Praise Versus Prayer

Originally posted October 30th, 2009. As of the date of this repost (March 2nd, 2011), I have been at my current job for a little over a year, which I started two and a half months after this originally posted.

My rabbi often points out that during the Sabbath, Jews are engaged in praise, not prayer. On the Sabbath, we are not allowed to petition or make a request for ourselves, the most common definition of prayer. Instead we praise the Deity. We sing psalms of praise, and then we have ancient passages we recite, which are commonly called prayers but are actually self-admonishments, affirmations, reminders of past events the Jewish people have endured, visualizations of future peace, and expressions of gratitude to our Creator.

When I first became religious, I really struggled with why we praise the Deity. At first glance, it appears silly to praise an all-powerful Being we can’t see, and it’s the first thing that atheists latch onto when they point out the absurdity of religious devotion. Monty Python has a scene in “The Meaning of Life” where an Anglican vicar looks up to the sky and rattles off about how meaningless and insignificant he and his congregation are, and how mighty God is:

Chaplain: Let us praise God. O Lord…

Congregation: O Lord…

Chaplain: …Ooh, You are so big…

Congregation: …ooh, You are so big…

Chaplain: …So absolutely huge.

Congregation: …So absolutely huge.

Chaplain: Gosh, we’re all really impressed down here, I can tell You.

Congregation: Gosh, we’re all really impressed down here, I can tell You.

Chaplain: Forgive us, O Lord, for this, our dreadful toadying, and…

Congregation: And barefaced flattery.

Chaplain: But You are so strong and, well, just so super.

Congregation: Fantastic.

Chaplain: Amen.

Congregation: Amen.

The idea that the Great Architect of the Universe is susceptible to flattery, and demands such flattery from us is really missing the point. Seriously. The Pythons understand that, and they are having a good laugh at this theological mistake.

We praise a person when they have done something that has pleased us. I tell my dog “Good boy! when he does a trick on command. I tell my girlfriend that she looks pretty. I tell my student that I’m proud of them when they solve a difficult math problem. In each case, I am reinforcing a behavior I like, or tending to another’s self-esteem, or doing something to bring a bit more perfection to an imperfect being.

Why, then do we praise a Perfect Being? What possible need does the Deity have of our praise? How can our praise have any benefit to the Great Architect of the Universe? For a long time, this really bugged me, and I asked a lot of different religious people about why they praise God.

I learned that many of us struggle with this, and many of us feel foolish doing this until we understand why we’re doing it. But singing “Hallelujah” (literally, “Praise God”) feels really good, deep in the body. I’m a baritone in the Consistory choir, and without revealing the music of the degrees, “Hallelujah” gets sung in some of what we sing. It feels good reverberating in the chest to sing it. There’s a reason that church choirs are ecstatic about praise. Your brain floods with endorphins, your posture improves, you enter an altered, higher state of consciousness when you sing “Hallelujah”.

There’s a section of the Jewish liturgy called Pesukei D’zimra, before the Bar’khu that starts the formal service. In it, we sing a lot of psalms, including a mash-up called Ashrei (literally, “happy”), and then Psalms 146 through 150. The 150th Psalm is a Hallelujah psalm. My rabbi introduces by saying “Psalms 1 through 149 are about trying to praise God, and they all fail to get all of it across. By 150, we use music and dance, beyond words, to do what words cannot.” In our congregation, we stand up in the middle, and really sing, and the whole room soars with song, and it’s very moving. It usually frightens visitors attending some kid’s Bar Mitzvah. But it’s very heart-felt and inspiring to me, especially when I’m feeling low. I understood why we sing this psalm well before I understood why we praise God.

The concept of God is impossible to wrap one’s mind around, and yet God is in our thoughts. We live in a world with a Creator, a Father, a Lord. None of these terms are quite right. Not all who believe in God believe in the Biblical Creation. Not all who believe in God believe that God is male. Not all who believe in God believe that God rules like a monarch over the earth. What is God? We do not all agree on every aspect we ascribe to Deity. Omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, omnibenevolence are all ascribed to Deity, and yet may be mutually contradictory. What is God? Who is listening when we pray? Whom do we address? What is the nature of that who made the oceans, the air, the sky, the planets and stars? What is God?

I don’t know. I don’t understand the nature of God perfectly. A lot of the realm of the Divine is a gray area for me, an unmapped territory about which I don’t always succeed in gaining knowledge, even when I strive for it. The higher rungs on the Tree of Life are pretty much blank to me. I don’t really get what Christians are talking about when they talk about the Holy Ghost as distinct from God the Father (please don’t be offended by this. I do not question the legitimacy of the theological construct, but I don’t really understand it, even though it is very meaningful for many Christian friends I love and respect). Much of the Bible does not make sense to me. A lot of the details are not filled in, let alone the explanations.

The final line of Psalm 150 is כֹּל הַנְּשָׁמָה תְּהַלֵּל יָהּ. “Kol haNeshamah t’Hallel Yah”. I translate it as “Everything that breathes, by breathing praises God.” Those who study Jewish mysticism will notice that the phrase “Kol haNeshamah” has a deeper meaning. The neshamah is the portion of the soul imbued in us by God, that cannot be corrupted by sin. Because the neshamah is a Divine filament in the inner core of the soul, untainted by sin, the neshamah retains its Divinity. All neshamahs put together form the portion of humanity that retains its Divinity. This is the bridge from the human to the Divine. Because what remains of the human is elevating towards the Highest, it readies itself for that transition by acclimating itself to the region in which it will enter. “T’hallel Yah” is where we get “Hallelujah” from. Overwhelmed, it gushes in praise.

Praise is when the impossible attempt to describe, to understand, to fully know God is overwhelmed and sublimates into something ineffable. The last moment where there are still words are words of praise. We praise God to reach this state, and to rise above it. We praise God to give us the mindset to reunite with our Maker.

Even when we are in the dullest state of consciousness, we can take inventory of the gifts bestowed upon us by a loving God, and find gratitude within us for what we have. We can tap into that thankfulness, and allow a trickle to become a flood. Every breath is a celebration, a prayer. A heart pumps rich, nourishing blood through our veins and into our thirsty brain. We are sustained by food and drink, relieved by loving friends and family, sheltered by the ingenuity of architects and builders, clothed by dressmakers, all of whom are sustained by others, in a great web of generosity leading to the Prime Mover. We see rich colors with eyes we were born with, taste flavors with a tongue that has always been in each of our heads. We feel and smell and hear things with similar gifts. We are the recipients of gifts greater than we can comprehend, and we are given the further gift of mental exertion to gain small victories of comprehension to further appreciate these gifts. By praising God we can elevate ourselves to something higher.

Freemasonry requires belief in a Supreme Being. The immortality of the soul is one of the landmarks of Freemasonry. Masons believe that what happens in the lodge room is our crude attempt to mimic what is happening in the Celestial Lodge. Praise is the bridge between the two.

Today is my last day of work at my current contract job. At 5 PM today, I go back to being unemployed. My wine and oil are very rich, but I’m going to start worrying about corn soon. But my faith is very real, very present. I went to three masonic events this week, my last week of work. How good and pleasant it is for Brethren to dwell together in unity.

Hillel and Shammai

Rabbi Hillel the Elder was one of the most important sages of the Mishnah, the first redaction of the Oral Torah written down in the Talmud. Emmanuel Bronner, the soap-maker, regarded Hillel as one of the teachers of Jesus Christ. While that is debatable, they lived at the same time, and their ethical teachings have a lot of parallels. Considering that Jesus was a gifted student of Torah in the time of Hillel, it is impossible for Jesus not to have been influenced by Hillel.

At the time of Hillel, the latter days of the Second Temple, the spiritual leadership of the Jewish people was in the hands of pairs of scholars, called Zugot. Hillel, and his arch-rival, Shammai, were the last of the Zugot. Hillel had a liberal, loving interpretation of the Torah, while Shammai was harsh, strict, and exacting. The two were involved in many disagreements, and both formed Houses of Study that continued to be rivals. The House of Hillel and the House of Shammai disagreed on many points of law, and their dispute was so polarizing that their houses could find no compromise. The Babylonian Talmud tells us that their dispute was solved when "a voice issued from Heaven announcing, 'The teachings of both are the words of the living God, but the law is in agreement with the School of Hillel.'"

Hillel believed conversion to Judaism should be easy, divorce should be easy (Hillel ruled that a man can divorce his wife for burning a meal), that anyone should be allowed to study Torah, and differed with Shammai on many technical aspects of worship. In the Pirkei Avot, from the Mishnah, Hillel is quoted as saying, "If I am not for myself, who is for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?".

Shammai made it very difficult for non-Jews to convert to Judaism, felt that divorce should be severely restricted, demanded that even tiny children fast on Yom Kippur, and usually interpreted the law in the most severe way. And yet, in Pirkei Avot, Shammai is quoted as saying, "greet every man with a cheerful countenance." Despite this last saying, the Talmud warns us "to be as humble as Hillel, and not short-tempered like Shammai." Later on in the Talmud, it is added, "Shammai's strictness could drive us out of the world; Hillel's humility brought us under the wings of the Divine Presence."

My favorite story of Hillel and Shammai has a masonic component to it. In the Tractate Shabbat in the Talmud, the following story is told:

Another story of a non-Jew who came before Shammai. He said to him: "Convert me [to Judaism] on the condition that you teach me the entire Torah while I stand on one foot." Shammai pushed him away with a builder's ruler that was in his hand. The non-Jew came before Hillel who converted him. Hillel said to him, "What you hate, do not do to your friend. That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. Go and learn!"

Everyone who has taken the Entered Apprentice degree pricks up his ears at the mention of the builder's ruler, the 24-inch gauge. As I am preparing to perform my first Entered Apprentice degree as an officer, I am thinking about the 24-inch gauge and the common gavel. I may save the common gavel for another post, but right now I am considering why Shammai used a 24-inch gauge to strike the potential convert.

The language of the Talmud is often cryptic and eccentric. This should not intimidate a mason. Why did the convert want to stand on one leg while being taught? At a first pass at an answer, it is more difficult to stand on one leg than on two, and one can only stay balanced on one leg for a short period of time. The convert is challenging the rabbis to be as succinct as they can be. The convert is demanding a sharp time constraint upon the Torah lesson. If I were going deeper, I would consider why the Tarot card of the Hanged Man has the hanged man suspended by one leg, why the angels in the vision of Ezekiel appear standing on one leg, study the letters of the Hebrew word leg to see if the numbers associated with them add up to a significant number, find scriptural passages that refer to one leg, and continue from there.

For the purposes of this post, the time constraint is my focus. The convert wants to learn the whole Torah, the law of the Jews, which many devote their entire lives to study, in a very brief period of time, much shorter than the time period we refer to as "at a sitting". Shammai is clearly convinced that one cannot learn the Torah that way. Shammai understands that the Torah takes a lifetime of daily study, and that a serious student of the Torah will schedule hours of study into his day. The rabbis of this period were lay people. They held secular jobs as well as being sages. Some of the rabbis of the Talmud were doctors, blacksmiths, brewers of beer, many different occupations. How were they able to do this, study Torah, and be the heads of households, father children, and hold court and judge legal cases?

The operative tool of the builder's ruler, the 24-inch gauge, is divided into three segments of eight inches each, representing a 24-hour period divided into three periods of eight hours each. This metaphor is used in exactly the same way by other groups than the masons, such as the eight-hour-day movement among labor unions of the last century. so this knowledge can be acquired outside a masonic lodge. Therefore I am not betraying any obligations if I discuss this metaphor further.

Eight of the hours of the day are to be devoted to the service of God, and a worthy distressed Brother. Labor unions regarded these eight hours as eight hours of recreation. Eight hours are to be devoted to one's usual vocation, or labor, and eight hours are to be devoted to sleep and refreshment, or rest. Shammai was teaching the convert to schedule time among his daily hours of recreation to study Torah.

As a modern working man, I struggle to balance the three parts of the 24-inch gauge. I am in my office for more than eight hours most days. I commute by public transport, and I give myself an hour in each direction to get to work. These eat away at the time devoted to the service of God and a worthy distressed Brother.

The Jewish religion asks its adherents to pray three times a day, for Shacharit, Minchah, and Ma'ariv. On the Sabbath, a fourth time, the Musaf, is added after Shacharit. Both Shacharit and Ma'ariv include the Sh'ma prayer and the Amidah prayer, and Minchah includes the Amidah but not the Sh'ma prayer. These are the modern parallels of the ritualized animal sacrifices scheduled daily in the Temple. When sacrifice was replaced with prayer, the prayers were aligned to the times in which the sacrifices were mandated to occur.

I do not pray as often as I am commanded to, and my prayers are somewhat abbreviated. On weekdays, I wake up, don a tallit and kippah, and recite a half-hour version of the Shacharit prayers: usually Ashrei, the Sh'ma, the Amidah, and then Aleinu, punctuated by Kaddish. I usually skip the Minchah entirely, except on Sunday, where I will often skip the Shacharit, and only recite the Minchah, with just Ashrei, the Amidah, and then Aleinu, punctuated by Kaddish. On weekdays, I recite a bedtime Sh'ma, but usually not a full Ma'ariv prayer.

I don't own tefillin and don't know the prayers associated with them. I've been meaning to visit a Chabad House and learn how to use them. They are expensive (about a thousand dollars), and I'm not sure that my level of commitment to this particular mitzvah is up to the task of owning tefillin and tying them daily.

I visit my synagogue almost every Friday evening and almost every Saturday morning for their services. On Saturday mornings, I don't recite the Amidah a second time during the Musaf (to be perfectly honest, I often visit the bathroom during Musaf, since I've been in the synagogue for three hours at that point), but only a few people in my synagogue do recite the Musaf Amidah.

When I was unemployed, I made an effort to recite Shacharit and Minchah, and to include a bedtime Sh'ma at night. The commandment to recite Sh'ma at night and in the morning is part of the Sh'ma prayer, and is in the Torah, whereas the commandment to recite the Amidah prayer three times a day is rabbinical. When I'm not working, I pray more. It's funny: compared to my friends who are secular or non-observant, I do a lot of religious activity, but compared to an Orthodox Jew, I'm hopelessly lax in my observance. Living with non-Jews means a kosher kitchen is impossible (and I would not demand that of them), and a mezuzah is not going to happen. My girlfriend is Buddhist, so I don't often pray in front of her. I brought her to Friday night services once, but I'm not sure that they speak to her condition. My Hebrew is not good enough to know most of the Berakhot. I recite Modeh Ani when I wake up alone.

Sometimes I feel bad that I don't do more, but to be honest, I've only been observant to any degree for one year, and I've learned an enormous amount in that time. I was raised without religion, and only started my religious practices in March of last year. I figure that if God lets me live a full life, I have plenty of time to learn Hebrew (and possibly Aramaic and Yiddish) and expand my practice.

An astute observer will notice that "what you hate, do not do to your friend" is the converse of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." While Christians believe that this maxim, called the Golden Rule, is theirs, it actually appears often in the Jewish tradition. Leviticus tells us to "love your neighbor as yourself," and later, "The foreigner who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt: I the LORD am your God." A similar sentiment also appears in Buddhism, the Baha'i faith, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, and Taoism. It comes as close to a universal ethical creed as probably exists among humankind.

My girlfriend came with me yesterday to buy a tuxedo. It was a lot of fun. I went with a conservative, tasteful outfit, and got a business suit for free for buying the tuxedo (although I had to buy a shirt and tie for the business suit, and ended up buying a second shirt and tie, and a few other accessories--- these men's shops know what they're doing). We have degree work on the 29th of April, where I will debut my tuxedo. I sponsored one of the candidates, a neighbor, who was elected in our last lodge meeting. I'm really looking forward to it.

Next Year in Jerusalem

I found out more about this particular Birkat HaChamah, in the year 5769, this year. Yesterday was Erev Pesach, the day before Passover. This day for the Birkat HaChamah as only happened twice before in Jewish history: once before the original Passover, when Moses led the Israelites from Goshen out of Egypt, and the other was when the Jews defeated Haman at the first Purim. A Kabbalistic source claims that another Erev Pesach Birkat HaChamah was the fourth day of Creation, when God made the sun, but I'm not sure that last one is easily verified.

My family does not observe Passover. We did when my grandparents were alive, but not every year. I still remember my grandmother's Matzah-ball soup, which was delicious. My brother is in Malaga, in Spain, celebrating Semana Santa (Holy Week). A good friend of his belongs to a group, possibly more than a thousand years old, who carry a heavy statue of a saint down the streets of Malaga. The statue has gold and silver on it, and is very heavy. The group carry this statue every year on Semana Santa. My brother is the only Jew to ever join this group, as far as I'm aware. It's an honor he greatly enjoys. I'm not sure he's religious, either Jewish or Christian, but he likes the camaraderie.

I was so busy with Scottish Rite last week that I never gave myself enough time to find a seder, so on Monday I sent an email to the Men's Group that meets at my synagogue asking if anyone had a spare seat at their Passover table for me, for the First Seder. Observant Jews celebrate two Passover seders, on two consecutive nights. I usually only go to one. This week there are seders on Wednesday and Thursday nights. Thursday night is the officer's rehearsal at my blue lodge, and while I'm not an officer, there was a chance I might be called in to be present for reasons I'm not sure I'm at liberty to divulge (although nothing bad, I assure you, gentle reader), so I only looked for a Wednesday night seder. I didn't take any time off of work, even though the first day of Passover is a Yom Tov, or holy day, in which work is traditionally forbidden. I just started a contract job. If I were on salary in a job I've had for a while, I'd take a paid vacation, but I feel it's too soon to take unpaid leave from my new job.

A woman from my synagogue who I'm friends with invited me to her Passover seder. Her mother was there, and a few people from our synagogue, along with other friends of hers. It was a lovely evening. We used a Haggadah edited by Elie Wiesel, and I really enjoyed the way we went through the seder ritual. I brought a bottle of red wine from the Golan Heights, and a bottle of raisin-flavored kosher vodka. The ritual involves four cups of wine, or literally, four cups of a grape product, so the vodka was a legitimate substitute, which I enjoyed for the third cup. I had a great time, and was really touched that she would invite me.

The climax of the Passover seder is the toast for the fourth cup of wine:

לְשָׁנָה הַבָּאָה בִּירוּשָׁלָיִם׃

or "Next year in Jerusalem!" Taken as a political statement, it has troubled me in the past. I struggle with my relationship to Zionism. I'm neither a Zionist nor an anti-Zionist. I'm grateful for the existence of the State of Israel, that the millenia of wandering for the Jews is over, but the Palestinian situation is unresolved, and I understand that Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) is their land, too. The Prophet ascended to Heaven from the Temple Mount, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque is a fitting celebration of that event. That means that if a Third Temple is to be built, either the Al-Aqsa Mosque will be destroyed (which I would regard as an atrocity), or it will have to be incorporated into the scheme of the new Temple. The implications to Freemasonry that the rebuilding of the Temple would have are enormous and fascinating, especially since we have regarded the Temple as a metaphor for the relationship between the soul, the body, and the world we inhabit. A real Temple would change the way we regard the Temple in our ritual.

Orthodox Jews, and some Conservative Jews feel that the Jewish religion is in some kind of suspension until there is a Temple in which the presence of God can dwell (the Shekhinah). Some want to resurrect the ancient Priesthood, the Kohanim, and start animal sacrifices again. There are rabbis in Israel who are planning the building of the Third Temple (although they represent an extreme fringe), and the Orthodox version of the Amidah prayer, recited thrice daily, asks God to help us rebuild the Temple and go back to regular animal sacrifices. Some fundamentalist Christians, especially post-Millenials, are offering to help rebuild the Temple because they believe that the Rapture will not occur until the Temple is rebuilt. They believe the Jews will convent en masse when Jesus returns, or spend eternity in Hell. Christian Zionists help on the assumption that the majority of Jews in Zion will convert to Christianity, which is kind of creepy, in my opinion.

When the Second Temple was destroyed, it was the most significant catastrophe for the Jewish religion in its history. The Jewish religion up until that point was centered around a central location, a single Temple. The three great festivals, Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot, required that Jews make a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem. Passover included a sacrificial lamb, who had to be sacrificed in the Temple courtyard in order to be kosher.

The rabbis of that era responded by replacing animal sacrifice at the Temple with prayer. They wrote the Amidah prayer as a substitute, to be recited at the times where the Torah commands the Priesthood to sacrifice animals. The Kohanim lost their considerable power, and the rabbi replaced the priest as leader of the Jewish people. The rabbi is a lay person, like everyone else. Rabbis are more learned than the general population, but there is nothing inherently sacred about a rabbi, the way there is for priests in Catholicism.

Prayer is better than animal sacrifice. Let me repeat that: prayer is better than animal sacrifice. Once more: prayer is better than animal sacrifice. A well-developed spiritual technology does not need animal sacrifice, but it cannot exist without prayer or meditation. When we lost the Temple, Jews evolved into something better than we were before. When we lost a central edifice, we became universal in space, which is better than being local. We developed the Sabbath as a "Cathedral in Time" to replace the Temple we lost. The Sabbath is one of the greatest pieces of spiritual technology ever invented, and the loss of the Temple helped craft it into what it is today. We needed to lose the Temple and lose Eretz Yisrael to become the people we are today, stronger, deeper, and far more spiritual than we were before.

Zionism, as a movement, has had two very distinct forms. Secular Zionists were looking for a homeland for the Jewish people to stave off the horrible oppression Jews found in Europe and the Middle East. It started as an one of many other Nationalist movements throughout the world. Religious Zionists were looking to fulfill their destiny, and to bring about the Messianic Redemption. Religious anti-Zionists, like the Satmar Hasids, object to the State of Israel because it was not founded by the Messiah. They feel that a secular State of Israel is a blasphemy. Secular Zionists make no Messianic claims about the State of Israel. They just want a modern nation-state centered around the Jewish people, a Jewish homeland. Because being Jewish can be considered a religion, an ethnicity, a nationality, or a civilization, these lines get very blurred when deciding who is a member of a Jewish nation-state.

I am of the opinion that the United States of America is the greatest country in the world in which to be a Jew. While there was some oppression in Spanish America, and even under the Pilgrims in Massachusetts, the First Amendment gave Jews freedom of conscience. Moses Michael Hays was made Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts in 1792, and in 1825, Solomon Simson became Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite, Northern Masonic Jurisdiction. While there has been anti-Semitism in the USA, and still is to some extent, there have never been pogroms here like there have been everywhere else in the world. Worshipful Brother George Washington addressed a synagogue in Providence, RI, when he was President. Our current President is hosting and attending a Second Seder, so that his Jewish employees can spend the First Seder with their families. There are dark moments in our history, such as the lynching of Leo Frank and the Jewish quotas. The Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman was accepted to Columbia University, and then later rejected because they had exceeded the number of Jews they were willing to matriculate that year. Many boats loaded with Jewish refugees fleeing Nazism and Fascism were turned away at our ports in the 1930s and 1940s. That being said, Jews have been able to live a life here in the USA that is better, freer, and happier than they have in any other country in the world, including the State of Israel.

So I don't thirst for a return to Zion as many Jews do. I have to admit that the Hatikva affects me emotionally:

Hebrew							Transliteration	English translation
כֹּל עוֹד בַּלֵּבָב פְּנִימָה							Kol ‘od balleivav penimah	As long as in the heart, within,
נֶפֶשׁ יְהוּדִי הוֹמִיָּה,							Nefesh yehudi homiyah,	A Jewish soul still yearns,
וּלְפַאֲתֵי מִזְרָח, קָדִימָה,							Ul(e)fa’atei mizrach kadimah,	And onward, towards the ends of the east,
עַיִן לְצִיּוֹן צוֹפִיָּה;							‘Ayin letziyon tzofiyah;	An eye still gazes toward Zion;
עוֹד לֹא אָבְדָה תִּקְוָתֵנוּ,							‘Od lo avdah tikvateinu,	Our hope is not yet lost,
הַתִּקְוָה בַּת שְׁנוֹת אַלְפַּיִם,							Hatikvah bat shnot alpayim,	The hope of two thousand years,
לִהְיוֹת עַם חָפְשִׁי בְּאַרְצֵנוּ,							Lihyot ‘am chofshi be’artzeinu,	To be a free people in our land,
אֶרֶץ צִיּוֹן וִירוּשָׁלַיִם.							Eretz-tziyon vy(e)rushalayim.	The land of Zion and Jerusalem.

But I think it's a terrible national anthem. No non-Jewish citizen of the State of Israel can sing this song, and I believe in freedom of conscience.

That being said, while I can find that stirring in my nefesh yehudi, my Jewish soul, when I search for it, I'd rather be a free person in the USA. I believe in the separation of Church and State. My patriotic loyalties are to the USA and not to Israel. There was a case a few years ago of a Jewish citizen of the USA spying for Israel, and I regard him as a traitor. I regard Israel as a valuable, if troubled ally of the USA. I know that the Right of Return waits for me there, but I cannot imagine that I will ever make Aliyah, and become an Israeli. I thank God the State of Israel exists, although I know that God will destroy the State of Israel if it ends up offending Him, just as He has done before.

This has been a long post, but I want to justify why I feel that "Next year in Jerusalem" is an appropriate toast to end the Passover seder. I'm reading a book right now, "Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust", by Yaffa Eliach. There's a story in there about Passover in Auschwitz. A group of Hasidic Jews risked their lives to scrounge together a few pieces of matzah in order to have a Passover seder in their barracks. They mixed unraised flour they bribed a Polish employee of the camp to obtain, mixed it with water, and burned it over an open fire to produce blackened panes of something that while technically matzah, was pretty nearly inedible. At any stage of this process, if a guard had spotted them, the would have been murdered. They had no wine, no charoset, no bitter herbs, no roasted egg, no shankbone. All they had was this improvised matzah. For them to say "Next year in Jerusalem", those who were facing imminent death, is an optimism that verged on madness. For me, a free Jew in a free country, to echo even an iota of their faith is the very least I can do. Someone survived that seder, and now lives in Jerusalem. His prayer came true. That's the power of faith.