Rich Strike

May 14, 2022

Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,

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Parshat Emor
May 14, 2022 — 13 Iyyar 5782
Rich Strike
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA

                           

            Last Shabbat an event of great importance happened: the Kentucky Derby and the unexpected, unlikely, implausible victory of a horse named Rich Strike.  It is a double miracle underdog story.

            As of the day before the big race, Rich Strike was not even supposed to be racing.  At the last minute, because another horse that had been scheduled to race was a last-minute scratch, Rich Strike was the last horse to enter the field.

            And Rich Strike was an 80 to 1 underdog. That made his upset victory the greatest upset victory since 1913.  If you watch the race, which takes two minutes, the announcer calling the race does not even mention the name Rich Strike until the very end.  For most of the race, until literally the last moment, the race was between two other horses named Epicenter and Zandon.   I am a rabbi, not a horse race announcer, but it sounds something like this. 

            Epicenter and Zandon are neck and neck.  Epicenter and Zandon are stride
            for stride.  Epicenter and Zandon head into the fine stretch.  Epicenter and
            Zandon turn the corner.  Epicenter and Zandon are racing furiously to the
            finish line. And the winner is…Rich Strike who got the inside track and followed the rail
            to win the 148th Kentucky Derby!!!  Rich Strike has just won the Kentucky Derby!!! 

            Lest you think I am making this emotion up, let me share just a bit of the contemporaneous account of the race written by a sportswriter for Sports Illustrated named Pat Forde:

            No one saw Rich Strike coming Saturday.  Not before the Kentucky Derby,
            where the horse wasn’t even assured of a spot in the field until another competitor
            scratched the day before.  Not during the first nine furlongs of the 10-furlong race,
            as all eyes focused on a stretch duel between…Epicenter and Zandon.  Not until
            the very end, when this nobody of a horse, with a nobody trainer and nobody jockey
            and nobody owner, came knifing along the rail a few strides before the wire to
            launch himself into history.

            Now Rich Strike’s shocking victory is obviously an amazing horse-racing story.  And any time a major underdog wins, that is a great sports story.  But what does Rich Strike’s winning the Kentucky Derby have to do with Judaism?  What does it have to do with our portion this morning, parshat Emor? The answer is everything.

            Here is the question that our Torah reading grapples with, and we grapple with as well.  In a hard and sometimes brutal world, full of heartache, heartbreak, and loss—the Torah reading begins with death and burial—is it possible to live a life that is a counter reality to all that pain and heartache?  That is an underdog position.  It would be more likely, more expected, for our life to be shaped and limited by our hard circumstances.  It would be unlikely, unexpected, an upset victory, for our life to transcend hard circumstances.  And it would be an even greater upset victory if we were not only able to transcend our hard circumstances, but also to transform them, to make them less hard.  How can we not only transcend but also transform our landscape? 

            That’s where our portion, Emor, is gold.  We are in the middle of Leviticus where we encounter a word not usually spoken in the world: holiness, kedushah.  Last week God commands us kedoshim tihyu ki kadosh ani Adonai eloheichem, you shall be holy because I the Lord your God am holy.  Rashi, the medieval commentator, observes  kedoshim tihyu means perhushim tihyu, you shall be holy means you shall be separate, set apart, different.  Holiness is about creating a counter reality.  There is the regular reality of the brutal hard world.  And there is the counter reality of a holier, healthier, happier world.

            This week’s portion teaches us that there are three kinds of holiness. 

            Kedushat zman, holy time.  Time like no other.

            Kedushat guf, holy people.  People like no other.

            Kedushat makom, holy space.  Space like no other.

            Holy time.  Holy people.  Holy space.   If we can put the three of these together we get a double underdog victory.

            We are uplifted.

            And we heal our world.

            Let me tell you two stories that embody what I am talking about.  One is an inside job, it happened here at the shul, in the Gann Chapel.  The other is very much an outside job, it happened on the streets of Greater Boston.

            The inside job.  This past week, on Monday and Thursday morning minyan in the Gann Chapel,  Butch Pemstein read Torah for the first time in his life.  Butch is 83. At his first Bar Mitzvah 70 years ago, the Torah scroll was open, but he read from a pamphlet on top of the Torah scroll.  There is this tradition that 70 years after your first Bar or Bat Mitzvah, at the age of 83, you read Torah again.  So Butch read from the Torah scroll for the first time.  Arielle and Isa, please call the Temple office on Monday morning and reserve your date at the morning minyan 70 years from now.  If you call now, I suspect that there should be broad availability in terms of dates.    Butch read both mornings, which was lovely.  His sons David and Josh also read, which was also lovely.  But lovelier still was the encouragement and joy people felt in sharing this moment with him.   That is a counter world of learning, growing, stretching, loving, sharing.  That is holiness.  That is Rich Strike.  But there’s more.

            Last Sunday was Mother’s Day.  Now Mother’s Day can be a complicated day emotionally.  Let’s say your mother has passed away; or your mother was complicated; or you want to be a mother but have not yet had mazal. How do you spend a day that is supposed to be happy, happy about mothers when you have real clouds in your skies?

            A woman named Clementina Chery must have experienced Mother’s Day with  ambivalence.   In 1993 her son Louis, at the age of fifteen, was killed in Dorchester by a stray bullet while on his way to a rally against gun violence.  How could Clementina Chery ever do Mother’s Day? 

            Here is what she did.  She brought holy people, holy time, and holy space together to uplift and to change our world. For the last 26 years, she created a Mother’s Day Walk for Peace through Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan that raises money for a peace institute named in honor of her son.   After two years of not being able to walk in person due to the pandemic, last Sunday the walk resumed in person.  Five thousand walkers, including a delegation from Temple Emanuel that I was happy to be a part of, joined in.  All these walkers raised over $430,000 to strengthen peace and healing initiatives in Greater Boston.  That is a counter world of healing, building, walking, strengthening.  That is holiness in action.  That is Rich Strike. 

            An underdog victory is too important to happen only at the  Kentucky Derby.  The underdog victory we need, that our world needs, must happen here and now, with all of us.  All of us can be, and must be,  the protagonists in this underdog story.  We have to find our own version of reading Torah for the first time at 83.  We have to find our own version of the Mother’s Day Walk for Peace.  We have to find our own  version of the Rich Strike moment when we put holy people, holy space and holy time together to uplift ourselves and to soften our world.  It is hard. It is unlikely. It is unexpected. It is implausible. It is 80 to 1.  But 80 to 1 is not a problem.  We have the power of Emor.  We have the power of this day.  We have the power of holiness.  Shabbat shalom.