Dear Friends,

Rabbi Tarfon taught, "It is not up to you to complete the task, but neither are you free to desist from it."  An unfortunate but necessary task is up to us at this time.  Every year, approximately thirty thousand deaths in the United States are caused by firearms – whether it is from murders, suicides or accidental shootings.  This high number is not comparable with other developed countries that have more stringent gun safety laws, suggesting that there is something we can do.  Our Congress is currently considering important gun safety measures including universal background checks, banning semi-automatic weapons, high capacity magazines, and gun-trafficking, enhancing school safety, and improving access to mental health care. Pikuach Nefesh, saving a life, is one of the most important mitzvot, commandments, in Jewish tradition.  In an attempt to fulfill this mitzvah, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism is at the center organizing support for these new policies.  On April 9th, the Reform Movement, the Conservative movement, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (OU) and dozens of other faith groups are encouraging people to call their Senators and urge them to vote in favor of these meaningful laws.  I hope that many of you will participate.  For more information on how to be a part of this national interfaith call-in-day, please visit www.faithscalling.org.  Your voice can make a difference.

L'shalom, to peace,

Rabbi Jason Holtz

The story of Joseph is surely one of the most powerful and engaging in the entire Hebrew Bible. After having been separated from his family for years, Joseph is reunited with his brothers who casted him into a pit and let him be sold into slavery. Joseph is now second only to Pharaoh and is managing Egypt through a famine. When his brothers come down to Egypt in search of food, they do not recognize Joseph, although Joseph recognizes them. Eventually, Joseph reveals himself to his brothers and says to them, "I am Joseph—is my father alive?" Is my father alive? What an anxiety-filled question. Joseph was not the first to ask a question like that. In the aftermath of a shooting, many people around the country are forced to ask the question, "Is my loved one still alive?"

It has been one week since the Newtown tragedy, where twenty six people, including twenty children, were killed. The sad reality, though, is that the amount of violence involving guns in the United States is atrociously high. On an annual basis, there are eleven thousand murders and nineteen thousand suicides using a firearm.^1,2 Of the eleven thousand murders, almost three thousand of them are children—children!³ If these statistics do not shake us to our core, more than twice as many preschool age children are killed on an annual basis by guns than soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.^4,5 Every day there is the equivalent of more than three Newtown massacres in the United States. The average day sees more than eighty people killed and two hundred seventy injured by a firearm.⁶ The mass shootings that we have witnessed in Newtown, in Aurora, and here in Tucson are all tragic, as are all of the other violent episodes involving firearms, but they are pointing to an even larger problem.

No one woke up this morning expecting that the day would conclude how it did. No one woke up this morning expecting a tragedy. No one woke up this morning expecting close to thirty people to be murdered, including twenty small children with their whole lives ahead of them and teachers who chose the noble profession of education. No one woke up expecting to hear the news that their child, their brother or sister, their grandchild, their niece or nephew, their friend, their colleague would be slain. No one woke up expecting this to happen, yet I would be lying if I said that there isn't some awful hint of familiarity. How many mass shootings have there been? Was it that long ago that we in Tucson had our own tragedy, with so many people wounded and killed? We are on the other side of the country, yet perhaps there is kinship in grief. Or at least those natural human emotions of shock, sorrow and sympathy at such an occurrence, no matter where it is, binds us together. Whatever connections we may draw, though, this is something new. As Rabbi David Wolpe wrote this afternoon, "Each time evil strikes it is a fresh wound to our spirit and an astonishment that people could so betray the image of God in each of us."

Our thoughts and our prayers are with all those affected today in Connecticut. Let us continue with a moment of silence...

Tonight is the seventh night of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, yet on a day like today we also remember the oppressive darkness that can creep into the world. That darkness is not everything though. As the poet Hannah Szenesh wrote, "There are stars up above, so far away we only see their light long, long after the star itself is gone. And so it is with people that we loved—their memories keep shining ever brightly though their time with us is done." It's a dark day, but we remember the light of the souls of each person caught up in the Connecticut tragedy as we kindle our Hanukkah Menorah.

Whoever came up with the original Hanukkah may have made a mistake. It is possible that Hanukkah is too long by exactly one day. How so? The miracle of Hanukkah is that when the Maccabees took back the Temple, they wanted to rekindle the Menorah. They found enough oil for only one day, but miraculously it lasted for eight days. Not coincidentally, that was just enough time to procure new oil. Now, if it was natural for the oil to burn for one day and was miraculously extended by another seven days, shouldn't that be the length of the holiday, seven days?

No. As it turns out, Hanukkah is not too long. It is exactly right. The reason is that miracles in the Jewish tradition are not just some events that defy the natural order, some occurrence occasioned by God that changes the course of history or turns regular burning oil into slow burning oil. Rather, the Hebrew word for miracle is nes, which also means sign. Just as in the English language, where "sign" comes from the same root as "significant," a nes is a significant event. It does not have to connote the suspension of the laws of nature. Rabbi Harold Schulweis writes, "To witness the miraculous is to observe in an ordinary event extraordinary significance, an event so important that it cries to be raised up and celebrated." In a great many ways, that is where the best lessons of Hanukkah are to be found: in the extraordinarily significant actions of ordinary people. If a miracle were just about what God does, perhaps Hanukkah should be only seven days. The first candle, however, reminds us of the important role of people.

Even if I had someone like Eliezer helping me look, I don't think I could have done any better. I'll pick up right where Jodi left off.

There are some fascinating details to the story in this week's parashah that affect Jewish practice to this day. When Eliezer and Rebecca return to meet Isaac for the first time, they find that he has "gone out to the field towards the evening to pray." One school of thought says that this is Isaac, creating the afternoon prayer service. Some of the classic rabbis attribute the entire Jewish tradition of prayer back to the patriarchs. To Abraham they credit the morning service, to Isaac the afternoon service, and to Jacob the evening service. As for Abraham and the morning service, there is a biblical verse that states: "The next morning, Abraham hurried to the place where he had stood before Adonai" (19:27). Some of early rabbis took standing to mean praying, and there you have it: morning services. Lastly, the evening service originates with Jacob based on the verse: "And he [Jacob] encountered a place" (28:11). In this case, having an encounter refers to prayer, and "a place" is taken to mean God. If that strikes you as a curious way of describing God as a "place," it is actually frequently done by the rabbis. They call God HaMakom -The Place. Perhaps what they mean is that God is the place where all of creation, all of being exists. If you like these explanations, then I suppose you have Isaac to thank for Yom Kippur services that seem especially long, particularly in the latter part of the day.

בראש השנה יכתבון וביום צום כפור יחתמון...ותשובה ותפילה וצדקה מעבירין את רע הגזרה

On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed...but teshuvah, tefillah, and tzedakah pass the evil of the decree.

Sometimes, it seems like we can predict the future. Tax day will come in April, the Yankees will invariably have a winning record at the end of the season, Tucson will remain hot and dry, Phoenix will have traffic, some people who are healthy right now will not be so next year, and some people who are here with us now will not be here next year, despite anyone's best efforts. We say, "On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed..." Some people believe this piyyut, liturgical poem, literally; God ordains the future. Many, however, do not believe that God has either the power, desire, or both to shape the exact course of everyone's life. Whatever one believes, though, things will happen that are outside of our control. Despite that, we affirm that "teshuvah (repentance), tefillah (prayer), and tzedakah (righteous giving) pass the evil of the decree." Things will happen that are outside of our control, but we can always respond. Sometimes, it is how we respond to the events in our lives and the events in others' lives that is as important or even more important than the event itself. Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor as well as a neurologist and psychiatrist, wrote, "Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." That can make all the difference.

On August 19, we will be entering into the new Hebrew month of Elul, the month immediately preceding Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. This month of Elul is traditionally used to prepare for the High Holy Days. A significant theme of the High Holy Days is teshuvah, return or repentance. It essentially means repairing broken relationships and strengthening existing ones with God, our family, our friends, our colleagues, ourselves, and so on. The twentieth century philosopher Martin Buber taught that all of our existence can be understood in terms of relationships. He wrote that when we have true, authentic relationships with others, we transform who we are and who they are. In fact, relationships are so important that one early sage, Rabbi Eliezer, said to engage in teshuvah every day. That is an admirable goal; however, for many of us, it too easy to become engrossed in our daily tasks, to go on autopilot, to become so focused on the trees that we lose sight of the forest; we do not take time to do the teshuvah that is necessary upkeep for every relationship. So, the High Holy Day season, beginning with Elul, helps us to focus on this central importance. May we be blessed with renewed and strengthened relationships this upcoming year.

Being Jewish is about doing Jewish. While Judaism engages the head and the heart, much of it is about the importance of doing over the importance of feeling. When the Torah mentions something about a feeling, "Love your neighbor as yourself," rabbinic commentators say that it is really about doing something. Rashi, the medieval French rabbi and greatest commentator on the Torah, wrote on that verse, "It is forbidden to do what you would not want done to yourself." He turns it into how to act. For Judaism, the importance of feelings is in acting them out.

What does it mean to love? It means to act lovingly. What does it mean to be compassionate? It means to act with compassion. What does it mean to be generous? It means to give generously. If someone does something wrong, it's not enough to feel remorseful—Jewish tradition teaches that we are to apologize and try to make amends when possible.

The core of being Jewish is doing Jewish. It's not enough to simply feel Jewish in one's heart and not do anything Jewish. That's like being a runner who doesn't run or a businessman who doesn't work. There's a difference between being a baseball fan and actually stepping up to the plate, ready to swing the bat. So what does it mean to do Jewish?