A lot of people have asked me about my thoughts on the Neo-Nazi march taking place in Columbia this weekend. My thoughts a best summed up by the Dvar Torah that I am giving tonight at Hillel. A copy of the Dvar Torah is after the jump. Also if you are interested in pledging money to your favorite organization promiting diversity and acceptance click here.

In life we are confronted with decisions that have two clear ways of dealing with them. One way is the usually the wrong way, the other the right. One way is easy, the other difficult. One way is emotional, while the other requires great thought.

In this weeks Torah portion Ki Tisa, Moses is on Mount Sinai longer than expected and the people of Israel create an idol, a golden calf, and begin to worship this calf. God explains to Moses that he will destroy them and will create a new people of Israel that Moses again can lead.

This situation is very similar to the one in which God informs Noah that he is going to flood the earth. Noah, however excepts his fate, while Moses does not. It would have been very easy for Moses to accept the fate of the people, but instead Moses takes a more difficult approach, a more thoughtful approach, a more compassionate approach.

He descends the mountain carrying the Ten Commandments and destroys them, destroys the golden calf, and sentences the main culprits to death. Moses then says to God, “If You do not forgive them, blot me out from the book that You have written.” That was no easy decision for Moses to make, but in the end God forgave the people.

I am reminded of one of my favorite poems. It is a poem I often live by. A matter of fact my father read it to me at my Bar Mitzvah. Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.”

You see, our community is being faced with a similar challenge this weekend. We could act emotionally, we could take the easy road, and we could do what our friends in Toledo did in 2005. But my friends, I couldn’t be prouder to be a part of a community that as a whole is taking the road less traveled. We aren’t acting emotionally, but rather with great thought. That couldn’t make me happier. And on this Shabbat I wish you all a Shabbat Shalom, a Shabbat of peace.

The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.