 I mentioned before at one of the talks that we've had here that I've become a big fan of Chip and Dan Heath since their first book called Made to Stick. And I just recently finished their most recent publication. I think their fourth book called The Power of Moments. The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath. Basically it's a book that focuses on how certain experiences in our lives can jolt us and can transform us. The potential within certain moments of life to have that kind of effect. And one of the stories they tell in this book is about someone named Doug Dietz who is an industrial designer working for General Electric. And he spent a number of years working on developing a new MRI machine. And in 2007 he had the chance to see it being installed in a hospital. And he went hanging out in the hallway waiting to see the first patients coming into the new room. And he said that he felt like a proud papa going to see his baby. As he was waiting in the hallway he saw the first group of people about to come into this room. And it was a couple that were bringing the young daughter who was crying her eyes out. And the young girl's father bent down to her and reassured her that everything was going to be okay and that she could be very brave. But then as soon as the girl entered the room she froze, terrified. And at that moment Dietz could see the way the room must have appeared through her eyes. On the wall there was a giant warning sign with a magnet and a huge exclamation point. On the floor were yellow and black tape that looked like it should have been in a crime scene. The room was dim with fluorescent flickering lights and the walls were an antiseptic beige. The atmosphere was sterile, bordering on menacing. And Dietz knew that the experience would only get worse. The little girl would be fed through a claustrophobic tube and be expected to lie motionless for 30 minutes trying to ignore the machine's loud and strange hums and clanging. And looking at the anguished parents and looking at this young girl Dietz was crushed. And in an instant his pride turned to horror. Dietz realized that he and his colleagues were simply focused on designing a machine. But the parents and the patients focused on the experience. And if a patient feared the MRI, which many of the children did, then there could be real health consequences. For example, 80% of the children had to be sedated and that itself carries its own risks. So after this epiphany in the MRI suite, Dietz reframed his mission now to be a designer to see if he could design an experience that could actually be fun. And with a team of consultants, he came to realize the power of a child's imagination. And that power can transform an experience. In a very powerful TED talk that Dietz delivered, he asked, what is three chairs in a blanket? Well, to a child it's a castle, a spaceship, it's a truck. So what if the MRI were not an MRI machine? What if it was a spaceship or a submarine? And his team went about reimagining the scanner as part of a larger story. At the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, they designed a jungle adventure. In the hallway leading into the room, they placed stickers on the floor that looked like rocks. And the kids would instinctively hop from one rock to the next as they came into the suite. The walls of the room were painted with rich, vibrant, colorful jungle scenes. The rocks from the hallway led to a painted koi pond stocked with fish surrounding the machine. The MRI table was now designed so that it lowered and the kids could climb up onto it. And it was redesigned to look like a hollowed out canoe. The kids were urged to hold still so they wouldn't tip the canoe over while they were being tested. And to the kids, they were magically floating through the jungle on this canoe. Now like deets, we all have experiences in our lives that serve as wake-up calls. For the Jewish community, our 9-11 moment results published in a number of population surveys taken of the American Jewish community. If you read the reaction of North American Jewry to these published reports, it was nothing less than a shocking wake-up call. In 1990, the Jewish population study of American Jews revealed that 12% of American Jews were practicing a religion other than Judaism. When the same study was released 10 years later in the year 2000, the number doubled to 25% of American Jews following a religion other than Judaism. In 2013, the very famous Pew Research Center released its study of American Jewry and found that while 17% of North American Jews belonged to a synagogue, 32% had Christmas trees. The study found that one-third of millennial Jews don't identify with being Jewish in a religious way as being part of a religion at all. They don't identify with the religion of Judaism at all. And 68% of those millennials raising children, 68% are not raising them to be Jewish in any way, shape, or manner whatsoever. Forget about religion, even as Kugel eaters. They're not raising their kids to be Jewish at all. The study in 2013 found that the rate of intermarriage of non-Orthodox Jews had climbed to 72% in the United States. And these numbers to every single concerned Jew was nothing less than shocking. This past summer, the Canadian Jewish News had a cover story, feature story about why so many Jews are attracted to Buddhism. The estimates are that in North America between 25% to 30% of Buddhists that are born here in North America come from a Jewish background. 25% to 30% of North American Buddhists come from a Jewish background. And more than that, the major leaders, teachers, writers on Buddhism are Jewish. Everyone today is familiar with Buddhist mindfulness practice. It's the flavor of the month. And very few people realize that mindfulness practice was brought to North America by three Jews who brought it back from India and they opened up a meditation center in Barry, Massachusetts. When I first came to Toronto 25 years ago, I was working as the chaplain at the University of Toronto running the Jewish Student Union. And I was part of the Interfaith Council and one day the Hindu chaplain invited me to speak at his Hindu temple downtown Toronto on a street called Emmett Avenue. And I said to myself, you know, I'm going to take this speaking engagement. I'm going to go because maybe there'll be one or two Jews there. And when I think back to this Sunday morning that I went, I still shake inside because when I walked into that Hindu temple, I will tell you that it was crawling with Jews. It was crawling with Jews. Mainly women in their 30s, 40s and 50s. Jewish women in their 30s, 40s and 50s. And I prepared my remarks that day for those Jews that would be coming, the two or three Jews that would be there. And after my talk, they all came over to me, all these Jews, and they were angry. They were angry. And basically what they said to me was, how come we never heard this before? How come we never heard what you're saying before? Here in this part of Canada, we have a sizeable Sikh population. And one of the leading Sikh teachers is a man named Hari Nam Singh Khalsa. Hari Nam Singh Khalsa was born David Friedman in the Kensington Market section of Toronto about 66 years ago. A number of years ago I went to Mississauga to a Sufi gathering. The Sufis are a mystical sect of Islam. And this was a group that with dervishes, they did the twirling. It was quite fascinating watching them. And I found out afterwards that the leader of this Sufi group was a Jewish Holocaust survivor. Despite the fact that people think that cults died out in the 1980s, there are still thousands of cults, destructive cults, that are flourishing in North America. And unfortunately Jews make up a disproportionate percentage of members of these groups. There are hundreds of new age religions in the world today. Newer religions, like Baha'i. You should not be surprised to find out that a tremendous percentage of people that are Baha'i are Jews. When I was a university student I was very attracted to Baha'i. The truth is that Jews today are in every ism in the world and sometimes the last is Judaism. And of course the largest of these groups is what Rabbi Shlomo Karabach used to refer to as Jews for nothing. When we have a moment of heightened awareness through one of these wake up calls it prompts a response. Whenever a person goes to an experience and has an awakening and comes to a realization it calls upon them to respond. Those of you familiar with the grace after meals with the Birkat Hamazzon so you probably noticed that there's a very unsettling line at the very end which is quoting from Psalm 37. And the line says Na'ar ha'iti gam zarkanti velo rai'iti tzadek ne'ezav vezarom eva keish lochem. Usually translated that I was a youth I was young and now I am old yet I have never seen a righteous man forsaken or his children begging for bread. Now anyone that's sensitive that reads that says say what? Never seen a righteous person forsaken or his children begging for bread? It's ma'isem shabachol yum it happens every day. So how do we understand this? So Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Sacks in his wonderful edition of the prayer book and his commentary translates the verse a little bit differently and I think he gets it correctly. He says that the Hebrew here lo rai'iti should not be understood to mean I have not seen. But he says really you can find a parallel usage of this phrase in the scroll of Esther in the Gilat Esther in chapter 8 verse 6 when Esther who is pleading on behalf of the Jewish people says for how can I watch the evil that shall come upon my people? How can I watch the destruction of my kindred? So it's not to see but it means to watch to stand as a passive witness and the translation therefore of Isaac says should be I was once young and now I'm old and I never stood by and just watched a righteous person being forsaken or his children begging for bread. That's really what's being proclaimed here. And I believe that that has to be our response to this demographic nightmare that we are facing as a people. We cannot just stand by and watch passively. That is impossible. That is unacceptable. The Bible says don't stand idly by the blood of your brother. When we see Jewish people today that are going lost we say now that if you're Jewish the chances are your grandchildren won't be that's an incredible tragedy and no one could sit back should sit back and just watch that happen. The Torah says in the book of Dvariem chapter 22 in the beginning there's a mitzvah of Hashavataveda if someone's animal gets loose and they're lost and you find their animal you have a biblical obligation to try to restore their property to them. It's the biblical commandment of Hashavataveda, returning lost property. And the Holy Orachayim the Orachayim Akadosh in his commentary to the Torah says if we're commanded to return a person's animal to them all the more so to return a person's lost soul to their true heritage. In the book of Samuel Shmuelal of the first book of Shmuel there's a very tragic story where our Aron Kodesh the Holy Ark from our Tabernacle is captured by the Philistines and they kept it for many months until finally it was miraculously returned to the Jewish people but our sages have a very trenchant commentary to this story. And our sages say that God was disappointed by the apathy of the Jewish people for their lack of initiative and effort to try to retrieve the Ark. It spent so many months in enemy hands and according to the Midrash this is what God said if one of your children I'm sorry if one of their chickens if one of their chickens went lost would they not attempt everything in their power to get it back? So the saintly Chavitzchayim Shrolmeir HaCoein in his famous book Chomat Adat says that today God's Holy Ark is in captivity. God's Holy Ark are his children and we therefore have an obligation to strive to return our brothers and sisters to their true spiritual path by the Moshe Feinstein who was the greatest Jewish legal authority of the 20th century said that not only do we have an obligation to give Ma'aseer from our funds to give 10% minimally up to 20% of our money to charitable causes he said that we should each donate 10% of our time to be involved with trying to help trying to help connect Jewish people that have strayed back to their faith. So the first lesson I believe that we can learn from disappearing Jews as Alan Dershowitz refers to them as the first lesson is to recognize our obligation to them. The second thing we need to learn and appreciate is who these people are who are the Jewish people today embracing Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Sufism everyism but Judaism. Who are they? Over 2600 years ago our prophet Hosea proclaimed my people are perishing due to a lack of knowledge. Years ago I used to give out a Jewish IQ test I published it when I was living in the states in a number of newspapers I used to give it out on campus here and it was sort of tongue in cheek but there was a point to it I would ask 10 questions who is the mother of Jesus I would ask? Shouldn't surprise you that about every Jewish university student was able to answer that question I would ask who is the mother of Moses just about no one knew the answer to that I would ask could you name any of the Gospels in the New Testament how many Jewish kids could name one of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John I asked at the other side of the test can you name any of the tractates in the Talmud just name one just about no one was able to answer that I would ask the Jewish students do you know what the word Trinity means? Sure Trinity the Christian belief in God as a father son, holy spirit and I would ask do you know what the word Taryag means? What's that? Taryag is the Hebrew number 613 that's how many commandments there are in the Torah but our university students don't know that what is the birthday of Jesus traditionally? Today everyone knows that how about the birthday of Moses and that's not just a bullamy so we know that birth date none of our university students know that our university students will know who wrote Das Kapital who wrote Das Kapital our university students know who wrote it but if you ask them who wrote the guide to the perplexed very few will know it it's terrifying it's terrifying that the vast majority of Jews here in North America cannot read Hebrew don't know their Jewish name Hebrew name if they have one not only did they never read the Bible but they're unfamiliar with any of the great classics of Jewish thought and literature The New York Times had an article years ago about a Jewish couple struggling in dealing with a child who was critically ill and the mother said to the reporter that she was tempted to convert to Catholicism because they have a belief in an afterlife how could you not cry how could you not cry that here a Jew is thinking about converting to another religion because they have a belief in the afterlife and she has gone through this woman and probably countless others their lives assuming it's not a thing that Jews believe in not only is there massive illiteracy among our brothers and sisters there's also something equally serious afoot if I was to share with you the profile of a typical Jew for Jesus and I've spoken to hundreds of them hundreds and hundreds they will tell you that they went to Hebrew school they had a bar about Mitzvah their families litchanica candles they had Passover saders they went to the synagogue on the high holidays that's what you hear about almost all of them but they will tell you in the same breath that they never experienced any of it as something that was spiritual to them Judaism was a culture an ethnicity a heritage a tradition an identity but that's it it was never experienced as a rich spiritual path of personal transformation or a way of developing a personal relationship with God and if you ask virtually any Jew who's embraced Christianity what they have now that they didn't have before I assure you that you'll be told that what they have now is a relationship with God the prophet Amos in the 8th chapter of his book God says that I'm going to send a famine to the earth but it's not going to be a hunger for food or a thirst for water it's going to be a tremendous need and thirst to hear the words of the Almighty and that's what we're experiencing today experiencing a generation of Jews who have not been given anything they've not been given anything there's a third thing that we need to know and appreciate about many of the Jews who today are not in synagogue but are in churches or in ashrams Vittorah has a tremendously poignant drama about the continuity of our forefathers Abraham was the progenitor of our people and he has a son Isaac and we know that Isaac has been the one to receive the blessings of Abraham and the mandate and the mission to go forward and continue the work that Abraham had done but then what happens after Isaac we know that Isaac has twins Jacob and Asav and we know that Asav was not really the most qualified person to take on the mantle of the Jewish people but for some inscrutable reason Isaac had his heart set on giving the blessings to Asav the wrong son and we know that his wife Isaac's wife Rebecca devises a plot to dress up Jacob to appear to look like the other son to look like Asav and Jacob goes in and basically gets the blessings but it's a very hair-raising drama because as we're going through the story we're wondering is the wrong son going to get the blessings and at the very last moment at the very last moment before Isaac gives the blessings to Jacob Natura tells us a strange detail Natura says immediately before Isaac blesses Jacob he smelled his clothing he smelled his clothing and our sages teach in the Midrash don't read this as he smelled his clothing the word bogdav means rebels or traitors it's interesting by the way that we wear clothing the word begad for clothing why do we wear clothing? because Adam and Eve rebelled in the Garden of Eden they ate what they weren't supposed to eat and their eyes are open and they saw they were naked they had to put on clothing so the whole idea of clothing is related to rebelliousness there are three other words by the way for clothing that all connect with the idea of rebelliousness so the Talmud says the sages teach us don't read this that Jacob's clothing was smelled by his father Isaac the sages say that Isaac smelled the rebels the traitors that would be coming out of Jacob that's why he blessed him now what's going on here why would he bless him because of the traitors and rebels that would be coming out one day and the Midrash goes on to tell two stories of such rebels one is someone named Yosef Mishisa Yosef Mishisa was basically drafted by those who were going to destroy and sack the holy temple in Jerusalem and they said to themselves you know what we don't want to go in there we saw raiders that had lost Ark and we know it's a little bit dangerous if you mess around with the Jewish stuff so they said to this kid Yosef Mishisa you know what you go in and you take something and you can keep it for yourself then you go back and get more stuff for us so he comes out what does he bring he brings the menorah and they're looking at the menorah and they're looking at him and they say no way we'll take that you can go back and get something else for yourself at this moment he starts to tremble and he says I already angered my father in heaven once I'm not going in there and doing it again and they say no we're telling you you have to go in we're not asking you you've got to go in and get the stuff bring it out for us I already angered my father in heaven and so they tried to bribe him they said you know what we'll let you off from paying taxes for three years no taxes just go in and get stuff for us and he started crying and he says I already angered my father in heaven once I'm not doing it again and so the Midrash tells us that they tortured him to death in the most horrible ways but he refused refused to go in and he died a martyr the other story that the sages teach us is about someone named Yokum Ishtsroros Yokum Ishtsroros was a nephew of the great Talmudic sage Yossi Benioeser and we're told that as Yossi Benioeser was being led to be crucified by the Romans he's on a little donkey broken down 90-year-old jalapie of a donkey they're taking him out to be executed and Yokum, his nephew is riding on a beautiful horse a beautiful steed and as he passes his uncle he sneers at him and he mocks him and he says ha ha look at the animal that you're riding on and look at the animal the beautiful animal that I'm riding on so his uncle looks up and says to him about himself, he says you know what if this is what happens to someone who does the will of the Almighty think about what's going to be with someone who doesn't do the will of the Almighty and the Midrash tells us that those words entered his heart like the poison of a snake and he went home and he built some kind of a crazy contraption where he gave himself the Dallad Mesos based in the four ways in which the court can execute someone he somehow did, don't ask it's in popular mechanics from the year 400 BCE I don't know but he ended up taking his life and as he was on his last breaths we're told that his soul entered paradise before that of his uncle these are some of the holy traders the holy rebels of the Jewish people and they are referred to as rebels bogdim because it's related to the word again begged clothing because clothing is not who you are it's external to who you are it's not the real you it's often a cover up, a disguise but deep down inside deep down inside that exterior beats the heart of a faithful holy Jew Retzalik Haqqain of Lublin used to always say that we are required not only to believe in God we're required to believe in ourselves as well to recognize that God does not make junk and that each one of us is created in the image of God and each one of us has a holy soul and so even though there are Jews who are in the wrong place doing the wrong things deep down inside they're not just good they're great and they're holy and they're very spiritual and the truth is that from where I sit I often don't blame these Jewish people for embracing other religions I understand them perfectly well the Talmud says the Talmud says that the mouse is not the thief it's the hole in the wall that no one repaired that's the thief don't blame the mouse for eating the cheese that's what mice do they eat cheese they don't get upset if you want to point your finger don't point it at the Jews today that are in ashrams or in churches they didn't make that hole in the wall they just fell through it these are Jews that could not tolerate the mediocrity of the Judaism they grew up with and I don't blame them they're searching for meaning they're searching for passion they're searching for spirituality they're searching for God and if they don't find it within the walls of the Jewish world in which they grow up they will go elsewhere and can we really blame them they tell a story that there was a fellow that had a job as the signal man at a railway crossing and his job was very simple when he hears a train coming he wants to make sure that no cars are going to go through the intersection so he's got to take out his lantern and he's got to wave the lantern and make sure cars don't come so one night he's at the job he's been on this job for many years he hears the blaring ringing the railroad car coming the train coming and he sees the headlights of a car coming he goes into his little booth and he takes out his lantern and he waves it back and forth and he's slowing down and this person is freaking out and he starts waving the lantern more and more furiously the car doesn't slow down and the driver goes through the intersection through the railroad crossing and he is basically smashed to smithereens by this train there's a major lawsuit and the family of this motorist sues the train company for $16 million and at the trial this signal man they ask him what happened that night and he tells the whole story that he heard the train coming and he saw the headlights of the car and he goes and he gets his lantern he's waving it back and forth and on the basis of this testimony the train company won the trial they didn't have to pay any money and the president of the train company comes over to him afterwards he's sitting in the corner somewhere he can't even sit up straight he's so upset and the president thanks him for his testimony but he sees the man is crying and he says why are you crying and he says you know sir I don't know what I would have said if anyone had bothered asking me was your lantern lit Rousseau Salonter the great founder of the Moussar movement remarked that if in Valogian Valogian was the center of a vibrant, rich Torah committed Jewry he said if there wasn't Beatle Torah in Valogian if it wasn't for the fact that people in Valogian were not studying Torah as much as they were supposed to he says there wouldn't be Khilo Shabbos in Paris the truth is that every single Jew in the world that is committed to Judaism that's concerned about the Jewish people we set the spiritual tone in the Jewish world and aside from the fact that we have an obligation to try to teach people to try to directly help people understand that yes, Judaism is spiritual that Judaism does have practices like meditation that Judaism does believe in God and having a relationship with God that Judaism has a technology that Judaism has a technology for personal growth and transformation aside from the fact that we have an obligation to teach people this because again our prophet said our people perish due to a lack of knowledge they don't know who can blame them but there's something deeper going on it's the way we live in the privacy of our own homes that impacts the rest of the world it's sort of a spiritual equivalent of the butterfly effect they say that if there's a butterfly in New Mexico that flaps its wings there may be a thunderstorm in Mississauga look it up on the internet so the truth is as we so cilantro said that the fact that Jews that are serious about Judaism may be on their own on their own spiritual journey on their own spiritual path not as intense as they should be not studying as much Torah as they should be not praying with as much intensity as they should be that impact Jews that they might never see in their life how does that happen so there's a story that's told I've heard it about a number of different people but it's a story that I once heard about of Yisrael Joseph Caro about Joseph Caro who was the author of the Code of Jewish Law and the story has it that he was once studying a passage in the Talmud and he could not figure it out he got stuck on a passage and he spent weeks and weeks and weeks killing himself working on it staying up countless hours he ended up fasting and praying and doing everything he could possibly do how do I understand this piece of Talmud finally after months of working on it it comes to him he's able to understand it he's on cloud nine he is thrilled the next morning the Bait Midrash, the study hall and he passes there's a father and his son studying Talmud and what do you know they're studying the same passage in the Talmud that he had been stuck on for months and he hears this ten year old boy explaining it to his father just as he had figured out and he was crushed he was so upset so he goes to his teacher and he complains to his teacher it's not fair it's a low fare it's not fair I killed myself for months and this little kid he has it so if the Kauros teacher says to him you don't understand something before you brought this idea into the world no one had it but once you worked so hard on this and you were able to articulate this idea and explain the Talmud you put it out there you brought it down and it's now in the atmosphere it's in the ether and the fact that you made it available and you put it out there this ten year old kid was able to access it what each one of us does impacts the rest of the world as our mystics explain all Jewish people are one organism we're one body we're one body and just like in one body if you stub your toe it hurts so as a people if any one of us is in pain if any one of us is lost it should hurt all of us but the truth is that anything we do in this big body of the Jewish people it impacts every other single Jew whether they know it or not and so I want to leave each of us here today with a challenge Panina challenged all of us and I'd like to leave two challenges number one to appreciate and recognize that each of us has a tremendous responsibility to in some way make an effort to teach to inspire to share sharing is caring as they say to share what we have with someone else and you don't have to be a scholar if you even know how to read Hebrew you can say you can teach someone who doesn't know how to read Hebrew you can study a book together if you have a Shabbat in your home invite someone for Shabbat I guarantee they'll be very appreciative so number one challenge is let's make an effort each one of us to try to directly share with influence teach other Jewish people that believe me are thirsty they're thirsty and number two let's each of us try to up our own game not necessarily for their benefit for our benefit but understanding and the knowledge that whatever we do to improve our own spiritual lives impacts the rest of the Jewish world so I want to leave all of us with that challenge and with a blessing that we should all be successful and see God willing a transformation of the Jewish people where next year we won't have to worry about why there are so many Jewish people in ashrams and churches we should worry about why there's not enough room here in Sharia Tfilah for all the Jews to do everything they can do for their loved ones and their Jewish people on many doors ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...