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It’s Madhim – It’s Incredible

I’m on my way to hear the Vice President speak, last Saturday night, in Orlando.
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November 9, 2015

I'm on my way to hear the vice president speak, last Saturday night in Orlando. He's about to address the 5,000 attendees at the Union for Reform Judaism Biennial, a gathering of Reform Jewish leaders from all over the world. We’re almost to security when my sister asks if we can jump into the Exhibition Hall for some last minute shopping. I try to be a good little brother so when the choice is Joe Biden or my big sister, the answer is easy.

Inside, I bump into fellow Omaha native and friend, Dr. Ron Wolfson, near the booth where his new memoir, The Best Boy in the United States of America, is for sale. We start talking, reminiscing about our grandparents who knew each other, of course (Omaha’s Jewish community is rather intimate, roughly the same size as the membership of Stephen Wise Temple!). My sister comes over and asks me what I think of the earrings she’s picked out. They’re gorgeous, I tell her. She wants to buy them but in order to make it through security to see the Vice President more quickly, she’s left her purse back in the hotel room. I’m no help – all I have is my room key. Dr. Wolfson comes to the rescue – if not the very best boy in America, he’s certainly one of the sweetest I know – and loans my sister money for the earrings. We start talking to the jeweler, Jackie Cohen.

Yoshi Zweiback, Jackie Cohen and Rosie Zweiback. Photo courtesy of Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback

I can tell from his accent that he’s Israeli. I ask him in Hebrew how he’s enjoying the Biennial. There’s a long pause and I worry that maybe it hasn’t been a good experience for him. I lived in Israel for five years and so often I found myself defending Reform Judaism to all sorts of Israelis – religious, secular, and even those who’d grown up in America. For a moment I worry that Jackie will say something that might make me regret the question. Maybe in characteristic Israeli bluntness, he’ll criticize or denigrate an approach to Judaism that fills my life with meaning.

It turns out that my defensiveness is unwarranted.

“Madhim” – he says, “incredible.” The Exhibition Hall is closed for Shabbat and ordinarily, Jackie explains, he’d take the morning off, sleep in or do some sight-seeing. But today, he went to services. “Ani hiloni l’gamrei,” he says, “I’m completely secular.” But, for some reason, he'd decided to go. And then he explains that in his entire life, he’s never experienced anything like it. Five thousand people – men and women, teens, kids, Jews of all colors and backgrounds – with amazing music (a full band and 50-person choir) and energy. One aliyah was for people who hadn’t grown up in the Reform movement – those who’d grown up in other movements, secular, or in other religious traditions. It was the biggest aliyah of all: ours is an incredibly diverse movement. The final verse of Torah in the morning service was chanted communally, the organizers had sent out a recording of the verse along with the text with trope to all participants in advance. Jackie was blown away.

“I called my wife in Givatayim,” he says, “and I told her that I’d just gone to services. She screamed! ‘Mah kara l’cha – what’s happened to you?’ I think she worried that I was becoming religious!” Then Jackie tells us that his brother-in-law was very ill and that during the Mi She’berach, he prayed for his health. “I never pray,” he says, “but today I prayed. It felt so good.”

When you are inside of something, experiencing it every day, it’s sometimes hard to see it, to appreciate it fully. When you live inside a vibrant Reform Jewish community, as I am privileged to at Stephen Wise, it seems normal to see over 500 committed Jewish students gather on your campus each day to learn. It seems ordinary to see women and men in tallit and t’fillin on Thursday mornings davening together. It seems natural for Jews-by-choice and those who are opening themselves to Judaism for the first time to pray side-by-side with others who grew up Orthodox or traditional here in America or from around the Jewish world. It’s expected to hear a traditional Torah chant, a Carlebach niggun, and then a contemporary setting of Oseh Shalom with a full-band and choir in the very same service. It’s how we roll. But for Jackie Cohen of Givatayim, it was a revelation.

We go through security and listen to our colleague, Rabbi David Saperstein, United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, talk about his passion for justice and then we hear Vice President Biden talk about his lifelong friendship and partnership with American Jewry and with Israel. For so many of us, thank God, it seems perfectly natural for a Rabbi to be appointed Ambassador by the U.S. President or for a Vice President of the United States to address a Jewish group so warmly and intimately, concluding his remarks by thanking our community “for answering the Jewish injunction to heal the world – Tikkun Olam.” But as I write this on the 77th anniversary of Kristallnacht, I know that such a thing is extraordinary in the context of Jewish history.

I wish that somehow every Jew, every seeker in our community, could have the opportunity to experience the joy, the warmth, and the meaning that we offer. I wish that everyone, no matter his background, no matter her preconceptions, might be open at just the right time to what heartfelt, exuberant, soulful prayer can feel like. I wish that everyone could experience the power of community and the sense of purpose that a congregation, a movement, and a People can provide.

It’s simply madhim – it’s incredible.

Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback is senior rabbi at Stephen Wise Temple

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