rabbi, and he does so from 1810 until 1860.))

My wife Nan and I are going to Germany in June of '93 to visit her daughter Amy, who is there with her boyfriend Andreas. While planning the trip, I indicate that I would like to go to Lichtenau, to tread the ground my great-great-grandfather trod. Nan agrees, she arranges the trip with our usual travel agent, Leslie, and on a Monday, we all drive two hours from Frankfurt down to Lichtenau. We stop in the center of town, and park next to the village cemetery adjacent to the town hall, where I want to inquire about where Grandpa Simon lived. The town hall is closed, and as we start to walk back to the car, I ask Andreas, who is German-born, to enquire of two old men sunning themselves in the square if there is a Jewish cemetery, even though I believe that they have been mostly destroyed during the Holocaust, and after. "No," they reply. Oh well. That's what I thought. We head back to the car. "But," one of them says, "there is one in Freistett, about 10 km. south of here." "As long as we're here, let's go there and look around", I say, and we head south. There is no one on the streets of Freistett, no one of whom we can enquire, and then, suddenly, a lone woman appears on the street riding a bicycle with a basket full of groceries. Andreas asks her where the Jewish cemetery is, and she tells us it's in a field behind a dance hall.

We find the field, and the cemetery, a small plot, about 25 yards on a side, with alder and birch trees, a shrubbery hedge and a fence. A placard on the gate gives the name and phone number of the caretaker. We head for a phone, and Andreas calls the number. I know he won't be home, because it's Monday, and he's working wherever he works.

Andreas talks with someone for quite a while, and tells us that in fact the man is home, because he just had knee surgery, otherwise he'd come down and let us in, but if we want, we can go to his house in the woods on a dirt road about two or three miles away. Now my childhood kicks in, and I start to get scared. I have visions of skinheads coming out of the woods and attacking this car full of Jews. However, we get to the house without any untoward events taking place, and the man, on crutches, gives us the key to the gate.

We return and open the gate and enter the cemetery. I go to the left, Nan goes straight ahead, Amy and Andreas go to the right, and we begin looking around. I discover a gravestone with the words "From Lichtenau" under a name, and I realize that not only could Lichtenau not afford a rabbi, they also didn't have their own cemetery. I start to get excited. After a few moments, Nan calls to me. "Have you found anything?" I ask. "No," she says, "I just want you to come be with me." I go to her, we stand, holding each other, just being together in the sanctity of this place, and after a moment or two, she glances down. She says to me, "What did you say his name was?" "Simon", I reply. She points to the grave she happened to stop by, not having looked at it before. "Is that it?" I read, "Here lies Simon Rosenthal, from Lichtenau, died March 18, 1863."

Not by strength, not by might, but by my spirit, says Adonai Tzeva'ot.

Tears leap to my eyes, then, as now. I gaze at the gravestone, and even though I am not generally given to discourse with inanimate objects, I start to talk to it. I say, "You survived!", a peculiar thing to say to a dead person. And although noone else hears it, I hear a voice which says, "I'm glad you came."

Not by strength, not by might, but by my spirit, says Adonai Tzeva'ot.

Not knowing of the tradition of leaving stones on the grave, I pick up a stone to bring back with me. I show it to an acquaintance, a Gentile, after our return, who says, noticing that the dark stone has a ring of white around it, "That looks like one of those skullcaps Jewish people wear, doesn't it?"

Not by strength, not by might, but by my spirit, says Adonai Tzeva'ot.

Eventually we leave the cemetery, and head back to Frankfurt. Andreas wants to stop and call his sister, with whom they are staying. Since we have left Freistett headed north again, he stops in the middle of Lichtenau at the first phone booth we see. Her line is busy, so while we are waiting in the car, he decides to wait a few minutes and call again. It's a warm day, and he turns around to catch some breeze through the door of the phone booth. He gazes around him, and stops suddenly, motioning us to come to where he is. He points to someone's front yard. There is a small marble monument in the yard, with a mogenDovid and the words, in translation: "To the memory of the murdered Jewish townspeople. The city of Lichtenau. Here stood, from 1810-1940, their synagogue." Grandpa Simon's synagogue, which we would not have found if Andreas' sister's line had not been busy.

Not by strength, not by might, but by my spirit, says Adonai Tzeva'ot.

Again with the tears. And I begin to wonder what's happening, really, like: Nan, are you sure you arranged this with our usual travel agent?

Jumping again to September 1993. I am watching Rabin and Arafat shake hands on the television. Again, I talk to inanimate objects. I say to the television set, "Maybe now we can stop living in fear." And again, the tears start. And in the next breath, I say, "Maybe now I can stop living in shame." The tears turn to deep crying, and continue for the next two days.

All right already. I don't need any more convincing. It is clear to me that it is time. It is time for me to declare who I am, time for me to be fully who I have always been, time for me to stop hiding from God.

I call my friend David Shragai, he tells me of this congregation. I talk to Stu, I tell him I want to be bar mitzvah, I want to learn to at least read our language, to be able to participate in worship, to pray as Grandpa Simon prayed, as all my ancestors prayed. I want to claim, fully, my heritage. I begin my studies. Stu suggests that I start davening every day, so I do that. I start showing up here every Saturday morning, I discover my friend Brad Rudolph is one of the original members of this congregation, he introduces me to folks, and I realize that I have come home. You are my family, my people. This is where I belong. Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha'olam, she'asani Yisra'el.

So, how did I get here? Easy. I followed God's directions. "Leave your house, turn left, go back 130 years to Lichtenau, then go to the corner of Rose and Walnut in Berkeley, turn right into Netivot Shalom, and ask for Me."