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