Sermon for Rosh Hashanah 5771 – Day 1, (over) Repentance
So the other day, I was sitting in my office and in walks Ted. He looked both terrified and exhilarated. He said to me, “Rabbi, the most amazing thing just happened to me. I was outside touching up the paint on the outside of the Temple to make it nice for the holidays. I was up on the ladder; I had just about finished painting when I noticed that there was a little space right under the roof that needed some more paint. I looked at my bucket and it was practically empty. I hated to have to go all the way down the ladder, get more paint and come back up again. So I poured a little bit of water in the bucket, it was latex paint; I mixed it around and applied it with my brush covering that space under the roof and came back down the ladder. All of a sudden, the skies darkened, there was thunder and lightning and I heard the voice of God and you know what God said to me? Repaint and thin no more!!!”
But seriously folks, what exactly is repentance? Like with so many things, that answer depends on who you ask. Back in 1979 and 1980, I taught in the High School program at the religious school of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue.
One of my brightest students Aaron Panken went on to be a rabbi with Ph.D. and is now the dean of the Hebrew Union College in New York. Another exceptional student Oren Etzioni went on to get a Ph.D. in Computer Science and is now a tenured professor at the University of Washington, a venture capitalist and one of the foremost authorities on Artificial Intelligence and information technology. At the time I taught them, Aaron was just a very smart kid but Oren was already semi-famous for being the son of Amitai Etzioni, a Ph.D. in sociology who was serving as a domestic policy advisor to President Carter. In 1997, along with David Carney, Amitai Etzioni edited a book entitled Repentance: A Comparative Perspective. This is an exhaustive study of repentance in all its sociological and religious manifestations. Certain basic aspects of the civic and religious forms of repentance remain the same yet there are considerable differences in the theoretical underpinnings and the practical applications of it.
Before we get into Etzioni’s theories on repentance and the common elements within civic and religious repentance, let me tell you what inspired me to begin researching repentance. First of all, these are the High Holidays, the Days of Awe, the Ten Days of Repentance. The preceding month of Elul with the daily blowing of the Shofar and the recitation of the Selichot prayers prepares us for these days. During Elul, we should perform a heshbon nefesh, an accounting of our self, to review our actions over the past year so that on this day, the first day of the year 5771, Rosh Hashanah, we can begin to repent our misdeeds, apologize, make amends, and seek forgiveness. In other words, today is all about teshuvah, repentance. But there was another reason as well for this topic. Over the summer, I heard a news report that astounded me and caused me to wonder, “What exactly is repentance and what are its parameters?”
Keith Oberman from MSNBC gave a report about an article written in the July 24th issue of the Wall Street Journal. In that article, Stephanie Simon wrote from Colorado Springs, CO about the return of the Reverend Ted Haggard to the pulpit of a church. Four years earlier Reverend Haggard resigned as president of the politically powerful National Association of Evangelicals and from the megachurch he founded after admitting that he had bought methamphetamines and had a sexual encounter with a homosexual prostitute. While he was one of the most prominent church leaders in the U.S., Reverend Haggard would decry homosexuality and drug use from his mighty pulpit. In his tortured letter of confession, he called himself “a deceiver and a liar” who wrestled with “repulsive and dark” desires. He left town and he left the state with his wife promising to follow a new path and stay away from ministerial work. In the past few months, Reverend Haggard has moved back to his former community and launched a new church that has grown to a congregation of 200 people. Enthusiastic as ever, Reverend Haggard says he is back doing what he was born to do. As he put it, “Tiger Woods needs to golf. Michael Vick needs to be playing football. Ted Haggard needs to be leading a church.” Why he chose to explain his divine mandate to minister a church by comparing himself to an adulterer and an animal abuser, I do not know but the rest of his comments are the most revealing. As Ms. Simon wrote, ‘He acknowledged some grave lapses of judgment in the episode he refers to as “my crisis” but Mr. Haggard also said that in his sorrow and shame, he accepted too much guilt after the scandal broke. “I over-repented,” he said.’ When I heard that, all I could think of was that bank commercial with the little kid with glasses trying to put the eggs into the basket who says, “What does that even mean?!” I over-repented. Is that even possible? How can one over-repent? In Jewish terms, repentance is not over until forgiveness is achieved and the sinner does not repeat the sin when given the opportunity. Was Ted Haggard forgiven for the sin of misleading his mega-congregation? Perhaps. Has he found himself in a similar situation and resisted the temptations? I do not know. I am sure that in our communication crazy society someone would have put it on facebook or youtube if the situation presented itself. How can he say he over-repented? Is he implying that his repentance is over, that he no longer needs to feel sorry or ashamed, that it is totally gone and forgotten? Or is he saying something else.
Now we know that certain words can mean one thing to one person and something else to another person. This is especially true of people in different cultures that speak the same language. If you were in South Africa and you were told that you would get something “just now,” expect to wait a while. And if you were in Mexico and you used the word “cojer” that in Panama is a perfectly acceptable Spanish verb meaning “to take,” you might get some very strange looks. So before I judged, I wanted to see if repentance meant the same thing in other cultures and religions.
Amitai Etzioni begins his book on repentance by writing about civic or secular repentance. When you punish a child for wrongdoing, there is the time out, the penalty phase, which is then followed by a period of apologies, making amends, and reconciling with those who were hurt or offended by the child’s actions. Once the apologies and other actions to repair the damage viewed as sincere and sufficient, the child is returned to his or her former status. Dr. Etzioni laments that this last phase of repentance is currently absent from today’s civic society. He uses the example of Senator Gary Hart who suffered public ridicule and shame for his extramarital affairs and was summarily deposed from his front running position as the 1988 Democratic Presidential candidate. In 1995, seven years after having suffered defamation and loss, being forced out of the national political scene and paying the price for his brazen infidelity, Gary Hart tried to run for a seat in Congress and was roundly derided and discredited and unable to resume a career in politics. In other words, once guilty, always guilty, once an ex-con, always an ex-con. The process of repentance in secular and in religious society must have a conclusion that involves full reconciliation and full restoration of the guilty to his or her former position. Professor Etzioni laments that in today’s society, there are criminals who have gone through the full process of sincere repentance and yet they are still branded as criminals; without closure, without reintegration into society.
We know that in Judaism as in civic society the quality of the repentance, the sincerity of the remorse, the heartfelt sense of loss and the suffered punishments and chastisements should lead towards atonement and forgiveness. Our Talmudic sages teach us that it is forbidden for us to say to a penitent person, “Remember your past misdeeds.” On the contrary, we must do everything in our power to encourage a person to engage in true repentance. As we read in our High Holiday prayer book, “It is not the death of sinners that God seeks, only that they turn from their former ways and live!” In Judaism, only the cruelest and most evil people who feel no guilt and lack all remorse for their actions would never have a chance at full atonement yet it seems that in our contemporary secular culture, society is always skeptical about a person’s sincerity in repentance and never seems to be satisfied by a person’s payment for his or her sin to grant them atonement or forgiveness.
Is that what happened in the case of Ted Haggard? In his claim of over-repentance was he trying to say, that he had suffered more than enough and that civic and religious society were never going to judge him favorably despite his sincere repentance and remorse? No, I don’t think so. He did suffer for his misdeeds but his current statements make it clear that he does not feel true remorse for his sin. He speaks about the homosexual affair as a massage that somehow went wrong and that he does not have same-sex attractions. He says that some church leaders went on a witch-hunt accusing him of engaging in a pattern of misconduct including inappropriate relationships and sordid talk. He laughs this off by saying that his only fault was cracking a few crude jokes. He tearfully confessed his sins in front of a national television audience on the Oprah Winfrey show but now he downplays them as if they were no big deal and along with his insincere remorse, he ignores the fact that his real sin was in misleading the congregation. It seems clearly evident that he has not yet repented and surely has not over repented for that sin.
Amitai Etzioni breaks down repentance in to three crucial elements, the three R’s of repentance. The first one is true remorse. It is hard to describe what true remorse is but we can identify what it is not by examining its polar opposite. False remorse is characterized by transferring guilt to others; for example, Eric and Lyle Menendez accusing their parents of abuse to exonerate themselves for murdering them. False remorse also involved trivializing the crime and disparaging the law. Professor Etzioni uses Lyn Nofziger, an aide to President Reagan who trivialized his conviction for influence peddling calling it tantamount to a parking ticket. Had Dr. Etzioni written his book today, I am sure that he would have used Ted Haggard’s example of calling his inappropriate behavior and sordid speech as just “cracking a few crude jokes.” Offering apologies with defeating qualifications as in the case of Senator Packwood of Oregon who in response to the accusation of repeated sexual harassment said, “I’m sorry if I did those things they say I did,” is a further symptom of false remorse. Along with true remorse not bearing any of the above symptoms of false remorse, the truth of a person’s remorse is the most convincing when it does not sound faked, rehearsed or devoid of emotion but said with sincerity and, although this is rarely the case, when there is little or nothing to be gained directly from its expression.
The second crucial element that must be part of any process of repentance is restitution i.e. doing penance or making amends whether by means of punishment, monetary compensation to the victims and/or to the community, or any other appropriate suffering or humbling experience. Religious suffering, at least within the monotheistic religions, can range from social isolation, self-affliction through fasting and other abstentions, to corporal punishment usually administered through self-flagellation. These are not meant to be ends in themselves but merely the pathways towards atonement and ultimately forgiveness. Eztioni points out that in civic society this phase of repentance usually involves isolation through incarceration. The problem is that imprisonment often short circuits the restorative reconciliation part of the process of repentance because the sinner or shall we say the criminal now associates him or herself with the alienated part of society, is not given a real chance at rehabilitation and cannot reestablish his or her position within law abiding society. This is why we have so many repeat offenders and why recidivism keeps our prisons crowded, which further inhibits the rehabilitation process for incarcerated criminals. Following a June 2006 study by a bi-partisan government commission on America’s prisons, we learned that to reduce overcrowding in our prisons 95% of prison inmates are released back into society after the completion of their sentence. Within three years of their release, however, 67% of former prisoners are rearrested and 52% are re-incarcerated. This high recidivism rate clearly calls into question the effectiveness of America's corrections system. Prisons might keep the criminals off the street which prevents them from committing crimes while imprisoned but, in most cases, they do not help a criminal do a full teshuvah and return to being a law-abiding citizen once they are released.
What is missing in the process of civic repentance today is the critical third step; restructuring one’s life. This element of repentance is often overlooked. In contemporary society, we focus on the sincerity of the remorse expressed and the proper punishment and penance paid by the sinner but we miss this third and most essential element without which repentance is not complete. Our Talmudic sages and the great medieval scholars and thinkers such as Saadia ha-Gaon, Bahya Ibn Pakuda and Rabbi Moses Maimonides described this third step as the quintessential acid test of true repentance. In the Talmudic tractate about Yom Kippur, the third century Babylonian teacher Rabbi Judah teaches us that a true penitent is defined as one who twice more encounters the object or person that led to his or her original transgression and does not repeat the transgression. Professor Etzioni writes that it is not enough for an adulterous person to show remorse and be punished. That person must never again commit adultery otherwise those first two elements of repentance, remorse and restitution, will be insufficient and ineffective. True reintegration into law-abiding, moral society must not be granted until a period has passed in which the guilty parties have had a chance to demonstrate that they have restructured their lives and themselves. Therefore, in the case of Ted Haggard, the jury is still out, his repentance will be deemed sincere and true if and when he finds himself in the position to commit his former sins again and does not do it. Only then will his repentance be over. Until then, it is morally offensive and grossly inaccurate for him to declare that he over-repented. According to Dr. Etzioni, remorse, restitution and restructuring are the critical, unavoidable, and essential steps in the process of repentance. Repentance in Judaism follows that path but does Dr. Etzioni’s theory of repentance hold true in other religions as well.
On August 6, sixty-five years after the US dropped an atomic bomb on the civilian population of Hiroshima, Japan, I was coming from a visit at Harbor Place, and as I was turning from Jennings Road onto US 1, I looked over at the guy who stands there on that corner every day proclaiming the gospel and calling all people to come to Jesus and I saw written on the big wooden cross that he leans against the traffic light pole the words “Repent and be saved.” I wondered what kind of repentance would lead to salvation and not to forgiveness or atonement. Does repentance means something different in Christianity?
The late evangelical theologian and scholar Reverend Dr. Harold Brown wrote a chapter in Dr. Etzioni’s book on Christian views of repentance. He wrote that in Christianity, repentance depends on the redeemer and not the individual. Belief and allegiance to Jesus is the key to repentance and forgiveness rendering free will and individual responsibility of lesser consequence. While Christianity and all religions teach the need for people to follow the rules and behave within the moral constraints just as civic society expects its citizens to abide by the laws, the stress on personal responsibility found in Judaism and in civic society is not the same for Christians. While in Judaism we must personally repent of our actions and ask forgiveness from our fellow human beings before we can ask God to forgive us on Yom Kippur, there is no such requirement in Christianity. For Christians, there is no distinction; a sin against God is a sin against our neighbors and vice versa. Dr. Brown describes the elements of Christian repentance as genuine remorse, determined resolution to never repeat the sin, evidence that the person has begun to live in a new way and full restoration and reintegration into the community. Notice that the element of doing penance, making amends, or suffering some kind of deprivation or punishment is not included in Dr. Brown’s description of Christian repentance. Could that be the key to understanding Reverend Haggard’s remarks? Perhaps.
I researched a little further and read the chapter in Dr. Etzioni’s book about repentance in Islam written by Dr. Mahmoud Ayoub, a Lebanese Muslim who received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and served for ten years as the Director of Islamic Studies at Temple University. Professor Ayoub writes that Islamic repentance is known as tawbah, an Arabic word similar in meaning to the Hebrew word for repentance, teshuvah, which means returning. In Islam, tawbah is returning to God with contrition, supplication and penitence eager for salaam submission to God’s will. The word tawbah and its derivatives appear 87 times in the Quran. In Islam, God (Allah) is ready to forgive if the sinner turns with complete faith in God alone. Notice once again, an absence of any need to seek forgiveness from your fellow human being, let alone your fellow Muslim. For Muslims, repentance is an act of divine grace. Suffering or self-affliction, especially within Sunni Muslim tradition, is not part of the process of repentance. Aside from absolute faith in Allah, human actions have no influence or effect on repentance or forgiveness.
While it may be interesting or even fascinating to discuss and discover other religious or secular traditions about repentance, we are here today on the first of the Ten Days of Repentance to fully commit ourselves to the process of repentance. Truth be told, there really isn’t a starting point to repentance and it cannot be completed within ten days. Our daily prayers include a plea for forgiveness for our multiple sins and transgressions. The Talmudic ideal is for a person to spend each day in repentance. In the Talmudic tractate on Shabbat, Rabbi Eliezer is quoted as saying, “Repent one day before your death.” When the late Rabbi Albert Lewis quoted these words of Talmud to Mitch Albom, his eulogist and the author of “Have A Little Faith,” Mitch Albom replied “But how do you know it’s the day before your death?” and Rabbi Lewis raised his eyebrows and said, “Exactly.” Rabbi Eliezer and all our sages are teaching us that since none of us know the day we are going to die, we should repent everyday. Consequently, for us, no one can ever over-repent but we can certainly repent insufficiently or inadequately or insincerely.
Most of us have committed acts over the past year for which we are now sorry. Whether through acts of omission or commission, willfully or by mistake, we have done things that were hurtful or misguided for which we need to repent, express remorse, and ask for forgiveness. In “Have A Little Faith,” Rabbi Lewis teaches us of a little known Jewish traditional practice at a funeral of going up to the coffin and asking the deceased to forgive everything you have ever done to hurt them. Rabbi Lewis comments that he doesn’t want to wait that long and so he uses his last High Holiday sermon to his congregation to repent and ask them to forgive him for all the things he should have done that he did not do and all the mistakes he made which he should not have made. Thankfully, this is not my last High Holiday sermon to my congregation although it might be my longest but I wanted to take this opportunity to repent and ask you all to forgive me for all the things I should have done but failed to do and all the mistakes I may have made that I should not have made.
In Judaism, we can never over-repent. It is not possible. True repentance can bring lasting change to people and communities but it will not happen overnight. Repentance and therefore forgiveness is a process that takes time. In 1995, on the fiftieth anniversary of the US bombing of Hiroshima, the first use of nuclear weapon which killed 140,000 people, only 50% of Americans felt remorse and a desire to apologize over the dropping the atom bomb on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945. Then President Clinton decided not to offer a public apology to the people of Japan nor did he believe that one was necessary. Fifteen years later in 2010, for the first time, a representative of the US government, Ambassador John Roos, attended the ceremonies in Hiroshima commemorating the event. It was not exactly an apology or an expression of true remorse but maybe it was the first step towards healing. Repentance takes time and we cannot and should not try to speed up or inhibit the process but it must be allowed to proceed and hopefully reach its ultimate conclusion of forgiveness, reconciliation and restoration. Like Yogi Berra used to say, “It’s over when it’s over.”
May it be God’s will that we eagerly embrace the opportunity given to us today and all these ten days of repentance to acknowledge our wrongdoings, sincerely express our remorse, seek to reconcile and reunite with friends, family members and fellow congregants, perform a true repentance and pursue forgiveness, healing and peace. And let us say, Amen
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Sermon for Erev Rosh Hashanah 5771
My wife and I love to play tennis, just not together. Across the net from each other, in doubles or in singles, we are okay, but as a team in doubles, un-unh, way too stressful. One day some friends of ours invited us to play tennis with them and sure enough, Sara and I had to play as a team against them. It was a disaster. I kept missing shots and serving into the net and every time I would mess up, I said, “Oops, I’m sorry.” I said I’m sorry so many times that one of our opponents jokingly said, “I thought love meant never having to say you’re sorry.” To which I replied, “Yes, but in tennis, love means nothing.”
In tennis and in life itself, there are many kinds of love. As most of you probably know, the last Friday night of every month is our time for “Ask the Rabbi.” On those nights, members of the congregation have the opportunity to ask me any question about Judaism or anything for that matter. At a recent “Ask the Rabbi” session, one of the younger members of our congregation asked me which mitzvah of the 613 commandments did I think was the most important one. Without hesitation I answered, “Ahavta l’reakha qamokha, love your neighbor as yourself.” Even though I had answered the question instinctively, the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was true. From that mitzvah flows all the ethical laws about society, about justice and fairness and helping those less fortunate, about feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, clothing the naked, and being caring and compassionate to all people acknowledging that each person is like us sharing our common humanity, sharing that divine spark of creation, and therefore should be treated no differently than us. Our greatest sages and teachers had similar opinions. The great teacher of the second century Rabbi Akiba ben Joseph taught that loving our neighbor was the greatest principle in the Torah. Hillel taught that it was the very essence of Torah and that all the rest was merely commentary. And one of the greatest rabbis of the twentieth century, Rav Kook, held the same belief and more importantly, he lived his life and practiced his rabbinate guided by that principle, the principle of ahavah, love, especially ahavat yisrael, loving each and every member of the people of Israel.
Rabbi Avraham Yizhak Kook was born in 1865 in Latvia and died in Israel in September 1935. Rav Kook was greatly revered in his lifetime and still is to this day seventy-five years after his death. Many Jewish organizations and institutions, most notably the educational and mystical ones, organized special tributes to Rav Kook on the occasion of his seventy-fifth Yahrzeit. Rav Kook was an exceptional student at his yeshiva in Latvia. He did not limit himself to merely studying Talmud but he studied Bible, Hebrew, philosophy and Kabbalah. The head of that yeshiva once said that it was worth founding the yeshiva if for no other reason than to educate and ordain Rabbi Kook. In 1888, he was appointed rabbi of Zaumel and then in 1895 Rav Kook began to serve the Jewish community of Bausk but soon felt his heart drawn elsewhere. Rav Kook immigrated to Erez Yisrael then known as Palestine under Turkish rule. He arrived in Jaffa in 1904 and immediately began to engage in qiruv-outreach, bringing people closer. With his openness to new ideas, Rav Kook drew many religious and non-religious people to him. He fostered close ties with people of all origins and beliefs, he built bridges of communication and political alliances between secular Zionist leadership and more traditional non-Zionist Orthodox Jews, and he freely spoke out and criticized non-religious Zionists and non-Zionist religious Jews, even the most ultra-Orthodox among them. Kook’s perspective was panoramic and all encompassing affirming the legitimacy of different approaches. He advocated outreach and cooperation, strove for Jewish unity and preached ahavat Yisrael, love of your fellow Israelite.
Rav Kook did not merely speak about Jewish unity especially over the issue of Zionism. He tirelessly worked for it. He saw the Zionists as agents in the divine plan of Messianic redemption and he wanted his fellow Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews to share his vision. In 1914, he traveled to Europe to attend a conference of the ultra-Orthodox organization Agudath Yisrael to convince them to support the Zionist plan. While he was there, World War I broke out and he could not return to Eretz Yisrael. He spent the war years in England serving an Orthodox congregation in London and continued to urge the Jews in England to support the Zionist cause. He returned to the Land of Israel after the war under the auspices of the British Empire who were given a mandate by the League of Nations to rule over Palestine. By virtue of his scholarship, his mystical leadership, and most importantly by his openness and his ability to build bridges between deeply divided groups, Rav Kook was appointed the chief rabbi of Jerusalem and with the formation of the chief rabbinate in 1921; he was elected the first Ashkenazic chief rabbi of Palestine. Rav Kook would often quote the rabbinic axiom that one should embrace with the right and rebuff with the left. Kook said that he was fully capable of rejecting but since there were more than enough rejecters, he was taking on the role of embracer. As we read in Ecclesiastes, there is a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. Now is the time for embracing.
King Solomon, who is purported to be the author of Ecclesiastes, is famous for his wisdom. In the Book of Kings, we read the story about King Solomon and the two mothers. Each of the two women had a baby. The baby of one mother dies during the night. When she discovers it, she quickly switches her baby for the other mother’s baby. As soon as the second mother wakens, she looks at the dead baby and knows it is not hers yet the first mother claims that it is. The case goes before the king and he has a radical suggestion, cut the baby in two and give one half to each mother. The first mother whose actual baby was already dead said “Okay, that’s fair” but the second mother said, “No, let the baby live with her.” That is how Solomon wisely determined that the live baby belonged to the second mother. Rav Kook makes an analogy of this story and compares the live baby to the community of Israel. The one who wants to split the community is not the true mother and should not be given any legitimacy. Rav Kook taught us, “After a time of tension, it is critically important not to divide, not to develop hatred, but to spread love and embrace.”
For Rav Kook, ahavat yisrael, loving and embracing our fellow Israelites was not just theoretical. It was real. One day, he went to a brit milah ceremony in the Old City of Jerusalem accompanied by dozens of his students. On his way back, a small group of hotheaded ultra-Orthodox extremists suddenly attacked him, showering him with wastewater. The chief rabbi was completely drenched with malodorous, filthy water. The Rabbi’s supporters were outraged. By the time Rav Kook had arrived home, news of the attack had spread throughout the city. The legal counsel of the British Mandate came to his home and advised Rav Kook to press charges against these hooligans and promised to have them promptly deported from Palestine. Much to the legal counsel’s astonishment, Rav Kook responded by saying, “Do no such thing. I have no interest in court cases. Despite what they did to me, I love them. I love every Jew.” Shortly after that event, he wrote in his poetry “In every single Jew young and old / The light of the living God burns and shines.” He believed that it was our obligation to see a unique, divine spark inside every Jewish woman and man.
Seven years ago, our congregation hosted the investigative journalist and author, Edwin Black as our Scholar-In-Residence for our Library Dedication weekend. Edwin Black is the author of a number of controversial books such as The War Against the Weak documenting the American Eugenics movement and its influence on the Nazi scientists, The IBM and the Holocaust showing how the computerization of personal records achieved by IBM’s technology enabled the efficiency of the Holocaust, and The Transfer Agreement detailing the 1933 secret arrangement by the Jewish Zionist leaders in Palestine with the Nazis to bring 60,000 German Jews and their property, worth about $100 million, into Palestine in exchange for an end to the Jewish-led boycott of German goods.
The chief architect and negotiator of this infamous transfer agreement was Chaim Arlosoroff, a leader in the Labor Zionist movement, a person destined to be the first Foreign Minister of the as yet unborn State of Israel. The agreement was concluded in May 1933 and the very effective Jewish-led boycott, which could have economically crippled Nazi Germany, was terminated. On the night of June 17, 1933 unknown assailants assassinated Dr. Chaim Arlosoroff while he was walking with his wife by the seashore in Tel Aviv. Two right-wing Zionist Revisionists were arrested; one named Abraham Stavsky was convicted. Stavsky vehemently maintained his innocence, a young Arab twice confessed to the crime and twice retracted his confession. It was a terribly divisive episode in the history of the Zionist movement. Surprisingly, Rav Kook stood up in the pulpit and proclaimed Stavsky innocent. The ultra-Orthodox already despised Rav Kook and now the Labor Zionists became his enemies as well. Despite the vitriol thrown at him from his detractors on all sides, Rav Kook never gave up his love for the whole of the Jewish people. As he wrote then, “After a time of tension, it is critically important not to divide and hate but to love and embrace.”
Tonight is Rosh Hashanah, tonight we begin a new year. In the old rabbinic parlor trick known as gematria, every number has an alphabetic equivalent; e.g. aleph equals one, yud equals ten, taf equals 400 etc. When you write out the Jewish date, you use Hebrew letters. So tonight begins the day of aleph tishrei taf shin ayin aleph, the first day of the month of Tishrei in the year 5771. But if we take those letters that spell out the number of the year 5771 and see them as an acronym perhaps they can tell us something about the coming year. The letters taf shin ayin aleph could spell out the phrase t’hiyeh sh’nat avodah v’ahavah, which means it will be a year of service and love. And in Hebrew, the word “avodah” which is translated as service implies not only worship in a religious service but also work in service to our community. Truth be told, t’hiyeh can also mean, “may it be,” which tells us that it is up to us to make this a year of service and love.
Many of our congregants and our leaders have been speaking about the need for healing and I could not agree more but unlike the story of genesis, it cannot be created ex nihilo, out of nothing. Healing comes from our active love of our fellow Israelite. Healing comes from repentance, from asking for and attaining forgiveness. Healing comes from focusing on the words and actions of the revered Rav Kook who understood that the key to it all was the unconditional love and acceptance of each and every member of the household of Israel especially this house here that we lovingly call our home, Beth El Israel, the house of God and Israel. If we want healing, we must accept all. If we want healing, we must open our doors to all. If we want healing, everyone must be included. If we want healing, we must treat each person the same. If we want healing, we must love our neighbors as ourselves. If we want healing, let us follow the teachings of Rav Kook who taught us that we live in a world of chaos. Not only do we need to perform tikkun olam, fixing the world through our righteous actions, but a tikkun elyon, a healing and a fixing at the highest level, repairing and transforming through uniting all living beings and their diverse tendencies and attributes. In the words of Rav Kook, “As long as each one exalts himself claiming ‘I am sovereign, I and no other’ there cannot be peace in our midst.” And what is peace? What is shalom? It is a state of being shalem; whole, united, healed. It is when we realize that there is no other in the house of Israel. There is no enemy. There is no “us and them.” It is all us. As Rav Kook said, “In the gathering of everything, everything is good.” As we come together, goodness prevails. As we grow towards wholeness sh’leimut goodness increases. As we follow Rav Kook’s example and practice ahavat yisrael, the love and acceptance and respect of every member of the house of Israel then the healing will come and we will have a very good year.
Ken y’hee ratson – May this be God’s will and let us all say, Amen
My wife and I love to play tennis, just not together. Across the net from each other, in doubles or in singles, we are okay, but as a team in doubles, un-unh, way too stressful. One day some friends of ours invited us to play tennis with them and sure enough, Sara and I had to play as a team against them. It was a disaster. I kept missing shots and serving into the net and every time I would mess up, I said, “Oops, I’m sorry.” I said I’m sorry so many times that one of our opponents jokingly said, “I thought love meant never having to say you’re sorry.” To which I replied, “Yes, but in tennis, love means nothing.”
In tennis and in life itself, there are many kinds of love. As most of you probably know, the last Friday night of every month is our time for “Ask the Rabbi.” On those nights, members of the congregation have the opportunity to ask me any question about Judaism or anything for that matter. At a recent “Ask the Rabbi” session, one of the younger members of our congregation asked me which mitzvah of the 613 commandments did I think was the most important one. Without hesitation I answered, “Ahavta l’reakha qamokha, love your neighbor as yourself.” Even though I had answered the question instinctively, the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was true. From that mitzvah flows all the ethical laws about society, about justice and fairness and helping those less fortunate, about feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, clothing the naked, and being caring and compassionate to all people acknowledging that each person is like us sharing our common humanity, sharing that divine spark of creation, and therefore should be treated no differently than us. Our greatest sages and teachers had similar opinions. The great teacher of the second century Rabbi Akiba ben Joseph taught that loving our neighbor was the greatest principle in the Torah. Hillel taught that it was the very essence of Torah and that all the rest was merely commentary. And one of the greatest rabbis of the twentieth century, Rav Kook, held the same belief and more importantly, he lived his life and practiced his rabbinate guided by that principle, the principle of ahavah, love, especially ahavat yisrael, loving each and every member of the people of Israel.
Rabbi Avraham Yizhak Kook was born in 1865 in Latvia and died in Israel in September 1935. Rav Kook was greatly revered in his lifetime and still is to this day seventy-five years after his death. Many Jewish organizations and institutions, most notably the educational and mystical ones, organized special tributes to Rav Kook on the occasion of his seventy-fifth Yahrzeit. Rav Kook was an exceptional student at his yeshiva in Latvia. He did not limit himself to merely studying Talmud but he studied Bible, Hebrew, philosophy and Kabbalah. The head of that yeshiva once said that it was worth founding the yeshiva if for no other reason than to educate and ordain Rabbi Kook. In 1888, he was appointed rabbi of Zaumel and then in 1895 Rav Kook began to serve the Jewish community of Bausk but soon felt his heart drawn elsewhere. Rav Kook immigrated to Erez Yisrael then known as Palestine under Turkish rule. He arrived in Jaffa in 1904 and immediately began to engage in qiruv-outreach, bringing people closer. With his openness to new ideas, Rav Kook drew many religious and non-religious people to him. He fostered close ties with people of all origins and beliefs, he built bridges of communication and political alliances between secular Zionist leadership and more traditional non-Zionist Orthodox Jews, and he freely spoke out and criticized non-religious Zionists and non-Zionist religious Jews, even the most ultra-Orthodox among them. Kook’s perspective was panoramic and all encompassing affirming the legitimacy of different approaches. He advocated outreach and cooperation, strove for Jewish unity and preached ahavat Yisrael, love of your fellow Israelite.
Rav Kook did not merely speak about Jewish unity especially over the issue of Zionism. He tirelessly worked for it. He saw the Zionists as agents in the divine plan of Messianic redemption and he wanted his fellow Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews to share his vision. In 1914, he traveled to Europe to attend a conference of the ultra-Orthodox organization Agudath Yisrael to convince them to support the Zionist plan. While he was there, World War I broke out and he could not return to Eretz Yisrael. He spent the war years in England serving an Orthodox congregation in London and continued to urge the Jews in England to support the Zionist cause. He returned to the Land of Israel after the war under the auspices of the British Empire who were given a mandate by the League of Nations to rule over Palestine. By virtue of his scholarship, his mystical leadership, and most importantly by his openness and his ability to build bridges between deeply divided groups, Rav Kook was appointed the chief rabbi of Jerusalem and with the formation of the chief rabbinate in 1921; he was elected the first Ashkenazic chief rabbi of Palestine. Rav Kook would often quote the rabbinic axiom that one should embrace with the right and rebuff with the left. Kook said that he was fully capable of rejecting but since there were more than enough rejecters, he was taking on the role of embracer. As we read in Ecclesiastes, there is a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. Now is the time for embracing.
King Solomon, who is purported to be the author of Ecclesiastes, is famous for his wisdom. In the Book of Kings, we read the story about King Solomon and the two mothers. Each of the two women had a baby. The baby of one mother dies during the night. When she discovers it, she quickly switches her baby for the other mother’s baby. As soon as the second mother wakens, she looks at the dead baby and knows it is not hers yet the first mother claims that it is. The case goes before the king and he has a radical suggestion, cut the baby in two and give one half to each mother. The first mother whose actual baby was already dead said “Okay, that’s fair” but the second mother said, “No, let the baby live with her.” That is how Solomon wisely determined that the live baby belonged to the second mother. Rav Kook makes an analogy of this story and compares the live baby to the community of Israel. The one who wants to split the community is not the true mother and should not be given any legitimacy. Rav Kook taught us, “After a time of tension, it is critically important not to divide, not to develop hatred, but to spread love and embrace.”
For Rav Kook, ahavat yisrael, loving and embracing our fellow Israelites was not just theoretical. It was real. One day, he went to a brit milah ceremony in the Old City of Jerusalem accompanied by dozens of his students. On his way back, a small group of hotheaded ultra-Orthodox extremists suddenly attacked him, showering him with wastewater. The chief rabbi was completely drenched with malodorous, filthy water. The Rabbi’s supporters were outraged. By the time Rav Kook had arrived home, news of the attack had spread throughout the city. The legal counsel of the British Mandate came to his home and advised Rav Kook to press charges against these hooligans and promised to have them promptly deported from Palestine. Much to the legal counsel’s astonishment, Rav Kook responded by saying, “Do no such thing. I have no interest in court cases. Despite what they did to me, I love them. I love every Jew.” Shortly after that event, he wrote in his poetry “In every single Jew young and old / The light of the living God burns and shines.” He believed that it was our obligation to see a unique, divine spark inside every Jewish woman and man.
Seven years ago, our congregation hosted the investigative journalist and author, Edwin Black as our Scholar-In-Residence for our Library Dedication weekend. Edwin Black is the author of a number of controversial books such as The War Against the Weak documenting the American Eugenics movement and its influence on the Nazi scientists, The IBM and the Holocaust showing how the computerization of personal records achieved by IBM’s technology enabled the efficiency of the Holocaust, and The Transfer Agreement detailing the 1933 secret arrangement by the Jewish Zionist leaders in Palestine with the Nazis to bring 60,000 German Jews and their property, worth about $100 million, into Palestine in exchange for an end to the Jewish-led boycott of German goods.
The chief architect and negotiator of this infamous transfer agreement was Chaim Arlosoroff, a leader in the Labor Zionist movement, a person destined to be the first Foreign Minister of the as yet unborn State of Israel. The agreement was concluded in May 1933 and the very effective Jewish-led boycott, which could have economically crippled Nazi Germany, was terminated. On the night of June 17, 1933 unknown assailants assassinated Dr. Chaim Arlosoroff while he was walking with his wife by the seashore in Tel Aviv. Two right-wing Zionist Revisionists were arrested; one named Abraham Stavsky was convicted. Stavsky vehemently maintained his innocence, a young Arab twice confessed to the crime and twice retracted his confession. It was a terribly divisive episode in the history of the Zionist movement. Surprisingly, Rav Kook stood up in the pulpit and proclaimed Stavsky innocent. The ultra-Orthodox already despised Rav Kook and now the Labor Zionists became his enemies as well. Despite the vitriol thrown at him from his detractors on all sides, Rav Kook never gave up his love for the whole of the Jewish people. As he wrote then, “After a time of tension, it is critically important not to divide and hate but to love and embrace.”
Tonight is Rosh Hashanah, tonight we begin a new year. In the old rabbinic parlor trick known as gematria, every number has an alphabetic equivalent; e.g. aleph equals one, yud equals ten, taf equals 400 etc. When you write out the Jewish date, you use Hebrew letters. So tonight begins the day of aleph tishrei taf shin ayin aleph, the first day of the month of Tishrei in the year 5771. But if we take those letters that spell out the number of the year 5771 and see them as an acronym perhaps they can tell us something about the coming year. The letters taf shin ayin aleph could spell out the phrase t’hiyeh sh’nat avodah v’ahavah, which means it will be a year of service and love. And in Hebrew, the word “avodah” which is translated as service implies not only worship in a religious service but also work in service to our community. Truth be told, t’hiyeh can also mean, “may it be,” which tells us that it is up to us to make this a year of service and love.
Many of our congregants and our leaders have been speaking about the need for healing and I could not agree more but unlike the story of genesis, it cannot be created ex nihilo, out of nothing. Healing comes from our active love of our fellow Israelite. Healing comes from repentance, from asking for and attaining forgiveness. Healing comes from focusing on the words and actions of the revered Rav Kook who understood that the key to it all was the unconditional love and acceptance of each and every member of the household of Israel especially this house here that we lovingly call our home, Beth El Israel, the house of God and Israel. If we want healing, we must accept all. If we want healing, we must open our doors to all. If we want healing, everyone must be included. If we want healing, we must treat each person the same. If we want healing, we must love our neighbors as ourselves. If we want healing, let us follow the teachings of Rav Kook who taught us that we live in a world of chaos. Not only do we need to perform tikkun olam, fixing the world through our righteous actions, but a tikkun elyon, a healing and a fixing at the highest level, repairing and transforming through uniting all living beings and their diverse tendencies and attributes. In the words of Rav Kook, “As long as each one exalts himself claiming ‘I am sovereign, I and no other’ there cannot be peace in our midst.” And what is peace? What is shalom? It is a state of being shalem; whole, united, healed. It is when we realize that there is no other in the house of Israel. There is no enemy. There is no “us and them.” It is all us. As Rav Kook said, “In the gathering of everything, everything is good.” As we come together, goodness prevails. As we grow towards wholeness sh’leimut goodness increases. As we follow Rav Kook’s example and practice ahavat yisrael, the love and acceptance and respect of every member of the house of Israel then the healing will come and we will have a very good year.
Ken y’hee ratson – May this be God’s will and let us all say, Amen
Sermon Kol Nidre 5771
Three senior Jewish women get together one afternoon. The first one sits down and goes, “Oy!” The second sits down and exhales “Oy!” And the third one says, “I thought we had agreed not to talk about the children!”
Children can bring us great nachas and they can also give us tremendous tsuris but, as in the case of all relationships, it can go both ways; we can give our children nachas or tsuris as well. Before we judge our children’s actions we have to ask ourselves, what do we give our children? What values and lessons should we impart to them as they live their adult lives; lessons and values that we hope will stay with them even after we are gone. Sociologists, educators and behavioral scientists all agree that the most lasting lessons taught by parents to their children are taught at home and are taught by actions and not by words. Do as I say and not as I do is a hypocritical cop out because children emulate the example of their parents. As parents we are role models for our children and they will more likely do as we do rather than as we say.
Back in 2002, our Temple and Temple Beit ha-Yam in Stuart shared a Scholar-In-Residence, Rabbi Jack Reimer. One of Rabbi Reimer’s main areas of interest is ethical wills. Ethical wills are first found in the Torah with the blessings given by Isaac to his son Jacob and by Jacob to his twelve sons and continued on as a significant part of a Jewish family life in the rest of the Bible and in the Talmud as well as medieval and modern Jewish life. Rabbi Reimer has written several books on the subject and has become somewhat of an expert not only providing the history of ethical wills but, in addition, a guide to writing your own. The title of one of his books on Ethical Wills is “So That Your Values Live On.” While a will is a final statement by a person regarding the sharing or apportioning of his or her property and other worldly goods to family and friends, an ethical will is a final statement by a person to his or her family, not of property or wealth to be left for the children but about the ethical ideals and practices that the person wants his or her children to continue. An ethical will is our last chance to leave our children a message of the values that we want them to maintain in their adult life especially after we are gone. It is our last chance to teach our children the ethics we have tried to impart throughout their lives. It is our last chance to leave our children with a legacy of critical life lessons that we hope will continue to guide them, sustain them and give them strength.
As Rav Kook taught us, we live in a world of chaos. This is not a world of ease and relaxation but of world of disorder, stress and fear. My generation grew up with the fear of nuclear war, which like a hurricane can be foreseen. This generation has grown up with the fear of terrorism, which is more like an earthquake able to strike anywhere and anytime without any forewarning. This generation not only lives in fear of terrorism but in fear of a total economic collapse as well. Small wonder that we have an epidemic of sleep deprivation, which is especially rampant among young people ages 20 to 50 that are trying to maintain their own homes and feed their young children. Recent studies have shown that one out of three adults suffer some form of sleep disorder leading to sleep deprivation. There are approximately 84 different diagnosed sleep disorders in today’s world. Sleep deprivation along with the many neurological problems it can cause is a sure sign of stress and fear and even depression. For an older person to have trouble sleeping is not so unusual, but for our young adult and middle-aged children to suffer sleep disorders is very disturbing. There are approximately 100 million Americans who cannot get enough sleep. What can we do about it? What lessons can we learn that we can impart to our children to give them more peaceful and healthier lives?
Many children are taught to say their prayers before going to bed at night. Every culture and every religion has their rituals and their sayings but they all come down to the same basic desires; protection and safety, peace and rest. About four weeks ago at our Thursday morning minyan service, I was asked if Jews believed in angels and I answered by saying that angels in Jewish literature are considered messengers of God, in fact, that is what the Hebrew word for angel malach means, messenger. But we do not believe in angels as divine beings that can intervene with God on our behalf. Then another minyanaire opined and said, “I remember as a child saying something about the malach that watches over me at night.” So I pulled out the Orthodox prayer book and sure enough in the reading of the Sh’ma that we are supposed to say at night, as we are about to go to sleep, there is a passage about the angel who redeems us and protects us. And at the end of the prayer it says, “In the name of the Lord, the God of Israel, may Michael be at my right hand, Gabriel at my left, in front of me Uriel and behind me Raphael and above me the Shechinah, the nurturing, loving, protecting presence of God.” In our Talmud, Rabbi Ben Zoma teaches, “Who is wise? One who learns from all people” as it says in Psalm 119, “I have learned from all my students.” That day, I learned something about Judaism that I had not known before and I understood the consoling and reassuring power of that nighttime prayer and how it could give children and adults alike a sense of peace at night and allow them to get the rest and the sleep they need. However, most of our children are no longer innocent children, they are knowledgeable and possibly skeptical adults. Belief in protecting angels will not reassure the majority of today’s young and middle-aged adults. There needs to be a profound paradigm shift in today’s society for that to happen and the prevailing paradigm in today’s society post 9-11 is the paradigm of fear. Charles Blow in OP Ed piece in the September 10th issue of the NY Times wrote about the current wave of fear. He stated that according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released last week the percentage of people who say that the country is safer now from terrorism compared with before Sept. 11, 2001, has reached a new low. He writes, “We seem to be experiencing a new sense of paranoia about these extremists and the threats they pose.”
Case in point; I am sure that many of you received this political propaganda in the mail before the recent primary elections. This is a picture taken at the height of the most recent Palestinian Arab uprising during 2001 and 2002, which is referred in Arabic as the intifada. In this picture, angry Palestinian Arab youth are throwing stones, clumps of concrete and other objects. Although we cannot see them, their most likely target were Israeli soldiers who were patrolling the occupied territories of either the West Bank or Gaza. Above their heads are the words, “Has there ever been a more important time to stand with Israel?” and over here in the upper left hand corner are the words ‘Paid for and authorized by Jeff Greene for Florida.’ Ultimately, Jeff Greene lost the Democratic primary election for the US Senate seat being vacated by Bill Nelson but what is so reprehensible about this propaganda is that Jeff Greene was trying to manipulate the Jewish vote. He promoted himself as a nice Jewish boy from Florida who had a Bar Mitzvah, taught at a Hebrew School, has lived in Israel, can speak Hebrew fluently and consequently is the best choice as our Senator because he will defend Israel better than his opponent. Jeff Greene was using our concerns for Israel, playing on our fears and counting on them to get him into the US Senate. What happened to the days when politicians spoke positively and reassuringly and said things like, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Our society is overwhelmed and consumed by fear. No wonder that we and our children cannot sleep well at night. And yet our leaders, and those who want to be our leaders, are not doing enough to alleviate our fears. Well we know, that fear is a dangerous thing to have because it leads not only to sleep deprivation but also to poor judgment, hasty actions, anger and hatred, division and ultimately destruction. As Rav Kook taught us, “In a time of tension, it is critically important not to divide, not to develop hatred, but to spread love and embrace.”
My generation expressed this sentiment with the phrase, “Make love not war.” In our daily prayer book, the Gates of Prayer, we find the same idea expressed on page 52. There we find a quote from the Mishnah, the first book of rabbinical law, where it says “these are the commandments whose fulfillment provides rewards in this world and in the world to come, honoring father and mother, welcoming guests, visiting the sick, rejoicing with bride and groom, accompanying the dead to the grave, comforting the mourners, and making peace where there is strife.” Make peace where people are fighting, make peace where people are struggling, make peace where people are hurting, make peace where people are afraid; make love not hatred, make peace not war. It is incumbent upon us to lessen the fears of our society; the fears of economic collapse, the fear of unemployment, homelessness and hunger, the fear of war or terrorism. We must not encourage fear. We must encourage understanding. We must not promote anger and hatred. We must promote peace.
We can help our children overcome their fears and teach them to promote peace in the ethical wills we leave them but why wait that long. Those words of the nighttime prayers reminding us that we have angels all around us and God’s presence above us protecting us gives us and our children comfort and a sense of security and the assurance that we are not alone but those prayers might not be sufficient for today. Our society is going through a very tough time right now. It is important for our children to know that they are not alone and that even though we may not be able to help them out financially, we are with them, standing with them, offering them our unconditional love and support.
We may have unresolved issues with our children. There may be a lot of hurt feelings and things left unsaid. While we know that our tradition dictates that we forgive a person once they approach us in true humility and remorse and ask us to forgive them but in the musar literature we find the ethical teaching that we should forgive someone even if he or she does not offer an apology. As we read in the Talmud tractate dealing with the laws of Yom Kippur, “If a person forgives others, he will merit forgiveness for his sins.” We have to let go of our anger at our children, let go of resentments, of our frustrations with them, let go of our desire to control their lives. We cannot and we should not try to control their livers but we must be there for them when they are in need, when they are afraid even though they are probably too proud and stubborn to express their fears to us. When the prophet Malachi spoke about the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord, the day when all the wicked will be judged and punished and all the righteous rewarded, he said that Elijah the prophet would return before that day to reconcile parents with children. Imagine that! Before the people of Israel and the world are judged by God, no less a personage than Elijah the prophet, God’s second greatest champion and advocate, will devote his time to reconcile parents with children. Messianic redemption is only possible when parents reconcile with their children; when there is shalom bayit peace in the family and in the home. In the stirring words of U’netaneh tokef, the prayer that asks us “Who shall be tranquil and who shall be troubled?” and that reminds us that our fate is sealed on Yom Kippur, we find the words declaring “Hineh yom hadin – This is the Day of Judgment.” With Malachi’s prophecy about Elijah and the coming messianic age, there can be no stronger indication that on this Day of Atonement and judgment we must reconcile ourselves with our parents and with our children.
Rabbi Reimer loves to tell this story about a guy who lived in New Jersey and would frequently travel on the NJ Turnpike. Every time he would get close to Exit 9, he would get angry. He would get so angry that his wife was sure he was going to have a heart attack. It turns out that many years earlier, a guy who lived off Exit 9 had been a friend of his and had betrayed his trust and had cheated him out of a very lucrative business opportunity. So for years afterwards, every time he would get near to Exit 9 he would remember the sin committed and experience intense anger. One day, he happened to run into somebody who had been a mutual friend of his and the guy who lived off Exit 9. So he casually asked him, “What do you hear from Chaim Yankel who lives off Exit 9 of the Turnpike?” And this friend tells him, “Oh, he died ten years ago.” He suddenly feels so ashamed and so foolish for wasting all that energy and time pointlessly holding on to anger and hatred. It is better to let go of old anger and resentments, jealousy and frustrations; it is toxic baggage, which cannot help or heal anyone or anything. Let go of your anger at your children and teach them the value of forgiveness and love and the lesson of making peace where there is strife. Before Elijah comes, reconcile with your children, make peace with your children. Teach them that they are not alone and that you love them. Maybe then, they can sleep at peace and finally get some rest.
They say that charity begins at home; so does peace. We say at the end of the tefilah, “As God brings peace to the heavens above, so may God bring peace to us and all Israel and all the world.” But let’s look at it more personally, as we reconcile parents with children, as we lessen our children’s fears, as we reassure our children of our love and devotion and try to help them get the rest and tranquility they so dearly need, and as we bring peace to our home and to our family, may that peace spread to all our congregation, to all our community, to all our country, and to all our world. And let us say, Amen
Three senior Jewish women get together one afternoon. The first one sits down and goes, “Oy!” The second sits down and exhales “Oy!” And the third one says, “I thought we had agreed not to talk about the children!”
Children can bring us great nachas and they can also give us tremendous tsuris but, as in the case of all relationships, it can go both ways; we can give our children nachas or tsuris as well. Before we judge our children’s actions we have to ask ourselves, what do we give our children? What values and lessons should we impart to them as they live their adult lives; lessons and values that we hope will stay with them even after we are gone. Sociologists, educators and behavioral scientists all agree that the most lasting lessons taught by parents to their children are taught at home and are taught by actions and not by words. Do as I say and not as I do is a hypocritical cop out because children emulate the example of their parents. As parents we are role models for our children and they will more likely do as we do rather than as we say.
Back in 2002, our Temple and Temple Beit ha-Yam in Stuart shared a Scholar-In-Residence, Rabbi Jack Reimer. One of Rabbi Reimer’s main areas of interest is ethical wills. Ethical wills are first found in the Torah with the blessings given by Isaac to his son Jacob and by Jacob to his twelve sons and continued on as a significant part of a Jewish family life in the rest of the Bible and in the Talmud as well as medieval and modern Jewish life. Rabbi Reimer has written several books on the subject and has become somewhat of an expert not only providing the history of ethical wills but, in addition, a guide to writing your own. The title of one of his books on Ethical Wills is “So That Your Values Live On.” While a will is a final statement by a person regarding the sharing or apportioning of his or her property and other worldly goods to family and friends, an ethical will is a final statement by a person to his or her family, not of property or wealth to be left for the children but about the ethical ideals and practices that the person wants his or her children to continue. An ethical will is our last chance to leave our children a message of the values that we want them to maintain in their adult life especially after we are gone. It is our last chance to teach our children the ethics we have tried to impart throughout their lives. It is our last chance to leave our children with a legacy of critical life lessons that we hope will continue to guide them, sustain them and give them strength.
As Rav Kook taught us, we live in a world of chaos. This is not a world of ease and relaxation but of world of disorder, stress and fear. My generation grew up with the fear of nuclear war, which like a hurricane can be foreseen. This generation has grown up with the fear of terrorism, which is more like an earthquake able to strike anywhere and anytime without any forewarning. This generation not only lives in fear of terrorism but in fear of a total economic collapse as well. Small wonder that we have an epidemic of sleep deprivation, which is especially rampant among young people ages 20 to 50 that are trying to maintain their own homes and feed their young children. Recent studies have shown that one out of three adults suffer some form of sleep disorder leading to sleep deprivation. There are approximately 84 different diagnosed sleep disorders in today’s world. Sleep deprivation along with the many neurological problems it can cause is a sure sign of stress and fear and even depression. For an older person to have trouble sleeping is not so unusual, but for our young adult and middle-aged children to suffer sleep disorders is very disturbing. There are approximately 100 million Americans who cannot get enough sleep. What can we do about it? What lessons can we learn that we can impart to our children to give them more peaceful and healthier lives?
Many children are taught to say their prayers before going to bed at night. Every culture and every religion has their rituals and their sayings but they all come down to the same basic desires; protection and safety, peace and rest. About four weeks ago at our Thursday morning minyan service, I was asked if Jews believed in angels and I answered by saying that angels in Jewish literature are considered messengers of God, in fact, that is what the Hebrew word for angel malach means, messenger. But we do not believe in angels as divine beings that can intervene with God on our behalf. Then another minyanaire opined and said, “I remember as a child saying something about the malach that watches over me at night.” So I pulled out the Orthodox prayer book and sure enough in the reading of the Sh’ma that we are supposed to say at night, as we are about to go to sleep, there is a passage about the angel who redeems us and protects us. And at the end of the prayer it says, “In the name of the Lord, the God of Israel, may Michael be at my right hand, Gabriel at my left, in front of me Uriel and behind me Raphael and above me the Shechinah, the nurturing, loving, protecting presence of God.” In our Talmud, Rabbi Ben Zoma teaches, “Who is wise? One who learns from all people” as it says in Psalm 119, “I have learned from all my students.” That day, I learned something about Judaism that I had not known before and I understood the consoling and reassuring power of that nighttime prayer and how it could give children and adults alike a sense of peace at night and allow them to get the rest and the sleep they need. However, most of our children are no longer innocent children, they are knowledgeable and possibly skeptical adults. Belief in protecting angels will not reassure the majority of today’s young and middle-aged adults. There needs to be a profound paradigm shift in today’s society for that to happen and the prevailing paradigm in today’s society post 9-11 is the paradigm of fear. Charles Blow in OP Ed piece in the September 10th issue of the NY Times wrote about the current wave of fear. He stated that according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released last week the percentage of people who say that the country is safer now from terrorism compared with before Sept. 11, 2001, has reached a new low. He writes, “We seem to be experiencing a new sense of paranoia about these extremists and the threats they pose.”
Case in point; I am sure that many of you received this political propaganda in the mail before the recent primary elections. This is a picture taken at the height of the most recent Palestinian Arab uprising during 2001 and 2002, which is referred in Arabic as the intifada. In this picture, angry Palestinian Arab youth are throwing stones, clumps of concrete and other objects. Although we cannot see them, their most likely target were Israeli soldiers who were patrolling the occupied territories of either the West Bank or Gaza. Above their heads are the words, “Has there ever been a more important time to stand with Israel?” and over here in the upper left hand corner are the words ‘Paid for and authorized by Jeff Greene for Florida.’ Ultimately, Jeff Greene lost the Democratic primary election for the US Senate seat being vacated by Bill Nelson but what is so reprehensible about this propaganda is that Jeff Greene was trying to manipulate the Jewish vote. He promoted himself as a nice Jewish boy from Florida who had a Bar Mitzvah, taught at a Hebrew School, has lived in Israel, can speak Hebrew fluently and consequently is the best choice as our Senator because he will defend Israel better than his opponent. Jeff Greene was using our concerns for Israel, playing on our fears and counting on them to get him into the US Senate. What happened to the days when politicians spoke positively and reassuringly and said things like, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Our society is overwhelmed and consumed by fear. No wonder that we and our children cannot sleep well at night. And yet our leaders, and those who want to be our leaders, are not doing enough to alleviate our fears. Well we know, that fear is a dangerous thing to have because it leads not only to sleep deprivation but also to poor judgment, hasty actions, anger and hatred, division and ultimately destruction. As Rav Kook taught us, “In a time of tension, it is critically important not to divide, not to develop hatred, but to spread love and embrace.”
My generation expressed this sentiment with the phrase, “Make love not war.” In our daily prayer book, the Gates of Prayer, we find the same idea expressed on page 52. There we find a quote from the Mishnah, the first book of rabbinical law, where it says “these are the commandments whose fulfillment provides rewards in this world and in the world to come, honoring father and mother, welcoming guests, visiting the sick, rejoicing with bride and groom, accompanying the dead to the grave, comforting the mourners, and making peace where there is strife.” Make peace where people are fighting, make peace where people are struggling, make peace where people are hurting, make peace where people are afraid; make love not hatred, make peace not war. It is incumbent upon us to lessen the fears of our society; the fears of economic collapse, the fear of unemployment, homelessness and hunger, the fear of war or terrorism. We must not encourage fear. We must encourage understanding. We must not promote anger and hatred. We must promote peace.
We can help our children overcome their fears and teach them to promote peace in the ethical wills we leave them but why wait that long. Those words of the nighttime prayers reminding us that we have angels all around us and God’s presence above us protecting us gives us and our children comfort and a sense of security and the assurance that we are not alone but those prayers might not be sufficient for today. Our society is going through a very tough time right now. It is important for our children to know that they are not alone and that even though we may not be able to help them out financially, we are with them, standing with them, offering them our unconditional love and support.
We may have unresolved issues with our children. There may be a lot of hurt feelings and things left unsaid. While we know that our tradition dictates that we forgive a person once they approach us in true humility and remorse and ask us to forgive them but in the musar literature we find the ethical teaching that we should forgive someone even if he or she does not offer an apology. As we read in the Talmud tractate dealing with the laws of Yom Kippur, “If a person forgives others, he will merit forgiveness for his sins.” We have to let go of our anger at our children, let go of resentments, of our frustrations with them, let go of our desire to control their lives. We cannot and we should not try to control their livers but we must be there for them when they are in need, when they are afraid even though they are probably too proud and stubborn to express their fears to us. When the prophet Malachi spoke about the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord, the day when all the wicked will be judged and punished and all the righteous rewarded, he said that Elijah the prophet would return before that day to reconcile parents with children. Imagine that! Before the people of Israel and the world are judged by God, no less a personage than Elijah the prophet, God’s second greatest champion and advocate, will devote his time to reconcile parents with children. Messianic redemption is only possible when parents reconcile with their children; when there is shalom bayit peace in the family and in the home. In the stirring words of U’netaneh tokef, the prayer that asks us “Who shall be tranquil and who shall be troubled?” and that reminds us that our fate is sealed on Yom Kippur, we find the words declaring “Hineh yom hadin – This is the Day of Judgment.” With Malachi’s prophecy about Elijah and the coming messianic age, there can be no stronger indication that on this Day of Atonement and judgment we must reconcile ourselves with our parents and with our children.
Rabbi Reimer loves to tell this story about a guy who lived in New Jersey and would frequently travel on the NJ Turnpike. Every time he would get close to Exit 9, he would get angry. He would get so angry that his wife was sure he was going to have a heart attack. It turns out that many years earlier, a guy who lived off Exit 9 had been a friend of his and had betrayed his trust and had cheated him out of a very lucrative business opportunity. So for years afterwards, every time he would get near to Exit 9 he would remember the sin committed and experience intense anger. One day, he happened to run into somebody who had been a mutual friend of his and the guy who lived off Exit 9. So he casually asked him, “What do you hear from Chaim Yankel who lives off Exit 9 of the Turnpike?” And this friend tells him, “Oh, he died ten years ago.” He suddenly feels so ashamed and so foolish for wasting all that energy and time pointlessly holding on to anger and hatred. It is better to let go of old anger and resentments, jealousy and frustrations; it is toxic baggage, which cannot help or heal anyone or anything. Let go of your anger at your children and teach them the value of forgiveness and love and the lesson of making peace where there is strife. Before Elijah comes, reconcile with your children, make peace with your children. Teach them that they are not alone and that you love them. Maybe then, they can sleep at peace and finally get some rest.
They say that charity begins at home; so does peace. We say at the end of the tefilah, “As God brings peace to the heavens above, so may God bring peace to us and all Israel and all the world.” But let’s look at it more personally, as we reconcile parents with children, as we lessen our children’s fears, as we reassure our children of our love and devotion and try to help them get the rest and tranquility they so dearly need, and as we bring peace to our home and to our family, may that peace spread to all our congregation, to all our community, to all our country, and to all our world. And let us say, Amen
Sermon Yom Kippur 5771
A Jewish couple was hosting a lovely dinner party at their home. There were three other couples at the dinner and they were all having a grand time eating and drinking. All of a sudden, the telephone rings. The host excuses himself and goes to answer it. After a few minutes, he comes back to the table and apologizes to his guests and tells them that there is an emergency board meeting at the Temple and he has to attend. His guests do not understand the urgency. They say to him, “Why must you go? You’re not the President, or Treasurer or an officer of any kind. Why can’t you miss this meeting?” and their host responds, “Because I’m the against vote.”
In 1994, Harvard Law School Professor Lani Guinier wrote a scathing critique of the contemporary American political system entitled “The Tyranny of the Majority.” That title came from the words of one of the Constitution’s framers, James Madison, as he tried in 1789 to craft our country’s legal system so that all parties and opinions were properly and proportionally represented. Dr. Guinier claimed that minority rights were not being properly represented and that the current legislative and electoral system was blatantly unfair to minorities. In the sixteen years since that book was written, we have seen a major shift in American and international politics. It might be more appropriate today to write a book about the tyranny of the minority.
President Kennedy once remarked that he would never be remembered as a great President because he could not get his bills through Congress. He envisioned and proposed bold legislation trying to drastically change housing laws, voting laws and many civil rights laws but he was met with constant resistance often suffering filibusters from members of his own party. President Truman referred to his Congress as the Do-Nothing Congress because of their inability or unwillingness to pass legislation. But in both of those cases, the legislation was proposed regardless of the possibility of a filibuster or fear of failure and these laws were supported or rejected by bi-partisan groups of Senators and Congressmen. Today we have a Congress that is not a do nothing Congress but a Congress that will not embrace bold legislation and make the changes necessary in our society for us to function in a healthy political system and with a sound economy. What has happened is that the minority party, which happens to be the Republican Party in today’s Congress, has become the party of “No!” When Nancy Reagan taught the country to Just Say No, she was referring to drug abuse but today’s Republican Party sees it as a rallying cry to resist and deter any bold legislation proposed by President Obama or the Democratic Congressional leadership. The tyranny of the majority is no more. Now it is the minority party that determines and drives the agenda. The against vote has taken center stage. Like Groucho Marx sang in the 1932 classic comedy movie “Horsefeathers”, “I don't care what you have to say: It makes no difference anyway. Whatever it is, I'm against it!
Lately we have heard about something called The Tea Party. This is a very vocal, superconservative right wing group within the Republican Party. It began as a fringe group, a minority constituency within the Republican Party. For this group, even George Bush wasn’t conservative enough. And yet, in the recent primary elections, candidates supported by this Tea Party movement have won the Republican nomination in significant states and have a good chance of winning in the general elections in November. Is this the trend for our society and our world that the small but vocal negative minority gets to control the political landscape and significantly affect the outcome while the majority does nothing. As Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post asks in her article of September 14th, “Is the moderate northeastern Republican in danger of going completely extinct?
And lest you think that this is only an issue in American politics, take a look at Israel. Israel’s political system is a parliamentary system based on the British system but with only one legislative body, the Knesset, rather than two. In the Knesset, you have 120 seats. For a political party to rule, they must have a majority of those seats. Whether it is Labor or Likud or Kadima or any party, they must control 61 or more seats in order for their party leader to be appointed the head of government by Israel’s president. In Israel’s 62 years of existence, there have been very few times when one party won all 61 seats. Most times, the leading party had to put together a coalition of minority parties to form a large enough block to control the majority of the seats in the Knesset. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, like others before him, had to include the ultra-Orthodox parties including the super right wing Sephardic party of Shas, which has 11 seats, as well as the ultra-nationalist party of Yisrael Beiteinu, Israel our home, which has 15 seats.
This past July, Knesset Member David Rotem of the Yisrael Beiteinu party who serves as the chairman of the Knesset Law and Justice Committee, initiated a bill that would make the ultra-Orthodox Chief Rabbinate of Israel the sole power to authorize and supervise conversions to Judaism. Not only would that have further de-legitimized the Conservative and Reform movements in Israel and prohibited conversions under their auspices, it would have legally nullified conversions performed outside of Israel by non-Orthodox rabbis should that person desire to make aliyah and become a citizen of Israel. Sadly, this is not the first and will probably not be the last time that the nationalist and religious parties in Israel will try to use the Knesset to outlaw Reform and Conservative and even Modern Orthodox conversions. Yet each and every time, it is a minority party in the government that uses its leverage to try and fulfill its own agenda contrary to the general perspective of the majority party or parties. The issue came to head this year around Tisha B’Av, the 9th day of the 11th month of Av, the anniversary of the destruction of the First and Second Temple’s in Jerusalem; an event, our rabbis taught us, that occurred because of the internal strife and division within the Jewish people at that time. Thankfully, the law did not pass but it was tabled for further study and will come up for discussion and a possible vote in January. The reason why this bill came so close to passage was that David Rotem wrote it in vague language and made it sound like it was a law designed to centralize and simplify the conversion process and lessen the court cases about who is and who isn’t a Jew. In addition, David Rotem had the support of his party Yisrael Beyteynu and worked in collusion with members of the ultra-Orthodox Sephardic party known as Shas and the ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazic party called United Torah Judaism. Together with David Rotem’s party that amounted to a voting bloc of 31 seats, three more seats than the majority Kadima party. Once the bill did not get passed, the Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar lashed out and claimed that the liberal and Reform Jews now “have their claws in Zion and are trying to impose on Israel the lifestyle of other nations with rampant violence, immodesty and assimilation at a very high rate.” The Chief Rabbi went on to say that the Reformers have “established legions of warriors in Israel whose purpose is to remove Torah from Israel “ and that every Jew must try to influence Knesset members and ministers and pray for these lost sons to return to the right path. Truth be told, the only reason the bill did not pass is because the non-Orthodox Jews of America spoke up and protested and convinced Prime Minister Netanyahu to speak out against the bill. But here again, we were seeing the vocal, narrow-minded minority controlling the legislation and driving the agenda of the governing body.
I am trying to figure out the group dynamics and psychological and sociological factors at work here. Why does this seem to be happening in institutions and organizations across the board? How is it that a one or two issue minority group can derail an entire governing body? How did the Tea Party get to exert so much influence that the recent Republican primaries had so many of their candidates winning? How did the minority Shas party that controls only 11 seats in the 120-seat Israeli Knesset become the power broker? How does a small yet vocal minority with a negative and self-centered agenda get to control any institution or organization from a major national government to a congregation? What is the common thread? What is the social or psychological dynamic evident here and can we change it? Does it mean that Richard Nixon was right that the strident minority calls the shots because the majority is silent?
Over the past few months, my wife Sara and I have been reading the trilogy of books written by the late Swedish journalist Steig Larsson. Before his death in 2004, Larsson wrote mostly about the racist, ultra-nationalist right wing in Sweden. After his death, he became most famous for his trilogy of novels written about the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo known as Lisbeth Salander and the investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist. But what is happening in Sweden today and the national election scheduled for tomorrow would have fascinated Larsson and would have been a huge topic for his earlier writing. Once a minority party, the “Sweden Democrats” is poised to amass an impressive number of votes in tomorrow’s elections to assure them of significant representation in Sweden’s parliament. While it is fascinating to watch a small political party gain a following and succeed in politics, it is frightening to watch 1933 happen all over again. The Sweden Democrats are a virulent anti-immigrant party that for 15 years walked the walk and talked the talk of neo-Nazi skinheads but have recently shed their jackboots and uniforms to gain greater political legitimacy. With the growth in the immigrant Muslim community in Sweden, the ideology of this minority, marginal party has achieved broader appeal and acceptability. Anders Sannerstedt, a political scientist at Lund University acknowledges that while the Sweden Democrats began as an outright racist organization, "In our neighboring countries, the parties of discontent began life as classic tax revolt movements." I
As long as we allow the minority’s agenda to influence or derail the majority’s goals, we run the risk of having the minority agenda becoming the majority agenda. We cannot allow that to happen in our congregation, in our community, in our country, in Israel or anywhere in the world. The special interest group has become the trendsetter and the guide for our government. We cannot focus on the interests of small groups. We must focus on the larger picture. It is impossible to please and appease each and every small group; it will ultimately tear us apart. We have to focus on the greater whole and not the particular interests of individuals and small groups. If it is a national issue, we must ask first and foremost is it good for our country and for the majority of its citizens? If it is a Jewish issue, we have to ask if it is good for the Jews both in Israel and in the Diaspora? If it is a Temple issue, we must ask ourselves if it is good for the current and future life of our congregation and the majority of its members.
This year of 5771 must be the year that we no longer focus on self-gratification or self-aggrandizement or settling old personal scores but we must focus on putting the greater interest of the whole body first. We cannot affect the outcome of Sweden’s election tomorrow although it does seem that allowing the minority party of The Sweden Democrats representation in the parliament would not be a good thing for the world.
We can affect the attempt by a minority party in Israel’s government to turn back all our advancements of legitimacy and acceptability of the Reform and Conservative movements in Israel. We must remain vigilant and watchful this coming December and January when the Rotem bill might resurface in the Knesset. Our voices and the voices of our representatives within the Reform and Conservative movements in Israel can stop this bill from reaching the Knesset floor for a vote.
By exercising our Constitutional right to vote in November, we can affect the attempt by the minority Tea Party to derail Congressional legislation so that it only deals with their agenda. We can certainly affect change in our Temple by redirecting ourselves away from individuals and small groups and towards the whole of the congregation. If it benefits the whole Temple in the short term and the long term and benefits the majority of its congregants, young and old alike, then it is an agenda worth pursuing.
Ken y’hee ratson – May it be God’s will that this New Year of 5771 be a year of broadening our perspective, a year when we dedicate ourselves to the greater good and not the individual or small group need, a year when we look at the big picture and do what is right and necessary to affect the greater good of the entire body. Let this be the year that we embrace the noble and honorable ideal that it is right and just and praiseworthy for the individual to sacrifice his or her needs or desires for the sake of the many.
And let us say, Amen
A Jewish couple was hosting a lovely dinner party at their home. There were three other couples at the dinner and they were all having a grand time eating and drinking. All of a sudden, the telephone rings. The host excuses himself and goes to answer it. After a few minutes, he comes back to the table and apologizes to his guests and tells them that there is an emergency board meeting at the Temple and he has to attend. His guests do not understand the urgency. They say to him, “Why must you go? You’re not the President, or Treasurer or an officer of any kind. Why can’t you miss this meeting?” and their host responds, “Because I’m the against vote.”
In 1994, Harvard Law School Professor Lani Guinier wrote a scathing critique of the contemporary American political system entitled “The Tyranny of the Majority.” That title came from the words of one of the Constitution’s framers, James Madison, as he tried in 1789 to craft our country’s legal system so that all parties and opinions were properly and proportionally represented. Dr. Guinier claimed that minority rights were not being properly represented and that the current legislative and electoral system was blatantly unfair to minorities. In the sixteen years since that book was written, we have seen a major shift in American and international politics. It might be more appropriate today to write a book about the tyranny of the minority.
President Kennedy once remarked that he would never be remembered as a great President because he could not get his bills through Congress. He envisioned and proposed bold legislation trying to drastically change housing laws, voting laws and many civil rights laws but he was met with constant resistance often suffering filibusters from members of his own party. President Truman referred to his Congress as the Do-Nothing Congress because of their inability or unwillingness to pass legislation. But in both of those cases, the legislation was proposed regardless of the possibility of a filibuster or fear of failure and these laws were supported or rejected by bi-partisan groups of Senators and Congressmen. Today we have a Congress that is not a do nothing Congress but a Congress that will not embrace bold legislation and make the changes necessary in our society for us to function in a healthy political system and with a sound economy. What has happened is that the minority party, which happens to be the Republican Party in today’s Congress, has become the party of “No!” When Nancy Reagan taught the country to Just Say No, she was referring to drug abuse but today’s Republican Party sees it as a rallying cry to resist and deter any bold legislation proposed by President Obama or the Democratic Congressional leadership. The tyranny of the majority is no more. Now it is the minority party that determines and drives the agenda. The against vote has taken center stage. Like Groucho Marx sang in the 1932 classic comedy movie “Horsefeathers”, “I don't care what you have to say: It makes no difference anyway. Whatever it is, I'm against it!
Lately we have heard about something called The Tea Party. This is a very vocal, superconservative right wing group within the Republican Party. It began as a fringe group, a minority constituency within the Republican Party. For this group, even George Bush wasn’t conservative enough. And yet, in the recent primary elections, candidates supported by this Tea Party movement have won the Republican nomination in significant states and have a good chance of winning in the general elections in November. Is this the trend for our society and our world that the small but vocal negative minority gets to control the political landscape and significantly affect the outcome while the majority does nothing. As Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post asks in her article of September 14th, “Is the moderate northeastern Republican in danger of going completely extinct?
And lest you think that this is only an issue in American politics, take a look at Israel. Israel’s political system is a parliamentary system based on the British system but with only one legislative body, the Knesset, rather than two. In the Knesset, you have 120 seats. For a political party to rule, they must have a majority of those seats. Whether it is Labor or Likud or Kadima or any party, they must control 61 or more seats in order for their party leader to be appointed the head of government by Israel’s president. In Israel’s 62 years of existence, there have been very few times when one party won all 61 seats. Most times, the leading party had to put together a coalition of minority parties to form a large enough block to control the majority of the seats in the Knesset. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, like others before him, had to include the ultra-Orthodox parties including the super right wing Sephardic party of Shas, which has 11 seats, as well as the ultra-nationalist party of Yisrael Beiteinu, Israel our home, which has 15 seats.
This past July, Knesset Member David Rotem of the Yisrael Beiteinu party who serves as the chairman of the Knesset Law and Justice Committee, initiated a bill that would make the ultra-Orthodox Chief Rabbinate of Israel the sole power to authorize and supervise conversions to Judaism. Not only would that have further de-legitimized the Conservative and Reform movements in Israel and prohibited conversions under their auspices, it would have legally nullified conversions performed outside of Israel by non-Orthodox rabbis should that person desire to make aliyah and become a citizen of Israel. Sadly, this is not the first and will probably not be the last time that the nationalist and religious parties in Israel will try to use the Knesset to outlaw Reform and Conservative and even Modern Orthodox conversions. Yet each and every time, it is a minority party in the government that uses its leverage to try and fulfill its own agenda contrary to the general perspective of the majority party or parties. The issue came to head this year around Tisha B’Av, the 9th day of the 11th month of Av, the anniversary of the destruction of the First and Second Temple’s in Jerusalem; an event, our rabbis taught us, that occurred because of the internal strife and division within the Jewish people at that time. Thankfully, the law did not pass but it was tabled for further study and will come up for discussion and a possible vote in January. The reason why this bill came so close to passage was that David Rotem wrote it in vague language and made it sound like it was a law designed to centralize and simplify the conversion process and lessen the court cases about who is and who isn’t a Jew. In addition, David Rotem had the support of his party Yisrael Beyteynu and worked in collusion with members of the ultra-Orthodox Sephardic party known as Shas and the ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazic party called United Torah Judaism. Together with David Rotem’s party that amounted to a voting bloc of 31 seats, three more seats than the majority Kadima party. Once the bill did not get passed, the Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar lashed out and claimed that the liberal and Reform Jews now “have their claws in Zion and are trying to impose on Israel the lifestyle of other nations with rampant violence, immodesty and assimilation at a very high rate.” The Chief Rabbi went on to say that the Reformers have “established legions of warriors in Israel whose purpose is to remove Torah from Israel “ and that every Jew must try to influence Knesset members and ministers and pray for these lost sons to return to the right path. Truth be told, the only reason the bill did not pass is because the non-Orthodox Jews of America spoke up and protested and convinced Prime Minister Netanyahu to speak out against the bill. But here again, we were seeing the vocal, narrow-minded minority controlling the legislation and driving the agenda of the governing body.
I am trying to figure out the group dynamics and psychological and sociological factors at work here. Why does this seem to be happening in institutions and organizations across the board? How is it that a one or two issue minority group can derail an entire governing body? How did the Tea Party get to exert so much influence that the recent Republican primaries had so many of their candidates winning? How did the minority Shas party that controls only 11 seats in the 120-seat Israeli Knesset become the power broker? How does a small yet vocal minority with a negative and self-centered agenda get to control any institution or organization from a major national government to a congregation? What is the common thread? What is the social or psychological dynamic evident here and can we change it? Does it mean that Richard Nixon was right that the strident minority calls the shots because the majority is silent?
Over the past few months, my wife Sara and I have been reading the trilogy of books written by the late Swedish journalist Steig Larsson. Before his death in 2004, Larsson wrote mostly about the racist, ultra-nationalist right wing in Sweden. After his death, he became most famous for his trilogy of novels written about the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo known as Lisbeth Salander and the investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist. But what is happening in Sweden today and the national election scheduled for tomorrow would have fascinated Larsson and would have been a huge topic for his earlier writing. Once a minority party, the “Sweden Democrats” is poised to amass an impressive number of votes in tomorrow’s elections to assure them of significant representation in Sweden’s parliament. While it is fascinating to watch a small political party gain a following and succeed in politics, it is frightening to watch 1933 happen all over again. The Sweden Democrats are a virulent anti-immigrant party that for 15 years walked the walk and talked the talk of neo-Nazi skinheads but have recently shed their jackboots and uniforms to gain greater political legitimacy. With the growth in the immigrant Muslim community in Sweden, the ideology of this minority, marginal party has achieved broader appeal and acceptability. Anders Sannerstedt, a political scientist at Lund University acknowledges that while the Sweden Democrats began as an outright racist organization, "In our neighboring countries, the parties of discontent began life as classic tax revolt movements." I
As long as we allow the minority’s agenda to influence or derail the majority’s goals, we run the risk of having the minority agenda becoming the majority agenda. We cannot allow that to happen in our congregation, in our community, in our country, in Israel or anywhere in the world. The special interest group has become the trendsetter and the guide for our government. We cannot focus on the interests of small groups. We must focus on the larger picture. It is impossible to please and appease each and every small group; it will ultimately tear us apart. We have to focus on the greater whole and not the particular interests of individuals and small groups. If it is a national issue, we must ask first and foremost is it good for our country and for the majority of its citizens? If it is a Jewish issue, we have to ask if it is good for the Jews both in Israel and in the Diaspora? If it is a Temple issue, we must ask ourselves if it is good for the current and future life of our congregation and the majority of its members.
This year of 5771 must be the year that we no longer focus on self-gratification or self-aggrandizement or settling old personal scores but we must focus on putting the greater interest of the whole body first. We cannot affect the outcome of Sweden’s election tomorrow although it does seem that allowing the minority party of The Sweden Democrats representation in the parliament would not be a good thing for the world.
We can affect the attempt by a minority party in Israel’s government to turn back all our advancements of legitimacy and acceptability of the Reform and Conservative movements in Israel. We must remain vigilant and watchful this coming December and January when the Rotem bill might resurface in the Knesset. Our voices and the voices of our representatives within the Reform and Conservative movements in Israel can stop this bill from reaching the Knesset floor for a vote.
By exercising our Constitutional right to vote in November, we can affect the attempt by the minority Tea Party to derail Congressional legislation so that it only deals with their agenda. We can certainly affect change in our Temple by redirecting ourselves away from individuals and small groups and towards the whole of the congregation. If it benefits the whole Temple in the short term and the long term and benefits the majority of its congregants, young and old alike, then it is an agenda worth pursuing.
Ken y’hee ratson – May it be God’s will that this New Year of 5771 be a year of broadening our perspective, a year when we dedicate ourselves to the greater good and not the individual or small group need, a year when we look at the big picture and do what is right and necessary to affect the greater good of the entire body. Let this be the year that we embrace the noble and honorable ideal that it is right and just and praiseworthy for the individual to sacrifice his or her needs or desires for the sake of the many.
And let us say, Amen
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