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62nd anniversary of my bar mitzvah

Given by Joel Bressler on December 6, 2008 (9 Kislev 5769 )
My second bar mitzvah speech

I look around this Sanctuary and feel surrounded by family and friends, sharing in the observance of the 62nd anniversary of my bar mitzvah. For me, it is an opportunity to look back at the joys and the sorrows, the learning, and the accomplishments, and I am thankful for what I have been given.

Today, grandson Matthew Waxman was called to the Torah and is wearing a tallit for the first time.

I thought it would be fitting for me to speak, one bar mitzvah "boy" to another, about the mitzvot-- commandments or good deeds, which Jewish adults are expected to observe.

The Torah reading today told of the young adult life of Jacob, one of our forefathers whose sons became the founders of the 12 tribes of Israel.

In last week's Torah portion, Jacob was cooking lentils when Esau came in from hunting in the fields-- famished.

He asked Jacob to give him some of the lentils. Jacob agreed, but only if Esau would sell him his birthright. In that time, the firstborn male would receive twice the inheritance, called the birthright, of other children. Esau said, "I am at the point of death; of what use is my birthright to me?" So Esau sold his birthright to Jacob.

Years later, when Isaac was old and blind, he asked Esau to kill some venison and prepare it for Isaac so that he would be able to give Esau the birthright blessing before he died. Esau went out into the field, and while he was gone, Rebecca, Isaac's wife, who knew about Jacob's receiving the birthright from Esau years earlier, prepared some venison and had Jacob bring it into his father and pretend he was Esau so that Isaac would give Jacob the greater blessing.

When Esau returned with the venison and found out what Jacob had done, he became enraged and swore to kill Jacob after Isaac died.

Thus, Jacob was forced to flee for his life from his home in Beersheva. Rebecca was in on the plot because she felt Jacob possessed the finer qualities to carry on the Jewish faith into ensuing generations, and Esau, an outdoorsman-hunter, did not. Besides, Isaac did not want Jacob to marry a Canaanite woman.

Rebecca advised Jacob to "get out of town" until Esau cooled off, to go back to her birthplace, Paddan-Aram, which is in today's Iraq.

This town was close to Haran,the birthplace of his grandfather, Abraham, the founder of the Jewish faith, and the first believer in one God.

En route to his mother's home, Jacob settled down for the night at a place called Luz. In modern times it has been called Bethel. While he slept, he had a dream: a stairway was set on the ground, with its top reaching the heavens. Angels of God were going up and down the ladder, and Adonai was standing beside him. Jacob was promised that the ground on which he was lying, God would assign to his offspring.

"You shall spread out to the West, the East, the North and the South. Remember, I am with you and will protect you wherever you will go and will bring you back to this land." The dream confirms Jacob as the heir to the divine promises made to both Abraham and Isaac.

He awoke from his sleep, shaken. He said, "How awesome is this place; this is none other than the abode of God, and it is the gateway to Heaven," "Ma norah hamakom hazeh, ain zeh ki im beit elohim, v'zeh sha'ar hashamayim."

In today's Torah reading, Jacob arrived in the area of Paddan-Aram, met his cousin, Rachel at the community well and fell in love with her. He made an agreement with Rachel's father, Laban, to marry her if Jacob would work for Laban for seven years. At the wedding ceremony, Laban switched Leah, Rachel's older sister, for Rachel, and Jacob had to work for Laban another seven years in order to marry Rachel.

So, in last week's Torah portion, Jacob deceived his father, Isaac. In today's Sedra, Jacob was deceived by his father-in-law, Laban. Laban was then deceived by Jacob and, later on, by his own daughter, Rachel. All this trickery sounds like the behavior of what today we would call a dysfunctional family. It all happened before the Torah was given at Mount Sinai, an indication that we need laws to promote good behavior.

In the Torah, we have been given a series of mitzvot, or Commandments, to live by, to enrich our lives and the lives of others. Originally, we were to observe 613 Commandments, many of which concerned the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, but today, because it is no longer in existence, it is necessary to observe only about 100 of the 613 Commandments.

If you will turn to page 9 in our blue prayerbook, you will see, in the next to the bottom paragraph, some of those Commandments listed in the Talmud which reward us with a good life here and in the future time to come.

First, we are commanded to honor our parents, to respect the people who brought us into the world or who have raised us. It is the responsibility of our parents to give us a value system, to teach us right from wrong, to educate us, to do the things that merit respect, and to teach us to become independent by learning a profession.

The second mitzvah: We are commanded to perform acts of lovingkindness-- gemilut chasadim. On page 11, we begin the morning service with, "I hereby accept the obligation of fulfilling my Creator's mitzvah in the Torah: Love your neighbor as yourself.

Here are some examples of deeds of lovingkindness we should perform:

Attending the prayer services at the synagogue, morning and evening. We perform this deed, not only to achieve a closer personal relationship with God, but also to enable us to recite certain prayers which can be said only in the presence of 10 adults, like the Kaddish prayer recited by those people in mourning for eleven months and on other occasions.

The next three deeds were taught in the Torah portions of a few weeks ago, during the lives of Abraham and Sarah, the founders of our faith. Each person in the community should assume the responsibility for some aspect of helping others.

1. Providing hospitality: We have an obligation to welcome new people into the community, making them feel welcome in the Synagogue, directing them to what facilities are available in our community, extending an invitation for a Shabbat dinner, making sure they have a Passover Seder to attend, finding schools, shopping and friends.

   
   A modern-day example of hospitality in our own Synagogue is the committee that works diligently in the kitchen, week after week, serving food to those who attend services on Saturday mornings and at other times. Those who would like to join this committee would be greatly appreciated.

2. Visiting the sick: When people are ill, they often feel helpless, abandoned, shut away from the world. A visit to their home, a hospital or a nursing home, a phone call, or food brought in, is a wonderful support and connection from the outside world.

3. Attending the dead: My special interest has been the Chevra Kaddisha, the Jewish Burial Society, some of whose members serve on the Taharah Committee which is responsible for the burial of a person who has died, performing the final act of kindness for a deceased person from whom they can never be repaid with gratitude.

   
   Other members of the Society make sure that the mourners are fed and comforted during the 3 to 7 day period of shiva that follows the funeral, and to ensure an evening minyan in the mourner's home, a minimum of ten adults, for prayer service during which the relatives are able to recite the Mourner's Kaddish prayer. Judaism teaches us that we must do good deeds for both the living and the dead.

   
   I had anticipated that Dr. Joseph Honigman, a close friend from Jacksonville, Florida, would be here today. Unfortunately, his daughter is in the hospital with a chronic disease and he is unable to come in for the celebration. Joe worked with me 34 years ago to help organize the Chevra Kaddisha at the Jacksonville Jewish Center Synagogue. The Chevra Kaddisha now serves city-wide.

   
   I served as its first president for 15 years. When I moved to Maryland, I used the experience from Jacksonville to help organize and educate the members of the Chevra Kaddisha in our own Congregation.

4. Another act of lovingkindness is giving charity: We have a Chesed Shel Emet committee in our Congregation which collects funds and distributes them to many charitable Jewish and non-Jewish organizations which help the needy.

   
   It has been a mere hop, skip and jump from leaving crops at the corner of a field for the poor, one of the ways of giving charity in Biblical days; to, just before the Sabbath begins on Friday afternoon, having our children to drop coins into a Jewish National Fund blue-and-white box for planting trees, building dams and roads in the State of Israel; to improving the world's food supply and cultural projects.

   
   It is no coincidence that Jews give great sums to non-Jewish charities, to hospitals, symphony orchestras, theatre groups, the Red Cross, and other organizations which help fight diseases and famine, whether the needy live in Israel, Africa, Indonesia, Darfur, Haiti, the District of Columbia, or in our own community. In the past, even the poor were encouraged to give charity to those who were less advantaged.

   
   

   Moshe ben Maimon, also known as Maimonides, was a Jewish physician, philosopher and scholar who wrote extensively over 800 years ago.

   He wrote a treatise on the 8 degrees of charitable giving, stating that the greatest degree of charity is, not only giving charity but training an unskilled person to be able to support himself and his family, rather than continuing to need assistance from others.

The final sentence of the paragraph on page 9 reads: The study of Torah is the most basic good deed of them all. Torah study leads to following the principles of the Torah which enrich our own way of life and also make the entire world a better place to live in.

Shabbat Shalom.

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