Sermons
Holiday and Hebrew Year
Yom Kippur: Misrepresentation
Sermon by Rabbi Sim Glaser
2016/5777
Twice this past year I was asked to serve as a dramaturge for two local stage productions. I was deeply honored to be considered as a dramaturge, and to celebrate the occasion, I dashed off to consult Webster’s Dictionary to determine what a “dramaturge” is! I guess I had always thought a dramaturge was a person with a burning desire to act on the stage… but I come by this honestly... When my mother first came to this country and heard about Jewish Social Action, she thought it meant mixed dancing at Hillel.
So it turns out a dramaturge is a literary editor who works with both cast and director on a production for various purposes – to correct inaccuracies, to help shape the play, and perhaps to advise on the effect it might have on the audience and so forth.
The first of the two plays was a musical about an Eastern European Jewish woman with a script that employed several Yiddish words and phrases. I think the most valuable contribution I made to this production may have been when I pointed out to the lovely young Lutheran actress that the dumplings in Grandma Sophie’s soup are not to be pronounced “crap-lach”. Yes, you’re welcome.
The second, and trickier, assignment was to assist a local cast in understanding some of the nuances of Shakespeare’s portrayal of the Jew Shylock in The Merchant of Venice for an upcoming production. To the credit of the director and producers, they were very conscientious about grappling with the significance of staging a play like Merchant in the Twin Cities, circa 2016. What did it mean historically? What does it mean today, to an audience here?
So they invited me to a pre-rehearsal discussion where I admitted up front that I am no Shakespearean scholar, nor do I play one on TV, but that I do have some working knowledge of the history of anti-Semitism and how this particular play has been used over the centuries to discredit and defame the Jewish people. The character of Shylock is firmly entrenched in the Western Canon and almost synonymous with greed, avarice, and blood-vengeance. The very word Shylock is a verb meaning to lend money at extortionately high rates of interest.
I thought the cast should be aware that no fewer than 50 different productions of Merchant took place during the reign of the Third Reich in Germany. One of Hitler’s personal favorites, he hired shills to be in the audience and to hoot and hiss when Shylock came on stage lest there be any uncertainty about how the Jew was being portrayed.
I also told the cast that relevant to staging The Merchant of Venice in present day Minnepolis/St. Paul is the historical fact that this place was, at one time, outside of Europe itself, the most viciously anti-Semitic spot in the world, with broad, fabricated, absurdly false representations of Jews coming out of the likes of Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, Radio minister Charles Coughlin, and Pastor William Riley who used plastic, oversimplified texts like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to school their adherents.
A member of the cast asked “What exactly did William Shakespeare really know about Jews?” Good question. Probably not that much, given that almost all of England’s Jewish population had been expelled in the 13th century and had not since returned. The playwright may well have been working off of the same mythology about Jews as anyone in his audience in 1596.
And then there is the fact that 16th century Venice is known, among other things, for introducing the word “ghetto” into the lexicon. The Jews of Venice were confined to one section of Venice called Geto, where their commerce was limited and they wore the identifying little red caps.
Now, I didn’t want to totally bum the cast out - even though, being good actors, they smiled politely during my diatribe. So I told them, hey, it ain’t all bad. If we learn anything from studying the works of Shakespeare, and any great literature we see that well-developed human characters are deeply nuanced, Shylock included. You can label any person as a typical this or that, but you will almost certainly misrepresent their unique nature. The greatest authors and playwrights surely knew this.
There is a wonderful YouTube video made some years ago of actor Patrick Stewart demonstrating three distinctively different ways in which the character Shylock can be and has been portrayed. Using Shylock’s well known dialogue with Antonio and Bassanio in the first act, Stewart first interprets Shylock as noble, dignified member of a persecuted race; then as a greedy, vengeful bloodthirsty monster (as Stewart was originally directed to play the part); then again a third time as humorous and jocular. To the actor’s credit, he refused to portray the character in only one dimension.
Labeling any large group of people in politics, art, or in casual “locker room banter” has huge consequences in a world that desperately seeks a sound bite. We want to sum up the totality of a race, a religion, nationality or gender in 140 characters or less. When we use stereotypes, or succumb to believing a stereotype, we grossly misinform ourselves about people. We quickly lose sight of individual integrity. We do not serve humanity. We verbally ghettoize people.
I think that a mitigating factor for the cast of Merchant might have been that the hatred portrayed lies so distantly in the past; it is old, a signature of its time and place. An historical curiosity. And there might be some truth in that.
But even a cursory glance at a Parisian newspaper, circa 2016, will reveal that Jew-baiting is alive and well in Europe. Someone not long ago mounted a kippah-cam, a small video recorder on top of a Yarmulke and walked through Paris, and the footage documented the person being spat upon repeatedly, not unlike the opening scene of Merchant of Venice some 500 years earlier.
And though the British expulsion of the Jews may indeed have occurred 8 centuries ago, you can still consult a modern edition of the Oxford English Dictionary and find the only proper noun that doubles as a verb is the word “Jew,” meaning to bargain with someone in a miserly or petty way.
Deborah Lipstadt taught us here several years ago, and discussed her then recent victory in the libel case against her by Holocaust denier David Irving. It was a big story at the time because it brought to light how a single person with a re-imagined narrative and a gross misrepresentation can mold public opinion about and discredit an entire people.
Deborah’s story is again the public eye as the film Denial has just been released. In one of the early scenes she makes it clear that she is willing to engage anyone in a discussion who wants to talk about various details, specifics, figures, but that she will not debate a person who denies, wholesale, that the Holocaust occurred. Such a claim, Lipstadt says, sheds no light on anything. Such a voice seeks to conceal, not to enlighten. Such a position seeks to misrepresent, not to portray. And the Jewish people are people who always err on the side of shining the spotlight on the human condition, not obliterating it with falsifications.
Lipstadt has more recently referred to a form of “soft-core” Holocaust denial in the use of false comparisons. “What we have now,” she writes, is where you label Jews as using Nazi-like tactics.” You may disagree with Israel’s policies on a gazillion things, but they are not behaving like the Nazis. You can say that the Palestinians are being mistreated but Israel is most certainly not committing genocide. Those terms are applied by people who either seek to demean the Shoah or paint a gut wrenching slanderous picture of the Jewish people and the Jewish state. Our children on University campuses are bearing the brunt of this insidious misinformation.
Why do we as a people get so upset about stereotyping? Is it not because we know the consequences of reducing human beings to a broad insulting caricature? Is it not because we celebrate this very day our ability to match our outer self with our inner self; that the two may be in harmony? Because this is a holiday devoted to the ardent study of human character and the potential for improvement? A holiday that abandons false labels and asks us to make our books of life decidedly non-fictional works?
A member of the cast then asked the elephant-in-the-room question: Rabbi, should this play be produced anywhere? Should it be banned from the stage?
No, I thought, and said as much. This is not how we roll. Jews are not in the habit of squelching dialogue. Jews do not support keeping discourse, or art, or literature or performance hidden from view. Better to reveal. Better to put it out there and discuss it. We are, after all, the people of revelation.
I noted that when Professor Suzannah Heschel, intellectual and scholar, was once asked if she thought Merchant of Venice should be banned and she said: “No, that would be a treason against western civilization. You might as well go live on the moon,” she said.
And while I agree with Dr. Heschel, I couldn’t help but note that in the movie Selma a couple of years back, her father, the great Jewish philosopher Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was unceremoniously airbrushed out of the pivotal March scene, no longer linked in history with Dr. King whom he stood alongside, praying with his feet. And you can certainly fact-check that!
Film, like the stage, is largely director’s media. You can tell the story in any way you want. Your characters can tell you how to feel.
Whether it is in the news, or in art or music, or in political discourse during an especially nasty election season, there are always going to be people who mess with the facts and spin the world to support their goals. Who cavalierly malign and label groups of people as though they were not possessed of a unique soul.
The Jewish people have been on the receiving end of this for too long. We know very well what it is to have our humanity stripped away and homogenized with a yellow-star or a red cap.
I excused myself from the meeting with the cast telling them I had to return to my day job of preparing for the upcoming holidays. I thought about the meaning of this great and awesome day on which Jewish people endeavor to harmonize the inner and the outer self. We are complex. We cannot be summed up in a sound bite. That the height of this day comes at that moment of true atonement – when we achieve at-one-ment. When the outer person who interacts with the world is the same as the individual we know dwells inside.
We do not shy away from facts. Not about the world. Not about others. Not about ourselves. We know that the more we look into our own traditions, the more we learn about ourselves and the people around us. We pride ourselves in being an or-la-goyim, a light to the nations. Darkness and obfuscation and misrepresentation are not our allies.
We as a people eternally represent all those who have been slandered, all who have been labeled, disenfranchised, mistreated, abandoned.
If you chance to be in New York and go see the latest Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof you may be disappointed to see that it does not open immediately with the Tradition piece. Instead you see a bearded man wearing a modern parka, reading a book in a subway with the Cyrillic lettered Anatevka on the wall behind him. Soon it is revealed he is Tevye the milkman and the show commences as it has done for 50 years.
At the conclusion of the play, as the Jews are led out of their “Geto” fearing a coming pogrom, the modern immigrant character reemerges and joins them in their search for a new home, taking his place in the long and tortured history of forced immigration.
Ninety-one-year-old Sheldon Harnick, the original Fiddler lyricist, who penned the words: “to life, to life, l’chaim!” had veto power over any major changes to the show and was asked about that one.
No, he said. It’s fine. It’s perfect. That is our tradition. That is who we are.
Yom Kippur: Forgiveness
Sermon by Rabbi Jennifer Hartman
2016/5777
I got a new name! Okay, I got married and decided to change my name.
As friends, family and community learned of my engagement, I began to receive a lot of advice about marriage. Having never been married before, I was happy for any insight and anecdotes. The advice included well-known adages such as: “never go to bed angry,” and “pick your battles.” Others that I had not thought of: “If you have kids, make sure to take vacations without them.” Or ones from blogs: “Never compromise; in every argument someone will have a stronger opinion and that person should win.” One piece of advice I found particularly intriguing comes from “the Notorious RBG” – Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. When asked if she has any advice to share with the public, she often quotes her mother-in-law: “In every good marriage, it helps sometimes to be a little deaf.” [i]
How I interpret this, and most advice given about marriage or any relationship, is that when living with another person you must be able to ask for and grant forgiveness. It sounds so easy, but both asking for and granting forgiveness is extremely hard. To ask for forgiveness we must admit that we have made a mistake, al cheit, we have sinned, we have missed the mark. None of us likes to be wrong. You can ask Mike: I am no exception. It is painful to admit when we are incorrect. It hurts our ego and our pride. Recently a girl friend of mine sent me a picture that truly depicts this difficulty. It was of her oldest son crying. He had been misbehaving and needed to apologize. Instead of saying “sorry” he lay on the ground crying: “It hurts too much to say I’m sorry.” Out of the mouths of babes can come the most profound statements.
(Last night Rabbi Zimmerman spoke to us about non-apology, apologies, but what does it take to truly ask for and grant forgiveness). It is very hard to say “I’m sorry,” but this very action is critical to enduring relationships and healthy communities. If it were easy to ask for forgiveness, we would not need a designated time in our calendar to ensure that we are performing teshuva, repentance. This process starts during the month of Elul, the month before Rosh Hashanah. And it continues through the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. And for those of us late tax filers, our tradition says that if you need still more time, the window of repentance stays open until Sukkot! To assist us in our repentance, the great teacher Maimonides provides specific instructions on how to perform t’shuva. First, we have to confess, verbally, what we did wrong, and we have to do it in detail. We cannot just say: “I was selfish.” Instead, we are to say, “My husband asked me to play golf with him, but four hours on the golf course sounded extremely boring so I said ‘no’,” or something of that sort. And then, we apologize to the person we harmed. We are to do this openly and explicitly. We are to resolve not to make the same mistake again. If there is anything that we can do now to repair the damage, we are to do so. Then, and only then, our rabbis teach, we have the right to ask for forgiveness.
You see, t’shuvah is more than an apology. T’shuvah is a serious, deep process which is meant, ultimately, to lead to self-improvement. That's why our sages teach that a person knows t’shuvah is complete only when he or she resists committing the same sin again. The ultimate goal is not to obtain forgiveness from someone else, or to wipe away our sense of guilt. The ultimate goal is to become a better person – the kind of person who would not cause this harm in the first place. [ii] When we truly atone for our sins, when we perform t’shuva, repentance, our changed behavior redeems our past actions and enables us to move forward.
This process of t’shuva is very hard. Many people decide to skip it. They have no desire to look into their hearts and souls and uncover the motivations that caused them to bring about such pain. Such heartbreak. Instead, there may be an insincere apology, or nothing at all. There are, however, stories of people willing to engage in this difficult endeavor. The New York Times Magazine recently featured the stories of reconciliation still taking place in Africa, as a result of the Rwandan genocide that occurred in the mid-1990s . Their piece, entitled “Portraits of Reconciliation,” featured pictures of Hutu perpetrators and Tutsi survivors working to rebuild relationships, 20 years after the Hutu murdered almost one million Tutsi.
With the help of a small non-profit organization, the Hutu are engaging in the very notions set forth by Maimonides, (okay they may not know it is Maimonides, but it is). The Hutu learn the true consequences of their actions. They gain understanding of the deep loss and pain they caused. They uncover what actions and stereotypes they need to change in order to move forward. They serve time in jail. They rebuild homes and provide food for the Tutsi. Then, and only then, after many months of counseling, do they formally ask the Tutsi they wronged for forgiveness. The Hutu did the hard work of t’shuva.
One Hutu perpetrator noted: “My conscience was not quiet, and when I would see [the woman that I harmed] I was very ashamed. After being trained about unity and reconciliation, I went to her house and asked for forgiveness. Then I shook her hand. So far, we are on good terms.”
The work of the Tutsi – the victims – is just as difficult. Many of us could never imagine the grace, the understanding, the compassion it takes to pardon someone who murdered our children, our spouse. The women in these stories lost everything. Still, they dug into the depths of their souls and found the sympathy and charity to grant mercy to their enemies. They were able to let go of the anger and hatred that had been controlling their lives. They came to understand that revenge would not give them the peace they could attain with forgiveness.
One Tutsi survivor writes: “He killed my father and three brothers. He did these killings with other people, but he came alone to me and asked for pardon. He and a group of other offenders who had been in prison helped me build a house with a covered roof. I was afraid of him — now I have granted him pardon, things have become normal, and in my mind I feel clear.”
Rwanda is a wonderful example of what can occur when we have the strength and determination to ask for and grant forgiveness. Musical genius Lin Manuel Miranda expresses the difficulty and reward that comes with this process in his musical Hamilton. (I still have not seen it but I can’t help but use its brilliance!). Hamilton and his wife Eliza have just been through two devastating events. First, Hamilton has an affair and publishes the details of it in order to avoid blackmail. Then, their eldest son is killed in a duel defending Hamilton’s honor. It is hard to imagine that Eliza will ever forgive Hamilton for these transgressions, but Hamilton apologizes and then waits. He says:
I know there’s no replacing what we’ve lost
Just let me stay here by your side
And we learn that for Eliza:
There is a grace too powerful to name
We push away what we can never understand
And they find their way back to one another.
Forgiveness. Can you imagine? They are going through the unimaginable.
Around the world we see countries that have done the unimaginable. They have found a path to healing through forgiveness. We can look to South Africa where in place of trials, Nelson Mandela created a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Here, victims and perpetrators were allowed to tell their stories. Through restorative justice, not revenge, the wounds healed and the country moved forward. We can look to Ireland, where after over 30 years of fighting a peace agreement was reached that included a power-sharing government with political forces that had been aligned with armed groups on each side of the conflict. We can look to the work that is being done by individuals in Israel. The Parents Circle-Families Forum (PCFF) is a grassroots organization bringing together Palestinian and Israeli families who have lost immediate family members due to the conflict. They believe that a process of reconciliation is a prerequisite for achieving a sustained peace. In each one of these cases, people on both sides of a conflict come together, face one another, look into each other’s eyes and see the humanity of their enemy. In these powerful moments and through much hard work, fear and hatred gave way to compassion and tolerance. We can only hope and pray that this same peace will come to countries currently engaged in civil war.
There are also times when we choose forgiveness, not because we have been asked, but because we understand that the hatred and fury we hold in our hearts is debilitating to us, while not affecting the perpetrator. Nelson Mandela teaches this lesson well. As he was leaving prison after 27 years, he is quoted as saying: “Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.” He understood that he would only be free if he could release the shackles of anger. Otherwise he would be grasping a hot coal with the intent of harming another, but he would be the one who got burned. [iii] Through forgiveness, Mandela accepted the reality of what happened to him and found a way to live in a state of resolution. He was able to identify, fully feel, express and then release his rage and his pain, and find healing.
The people of Charleston, SC, also found their way to forgiveness. Last summer, you may remember, a gunman open fired in a church basement there. Nine people were murdered and five survived. Given the racial tensions in Charleston, the city could have erupted into riots, but instead, led by the survivors of the Emanuel Nine, Charleston erupted in grace. Within 36 hours of the killings, and with pain racking their voices, family members stood in a small county courtroom to speak the language of forgiveness [iv]. It happened suddenly when Nadine Collier, the daughter of murdered Ethel Lance spoke at the bond hearing. She remembers being “angry and mad” because her mother had “more living to do.” At the same time, racing through her head were lessons she had learned long before: “You have to forgive people, because when you keep that hatred, it hurts only you.”
It was this courage of the Charleston survivors that brought about an outpouring of all races and ethnicities, who filled the streets with unity. As a result of their grace, “within days of the shooting, the most contentious public symbol of South Carolina’s Civil War past, the Confederate flag, was finally removed from the state capitol” [v]. It was a truly remarkable feat of forgiveness that brought with it much healing. Collier’s ability to forgive the pain and loss that she endured brought peace to her city. As the Dalai Lama says: world peace can only develop from inner peace.
Right here in Minnesota, we show our own ability to forgive with our unwavering support of the Minnesota sports teams who seem to break our hearts over and over again. Yet despite all of the (and I quote), “agony”, “dashed hopes” and dare I say “failure,” Minnesotans continue to bounce back and forgive!
And still, I must acknowledge that there are times when forgiveness is not possible. Abuses endured that can never be pardoned. Some of these have been making the headlines recently – in the political debates, on college campuses and beyond. We pray for the victims of such violence, those sitting here with us today, and those outside this sanctuary. We pray that they are able to find peace and healing despite the fact they may never be able to reconcile why or how this happened to them. We wish that the sharing of stories through social media will show them they are not alone, and will give them courage to speak out. We hope that accounts of unimaginable forgiveness will give those in pain strength and fortitude as they carry their burden.
The work of repentance and forgiveness is hard, but it is important and worthwhile work. We are blessed with only one soul in this life. It is for us to determine how to fill it. Will we fill it with self-righteousness and arrogance? With anger and hatred? With retribution and revenge? Or will we work toward reconciliation and understanding, compassion and sympathy, peace and harmony? As we begin this New Year, may we work to elevate our lives and our relationships to new heights. May we use this time to bring to mind the mistakes we have made, the offences we have committed, the times we have missed the mark. May we take our transgressions and turn them into opportunities for engagement and renewal. May we engage in teshuva, in repentance, in order to return to our true and best selves and move forward into the New Year with deeper and more meaningful relationships. May we find the strength, the courage and the resolve to forgive those who have wronged us.
The rabbis teach that the Torah begins with a bet – and not an aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet – for a reason. It is because Bet is only open on one side, to the future. May this season of repentance, of possibilities, and of new beginnings, give us all the strength to imagine forgiveness in order to move forward into a bright and meaningful future.
Gamer chatima Tova. May we be sealed in the book of life.
[i] Ginsberg, Ruth Bader. Ruth Bader Ginsbergs Advice for Living. New York Times October 1st, 2016.
[ii] Lew, Alan. This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared.
[iii] http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/b/buddha104025.html
[iv] Time Magazine. How Do You Forgive a Murderer. David Von Drehle and Jay Newton-Small and Maya Rhodan. http://time.com/time-magazine-charleston-shooting-cover-story/
[v] Ibd.
Rosh HaShanah: An Entire World
Sermon by Rabbi Sim Glaser
2016/5777
This is a year of celebration of our community. We expanded our Temple on a yuuuuuuuuuuge level! You came through our ginourmous lobby of 1.6 million square feet; our sanctuary now seats 65,000 people; we are partnered with over 20 different food and beverage companies; there are 125 suites overlooking the field; we have 1200 HD flat screen televisions, and the largest glass pivoting doors in the world! At our coffee bar you can get a beer for $11.50 a glass and… Wait, oh, how embarrassing. I’m being told I apparently have the incorrect building status report.
But those numbers are impressive, no? And ours are too! 6000 congregants, 2200 family units. I have to admit, I throw around big numbers all the time. Lots of folks do! There are over 7 billion people in the world. Did you know that the Powerball Jackpot is currently $47.5 million? Someone told me at Torah study this last Shabbat that there are something like 8 trillion stars in our universe!
When we use words like 6 million Jews, or read that 450,000 Syrians have been killed in that civil war which still rages on, we are dismayed, but on some level we cannot wrap our minds around big numbers of people. Their identities are drowned out by the brash statistic. When, after all, in our day to day lives, do we deal with 6 million or 450,000 of anything??
No matter how big we get, and no matter how colossal the numbers are in the daily news from distant lands, we are hardwired to deal with one person at a time. Our Talmud teaches us whosoever saves a single life it is as though he has saved an entire world.
Many years ago a documentary film was made about a classroom in Whitwell, Tennessee, a small community of 1600 people. They were studying the Holocaust and the consequences of extreme prejudice. The kids in Whitwell knew about hatred. The KKK had been founded about a hundred miles from their town. The challenge for the teachers was when the kids asked: What is Six Million?
Their solution was to have the kids try and collect 6 million paper clips in order to wrap their young minds around the enormous number of victims. They succeeded in doing so. Now they knew what the number 6 million meant.
Last week our scholar-in-residence was Yehudit Shendar from the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. So we were steadying ourselves to hear from her about the millions of Jews who lost their lives during the Shoah, the real impact of her presentation, and this is definitely how she “rolls,” was when she began to tell us individual stories.
She told us, in loving detail, about Petr Ginz, one 14 year old Czechoslovakian boy, a gifted artist and author who wrote novels and created drawings while imprisoned in the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp, and who continued to write and draw even in Auschwitz where he was murdered. How Petr dreamed, in 1943, of flying in a rocket into space. And how 60 years later his drawing of an imagined moon landscape actually accompanied the first Israeli Astronaut Ilan Ramon on the ill-fated Columbia Mission.
A chill went up our collective spine when Dr. Shendar told us that the morning on which the Columbia disintegrated upon reentry into the earth’s atmosphere on February 1st, 2003 in the skies over Texas… happened to be the very day Peter Ginz would have turned 75 years old! Now the dark history became real. There, in the tragedy, hope and glory of one 14 year old boy, and the world’s first Israeli astronaut, lay the human drama.
Remember a single life, and you save an entire world.
Experts tell us that compassion fatigue sets in not when the number of victims reaches the hundreds or thousands, but when we hear about the fate of even two people! It seems we are hard-wired to relate to each other one at a time.
Lots of numbers flew at us last year, but what were the images that penetrated our consciences - the little boy washed up on the shores of the Mediterranean; the Syrian child who survives the bombing of his city and sits, shell-shocked, staring at us from the back of the ambulance.
Witness a single life, and you see an entire world.
Yes, we rejoice in being a large Temple community. But in reality we are built around individual joy, individual achievement, individual pain. Our shiva houses are mobbed because one family has lost one beloved person. Caring Bridge communications online when a single friend has a life threatening illness. Our community gets energized when we coalesce around one loss, when we trot out one young thirteen year old for her Bat Mitzvah, when we name one baby.
Just about a month ago the fate of Jacob Wetterling became known to us. Here is one young life, a boy whose whereabouts were unknown for 27 years, a tragic mystery that somehow galvanized a community. We cried, we waited, we searched and we hurt right alongside the Wetterling family for 27 years. We marveled at Patty Wetterling’s tenacity of spirit as she ran for public office, like she was our own mother, or sister. People in our congregation talked about how they were 11 years old when Jacob was 11 years old and feel as though they “grew up with him.” And when we finally learned what had befallen Jacob, we felt that strange combination of horror and relief, again, along with the Wetterling family.
Remember one young life, and you have remembered an entire world.
You have to ask yourself, how can it be, that such a thing happens to a family you don’t even know and may never even meet, and still you agonize alongside them and find relief, with them, in knowing, finally, an answer? This is what is truly meant by community. And we as Jews should celebrate it!
A friend of mine was a student rabbi years ago in the northeast. He used to marvel that many members of his tiny congregation, some of them over 80 years old, would somehow make it to services even in the midst of a big snowstorm. When he asked, one woman responded, “well, I wouldn’t want Ethel to be disappointed by my not showing up.” Another said: “well, Fred won’t know what to do without me here.”
The humorist Harry Golden tells the story of his father, a notorious atheist who nevertheless went to synagogue every single Saturday morning. When Harry asked his father about it, he replied, "Look, everyone goes to shul for a different reason. Garfinkel goes to synagogue to talk to God. I go to synagogue to talk to Garfinkel."
It is no coincidence that when any U.S. President gives the State of the Union address the high point of the talk is often when he points up to the gallery and identifies one soldier, one national hero, one individual story of heartbreak, one person’s act of courage. Even when you are speaking to millions of people through the media, you can’t portray the whole country as simply a mass of humanity – you have to look at the people – one by one.
Before construction began on Temple’s new addition, we invited members of the Kenwood neighborhood to a forum to talk about the new building. We asked if any individual had an issue with what we were proposing. Not a soul objected. Maybe it’s because we are good neighbors. Maybe it is because the people who come in and out of this building care about the individuals they meet up with on the street. Or maybe it is because we cared what each of them thought.
You know, there have been many stunning moments in this campaign season, and I’ll bet we’re in for a lot more, but one of my personal favorites was when, in addressing the plight of Syrian refugees and immigration quotas someone asked the question: If I had a big bowlful of Skittles and told you that just three of them would kill you, would you take a handful?
Called upon for comment, a spokesperson for the Mars Candy Company, maker of Skittles, had the wisdom to point out, quote: Skittles are candy, refugees are people. We don’t feel this is an appropriate analogy.
Personally, I imagined a group of Jews ferrying out to the Statue of Liberty to scrub the obscene graffiti off the Emma Lazarus poem and to re-hoist the lamp beside the golden door that the Statue of Liberty dropped when she heard the Skittles comment!
But here’s the more Jewish response: If you knew that in that teeming mass of people there were three who would bring joy and wisdom, brilliance, initiative and innovation to our society, could you refrain from bringing them to safety? If you knew that in that bowl of humanity was young Petr Ginz, who dreamed of flying to the moon, and would have delighted us endlessly with art, stories, visions and achievements, who may have discovered a cure for disease or devised new sources for clean and renewable energy, could we refrain from opening our golden door to him?
Save a single life, and you have saved an entire world.
We can talk big numbers, statistics, we can talk millions, hundreds of thousands, or dozens crowded on life rafts floating in the Mediterranean. But better each of us should think of a single person, or her descendent, someone whom we know personally, even we ourselves, who would not be alive today had more Americans angrily protested the immigration of Jewish refugees to this country during World War II.
The Jewish people knows what it means to be counted as numbers. We’ve had them tattooed on our arms. We are commanded, in our tradition, never to count people. The Prophet Hosea said: And the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which shall never be counted. The great sage Maimonides warned that to count people like so many cattle is a sin against God and humanity.
The paper-clip-collecting children of Whitwell Tennessee didn’t learn the lesson when millions of paper clips arrived in their classrooms. They got it when they saw the clips that held the name of a single person, or the faded yellow Jewish star, or the identification papers… the single photograph.
We are a people who love people. We find our treasures in the individuals we know. We celebrate milestones, one Jew at a time. We share the pain of those who have lost that special person they love. This is what is meant by community.
As big numbers come your way in the coming weeks, don’t think so big. Forget the 65,000 seats. Think of the individual fan. Never mind the 8 trillion stars – think of the fragile planet Earth. Don’t ruminate on 6 million Jews. Think of Petr Ginz. Don’t let the number 450,000 lull you into the stupor of indifference. Think of the one child in the ambulance staring past the camera.
And thus our Talmud teaches: To save one life is to have saved an entire world!
When Jacob Wetterling’s murderer led the authorities to his grave last month, tens of thousands of people uttered a communal gasp.
Why, on one of the holiest days on the Jewish calendar would a synagogue community, and a rabbi giving a sermon, want to remember Jacob Wetterling, an 11 year old boy who went missing 27 years ago? What does it have to do with us? What does the story of just one boy have to do with you and me?
Everything. For he was an entire world.
Rosh HaShanah: Watching Our Words
Sermon by Rabbi Jennifer Hartman
2016/5777
“The time has come
The walrus said
To talk of many things:
Of shoes- and ships-
And sealing wax-
Of cabbages and kings-
And why the sea is boiling hot-
And whether pigs have wings.”
With words such as these we are pulled into Lewis Carroll's famous book, Alice and Wonderland, in which Carroll so vividly paints a mystical magical world for us through the use of his pithy phrases, short anecdotes and even, gibberish. We follow as Alice, bored with the conversation of grown-ups, finds a topsy-turvy, upside down universe filled with entertainment and adventure.
As a little girl, I loved to escape behind the looking glass with Alice. I was introduced to these stories by my grandfather. Still a man of few—but powerful—words, he has always connected best through the wit and wisdom of books. Whenever we were together, we had a nighttime ritual. Once I was in bed he would come into my room and tell me a story. Using the characters from Alice and Wonderland, he created an imaginary world and sent Alice, with me as her sidekick, on an adventure. I could not help but be enchanted by the reality he created.
On one of my recent visits to my grandparent’s home I found Carroll's book amongst the vast array of volumes overflowing my grandfather's shelves. I picked it up and began to read. I was quickly reminded of Carroll’s brilliance and his mastery of the English language. His riddles stay with us as their logic, combined with their whimsical nature, reverberates in our minds. It is his creative genius and wordplay that keeps us engaged in the story. Words have that power. They have the ability not only to impart information but also to engage, motivate and transform.
The great speeches of our time are remembered for more than the speaker's personality or charisma. They are remembered for the anecdotes that speak to our hearts and endure in our minds. “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” “I have a dream.” I get chills just thinking about these words that marked such astonishing human achievements - the celebration of space exploration, a President summoning us to be our best selves, and the greatest civil rights leader challenging the status quo. They are motivational and inspirational. They move us to act, they propel us forward, they enable us to envision a brighter future and bring that vision to reality. These are words that have the strength to inspire us to action.
Our Jewish tradition understands the power of words. In just a few weeks we will begin the Torah anew with these words: “Bereshit barah elohim et hashamayim v’et haratz. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1) God spoke and the world was created. It is through God’s words that the world came into being. With words we humans also create. When a new couple stands beneath the wedding chuppah excited and nervous to begin their lives together, they exchange vows - Harei at mekudeshet li - that bind their lives together. With their words they build a family. For any of us who have had the privilege and the honor of witnessing this moment we can feel its power, its exhilaration, its hope. In that moment we witness creation.
Words, however, also have the ability to harm. We have all been at the other end of a snide remark, a hurtful comment, and a bad joke. We all know that the nursery rhyme “sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” is far from true. Words hurt, a lot. They get under our skin and attach to our soul. We carry harmful words around with us like bricks weighing us down. They make us look at ourselves differently. They deflate our confidence and cause us to question our being. Now, more than ever, it seems we cannot escape the critical words that aim to tear us down. They are everywhere. They are on our many screens, in our pockets, at work and sometimes even at home.
Do you know that there are people today who are surfing the Internet with the sole purpose of criticizing others? They are called trolls, which is Internet slang for a person who sows discord by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community. Factors like anonymity and a lack of authority strip away the morals that we as a society have spent millennia building, giving people the freedom to attack others. They use social media to perform pranks, harass and threaten their victims.
This is not a new issue or a new concern. Entire books have been written on the dangers of having an evil tongue. The Torah refers to the slander as lashon hara - derogatory speech about another person. The prohibition against this is found twice in the Torah, both in the third book, the book of Leviticus. “You will not go up and down as a tale-bearer among thy people” (Lev. 19:16), “You shall not wrong one another with speech” (Lev. 25:17). The Talmud teaches us that the act of lashon hara kills three people - the person who speaks it, the person who hears it and the person about whom it is told. In fact, the rabbis went as far as to say that slander, tale bearing, and evil talk are worse than the three cardinal sins of murder, immorality, and idolatry. In truth, it is with words that we can affect others to the point of causing these latter three offences.
This is why sins committed with our words hold a central place in our confessions on Yom Kippur. Of the 43 sins enumerated in the Al Cheit confession recited on Yom Kippur, 11 are sins committed through speech. According to Jewish tradition the tongue is the most dangerous of all instruments. For this reason it must be kept hidden from view, behind the two protective walls of the lips and teeth, in order to prevent its misuse.
I would argue that our lips and our teeth are not doing their job these days. The words that we are hearing from our pre-school children to our politicians are mean and alarming. This summer I was at Camp TEKO sitting with a first grade group as they ate their snack when I heard one camper say to another, “Donald Trump is racist and hates woman.” The camper responded “Hillary Clinton is a liar and a cheater.” While it would be unwise to underestimate the aptitude of Camp TEKO first graders, I am fairly certain that our campers did not come up with these assessments on their own. They were merely repeating what they heard around the kitchen table. While they may not fully understand the words they are saying, they do know they are unkind.
We have come very far from the debates over the white picket fence author Bill Bishop describes in his book, The Big Sort. He writes that although “America is more diverse than ever coast to coast, the places where we live are becoming increasingly crowded with people who live, think, and vote like we do. We've built a country where we can all choose the neighborhood and church and news show — most compatible with our lifestyle and beliefs. And we are living with the consequences of this way-of-life segregation. Our country has become so polarized, so ideologically inbred, that people don't know and can't understand those who live just a few miles away.” This trend is apparent in the way in which we speak to one another about the topics over which we disagree.
This year’s political discourse has been characterized by a certain coarseness and demeaning quality. Instead of news that teaches us about the merit or problems with each candidate’s policy suggestions, we are reading and hearing personal attacks on politicians themselves. And we, as private citizens, are repeating and perpetuating these campaign smears while also applying our judgment to our peers. We are attacking each other for our political opinions. I regularly see Facebook posts threatening to end friendships over politics. We question the intelligence and sanity of those with whom we disagree. We are using our words to attack one another’s very being. We are judging people’s souls based on their political leanings. We are assuming that because their thoughts differ from ours they are evil, malicious and going to cause the destruction of the country. We have replaced listening with judging.
Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad. Listen Israel Adonai is our God, Adonai is one. Listen Israel. These are the words that Jews are commanded to say each time we pray, they are the words that our on our lips when we go to sleep at night. They are on the doorposts of our home. We teach them to our children. They are the last words we say before we die. These words teach us to pay attention. We are not just to let the sounds pass by our ears. We are to use the skill of listening, not just the physical ability to hear, which not all of us have. Yet, we can all listen to the words being communicated to us, whether it be through speech, sign language or the written word. In fact, listening, paying attention, Sh'miat Haozen, is one of the virtues we are to aspire to. When we are committed to attentive listening we have the ability to understand and learn from one another.
The Torah is full of times when God is trying to get our attention. “Listen well, O heavens, and I will speak.” (Deuteronomy 32:1)– only if we are paying attention will God talk to us. This idea of listening is of utmost importance in the Torah. Torah does not mince words. Tradition tells us that every word is used for a purpose. It is no accident that we are commanded time and again to pay attention. The Israelites were not very good at listening. They rarely understood what was being communicated to them. Instead, they interrupted with their list of grievances. Too often, we are like the ancient Israelites.
If we are honest with ourselves we know that we don’t listen very well. And when we do, we are often listening for what we want to hear. We have made a decision about what the other person will say and we are biding our time, waiting for when we can interject with our own opinion, or discredit the speaker with a counterpoint. Rarely do we slow down enough to ask questions, to dig deeper, and to understand another’s point of view and core values. Rarely do we hear, let alone look for, the truths that differ from our own assumptions or understandings. Rather than using our conversation to learn something new, we use them to convince others of our side. All too often this leads to yelling and arguing, instead of listening and understanding.
We all know how much better we feel when others pay attention to us. This is when we feel most valued, most understood, most important. It is also when we are most able to listen to another’s point of view. It is in this duality that we are able to find common ground where our paths, our passions and our concerns meet and where we can find solutions that were never imagined.
As hard as it is to choose our words carefully, it is even harder to listen to those with which we disagree. Game of Thrones is a TV series, based on a book, that shows the best and worst of humanity. It happens to be much too gory for me, but I still can’t stop watching when Mike has it on! There are characters in it that are so despicable it hard not to root for their destruction. Then there are others whose wisdom far exceeds their position or stature. One such character, who happens to be my personal favorite, Tyrion Lannister, remarked: “We make peace with our enemies, not our friends.” Guarding our tongue and listening attentively are two crucial skills to living together amongst families and within communities.
In a conversation with the Mad Hatter, Alice begins a sentence “I don’t think…” Before she has a chance to finish the Hatter jumps in with: “Then you should not speak.” This of course frustrates Alice to no end, for the Hatter is clearly not listening to her. In fact, in many ways it is the lack of listening that propels the story of Alice forward. But, in this instance, it is not the art of listening that the Mad Hatter is trying to teach us. He wants Alice to realize that she is not choosing her words carefully. So often we don’t think, but we do speak. We speak out of anger and frustration; we speak out of boredom or to fill the silence. We use our words without discretion. In so doing, we forget the power we have to create and to destroy. Instead, we view speech as a credit line with no limit, rather than the most valuable possession we have. And the value of our credit is plummeting.
It is time for us to take back the importance of speech and relearn the art of listening. It is time for us to work toward understanding one another. Our words, once released, are like an arrow. They cannot be recalled; the harm they do cannot be contained. Just as the feathers in the well-known parable cannot be put back into the pillow once they have been shaken out into the wind, our words have a tendency to fly away to places unknown where we are unable to collect them and the damage they do cannot be undone. But, as is said in Proverbs, kind words are like honey, they are sweet to the soul and healing to the body. They promote kindness and compassion.
Therefore, as we celebrate this New Year, we have a choice to make. Will we use our speech to heal or to harm? Will we speak rashly like the thrust of a sword or bring healing with the wise tongue? Will we use our words to light fires in our minds or to wring tears from our eyes? And to whom will each of us commit to listen? Whose opinion will we try to better understand? Whose fears will we begin to acknowledge? Now is our chance to change the conversation. For:
“The time has come
The walrus said
To talk of many things”
Shana Tova
Erev Rosh HaShanah: Laughing and Dreaming
Sermon by Rabbi Sim Glaser
2016/5777
Passover Seders were always a big deal at our home when I was growing up. My father would lead the Seder and my mom would make sure that the table was set just right and that all the appropriate Pesach food out at just the right time. Mom loved the holiday rituals and traditions and really, all things Jewish. You know, traditions… like someone would spill the wine, or that that the chicken should always be a little on the dry side. Traditions!
Two family traditions that especially linger for me are that my mom loved to laugh, and was my best audience. Also, during the Seder my mom had a special fondness for a certain song in the Haggadah, Laugh at all my dreams…. Originally Sachki Sachki, by a Russian poet.
The song’s words are a statement of belief in the goodness of people, a salute to the inherent decency of humankind; that despite everything you’ve heard, every hurt you’ve suffered, every time you’ve been let down, you can still trust in people to be kind and caring, to achieve peace, to bring laughter to sorrowing hearts… to repair broken worlds, one at a time.
Even as a young boy sitting at our Seders I thought it was pretty amazing that my mother, who had witnessed Kristalnacht, had left Germany at the age of 10 without her parents, journeyed halfway around the world, was adopted by a foster couple in San Francisco, later learning that her parents had been imprisoned in a work camp and then sent to their deaths at Auschwitz, could joyfully sing a song that testified to the goodness of people. Laugh at all my dreams my dearest, went the song, laugh and I repeat anew, that I still believe in people as I still believe in you.
Mom was a dreamer and she knew how to laugh and deep down I think she believed in people. She celebrated people. But in typical Jewish fashion, she wrestled with it. She knew that human beings often need their behavior to be adjusted. That we need to know how to adapt to change, but that it is within the human spirit to accomplish that.
The familiar Psalm says: b’shuv Adonai et Tzion, hayyinu k’cholmim: “When God brought back the exiles to Zion, we were like dreamers.” Despite all we have been through, or what may lie ahead, it is the most Jewish of ways to all at once dream, and to wrestle with the reality that requires dreaming. Somehow our Jewish heroes seem to be able to do that balancing act.
Three well-known Jews who truly could not be more different than each other passed away this year. Elie Wiesel, Shimon Peres and Gene Wilder. Yes, Gene Wilder. The entertainer in me needs to include Gene Wilder.
Each, in his own way, was a dreamer. Each believed in and celebrated people, each enjoyed laughter, each one lived a bold Jewish life in the face of odds stacked against him. And each one knew the great things human beings are capable of… with a little Jewish nudging, and a lot of dreaming.
As a child Elie Wiesel would sing along with his Jewish classmates Ani ma’amin b’emunah shlemah - I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah. That “perfect faith” was to be challenged in the most profound way when as a young boy Elie endured during the horrors of Auschwitz. His famous memoir Night became an international bestseller and brought the reality of the Holocaust to the world. As an adult Wiesel became the author and spokesman for a generation of victims and survivors.
Wiesel never let up, demanding that people live up to being human, and rise from the ashes of the Shoah. He taught that the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, it is indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it is indifference. And the opposite of life, is not death, it is indifference....
In other words, Elie Wiesel taught us that the worst thing a human being can do is to not care! That within each and every one of us there is that caring spirit that must be expressed in order to be fully human. Elie Wiesel believed that humanity could redeem itself.
But Wiesel wrestled with the reality of the Jew in a real world. Asked many times: How could anyone believe in God after the Holocaust, Wiesel would respond: “That isn’t the question. Better you should ask: How can we believe in humankind?” He rejected both the notion that God had anything to do with the horrific events but insisted that human beings have the capacity to choose good over evil, and need to be reminded frequently! Living in a world of people, he knew that humankind is our only hope.
Shimon Peres who died only this last week, was known worldwide for his tenacity of spirit and as a dreamer of peace. Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas was present at his funeral only two days ago. President Bill Clinton once praised Shimon Peres saying: Here is a man who thought big bold thoughts and figured out actual ways to achieve them.
You’d have to go a long way to find a leader in the Middle East who went to the lengths Shimon Peres did to achieve peace. He used to say: As a bird cannot fly with one wing, as a person cannot applaud with one hand, so a country cannot make peace just with one side, with itself. For peace, we need the two of us.
Peres, believed in the possibility that Israelis and the Palestinian people could live side by side in harmony. It didn’t always make him popular, and he never became as beloved a leader as he might have wanted to be. We will read many articles about Peres in the weeks to come, and many of them will testify to the fact that even as he worked for peace, Peres was also the architect of Israel’s most powerful defense systems, and he was demanding of those who would enter into peace negotiations with Israel.
Shimon Peres never stopped dreaming about the human capacity to achieve peace. When asked: “What was the greatest achievement of his career?” Peres responded with this. He said: “There once was a great painter named Mordecai Ardon, who was asked which picture was the most beautiful he had ever painted. Ardon replied, ‘Ah, that is the picture I will paint tomorrow.’ That is also my answer,” Peres said. “My next achievement.” So it goes with dreamers. The greatest achievement is the one that is yet to come.
But when push came to shove, Shimon Peres lived to dwell in a world of people and he knew that humankind is our only hope.
It may seem strange to include the comedic actor Gene Wilder, but like something out of News of the Weird Wilder’s death 2 months after Elie Wiesel passed, Wilder, in characteristic fashion, almost stole the show! Why would Jewish people be so moved by the passing of this crazy actor from the Mel Brooks movies and countless other zany flicks?
Describing himself as a Jewish Buddhist Atheist, Gene Wilder summed up his religious views with Hillel’s admonition that what is hateful to you do not do to another. Gene Wilder knew that the way into the human heart is through laughter and he kept everyone, young and old, laughing throughout his career. He experienced many sad episodes in his life, losing his loved ones, and eventually succumbing to dementia. But somehow he seemed to retain his sense of humor and his love of humanity.
Whether or not Wilder identified strongly with Judaism, his characters were distinctively human… and Jewish! The neurotic worried Leopold Bloom in The Producers; a proud Rabbi carrying a Torah scroll through the old west in The Frisco Kid. Bringing sweetness and song to little children in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, or in Young Frankenstein, when he corrects the pronunciation of his name – “that’s Frahn-ken –shteen!” Very Jewish.
But what is equally telling about the actor was in the last three years of his battle with Alzheimers he opted not to go public with his dementia. It wasn’t out of vanity, nor was he shirking the responsibility of bringing light to the disease. Rather, Gene Wilder’s relatives told the press that he was thinking of the countless young children that might see him out on the street, or in a park or restaurant, and might smile or call out to him ‘there’s Willy Wonka,’ – only to be told by an adult that he was ill. Wilder said he “simply couldn’t bear the idea of one less child smiling in the world.” Living in a world of people he knew that humankind is our only hope.
My mother used to come to Temple here and tell the story of her childhood and her journey half way around the world and the kids were riveted. When I took over the job, telling my mom’s story in the second person, the kids listened, but not quite as well. Part of the difference was that she was telling it about herself, about a child their very age when it all happened. And the kids thought that was pretty cool.
But the real power in the way my mother told her story was in how positive she was about the whole thing. It wasn’t a sad history lesson. It was about the childhood friend who stuck by her in dark times. It was about honoring the resilience of her parents when confronted by the Nazis. It was about her colorful grandfather who got along with every person in their little farming village. It was about her own insistence on observing a strictly kosher lifestyle in her new foster home. Going on to marry a young rabbinical student. Raising four Jewish children. Every element of her story was imbued with hope, laughter, strength and a vision for a higher form of humanity.
When kids would write her thank you letters they rarely expressed sorrow for her losses. Rather, they were amazed, amused and inspired by her upbeat let’s-get-on-with-it attitude. They liked her laughter, they were impressed with her memories of happiness, even in a dark time.
We are human. We live in a human world. We embark tonight on a new Jewish human year. This is our destiny, and hope and belief in humankind is and will always be our best hope. Being Jewish will always be a balancing act between the difficulties of a real world that is not always kind, and the firm belief that human beings are capable of great, great things.
Laugh at all my dreams my dearest, laugh and I repeat anew. For I still believe in people, as I still believe in you!
Join me as we sing the song together.
Erev Rosh HaShanah: Sanctuary Service
Sermon by Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman
2016/5777
Written text of Rabbi Zimmerman's sermon is not available. Please enjoy the video of this Erev Rosh HaShanah Sanctuary Service.