Will The Next Generation Make It Into The Promised Land?

Moshe's generation who led the Israelites out of Egypt did not lead the people all the way into the Promised Land. In fact, they messed things up so badly that they didn't get to go at all! That daunting journey was left for the next generation.

Our Friday, August 19th service was focused on exciting celebrations for our families — BMitzvahs, a baby naming, and more! Rabbi Lizzi took this opportunity to reflect on how we are yet again leaving a daunting task to the next generation of Jewish leaders. Will our children be able to succeed where we failed?

Mishkan Chicago's High Holiday tickets are now on sale to the general public! For scheduling, pricing, venue information, and tickets, follow this link:

https://www.mishkanchicago.org/high-holy-days/

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For upcoming Shabbat services and programs, check our event calendar, and see our Accessibility & Inclusion page for information about our venues. Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook for more updates.

Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss.

Transcript

Transcript

Welcome, again to everybody who is either here for the first time or here in a Jewish service for the first time. This is what it is. And this is who we are. You're at Mishkan Chicago. My name is Rabbi Lizzi Heydemann. I've been here with Rabbi Steven and are members of our davening team. These are community members, Ellie and Lauren. And Erica, whose son Hunter became the mitzvah a couple months ago here. And, as has been mentioned a few times already high holidays is in a month. And if you're trying to figure out where to be, we invite you to join us we're in a venue this year that actually can accommodate the number of people who might want to join us. And so we invite you to come for any or all of the High Holidays, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur war, we're doing a class in preparation for the holidays, Monday nights starting on this Monday about the power and the presence and sound of the shofar. And other than that, you know, our schedule between now and the holidays, go on the calendar on our website, and you can see, but if you're thinking to yourself, you know, maybe I do want a little bit more tour in my life or more questions in my life, or more theological unpacking and discussion over lunch, we invite you to take a step in. before we, before we wrap our service, and we'll be joined by some of the littles from the other room in a few minutes. I want to I wanted to acknowledge all of the be mitzvah students who are beginning your journey this year with us all in the back and your parents. Yeah, yeah, this is this isn't there? Like Wait, this thing is like, between two and two and a half hours? Nobody told me that. And so so welcome to the beginning of learning how much about Judaism there is to know. And and how little any of us know, there's a famous rabbi in the Talmud, I think Rabbi Eliezer, who said of his teacher, if my teacher was an ocean, I am like a tube of mascara. In comparison, you know, and I know I feel that way in the presence of some of my teachers. And so for anybody who's thinking like, you know, I'll never know all there is to know like, welcome to The Club, Rabbi Eliezer, didn't know all there was to know. And probably his teacher, the ocean thought that his teacher was the solar system, you know. So there's a line in this week's Torah portion that I mentioned earlier about the human being being likened to a tree. That's actually where the Jewish imperative not to destroy nature comes from, is from this week's Torah portion. It's called bow Tashi. It's that you should not destroy the natural world. The Talmud says, Anyone who deliberately breaks dishes, tears, clothing wrecks, a building clogs, a fountain wastes food, is violating the law of bowel tear sheets, the imperative not to waste or destroy natural resources. And you could say so much of the more so destroying the natural world through negligence, wastefulness pollution, even taking it for granted, you know, so whatever is causing us to destroy nature, Torah says it's wrong. Key a damn eighths HESA de because the human being is like a tree. And so this is also where I don't know if you've heard or seen this custom of Jewish of Jewish people not cutting children's hair until they turned three years old. Because elsewhere in the Torah says you should leave trees alone and don't pick their fruit until they're three years old, you know, give the tree time to establish itself. And so because the tree is like a person, you know, maybe we should leave kids hair alone until they're three years old, too. And so there's a whole sort of sweet ritual called an option for like, giving a kid their first haircut at age three. I'm thinking about this deep relationship between people and Torah and specific and excuse me, people and trees, and specifically children and trees. Because in Montana this week, you might have heard a judge found in favor of the children of Montana, plaintiffs aged five to 22, who sued the state for failing to live up to its own mandate to protect the basic rights of its children, and sued the States essentially for violating the law of Bel Tashfeen. According to the kids who brought this case, the state of Montana is breaking its own laws and constitution by allowing companies to pursue their corporate interests without regard to the climate implications on the present and future generations of the state. And being negligent and ensuring clean air and drinking water and that the environment supports healthy minds and growing bodies. The founder of the Children's Trust that brought the case Julie Olson set of the judge's ruling, as fires rage in the West, fueled by fossil fuel pollution. Today's ruling in Montana is a game changer. That marks a turning point in this generations efforts to save the planet from the devastating effects of human caused climate chaos. This is a huge win for Montana, for youth for democracy, and for our climate. More rulings like this will surely follow. Boy do I hope she's right. But if I'm being honest I worry that it won't be fast enough, or far reaching enough to make the changes needed on the timeline needed to avoid even worse environmental catastrophes and chaos than we have already seen and already seen this summer, and even in the past week, we don't do ourselves any favor any favors by denying this reality, or pretending this isn't the world we live in, or it's just gonna get better, or it's not as bad as we think. And I asked myself who could possibly be powerful enough to persuade or change the forces, polluting our Earth and damaging our climate who we wonder will be furious enough and persistent enough and hopeful enough, and have the necessary combination of naivete and entitlement and chutzpah to stay in this fight? To give us a fighting chance? Yeah, who has that essential combination of chutzpah and entitlement and hopefulness that is necessary to change reality? And we all know the answer, teenagers. It's our teenagers, it's our kids. And it brings me no great joy to say that because all any parent wants to do is pass on a better world than we were given. But we know that it's not us, and our parents generation that will pull the climate back from the brink for our children. Instead, it's going to be the other way around. So we're looking at you kids. And it will be kids, like Leo and Byron. And like Gil, and like all of you, who will sue states and protest pipelines and lobby Congress and invent new technology. And it's not fair. It's not fair. That it rests on your shoulders. It's not. But it's what we have, you're who we have. It's where we are. And the truth is, you know, even like 20 minutes ago, when we sat when we stood up here and saw three generations of women reading Torah, you kids can look back at your grandparents, and parents generation, with a sense of inspiration at what can happen when you decide to put your mind toward and a community toward changing the world. Right, because back when they were young, your grandparents and their parents, and they had an uncompromising sense of justice, and a sense of hopefulness and entitlement and chutzpah, not to mention strong Jewish values that include the dignity of all people that include the rhythm of a week that includes Shabbos, and a day off that every human being is entitled to, it's because of generations that fought for the things that they might never see in their lifetime, but fought anyway, that we have same sex marriage, that we have a five day workweek and labor laws that we have civil rights laws. And we're not there yet. We know we're not there yet. We have a long way to go. And that's partially because every time we take a step forward, there is some Pharaoh trying to take us two steps back. Who rises up in every generation to threaten the progress we've made toward the promised land? You know, and when we envision what what is that promised land, I think it's important to like hold not just what we're against, but what are we for, right a world in which everyone can be who they are love who they love, and live sustainably on this earth. And in every generation, there will be new battles to be fought and visionary people will fight them, and their children will look back and say, they didn't do enough for the issues that matter to them. And will say, We're sorry, we tried. And now it's your turn to pick up the baton. And we'll all work together in this relay race. And so I want to say to all the kids in the house this morning, we believe in you. We believe in you, me, all of us, all of your parents. At every baby naming we actually put the baby down on a chair called Elijah's chair, and we evoke Elijah the prophet. And Elijah's role in Jewish history is to Harold, the Messianic age to let us know that a better days are on the way and we say to that little baby, sitting on that pillow or chair, we don't know what your role will be in the bringing about of a better world. But we love you. And we support you in becoming the person that God puts you in the world to be and growing into the adult that you are destined to become and we celebrate you and what you will do to make this world more beautiful and more whole and more just and we will do whatever we can to help you. Adults are we on board.

Being part of a community where we are raising up new generations and passing on our values in whatever way you're part of them, having the kids being in community with the kids being aunts or uncles or grandparents to the kids. All of this is a profound act of hopefulness and faith because we hope you'll be like trees, planting deep roots having a sense of who you are growing tall branches absorbing and metabolizing the nutrition and nutrients around you giving back to your environment, communicating with others so as not to hoard right resources, but to thrive and to know that you're helping the ecosystem around, you thrive to keep a dam, a test a day, each person is like a tree. And we need each other. And we need our young saplings who will grow our forest. So in closing this morning, I actually want to invite up all of our new educators who are helping create the family program for Mishcon. So that is Rabbi Ari malefic. In the back, come on up, and I want to give you like, some love over here, yes, yes, yes. Is Rachel Mailand here or she's still with the kids. Okay, so if Rachel Mylan still with the kids, well, you can let them know they can either come in if they want. Or we can just know that Rachel is here. And then we've got Maddie Fisher, who I think is also in the other room with Rachel. And then Nathan Kaplan, who's not here this morning. And then the entire staff of the men's Academy who works very hard Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, we're giving them Shabbat off. So our he's basically representing a, a minion of people up here who are helping guide the next generation at Mishkan. And we're here to cultivate strong Jewish roots and let you all grow and thrive in this soil and help you cultivate your sense of justice and righteousness and your own sense of power in the world. And just like the gardener, who believes that something must be happening under the soil, and waters and weights and waters and weights, we believe in you and we cannot wait to see the incredible people that you are becoming. And so I just want to say amen. To that prayer for all of you. And all the little ones are coming in. And here's Rachel and here's Maddie. And Alan. Yeah, yeah, come on up. Come on up. Ari is our new director of teen and youth programs. And Rachel is our Director of early and elementary family engagement. And Maddie is our development and engagement associate who also does family program support and engagement. Did I get it right? Amazing. And we and we're so lucky to have you Is there anything you want to say before we muscle tough to beautiful and you did a beautiful job helping to lead this? I can't wait to get to know everyone. I mean, I mean, you can read their bios on our website but know how lucky we feel to have you helping craft the next generation of young Jewish minds and souls here at Mishcon