Yom Kippur: Mandated Reporters
Sermon by Rabbi Sim Glaser
2012/5773
Last month, in August, there appeared a blue moon. A blue moon is when there is a full moon not once but twice in one month! And you know how often that happens! Oh, once in a, uh… It happens once in a… Well very infrequently. Next one not due until 2015.
No such thing as a blue moon on the Jewish calendar. Ours is a lunar calendar, the Jewish month begins with the new moon. The full moon marks the middle of the Jewish month, and indicates an important bit of information to rabbis the world over this time of year: you have two weeks to get your sermons written! We call them sermon moons.
Seeing the new moon can mean many things to many people. Ancient Jews in Jerusalem would witness the new moon as a call to action, to prayer, to meaning, to new beginnings. The sages in Jerusalem had to announce to the Jewish world beyond the walls of the city that a new month was dawning. In a way these were mandated reporters who needed to let the rest of the Jewish world know what they had seen so as to observe the Torah Holidays properly. As soon as the new born crescent was sighted from the capital the news was sent to the rest of the country.
Does this still happen today? No, new moons are scientifically determined. But also, first sightings of the new moon may vary. The moon may be seen at one place, only to be missed at another. Atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity, clouds, dust, latitude, etc. can affect a first sighting of the new moon. Even a distance of a few hundred miles in any direction could make the difference between seeing the new moon and not seeing it. City dwellers can’t get away from the glare of the city lights each month to look out for the new moon.
Neil Armstrong, who died this summer, was the first to step onto the lunar surface. Millions of people around the world, including yours truly at about the age of 14, watched it, fascinated, awestruck. For most people, I think, the immediate reaction was: Wow, that guy is standing on the moon, 239,000 miles away! But soon came more profound observations at seeing the earth from a distance.
Armstrong’s famous quote at that moment was: “One small step for a man, one giant step for mankind.” A year prior to that moon landing astronaut Frank Borman saw the earth for the first time from space and remarked: “When you’re up at the moon looking back on earth, the differences and nationalistic traits blend and you understand that this really is one world and why the hell can’t we learn to live together like decent people?”
William Burroughs, the novelist and poet, in a wry moment wrote – “After one look at this planet, any visitor from outer space would say – “I want to see the manager”.
Ironic, said another Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders that we had come to study the moon and wound up discovering the earth.
Hubert Humphrey remarked: As we begin to comprehend that the earth itself is a kind of manned spaceship hurtling through the infinity of space it will seem increasingly absurd that we have not better organized the life of the human family.
Earth gazing is nothing new. In 1948, 20 years before any such viewings, it was said that once a photograph of the earth taken from the outside is made available, a new idea, as powerful as any in history, will be let loose. In the 17th century Galileo said “if you could see the earth illuminated when you were in a place as dark as night it would look to you more splendid than the moon.”
How interesting the way many, upon seeing the earth as a distant whole unit, were moved to testify primarily to both its fragility and to the now obvious unity of the human race. It is as though once we saw the whole earth, even through the eyes of an astronaut we all became mandated reporters for the welfare of our planet and its inhabitants.
The actual definition of a mandated reporter is a professional who in the normal course of his or her work come in contact with vulnerable members of society; children, the poor, the disabled, senior citizens, and who witness abuse, neglect, suffering, or outright abandonment, are required to sound the alarm. In certain careers the mandated reporter who does not “report” is subject to the civil and even criminal justice systems for intentionally failing to act.
Jews have always been and will continue to be mandated reporters. And Yom Kippur is the day of mandated reporting.
This afternoon we will be reading the book of Jonah upstairs. Some of you will be there but many of you may not be, which is too bad because it tells a critical story about a mandated reporter who shirks his responsibility big time. So here’s the short version of one of the shortest books in the bible.
Jonah is a prophet who is called by God to go to the sinful city of Nineveh, a place that makes Vegas look like Disneyworld. There he is assigned to convince the people of that city of the error of their ways and get them to make teshuva, atonement, and change their behavior from cruel, callous and inhumane to kind and good. Jonah’s response to the assignment is basically, “no way - that’s 47% of the population I don’t need to care about. The people of Nineveh are beyond redemption. They have their problems, but they are not MY problems. Let’s just work around them.”
God says something to the effect of, “that’s a lame excuse and I still want you to go.” Jonah does not listen and heads to the seaside, catching the first boat to anywhere, hiding out in the hull of the ship. When the storm comes and the seas are raging in revolt against this irresponsible prophet, they throw Jonah overboard and he winds up inside a fish. After a few days he gets tired of seafood, which he is not allowed to eat anyway, and says “alright I’ll go.” He arrives at Nineveh, tells them to behave, and lo and behold they actually listen to him. Jonah is dismayed because he is not big on atonement and thinks people ought to get what they deserve. After his big mission a very blue Jonah feels overcome by a blazing hot sun overhead and prays for shelter. God blesses Jonah with a little shade tree, which then withers and dies leaving Jonah sad and empty. How, asks God as the book concludes, can you be so upset about something personal that is happening to some vegetation and not give a hoot about a great city filled with people and animals that turned itself around because of you?
Today we still live in a rarified atmosphere believing that as long as we’re ok right here and right now, everything will be alright. But it doesn’t work that way anymore. There are big issues at home and globally that affect the planet and everyone knows it. Technology has kept us well updated. This year, for the first time, Temple streamed Rosh Hashanah upstairs services. I got a message from Tel Aviv telling me how much they liked my…haircut!
A mandated reporter is certainly not someone who holes up in the stomach of a fish and waits for the storm to pass. Rather, he is a witness. The mandated reporter looks at her world and sees what needs to be changed. The mandated reporter is a voting aged person who makes it to the polls. The mandated reporter asks questions of their elected officials until they get answers.
How strange is it that our presidential election in November may well be determined by those who don’t vote this fall. No more than 60% of the population ever votes in a given election year.
Politics were meant to unite, not to divide and yet we witness more political division than ever before. And there is plenty of whale hiding going on across the political spectrum.
This July was the hottest in recorded history. Where were the mandated reporters? Did I miss logging on to a super-pac called Holy-cow-it’shot.com? I don’t think so. The two major parties nominated their presidential favorite son during the hottest summer ever and neither of them so much as touched the issue. Our president knows that the number one global issue is the environment but kept it out of the news during campaign season. On July 19th of this summer where was the highest heat index in the world reported? In the tropics? The Saharan desert? Saudi Arabia? No, the hottest spot on the planet on July 19th was Moorhead, Minnesota! But then, who’s ever heard of Minnesota?
We are in a pattern of mass running away. We are hiding in ship hulls and fish bellies when we avoid topics because they are unpopular. We are hiding when we ignore a huge sector of our population by demanding IDs to exclude voters, or adopting amendments that relegate fellow Americans to the status second class citizens. Don’t Jewish people know better from our own history to let that happen?
Jonah was a mandated reporter, meaning he knew something that needed to be dealt with and was ethically charged to confront it. He hopped the first boat leaving town. Yom Kippur is a no hiding day, and that is why, shortly before the gates close tomorrow the tradition throws Jonah’s escapist tale our way.
We read Jonah at the 11th hour. A lot of Jews who wrote musicals for Broadway know about this. In the musical theater business there is something called the 11 o’clock number where the composers put in a fabulous, hummable song just before the finale of the show. They do it on purpose because that’s when you start losing people – sort of where I am in my sermon right about now.
The 11 o’clock song jolts the listener back into attention so they can feel the intense message of the drama right up to the finish. You know these songs - Memory from Cats, Rose’s Turn from Gypsy, Sit Down You’re Rockin’ The Boat from Guys and Dolls, What I Did For Love from A Chorus Line, Edelweiss from the Sound of Music. They come late in the second act. Desperately the composers do not want you to leave the theater without the full impact of the production.
The 11 o’clock song for Yom Kippur is the story of Jonah, placed right in there as we move to the conclusion of the service to remind the congregation what the whole show is about. This is the story of the bible’s mandated reporter turning his back on critical missteps of humanity because it wasn’t politically advantageous and it didn’t matter to him personally at that moment. How ironic that the first individuals to see the earth from a great distance away were not alienated from the planet but deeply sentimental and concerned with its destiny. How quickly the borders vanished. How rapidly the political fences became invisible. How obvious were the issues that confront the sum total human race, just from a single glimpse at this orb floating in space. The clouds that covered one country were just like those covering any other country.
Jonah reminds us that even at the 11th hour we can turn things around. Teshuvah, return, is always possible. Jonah may have rejected his responsibility as a mandated reporter but we cannot. You cannot escape by boat when we are all in the same boat. Yom Kippur is about personal change, but it is also very much about a communal shifting for which we are all, in part responsible.
It can make you mighty unpopular to talk about something unpleasant. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. Jonah’s avoidance of his duty to save Nineveh came from his belief that people ought to get what they deserve. He did not understand that teshuva is something our God wants for us. But as the gates begin to close this afternoon let us be sure of at least one thing. Our atonement, our tikkun, our repair is very much God’s wish. The health of the world is very much God’s wish. The participation of every human being on this planet, regardless of race, creed, sexual orientation, or socio-economical level is very much God’s wish.
If rabbis start promoting political parties Temple Israel loses our 503C tax exempt status. But we can learn to reaffirm the truth that politics and government were meant to unite and not divide in order to conquer. We need leaders to see the big picture; who care about the distant future, our kids and grandkids. And perhaps most importantly, leaders who want to hear everybody’s voice. Not just the people who agree with them.
Leaders who can look out the window of a space vehicle, see the world as a fragile star floating, orbiting, faithfully in space, and say “we are one, and we are fragile.” YK is a day of no avoidance, no secrets, no procrastination, and it is a day of mandated reporting. You may find yourself eating fish at the break-fast this evening, but don’t let the fish eat you! Running to the seaside and hopping on the good ship Denial is not what Jewish people do.
To gaze in awe at the new moon is to understand beginnings. That is what Jewish people do. To see our entire planet objectively as though from an Apollo 8 spacecraft and hear the call to action that involves all 7 billion of us, that is also what Jewish people do.
Great things can begin for all of us this year with small determined steps. May 5753 see a giant step for humankind.