Sermons

Yom Kippur, 2017/5778 Katy Kessler Yom Kippur, 2017/5778 Katy Kessler

Yom Kippur: It’s Not About the Bloodline

Sermon by Rabbi Sim Glaser
2017/5778

The good news in the year 5758 is that it has never been cooler to spit into a test tube. Why? Because after decades of scientific study and billions of dollars of research funding, you can determine your entire genetic code for about $350 dollars. That’s right, it’s now possible to find out exactly who you are!

Companies like 23andMe.com, or Ancestry.com now offer DNA tests that promise to pinpoint a customer’s heritage and even identify genetic relatives. Apparently people are quite eager to know where they came from, and find a familial context that may be lacking. Behold, the answers hidden in my DNA will shed light on hidden events that occurred decades or even centuries earlier and will forever change my family narrative! However, before you go down that windy road you might want to consider a few of the interesting results folks have discovered about themselves.

Bob Hutchinson grew up in a home where there was not a single photograph of his mother when she was a child or any pictures of her parents. She had always told her son Bob that she was an only child, and that her parents were dead. Her heritage, she said, was Italian and Swedish. Bob suspected there was more to the story and found his mother’s childhood home listed in a 1930 census. The family had lived in Montclair, N.J., and was described as “Negro.” Through genetic testing Bob learned what no one had ever told him, that he had African American heritage.

There are some interesting, if less profound physical discoveries people are making about themselves through this genetic testing. Like possessing a variant in the gene marked rs4481887 – everybody get that - which indicates the probability that you are among the few people in the world who are unable to detect that unique odor when you pee after eating asparagus. And hey, isn’t that worth $350 right there??

I myself would shell out the $350 bucks to map my genome, but I already know what they are going to tell me – that I’m lactose intolerant!! I paid $20 for a Hello Pizza the other night and found that out! Hello!?

Then there is the fellow named Mark, a banker from Delaware, who got his test results back from Ancestry.com along with a list of relatives in its database. He was thrilled to find out about his new found mishpocha until he noticed that there was nobody at all on the list from his father’s side of the family. He did, however, recognize the name of his father’s best friend. A banner day for Mark.

And full disclosure: The mechanics of the system haven’t been perfected quite yet. One woman got lipstick mixed in with her tube-spit and received word she was some sort of alien mutant. (Ok, maybe not…)

But my all-time personal favorite has to be the anti-Semitic skinhead who found out he had 37% German-Jewish background, which I guess makes him an Ashke-NAZI. Poor guy. That’ll get him kicked out of the club.

Of course there are sound medical reasons to have one’s DNA tested to learn of one’s potential for carrying a Jewish genetic disease, or knowing the one’s chances of getting certain cancers or other diseases, can be literally life-saving.

On the other hand, there is the darker question of who exactly is collecting all this data and what might they be using it for? Should I be worried that the CEO of Ancestry.com happens to be married to one of the founders of Google? I don’t know. Maybe?

And then there is the “Brave New World” conversation about our evolving potential to choose the genetic makeup of our own offspring. Yes, I’d like my child to have blue eyes, be musically proficient, brilliant at mathematics, athletically fit, or most importantly, lactose tolerant so she can eat Hello Pizza. But Jews know all too well the hazards of a society bent on manufacturing an ideal race.

Still, millions of people around the world are testing themselves, and I have to wonder, what are we really trying to find out in this quest? Is the reason for our existence revealed in our genetic code?

Are we maybe searching for each other? Maybe our 21st century minds just want demonstrable proof that we are linked. That on the level of soul we know that people from different countries, dissimilar ethnic backgrounds and competing ideologies are all in this together and that we don’t need to settle scores violently?

Whatever the case, our Jewish tradition teaches us that biology is not destiny. We are not preprogrammed machines. The genetic material we are born with does not make us who we are. Nor does it condemn us to a firm set of character traits that we cannot control. If we believed that there would be no need for the Torah or ethical religious teaching. And there certainly would not be a need for Yom Kippur!

The Torah portion chanted this morning reveals an important fact: The covenant, it says, is binding upon “all of you who are standing here today as well as those of you not standing here today” – a direct reference to all those who will, regardless of their genetic heritage, at some future time join the club.

And note also that the covenant includes the woodchopper and the waterdrawer. We know, from Biblical studies, and a close look at the book of Joshua in particular, that those hackers and shleppers were, in fact, not ancient Hebrews, but members of the local Gibeonite tribe who decided to hang out with us after the conquest of Canaan! So what? I hear you say. It matters! The Torah wants us to know that Judaism is not implicitly a religion of bloodline. It is an ethical, moral, ritual way of living that can and has been adopted by millions throughout our history. The covenant does not run through the blood in the veins - it exists in the deeds done by the hands that encase those veins, and the hearts that pump that blood!

Yes, it is certainly the case that for thousands of years our tradition has emphasized the religion of the biological mother as a determinant of one’s status. But don’t forget that 34 years ago our Reform Movement upended that tradition once and for all, courageously proclaiming that how we raise our children is far more crucial than the biological line of the father or the mother. Much of the Jewish world still takes issue with that landmark decision, and yet this is the shape of things to come. Judaism 100 years from now will look very little like it does today, and I guarantee you that Jewish people ourselves certainly will not. For example, one out of every 5 Jews currently on the planet is a person of color.

And yet isn’t it amazing that there are still Jews in this world who look at the Jew by choice and say: yeah, well you weren’t born Jewish! So what. Good luck finding a Jew who can trace herself back to the wandering Israelites. My wife Barb would like to know exactly which ancient Hebrew tribe she can attribute her beautiful curly red hair, light skin and freckles. None, of course.


Here are some things that having little to nothing to do with your genetic code: your biology didn’t bring you here. There is no Darwinian survival of the fittest that says Yom Kippur is good for the gene pool. It is not required. Or the young people leading us today and taking responsibility for their own identities. Do we ask them: which of your parents gave you which part of your genome? No, you chose to do this!

We are taught that the universe was created through an act of divine will. The world was created on purpose, with purpose, and each of us was created for a good reason. To contribute something unique the world has never seen before you came along! Your biology may be firmly established, but whether you choose to grow your soul, or allow that soul to wither and dry up in your biological shell is entirely up to you.

The 23andMe.com readout won’t indicate if you a white supremacist or a tzaddik – There is no gene strand for hatred and bigotry. The readout won’t tell you that you’ll live a life of doing mitzvahs or if you will be entirely selfish through the years allotted to you. And it will not tell you today whether you are going to be willing to forgive other people for what they did to you last year.

A friend was telling me recently a woeful story about how deeply painful it was that she and her son had not spoken to one another in over 20 years. “He is the way he is,” she said, “and I am the way I am, just some bad chemistry. Maybe we both have the stubborn gene.” I don’t believe there is such a thing as a “stubborn gene”. Yom Kippur tells us that it doesn’t have to be that way. We don’t have to be stubborn. do we really believe that there is some strange biological destiny that precludes us from asking for forgiveness or forgiving? This holiday asks us to move outside our “nature” to take that chance.

My baby brother, the youngest of four, came into our lives 5 years after my sister, to everyone’s joy and surprise. One evening when he was about 20 years old we were sitting around the dinner table talking about our family and as he was sipping his soup looking down at the bowl he said: “Wow, can you imagine how horrible it would be to find out that you were an unintended birth?” And my sibs and I looked at each other thinking: Oh – My – God - He doesn’t know??

We are all, even the most planned baby in the bunch, mistakes. And, as my pit-bull, shepherd, boxer-mix dog Flora likes to remind me on a regular basis: You are also a mutt buddy! If you look at it from a bloodline standpoint we are all mistakes, chance occurrences. We’re all mutts. Beautiful human accidental people who, by the way share 95% of our DNA with a fruit fly. This afternoon some of us will find ourselves at the part of today’s YK ritual called Yizkor. And during Yizkor there will be that period of silence for 5 minutes or so when we think about our beloved late parents and grandparents and great grandparents. We will reflect on how much we miss them. Many of us will roll our eyes at how much we seem to be turning out like them. Still others will meditate on the gifts they brought us, the wisdom we gained from them. How much they strived to bless us with only the best of their character, and yet how much of their mishegas got through to us as well.

In some cases we will think of how hard we struggled not to become our parents, and here we are behaving so similarly to them. Yes, we share a good deal of DNA with them, but we are hardly identical. Ideally we take the best of their material, and sculpt original lives inspired by them.

This emerging science may tease us into believing that biology is destiny. But our Jewish tradition, and this holiday itself, proclaim that we are still in charge. Far from being the latest chemical soup of genetic material, we are Divine creatures who will make choices every day in this coming year that affect the world, and each other, in ways that only we uniquely can. So go ahead and spit in a tube if you want to. Find out where you come from… enjoy… But remember that the challenge of these holidays is to write original material into our books of life.

Your handwriting may resemble someone else out there in your inherited past, but the story? The story is all yours.

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