Making Today Count

            In this season just following Passover, our tradition invites us to embark on a spiritual journey of finding meaning through the counting of the Omer.  Each day for the 49 days between the start of Passover and the holiday of Shavuot, we are instructed to make an offering.  According to our Torah, this offering was to be an Omer (a specific measurement) of barley.  Today, this period of time calls upon us to find our own source of Omer. 

            We are reminded that each of us has the potential to offer something new to the world every day – to impact another person, to stand up for those who need defending, to advocate for our core values.  At this time of year, we strive to do so consciously, not letting a day go by where we have failed to bring some kind of intentional offering of ourselves.

            While we impact our world, we are also reminded that the barley that was offered in ancient times was not of us but of the earth.  Part of the Omer involves recognition of the gifts that this world has to offer us.  During this period, let us seek out moments of appreciation for the world in which we live.  Let us take time to note and find those elements of our lives that we might take for granted and spend a few moments in gratitude.  Doing so might just offer us the perspective we need to positively and intentionally impact our world.

            In light of this time of year also bringing Yom HaShoah – our day of Holocaust Remembrance – we must be reminded the importance of making each moment count.  By living out this Omer message, we declare to the world and to our ancestors that despite the best attempts of those who tried to wipe out our people, we are still here striving for tikkun olam, the repair of our world, according to our Jewish values.                         

Today is the 13^th day of the Omer. 

·      How will I make it different from the previous days? 

·      What will I offer to the world on this day? 

·      What offering does the world have for me? 

If we can find positive answers to each of these questions today and every day of the Omer, our world will be transformed and lifted up.

-       Rabbi Ari N. Margolis

Omer 5772

One way to make an immediate offering to our world is to join with us in opposition to the proposed marriage amendment to the NC State Constitution.  Be sure to vote on or before May 8^th.  Talk about it to friends and neighbors.  For more ideas on how to advocate, visit www.equalitync.org

Living the Passover story this year in North Carolina

Wishing you a Happy Passover!  Chag Pesach Sameach!

            I want to wish you a wonderful Passover filled with meaning and may all your matzah be tasty.  As we gather with friends or family for our Passover Seders this year, let us all be reminded of the messages of this holiday. 

            We retell the Exodus story of our ancestors from their enslavement in Egypt, and we are taught that each one of us is to use our imagination as if we were the ones toiling hopelessly in Egypt, watching the plagues shift all of our paradigms, trekking through the desert with a mixture of trepidation and jubilation on our backs right alongside the matzah we were cooking.  Each step away from Egypt brought us closer to freedom and yet had the opposite effect of gravity, making us feel more and more pulled back from whence we came.  And upon reaching freedom, we too feel the exaltation and relief and inspiration that the injustices of Egypt are behind us and that we can work to create a better, more fair society.

Our Passover narrative still rings true today, as we recognize that the Hebrew word for Egypt, mitzrayim, literally means, “narrow places.” One of these narrow places might just be the ballot box in just under a month.  The proposed Amendment One to the state constitution threatens to plague North Carolina with injustice.  Not only does this amendment strip our gay and lesbian friends and family, some of whom may be sitting at our own seders this year, of access to the rights of domestic partnership, but it threatens any loving couple who chooses not to marry for any number of reasons from being able to fully share in one another’s lives. Widowed couples who live together in unmarried partnership might no longer be able to advocate for one another’s health directives. Children raised by two loving partners might be stripped from the only parent they have left, in the case in which their biological parent was to die.  No matter how far away from Egypt we believe ourselves to be, society is constantly challenged by the gravitational pull of our narrower views. 

In the Passover story we see that if it had not been for external help – from an inspirational power like God, from a great leader like Moses, from the faith of Nachshon ben Amindadav (according to a Rabbinic Midrash, the Red Sea only parted after he stepped into it, believing that something could happen), we might still be stuck in the narrow spaces of Egypt.  Let us be inspired to do something about our modern narrow spaces:

o      Volunteer with Equality NC

o      Talk about the core of the issues with family or friends or coworkers or neighbors or grocery counter checkout people.

o      Be sure to vote on or before May 8^th (for Early Voting information click here)

o      Come to our Temple Beth Or phone bank, April 15^th – 10AM-1PM.  Contact Cindy Schneider, caschneider2000@aol.com, or Eileen Schwartz, eyeschwartz@nc.rr.com, for more details.

Current polling shows that although public sentiment does not agree with the outcome of this amendment, too many North Carolinians remain uninformed as to the potential consequences of this Amendment for it to be defeated. This will not change unless each of us steps forward to be a Moses or a Nachshon or an inspiration to others.

This year, let us each add a symbol to our seder plate, one that represents our contemporary Egypts, our own narrow spaces, our struggle against the injustices of Amendment One.  And when someone asks what it is doing on our seder plates, we can not only retell the story of Passover but relive it, as well. 

Rabbi Ari N. Margolis