The USY Experience

USY is so vital to our youth because living a meaningful Jewish life is something that must be experienced.
Vayishlach 5770 / December 5, 2009

This morning we set aside some time to celebrate and showcase our HEA youth and our USY chapter. Thank you Mark for ­­­­­­speaking about the importance of USY and for the energy you bring to your work; and thank you Levi for sharing your experience with USY in Israel. You touched upon the very essence of USY’s importance to us as a Jewish community. What makes USY so important for our youth is the power of experience. What we teach our young people in religious school is vital – the knowledge we try to instill provides building blocks for success as a Jewish adult. The training we put you through to become a bar or bat mitzvah provides you with skills that make it possible for you to walk into any synagogue in the world and feel at home. But, nothing is more effective than experiencing Judaism and living it. Nothing you learn in school can replace the power of experiencing Judaism with all of your senses – the smells, the sights, the sounds, tastes and textures of Jewish life. Judaism is not merely a philosophy; it is how we as Jews walk in this world. It is the source of the values and principles that should guide us in our lives. And, it is the basis upon which we seek to repair what is broken in our world.

When our children are young, it is incumbent on us as parents and adults to communicate our values by making our homes places that reverberate with the rhythms of Jewish life. But you are no longer children. As teenagers, you are beginning a process of striking out on your own. You are starting to make decisions for yourself and choosing how you want to live your life. And, Levi, you talked this morning about what it was like to experience that independence among peers while travelling through the historic homeland of our people. Going to Israel and seeing the country for yourself and experiencing some of what it means to live in Israel, you learned something that can’t be taught from books. You learned why our national homeland is called Yisrael.

The reason for our name, Yisrael, comes from this week’s Torah portion. In parashat Va-yishlach, Yaakov is preparing to confront his brother Esav and he’s very nervous – he doesn’t know if Esav still holds a grudge. You’ll remember that Yaakov had swindled his brother Esav out of his birthright and later he deceived his father, Yitzhak, into giving him the blessing reserved for the first born. Despite our reverence for Yaakov as one of our patriarchs, we can’t deny the fact that Yaakov – in his youth – was a not a very good person. He got what he wanted through deceit and treachery. As a youngster, he lived up to the meaning of his name – he was named Yaakov because he was born grasping at his twin brother’s heal. And, he spent most of his early years pulling and clawing for whatever he wanted by any means he could devise. Esav was murderously angry with Yaakov; so Yaakov fled. And, once he separated from his family, for the first time in his life he really had to fend for himself and face challenges head on. So, now on the eve of his reunion with Esav, we find a very different Yaakov. And this transformation he undergoes reaches a dramatic climax when, during the night, he is confronted by a mysterious figure who attacks him.

Who is Yaakov fighting? Most traditional commentators understand that this is an angel from God. I prefer the explanation given by the 19^th century Hassidic master known as the S’fat Emet who says that Yaakov is finally confronting himself, wrestling with his own conscience; flexing moral muscles he didn’t know he had. But, this time he cannot defeat his conscience with tricks and deceit. But, Yaakov doesn’t give up, instead he demands that his opponent give him a blessing.

What blessing did Yaakov receive? The adversary responds, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Yaakov.” The other then says, “Your name shall no longer be Yaakov, but Yisrael – for you have struggled with God and with men, and you have prevailed.”

The blessing Yaakov received, however, was not a new name. The blessing was the struggle itself. As teenagers you too are in the midst of struggles. Getting older and becoming an adult is not easy and you have a lot to figure out. But the struggles are not a curse, they are, instead, the blessing. The story of Yaakov becoming Yisrael teaches us that the truly valuable learning we do in life comes about by grappling with ourselves. The real growth comes through experiences and ordeals. As teenagers, you are experiencing new things, making choices for yourselves, charting out a path for your own life. And USY is so important because it gives you the opportunity to experience these changes in a Jewish context – in community with other young Jews, imbedded in a framework of Jewish values and ideas. USY is fun – very fun. But, while you’re having fun with your friends, you’re also learning what it means to be part of the adult Jewish community, how to live in this world as a Jew, and how to engage in a productive struggle with God.

So, I want to give you a blessing this morning just as the angel blessed Yaakov. I bless you that you keep working hard at becoming adults. I hope you will remember that we are Am Yisrael – a people continually engaged in the struggle to live by the ideals God sets out for us. That struggle begins now; but, I want to let you in on a secret – the struggle never ends. That struggle is at the heart of what makes us human beings created in the image of God. That is why it is so important for you to stay connected to the Jewish community – because we offer you a context in which to face those struggles. So, I hope you will deepen your involvement in USY, in the HEA community, in Hillel and I hope you know that you always have a home among our people.