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