Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation

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Mishkan/Sanctuary: Encountering the Sacred in Space and Time

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Yom Kippur talk by Carole Caplan

sunsets-over-farmThe day outside is cool, but the bright sun filters through the trees and warms me every now and again. I can hear the rustle of the wind in the branches above, and the call of something further away, maybe a loon, making its way to more hospitable winter accommodations. The crackling of the leaves under my feet step after step, make it clear to me that out of nowhere and all too soon, fall has arrived.

Baba walks ahead of me, and my soul, battered and bruised from the turnings of seasons before, struggles to keep up with this wise man in every way. “I tend the path,” is all he says to me, and I wonder, if I am here to learn from him, how or why or when. We walk quietly together, yet completely alone, for a long time, step after step.

The woods grow deeper and I can smell the moss on untouched earth in this old wood forest that has stood here longer than I will even be alive. Baba moves a tree limb that has fallen in our way. Come this way he motions, and without words I hear him say, “I tend the path, Carole, for you.”

Step after step we make our way along the edge of the forest to an opening that overlooks a large field. Its expansiveness holds the possibility of future crops, of dreams, of desires, of growth, of success, of nourishment, of failure, of disappointment, of need, of drought, of lack; of death. I sense that all of these have happened here in this field before. Is it knowledge or preparation that makes the difference? Is it repentance or punishment? Is it chance or luck? I hear no answers, and quickly retreat back to the woods, overwhelmed by the acknowledgement that so many things will always remain outside of my control.

How is it that I have found myself here…here in this place…following a monk through the woods? I know I am searching. I know I am completely lost, yet I know I am somehow exactly where I need to be. Truly, this must be grace cradling me in her strong and loving arms.

My soul, that which time has completely walled off and simultaneously entirely exposed, begins to soften. I feel compelled to stop and lean against a tree too big for my arms to wrap around.

I watch as Baba walks ahead step by step. And then it happens. Through the deafening silence and the tears streaming down my face, I hear clearly and loudly what I never even knew I had been longing to hear… “I tend the path, Carole—and it is enough for me to do just that.” It was a simple but elusive validation. A much needed directive, urging me on. It is enough just to be. It’s not about how much you can do. Enough just to walk. Not to always be striving, struggling, hurrying, worrying to get somewhere. Not about what you can produce. Enough just to tend that which is in front of us on our path with our time, our talent, our hearts, and yes, with our broken souls.

Baba and I turn to head back to the others making lunch at the central house. In a wordless flash, I recognize this as a magic moment−a door through which I have passed and will have been changed forever. I don’t know how it is that I have found myself here in these woods, but I do know that here I have somehow found myself renewed.

So, this I know: I am here to tend the path. The path that has led me to a farm outside of Ann Arbor where I tend the gardens, and know it to be “enough.” The soil there outside my door holds the seeds that become the plants that provide the fruits that adorn the tables that I am being called to set–and this cycle nourishes every part of me. I hope you will visit me sometime. You see, there is a path there that wanders through the growing things that turn with the seasons. And perhaps once there, you’d like to join me, step-by-step, for a walk.

Our Kahal, Our Sacred Community

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Rosh Hashanah talk by Margo Schlanger

margoHi, I am Margo Schlanger, and I’m the chair of the Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation. I’m here to welcome you, whether you’ve been a part of our community for its full history of 22 years, or this is your first time spending time with us, or—as with me and many others—something in between.

My two children are 15; it’s been two-and-a-half years since their b’nei mitzvah. There was something about that morning that really epitomized AARC for me. Something, in particular, about the Torah service. The kids read Torah—the parsha was Mishpatim, laws—and they gave drashes in which they talked about the function of some of those laws at the time they were promulgated, and how we need to notice and critique the Torah’s failures with respect to equality in particular. Those of you who know my kids know that they have strong views about religion—like pretty much everything else. I was really proud of them—their moral and intellectual seriousness, their sustained engagement with Jewish texts and tradition, and their Hebrew skills. All that was nourished here in our AARC community. As usual in our services, someone else also read Torah, too—in this case, it was my sister-in-law, Ellie. Ellie is orthodox, and she had never read Torah in a mixed gender congregation before. We invited her, and she accepted, as an act of bridging her orthodoxy with our more liberal Judaism. It was about shared family feeling, and shared Judaism. I was really proud of her, and proud to be her sister-in-law, both because of her evident erudition, and because she was willing to participate, just for a few minutes, in our community that is so very unlike hers.

Anyway, back to why I’m standing here before you. To me, what happened at my kids’ b’nei mitzvah—both with them, and with Ellie—was the essence of our kahal, our sacred community. As it did during that Torah service, AARC during High Holidays and all year round offers a space and community where so many different kinds of people can gather, and can share whatever it is about Judaism that is most meaningful to them. Whether that is prayer and communal services, on Fourth Fridays, Second Saturdays, and holidays; connecting at our monthly pot lucks that follow Fourth Fridays; social justice projects; book club, Beit Sefer. For different members, different families, the draw is different—but we have created a kahal, a sacred community, out of all of us together.

And so now I get to the ask. Our community depends on you. That means both money and effort; we count on both, in so many ways. For many of the folks here, we depend on your membership, and your efforts on our behalf, and your membership dues. For non-members, perhaps you’d like to take the (very easy) plunge and become a member. But even for non-members not interested in membership—and we love having non-members come to our services, including these lovely High Holiday services—we depend on your support.

So welcome to our service, and welcome to this next year in our community. We will this year, together, enjoy many events and activities and meals and study sessions. We’ll do that with rabbinic leadership—Rabbis Strassfeld, Levitt, and Alpert—and with lay leadership, as we conduct our more permanent rabbi search. Please support this community—your community—as generously as you can.

L’shanah Tovah

[Editor’s note: You can easily renew your membership online right here.

Eyn Od/There is Nothing Else

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Rosh Hashanah talk by Deb Kraus

FullSizeRenderI’ve been thinking a lot recently about the passage of time. I’m turning 60 in a few weeks, and a few months back, my daughter Molly turned 20 (I know, right?) and while writing this up north, a place where time seems to both stand still and pass much too quickly, the frustration of not being able to just stop time at the parts we like, to slow down the passage of our lives, hit me pretty strongly.

I think it hit me particularly strongly because of an experience I had while hiking in the Alps this summer. Lest this sound as pretentious to you as it does to me, let me explain a little about this trip.

Looking back, I’m not sure why I thought this middle-aged amateur hiker—late to the notion of exercise in any form, from a long line of people who were entirely sedentary—could do it. Obviously the idea of hiking 102 mostly vertical miles through three countries—literally into three countries—with the backdrop of majestic mountains, the sound of cow bells, the taste of cheese, chocolate and baguettes, and the bragging rights that would come with completing something as difficult as the Tour du Mont Blanc, all of this appealed to me, and as many of you can attest, training for this trip over the past year had given me a new sense of competence and strength.

And while it was beautiful—and yes, tasty—to be in this part of the world, the hiking was much, much harder than I anticipated. And I’m not even going to talk about the punishing downhill part! As I tried to scurry up the inclines to keep up, depriving myself of photo opps because “the slowest one should not incur the wrath of the group any more than is absolutely necessary,” two things happened.

First, I got teachable. My friend sat me down after the second day and quite harshly told me to “follow the leader” who had been trying to slow me down the whole day, but in French words I didn’t understand. How counterintuitive to be told to go slow, slower than I could have ever imagined, up each long (several hour!) incline. Don’t look up to see where you are going; that will only freak you out. You’ll lose your breath.

And yes, it’s all about the breath. And as I followed the leader the next morning, I found that my friend was right: when I focused on my breath first, and matched my step to that, amazingly I was able to get up every incline on the trail. After a while, I could even look up to see where I was going, and then look back down and focus on where I was. Eyn Od

Breath by breath, then Step by step. A walking meditation.

A very looong walking meditation.

The second and more universally applicable thing I learned is what happens when I did this, when I did slow myself down.

The phrase that kept coming to me, over and over, was Eyn Od. There is nothing else.

Just this breath. Just this step. Just this moment.

As a psychologist who is current on neurobiology, I have known for a long time how important meditation and mindfulness are. I just never took the time.

But on the mountain, there was nothing else to do.

Eyn Od. There is nothing else.

But here’s the most remarkable thing: the slowing down has continued. I no longer want to be so busy all the time, to run from thing to thing, to always maximize my productivity, to wonder what I should or could be doing even as I’m working as hard as I can already. To play mindless computer games that continue the racing thoughts when I could be resting. Well, OK, that last thing I really do want to do, but I’ve been told it’s really bad for me, and from the vantage point of what I learned in the Alps, that makes total sense.

So it’s still a struggle. Much easier, on the mind anyway, to take my time when all I have to do every day is to hike from point A to point B, or point F to point G. Harder when I juggle work, community responsibilities, the responsibilities of a home and neighborhood, and all the other things I do. I still am reaching for that #*($&# game between clients or when someone is two minutes late. There is a part of me that is truly addicted to that sense of busy-ness.

But I’m finding out, each time I slow down, I can put myself back in the Alps or floating down the Crystal Rver, and when I do that, in comes that same phrase,

Eyn Od. There is nothing else.

Just this moment.

Nothing to be afraid of. Or impatient about. Or judgmental about.

Just this moment, and then the next. Just like each step on the trail in the Alps.

Eyn Od.

There is nothing else.

Jews Come in All Colors

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Rosh Hashanah 2015 talk by Clare Kinberg

The Jewish Multiracial Network visited the White House in July 2015
The Jewish Multiracial Network visited the White House in July 2015

When our daughters were infants, my wife Patti and I made commitments to them and to ourselves that to the best of our ability we would not put the girls in situations in which there are no other African Americans, in which they are the only ones. Given the very high level of social and organizational segregation in the US, this has been a very difficult commitment, and one that has affected our family in countless ways. A wonderful effect has been our seeking out of organizations of Jews of color such as the Jewish Multiracial Network. And there have been times when other commitments have drawn us to break this commitment. For instance, three years ago when my older daughter was in 9th grade, I wanted her to participate in the Ann Arbor/ Nahalal student exchange in which she went with a group of 20 Ann Arbor 9th graders to Israel for 10 days. My unease with knowing she would be the only black student in the group was heightened by several exchanges we had with Israelis we met in Ann Arbor who felt compelled to warn my daughter to prepare herself for Israeli racism. She didn’t know what to expect, and really neither did I. I figured one thing that may happen is she will be asked the ubiquitous, unwelcome and invasive question foisted on non-European appearing Jews, “How are you Jewish?” I thought I should tell her, just say “my mother is Jewish,” and leave it at that. But being the kind of mother I am, before advising her of what to answer, I asked her how she would respond to the “How are you Jewish” question. Her 14 year old answer? “I’ve celebrated becoming bat mitzvah, and Jesus is not my best friend.” I decided she could handle it, and left it at that. And in fact, we found that when embedded in a Federation delegation, her Jewishness was not questioned.

But I want to talk more about that “How are you Jewish question?” because it is a good stand in for all the many barriers in the Jewish community from full participation by Jews of color. The catch phrase of the Jewish Multiracial Network is “Jews come in all colors.” Once we awake to that simple truth, we can touch on its corollary: if you look around at a Jewish communal event such as this, and you don’t see a mixed multitude, you are seeing racism at work.

Fortunately, there are people in our community over the past twenty years who have come to understand this, that American racism is manifest in our communities when there are no or only a few Jews of color. The luminescent Rabbi Susan Talve, at Central Reform Congregation in St. Louis is one such person. You may have heard of her as one of the rabbis who has been on the front lines in protesting police brutality and seeking racial justice in Ferguson, MO. I want to share with you some words from her magazine article from a 2010 issue of Reform Judaism titled “Breaking the Color Barrier.” She wrote:

1997 was a transformative year in our congregation: The beautiful Josephine was born to a white Jewish mother and a non-Jewish African American father. There was no question that her parents would raise her to be a Jew. And when I held her at her naming ceremony, I promised her: By the time you begin to notice how you fit into your surroundings, we will have a community that includes others who look like you. You will see yourself reflected in the diversity of our temple. Your parents’ good intentions [to stay active in the synagogue] and our own [to treat you with respect] are not enough.

Jews of color were starting to find their way into our sanctuary.

Some of these Jews attended services at various area congregations. A few attended Orthodox congregations and day schools where, by their own accounts, they felt marginalized. Another two Jews of color had grown up in white Jewish homes before CRC was founded. In third grade they’d noticed they were different. By junior high they felt they had to make a choice between being black and being Jewish; there were no role models for being both. They couldn’t choose not to be black, so they stopped identifying as Jews.

Her article then goes on to detail the many specific, organizational, spiritual, steps the congregation took to change. In my opinion, this article should be studied like words of scripture. I have printed a couple copies you could grab on your way out. Rabbi Talve concludes her article:

About 20 of our active adult members are black and many of them have children. On some Friday evenings, African drumming and dance are part of our Shabbat service, and a growing number of African Americans worship with us. I’ve even officiated at a marriage of a biracial couple who decided to raise their kids to be Jewish because of us, because they have a place to do this. Still, I know that we have a long way to go to keep my promise to Josephine, who will celebrate her bat mitzvah next year. But for this congregation, situated in the city just a few miles from the Old Court House where the slave Dred Scott lost his case for freedom, I have hope that we are chipping away at the racism that plagues us.

In our prayers for Shabbat we read:

To pray for a Sukkat Shalom is to pray for a full house; a shelter that reflects creation in its glorious diversity. As we continue the holy work of uprooting the scourge of racism from this and all communities, we look forward to the time when our Jewish family will embrace Jews of all colors. Then, our Sukkat Shalom will become truly multi-racial as it was always intended to be.

May it come soon.

Sympathy for Azazel

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Yom Kippur 5776 talk by Sam Bagenstos

samuel bagenstosWhen Deb Kraus asked me to give a talk on the scapegoat parsha, I was intrigued and intimidated.  It should be obvious why I was intimidated—this is a deeply learned crowd, and the chances of embarrassing myself by offering some half-baked reaction to one of the most studied portions of Torah were high.

But why was I intrigued?  Well, in part it goes back to my days misbehaving in Hebrew School.  In Fourth Grade or so, all my buddies and I did was try to learn to curse in Hebrew.  I remember one of them leaning over in class, whispering to me what he said was the Hebrew for “Go to Hell!”—I still don’t know whether he was right; we were all just making stuff up—which is the first time I recall hearing the word, “Azazel.”  Yes, even though it was the Seventies, “Go to Hell!” was as transgressive as we got, I’m ashamed to say.

Ever since then, I’ve found the scapegoat story somewhat fascinating.  I mean, we’re Jews—I thought we didn’t have much of an idea of Hell, or a devil, or anything like that.  Yet here we see, right in Leviticus—the most prescriptively legalistic book of the Torah—that Aaron must take the two goats and draw lots, with one goat designated for the Lord and the other “for Azazel.”

This is apparently the only place in the Torah in which the word “Azazel” appears.  And a debate has raged for centuries about what, exactly, the word means.  Some do in fact interpret “Azazel” as referring to a demon, evil demigod, or fallen angel.  (The suffix “-el” often denotes an angel’s name.)  Others interpret “Azazel” as referring to a rough mountain—in other words, it’s the place where the goat is sent.  Note that the Torah does not say anything about what happens to Azazel’s goat once it is set free.  It just says that “the goat shall carry on it all [the Israelites’] iniquities to an inaccessible region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness.”  Nonetheless, the Mishnah tells us that the tradition during the time of the Temple was to push the scapegoat off of a hard, rocky cliff.  And “Azazel” may simply have referred to the cliff.smpathy for the devil

But then there’s the third, simplest interpretation.  “Azazel” might refer to the goat itself.  “Ez”—Hebrew for goat—plus “azal”—apparently the Aramaic word for “to go.”  So “Azazel” might simply mean, roughly, “the goat that went away”—just as the English “scapegoat” means “the goat that escaped.”  Obviously, it’s the first of these definitions that inspires my title, Sympathy for Azazel—thanks Mick and Keith!—but I’m actually more interested in the other two, as you’ll see. [Read more…] about Sympathy for Azazel

What makes a moment religious?

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Comments written by Julie Norris, delivered by Kevin Norris on Rosh Hashanah 2015

What makes a moment religious?

What makes an experience feel religious?

Is it a glimmer of a feeling, or a feeling that encompasses you?

What is your recipe for a religious moment?

This July 4th weekend, I was so struck when I had an experience that I expected to be a lot of nostalgic fun, but which shifted into something that felt unexpectedly, but unmistakably, religious.

We took a train to Chicago to meet up with our adult daughter, for the Grateful Dead’s 50th anniversary, fare-thee-well concert.  3 nights under the stars at Soldier’s Field with 70,000 tie-dyed faithful.

grateful deadAnd it happened almost immediately – the awareness that somehow this felt religious. It never struck me as religious in the early 1980s as I followed the band up and down the east coast, but now, the awareness of the rituals and culture surrounding this music led me to think about some of the similarities between the shows and services.

First, the music. Many of us are so deeply moved by music. The melodies and harmonies you recognize from decades gone by and the knowledge that these same tunes are known and appreciated by millions. The verse and refrain that feel like coming home.

There’s the rhythm of sitting and standing in unison. How do 70,000 people know, without being told, when to stand but this crowd knew. And through 3-1/2 hours, 3 nights in a row, if you closed your eyes to sink fully into the moment, suddenly a recognized chord or phrase that you hadn’t realized how much you’d missed hearing would emerge and you’d be drawn to your feet. And when you open your eyes you see that everyone else has stood too, in a collective expression of joy and appreciation.

Then there’s the text or lyrics, full of poetry and meaning, full of space for interpretation. And as I gaze at my daughter, I see that these words have now been passed on from one generation to the next.

[Read more…] about What makes a moment religious?

Welcome Rabbi Alana Alpert

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by Deborah Fisch

Alpert_photoDuring the Aug. 28 Shabbat service, visiting rabbi Alana Alpert explained her route to the rabbinate. While her first love was community organizing in service of social justice, she worried about the high rate of burnout such work entailed. Rabbinical school seemed to her a way to prepare to help those leaders most at risk for burnout. “I never expected to be a rabbi with my own congregation!” She now splits her time as a half-time rabbi for Congregation T’chiyah in Detroit and as a community organizer with Detroit Jews for Justice – and one of our visiting rabbis.

In her Dvar Torah, Rabbi Alpert examined a verse from Parsha Ki Teitzei: “When you build a new house, you shall make a guard rail for your roof…” She found this verse’s practical application in preventing potential harm to be immediately relevant to her recently purchased fixer-upper, in which she and her partner discovered rotted beams that threatened the stability of a second-floor balcony. While the installation of a roof rail or replacement beams improves physical safety, Rabbi Alpert also inferred a symbolic meaning for the rail: it acts as a limit on pride of ownership of a house – a necessary check on entitlement and privilege in the midst of poverty and homelessness.

We welcome to our congregation Rabbi Alpert and the many other newcomers who attended the service, including a large contingent of U-M Law School students. The usual outstanding potluck dinner followed the service, which this time might appropriately have been titled, “Celebration of the Tomato.”

Shabbaton: Privacy/Security/Inclusivity/Salad

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By Dave Nelson

Dave Nelson and a goat
On the weekend of August 14 AARC was pleased to host a shabbaton with Rabbis Michael Strassfeld and Joy Levitt, who will be visiting us several times this year, including for High Holy Day services. Strassfeld and Levitt are two of the most distinguished rabbis currently working in the Reconstructionist movement, and the mid-August Shabbat evening service they led was fresh and lively—a promising glimpse of what we might expect for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

Rabbi Joy’s Kabbalat Shabbat sermon was concise and graceful.  She deftly explored what appeared to be trivial (and somewhat contradictory) rabbinical opinions on the proper construction of courtyard entryways: Who can be obliged to chip in to pay for it, how the doorhandles are to be mounted, where a gatehouse should be located, and so on.  But she teased out a very powerful, surprisingly relevant message about how we are morally obligated to work together to maintain our privacy and security, without inadvertently fostering exclusivity.  While there are obvious overtones here—especially in an age of shared and contested borders, gated communities, large-scale protests, and larger-scale dumps of hacked databases—what the rabbi chose to highlight was the slightly more subtle moral hazard: When we become too wholly focused on maintaining our own security and privacy, we make ourselves entirely inaccessible to the cries of those in need of our assistance.

As ever, the potluck was delicious and diverse.  Quinoa and kale were in surprisingly short supply, but a variety of exceedingly fresh tomato and cucumber salads more than compensated for this omission.

Q&A with City Council Primary Winner Zachary Ackerman

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Zachary Ackerman, 21 year old U-M student and son of AARC members Erica and Mark, won the August 4, 2015 primary for 3rd ward City Councilperson and will run unopposed in the November election.  In the busy days following his primary victory, Zach kindly agreed to answer a few questions about his experiences, including his Jewish upbringing.

Emily Eisbruch (EE): Congratulations Zach!  How do you balance your campaign with the responsibilities of being a University of Michigan student?
Zachary Ackerman (ZA) : Balance in one’s personal life is always difficult to strike. Luckily, being a student allows for flexibility. This summer, when I really hit the campaign trail running, I was working full time at the University’s IT department. From time to time, people will express concern about how I will balance work on Council with work as a student. The reality is that I will only be both a student and a representative on Council for one or two meetings.
EE: How has this campaign experience compared to your expectations? What have you learned?  What are your hopes moving forward?
ZA: I’ve worked professionally for Democratic politicians for a number of years, but being the candidate is very different. Knocking on fifty strangers’ doors a day is really putting yourself out there. What I found most interesting and most valuable is how different each household, each street, and each neighborhood in the Third Ward really is. It was critical that I did knock every door in the ward because every household proved to have its own concerns with the City. I look forward to getting to work to address those priorities.
EE: How, if at all, did Jewish upbringing or education feed into your interest in public service?
ZA: I was raised on stories of my great-grandparents and my grandfather. My grandfather’s parents came to the United States in the wake of the Russian pogroms. Like so many they had nothing to their names but their faith and family. They settled in Columbus, OH and opened up a small tailor shop, which went on to serve the growing Jewish community of Columbus. It was there that they helped found an Orthodox congregation and raised my grandfather. My grandfather died young from wounds he sustained in Italy in WWII, but he used his short life to its utmost. After the war, he became a pharmacist, serving the community his parents had helped root. As the owner of Ackerman Drug, he helped local kids pay their way through school, and filled prescriptions for the sick and indigent. I was raised to be a mensch like my grandfather. I was raised to believe community can and should take care of its own.
EE: Tell us about your Jewish background.  Did you participate in Jewish activities growing up?
ZA: I grew up a member of the Beth Israel congregation here in Ann Arbor. There, I attended Hebrew school three times a week and became a bar mitzvah (my Torah portion was Ki Tavo). A few years ago, my parents joined the AARC. Since then, I’ve joined them for High Holiday services and look forward to seeing everyone again soon.

EE: Thank you Zach, and we hope to see you soon at the AARC also!

 

 

 

Morgan Buroker D’var Torah, August 1, 2015, Parshah Ve’ethanan

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IMG_0892Hello, shabbat shalom! I am so happy that now I get to tell you about my parshah! My parshah is called Va`ethanan. Va`ethanan is in the book of Deuteronomy chapters 4-7. The whole book of Deuteronomy is a series of speeches given by Moses reminding the Jews, who are standing at the shore of the Jordan River, of their history and the rules to follow in the land. Deuteronomy means “second law” because this is the second time the rules have been stated to the Jewish people. (The first time being after the Jews left Egypt).

Va`ethanan means “and I plead.” In the beginning of my parshah, Moses begs (pleads) to God to let him in the land after he is told he could not go. He was not successful. Next, the Ten Commandments are restated and the Shema and V’ahavta are declared. Also in the parshah is a famous verse that inspired the Passover haggadah that says “When in time to come, your children ask you, what mean the rules and laws that the Lord your God has enjoined upon you, you shall say to your children, we were slaves to the pharaoh in Egypt and the Lord freed us from Egypt with a helping hand.”

Today I will be talking about the Ten Commandments, from Deuteronomy chapter 5 lines 1-18. Moses is restating the commandments. Almost all people who left Egypt died on the 40 year trip to Israel, so a whole new generation of people who had not heard the Ten Commandments were there to hear them. That is why Moses needed to restate them. Also, the Ten Commandments are important because if you don’t do a commandment, it could sacrifice your chances of living a good life in the promised land.

The big thing that I am focusing on is the commandment “Honor your mother and father.” This commandment is very interesting to me for many reasons. One reason is that God actually had to tell us to honor our parents. God could have made a more important commandment, like “treat animals right.” Animal abuse is a more important problem in this world; not that I’m saying honoring your parents isn`t important. It’s just not as important as some problems in the world. Now why does God actually need to tell us to honor our parents? If God didn’t, does God think that we wouldn’t do it? But the thing is, just because there is a commandment about something doesn’t always mean that people will still follow it, people don’t always honor their parents. [Read more…] about Morgan Buroker D’var Torah, August 1, 2015, Parshah Ve’ethanan