L'chaim: Kol Nidrei Sermon (5769/2008)

Kol Nidrei 5769 / October 8, 2008

Hachayim yod’im sheyamutu. “The living know they will die.” So we learn from Kohelet (Ecclesiastes, 9:5).

At this time of year, the season of Remembrance and Judgment, nothing separates us from the animals and the rest of God’s creation as dramatically as this knowledge -- not our being created in God’s image, not our sense of humor, not our civilization, not even our knowledge of right and wrong -- but the awareness of our own mortality.

Most of us probably don’t think about death very often, except when it touches someone close to us. Unlike the rest of us, philosophers have been writing about mortality for thousands of years.

For Socrates, philosophy -- the art of living -- was really about the art of dying. To live well, he explained to his disciples on the eve of his drinking the fatal hemlock, is to be prepared for death. While his followers began to grieve and urge him to avoid his fate, he faced impending death resolutely. His composure rested on his belief that he had lived his life with integrity in preparation for meeting his death.

Fast-forwarding to the 20th Century, the Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig began his major work of theology, The Star of Redemption, with the contemplation of death. Mortality, he believed, presents humanity with an existential ultimatum. No one can contemplate death and emerge unscathed; knowledge of mortality demands a reckoning of the meaning, value, and purpose of one’s life. For Rosenzweig, the Torah and Jewish tradition define that purpose by building frames of meaning through which we can relate to God’s presence and God’s demands in our lives.

Psychologists also have much to say about death and mortality. In his book The Doctor and the Soul, Holocaust survivor and Austrian intellectual Victor Frankl explained:

How often we hear the argument that death does away with the meaning of life altogether. That in the end all man’s works are meaningless, since death ultimately destroys them. Now, does death really decrease the meaningfulness of life? On the contrary. For what would our lives be like if they were not finite in time, but infinite? If we were immortal, we could legitimately postpone every action forever. It would be of no consequence whether or not we did a thing now; every act might just as well be done tomorrow or the day after or a year from now or ten years hence. But in the face of death as absolute finis to our future and boundary to our possibilities, we are under the imperative of utilizing our lifetimes to the utmost…

Though there is a lot of wisdom in these thinkers’ writing, it goes without saying that reading about mortality in a book and experiencing it are worlds apart. One of my earliest memories of death takes me back to the age of 13, six months after my Bar Mitzvah. My grandmother on my father’s side, Grandma Lillie to me, was almost 82 years-old, in great shape and still as sharp as ever. While playing bridge with her friends, she started to complain of an unusually bad headache, and then she collapsed. By the time the ambulance arrived, Lillie had died from a massive stroke.

What struck my 13-year-old head and heart most about that experience was how my grandmother’s friends reacted to it. They all said, one way or another, “That’s how I want to go. 80-plus years, great health to the end, and then one day just gone. I don’t want to linger.”

What strikes my head and heart most now is that such a death would mean you wouldn’t have time to ask forgiveness from an estranged friend, or accept the apology of a loved one, or make amends where a relationship was broken. You would have to have your accounts in order, not just financially but ethically, spiritually, and interpersonally as well.

* * *

Like the philosophers, psychologists, and my grandmother’s friends, the rabbis have thought about this, too. In Pirkei Avot (2:10) and the Talmud (BT Shabbat 153a), Rabbi Eliezer gives his students a cryptic piece of advice: shuv yom echad lifnei mitatcha -- “Repent one day before your death.” His skeptical students asked rhetorically: “But does a person know on which day he will die?!?” Eliezer was ready with his response: v’chol sheken yashuv hayom shema yamut l’machar -- “All the moreso, one should repent today lest he die tomorrow. Then all his days he will be found to be living in teshuva.” And when his last day comes, he will be ready.

A life lived in perpetual repentance -- would that mean always making amends for mistakes, accepting apologies, being merciful in forgiving, never letting conflicts fester? The Sages of the Talmud share a parable to help us understand Rabbi Eliezer’s words [paraphrased]:

It is like a king who invited his servants to a banquet, but he did not set an exact time for them to arrive. The wise ones among them got dressed in appropriately formal clothing and sat waiting at the door of the palace, saying to themselves, “The king’s banquet could be ready at any moment, and we must be properly attired in case we get called in suddenly!”

The foolish servants went about their work and kept wearing their regular everyday clothes. “A banquet takes time to prepare,” they told themselves, “so we surely have time before the feast will be ready.”

Suddenly the king summoned all the servants to the banquet. The wise ones entered, adorned in their dress clothes. The foolish ones entered before the king with their clothes soiled from their daily work.

To those who were suitably dressed for the banquet, the king bade them sit, eat, and drink. To those who had failed to adorn themselves for the banquet, the king said they would have to stand and watch the others partake. These are privileged to eat, while those must go hungry. These may drink, but those are doomed to thirst.

What would it mean for us to live everyday as if it were our last, as if death were right around the corner? Yom Kippur gives us a taste of what it would be like to take this lesson seriously.

In the rituals of the Day of Atonement the reminders of mortality are pervasive. The Unetaneh Tokef prayer and others besiege us with images of God’s Book of Life and Death, of who shall perish by water and who by fire. The fast gives us the sense of a withered body, freed as in death from the need for physical sustenance.

Earlier tonight the Kol Nidrei prayer asked for us to be absolved of vows we are unable to fulfill. Usually this is interpreted as an admission of our inevitable failure to live up to our word. But couldn’t it also be meant as an acknowledgement of the possibility that -- God forbid -- our life might end before we can keep all our promises?

Moreover, when we stand before the ark for this prayer, we remove all the Torah scrolls. In that moment, the aron kodesh – the holy ark – without the holy sifrei Torah in it, becomes merely an aron – which in Hebrew also means “coffin.” And the traditional attire for Yom Kippur, the kittel or plain white robe, is also the traditional attire for burial. In effect, on Yom Kippur we stand together with the support of our community and look into our own grave.

In this light, the Day of Atonement feels like a rehearsal for the last day of our life. The effect could be despair, unless we can see this day as an unexpected gift: a God’s-eye view of our life from its end.

One day a year, we stare death in the face. And it turns out that death’s face is a mirror. When we stare into it, we get the opportunity to evaluate our lives as if from our last day. On that day, we will ask in the past tense what we are blessed today to ask in the present: are we living the life we should, the life we want, for ourselves and those around us? If this day were our last, what old wound would we try to heal, which broken promise would we try to keep, which loved ones would we remind how much we love them?

* * *

It may be enough to enshroud ourselves in this heavy death imagery only one day each year. In fact, I happen to think that the rabbis behind the story of the wise and foolish banquet guests are a little too fixated on the World to Come and dismissive of the work of the World As It Is. Taken to the extreme, obsessing about the possibility of impending death might lead us to neglect our responsibilities in the here and now.

After all, Judaism is a religion of life, not death. Our tradition repeatedly urges us to “choose life” for ourselves and our children, as we will read in the Torah portion tomorrow. The aim of our central sacred story, the Exodus, is not some otherworldly reward but a better life in the Land of Israel. The Talmud and our other Jewish law books spend hundreds of thousands of words on the details of life here in this world, from observing Shabbat and raising a child, to planting a field and running a business. Even the passages about death are essentially about how the living are to treat and memorialize the dead.

But Yom Kippur understands this, too. Again, there is great wisdom in our liturgy. As we finish the prayers for Yom Kippur tomorrow, the somber quiet of death is shattered by the sound of the shofar -- and not just any ordinary blast, but a tekiah gedolah.

A midrash explains that the shofar is a symbol of resurrection:

And how does the Holy One, blessed be He, resuscitate the dead in the world to come? We are taught that the Holy One, blessed be He, takes in His hand a Great Shofar . . . and blows it, and its sound goes from one end of the world to the other. (Midrash Aleph Beit D’ Rabbi Akiba 3:31)

Here in the synagogue, we have our own Great Shofar -- actually several great shofars in very capable hands! -- and when they sound near the end of Yom Kippur tomorrow, we too will be jolted out of our pseudo-death, to life renewed. Looking back on our year, the good and the bad, we are called to resurrect the person we have been in our better moments. From the mire of mortality, each of us is reborn with the new year.

* * *

When my fiancee and I get married -- God-willing -- next May, I will wear the ring that my Grandpa Al wore at his wedding. It was given to him by my Grandma Lillie with the following inscription: “LS [Lillie Streen] to AS [Al Segal] 11-25-35.” The same ring that sanctified their marriage 73 years ago will sanctify ours.

This symbolic ring will remind me of both sides of the coin of the human condition: you won’t be around forever; but you sure can live with meaning while you’re here. Lillie and Al managed to do it, and there’s a ring and a lifetime of memories to show for it, not to mention children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

It makes sense now that the kittel traditionally worn by the worshiper on Yom Kippur and by the deceased for burial is also worn by a groom on his wedding day. The awareness of mortality and the embrace of life’s joyful passages are inextricably intertwined. We turn to the words of Kohelet again:

Enjoy happiness with a woman you love all the fleeting days of life that have been granted to you under the sun (9:9).

Again, two sides of the coin: our days are indeed fleeting, and yet there is happiness to be enjoyed. That nothing lasts forever need not entail that nothing has meaning, or impact, or lasting value.

During a recent summer internship as a hospital chaplain, I came across a pamphlet entitled Helping a Child Grieve and Grow. I relied on it several times during the summer to help bereaved parents support their grieving children. It said:

A wise writer once insisted that only death makes love possible. Because human life is fragile, it is precious. Because an individual makes but one appearance on this earth, his or her uniqueness must be cherished.
Do you really want to protect a child from discovering that truth?

I believe Yom Kippur brings us face-to-face with death precisely so we can discover and rediscover this truth. What feels like a curse at first turns out to be a blessing in disguise. For with the knowledge of death comes a new understanding of life: since it is finite, every moment counts. Since it is short, it is to be treasured.

And on Yom Kippur God gives us the chance to evaluate it and even to change it for the better. So we look back at what we could have done better and we look ahead with a prayer that we will have time under the sun to make it better this time around. The length of our days remains in God’s hands, but the fullness of them depends on us.

* * *

Only a few verses after Kohelet reminds us, the living, that we know we will die, the text continues with one of its most famous statements: “Go, eat your bread in gladness, and drink your wine in joy” (9:7a). And elsewhere, in more familiar words, “Eat, drink, and be merry” (8:15).

Of course, on the Day of Atonement there will be no eating or drinking (or merriment!). But this day of self-denial can help us live with more merriment during the year. Today we stare death in the face and endure a reckoning of the soul; tomorrow we come back to life wiser, more reflective, more appreciative. Today we fast in somber penitence; tomorrow we drink our wine in joy.

It is no accident, then, that when we drink wine in joy, we say l’chaim -- to life! -- that we mark those occasions with a nod in the direction of life. Each moment of celebration is a life-embracing act.

And so we say:
l’chaim, to a new year of lessons learned from years past;
l’chaim, to letting mortality teach us how to embrace life;
l’chaim, to renewing our days in the richness of our better moments.

May we fill the pages of our Book of Life, from word to word, and line to line, with the chronicles of a life well-lived, so that when we come to the end and look back, we might be able to say, “That was worth reading.”

Shanah tovah, g’mar tov. L’chaim.

What is Yom Kippur to *me*? (5769/2008)

Yom Kippur Morning 5769
October 9, 2008

We all have our own reasons for being here in synagogue today: our own hopes for what this day and year will bring, our fears about last year’s mistakes’ repeating themselves again, our doubts about whether repentance can mean anything for us in 5769.

As Modern Jews, we hear the Kol Nidrei prayer, we sing Avinu Malkeinu, we read the Unetaneh Tokef and the confessions of sin -- but what do we really believe? What do we really feel today? If the Wicked Son of the Passover Seder were here, he might ask: What is all this teshuvah to me?

The writer Howard Harrison, in a poem entitled “Yom Kippur,” struggles with these questions. He takes us through a crisis of cynicism, a crisis of faith and meaning, and he emerges with a little more reverence, perhaps a little more faith, on the other side. He writes:



Night and day, and somberly I dress
In dark attire and consciously confess
According to the printed words, for sins
Suddenly remembered, all the ins
And outs, tricks, deals, and necessary lies
Regretted now, but then quite right and wise.

The benches in the shul are new. So this
Is what my ticket bought last year; I miss
My easy chair, this wood is hard, and I
Have changed my mind, refuse to stand and lie
About repentance. No regrets at all.
Why chain myself to a dead branch, I fall
In estimation of my neighbors who
Would have me be a liberated Jew
Ridiculing medieval ways
Keep up with them in each swift modern craze
To dedicate our souls to modern taste
To concentrate our minds on endless waste.

“Medieval” must be too new a term
For deeper, longer, truer, something firm
Within me used the word “waste.” Despite years
Assimilating lack of faith, the fears
My father felt of God, their will to know
That vanity and greed were far below
The final aim of life will help me, too,
Atone, and be a Jew, and be a Jew.

~ Commentary, vol. 20, no. 4 (October, 1955), p. 355


As we fast today, stripping off that layer of comfort that food provides, and retreat into this sanctuary from the persistent pace and pressure of our everyday lives, may we also find something firm within us: a still small voice that says no to vanity, no to greed, no to pride, no to stiff necks and hard hearts.

If we each place our individual fears, regrets, and hopes upon the altar of community, and let our prayers and doubts mingle, then we can support each other in reaching atonement, or -- as a wise wordsmith said -- “at-one-ment.”

May it be God’s will for us today. Together we say: Amen.

Rosh Hashanah Morning Sermon 2008

Rosh Hashanah Morning Day 1
September 30, 2008 / 1 Tishrei 5769

God Bless America

“God damn America!”

[...pause for effect...]

Of course, I don’t really mean that.
But now that I have your attention, I want to ask you a question: what would you do if your rabbi gave a sermon like that?

Would you walk out in protest? Would you stay to hear him out, then let him have it after services? Would you try to see it from his point of view, since, after all, he officiated at your wedding and your children’s b’nei mitzvah? Would you, perhaps, find that the message resonated with you, harsh as it is?

And what would each of these responses say about the kind of person you are, and the kind of religious faith you have, and the kind of policies you would support?

For many months now, there has been a national conversation about four Americans’ answers to questions like these. They aren’t your typical congregants, perhaps: they’re running for the highest offices in the country. They are Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John McCain, and Sarah Palin.

And yet each of them is, on some level, just another churchgoer in the pew. Religious leaders and religious beliefs play a central role in their private and public lives.

The question I want to explore today revolves around my deep concern about where and how we as a society -- and as a Jewish community -- draw the line between personal faith and public life. On the one hand, don’t we have a right to know and evaluate the doctrines and positions of our candidates and their spiritual guides? On the other hand, don’t we value freedom of worship so deeply, especially as American Jews, that we would bristle at the thought of an outsider’s criticizing our faith or practice?

To put it simply: can we be wholly committed to pluralism and fully protective of Judaism?

Before we start answering these questions, let’s look back on four recent instances of confronting the boundary between personal faith and public life, and the lessons we might learn from them.

* * *

First:
As Barack Obama’s star was rising in the Democratic primary race, certain statements by his longtime pastor threatened his campaign’s success. No doubt, we all remember the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy. Let me take a moment to refresh that memory, since it’s been a whopping six months, which is an eternity in political time.

Rev. Wright’s sermon excerpts were publicized first by ABC News in March 2008 and later by the rest of the mainstream media, bloggers, and YouTube. Among his tirades, he accused the government of lying: about the Tuskegee experiment, about Pearl Harbor, about 9/11, about the Iraq War. In each case, he claimed, the government deceived us.

About the violent attacks of 9/11 he echoed Malcolm X’s infamous response to the JFK assassination: “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.” He explained that America’s imperial policies abroad were to blame for the acts of terror at home. He reminded his parishioners that America killed far more people without batting an eye in Hiroshima and Nagasaki than the terrorists did in New York City. In his most famous rant, he repeated the refrain “God damn America” as he shouted a laundry list of the government’s offenses against the African American community. Framing it all, he reminded his congregation that, unlike government, God never lies, never cheats, never murders, never changes.

The backlash was intense and immediate, and the media frenzy all-consuming. Obama denounced his pastor’s comments, and within a month he left the church altogether, saying that such hateful, anti-American rhetoric was unacceptable. Obama then proceeded to give, in my opinion, a transcendent speech on race in America. At least as a news story, the Rev. Wright controversy seems to have faded mostly from view.

Wherever you stand on Rev. Wright’s statements, the question arises: are we to judge Barack Obama -- and therefore all of Rev. Wright’s congregants -- on the basis of these controversial excerpts from his sermons?

Second:
Senator Joe Biden’s religious views have been in the news more than usual now that he is the Democratic candidate for Vice President. Because he is Catholic, his stance on abortion garners particular scrutiny. Biden states his position as personally opposed to abortion but unwilling to impose his particular religious belief on others through legislation. During the Democratice Convention, according to a Delaware Online news report, the Archbishop of Denver

said Biden should not receive Communion because of his public support for abortion rights. Last fall, [that Archbishop] and other U.S. bishops published guidelines for voting -- Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship -- that call abortion ‘intrinsically evil.’ ‘We do not tell people how to vote,’ the bishops wrote... But the guidelines say a candidate's positions on anti-abortion matters could disqualify that person from a Catholic voter's support.

A similar issue erupted into controversy in 2004 when a number of Catholic bishops refused Communion to John Kerry because of his pro-choice position.

Wherever you stand on abortion rights, the question arises: do religious leaders have the right to draw communal boundaries around political positions -- and do we have the right to criticize or praise them for it?

Third:
Republican Governor and Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s religious life has also been the target of scrutiny, albeit less intense than that around Obama’s.

Palin is a self-identified “Bible-believing non-denominational Christian.” She used to attend a Pentecostal Church; her former pastor there, Ed Kalnin, told churchgoers in 2004 that if they voted for John Kerry, he would “question [their] salvation.” Later, the church issued an online clarification saying that he was “joking” when he suggested “Kerry supporters would go to hell.”

In August, Gov. Palin attended a talk at her regular church by a guest speaker, David Brickner, the founder of Jews for Jesus. He told those in attendance that terror attacks against Israel are manifestations of God’s judgment against Jews who haven’t embraced Christianity. As quoted in a CNN report, Brickner continued:

Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. When a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people: Judgment -- you can't miss it.

Gov. Palin’s current pastor, Larry Kroon, when asked directly on CNN whether he agreed with Brickner’s comments and whether Brickner would be invited back, said, “Yeah. He would be.”

In a press statement reported in the Anchorage Daily News, McCain campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb said that Gov. Palin did not know Brickner would be speaking, and that Palin does not share the views he expressed. “She and her family would not have been sitting in the pews of the church if those remarks were remotely typical,” Goldfarb said.

Wherever you stand on Jews for Jesus and comments like Brickner’s -- although I have a feeling I know where you stand! -- the question arises: Are we to convict a candidate guilty by association, or trust the campaign’s distancing and clarification?

Fourth:
The Republican Presidential Candidate Senator John McCain was embroiled in a religious controversy that emerged in the wake of his seeking the endorsement of John Hagee, a radically conservative Christian pastor. Hagee and his colleagues Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell infamously blamed both Hurricane Katrina and 9/11 on America’s sinfulness, as manifest in gay marriage, abortion rights, and people refusing to turn to Christ. McCain has now condemned many of Hagee’s positions and remarks; after first seeking his endorsement, McCain has been distancing himself from the controversial Christian firebrand.

Even more troubling to me was McCain’s interview for Beliefnet in the fall of 2007. When asked about how a Muslim presidential candidate might fare, he said,

Personally I prefer someone I know has a solid grounding in my faith.
I just feel that my faith is probably a...better spiritual guidance. I just feel that that’s an important part of our qualifications to lead....

And when asked whether the Constitution establishes a Christian nation, he went on to say:

I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation. But I say that in the broadest sense. The lady that holds her lamp beside the golden door doesn't say, “I only welcome Christians.” We welcome the poor, the tired, the huddled masses. But when they come here they know that they are in a nation founded on Christian principles.

I can’t help but point out the irony in McCain’s choice to quote the poem on the Statue of Liberty as a symbol of America’s Christian soul. The poem from which those lines are taken, “The New Colossus,” was written by Emma Lazarus, a New York City-born descendant of Portuguese Sephardic Jews who, in the late 1880s, helped train the masses of Eastern European Jewish immigrants in America to become self-supporting. I would guess that many of us here, myself included, owe a great deal to the fact that America’s freedom of religion allowed our immigrant ancestors to prosper like no other time or place in Jewish history.

In October 2007, The Anti-Defamation League expressed their dismay over McCain’s comments in an open letter. They urged McCain to withdraw his statements describing the United States as a “Christian nation” and “a nation founded on Christian principles.”

McCain’s response sought to clarify his earlier remarks, acknowledging that “people of all faiths are welcome here and entitled to all the protections of our Constitution, including the unfettered right to practice their religion freely...”

The ADL replied again with a mixed reaction, saying, in part “...We are disappointed that you did not expressly retract your statement that ‘the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation...’ We hope that you will express your commitment to our pluralistic values in more inclusive language in the future.”

Wherever you stand on McCain’s political platform and voting record, the question arises: how should we reconcile McCain’s belief in America’s Christian foundation, our belief in Judaism’s legitimate place at the table of American religions, and our overarching belief in religious freedom which allows for others’ beliefs that differ from our own?

* * *

The set of questions I have raised today touches on the role of clergy in congregants’ political life and the role of private religious faith in candidates’ public life. At a deeper level, all of these questions fall into the category of religious freedom, pluralism, and the future of faith groups in America.

This issue poses a special challenge to us as Reform Jews, for we embody the dichotomy between a commitment to a particular faith and a belief in religious pluralism. It’s in our very label, “Reform Jews.”

That we are Jews means we cast our lot with the descendants of Abraham and Sarah. Inheritors of thousands of years of tradition, we believe that our ancestors’ legacy bears God’s message about our people’s special relationship with our Creator and our mission to act as God’s agents in the world. Our holy text speaks in our people’s ancient tongue to each generation, calling us into covenant with the God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob, Rachel and Leah.

That we are Reform means that we cast our lot with humanity. The lessons of history and our belief in moral behavior lead us to hope for a better future. We believe that, like us, all the peoples of the earth have inherited sacred traditions calling them into relationship with their Gods. Science and ethics speak in every human language to all who would listen.

In other words, we are religious pluralists. We embrace our own faith tradition while we also appreciate and even celebrate the faiths of others. To some, this might present an untenable contradiction. To us, it is a recipe for a rich life in the modern or postmodern world. As one Israeli scholar writes, we aim for

spiritual inclusivity (recognition that different groups are capable of understanding the truth, albeit frequently in diverse ways), which logically leads to ritual exclusivity (or pluralism, namely that the existence of different religious approaches and ritual practices is both legitimate and desirable, and that there is no reason to seek to proselytize others).

We welcome converts, of course, but we make no claim that our faith is the one true path to God, nor do we seek to impose our religious beliefs on others.

As religious pluralists, therefore, we bear what I call the Pluralist’s Burden: that is, how do we respond to anti-pluralist, exclusivist faiths? Should we reject the beliefs and practices of those who reject ours? On the one hand, we espouse pluralism, and fundamentalism flies in the face of that belief. On the other hand, we espouse pluralism, so aren’t we also bound to support others' rights to believe and worship as they choose, even if those beliefs contradict our own?

I think the answer, almost paradoxically, is “D,” all of the above. We should be proud to be committed Jews, creating meaning in our lives through the learning and liturgy of our tradition and community. And we should be proud pluralists, protecting the freedom of our neighbors and fellow citizens to worship and live according to their conscience.

In public life, we should demand that our leaders uphold the Constitution’s promise of separation of church and state. That bedrock principle of our democratic republic forms the foundation on which pluralism can thrive. A healthy religious pluralism is the only assurance that our choice to live as Jews will remain safe and protected, and it also protects the choices of all those who practice other religions, or no religion at all.

If Barack Obama is the next president, it will be upon us to remind him that he called Rev. Wright’s words “not only wrong but divisive... at a time when we need unity.”

If Joe Biden or Sarah Palin is the next Vice President, it will be upon us to remind them of the view they seem to share, as described by Gov. Palin in December 2006:

I've honestly answered the questions on what my personal views are on things like abortion and a lot of controversial issues... I am not one to be out there preaching and forcing my views on anyone else.

And if John McCain is the next president, then it will be upon us to remind him of his assurance to the ADL that he believes “people of all faiths are welcome here and entitled to all the protections of our Constitution, including the unfettered right to practice their religion freely...”

This message would be incomplete if it ended at broad national issues. Our commitment to certain values demands something from us locally, internally, as well. Just as we value pluralism on a national scale, we should promote pluralism even within the halls of our synagogues. In fact, let’s be as strong and vocal in pluralism as others are in exclusivity and fundamentalism!

I’ll start right now, with a small example. It’s not my job to tell you how to vote; in fact, it’s implicit in my job that I not tell you how to vote. Now, I may have pretty much made up my own mind on how I will vote on November 4, but I don’t expect you to agree. In fact, I welcome a conversation about why we might agree or disagree on that position. I cannot stomach the idea of religious leaders stigmatizing or rewarding their followers for differing but legitimate political opinions. I prefer to discuss the issues and learn from each other.

Religious leaders and religious communities should foster healthy debate built on real relationships between members. We can build together a model of spiritual inclusivity and ritual exclusivity within these walls and within our families. We can be a paragon of pluralism to a country and world too often divided, violently, by religious conflict. We can show the skeptics what it looks like to be committed to our own faith as well as to the rights of others to practice theirs. If we remain faithful to each other, we can hold multiple truths in harmony.

* * *

There is America-bashing, extremism, and fundamentalism on the left and the right. I believe we can chip away at these corrosive elements of American society by standing firm for what we believe -- which includes letting others believe as their consciences dictate.

In the early 1900s a Jewish American, Irving Berlin, wrote a patriotic tune by the name of “God Bless America.” Unfortunately, that phrase has been exploited and exhausted by politicians, demagogues, and religious zealots.

In this new year, 5769, I’d like to reclaim it: God Bless America!
Not as a statement of xenophobic nationalism, nor as a declaration of religious superiority, nor as an empty pandering sound-bite -- but rather as a sincere expression of prayer:

May God bless America with the courage to fulfill her potential.
May God bless America with leaders and citizens committed to religious liberty for all.
May God bless America as a land where differences are embraced as enriching.

May the new year be a year of many blessings for America; for our neighbors across oceans, across borders, and across the street; for our families; and for each of us.

And when we say and hear, “God bless America,” let’s remember that we are the ones who bear the God-given responsibility to make our lives a blessing to the Jewish people, to our nation, and to all humanity.

Shanah Tovah.