Princeton University Hillel, Reform Jewish Services
Shanah tovah
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Rosh Hashanah Evening Sermon 5770/2009
Princeton University Hillel, Reform Jewish Services
Shanah tovah!
Shanah tovah!
Thursday, October 09, 2008
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:
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]:
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:
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:
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:
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.
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!”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.
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.
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.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.
Do you really want to protect a child from discovering that truth?
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.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
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:
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Rosh Hashanah Morning Sermon 2008
Rosh Hashanah Morning Day 1
September 30, 2008 / 1 Tishrei 5769
[...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
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:
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,
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
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:
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.
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.And when asked whether the Constitution establishes a Christian nation, he went on to say:
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....
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.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Humor and Repentance
Rosh Hashanah Day 2
October 1, 2008
One of my favorite Jewish thinkers is a Greek by the name of Philo. He lived in the first century of the common era in Alexandria, Egypt. In his commentary on the Binding of Isaac, he reads the story as a philosophical parable. It pivots on Isaac’s name, Yitzhaq, from the Hebrew word for laughter. The story, says Philo, portrays Abraham’s command to sacrifice his son as a metaphor for the task of every truly pious man -- that he should sacrifice his laughter and joy in service to God. These earthly pleasures, Philo reasons, pale in comparison to the ultimate joy of knowing, fearing, and obeying the one true God.
I humbly submit that Philo didn’t get this one quite right. I believe that humor can be redemptive, helping us shine the light of day on our faults and so become better able to address them. But don’t take it from me, take it from Freud, another of my favorite Jewish thinkers:
Especially in this season of teshuva, we should be grateful for the gift of humor. A good joke can disarm the ego, and a good laugh can bring estranged friends back together. Although mocking humor can hurt, warm humor can heal. And if we can laugh about our own faults, then we may yet conquer them, and -- laughing -- turn back to God, to each other, and to the better angels of our nature.
Now, since I’ve been talking about humor in such solemn and rational Greek and Freudian terms, I’d like to close with the words of yet another of my favorite Jewish thinkers, Woody Allen. His retelling of the Binding of Isaac, I believe, balances delicately on that line between reverence and irreverence:
I hope this joke helps remind us of our own faults, and also of our faith in the power of getting some rest and checking in again tomorrow. For tomorrow is another day, and the gates of teshuva are always open...
Shanah Tovah.
October 1, 2008
One of my favorite Jewish thinkers is a Greek by the name of Philo. He lived in the first century of the common era in Alexandria, Egypt. In his commentary on the Binding of Isaac, he reads the story as a philosophical parable. It pivots on Isaac’s name, Yitzhaq, from the Hebrew word for laughter. The story, says Philo, portrays Abraham’s command to sacrifice his son as a metaphor for the task of every truly pious man -- that he should sacrifice his laughter and joy in service to God. These earthly pleasures, Philo reasons, pale in comparison to the ultimate joy of knowing, fearing, and obeying the one true God.
I humbly submit that Philo didn’t get this one quite right. I believe that humor can be redemptive, helping us shine the light of day on our faults and so become better able to address them. But don’t take it from me, take it from Freud, another of my favorite Jewish thinkers:
The occurrence of self-criticism as a determinant may explain how it is that a number of the most apt jokes...have grown upon the soil of Jewish popular life. They are stories created by Jews and directed against Jewish characteristics….
The Jewish jokes which originate from Jews...know their real faults as well as the connection between them and their good qualities, and the share which the subject has in the person found fault with…
Incidentally, I do not know whether there are many other instances of a people making fun to such a degree of its own character.
(~Sigmund Freud, Jokes and their Relation to the Unsconscious)
Especially in this season of teshuva, we should be grateful for the gift of humor. A good joke can disarm the ego, and a good laugh can bring estranged friends back together. Although mocking humor can hurt, warm humor can heal. And if we can laugh about our own faults, then we may yet conquer them, and -- laughing -- turn back to God, to each other, and to the better angels of our nature.
Now, since I’ve been talking about humor in such solemn and rational Greek and Freudian terms, I’d like to close with the words of yet another of my favorite Jewish thinkers, Woody Allen. His retelling of the Binding of Isaac, I believe, balances delicately on that line between reverence and irreverence:
And Abraham awoke in the middle of the night and said to his only son, Isaac, "I have had a dream where the voice of the Lord sayeth that I must sacrifice my only son, so put your pants on." And Isaac trembled and said, "So what did you say? I mean when He brought this whole thing up?"
"What am I going to say?" Abraham said. "I'm standing there at two a.m. in my underwear with the Creator of the Universe. Should I argue?"
"Well, did he say why he wants me sacrificed?" Isaac asked his father.
But Abraham said, "The faithful do not question. Now let's go because I have a heavy day tomorrow."
And Sarah who heard Abraham's plan grew vexed and said, "How doth thou know it was the Lord and not, say, thy friend who loveth practical jokes." And Abraham answered, "Because I know it was the Lord. It was a deep, resonant voice, well modulated, and nobody in the desert can get a rumble in it like that."
And Sarah said, "And thou art willing to carry out this senseless act?" But Abraham told her, "Frankly yes, for to question the Lord's word is one of the worst things a person can do, particularly with the economy in the state it's in."
And so he took Isaac to a certain place and prepared to sacrifice him but at the last minute the Lord stayed Abraham's hand and said, "How could thou doest such a thing?"
And Abraham said, "But thou said--"
"Never mind what I said," the Lord spake. "Doth thou listen to every crazy idea that comes thy way?" And Abraham grew ashamed. "Er--not really ... no."
"I jokingly suggested thou sacrifice Isaac and thou immediately runs out to do it."
And Abraham fell to his knees, "See, I never know when you're kidding."
And the Lord thundered, "No sense of humor. I can't believe it."
"But doth this not prove I love thee, that I was willing to donate mine only son on thy whim?"
And the Lord said, "It proves that some men will follow any order no matter how asinine as long as it comes from a resonant, well-modulated voice."
And with that, the Lord bid Abraham get some rest and check with him tomorrow.
(~Woody Allen, Without Feathers)
I hope this joke helps remind us of our own faults, and also of our faith in the power of getting some rest and checking in again tomorrow. For tomorrow is another day, and the gates of teshuva are always open...
Shanah Tovah.
A Rosh Hashanah reflection (2008)
Rosh Hashanah Day 1
September 30, 2008 / 1 Tishrei 5769
A story is told of an old man who, on his 104th birthday, raised a glass of wine to the sky and proclaimed:
“Up there, they have forgotten about me!”
This old man’s toast reflects the view -- perhaps of many -- that when God remembers us, we are called from this life, but when God forgets us, we remain, neglected, here on earth.
In Judaism, where God is the Author of Life, we see it differently than this old man. To be alive is to be remembered by God. To be in peril or pain is to wonder, as did the Psalmist, “How long, O God? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” (Psalm 13:1)
This is why we say to each other: “May you be remembered for a good year.”
The power of remembering is so great that it can even conquer death. When we speak of a loved one we have lost, we say zichrono/a liv'racha, may his/her memory be for a blessing. When we remember, something of that person -- their presence -- lives on in our lives.
On this Rosh Hashanah day, also known as Zichron Teruah (the Remembrance of the Shofar Blast) and Yom HaZikaron (The Day of Rememberance), we pray for many kinds of memory:
September 30, 2008 / 1 Tishrei 5769
A story is told of an old man who, on his 104th birthday, raised a glass of wine to the sky and proclaimed:
“Up there, they have forgotten about me!”
This old man’s toast reflects the view -- perhaps of many -- that when God remembers us, we are called from this life, but when God forgets us, we remain, neglected, here on earth.
In Judaism, where God is the Author of Life, we see it differently than this old man. To be alive is to be remembered by God. To be in peril or pain is to wonder, as did the Psalmist, “How long, O God? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” (Psalm 13:1)
This is why we say to each other: “May you be remembered for a good year.”
The power of remembering is so great that it can even conquer death. When we speak of a loved one we have lost, we say zichrono/a liv'racha, may his/her memory be for a blessing. When we remember, something of that person -- their presence -- lives on in our lives.
On this Rosh Hashanah day, also known as Zichron Teruah (the Remembrance of the Shofar Blast) and Yom HaZikaron (The Day of Rememberance), we pray for many kinds of memory:
- We pray that God remembers us for a year of blessing.
- We pray that we may remember those no longer with us so that the light of their lives continues to shine onto our own, illuminating our path to blessing.
- And, looking ahead through the Days of Awe to Yom Kippur, also known as Yom HaDin (The Day of Judgment), we bring memory and judgment together and ask ourselves: how do we want to be remembered after we’re gone?
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Yom Kippur Morning Sermon (2007)
Yom Kippur Morning
September 22, 2007
10 Tishrei 5768
The confessional is a mainstay of the Yom Kippur liturgy. So many times through the day’s prayers, we stand and publicly avow all the sins we may have committed in the past year.
In this spirit, this morning I have another confession to make:
I am a fundamentalist.
Yes, it’s true. I discovered it while reading this morning’s Torah portion from Nitzavim. But before you contact HUC to send me back to New York, let me explain.
First of all, a bit about the word “fundamentalism” itself. In order to understand it fully, I looked up the word “fundament” on dictionary.com: it is “a foundation; an underlying theoretical basis or principle.” “Fundamentalism”, then, is “a religious point of view characterized by a return to basic, essential, foundational principles” [adapted].
Inspired by the words of Moses in this Torah portion, I began to understand my religious quest in these terms – a Return to Essentials, or Back to the Basics.
So, what are these fundaments upon which my faith rests? Before I answer, I want to set the stage, and that involves a little bit of congregational participation.
I would like to ask you all to open up your Gates of Repentance to page 343, to Deuteronomy 30:11-14, which begins at the bottom of the page. I invite you to please rise and read this passage responsively with me; your part is everything in quotes, and I will begin.
(You may be seated.)
In the wake of the overwhelming display of God’s power during the Exodus, Moses has to convince the Israelites that the Torah they are receiving will not be similarly overwhelming. It is almost as if he says:
In other words, all that divine intervention was paving the way for human activation.
Here’s where we get down to the Jewish fundamentals: the mouth-heart partnership. I believe that this duality is a radical statement of our relationship to tradition, community, and ourselves.
The mouth is the locus of public discourse. It is the quintessential tool for interpersonal communication, and, therefore, the mouth is the fundamental building block of community. By locating the Torah in our mouths, Moses reminds us that Judaism cannot exist in isolation but requires the active engagement of a collective.
On the other hand, the heart is the locus of personal reflection, self-fulfillment, and autonomy. Individuality, even when it leads to disagreement, is essential for an authentic, thriving Judaism. Of course, there are limits to this autonomy, and Moses warns us that following our own willful hearts is abhorrent to God: the heart untempered by the mouth is self-aggrandizing and idolatrous.
This interplay of individual and community is also illustrated in the way Moses addresses the Israelites in this speech. He locates the fundamentals of Judaism in “your heart” and “your mouth”, both in the singular. That singular, together with the plural “You” (or “Y’all” where I come from) in the very first verses of the portion, makes it clear that Moses is speaking to the community in its radical entirety: the Torah is to be found in the mouth and heart of every man, woman, and child – and not just the Israelite, but the stranger, too. And not just those present at the time, but all their descendants in perpetuity. Therefore, to exclude even one individual is to limit ourselves from the covenant, to cut ourselves off from God.
That’s what I mean when I say I’m a fundamentalist. My commitment to others, within and without the Jewish community, is my first and my last. Consider: Moses did not say, “This thing is very close to you, right here in this Sefer Torah.” If we are serious about the meaning of Torah, then we must guard against taking the pages of Torah so seriously that we blind ourselves to the Torah within each of us and among all of us.
This is why it makes me so angry when so-called “fundamentalists” – Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and otherwise – make inflammatory and exclusionary statements. Terrorists call for holy war to wipe out all the non-believers. Missionaries call for conversion to their one true faith at the threat of eternal punishment – and maybe some earthly punishment, too. Reactionaries call for the condemnation of those of different races, sexual orientations, and political affiliations.
To all of these I want to react dramatically; I want to call them racist, chauvinistic, outside the bounds of acceptable religion. I want to rail against them because they do not seek the divine in the mouths and hearts of those they condemn to suffering or even death. I might have used the label “fundamentalist” and meant it as a criticism, but I won’t anymore. For these kinds of believers disregard those fundamentals of mouth and heart that Moses articulates in our Torah portion. Preferring the words of their holy texts, they ignore the holy words that dwell in every human soul. They desecrate the divine spark in others and in themselves.
And then, in a more self-critical moment, I pause to ask if my summary rejection of these “fundamentalists” is itself a violation of my fundamental principle of mouth and heart. As hard as it is to ask, should I not seek some taste of the sweetness of Torah even in the bitterness of their words? In the wisdom of the great sage Ramban and this Season of Repentance, I found the beginning of an answer.
Up to now, we have taken it for granted that “this Mitzvah” (“this commandment”), which Moses locates in our mouths and hearts, refers to the entire Torah, and most commentators agree. But the Ramban, in his commentary on Deuteronomy, takes it to refer to the specific commandment of teshuva – repentance – a few verses earlier: “you shall return to the Eternal your God” (Deut 30:2; see also 30:10).
The Ramban’s interpretation encourages us, even as we criticize others, to reflect on ourselves:
When have I abused Torah to justify my hatred or to hide my indifference? When have I clothed profane ulterior motives in pious garb? When have I complained without constructing, criticized without contributing? When have I deprived myself of experiencing God by excluding someone, knowingly or not? When have I been blinded by my own willful heart? When have I been deaf to the voices of my community? When have I been hesitant to ask forgiveness? When have I been slow to forgive?
These are the questions that I carry with me this Yom Kippur. The task before each of us is to bring the mouth and heart back into dialogue, back into balance. Sometimes this means calling out hypocrisy and sin in our communities and in our world. Sometimes, it means turning those fundamentals into tools of forgiveness. Always, it means that if our own mouths and hearts are in order, we can speak with greater integrity when we see dangerous “fundamentalism” in others.
As we turn inward during this day of introspection, let us not forget to keep looking outward, too. My hope for all of us is that we have the heart to reflect critically on our own souls, and the openness of mind and mouth to share in that soul-searching with our community.
Ken y’hi ratzon, and a meaningful fast.
September 22, 2007
10 Tishrei 5768
Fundamentalism and Self-Reflection
The confessional is a mainstay of the Yom Kippur liturgy. So many times through the day’s prayers, we stand and publicly avow all the sins we may have committed in the past year.
In this spirit, this morning I have another confession to make:
I am a fundamentalist.
Yes, it’s true. I discovered it while reading this morning’s Torah portion from Nitzavim. But before you contact HUC to send me back to New York, let me explain.
First of all, a bit about the word “fundamentalism” itself. In order to understand it fully, I looked up the word “fundament” on dictionary.com: it is “a foundation; an underlying theoretical basis or principle.” “Fundamentalism”, then, is “a religious point of view characterized by a return to basic, essential, foundational principles” [adapted].
Inspired by the words of Moses in this Torah portion, I began to understand my religious quest in these terms – a Return to Essentials, or Back to the Basics.
So, what are these fundaments upon which my faith rests? Before I answer, I want to set the stage, and that involves a little bit of congregational participation.
I would like to ask you all to open up your Gates of Repentance to page 343, to Deuteronomy 30:11-14, which begins at the bottom of the page. I invite you to please rise and read this passage responsively with me; your part is everything in quotes, and I will begin.
30: 11] For this commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you, nor too remote. 12] It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will go up for us to heaven and bring it down to us, that we may do it?” 13] Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will cross the sea for us and get it for us and bring it over to us, that we may do it?” 14] No, it is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, and you can do it.
(You may be seated.)
In the wake of the overwhelming display of God’s power during the Exodus, Moses has to convince the Israelites that the Torah they are receiving will not be similarly overwhelming. It is almost as if he says:
Remember when we went across the sea on dry land on our way to receive the Torah? And remember when I ascended the mountain to God’s very Presence in the heavens to receive the Law? I know that was all very miraculous and intimidating, but from now on, everything will be accessible to you on the ground.
In other words, all that divine intervention was paving the way for human activation.
Here’s where we get down to the Jewish fundamentals: the mouth-heart partnership. I believe that this duality is a radical statement of our relationship to tradition, community, and ourselves.
The mouth is the locus of public discourse. It is the quintessential tool for interpersonal communication, and, therefore, the mouth is the fundamental building block of community. By locating the Torah in our mouths, Moses reminds us that Judaism cannot exist in isolation but requires the active engagement of a collective.
On the other hand, the heart is the locus of personal reflection, self-fulfillment, and autonomy. Individuality, even when it leads to disagreement, is essential for an authentic, thriving Judaism. Of course, there are limits to this autonomy, and Moses warns us that following our own willful hearts is abhorrent to God: the heart untempered by the mouth is self-aggrandizing and idolatrous.
This interplay of individual and community is also illustrated in the way Moses addresses the Israelites in this speech. He locates the fundamentals of Judaism in “your heart” and “your mouth”, both in the singular. That singular, together with the plural “You” (or “Y’all” where I come from) in the very first verses of the portion, makes it clear that Moses is speaking to the community in its radical entirety: the Torah is to be found in the mouth and heart of every man, woman, and child – and not just the Israelite, but the stranger, too. And not just those present at the time, but all their descendants in perpetuity. Therefore, to exclude even one individual is to limit ourselves from the covenant, to cut ourselves off from God.
That’s what I mean when I say I’m a fundamentalist. My commitment to others, within and without the Jewish community, is my first and my last. Consider: Moses did not say, “This thing is very close to you, right here in this Sefer Torah.” If we are serious about the meaning of Torah, then we must guard against taking the pages of Torah so seriously that we blind ourselves to the Torah within each of us and among all of us.
This is why it makes me so angry when so-called “fundamentalists” – Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and otherwise – make inflammatory and exclusionary statements. Terrorists call for holy war to wipe out all the non-believers. Missionaries call for conversion to their one true faith at the threat of eternal punishment – and maybe some earthly punishment, too. Reactionaries call for the condemnation of those of different races, sexual orientations, and political affiliations.
To all of these I want to react dramatically; I want to call them racist, chauvinistic, outside the bounds of acceptable religion. I want to rail against them because they do not seek the divine in the mouths and hearts of those they condemn to suffering or even death. I might have used the label “fundamentalist” and meant it as a criticism, but I won’t anymore. For these kinds of believers disregard those fundamentals of mouth and heart that Moses articulates in our Torah portion. Preferring the words of their holy texts, they ignore the holy words that dwell in every human soul. They desecrate the divine spark in others and in themselves.
* * *
And then, in a more self-critical moment, I pause to ask if my summary rejection of these “fundamentalists” is itself a violation of my fundamental principle of mouth and heart. As hard as it is to ask, should I not seek some taste of the sweetness of Torah even in the bitterness of their words? In the wisdom of the great sage Ramban and this Season of Repentance, I found the beginning of an answer.
Up to now, we have taken it for granted that “this Mitzvah” (“this commandment”), which Moses locates in our mouths and hearts, refers to the entire Torah, and most commentators agree. But the Ramban, in his commentary on Deuteronomy, takes it to refer to the specific commandment of teshuva – repentance – a few verses earlier: “you shall return to the Eternal your God” (Deut 30:2; see also 30:10).
The Ramban’s interpretation encourages us, even as we criticize others, to reflect on ourselves:
When have I abused Torah to justify my hatred or to hide my indifference? When have I clothed profane ulterior motives in pious garb? When have I complained without constructing, criticized without contributing? When have I deprived myself of experiencing God by excluding someone, knowingly or not? When have I been blinded by my own willful heart? When have I been deaf to the voices of my community? When have I been hesitant to ask forgiveness? When have I been slow to forgive?
These are the questions that I carry with me this Yom Kippur. The task before each of us is to bring the mouth and heart back into dialogue, back into balance. Sometimes this means calling out hypocrisy and sin in our communities and in our world. Sometimes, it means turning those fundamentals into tools of forgiveness. Always, it means that if our own mouths and hearts are in order, we can speak with greater integrity when we see dangerous “fundamentalism” in others.
As we turn inward during this day of introspection, let us not forget to keep looking outward, too. My hope for all of us is that we have the heart to reflect critically on our own souls, and the openness of mind and mouth to share in that soul-searching with our community.
Ken y’hi ratzon, and a meaningful fast.
Yom Kippur / Kol Nidrei Sermon (2007)
Erev Yom Kippur - Kol Nidrei
September 21, 2007
10 Tishrei 5768
This past summer, I interned as a chaplain at a hospital in Seattle. I learned a powerful lesson from a pamphlet available in the pastoral care department, entitled Helping a Child Grieve and Grow. I used this pamphlet several times during the summer to help families support their grieving children. It said:
We are human beings like Adam and Eve, and we inherited those eternal questions. The cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, in his book The Denial of Death, speaks of “constructions of symbolic immortality” to describe the ways we make lasting meaning in the world. For many, children carry on that undying spark into the future; for some, their contributions to society; and for others, their community, which outlives its individual members. Each of these – children, contribution, community – puts us in contact with eternity, in relationship with immortality, in touch with meaning.
As we gather today as a community of meaning-seekers, Yom Kippur urges us to confront these questions again. 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. Kol Nidrei asks for us to be absolved of vows we are unable to fulfill, acknowledging the possibility that our life might end before we live up to our promises. When we stand before the ark for this prayer, we remove all the Torah scrolls. The aron kodesh – the holy ark – without the holy sifrei Torah in it, becomes merely an aron – which is also the Hebrew word for "coffin." On Erev Yom Kippur we stand with the support of our community and stare 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 final day. On that day, we will ask in the past tense what we are privileged today to ask in the present: are we living the life we should, the life we want, for ourselves and those around us?
The Sages used to say, “Repent one day before you die” (Avot 2:15). Their disciples countered skeptically, “But how can we possibly know when that day will come?” “Exactly,” the Sages replied, “Therefore repent every day, and when your last day comes, you will be ready” (adapted from BT Shabbat 153a).
One day a year of immersing ourselves in this heavy death imagery may be enough. Judaism is obsessed with life, not death, and our tradition repeatedly urges us to “choose life” for ourselves and our children, as we will read in the Torah portion tomorrow morning.
Again, the liturgy is a great teacher. As we finish the prayers for Yom Kippur, the quiet of death is shattered by the rousing sound of the shofar. As one midrash explains, the shofar is a symbol of resurrection:
In the last week of my chaplaincy internship, I was present with a family while they said final farewells to their beloved Richard as his life support was removed. This 67-year-old man had been well respected in his community for his commitment to the arts and civic life, and in this moment he was surrounded by family and friends. I hope I never forget the image of his wife and three daughters embracing each other and holding his hand as he took his last breaths. Their tears were grief and joy intermingled: grief for losing him, joy for all the blessings that outlived him. Please God, may we all leave behind such a loving legacy.
If we are open to it, Yom Kippur’s glimpse of death may remind us of the preciousness of life. Then may it help us appreciate the sanctity of our relationships with our loved ones and with our communities who give this life its special meaning.
Ken Y’hi ratzon. Gut yontif.
*Special thanks to my teacher Rabbi Larry Hoffman for planting the seed of the idea for this sermon in our Liturgy class on September 6, 2007.
September 21, 2007
10 Tishrei 5768
Mortality and Meaning
This past summer, I interned as a chaplain at a hospital in Seattle. I learned a powerful lesson from a pamphlet available in the pastoral care department, entitled Helping a Child Grieve and Grow. I used this pamphlet several times during the summer to help families 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.Unlike God’s other creations, we humans live with the knowledge that our lives will come to an end. When Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, I don’t believe they brought death into the world – I believe they became aware of it. A curse at first, this morose realization was also a blessing in disguise. For with the knowledge of death came a new understanding of life: since it is finite, every moment counts. Since it is short, it is precious. In his book The Doctor and the Soul, psychologist Victor Frankl explains:
Do you really want to protect a child from discovering that truth?
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… Finality, temporality, is therefore not only an essential characteristic of human life, but also a real factor in its meaningfulness….In one of those bittersweet ironies of the human condition, death becomes a teacher, a guide, an inspiration, even. When we ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and knew death, a new mandate came into the world: embrace life. God’s command to Adam and Eve – Be fruitful and multiply! – is an answer to the question of death. Knowing that their singular lives would come to an end, the symbolic first human beings were charged to leave something of themselves behind in this world. What legacy of theirs would be untouched by death, an immortal gift to the next generation, and the next…?
We are human beings like Adam and Eve, and we inherited those eternal questions. The cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, in his book The Denial of Death, speaks of “constructions of symbolic immortality” to describe the ways we make lasting meaning in the world. For many, children carry on that undying spark into the future; for some, their contributions to society; and for others, their community, which outlives its individual members. Each of these – children, contribution, community – puts us in contact with eternity, in relationship with immortality, in touch with meaning.
* * *
As we gather today as a community of meaning-seekers, Yom Kippur urges us to confront these questions again. 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. Kol Nidrei asks for us to be absolved of vows we are unable to fulfill, acknowledging the possibility that our life might end before we live up to our promises. When we stand before the ark for this prayer, we remove all the Torah scrolls. The aron kodesh – the holy ark – without the holy sifrei Torah in it, becomes merely an aron – which is also the Hebrew word for "coffin." On Erev Yom Kippur we stand with the support of our community and stare 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 final day. On that day, we will ask in the past tense what we are privileged today to ask in the present: are we living the life we should, the life we want, for ourselves and those around us?
The Sages used to say, “Repent one day before you die” (Avot 2:15). Their disciples countered skeptically, “But how can we possibly know when that day will come?” “Exactly,” the Sages replied, “Therefore repent every day, and when your last day comes, you will be ready” (adapted from BT Shabbat 153a).
* * *
One day a year of immersing ourselves in this heavy death imagery may be enough. Judaism is obsessed with life, not death, and our tradition repeatedly urges us to “choose life” for ourselves and our children, as we will read in the Torah portion tomorrow morning.
Again, the liturgy is a great teacher. As we finish the prayers for Yom Kippur, the quiet of death is shattered by the rousing sound of the shofar. As one midrash explains, 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)When the shofar sounds near the end of Yom Kippur tomorrow, we too will be jolted out of our pseudo-death and return to life again. Looking back on our year, the good and the bad, we are called to resurrect the person we have been in our best moments. From the mire of mortality, each of us is reborn with the new year, ready to reach for the elusive embrace of eternity through our relationships and our works.
* * *
In the last week of my chaplaincy internship, I was present with a family while they said final farewells to their beloved Richard as his life support was removed. This 67-year-old man had been well respected in his community for his commitment to the arts and civic life, and in this moment he was surrounded by family and friends. I hope I never forget the image of his wife and three daughters embracing each other and holding his hand as he took his last breaths. Their tears were grief and joy intermingled: grief for losing him, joy for all the blessings that outlived him. Please God, may we all leave behind such a loving legacy.
If we are open to it, Yom Kippur’s glimpse of death may remind us of the preciousness of life. Then may it help us appreciate the sanctity of our relationships with our loved ones and with our communities who give this life its special meaning.
Ken Y’hi ratzon. Gut yontif.
*Special thanks to my teacher Rabbi Larry Hoffman for planting the seed of the idea for this sermon in our Liturgy class on September 6, 2007.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Rosh Hashanah Morning Sermon (2007)
Rosh Hashanah Morning
September 13, 2007
1 Tishrei 5768
The Rosh Hashanah morning sermon presents a special challenge to us rabbi types. The story of Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac, his beloved son, is, to say the least, a difficult episode. Not to mention that thousands of years of interpretation – Jewish, Christian, and Muslim – are layered on top of this story so thick that’s it’s all we can do just to scratch the surface.
But instead of analyzing the traditional midrashim and rabbinic commentators, I decided to share with you some thoughts I’ve been having recently about this story, and how we might try to make sense of it.
My thoughts on the Aqeda, the binding of Isaac, go in three directions, each represented by one of three Abrahams.
The first Abraham I want to talk about is Avraham Avinu, Abraham the Patriarch, the Father of our Faith and the subject of this Torah portion.
He was a religious revolutionary and iconoclast, not only leaving the physical and spiritual home of his fathers but also destroying their idols before he left. Some even refer to him as the first religious zealot. Indeed, his fervent dedication to God was evident in his relocating to a new land, his circumcision of himself and his entire clan, and his steadfast adherence to God’s will. Maybe it shouldn’t surprise us, then, that Abraham would be willing to follow God’s command even to the point of slaughtering his own son, that beloved promise of the future.
Many people I’ve talked to about this story are deeply disturbed by Abraham’s compliance. How could he carry out such a barbaric and brutal act as killing his own son? Wasn’t he just a dangerous fanatic? Is this really the individual that we want to elevate and emulate as the paragon of our faith? The jarring story of the binding of Isaac is our spiritual inheritance, but is a difficult legacy.
This Abraham was ready to sacrifice his child for the sake of Faith in God.
The second Abraham I have been thinking about is Abraham Geiger.
A German scholar and rabbi, Geiger lived from 1810-1874 and can be called the father of Reform Judaism. Like many of his fellow 19th-century European Jews, Geiger was drawn to the cultural richness of his surroundings; art, music, science, history, literature, and philosophy were all flourishing, and many Jews wanted to be a part of it. And for most of them, embracing that world meant leaving behind the particularistic, tribal, superstitious world of Jewish tradition.
Geiger watched in dismay the exodus from Judaism of so many educated fellow Germans. His solution was to transform Judaism into a religion of reason, history, sophistication, and high art. He brought the critical approach of a scholar to his role as rabbi, undertaking to fashion a Judaism for the Modern Age. As one writer said, “If a practice separated a Jew from the modern, secular world, then it was a Jew's religious obligation to renounce it” (Jewish Virtual Library, “Abraham Geiger”). For Geiger, to be properly religious meant to participate in modernity, not to withdraw from it.
Like Avraham Avinu, this Abraham was also an iconoclast and a religious revolutionary. He, too, smashed the idols of his fathers, at least metaphorically. As the Jewish Encyclopedia says, Geiger demanded that the “Torah as well as the Talmud … should be studied critically and from the point of view of the historian, that of evolution, development.” Of course, Geiger’s approach inflamed more traditional segments of the Jewish community, and the resulting rift led to (among other things) what we now know as Modern Orthodoxy.
Geiger did not possess the zealous faith in God of the first Abraham. His was a steadfast faith in human reason, a devotion to modernity, and a nearly messianic trust that the spirit of the age would dissolve Anti-Semitism and usher in a new era of equality for all humanity.
This Abraham was ready to sacrifice ancient practices for the sake of Reason, Modernity, and Progress.
Turning now to the final example in our “Abrahamic trinity”, I look not to the pages of biblical or Modern Jewish history, but to the annals of the American experience: Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln was a consummate politician and statesman, with a knack for reading and shaping public opinion. In an age when partisan rancor polarized the debate toward venomous extremes, Lincoln rose above the fray with his lofty moral vision expressed through equally lofty rhetoric.
This Abraham, like our first two, was an iconoclast and, according to some, a radical reformer. The institution of slavery was so ingrained in the culture and economy of the nation that the Founding Fathers had not conceived of a way to get rid of it, and the country was willing to go to war over it. But Lincoln’s steadfast devotion to the ideals embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution led him to devise an end to the inhumane practice. He acted not with aggression or fear-mongering, but through carefully reasoned, morally sound, political maneuvering. He often endured criticism from the left-wing and right-wing alike, for being too conservative or too radical. (This reminds me of the wise observation, “If both sides of the aisle are upset, you’re probably on the right track.”)
Lincoln displayed masterful leadership and devout patriotism. He rose above personal grudges and partisan animosity because he believed fervently in a higher purpose. He labored tirelessly to preserve the sanctity of the Constitution – the covenant of his fathers – and to hasten the reign of liberty and justice in our land. In the end, he died for his cause.
This Abraham was ready to sacrifice himself for the sake of Union, Democracy, and Liberty.
So what do these three – the Religious zealot, the scholarly reformer, the political genius – have to do with us?
The unflinching intensity of Avraham Avinu’s faith sustained the Abrahamic covenant through hundreds of generations of descendants, leaving us to bear its burden and enjoy its blessings.
The force of Abraham Geiger’s brilliant scholarship and religious criticism gave birth to the kind of Liberal Judaism from which we are descended.
And the steadfastness of Abraham Lincoln’s moral vision and political genius preserved the Union and ushered a new era of freedom for our nation.
I submit that these three – even as they themselves stand alone in their generations – represent archetypes that we all have to wrestle with as 21st-century American Jews. They are us: Jewish, Modern, American. These models have many blessings to offer, but they have darker sides, too: fanaticism, assimilation, corruption.
How will we approach the big questions in our lives, issues of meaning, holiness, and community? What measure of faith, reason, and politicking will we include in our estimation of living a good life? How will we balance our many loyalties – to God, to Jewish community, to America, to the world?
I hope that these three Abrahams may be our teachers as we look to the New Year and think about what kind of life we want to lead. May God grant us the courage and wisdom to handle the pressures pulling us in various directions in our lives, enlightening us to avoid the dangers and follow the good. And may the New Year be for each of us a year of balance, where fervent faith, critical reason, and political patriotism join together to help us choose blessing, not curse, and to affirm life for us and our children.
Shanah Tovah U’Metukah.
A sweet and good new year.
September 13, 2007
1 Tishrei 5768
Three Abrahams
The Rosh Hashanah morning sermon presents a special challenge to us rabbi types. The story of Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac, his beloved son, is, to say the least, a difficult episode. Not to mention that thousands of years of interpretation – Jewish, Christian, and Muslim – are layered on top of this story so thick that’s it’s all we can do just to scratch the surface.
But instead of analyzing the traditional midrashim and rabbinic commentators, I decided to share with you some thoughts I’ve been having recently about this story, and how we might try to make sense of it.
My thoughts on the Aqeda, the binding of Isaac, go in three directions, each represented by one of three Abrahams.
* * *
The first Abraham I want to talk about is Avraham Avinu, Abraham the Patriarch, the Father of our Faith and the subject of this Torah portion.
He was a religious revolutionary and iconoclast, not only leaving the physical and spiritual home of his fathers but also destroying their idols before he left. Some even refer to him as the first religious zealot. Indeed, his fervent dedication to God was evident in his relocating to a new land, his circumcision of himself and his entire clan, and his steadfast adherence to God’s will. Maybe it shouldn’t surprise us, then, that Abraham would be willing to follow God’s command even to the point of slaughtering his own son, that beloved promise of the future.
Many people I’ve talked to about this story are deeply disturbed by Abraham’s compliance. How could he carry out such a barbaric and brutal act as killing his own son? Wasn’t he just a dangerous fanatic? Is this really the individual that we want to elevate and emulate as the paragon of our faith? The jarring story of the binding of Isaac is our spiritual inheritance, but is a difficult legacy.
This Abraham was ready to sacrifice his child for the sake of Faith in God.
* * *
The second Abraham I have been thinking about is Abraham Geiger.
A German scholar and rabbi, Geiger lived from 1810-1874 and can be called the father of Reform Judaism. Like many of his fellow 19th-century European Jews, Geiger was drawn to the cultural richness of his surroundings; art, music, science, history, literature, and philosophy were all flourishing, and many Jews wanted to be a part of it. And for most of them, embracing that world meant leaving behind the particularistic, tribal, superstitious world of Jewish tradition.
Geiger watched in dismay the exodus from Judaism of so many educated fellow Germans. His solution was to transform Judaism into a religion of reason, history, sophistication, and high art. He brought the critical approach of a scholar to his role as rabbi, undertaking to fashion a Judaism for the Modern Age. As one writer said, “If a practice separated a Jew from the modern, secular world, then it was a Jew's religious obligation to renounce it” (Jewish Virtual Library, “Abraham Geiger”). For Geiger, to be properly religious meant to participate in modernity, not to withdraw from it.
Like Avraham Avinu, this Abraham was also an iconoclast and a religious revolutionary. He, too, smashed the idols of his fathers, at least metaphorically. As the Jewish Encyclopedia says, Geiger demanded that the “Torah as well as the Talmud … should be studied critically and from the point of view of the historian, that of evolution, development.” Of course, Geiger’s approach inflamed more traditional segments of the Jewish community, and the resulting rift led to (among other things) what we now know as Modern Orthodoxy.
Geiger did not possess the zealous faith in God of the first Abraham. His was a steadfast faith in human reason, a devotion to modernity, and a nearly messianic trust that the spirit of the age would dissolve Anti-Semitism and usher in a new era of equality for all humanity.
This Abraham was ready to sacrifice ancient practices for the sake of Reason, Modernity, and Progress.
* * *
Turning now to the final example in our “Abrahamic trinity”, I look not to the pages of biblical or Modern Jewish history, but to the annals of the American experience: Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln was a consummate politician and statesman, with a knack for reading and shaping public opinion. In an age when partisan rancor polarized the debate toward venomous extremes, Lincoln rose above the fray with his lofty moral vision expressed through equally lofty rhetoric.
This Abraham, like our first two, was an iconoclast and, according to some, a radical reformer. The institution of slavery was so ingrained in the culture and economy of the nation that the Founding Fathers had not conceived of a way to get rid of it, and the country was willing to go to war over it. But Lincoln’s steadfast devotion to the ideals embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution led him to devise an end to the inhumane practice. He acted not with aggression or fear-mongering, but through carefully reasoned, morally sound, political maneuvering. He often endured criticism from the left-wing and right-wing alike, for being too conservative or too radical. (This reminds me of the wise observation, “If both sides of the aisle are upset, you’re probably on the right track.”)
Lincoln displayed masterful leadership and devout patriotism. He rose above personal grudges and partisan animosity because he believed fervently in a higher purpose. He labored tirelessly to preserve the sanctity of the Constitution – the covenant of his fathers – and to hasten the reign of liberty and justice in our land. In the end, he died for his cause.
This Abraham was ready to sacrifice himself for the sake of Union, Democracy, and Liberty.
* * *
So what do these three – the Religious zealot, the scholarly reformer, the political genius – have to do with us?
The unflinching intensity of Avraham Avinu’s faith sustained the Abrahamic covenant through hundreds of generations of descendants, leaving us to bear its burden and enjoy its blessings.
The force of Abraham Geiger’s brilliant scholarship and religious criticism gave birth to the kind of Liberal Judaism from which we are descended.
And the steadfastness of Abraham Lincoln’s moral vision and political genius preserved the Union and ushered a new era of freedom for our nation.
I submit that these three – even as they themselves stand alone in their generations – represent archetypes that we all have to wrestle with as 21st-century American Jews. They are us: Jewish, Modern, American. These models have many blessings to offer, but they have darker sides, too: fanaticism, assimilation, corruption.
How will we approach the big questions in our lives, issues of meaning, holiness, and community? What measure of faith, reason, and politicking will we include in our estimation of living a good life? How will we balance our many loyalties – to God, to Jewish community, to America, to the world?
I hope that these three Abrahams may be our teachers as we look to the New Year and think about what kind of life we want to lead. May God grant us the courage and wisdom to handle the pressures pulling us in various directions in our lives, enlightening us to avoid the dangers and follow the good. And may the New Year be for each of us a year of balance, where fervent faith, critical reason, and political patriotism join together to help us choose blessing, not curse, and to affirm life for us and our children.
Shanah Tovah U’Metukah.
A sweet and good new year.
Rosh Hashanah Evening Sermon (2007)
Rosh Hashanah Evening
September 12, 2007
1 Tishrei 5768
I would be lost without my calendar. I happen to keep mine on my palm pilot, and if it were to break or get erased, the effect would be devastating. My calendar orders my life. When the hours in my days are unformed and void, my calendar – like the word of God at Creation! – fashions my world out of that chaos.
Perhaps it is a touch ironic, then, that calendars are, for many American Jews, a source of confusion. Why don’t the Jewish holidays match up with the same American calendar days every year? And why do the holidays start and end at sundown? And how many new years do we celebrate? And are we in the 21st century, or the 58th?
I remember encountering similar confusion among many of my classmates in the Episcopalian school I attended as a child. “Why did I get to miss school a few days every fall?” (Maybe they were a little jealous!) I would explain that it was the Jewish High Holidays; not knowing a whole lot more than that, I would sometimes tentatively add, “It’s a long story.”
Now I know a little bit more than I did then, and so I can say with confidence, “It’s a long story.” Because the history of the development of the Jewish New Year is a rather long and complicated story.
The Bible does not actually mention the phrase “Rosh Hashanah.” In fact, the Torah’s designation of the New Year is not Rosh Hashanah at all but something entirely different. As we read in Exodus 12:1-2, about the springtime month of Nisan, “Adonai said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you.” This New Year is situated in the Exodus story, as a commemoration of the first Passover, when the Israelites were redeemed from Egyptian bondage. In other words, the rebirth of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as a nation occurred in the month of Nisan, in the spring, the season of rebirth. Thus, the New Year as defined in Exodus, as one scholar put it, “coincided with the beginning of Jewish national history.”
So the months of the year begin at Passover, and Jewish national history begins at Passover, and that makes sense as the New Year holiday. But what does the Bible say about Rosh Hashanah?
Well, like I said, the phrase itself does not appear in the Bible, but there is a reference in both Leviticus 23.24-25 and Numbers 29.1-2 to a day of sacred assembly, when we are to make offerings to God, observe complete rest, and sound the shofar. And this is to be done on the first day of the seventh month, Tishrei – that is, today.
So we have something that looks like what we’re doing today, with the sacred assembly and the shofar, but it doesn’t say anything about a new year. So where does this Rosh Hashanah idea come from?
Enter the Rabbis. The Mishnah, the 2nd-century compilation of rabbinic teachings and commentary on the Torah, holds the key to answering our questions. Here the Rabbis actually name four different New Years, including Passover/Nisan, but only one of the other three interests us today. That one, which they actually call “Rosh Hashanah,” they designate as the first day of the seventh month – today. More specifically, they define it as the beginning of the year for counting years, sabbatical years (7-yr cycle), and jubilees (50-yr cycle).
In effect, the Rabbis built a practical, functional New Year observance on the foundation of a biblical day of assembly. In this respect, it resembles the American New Year, when the calendar year resets. Rosh Hashanah would be, the Rabbis decided, the focal point for organizing the calendar. There’s that order-from-chaos thing again.
The New Year celebrated on Passover is symbolic and particularistic. It is about our genesis as the Jewish People, and our story about leaving Egypt, wandering in the wilderness, and receiving our Torah.
But for the Rabbis, and I would say for most Jews, this has never been the end of the story. The genius of Judaism is in the profound link between particularism and a commitment to universal values and responsibility.
Sure enough, the calendar reflects this. Six months after our national celebration of the Passover story, we experience Rosh Hashanah. This New Year is, literally, universal – a commemoration of God’s creation of the universe, the world, and all humanity. This holiday asks us not, “Where do you stand as a Jew?” but rather, “Where do you stand as a human being?”
I think the Rabbis meant for it to be so. Elsewhere in the Mishnah, they describe Rosh Hashanah this way, quoting from Psalm 33:
Living between those New Years is still a challenge, though. Judaism, and especially Reform Judaism, does not bemoan our acculturation into American society; we embrace it. Sometimes this relationship creates tension, between seeing ourselves as Jews and seeing ourselves as Americans, and more globally as human beings.
But we continue to live with a foot in each world. The chaos of our lives is ordered by two overlaid but not always overlapping calendars.
My prayer for all of us in this season is that we find the insight and support to turn that tension into inspiration and action. May we learn from the wisdom of our calendars to navigate between particularism and universalism, between self and other, and so take responsibility in the world as Jews, and as human beings.
Shanah tovah.
*Special thanks to my teacher Rabbi Larry Hoffman for planting the seed of the idea for this sermon in our Liturgy class on September 6, 2007.
September 12, 2007
1 Tishrei 5768
Calendars Collide?
I would be lost without my calendar. I happen to keep mine on my palm pilot, and if it were to break or get erased, the effect would be devastating. My calendar orders my life. When the hours in my days are unformed and void, my calendar – like the word of God at Creation! – fashions my world out of that chaos.
Perhaps it is a touch ironic, then, that calendars are, for many American Jews, a source of confusion. Why don’t the Jewish holidays match up with the same American calendar days every year? And why do the holidays start and end at sundown? And how many new years do we celebrate? And are we in the 21st century, or the 58th?
I remember encountering similar confusion among many of my classmates in the Episcopalian school I attended as a child. “Why did I get to miss school a few days every fall?” (Maybe they were a little jealous!) I would explain that it was the Jewish High Holidays; not knowing a whole lot more than that, I would sometimes tentatively add, “It’s a long story.”
* * *
Now I know a little bit more than I did then, and so I can say with confidence, “It’s a long story.” Because the history of the development of the Jewish New Year is a rather long and complicated story.
The Bible does not actually mention the phrase “Rosh Hashanah.” In fact, the Torah’s designation of the New Year is not Rosh Hashanah at all but something entirely different. As we read in Exodus 12:1-2, about the springtime month of Nisan, “Adonai said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you.” This New Year is situated in the Exodus story, as a commemoration of the first Passover, when the Israelites were redeemed from Egyptian bondage. In other words, the rebirth of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as a nation occurred in the month of Nisan, in the spring, the season of rebirth. Thus, the New Year as defined in Exodus, as one scholar put it, “coincided with the beginning of Jewish national history.”
So the months of the year begin at Passover, and Jewish national history begins at Passover, and that makes sense as the New Year holiday. But what does the Bible say about Rosh Hashanah?
Well, like I said, the phrase itself does not appear in the Bible, but there is a reference in both Leviticus 23.24-25 and Numbers 29.1-2 to a day of sacred assembly, when we are to make offerings to God, observe complete rest, and sound the shofar. And this is to be done on the first day of the seventh month, Tishrei – that is, today.
So we have something that looks like what we’re doing today, with the sacred assembly and the shofar, but it doesn’t say anything about a new year. So where does this Rosh Hashanah idea come from?
Enter the Rabbis. The Mishnah, the 2nd-century compilation of rabbinic teachings and commentary on the Torah, holds the key to answering our questions. Here the Rabbis actually name four different New Years, including Passover/Nisan, but only one of the other three interests us today. That one, which they actually call “Rosh Hashanah,” they designate as the first day of the seventh month – today. More specifically, they define it as the beginning of the year for counting years, sabbatical years (7-yr cycle), and jubilees (50-yr cycle).
In effect, the Rabbis built a practical, functional New Year observance on the foundation of a biblical day of assembly. In this respect, it resembles the American New Year, when the calendar year resets. Rosh Hashanah would be, the Rabbis decided, the focal point for organizing the calendar. There’s that order-from-chaos thing again.
* * *
The New Year celebrated on Passover is symbolic and particularistic. It is about our genesis as the Jewish People, and our story about leaving Egypt, wandering in the wilderness, and receiving our Torah.
But for the Rabbis, and I would say for most Jews, this has never been the end of the story. The genius of Judaism is in the profound link between particularism and a commitment to universal values and responsibility.
Sure enough, the calendar reflects this. Six months after our national celebration of the Passover story, we experience Rosh Hashanah. This New Year is, literally, universal – a commemoration of God’s creation of the universe, the world, and all humanity. This holiday asks us not, “Where do you stand as a Jew?” but rather, “Where do you stand as a human being?”
I think the Rabbis meant for it to be so. Elsewhere in the Mishnah, they describe Rosh Hashanah this way, quoting from Psalm 33:
On Rosh Hashanah all human beings pass before God as troops, as it is said, “Adonai looks down from heaven, God sees all mankind. From God’s dwelling place God gazes on all the inhabitants of the earth, God who fashions the hearts of them all, who discerns all their doings” (Psalm 33:13‑15). (M. Rosh Hashanah 1.2)For the rabbis, the Universal New Year, Rosh Hashanah, was elevated above the Jewish People’s New Year, Passover. Where the latter celebrates particularistic national myth, the former recognizes universal human responsibility. With our years punctuated perennially at six-month intervals by these two alternating New Year observances, it feels as if that particularistic redemption from Egyptian bondage gave us the freedom and privilege to realize our common humanity.
Living between those New Years is still a challenge, though. Judaism, and especially Reform Judaism, does not bemoan our acculturation into American society; we embrace it. Sometimes this relationship creates tension, between seeing ourselves as Jews and seeing ourselves as Americans, and more globally as human beings.
But we continue to live with a foot in each world. The chaos of our lives is ordered by two overlaid but not always overlapping calendars.
My prayer for all of us in this season is that we find the insight and support to turn that tension into inspiration and action. May we learn from the wisdom of our calendars to navigate between particularism and universalism, between self and other, and so take responsibility in the world as Jews, and as human beings.
Shanah tovah.
*Special thanks to my teacher Rabbi Larry Hoffman for planting the seed of the idea for this sermon in our Liturgy class on September 6, 2007.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Two poems
Both of these are based on parts of the Jewish liturgy: Emet V'yatziv declares the truth of God's greatness and praises God for redeeming us from Egyptian bondage; the Mi Shebeirach asks God to grant physical and spiritual healing upon our loved ones. Here are two poetic interpretations of those prayers.
Mi Shebeirach?
for Leslie Simmons
“Why bother”
___he didn’t ask but simply stated
___resigned at her bedside
“I believe
with perfect faith in
the Doctors and in
the Medicines, their Messengers,
God listens (or not)
but it doesn’t help, so
Why bother”
“Trust me”
___she didn’t simply state but asked
“I believe
It helps”
his hands clasped
___around her hand
his head bowed
___over her breast:
prayer enough for her.
-
-
Emet V’Yatziv
a Sonnet
Enduring, Good, Miraculous, and Right
Is this eternal teaching of our flock:
Our God is Sov’reign, Shield, Redeemer, Rock,
Deliverer from Egypt’s callous might.
Now scientific logic would reject
That God abides, endures, exists at all:
“Forget the Exodus – that tale is tall,
A fantasy of some deluded sect.”
While reason has its place in human life,
And plays a healthy academic role,
It fails to elevate a person’s soul,
Or offer hope in anguish, love in strife.
Where science – dumbstruck – stalls, this Truth resounds;
With psalms of thanks and praise our prayer abounds.
-
-
* * *
Mi Shebeirach?
for Leslie Simmons
“Why bother”
___he didn’t ask but simply stated
___resigned at her bedside
“I believe
with perfect faith in
the Doctors and in
the Medicines, their Messengers,
God listens (or not)
but it doesn’t help, so
Why bother”
“Trust me”
___she didn’t simply state but asked
“I believe
It helps”
his hands clasped
___around her hand
his head bowed
___over her breast:
prayer enough for her.
-
-
* * *
Emet V’Yatziv
a Sonnet
Enduring, Good, Miraculous, and Right
Is this eternal teaching of our flock:
Our God is Sov’reign, Shield, Redeemer, Rock,
Deliverer from Egypt’s callous might.
Now scientific logic would reject
That God abides, endures, exists at all:
“Forget the Exodus – that tale is tall,
A fantasy of some deluded sect.”
While reason has its place in human life,
And plays a healthy academic role,
It fails to elevate a person’s soul,
Or offer hope in anguish, love in strife.
Where science – dumbstruck – stalls, this Truth resounds;
With psalms of thanks and praise our prayer abounds.
-
-
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Podcast!
After a long hiatus, I return by posting a link to my friend Sean's blog. Sean is married to one of my classmates, and he has taken it upon himself to do a weekly podcast with various members of the HUC community, just chatting about various issues and current events. There's some interesting stuff in it and some really good laughs, if I may say so myself...
So if you have 55 minutes to kill, or just want to listen for a little while:
Sean's blog (click the link under the February 7 entry)
Direct link to our podcast or upload it directly to iTunes
So if you have 55 minutes to kill, or just want to listen for a little while:
Sean's blog (click the link under the February 7 entry)
Direct link to our podcast or upload it directly to iTunes
Saturday, November 05, 2005
A poem and a thought
For this past Shabbat, I prepared a sonnet and a reading. Feel free to use or quote if you find them inspiring / interesting!
___________________________________________
___________________________________________
The Sabbath Bride
A Sonnet for Erev Shabbat by David Segal
The Bride arrives, our long-awaited guest,
And wakes Her Bridegroom from His lonely sleep.
From seeds of promise sown of old they reap;
In refuge from their exile, Lovers rest.
From this belated union Blessing flows:
A storm – once threat’ning – smiles and rains down love.
For when divine completeness reigns above,
We children share in heavenly repose.
Yet let us not in reverie neglect
The Source of Blessing worthy of our praise,
But utter words of gratitude and raise
Our souls to God and humbly genuflect.
Our Sabbath Bride will linger but a day:
Awake, O
___________________________________________
A Sabbath
As the floodwaters of another week’s storms subside, we, like Noah, gaze out over a world ready to be reborn.
An echo of the first Creation can be heard in the Great Flood: one, a leveling by water; the other, a shattering by light. In each Shabbat, too, we can feel the vibrations – better yet, the reverberations – of the first Shabbat, a weekly commemoration of Creation.
The rainbow serves as a stunning reminder of God’s covenant with us never to send another great flood to destroy humanity, but it commemorates something else, too. Each new rainbow recalls the last and foreshadows the next – a symbol of eternal recurrence. The sky is clear today, but rain will fall again.
Before we can enjoy Sabbath rest, before we can find shelter from the storm, we must each build an ark for our soul. On Shabbat, we set aside the work of the world and take up the work of the spirit.
What did we leave behind in last week’s cleansing rain?
What did we destroy in storms of the spirit?
What will we take with us in next week’s ark?
Will we build it strong enough to weather another week?
As Noah’s
Shabbat shalom.
Holy Limerick #3
And now the third installment in what I hope will eventually be a cycle of 18 limericks. This one was inspired by my realization of the absurdity of the imagery of L'cha Dodi, which welcomes the Sabbath Bride, juxtaposed with the mechitza, which separates men from women in a traditional synagogue.
We welcome Shabbat as a bride
And rejoice as we call her inside.
But - wait - a mechitza?
The first thing that greets 'er?
Guess she'll sit on the opposite side...
We welcome Shabbat as a bride
And rejoice as we call her inside.
But - wait - a mechitza?
The first thing that greets 'er?
Guess she'll sit on the opposite side...
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Never what again?
Below is a journal entry I wrote in the heat of the moment after a class visit to Yad VaShem, Israel's memorial and museum of the Holocaust. I have succeeded in little more than raising questions; please feel free to suggest answers, or to express criticism or support for anything I have set forth here. Thanks for reading.
In early 2002, after an emotionally draining college course on “Texts and Images of the Holocaust”, I swore off Holocaust movies, literature, and images indefinitely. The combination of helplessness and guilt with which I left the course convinced me that I had been overexposed and that I needed a hiatus from this traumatic topic.
About a year later, I went to see The Pianist with my former professor. As good as I thought the movie was, I was still not emotionally ready to be exposed to that imagery again. So I reinstated my self-imposed ban.
Other than a few sessions and readings on historical analysis of the Holocaust in a Modern Jewish History seminar during my senior year of college (in the spring of 2003), I hadn’t touched the subject until today.
It was, predictably, very hard for me. Much of it I simply walked through with my eyes averted – past images of piles of emaciated corpses, ghetto round-ups, and concentration camp horrors. Once or twice I snuck a peak and was immediately reminded of why I had averted my eyes in the first place:
How many more photos of Holocaust horrors do I need to see before I can legitimately say, “I get it”? Is it even really possible for me to understand? (I think, in the end, no.) What am I learning or gaining by continuing to expose myself to this traumatic imagery? Do I somehow owe it to each victim or survivor to hear their stories and see their pictures? All 6,000,000? This would be an inhuman task. So where am I?
I am, as always, left with the question, What is the point of Holocaust education and commemoration? The typical American answer seems to be something along the lines of “teaching tolerance”. Sometimes that takes the form of making us see ourselves as capable of being perpetrators; sometimes, motivating us – as Americans – to act to ensure that “never again” isn’t just a neat slogan but a political reality. There tends to be a universalistic message of humanitarian hope, where Never Again means Never again will genocide happen on our watch.
Today, it was interesting to look at the Holocaust as seen through Israeli eyes. The exhibit went into more detail than I’ve seen before about both Jews and Righteous Gentiles from various nations (e.g. the North African Jewish community, which I’ve never seen mentioned in a Holocaust exhibit). Ending the exhibit with Hatikva, followed by a panoramic view of Jerusalem just outside the exhibition hall, was a powerful statement of the importance of Israel to Jewish survival – and the importance of anti-Semitism in Israeli and Zionist self-understanding. It was also interesting to see how much
The complete lack of Arabic in the museum was another indication of the particularistic Jewish message of Yad VaShem, about the need for Jews to defend themselves and to build and protect their nation in Eretz Yisrael. I wouldn’t claim it to be maliciously exclusionary, but it is clear at least that the current conflict with Arabs – indeed, the struggle within Israel to provide equal rights for all regardless of race – did not figure into the consciousness of the architects of the exhibit. Here, Never Again seems to mean Never again will any foe be allowed to bring the Jews to the brink of destruction, nor will we ever again trust anyone but ourselves to save us.
* * *
For me, the most powerful part of the museum was the Righteous Gentiles section. Seeing the personal stories of non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews and others from the Nazi slaughter made me very emotional and filled me with hope (unlike the rest of the exhibit). Interestingly, I found that it was the stories of non-Jews working together with fellow Jews to help save Jewish lives that moved me most. I also got to thinking about the label “Righteous Gentile”, and began to deconstruct it: what does it imply about other gentiles? What does it imply about Jews? Are we Jews by default righteous and thus without need of the label? Are gentiles who do other humanitarian work that doesn’t directly save Jewish lives (but, e.g., saves non-Jewish lives) less worthy of the epithet?
More to the point, I think this section moved me most because it speaks of the need to look beyond race and religion to see the humanity, first and foremost, in an individual. In a frustrating and ironic way, the Jews conceded the race card in the establishment of
Maybe instead of some abstract universalistic lesson about tolerance, or a particularistic call for self-defense and survival, we should use the Holocaust as a tool for teaching techniques of intergroup cooperation and resistance to immoral governments, politicians, and policies. Just a thought…
* * *
Several other miscellaneous quotes and episodes struck me as noteworthy:
In the German propaganda section, the images of the noble German worker bore a striking resemblance to the images of the “New Jew” of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There is some kind of common thread of nationalism and rebirth that runs through both…
Tuvia Bielski, a partisan, said, “Don’t rush to fight and die… We need to save lives. It is more important to save Jews than to kill Germans.”
Imre Bathory, a Righteous Gentile from
Father Hubert Celis, who together with his brother Father Louis helped hide a Jewish family’s children during the war, said, “I have always preferred a good Jew to a bad Christian.”
Moussa Abadi, a Damascus Jew, was teaching at a Catholic theological seminary in occupied
In a series of pictures of German troops' occupying various countries in
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