Rabbi Klein's High Holiday messages to the Grosse Pointe Jewish Council
Becoming Erev Rosh Hashana 2015
In 1934 Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, wrote his classic text Judaism As Civilization. Kaplan taught that there are three ways of identifying with a religious community: by believing, by behaving, and by belonging, insisting that the primary and most enduring (and therefore historically significant) of the three was belonging, what he called “that intuitive sense of kinship that binds a Jew to every other Jew in history and in the contemporary world.” And it’s true that no matter what Jews believe, and no matter how Jews behave, there is an underlying, fundamental and intrinsic interconnection that ties us together in a common history and present reality.
To a sociologist “Jewish” is a uniquely messy term! Typically, there is a difference between ethnic and religious classifications: for instance one can be ethnically “Irish” while being Catholic--or Protestant. Yet the adjective “Jewish,” nominally religious-- is also used ethnically! Isn't it true that we speak of Italian neighborhoods, Mexican neighborhoods -- and Jewish neighborhoods! Consider that while the classic division of religious Americans is Catholic, Protestant, Jew, we are the only ‘religious’ group that is included in encyclopedias of ethnic peoples! And why is it that in bookstores one can find books on Jewish cooking and Jewish humor, but nothing like Catholic cooking, or Muslim humor? And even when “Jewish” is used as a completely religious term it has unique qualities. I’m sure you have heard folks say “I used to be Methodist but now I’m not,” or “I was born Catholic but I left the church,” or “I was Baptist, but now I’m Presbyterian.” But have you ever heard anyone say “I used to be Jewish but now I’m not?”! Sociologists have difficulty with “Jewish” because the term is not fully an ethnic or religious identification.
Were it one or the other it would be much easier for all of us! If Jewish were only ethnic, then chicken soup, yiddish theater, and dancing the hora would adequately describe and define and express one’s identity. If Jewish were only religious, then Sabbath candles, synagogue worship, and the Kaddish would separate who “is” from who “isn’t.” And it seems that more and more we describe and express our Judaism in cultural, ethnic terms rather than in religious values. If we were to take the traditional ritual and religious “oughts” of Judaism as the minimum “requirement” for identification-- most of us would fall far short!
Less than one Jew in ten follow what Orthodoxy claims is necessary to be a proper Jew. Reform and Conservative synagogues see only a small percentage of their membership on a regular basis. And the majority of American Jews don’t even belong to synagogues-- the unaffiliated rate in many large cities is well over 70%. But before we wring our hands and bemoan the dilution and dissolution of American Judaism let’s be clear: this is a not a recent development, this predominantly ethnic dimension of being Jewish. The declining impact of Judaism “as a religion” in our lives is endemic to the American Jewish experience. Even before the waves of immigration brought our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents to America, they arrived anxious to become “100% American.” They associated the cultural dress and habits of the “Old World” with what they had gladly and readily left behind. They were eager to become “newly and fully American” and so were quick to shed the outer appearance of a new immigrant “greenhorn”. A “yankee” did not have peote/side-curls or a babushka.; A yankee did not speak Yiddish; did not turn away from American food or American weekend leisure activities. We wanted to belong to America and not to the Judaism we’d left in the “old country!” And because our Jewish religious values are primarily expressed in observant “behavior,” it is no surprise that in becoming “100% American” we abandoned what we associated with Jewish ritual and religion, and filled in ethnically what we had thrown out ritually.
When our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents came to America in the 19th C. the majority of them wanted to leave behind the restrictive world of their parents. For the most part, they did not believe in the fundamental tenets of Jewish faith: divinely written scripture, superstitious rites and ceremonies. They rejected what they thought an oppressive Orthodoxy-- at odds with the Enlightenment values of the 19th Europe. (It was only in the early 20th C that Orthodox Judaism gained a foothold in America.) These young, idealistic Jews did not altogether jettison their Judaism, they redefined it as a universalist ethic of socialism. They took the morality of Biblical Judaism and created a cultural, social Jewish community within which they could embrace the values and lifestyle of “America.” They did not “abandon” Judaism, rather they envisioned it as “Ethical Monotheism”, religiously reflecting the cultural and secular “American Dream.”
It is therefore wrong to speak of the history of the American Jewish community as becoming more and more “assimilated.” Instead we must understand it as a process of “acculturation”: newcomers becoming “Americanized” as an ethnic community. Acculturation is not the same as assimilation if assimilation is understood as dissolving into the ‘melting pot’ of the general population, where one’s particularistic identity is lost. And the truth is that we were exceptional in that we acculturated faster and more successfully than most other ethnic groups, even as we essentially still lived amongst ‘landsmen’, and identified ourselves as a separate group in the larger community.
As our “Americanization” proceeded, it was necessarily accompanied by a diminishing of Jewish culture, Jewish learning and religious intensity-- but we did not disappear into the “melting pot.” What did happen was that significant shifts were taking place. In the 1950's it was becoming more and more apparent that young Jewish adults were leaving the neighborhoods of their parents. They chose friends and spouses without regard to ethnicity or religion. By the early ‘60s the postwar Jewish generation, at rates approaching 80%, entered colleges and found there an environment that tended to undermine familial, religious and institutional loyalties. No longer was “Jewish” a significant factor with respect to choices in career, friends, lovers, spouses, politics and neighborhoods. And to be frankly honest-- when we left our Jewish past to enter into an American present, my cohort of “boomer” Jews didn’t lose anything because there was not that much to be lost! If we were leaving anything--it was a Jewish past remembered with negative feelings: Hebrew School afternoons and Sunday Religious Schools that were trivial or unpleasant, a dutiful Bar Mitzvah suffered for the sake of the parents, redeemed only by the ingathering of gifts.
Most of that generation (my generation!) had only a smattering of observance: occasional visits to the synagogue, perhaps a yearly Seder and the lighting of the Chanukah candles before the presents. For the most part, the young adults who emerged in the middle and late 60's had little Jewish culture or learning or religion to begin with, and so there was little of substance to reject. So today’s middle-aged and retirement-aged adults, now thoroughly Americanized, can hardly be criticized for “giving up” something they never had! And so there are understandably no feelings of guilt associated with their acculturation! As we grew, we grew away from the Jewish community, becoming what is today the largest American Jewish group-- the unaffiliated.
Jewish leaders bemoan the number of unaffiliated Jews in our midst, calling them a “generation without memory.” In fact just the opposite is true! We remember too clearly the minimal symbolic Judaism of our parental homes, the trivial education about Jewish history and culture we sat through in Sunday School. The unaffiliated are better characterized as a generation without knowledge of Jewish culture, history or tradition, and without the desire to acquire it. We cannot fault them/us for leaving behind what was never of personal value.
It is true that many unaffiliated, acculturated American Jews have disappeared into secular society and can be said to have fully assimilated, melted into the general population where their particularistic identity has effectively dissolved. And they are beyond our reach, with no reason or desire to identify with us. They have left us purposefully, with thought and consideration-- they are a measure of our cultural success! Our parents and grandparents wanted us to be comfortable within American culture-- and we are! We must live with the consequences of our dream-come-true! But the formerly marginalized Jews who have disappeared over the margin are not us, not you who purposefully gather -- as a community-- for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, Shabbat and Festivals. And if we honestly ask ourselves why we want this community to be a community? Why it’s important to be here today, and tomorrow, and ten days from now? The truth is that for us Judaism is still a religious faith-expression first, with cultural and ethnic attributes secondarily. This, after all, is not an ethnic gathering. We are here because at the heart of Judaism is a spiritual message, not a cultural one. So it’s important that we remind ourselves of that truth, that reality, that certainty. Straddling the border between culturally American and religiously Jewish we have to work harder to preserve and protect that religious part of our selves lest we melt away into the secular pot. And that is the point of our High Holidays.
Here we remember that we are “Jewish”, that we have survived as a faith community. Here we remember the difference between a sh’meir and the Sh’ma, between bagels and belief, between a hora at a wedding and the hallelulya response of the Kedusha. It is the yiddishe n’shamah, the “Jewish soul” which brought us together this evening, and whose preservation and celebration we seek. As American Jews we know that the Jewish soul can thrive and flourish within our American culture, but not if Judaism is defined as an occasional ethnic experience. We must be careful then to create a living Judaism within our community and within our homes; a Judaism that transcends the ethnic, that emphasizes, as Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan wrote 80 years ago, belonging ...and behaving...and believing. And I would add tonight “becoming”. In our choosing to become authentic Jews within the greater American community, we protect and preserve our history and heritage. With pride and purpose we sustain and strengthen ourselves, our families and this small community. May this new Jewish year renew our individual and collective intention to “become” what we’ve always wanted to be, what we’ve always known we could be.
Chazak chazak v’nitchazek, be strong, be strong and we will strengthen each other.
Shana tova umtuka, may this year be good and sweet.
And let us say Amen.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Redeeming the Akedah Rosh Hashanah 2015
The following commentary on our Rosh Hashanah Torah portion was written by the great 20th C. Jewish theologian Woody Allen:
And Abraham awoke in the middle of the night and said to his only son, Isaac, “I have had a dream where the voice of the Lord sayeth that I must sacrifice my only son, so put your pants on.” And Isaac trembled and said, “So what did thou sayest? I mean when He brought up this whole thing?”
“What am I going to say?” Abraham said. “I’m standing there at 2 am. in my underwear with the Creator of the Universe. Should I argue?”
“Well, did He say why He wants me sacrificed?” Isaac asked his father.
But Abraham said, “The faithful do not question. Now let’s go because I have a heavy day tomorrow.” And Sarah who heard Abraham’s plan grew vexed and said, “How doth thou know that it was the Lord and not, say, thy friend Sam who loveth practical jokes, for the Lord hateth practical jokes-- and whosoever shall pull one shall be delivered into the hands of his enemies, whether they can pay the delivery charge or not.”
And Abraham answered, “Because I know it was the Lord. It was a deep, resonant voice, well-modulated, and nobody in the desert can get a rumble in it like that.” And Sarah said. “And thou art willing to carry out this senseless act?” But Abraham told her, “Frankly yes, for to question the Lord’s word is one of the worst things a person can do, particularly with the economy in the state it’s in.”
And so he took Isaac to a certain place and prepared to sacrifice him, but at the last minute the Lord stayed Abraham’s hand and said, “How could thou doest such a thing? And Abraham said, “But thou said...”
“Never mind what I said.”Doth thou listen to every crazy idea that comes thy way?” And Abraham grew ashamed, “Er, no, not really.”
“I jokingly suggest that thou sacrifice Isaac and thou immediately run out to do it.” And Abraham fell to his knees saying, “See, I never know when thou art kidding.”
And the Lord thundered, “No sense of humor. I can’t believe it.” And Abraham said “But doth this not prove that I love thee, that I was willing to donate my only son on thy whim?”
And the Lord said, “It proves that some men will follow any order no matter how asinine, as long as it comes from a resonant, well-modulated voice.” And with that, the Lord told Abraham to get some rest and check with Him again tomorrow.
Each year, on Rosh Hashanah morning, we return to this Torah narrative of the Akedat Yitzchak, “The Binding of Isaac”. And each year I remind myself that we read it because we’re supposed to, not because it offers such a wonderful New Year message. It is, in fact, a terrible story! And I’ve always been fascinated by the lengths to which our commentators have gone to explain, accept and justify it. The traditional responses to the Akedah tend to fall into two categories. The first is that this was a test of Abraham’s faith and trust in God, which he thankfully passed. The problem with this explanation is that we have to ask ‘what kind of God commands a parent to kill his or her child, even if only as a test!?’
The second kind of commentary has it that this experience was a warning to Abraham against the practices of the idolaters who did sacrifice their children-- that in his terror-walk up Moriah, and in placing Isaac on the altar, Abraham finally and fully realizes the horrible evil of human sacrifice. The problem with this explanation is that God praises Abraham because he is indeed ready to sacrifice his son. If this was to be an admonition against child-sacrifice, then instead of praising Abraham, and blessing him because he was going to go through with it-- God should have chastised him for his willingness, and warned him: ‘now let this be a lesson to you.’
However this story was understood 3000 years ago, we have to find our own meaningful response since we can’t very well ignore it. And our problem is that if we affirm God as our source of justice and morality, then we cannot give the story a face-value validity. What I mean is: If God is good, then God would not, could not, have done this! So can we “fix” this terrible story which reflects so poorly on everyone involved, for indeed no one comes out unblemished:
Abraham obediently rushes off to kill his son;
Isaac passively, submissively accepts his own death;
Sarah (though not explicitly mentioned in the story) lets her husband go off on his mission of murder;
and God demands the death of a son by the hand of his father.
We don’t know for sure why this particular Torah reading was assigned so prominent a place on Rosh Hashana by the rabbis in the Talmud. But I suspect that it was chosen as a raised banner against the growing Christian church in the 2nd and 3rd C., waved on this major community gathering as a declaration that ours is the original story of a father offering up his one and only son as a sacrifice. But whatever the reason for its inclusion on Rosh Hashanah, Tradition demands that it be read and explicated this morning, and so we follow the rules.
I am regularly troubled by traditional commentaries that praise Abraham for willing to kill his son, or that justify God’s command. If this was a test, then I think God failed it! How can I pledge my faith to, or be in covenant with, a God who commands a father to kill his son. And to those who say that the sacrifice was never meant to be realized, that God would never have let it go to completion— I wonder how God could even ask this of a father! What kind of God would think this an acceptable test? Neither murder enacted nor murder intended can ever be justified by principles of faith. To even suppose that that might be true, opens the doors of justifiable terrorism to the likes of ISIS, Al Qaida, and Hamas who with blind loyalty and faith are ready to kill in God’s name. If this was a test, then Abraham also failed in not rejecting the command and the commander, out-of-hand. How could Abraham heed so immoral a demand?
And when we look to the larger Biblical text for help in understanding the lesson of the Akedah, we look in vain and come up empty. There is simply no reference at all to this story in Hebrew Scripture! It’s almost as if the Prophets and storytellers of Scripture who already knew how problematic is the Akedah -- purposefully ignored it. I did find recently a particularly interesting take on the story which goes like this:
Abraham had conceived a new faith in a new single, unitary god. To that end Abraham abandoned the idols of his father Terach and left his homeland to go to a new land where he would establish a new nation, and where his offspring would inherit the land and continue his belief. But as a really old man, Abraham was not certain that his son Isaac would maintain the faith. Might Isaac repeat what Abraham had done to his own father? Might Isaac abandon the belief of Abraham and leave what was to be the Promised Land? How could Abraham guarantee that Isaac would continue the covenant? So Abraham, on his own, stages this akedah. Taking his son to the mountain, he binds Isaac on the altar, brandishes a knife over his head, and then drops it at the last moment, saying to Isaac, ‘Behold, it is God who has forbidden me to kill you. It is God who saved your life.’ Isaac would then believe that he owed his life to his father’s God. Thus Abraham taught Isaac that God would always deliver him from trouble.
With this interpretation, Abraham intentionally sacrifices his relationship with his son, in order to preserve the family’s covenant with God. Interesting, but not particularly satisfying.
Sometimes, in advance of Rosh Hashana, I imagine how nice it would be to ignore altogether this morning’s Torah reading, this troubling and disturbing assault on Jewish theology. What kind of God could ask such a thing of a parent? If we believe that God cares for us and blesses us with life and goodness, if God is a God of justice, righteousness and mercy-- then what are we to do with the God of the Akedah? We can’t pretend the story away, since we’re forced to deal with it in this most public of community forums. Traditionally, Rosh Hashana sermons justify God and Abraham by saying that what seems to be happening isn’t all that bad; or that it just needs to be explained “within its context”; or that it is merely a metaphor to teach the importance of faith and trust. But I can only read the text the way it’s written. And if God means what God says, and if Abraham is prepared to comply-- then I am angered by the questions I have to ask! How can God demand Isaac’s death, and why (in God’s name!) does Abraham agree?
I therefore choose to believe that neither Abraham nor God want Isaac to be slaughtered nor do they expect him to be! I find support for this argument in the text itself. Five chapters prior to the Akedat Yitzchak God announces to Abraham that he has been chosen to begin a new nation, to be the father of a people in special covenant with God. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly...Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations...And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant. [Genesis 17:2-7] . . . And God said, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son . . . and you shall call his name Isaac; and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him. [17:19] . . . I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you [17:21]
God is clear and unambiguous in his promise to Abraham: He will father a great nation which will inherit Canaan, guided and protected by God in a covenant that will pass from Abraham through Isaac. So we already know by chapter 22 that Isaac will become the second patriarch, that from him and through him God’s Chosen People will continue. If Isaac dies, so does the promise of God’s covenant! And Abraham must know this, must realize that God could not possibly want Isaac to die on the mountain. So why is Abraham silent, why doesn’t he right away object or protest, why does he passively go up the mountain, to the altar and take up the knife. Why? Because Abraham is waiting for God to stop him, knowing that God has to stop him!
We read this in Abraham’s only statement to Isaac when the boy asks “where is the sheep for the offering?” Abraham replies “God will provide for Himself the sheep for the offering, my son.” Abraham says what he knows to be true, God will not let it happen unless...unless the prior promise has no value, unless God’s word is worthless. And if that promise was false and the Promiser a fraud, and God does not stop Abraham--- well, then the father unties the son and they both go home. If the covenant is real, then God will intervene, has to intervene. If not then Abraham chalks it up to false faith.
So Abraham lifts the knife, and waits. Is God going to end this charade or is this the end of his faith in God? Yes, this is the story of a test, but it is Abraham who is testing God. Abraham who is in control, who alone holds the knife above Isaac’s throat...and waits. God must stop him if God is the God of truth.
I still don’t care much for this story! But at least we can rescue Abraham from being cast as a blind-faith follower ready to kill at his God’s command. This is the story of a test, but it is Abraham who tests God, who challenges his own faith, and who never relinquishes control over how the story will end. And that is the message of Torah to us on this first day of the new year. We are to be like Abraham: having faith in one’s self, in the surety that what we know is true and just and right is indeed so, and that even though there are no simple, easy answers to questions of faith, belief and God, we must not turn away from the challenge. This new year’s day is our invitation to challenge ourselves and our faith, our religion and our traditions so that we might become more secure in, and fulfilled by, our covenant with God.
Shana tova
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
“Who by fire and who by flood” Erev Yom Kippur 2015
On Rosh Hashana morning we read the story of Rabbi Amnon of Mayance, that he was tortured by the Church on Yom Kippur in the 12th C. With his dying breath he said “Unetaneh tokef k’dushat hayom / Let us declare the sacred power of this day; it is awesome and full of dread. [For] now the divine Judge looks upon our deeds and determines our destiny.” The reading then continued with a liturgical poem that we’ll repeat tomorrow morning on page 313. We’ll read: “As the shepherd seeks out the flock and makes the sheep pass under the staff, so do You muster and number and consider every soul, decreeing its destiny. On Rosh Hashana it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed, who shall live and who shall die… but repentance, prayer and charity temper judgement’s severe decree.”
This poem, identified by its opening words Unetaneh tokef, is a well-remembered reading in the liturgy of the Holidays. Traditionally it is interpreted as an instructive warning to us that before God determines our fate in the new year (who shall live and who shall die, who by sword and who by beast, who by fire and who by flood)—we are able to avert God’s decree, change God’s mind, by demonstrating our worthiness by repentance, prayer and charity.
Unentaneh tokef is the liturgical expression of the folk-belief that on Rosh Hashana God opens the “Book of Life” and for these ten days God decides what will be written next to each of our names in the coming year. We have until tomorrow evening to be written down for a good year, for then the book is shut and sealed with the setting sun. Want to be safe next year?—pray, repent and do tzedakah, and just like that God will protect you.
I think about Unentaneh tokef and its theology every time a tornado hits in Kansas and Oklahoma, or a hurricane comes ashore in Florida or North Carolina, or wild fires and flash floods destroy homes in California, and family after family is displaced and communities are destroyed. Unentaneh tokef would have us believe that God sealed for destruction a year ago, thousands of families and dozens of communities!
I’ve known for a long time that the story of Rabbi Amnon of Mayence is far more bubba-myseh than history. There is significant doubt among Jewish scholars that he even existed, much less died a martyr and proclaimed Unentaneh tokef. It’s most unlikely that a Jew from Mayance in Germany would have the Italian name of Amnon, especially since German Ashkenazic and Italian Sephardic cultures did not at all mix in the 12th C when Amnon was supposed to live. More importantly though, this piyyut, or liturgical poem, according to literary scholars, is not in the written style of 12th C Germany. There is, however, textual evidence that Unentaneh tokef came from 6-8th C Palestine, with speculation that it was written by the 6th C. Christian Byzantine poet Romanus.
Of course, where it came from is not nearly as important, or as interesting, as the process by which it came to be included in our prayerbook. We do know that the text we read on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur mornings is not the original. It would appear that the rabbis of late Talmudic times appropriated the 6th C text, from wherever it came, and initially incorporated it as follows: “Rabbi Yudan said in the name of Rabbi Leazar: Three things nullify a decree of evil, and these are they: prayer, righteousness, and repentance. [Genesis Rabba 44:5]”
Now that’s a lot different from what we have on our prayerbook! Rabbi Yudan quotes Leazar as saying that these three things “nullify a decree of evil.” Our prayerbook says the same three “temper (not nullify) God’s judgement (not an evil) decree.” The original text declares that we can invoke God’s power to nullify evil. But what the rabbis wrote into this liturgy is that we have the power to temper the decree of God’s judgement! And this expectation is still affirmed in Orthodox Judaism. Traditional theology did then, and still does, affirm that God is fully in control of everything that happens in this world, that good people receive God’s blessings and are protected, and bad people are cursed. It’s a nicely neat and tidy world they believe in, but it’s not the world I live in! Life in the real world is not fair: good, innocent people sometimes do suffer pain and destruction, and evil people as often as not, do prosper.
There was a time when Jews stood before the ark on Yom Kippur trembling with fear before the Divine Judge. For Jews not so very long ago, the phrase “may you be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life for a good year” was more than an expression, it was their certain belief that God would decide, before the day was over, their fate for the next year. This day of “atonement” was not “spiritual metaphor”-- but actual and very real. If my promises of repentance were well received, I would be blessed in the year ahead. The Great Book of Life, closed and sealed with the setting sun, would be indelibly inscribed with my next year’s fate. My tomorrows were dependent on my fearful, self abasing, and sworn promises before God tonight and tomorrow. This really was a day of awe and dread, of fear and trembling, and the call of Kol Nidre brought us to our knees in submission before the righteous judgement of God. And the question I struggle with is this: Can we come to Yom Kippur affirming God the Just Righteous and Merciful Judge when we know that quite regularly bad things happen to good people?!
But let’s be honest-- we no longer stand at Kol Nidre believing that with tomorrow’s sunset God will have decided and determined our fates for the coming year. And though many of us have questions about God, or are of uncertain faith— we don’t believe that God will protect us merely because we try to be good Jews; and we don’t believe that God rewards the good and righteous with blessings and bounty, and punishes “evil doers. We live in a world that clearly and demonstrably is not directed by God’s promise of reward and punishment.
And yet, that is exactly what’s written into our Shabbat and Festival prayerbooks. It’s a theology with which I am not at all comfortable, and I presume that it is equally rejected by all of you. I say that with some confidence because if you believe that observing the mitzvote/commandments will protect you from misfortune, if you believe that God decides and directs the daily events in your life, that your fate for the new year will be sealed and determined with tomorrow’s setting sun-- then what in the world are you doing here on Yom Kippur!
Arthur Cohen, in his 1984 theological response to the Holocaust wrote, “The question… is not how can God abide evil in the world, but how can God be affirmed meaningfully in a world where evil enjoys such dominion (The Tremendum p. 34).” Cohen concludes that for him, God cannot be the God of traditional theology, which means that God can no longer be the God of the traditional prayerbook.
Many of us, and I include rabbis, agree with Arthur Cohen-- we cannot affirm a God who judgmentally intervenes in our lives, who heals us if we’re good, who harms us if we’re not. Then what are we to do with all these prayers that petition El rachum v’nachum (God of mercy and compassion) to intercede in our lives? What are we to do with the prayers that express our gratitude to God for God’s active and redemptive salvation? What shall we do with these prayers that are not at all what we in fact believe?
Tomorrow morning we’ll recite Mi y’chiyeh, umi yamut? “Who shall live and who shall die?” just as did our grandparents, and great grandparents for generations. But for them, for many of them, the words were filled with fear of God’s immanent decree. Their prayers were a fervent plea to a listening God in heaven, hoping against hope that God would smile on them and grant them good health and length of days. The God they worshipped was omnipotent and compassionate, an intervening deity who listened to and heard their petitions, their praises, and their thanks, and then responded to them. These were quite literally life and death pleas.
How different for us on these Days of Awe, for we read these words as metaphor and poetic idiom. For us their power is nostalgic, not actual. It is the effect of this worship that brings us a satisfying comfort for these words are no longer an existential cry for salvation. All of which leaves us caught on the horns of a major dilemma. Should we then dismiss and dispense with the traditional liturgy? Can we be both intellectually honest and still read these prayers?
The answer I think is certainly ‘Yes.’ The traditional prayers of our Sabbath and Festival prayerbooks transcend the literal theology of the text. What matters to us is not really what the words say, but how the moment affects us. Using the example of the Mi sh’berach-- in naming our friends and family members who are ill, we remind ourselves that we care and are concerned about them. Keeping them in mind prompts us to be more diligent in helping them with their recovery, in easing their discomfort, and in spending quality-time with them. And knowing that I am specially remembered within the congregation, during worship, can only bring me a sense of well-being that others are thinking about me in my distress and care about me. The actual words of the prayer in fact, pale in importance before the effect that the prayer has for both the one bringing the name, and the one who is named.
Which leads to the question: What then is the purpose of prayer? I think we agree that it is not to “remind” God to preserve and protect me, or to remedy destructive events, or heal those who are ill. And in this, our theology matches the original Rabbinic tradition which also rejects the notion that “prayer” is primarily a plea for intervention. The Hebrew word that we translate as prayer, the word coined by the rabbis almost 2000 years ago, does not mean “petition”, it is not a plea or request for. Our Hebrew word of t’filah is derived from the verb that means “to search within.” L’hitpalel means to “search within oneself.” Thus in our worship service we are to look within for answers, for guidance, and for direction.
This is very different from our English word that’s derived from Old English as in “Pray tell me…” meaning “Please tell me.” “Prayer” as understood in our western religious culture is a petition-- we pray for health, happiness and peace. And so pervasive is this western understanding of “prayer” that, unaware, we incorporate it into our own theology. To appreciate the Jewish sense of t’filah I remind you of a paragraph from our Sabbath siddur the Gates of Prayer:
Prayer invites God to let God’s presence suffuse our spirits, to let God’s will prevail in our lives. Prayer cannot bring water to parched fields, nor mend a broken bridge, nor rebuild a ruined city. But prayer can water an arid soul, mend a broken heart and rebuild a weakened will. (p. 152)
These words from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel clearly differentiate our notion of prayer from that of our western neighbors. It is our private and very personal opportunity to search within ourselves for the presence of God. And if “prayer” is primarily an inward directed examination, then the words we together recite are merely a communal means to benefit the focus of the individual.
And though our Holiday communal recitation, written almost 2000 years ago, does not particularly reflect our 21st C theology, though the prayerbook they wrote is not a tight, complete and problem free faith-system for us-- it at least reminds us that we’ve always struggled to define God, to understand the brit, the Covenant between the Divine and the Human, and that even with all its faults-- our best vehicle in that struggle is prayer.
We know that we cannot rely on the power of prayer to save us, or save our world. But on Yom Kippur we know that prayer can help us find within ourselves that power. We speak of t’shuvah, a word that means ‘turning’ but is often translated as “repentance”. When we consciously and purposely “turn” inward, and recognize that having erred, we can correct those mistakes-- then the renewal of the single person, and the community, and the world is possible.
For former generations, standing before God on Yom Kippur, the world was forbidding, dark and dangerous with one’s future most uncertain. Today, we too are fearful, and though we know that the future is, to some extent, out of our hands, and even less so in God’s—still we believe that tomorrow can be better than today, if and only if, we—you and I, make it better. And though our traditional liturgy (written for a different community in a different time with a different theology) pointedly petitions God to intervene on our behalf, we believe that if God works at all, God works through us.
The Christian theologians Augustine in the 4th C., and Ignatius in the 6th C. are both credited as saying: “Pray as if everything depends on God; work as if everything depends on you.” And we say: “Prayer invites God to let God’s presence suffuse our spirits, to let God’s will prevail in our lives.”
May we all inscribe ourselves in the Book of Life for a good year, a better year-- for us, for our community and for the world. And we say AMEN.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Jews and Words Yom Kippur 2015
A year or so ago I was asked in a college class, in one of our first meetings, “What does it mean that the Jews are the Chosen People?” I explained that Biblically we are the inheritors of the Covenant between God and the descendants of Abraham, chosen to be a “light to the nations” (Isaiah 42:6 and 49:6), to illumine the path to a better world. A millennium later this “Chosen People” sparked the creation of both Christianity and Islam, brought faith in the One Indivisible God to Western Civilization. To be “chosen” does not make us better, but it does make us the first.
I then said, “In all of human history not one nation or people or civilization has ever survived the destruction of its religious center and national capitol, not one—except us! And we did it twice! We are unique in human history that despite the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians and then the Romans, despite almost 1000 years of organized persecutions that included the Crusades, expulsions, pogroms and the Holocaust, in spite of so many efforts to destroy us— here we are.
And here we are-- celebrating our history and heritage, confident in our future on this most solemn and serious of days. Throughout our history Judaism has flourished wherever Jews chose or were forced to live. “Wherever you go, there’s always someone Jewish” as my friend Rabbi Larry Milder titled his song.
Now if that student had had her wits about her, she would have asked me “Do you really believe that God has purposely, personally singled you out, protected and preserved you?” Had she asked me that, I would have said “No” and I probably would have had explain my theology beginning with something like my message of last night. But if theology (at least my theology) doesn’t explain our Jewish longevity and unique role in human history, what does? Needless to say, that’s something I often think about, and I suspect it’s a question you’ve asked yourselves or have had asked of you. The answer, I think, is as simple as looking at this sanctuary.
When you take your seat in a church—when it’s used as a church, in front of you you’re looking at a wide table that’s an altar. It symbolizes the sacrificial altar on which God offered his son as a sacrifice to save humanity. And above the altar in a Catholic church you’ll see the body of that sacrificed son nailed to a cross. In a Protestant church, it’s different. Above the altar you’ll see an empty cross. The intentional Catholic message is that Jesus suffered and died for your sins—thus the figure of a tortured man. For Protestants their message is that the resurrection of Jesus (represented by the empty cross) is God’s promise of everlasting life.
But seated in a synagogue what is it that one sees? The centerpiece of the sanctuary is a closet-cabinet, and when it’s opened we rise and we see—a book! And on the bima, the platform in front of the ark, is not an altar but a reading desk. This is the secret of our historic and unprecedented success.
Last month in our year-long cycle of Torah readings we began the Book of Deuteronomy (a Greek word meaning “second law”). In Hebrew the book is called Devarim because of its opening line Eleh had-varim... “These are the words which Moses spoke to all of Israel.” Deuteronomy is a long discourse, something of an extended poem from Moses to the Israelites, his parting words as they are about to leave him and enter the Promise Land. Eleh had-varim... “These are the words” it begins.
To someone foreign to Judaism or Jewish tradition attending our worship, it must seem strange to witness the community rise before the open ark, even bowing as some do, before the Scroll of Torah. Are we worshipping this book? No. Are we affirming the authority, the majesty, even the divinity of what the book represents—well, yes. In the 3rd and 4th C’s when the rabbis were organizing the prayerbook and deciding the rituals of worship, they wrote Aleinu to conclude their service: Aleinu l’shabeiach l’adon hakol “It is on us to praise the Master of Everything” and they called God the “King of kings of kings” melech malchai ham-lachim. But how are we to publically acknowledge this Infinite God? Since we rise and bow before an earthly king, so they said, we should rise and bow before God’s finite, tangible presence in our midst—the Torah that’s God’s personally written revelation, God’s perfect and absolute message given to Moses at Sinai. Not only do we rise before the scroll, but we put regal symbols: crowns and breastplates on its body as a demonstration that its author is King of all kings.
As the rabbis created and constructed the worship experience, the black-on-white finite text of the Word of God that is in our midst, represented the Infinite Divine Presence that was far beyond us. And if one wanted access to the Divine, one had to be able to read. In 64 CE, Joshua ben Gamla the high priest in the last years of the Second Temple issued an ordinance mandating universal schooling for all males starting at about age six. The ordinance was not only issued; it was implemented. The Jews, and only the Jews, effectively established universal male literacy and numeracy.
This effected a shift of Jewish families as early as the 1st C, from farming and herding to urban occupations. If the Jewish head-of-household was educated, he possessed an asset that had economic value in occupations that required reading, writing and counting, particularly those occupations involving sales and transactions. If he remained a farmer, his education had little commercial value.
But students had to become more than merely “functionally” literate, they had to be able to read more than just simple texts. The Hebrew of the Torah and prayerbook, after all, require fairly advanced reading skills. And beyond that, to study the Talmud and its commentaries with understanding requires considerable intellectual and literary capacity. And at this highest level of literary accomplishment the text was not merely read, but it was debated and dissected. In this post-Biblical world of rabbinic Judaism, in the re-fashioned revolutionary transformation of Judaism, the “perfection” of Torah lay not in its absolute, unquestionable, carved-in-stone, once-and-for-all, here-it-is-for-all-time message—rather its divine perfection lay in its ability to necessarily be questioned and interpreted and even given new meaning. Torah was expected to be read differently generation to generation. The Word was not so much “instruction” as it was “invitation”, it was both “command” and “challenge”. The genius of the rabbinic reformation was that no longer would there be a single priestly religious authority. Now anyone (at least any man) could become a teacher/rabbi, a judge of a rabbinic court, an authorized expert in religious law and ritual.
So in the centuries after Rome’s 1st C. destruction of the Temple, Judaism evolved in such a way that to be a good Jew meant that a man had to read, understand and cogently discuss rather complicated texts. All of which had the additional benefit of increasing one’s verbal skills. And during the Middle Ages these skills were very much in demand where the political, military and landowner elite could not, for the most, read or write. We survived in those years despite Crusades, Inquisitions and pogroms because disparate Jewish communities remained in contact and could help each other, because we were a valuable asset to the authorities wherever we settled or were driven, and because we were always honing our intellectual skills. If we couldn’t be stronger than our enemies, we could be smarter!
What does it mean that the focal center of our sanctuary is a book? It’s a regular reminder that it has been the words of our texts that allowed for, provided and advanced Jewish connectivity and continuity. What connects us is not our culture that unites Jews past, present and future: the life-style of charedi/ultra-Orthodox Jews is nothing like that of the Jews of Grosse Pointe or life on an Israeli kibbutz. What connects us is definitely not philosophy and theology, rituals and customs that unites us historically: just compare Biblical Judaism and its priestly sacrificial cult to our worship. And it’s not geography: my grandparents came from England through South Dakota on one side, and Hungary through Cleveland on the other. And we’re not connected through our chromosomes. Even though there appears to be a genetic marker for cohen/priestly ancestry, there is simply no way to trace and substantiate the Jewish continuum through DNA. Jewish connectivity and continuity comes from none of the above. It is however textual.
It is the written word that is our historical highway back to our beginnings, and presumably the connection forward into our future. The Torah text we read this morning is almost 3000 years old, older as oral transmission. Even the youngest texts in Torah are almost 2500 years old, half a millennium before Jesus and over a thousand years before Muhammad. For the last 2000 years there has never been an illiterate Jewish community. Every generation, every community made reading and writing a priority. Ours is a lineage of literacy. What connects us all, past to present, is not a bloodline, but a textline.
That is not to say that other religious communities are not text-based. But what makes Judaism different is that our words are not passed on and sent forward by unthinking recitation or uncritical acceptance. We engage our texts, examining the conclusions of those who like us, struggled with them before us. We challenge our texts fully expecting to expand them with new meaning and value. From the primary text of Torah, and then the Prophets and Writings that together are Tanach, we opened and enlarged those words into Mishna and Midrash and then G’morra. We added the texts of the Siddur, our prayerbook and the Hagaddah, and countless commentaries and responsa. We may not read and study these voluminous writings like the yeshiva, but this prayerbook and our Tanach, are milestones on the road back to our very beginnings. To be a Jew is to embrace the lineage and legacy of literacy.
What does it mean that the focal center of our sanctuary is a book? It means that Jewish learning is important for the youngest and the oldest of us. It means that one’s Jewish identity and sense of well-being flow from an appreciation and comprehension of what these texts have taught those before us and are still ready to teach us today.
In Pirke Avot (5:26) the “Saying of the Fathers” which is the first section of the Mishneh there’s a quote from sage with a curious name. Ben Bag Bag said: Turn the Torah over and over for everything is in it. Look into it, grow old and worn over it, and never move away from it, for you will find no better portion than it.
Tradition has it that Ben Bag Bag, meaning the ‘son of Bag Bag’ is a nickname for a man who had converted to Judaism. Without a first name, and only noted as the son of “Bag Bag” we are supposed to realize that the letters spelling Bag, bet and gimel together are the numerical equivalent of 5, and the 5th letter of the alphabet is hey. When Abram’s and Sarai’s names were changed to Abraham and Sarah it was a hey that was added to each, specifically the two hey’s from God’s name yud-hey-vov-hey. “Bag Bag” thus points to 5 and 5, the two hey’s with which God blessed them and us.
The unknown son of “Bag Bag” said that we must turn Torah over and over and even inside out to discover all that is in it. Which makes our study of Torah unlike secular study-- for when one masters Algebra I he moves on to Algebra II, when one completes the plays of Shakespeare she moves on to his poetry. Not so with Torah-- year after year we study the same texts, in the same order, fully expecting to learn something new each time. We do not “master” Torah. We return to it again and again. Turn it over and over for everything is in it.
Torah and the texts that have evolved from it have been the connective tissue of Judaism and Jews throughout our long history. Though I admit being biased, I believe that the intimate relationship that Jews have with their words is unlike any other religious community. I invite and encourage you to accept the challenge of exploring the words of this book that has for almost 3000 years not only captured our attention but has been the source of our survival.
Shana tova
In 1934 Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, wrote his classic text Judaism As Civilization. Kaplan taught that there are three ways of identifying with a religious community: by believing, by behaving, and by belonging, insisting that the primary and most enduring (and therefore historically significant) of the three was belonging, what he called “that intuitive sense of kinship that binds a Jew to every other Jew in history and in the contemporary world.” And it’s true that no matter what Jews believe, and no matter how Jews behave, there is an underlying, fundamental and intrinsic interconnection that ties us together in a common history and present reality.
To a sociologist “Jewish” is a uniquely messy term! Typically, there is a difference between ethnic and religious classifications: for instance one can be ethnically “Irish” while being Catholic--or Protestant. Yet the adjective “Jewish,” nominally religious-- is also used ethnically! Isn't it true that we speak of Italian neighborhoods, Mexican neighborhoods -- and Jewish neighborhoods! Consider that while the classic division of religious Americans is Catholic, Protestant, Jew, we are the only ‘religious’ group that is included in encyclopedias of ethnic peoples! And why is it that in bookstores one can find books on Jewish cooking and Jewish humor, but nothing like Catholic cooking, or Muslim humor? And even when “Jewish” is used as a completely religious term it has unique qualities. I’m sure you have heard folks say “I used to be Methodist but now I’m not,” or “I was born Catholic but I left the church,” or “I was Baptist, but now I’m Presbyterian.” But have you ever heard anyone say “I used to be Jewish but now I’m not?”! Sociologists have difficulty with “Jewish” because the term is not fully an ethnic or religious identification.
Were it one or the other it would be much easier for all of us! If Jewish were only ethnic, then chicken soup, yiddish theater, and dancing the hora would adequately describe and define and express one’s identity. If Jewish were only religious, then Sabbath candles, synagogue worship, and the Kaddish would separate who “is” from who “isn’t.” And it seems that more and more we describe and express our Judaism in cultural, ethnic terms rather than in religious values. If we were to take the traditional ritual and religious “oughts” of Judaism as the minimum “requirement” for identification-- most of us would fall far short!
Less than one Jew in ten follow what Orthodoxy claims is necessary to be a proper Jew. Reform and Conservative synagogues see only a small percentage of their membership on a regular basis. And the majority of American Jews don’t even belong to synagogues-- the unaffiliated rate in many large cities is well over 70%. But before we wring our hands and bemoan the dilution and dissolution of American Judaism let’s be clear: this is a not a recent development, this predominantly ethnic dimension of being Jewish. The declining impact of Judaism “as a religion” in our lives is endemic to the American Jewish experience. Even before the waves of immigration brought our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents to America, they arrived anxious to become “100% American.” They associated the cultural dress and habits of the “Old World” with what they had gladly and readily left behind. They were eager to become “newly and fully American” and so were quick to shed the outer appearance of a new immigrant “greenhorn”. A “yankee” did not have peote/side-curls or a babushka.; A yankee did not speak Yiddish; did not turn away from American food or American weekend leisure activities. We wanted to belong to America and not to the Judaism we’d left in the “old country!” And because our Jewish religious values are primarily expressed in observant “behavior,” it is no surprise that in becoming “100% American” we abandoned what we associated with Jewish ritual and religion, and filled in ethnically what we had thrown out ritually.
When our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents came to America in the 19th C. the majority of them wanted to leave behind the restrictive world of their parents. For the most part, they did not believe in the fundamental tenets of Jewish faith: divinely written scripture, superstitious rites and ceremonies. They rejected what they thought an oppressive Orthodoxy-- at odds with the Enlightenment values of the 19th Europe. (It was only in the early 20th C that Orthodox Judaism gained a foothold in America.) These young, idealistic Jews did not altogether jettison their Judaism, they redefined it as a universalist ethic of socialism. They took the morality of Biblical Judaism and created a cultural, social Jewish community within which they could embrace the values and lifestyle of “America.” They did not “abandon” Judaism, rather they envisioned it as “Ethical Monotheism”, religiously reflecting the cultural and secular “American Dream.”
It is therefore wrong to speak of the history of the American Jewish community as becoming more and more “assimilated.” Instead we must understand it as a process of “acculturation”: newcomers becoming “Americanized” as an ethnic community. Acculturation is not the same as assimilation if assimilation is understood as dissolving into the ‘melting pot’ of the general population, where one’s particularistic identity is lost. And the truth is that we were exceptional in that we acculturated faster and more successfully than most other ethnic groups, even as we essentially still lived amongst ‘landsmen’, and identified ourselves as a separate group in the larger community.
As our “Americanization” proceeded, it was necessarily accompanied by a diminishing of Jewish culture, Jewish learning and religious intensity-- but we did not disappear into the “melting pot.” What did happen was that significant shifts were taking place. In the 1950's it was becoming more and more apparent that young Jewish adults were leaving the neighborhoods of their parents. They chose friends and spouses without regard to ethnicity or religion. By the early ‘60s the postwar Jewish generation, at rates approaching 80%, entered colleges and found there an environment that tended to undermine familial, religious and institutional loyalties. No longer was “Jewish” a significant factor with respect to choices in career, friends, lovers, spouses, politics and neighborhoods. And to be frankly honest-- when we left our Jewish past to enter into an American present, my cohort of “boomer” Jews didn’t lose anything because there was not that much to be lost! If we were leaving anything--it was a Jewish past remembered with negative feelings: Hebrew School afternoons and Sunday Religious Schools that were trivial or unpleasant, a dutiful Bar Mitzvah suffered for the sake of the parents, redeemed only by the ingathering of gifts.
Most of that generation (my generation!) had only a smattering of observance: occasional visits to the synagogue, perhaps a yearly Seder and the lighting of the Chanukah candles before the presents. For the most part, the young adults who emerged in the middle and late 60's had little Jewish culture or learning or religion to begin with, and so there was little of substance to reject. So today’s middle-aged and retirement-aged adults, now thoroughly Americanized, can hardly be criticized for “giving up” something they never had! And so there are understandably no feelings of guilt associated with their acculturation! As we grew, we grew away from the Jewish community, becoming what is today the largest American Jewish group-- the unaffiliated.
Jewish leaders bemoan the number of unaffiliated Jews in our midst, calling them a “generation without memory.” In fact just the opposite is true! We remember too clearly the minimal symbolic Judaism of our parental homes, the trivial education about Jewish history and culture we sat through in Sunday School. The unaffiliated are better characterized as a generation without knowledge of Jewish culture, history or tradition, and without the desire to acquire it. We cannot fault them/us for leaving behind what was never of personal value.
It is true that many unaffiliated, acculturated American Jews have disappeared into secular society and can be said to have fully assimilated, melted into the general population where their particularistic identity has effectively dissolved. And they are beyond our reach, with no reason or desire to identify with us. They have left us purposefully, with thought and consideration-- they are a measure of our cultural success! Our parents and grandparents wanted us to be comfortable within American culture-- and we are! We must live with the consequences of our dream-come-true! But the formerly marginalized Jews who have disappeared over the margin are not us, not you who purposefully gather -- as a community-- for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, Shabbat and Festivals. And if we honestly ask ourselves why we want this community to be a community? Why it’s important to be here today, and tomorrow, and ten days from now? The truth is that for us Judaism is still a religious faith-expression first, with cultural and ethnic attributes secondarily. This, after all, is not an ethnic gathering. We are here because at the heart of Judaism is a spiritual message, not a cultural one. So it’s important that we remind ourselves of that truth, that reality, that certainty. Straddling the border between culturally American and religiously Jewish we have to work harder to preserve and protect that religious part of our selves lest we melt away into the secular pot. And that is the point of our High Holidays.
Here we remember that we are “Jewish”, that we have survived as a faith community. Here we remember the difference between a sh’meir and the Sh’ma, between bagels and belief, between a hora at a wedding and the hallelulya response of the Kedusha. It is the yiddishe n’shamah, the “Jewish soul” which brought us together this evening, and whose preservation and celebration we seek. As American Jews we know that the Jewish soul can thrive and flourish within our American culture, but not if Judaism is defined as an occasional ethnic experience. We must be careful then to create a living Judaism within our community and within our homes; a Judaism that transcends the ethnic, that emphasizes, as Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan wrote 80 years ago, belonging ...and behaving...and believing. And I would add tonight “becoming”. In our choosing to become authentic Jews within the greater American community, we protect and preserve our history and heritage. With pride and purpose we sustain and strengthen ourselves, our families and this small community. May this new Jewish year renew our individual and collective intention to “become” what we’ve always wanted to be, what we’ve always known we could be.
Chazak chazak v’nitchazek, be strong, be strong and we will strengthen each other.
Shana tova umtuka, may this year be good and sweet.
And let us say Amen.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Redeeming the Akedah Rosh Hashanah 2015
The following commentary on our Rosh Hashanah Torah portion was written by the great 20th C. Jewish theologian Woody Allen:
And Abraham awoke in the middle of the night and said to his only son, Isaac, “I have had a dream where the voice of the Lord sayeth that I must sacrifice my only son, so put your pants on.” And Isaac trembled and said, “So what did thou sayest? I mean when He brought up this whole thing?”
“What am I going to say?” Abraham said. “I’m standing there at 2 am. in my underwear with the Creator of the Universe. Should I argue?”
“Well, did He say why He wants me sacrificed?” Isaac asked his father.
But Abraham said, “The faithful do not question. Now let’s go because I have a heavy day tomorrow.” And Sarah who heard Abraham’s plan grew vexed and said, “How doth thou know that it was the Lord and not, say, thy friend Sam who loveth practical jokes, for the Lord hateth practical jokes-- and whosoever shall pull one shall be delivered into the hands of his enemies, whether they can pay the delivery charge or not.”
And Abraham answered, “Because I know it was the Lord. It was a deep, resonant voice, well-modulated, and nobody in the desert can get a rumble in it like that.” And Sarah said. “And thou art willing to carry out this senseless act?” But Abraham told her, “Frankly yes, for to question the Lord’s word is one of the worst things a person can do, particularly with the economy in the state it’s in.”
And so he took Isaac to a certain place and prepared to sacrifice him, but at the last minute the Lord stayed Abraham’s hand and said, “How could thou doest such a thing? And Abraham said, “But thou said...”
“Never mind what I said.”Doth thou listen to every crazy idea that comes thy way?” And Abraham grew ashamed, “Er, no, not really.”
“I jokingly suggest that thou sacrifice Isaac and thou immediately run out to do it.” And Abraham fell to his knees saying, “See, I never know when thou art kidding.”
And the Lord thundered, “No sense of humor. I can’t believe it.” And Abraham said “But doth this not prove that I love thee, that I was willing to donate my only son on thy whim?”
And the Lord said, “It proves that some men will follow any order no matter how asinine, as long as it comes from a resonant, well-modulated voice.” And with that, the Lord told Abraham to get some rest and check with Him again tomorrow.
Each year, on Rosh Hashanah morning, we return to this Torah narrative of the Akedat Yitzchak, “The Binding of Isaac”. And each year I remind myself that we read it because we’re supposed to, not because it offers such a wonderful New Year message. It is, in fact, a terrible story! And I’ve always been fascinated by the lengths to which our commentators have gone to explain, accept and justify it. The traditional responses to the Akedah tend to fall into two categories. The first is that this was a test of Abraham’s faith and trust in God, which he thankfully passed. The problem with this explanation is that we have to ask ‘what kind of God commands a parent to kill his or her child, even if only as a test!?’
The second kind of commentary has it that this experience was a warning to Abraham against the practices of the idolaters who did sacrifice their children-- that in his terror-walk up Moriah, and in placing Isaac on the altar, Abraham finally and fully realizes the horrible evil of human sacrifice. The problem with this explanation is that God praises Abraham because he is indeed ready to sacrifice his son. If this was to be an admonition against child-sacrifice, then instead of praising Abraham, and blessing him because he was going to go through with it-- God should have chastised him for his willingness, and warned him: ‘now let this be a lesson to you.’
However this story was understood 3000 years ago, we have to find our own meaningful response since we can’t very well ignore it. And our problem is that if we affirm God as our source of justice and morality, then we cannot give the story a face-value validity. What I mean is: If God is good, then God would not, could not, have done this! So can we “fix” this terrible story which reflects so poorly on everyone involved, for indeed no one comes out unblemished:
Abraham obediently rushes off to kill his son;
Isaac passively, submissively accepts his own death;
Sarah (though not explicitly mentioned in the story) lets her husband go off on his mission of murder;
and God demands the death of a son by the hand of his father.
We don’t know for sure why this particular Torah reading was assigned so prominent a place on Rosh Hashana by the rabbis in the Talmud. But I suspect that it was chosen as a raised banner against the growing Christian church in the 2nd and 3rd C., waved on this major community gathering as a declaration that ours is the original story of a father offering up his one and only son as a sacrifice. But whatever the reason for its inclusion on Rosh Hashanah, Tradition demands that it be read and explicated this morning, and so we follow the rules.
I am regularly troubled by traditional commentaries that praise Abraham for willing to kill his son, or that justify God’s command. If this was a test, then I think God failed it! How can I pledge my faith to, or be in covenant with, a God who commands a father to kill his son. And to those who say that the sacrifice was never meant to be realized, that God would never have let it go to completion— I wonder how God could even ask this of a father! What kind of God would think this an acceptable test? Neither murder enacted nor murder intended can ever be justified by principles of faith. To even suppose that that might be true, opens the doors of justifiable terrorism to the likes of ISIS, Al Qaida, and Hamas who with blind loyalty and faith are ready to kill in God’s name. If this was a test, then Abraham also failed in not rejecting the command and the commander, out-of-hand. How could Abraham heed so immoral a demand?
And when we look to the larger Biblical text for help in understanding the lesson of the Akedah, we look in vain and come up empty. There is simply no reference at all to this story in Hebrew Scripture! It’s almost as if the Prophets and storytellers of Scripture who already knew how problematic is the Akedah -- purposefully ignored it. I did find recently a particularly interesting take on the story which goes like this:
Abraham had conceived a new faith in a new single, unitary god. To that end Abraham abandoned the idols of his father Terach and left his homeland to go to a new land where he would establish a new nation, and where his offspring would inherit the land and continue his belief. But as a really old man, Abraham was not certain that his son Isaac would maintain the faith. Might Isaac repeat what Abraham had done to his own father? Might Isaac abandon the belief of Abraham and leave what was to be the Promised Land? How could Abraham guarantee that Isaac would continue the covenant? So Abraham, on his own, stages this akedah. Taking his son to the mountain, he binds Isaac on the altar, brandishes a knife over his head, and then drops it at the last moment, saying to Isaac, ‘Behold, it is God who has forbidden me to kill you. It is God who saved your life.’ Isaac would then believe that he owed his life to his father’s God. Thus Abraham taught Isaac that God would always deliver him from trouble.
With this interpretation, Abraham intentionally sacrifices his relationship with his son, in order to preserve the family’s covenant with God. Interesting, but not particularly satisfying.
Sometimes, in advance of Rosh Hashana, I imagine how nice it would be to ignore altogether this morning’s Torah reading, this troubling and disturbing assault on Jewish theology. What kind of God could ask such a thing of a parent? If we believe that God cares for us and blesses us with life and goodness, if God is a God of justice, righteousness and mercy-- then what are we to do with the God of the Akedah? We can’t pretend the story away, since we’re forced to deal with it in this most public of community forums. Traditionally, Rosh Hashana sermons justify God and Abraham by saying that what seems to be happening isn’t all that bad; or that it just needs to be explained “within its context”; or that it is merely a metaphor to teach the importance of faith and trust. But I can only read the text the way it’s written. And if God means what God says, and if Abraham is prepared to comply-- then I am angered by the questions I have to ask! How can God demand Isaac’s death, and why (in God’s name!) does Abraham agree?
I therefore choose to believe that neither Abraham nor God want Isaac to be slaughtered nor do they expect him to be! I find support for this argument in the text itself. Five chapters prior to the Akedat Yitzchak God announces to Abraham that he has been chosen to begin a new nation, to be the father of a people in special covenant with God. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly...Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations...And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant. [Genesis 17:2-7] . . . And God said, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son . . . and you shall call his name Isaac; and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him. [17:19] . . . I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you [17:21]
God is clear and unambiguous in his promise to Abraham: He will father a great nation which will inherit Canaan, guided and protected by God in a covenant that will pass from Abraham through Isaac. So we already know by chapter 22 that Isaac will become the second patriarch, that from him and through him God’s Chosen People will continue. If Isaac dies, so does the promise of God’s covenant! And Abraham must know this, must realize that God could not possibly want Isaac to die on the mountain. So why is Abraham silent, why doesn’t he right away object or protest, why does he passively go up the mountain, to the altar and take up the knife. Why? Because Abraham is waiting for God to stop him, knowing that God has to stop him!
We read this in Abraham’s only statement to Isaac when the boy asks “where is the sheep for the offering?” Abraham replies “God will provide for Himself the sheep for the offering, my son.” Abraham says what he knows to be true, God will not let it happen unless...unless the prior promise has no value, unless God’s word is worthless. And if that promise was false and the Promiser a fraud, and God does not stop Abraham--- well, then the father unties the son and they both go home. If the covenant is real, then God will intervene, has to intervene. If not then Abraham chalks it up to false faith.
So Abraham lifts the knife, and waits. Is God going to end this charade or is this the end of his faith in God? Yes, this is the story of a test, but it is Abraham who is testing God. Abraham who is in control, who alone holds the knife above Isaac’s throat...and waits. God must stop him if God is the God of truth.
I still don’t care much for this story! But at least we can rescue Abraham from being cast as a blind-faith follower ready to kill at his God’s command. This is the story of a test, but it is Abraham who tests God, who challenges his own faith, and who never relinquishes control over how the story will end. And that is the message of Torah to us on this first day of the new year. We are to be like Abraham: having faith in one’s self, in the surety that what we know is true and just and right is indeed so, and that even though there are no simple, easy answers to questions of faith, belief and God, we must not turn away from the challenge. This new year’s day is our invitation to challenge ourselves and our faith, our religion and our traditions so that we might become more secure in, and fulfilled by, our covenant with God.
Shana tova
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
“Who by fire and who by flood” Erev Yom Kippur 2015
On Rosh Hashana morning we read the story of Rabbi Amnon of Mayance, that he was tortured by the Church on Yom Kippur in the 12th C. With his dying breath he said “Unetaneh tokef k’dushat hayom / Let us declare the sacred power of this day; it is awesome and full of dread. [For] now the divine Judge looks upon our deeds and determines our destiny.” The reading then continued with a liturgical poem that we’ll repeat tomorrow morning on page 313. We’ll read: “As the shepherd seeks out the flock and makes the sheep pass under the staff, so do You muster and number and consider every soul, decreeing its destiny. On Rosh Hashana it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed, who shall live and who shall die… but repentance, prayer and charity temper judgement’s severe decree.”
This poem, identified by its opening words Unetaneh tokef, is a well-remembered reading in the liturgy of the Holidays. Traditionally it is interpreted as an instructive warning to us that before God determines our fate in the new year (who shall live and who shall die, who by sword and who by beast, who by fire and who by flood)—we are able to avert God’s decree, change God’s mind, by demonstrating our worthiness by repentance, prayer and charity.
Unentaneh tokef is the liturgical expression of the folk-belief that on Rosh Hashana God opens the “Book of Life” and for these ten days God decides what will be written next to each of our names in the coming year. We have until tomorrow evening to be written down for a good year, for then the book is shut and sealed with the setting sun. Want to be safe next year?—pray, repent and do tzedakah, and just like that God will protect you.
I think about Unentaneh tokef and its theology every time a tornado hits in Kansas and Oklahoma, or a hurricane comes ashore in Florida or North Carolina, or wild fires and flash floods destroy homes in California, and family after family is displaced and communities are destroyed. Unentaneh tokef would have us believe that God sealed for destruction a year ago, thousands of families and dozens of communities!
I’ve known for a long time that the story of Rabbi Amnon of Mayence is far more bubba-myseh than history. There is significant doubt among Jewish scholars that he even existed, much less died a martyr and proclaimed Unentaneh tokef. It’s most unlikely that a Jew from Mayance in Germany would have the Italian name of Amnon, especially since German Ashkenazic and Italian Sephardic cultures did not at all mix in the 12th C when Amnon was supposed to live. More importantly though, this piyyut, or liturgical poem, according to literary scholars, is not in the written style of 12th C Germany. There is, however, textual evidence that Unentaneh tokef came from 6-8th C Palestine, with speculation that it was written by the 6th C. Christian Byzantine poet Romanus.
Of course, where it came from is not nearly as important, or as interesting, as the process by which it came to be included in our prayerbook. We do know that the text we read on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur mornings is not the original. It would appear that the rabbis of late Talmudic times appropriated the 6th C text, from wherever it came, and initially incorporated it as follows: “Rabbi Yudan said in the name of Rabbi Leazar: Three things nullify a decree of evil, and these are they: prayer, righteousness, and repentance. [Genesis Rabba 44:5]”
Now that’s a lot different from what we have on our prayerbook! Rabbi Yudan quotes Leazar as saying that these three things “nullify a decree of evil.” Our prayerbook says the same three “temper (not nullify) God’s judgement (not an evil) decree.” The original text declares that we can invoke God’s power to nullify evil. But what the rabbis wrote into this liturgy is that we have the power to temper the decree of God’s judgement! And this expectation is still affirmed in Orthodox Judaism. Traditional theology did then, and still does, affirm that God is fully in control of everything that happens in this world, that good people receive God’s blessings and are protected, and bad people are cursed. It’s a nicely neat and tidy world they believe in, but it’s not the world I live in! Life in the real world is not fair: good, innocent people sometimes do suffer pain and destruction, and evil people as often as not, do prosper.
There was a time when Jews stood before the ark on Yom Kippur trembling with fear before the Divine Judge. For Jews not so very long ago, the phrase “may you be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life for a good year” was more than an expression, it was their certain belief that God would decide, before the day was over, their fate for the next year. This day of “atonement” was not “spiritual metaphor”-- but actual and very real. If my promises of repentance were well received, I would be blessed in the year ahead. The Great Book of Life, closed and sealed with the setting sun, would be indelibly inscribed with my next year’s fate. My tomorrows were dependent on my fearful, self abasing, and sworn promises before God tonight and tomorrow. This really was a day of awe and dread, of fear and trembling, and the call of Kol Nidre brought us to our knees in submission before the righteous judgement of God. And the question I struggle with is this: Can we come to Yom Kippur affirming God the Just Righteous and Merciful Judge when we know that quite regularly bad things happen to good people?!
But let’s be honest-- we no longer stand at Kol Nidre believing that with tomorrow’s sunset God will have decided and determined our fates for the coming year. And though many of us have questions about God, or are of uncertain faith— we don’t believe that God will protect us merely because we try to be good Jews; and we don’t believe that God rewards the good and righteous with blessings and bounty, and punishes “evil doers. We live in a world that clearly and demonstrably is not directed by God’s promise of reward and punishment.
And yet, that is exactly what’s written into our Shabbat and Festival prayerbooks. It’s a theology with which I am not at all comfortable, and I presume that it is equally rejected by all of you. I say that with some confidence because if you believe that observing the mitzvote/commandments will protect you from misfortune, if you believe that God decides and directs the daily events in your life, that your fate for the new year will be sealed and determined with tomorrow’s setting sun-- then what in the world are you doing here on Yom Kippur!
Arthur Cohen, in his 1984 theological response to the Holocaust wrote, “The question… is not how can God abide evil in the world, but how can God be affirmed meaningfully in a world where evil enjoys such dominion (The Tremendum p. 34).” Cohen concludes that for him, God cannot be the God of traditional theology, which means that God can no longer be the God of the traditional prayerbook.
Many of us, and I include rabbis, agree with Arthur Cohen-- we cannot affirm a God who judgmentally intervenes in our lives, who heals us if we’re good, who harms us if we’re not. Then what are we to do with all these prayers that petition El rachum v’nachum (God of mercy and compassion) to intercede in our lives? What are we to do with the prayers that express our gratitude to God for God’s active and redemptive salvation? What shall we do with these prayers that are not at all what we in fact believe?
Tomorrow morning we’ll recite Mi y’chiyeh, umi yamut? “Who shall live and who shall die?” just as did our grandparents, and great grandparents for generations. But for them, for many of them, the words were filled with fear of God’s immanent decree. Their prayers were a fervent plea to a listening God in heaven, hoping against hope that God would smile on them and grant them good health and length of days. The God they worshipped was omnipotent and compassionate, an intervening deity who listened to and heard their petitions, their praises, and their thanks, and then responded to them. These were quite literally life and death pleas.
How different for us on these Days of Awe, for we read these words as metaphor and poetic idiom. For us their power is nostalgic, not actual. It is the effect of this worship that brings us a satisfying comfort for these words are no longer an existential cry for salvation. All of which leaves us caught on the horns of a major dilemma. Should we then dismiss and dispense with the traditional liturgy? Can we be both intellectually honest and still read these prayers?
The answer I think is certainly ‘Yes.’ The traditional prayers of our Sabbath and Festival prayerbooks transcend the literal theology of the text. What matters to us is not really what the words say, but how the moment affects us. Using the example of the Mi sh’berach-- in naming our friends and family members who are ill, we remind ourselves that we care and are concerned about them. Keeping them in mind prompts us to be more diligent in helping them with their recovery, in easing their discomfort, and in spending quality-time with them. And knowing that I am specially remembered within the congregation, during worship, can only bring me a sense of well-being that others are thinking about me in my distress and care about me. The actual words of the prayer in fact, pale in importance before the effect that the prayer has for both the one bringing the name, and the one who is named.
Which leads to the question: What then is the purpose of prayer? I think we agree that it is not to “remind” God to preserve and protect me, or to remedy destructive events, or heal those who are ill. And in this, our theology matches the original Rabbinic tradition which also rejects the notion that “prayer” is primarily a plea for intervention. The Hebrew word that we translate as prayer, the word coined by the rabbis almost 2000 years ago, does not mean “petition”, it is not a plea or request for. Our Hebrew word of t’filah is derived from the verb that means “to search within.” L’hitpalel means to “search within oneself.” Thus in our worship service we are to look within for answers, for guidance, and for direction.
This is very different from our English word that’s derived from Old English as in “Pray tell me…” meaning “Please tell me.” “Prayer” as understood in our western religious culture is a petition-- we pray for health, happiness and peace. And so pervasive is this western understanding of “prayer” that, unaware, we incorporate it into our own theology. To appreciate the Jewish sense of t’filah I remind you of a paragraph from our Sabbath siddur the Gates of Prayer:
Prayer invites God to let God’s presence suffuse our spirits, to let God’s will prevail in our lives. Prayer cannot bring water to parched fields, nor mend a broken bridge, nor rebuild a ruined city. But prayer can water an arid soul, mend a broken heart and rebuild a weakened will. (p. 152)
These words from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel clearly differentiate our notion of prayer from that of our western neighbors. It is our private and very personal opportunity to search within ourselves for the presence of God. And if “prayer” is primarily an inward directed examination, then the words we together recite are merely a communal means to benefit the focus of the individual.
And though our Holiday communal recitation, written almost 2000 years ago, does not particularly reflect our 21st C theology, though the prayerbook they wrote is not a tight, complete and problem free faith-system for us-- it at least reminds us that we’ve always struggled to define God, to understand the brit, the Covenant between the Divine and the Human, and that even with all its faults-- our best vehicle in that struggle is prayer.
We know that we cannot rely on the power of prayer to save us, or save our world. But on Yom Kippur we know that prayer can help us find within ourselves that power. We speak of t’shuvah, a word that means ‘turning’ but is often translated as “repentance”. When we consciously and purposely “turn” inward, and recognize that having erred, we can correct those mistakes-- then the renewal of the single person, and the community, and the world is possible.
For former generations, standing before God on Yom Kippur, the world was forbidding, dark and dangerous with one’s future most uncertain. Today, we too are fearful, and though we know that the future is, to some extent, out of our hands, and even less so in God’s—still we believe that tomorrow can be better than today, if and only if, we—you and I, make it better. And though our traditional liturgy (written for a different community in a different time with a different theology) pointedly petitions God to intervene on our behalf, we believe that if God works at all, God works through us.
The Christian theologians Augustine in the 4th C., and Ignatius in the 6th C. are both credited as saying: “Pray as if everything depends on God; work as if everything depends on you.” And we say: “Prayer invites God to let God’s presence suffuse our spirits, to let God’s will prevail in our lives.”
May we all inscribe ourselves in the Book of Life for a good year, a better year-- for us, for our community and for the world. And we say AMEN.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Jews and Words Yom Kippur 2015
A year or so ago I was asked in a college class, in one of our first meetings, “What does it mean that the Jews are the Chosen People?” I explained that Biblically we are the inheritors of the Covenant between God and the descendants of Abraham, chosen to be a “light to the nations” (Isaiah 42:6 and 49:6), to illumine the path to a better world. A millennium later this “Chosen People” sparked the creation of both Christianity and Islam, brought faith in the One Indivisible God to Western Civilization. To be “chosen” does not make us better, but it does make us the first.
I then said, “In all of human history not one nation or people or civilization has ever survived the destruction of its religious center and national capitol, not one—except us! And we did it twice! We are unique in human history that despite the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians and then the Romans, despite almost 1000 years of organized persecutions that included the Crusades, expulsions, pogroms and the Holocaust, in spite of so many efforts to destroy us— here we are.
And here we are-- celebrating our history and heritage, confident in our future on this most solemn and serious of days. Throughout our history Judaism has flourished wherever Jews chose or were forced to live. “Wherever you go, there’s always someone Jewish” as my friend Rabbi Larry Milder titled his song.
Now if that student had had her wits about her, she would have asked me “Do you really believe that God has purposely, personally singled you out, protected and preserved you?” Had she asked me that, I would have said “No” and I probably would have had explain my theology beginning with something like my message of last night. But if theology (at least my theology) doesn’t explain our Jewish longevity and unique role in human history, what does? Needless to say, that’s something I often think about, and I suspect it’s a question you’ve asked yourselves or have had asked of you. The answer, I think, is as simple as looking at this sanctuary.
When you take your seat in a church—when it’s used as a church, in front of you you’re looking at a wide table that’s an altar. It symbolizes the sacrificial altar on which God offered his son as a sacrifice to save humanity. And above the altar in a Catholic church you’ll see the body of that sacrificed son nailed to a cross. In a Protestant church, it’s different. Above the altar you’ll see an empty cross. The intentional Catholic message is that Jesus suffered and died for your sins—thus the figure of a tortured man. For Protestants their message is that the resurrection of Jesus (represented by the empty cross) is God’s promise of everlasting life.
But seated in a synagogue what is it that one sees? The centerpiece of the sanctuary is a closet-cabinet, and when it’s opened we rise and we see—a book! And on the bima, the platform in front of the ark, is not an altar but a reading desk. This is the secret of our historic and unprecedented success.
Last month in our year-long cycle of Torah readings we began the Book of Deuteronomy (a Greek word meaning “second law”). In Hebrew the book is called Devarim because of its opening line Eleh had-varim... “These are the words which Moses spoke to all of Israel.” Deuteronomy is a long discourse, something of an extended poem from Moses to the Israelites, his parting words as they are about to leave him and enter the Promise Land. Eleh had-varim... “These are the words” it begins.
To someone foreign to Judaism or Jewish tradition attending our worship, it must seem strange to witness the community rise before the open ark, even bowing as some do, before the Scroll of Torah. Are we worshipping this book? No. Are we affirming the authority, the majesty, even the divinity of what the book represents—well, yes. In the 3rd and 4th C’s when the rabbis were organizing the prayerbook and deciding the rituals of worship, they wrote Aleinu to conclude their service: Aleinu l’shabeiach l’adon hakol “It is on us to praise the Master of Everything” and they called God the “King of kings of kings” melech malchai ham-lachim. But how are we to publically acknowledge this Infinite God? Since we rise and bow before an earthly king, so they said, we should rise and bow before God’s finite, tangible presence in our midst—the Torah that’s God’s personally written revelation, God’s perfect and absolute message given to Moses at Sinai. Not only do we rise before the scroll, but we put regal symbols: crowns and breastplates on its body as a demonstration that its author is King of all kings.
As the rabbis created and constructed the worship experience, the black-on-white finite text of the Word of God that is in our midst, represented the Infinite Divine Presence that was far beyond us. And if one wanted access to the Divine, one had to be able to read. In 64 CE, Joshua ben Gamla the high priest in the last years of the Second Temple issued an ordinance mandating universal schooling for all males starting at about age six. The ordinance was not only issued; it was implemented. The Jews, and only the Jews, effectively established universal male literacy and numeracy.
This effected a shift of Jewish families as early as the 1st C, from farming and herding to urban occupations. If the Jewish head-of-household was educated, he possessed an asset that had economic value in occupations that required reading, writing and counting, particularly those occupations involving sales and transactions. If he remained a farmer, his education had little commercial value.
But students had to become more than merely “functionally” literate, they had to be able to read more than just simple texts. The Hebrew of the Torah and prayerbook, after all, require fairly advanced reading skills. And beyond that, to study the Talmud and its commentaries with understanding requires considerable intellectual and literary capacity. And at this highest level of literary accomplishment the text was not merely read, but it was debated and dissected. In this post-Biblical world of rabbinic Judaism, in the re-fashioned revolutionary transformation of Judaism, the “perfection” of Torah lay not in its absolute, unquestionable, carved-in-stone, once-and-for-all, here-it-is-for-all-time message—rather its divine perfection lay in its ability to necessarily be questioned and interpreted and even given new meaning. Torah was expected to be read differently generation to generation. The Word was not so much “instruction” as it was “invitation”, it was both “command” and “challenge”. The genius of the rabbinic reformation was that no longer would there be a single priestly religious authority. Now anyone (at least any man) could become a teacher/rabbi, a judge of a rabbinic court, an authorized expert in religious law and ritual.
So in the centuries after Rome’s 1st C. destruction of the Temple, Judaism evolved in such a way that to be a good Jew meant that a man had to read, understand and cogently discuss rather complicated texts. All of which had the additional benefit of increasing one’s verbal skills. And during the Middle Ages these skills were very much in demand where the political, military and landowner elite could not, for the most, read or write. We survived in those years despite Crusades, Inquisitions and pogroms because disparate Jewish communities remained in contact and could help each other, because we were a valuable asset to the authorities wherever we settled or were driven, and because we were always honing our intellectual skills. If we couldn’t be stronger than our enemies, we could be smarter!
What does it mean that the focal center of our sanctuary is a book? It’s a regular reminder that it has been the words of our texts that allowed for, provided and advanced Jewish connectivity and continuity. What connects us is not our culture that unites Jews past, present and future: the life-style of charedi/ultra-Orthodox Jews is nothing like that of the Jews of Grosse Pointe or life on an Israeli kibbutz. What connects us is definitely not philosophy and theology, rituals and customs that unites us historically: just compare Biblical Judaism and its priestly sacrificial cult to our worship. And it’s not geography: my grandparents came from England through South Dakota on one side, and Hungary through Cleveland on the other. And we’re not connected through our chromosomes. Even though there appears to be a genetic marker for cohen/priestly ancestry, there is simply no way to trace and substantiate the Jewish continuum through DNA. Jewish connectivity and continuity comes from none of the above. It is however textual.
It is the written word that is our historical highway back to our beginnings, and presumably the connection forward into our future. The Torah text we read this morning is almost 3000 years old, older as oral transmission. Even the youngest texts in Torah are almost 2500 years old, half a millennium before Jesus and over a thousand years before Muhammad. For the last 2000 years there has never been an illiterate Jewish community. Every generation, every community made reading and writing a priority. Ours is a lineage of literacy. What connects us all, past to present, is not a bloodline, but a textline.
That is not to say that other religious communities are not text-based. But what makes Judaism different is that our words are not passed on and sent forward by unthinking recitation or uncritical acceptance. We engage our texts, examining the conclusions of those who like us, struggled with them before us. We challenge our texts fully expecting to expand them with new meaning and value. From the primary text of Torah, and then the Prophets and Writings that together are Tanach, we opened and enlarged those words into Mishna and Midrash and then G’morra. We added the texts of the Siddur, our prayerbook and the Hagaddah, and countless commentaries and responsa. We may not read and study these voluminous writings like the yeshiva, but this prayerbook and our Tanach, are milestones on the road back to our very beginnings. To be a Jew is to embrace the lineage and legacy of literacy.
What does it mean that the focal center of our sanctuary is a book? It means that Jewish learning is important for the youngest and the oldest of us. It means that one’s Jewish identity and sense of well-being flow from an appreciation and comprehension of what these texts have taught those before us and are still ready to teach us today.
In Pirke Avot (5:26) the “Saying of the Fathers” which is the first section of the Mishneh there’s a quote from sage with a curious name. Ben Bag Bag said: Turn the Torah over and over for everything is in it. Look into it, grow old and worn over it, and never move away from it, for you will find no better portion than it.
Tradition has it that Ben Bag Bag, meaning the ‘son of Bag Bag’ is a nickname for a man who had converted to Judaism. Without a first name, and only noted as the son of “Bag Bag” we are supposed to realize that the letters spelling Bag, bet and gimel together are the numerical equivalent of 5, and the 5th letter of the alphabet is hey. When Abram’s and Sarai’s names were changed to Abraham and Sarah it was a hey that was added to each, specifically the two hey’s from God’s name yud-hey-vov-hey. “Bag Bag” thus points to 5 and 5, the two hey’s with which God blessed them and us.
The unknown son of “Bag Bag” said that we must turn Torah over and over and even inside out to discover all that is in it. Which makes our study of Torah unlike secular study-- for when one masters Algebra I he moves on to Algebra II, when one completes the plays of Shakespeare she moves on to his poetry. Not so with Torah-- year after year we study the same texts, in the same order, fully expecting to learn something new each time. We do not “master” Torah. We return to it again and again. Turn it over and over for everything is in it.
Torah and the texts that have evolved from it have been the connective tissue of Judaism and Jews throughout our long history. Though I admit being biased, I believe that the intimate relationship that Jews have with their words is unlike any other religious community. I invite and encourage you to accept the challenge of exploring the words of this book that has for almost 3000 years not only captured our attention but has been the source of our survival.
Shana tova