Erev Rosh HaShanah: Traditional Service
Sermon by Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman
2020/5781
On average we breathe between 12 and 16 breaths every minute. By the time we are 50 years old, we have 400 million breaths. This is truly a remarkable reality; a sense of miracle. Physically, of course, breathing gives oxygen to every cell in our bodies. It is amazing to see the beauty of breath come into this world with an inhale, and we exit with a last exhale. The breaths of life: breathe in, breathe out.
In Judaism, breath is a part of what it means to be G-dlike, to have the divine essence in us. It is about remembering every morning we say elohai nishamov shenatata bi t’horah hi. Every morning we say, “G-d, you have implanted our soul within us. You have formed it. You have created it. And you have breathed it into me.”
In Genesis, G-d’s breath gives life. G-d’s breath hovers over the surface of the water. G-d gives breath to all the animals on the land, the birds in the sky, and all the creeping things on the ground. G-d gives breath. From that dust of the Earth, G-d breaths into the nostrils of the first human being the breath of life. It is amazing. It is miraculous. A daily miracle 20,000 times a day.
Covid-19 takes away the oxygen in our bodies like no other respiratory disease, and it doesn’t always show distress. In Norway, Dr. Marie Seim visited a man in his home. He was in his 60s and he had flu-like symptoms for over a week. Of course, with Covid-19 on her mind, she walked into his living room and could not believe what she saw. She saw this man sitting up, smiling – not looking upset or distressed at all. His breaths were fast and shallow, and he had a tint of blue around his lips and on his fingers. Dr. Seim really did not think that he was as sick as he really was until she measured his blood oxygen. Normally our blood oxygen is well above 90 percent. Her device read 66 percent. She thought she had it upside down and so she, again, measured the man’s oxygen; it was 66 percent. She called the ambulance.
Covid-19 has scientists and health workers perplexed. Really. They walk in and here are people who have such low oxygen levels that healthcare workers would expect them to actually be incoherent or in shock. But instead, these individuals are sitting in their chairs talking to their physician and calling people on their cell phones.
Silent hypoxia, it is called. It is the reality of truly giving one this consent, this view that they’re okay but really they’re in deep, deep distress. This is Covid-19. It is a respiratory disease that can quietly take your breath away.
It is amazing what we are living with in our times. Many of us have known people who have had Covid-19. And some of us might have even experienced what Dr. Seim experienced. But what’s amazing to me is this silent hypoxia, if I were a biblical writer, I would actually think that this is a reflection of our social reality. That actually, in so many ways, our social body is being deprived of oxygen. That we go about our day as poverty increases and homelessness is all around; where people are having difficulty finding food; one out of every five children doesn’t have food.
Racial inequity, police brutality, pandemics. It is really this possibility of finding the symbolism of this silent hypoxia, of where we go about our lives talking on the phone acting as though the problems of this world are too big or overwhelming for us to take on. Or worse yet, we are in denial and we deny that they even affect us, the problems of this world – the epically, biblically, possible problems in this world. That they don’t even affect us.
That seemed to change on May 25. Here in Minneapolis at 38th and Chicago, when George Floyd yelled out, “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe,” as a Minneapolis police officer put his knee on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds. “I can’t breathe.”
In July the bodycam coverage was released, and we found out a few new things. That the police officer as we knew had his hands in his pocket, but we heard from the first time his words. His words not paying attention or empathetic to the distress that George Floyd was in. “I can’t breathe.” The officer said it sure takes a lot of breath, a lot of oxygen, to talk.
George Floyd went into shock. He became incoherent. And his battle cry – I can’t breathe – was at the center of demonstrations throughout this world. It is the moment where that idea of breath was taken away. And for us, that cry is to be in the presence and to fight for racial justice and against police brutality.
When I was 20 years old I was at an urban studies program in Chicago. I all of a sudden was living and learning in the heart of the city. In this diverse world that I had never been in before, I took a class; it was Racism in America. The teacher, Pat Berg, she was the first person to confront me about my own racism and implicit bias. She made sure that all of the white students in that seminar had a reckoning with ourselves and became truth-tellers about our own history and our own sense of race, or the lack thereof. And so she was a contender. This strong and compassionate black woman became one of the most important educators in my life. She changed my world. She helped me see things differently.
My grandparents, like many of yours, were immigrants to this country from Russia. They came here to escape anti-Semitism, and to create a world and a life that was better for their children and their grandchildren. My parents, they were good and loving people. They worked hard. And my father, a doctor, he wanted to help people. But in that seminar, I had to come to terms with the reality of the phrases used in my house about the black community; perspective and opinions shared. I had to become a truth-teller about my own background. It isn’t just what my parents and grandparents said. It was the television programs I was watching in the ‘60s and ‘70s; it was the commercials that were on; it was the school that I went to, and the lack of diversity; the neighborhood I up in. On and on and on. I had to wrestle with the realities of the life that I was raised in and I had to tell the truth. It was so important.
In that seminar there were times I got defensive. I got fragile. I got upset. I didn’t understand. I felt misunderstood. But what was amazing is Pat Berg just kept on quietly, strongly, loudly telling me the realities of racism in this country. And I know with every breath I have that I have to wrestle with that every single day of my life. And I have tried from that moment on; I have been successful some and I have failed others. And I know that confronting racism is not comfortable. There is discomfort in that process, and I bring it on because it is the only way that I will grow. It is the only way that I can change. It is the only way that I can be a part of the solution, not the problem.
Immediately after George Floyd, it was amazing to see what happened here at Temple. My phone started ringing constantly. Congregants from white Ashkenazi backgrounds were saying Temple has to do something. People who had never spoken about race, who had never come to any program about race, all of a sudden were calling me and wanting us to do something; wanting to make it better, wanting to be a part of a world that stops systemic racism. They didn’t always know what to do. They didn’t always have the words to do it. But they wanted Temple to do something.
We started a white ally group, and that group is here to support our congregants of color group that started over a year ago. Jessi Kingston, who is a member of our Board of Directors, and I are partners in this work here at Temple Israel to confront racism, to make sure that we become anti-racist in fighting the fight against systemic racism. We reached out to all of our congregants of color to make sure that they knew we were thinking of them and wanted to know how they were doing. Of course as time went on and the violence in the streets happened, many people called and were unsure how to understand it. Others were upset about it, and actually began to disconnect from their initial desire to do something. Let me be clear: I condemn violence. I condemn what happened on those streets. That was broken glass. But I do understand that if we don’t get to the root of things, that that will never change.
Congregants at Temple were directly affected by that violence, businesses destroyed, and broken glass and chaos outside the living room windows of people who were afraid. We need to also understand, as frightening as it is, as absolutely unacceptable, we have to get to the roots of things. We have to look at this broken world.
Judaism believes that the world is broken. We were kicked out of the Garden of Eden because we were not ready to take on paradise, and the hopes and dreams of a perfect world. So we are not going to find that perfect world or the garden until we do the work in this world.
John Lewis, may his memory be for a blessing; he actually told us the importance of what it means to fight for freedom. He says, “Freedom is not a state, it’s an act.” It’s not some garden set in a plateau set in this beautiful place where you can eventually sit down and rest. That’s not freedom. John Lewis reminds us that good trouble is about the freedom of the work we all have to do in every generation. Freedom is doing that work. Freedom is about the hard work, not being fragile. Finding a place that it’s okay to feel uncomfortable because that’s how we grow.
In this work I have to be honest. We’re going to break a little, too. It’s just part of it. In apartheid South Africa there’s a story that I love about a white teacher who actually decides that his school of all-white students is going to play hockey with an all-black school. His name is Robert Mansfield and he did this until his Board of Education told him he could no longer do it. So Mansfield resigns in protest. Emanuel Nene is a leader of the black community is apartheid South Africa at the time, and he goes and seeks out Mansfield and he says to him, “I want to meet the man who doesn’t want to prevent children from playing with each other. I want to join you in your fight.” And Mansfield responds, “You’re going to get wounded.” And Nene responds, “I don’t care about the wounds, because when I get up there -- and I am going to get up into the heavens – the holy one will ask me, ‘Where are your wounds?’ And if I say I have none, then the holy one will respond, ‘Was there nothing worth fighting for?’ And I cannot answer that question.” That’s what’s being asked of us today. Is there something worth fighting for? Where are our wounds?
Rabbis Minda and Shapiro and countless laypeople have decided to stay in the city. Temple Israel is a beacon – a beacon of social justice, a beacon of Judaism, a beacon of religious voice – and we have stayed here because we understand that it is up to us. We have the possibility of helping, we have the brain-trust, we have our circles of influence, and we have the power to make change. Where are our wounds? What is worth fighting for? Because for me, if we sit out on this one then I just wonder, and I ask you, what will our history say about us? What will we say to the holy one when the holy one asks us where are your wounds? What will our precious city say if we sit this one out because it’s too complicated?
I love this complicated world. I am eager to do the work that we need to do. And so, our white ally group made a bold statement. They wanted to do something that was very essential and powerful. So the ally group went to the Board of Directors and asked, or proposed, let’s put it that way, that Temple Israel put a Black Lives Matter poster outside facing Hennepin Avenue so that we could give life and breathe life into the Isaiah quote over our doors: This house should be a house of prayer for all peoples.
This Rosh Hashanah we have our breath and out of our breath comes the sound of the shofar. The shofar awakens us. It is a place for us to make sure that you join Temple Israel in a robust program around race. We have been working on it for years now, and this year the initiatives are particularly important. We invited you to come with us to share in reading and share in opinion, but to make sure that we do that work.
In the month of Elul, just prior to today, we amplified the voices of those congregants of color. They are astonishing and exquisite. They are powerful. I invite you to go to our webpage and hear them. And I want to say that there was a nine-year-old, her name is Izzy. Izzy was born into this congregation as her mother was. Izzy is part of a multi-racial family. Izzy has a few things to tell us, and instead of paraphrasing it, I decided I think we should let Izzy speak for herself.
Izzy:
“When I was two years old I was having a fit over nothing like most two-year-olds, right? Of course I was with my dad who is a person of color along with my sister. A random woman saw me crying and snatched me away from my dad. I cried as hard as I could without choking on my own spit. I was reaching for my dad as long as my little two-year-old arms could reach. My dad reached out an managed to grab me back. The woman, still feeling what she did was right, walked away. In the nine years of my life I’ve seen more than that. For example, when I was four years old, and my dad had taken me to the park. It was a bright, sunny day and I was playing in the sand with him. Then a woman came over and started yelling, “He is not your dad. Why don’t you adopt a black kid, not a good white one.” She yelled and yelled and yelled until I started whimpering and told my dad, “Can we go dad? I’m scared.” He was about to tell me to pack up the sand toys, but we just left and walked back home. And the woman was still ranting. I understand I just took a glimpse into the world of which black children and black people live in all of their lives, but that has really given me my perspective on life. Why throw stones when you can hold hands? Why use violence when you can go to a peaceful protest? So many people used to choose to use violence and throw stones. We need to understand the privilege we have as white people. We need to speak up because we have the ability to do it. All of us need to come together in spite of our differences so we can make a difference. You can donate, or protest, or just tell a friend hang in there, it’s going to be all right. Because you can make a difference. And right now we need all the difference we can get.”
Yes, Izzy, I promise you as your rabbi that Temple Israel will fight for your family. We love you. We love your diversity and we love your perspective. Thank you for having the courage to share it with us.
Twenty-thousand breaths a day. Miraculous and wonderful. But we know it is not just the number of breaths we’re given that truly values our life. Our life is valued by the people we love, by the work we do to make this world a better place. The breaths that we have we must share with the world and breathe life into the new possibilities in the wake of this historic moment. It is the possibility of creativity, the possibility of innovation, the possibility that racial injustice can be our past but not our future. Let us work together, because as the proverb so beautifully says, “It is not the number of breaths that we take in our life, but it is truly the number of moments that take our breath away.”
Shabbat shalom and shanah tovah.