Jul 31st 2008, 00:00

Dear Friends,

Many of you know that I love Professional Football. I don’t have a favorite team; I am a fan of the game. I love the strategy, the teamwork, the individual effort, the pressure of the clock, and so many other aspects. I also love the history of the game, so much so that I convinced my dear wife to visit the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, for our first wedding anniversary! (I know, I owe her big time for that one!)

Football is a team sport but played by individuals. There are many parallels to life, which we live as individuals and part of groups and a society. In football you have to do your part, play your position, and defend your territory, but you also have to rely on your teammates to do likewise. No one can win the game all by themselves, and yet without the individual effort, the team fails.

One of the descriptive phrases used to describe a great effort on the playing field is “intestinal fortitude.” When the ball is on the goal line and it’s player against player, one side against another, each person has to dig down deep and find what they are made of. The same is true in life. If we think back to the great struggles of our age, it was the intestinal fortitude demonstrated by individuals that ultimately won the game. We can think of Abraham Lincoln, the Suffer Jets, Gandhi, the pioneers who settled and created the State of Israel, Martin Luther King, Jr., and so many others who showed personal courage in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

I am proud to be a Jew and a rabbi, and particularly proud to be a Reform Jew and a Reform rabbi. Why? Because Reform Jews, Reform Judaism, and Reform rabbis have been at the forefront of the struggles for all the advancements this society has made. We are the ones who have put our personal needs aside and given everything for the team. We, who were once slaves in Egypt and who know what it is like to be strangers in a strange land – we are the ones who have fought for the oppressed and downtrodden of this world. We have fought for economic justice and we spoke of caring for the earth long before Global Warming ever received any media attention.

Of course, sometimes there was a price to be paid. Rabbis had to take unpopular positions, even unpopular in their own congregations and communities. Their jobs, homes, and sometimes, their very lives were threatened. But they stood up to evil and they showed the intestinal fortitude that it took to change what they knew to be wrong. As an inheritor of that tradition, I wonder sometimes how I would have reacted and acted in similar circumstances.

Many rabbis today are afraid of controversy. They fail to speak out about the moral issues of today, and they fail to demonstrate moral leadership as so many of those who came before did. Of course, it has to be done in a proper way and this, I believe, is an ever-changing dynamic given the current climate in which we live.

I invite you, then, to come to our second Friday service and program on August 8^th where I will show a new video produced by the American Jewish Archives entitled, “Voices of Moral Leadership.” This film, debuted at the Central Conference of American Rabbis’ annual conference in Cincinnati last April, highlights several cases of Reform rabbis who showed moral leadership and changed Judaism and our society. Following the film, we will discuss the proper role of rabbis today on difficult and controversial issues. I’d love to hear your input.

I hope you are all having an enjoyable and safe summer.