September 25, 2008

Week 254, Day 4

25 Elul 5768

EILU D’VARIM: Part 2
Art Grand

Download the PDF of this prayer

At the beginning of the morning service we study an excerpt from the Mishnah called Eilu D’varim,
“these are the things” which reminds us what it means to lead a Jewish life.
Eilu D’varim teaches us that Judaism is not just for rabbis and other professionals. It contains a list of
the basic acts of decency that all of us are commanded to do: honoring our parents, visiting
the sick, comforting the mourner, and sharing our neighbors’ simchas. Performing these acts for
each other is what makes life bearable. More than that, our willingness to do these things for the
other is what changes a synagogue from a fee-for-service organization into a community.
The remarkable thing about Eilu D’varim is that there is no hierarchy. The prayer does not say,
“These are the five things that a Jew must do, and these are the two hundred additional things that
a rabbi must do”. Eilu D’varim simply tells us “These are your obligations as Jews”. According to
Rabbi Richard Address, Eilu D’varim contains the ultimate democratization of the mitzvah. Our
rabbis may have studied more Torah, and they may have taken classes in visiting the sick and
comforting the mourner, but ultimately they are no different from the rest of us. We have the
same responsibilities as they do.

Eilu D’varim is about more than obligations. According the “creative” translation in Gates of
Prayer, “These are the obligations beyond measure whose reward, too is beyond measure”. The
translation in Gates of Prayer may not be literal, but it teaches us one of the greatest secrets of
synagogue life: that the rewards for creating a caring community are literally beyond measure.
There is a joy to helping our fellow congregants that is impossible to describe. Eilu D’varim tells
us that the joy of helping others is real and wonderful, and that it is available to all of us, lay and
professional alike.

On the page opposite Eilu D’varim in Mishkan T’filah, there are three alternate study texts: a
teaching by Herbert Bronstein about the importance of covenantal work and study, a traditional
text about tzedakah, and a teaching by Paula Ackerman about the importance of an educated
laity.

Rabbi Bronstein’s teaching reminds us that mitzvot are more than obligations and more than
opportunities to feel good about ourselves:
The covenant calling and covenant work goes on in each act of teaching and
learning of the Torah, through which at the same time, God is still being revealed.
Through each moment of study, through each act of helping another, God is revealed. Bronstein
reminds us that study and mitzvot are more than ways of finding connection to each other; they
are ways of discovering the essence of God.

Paula Ackerman teaches:

We need Jewish men and women to become a Jewishly inspired and informed
leadership – not only rabbinic but also lay. We need Jews more conversant with the
thought and teachings of Judaism, to whom Judaism is no cold remote theology….
For two thousand years, there has been no priestly class. All of us, professional and lay, have
the same obligations, the same chance for joy, the same potential to discover the divine.
Ackerman points out that lay leaders have a particularly important responsibility. Reform Jews
often look at the things their rabbis are doing – reading Torah, visiting the sick, leading services –
and they say to themselves, “I could never do that.” In order to realize their potential, Reform
Jews need lay role models – models of lay leaders who study Torah and who see the day-to-day
work of lay leadership as the sacred work that it really is. Ackerman teaches that being a lay
leader is about more than budgets and financial decisions – it is about providing a model of what it
means to be a Jew.

In last year’s Erev Ordination Address at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion,
Rabbi Richard Sarason spoke about the obligation to be a living Torah—an embodiment of the
values of our tradition, an embodiment of its learning and of its ideal of godliness. He wrote, “This
is not about being a rabbi; it’s about being a Jew. A rabbi is just a Jew who, because of his or her
opportunity to have had more sustained Jewish learning and training and because of modern
culture’s insistence on professional specialization is, perhaps, a bit further down the path—but
that path is meant for all of us”. Eilu D’varim teaches that the path of study and mitzvot is meant
for all of us.

Art Grand is President of the Pacific Central West Council of the Union for Reform Judaism and
Chair of the Joint Commission on Worship, Music and Religious Living.