Rabbi Klein's Holiday Messages at Grosse Pointe Jewish Council
Israel at 70: Failing Her Future Rosh Hashana 2018
Our Torah reading this morning from Genesis 22 comes ten chapters after the story of Abraham begins.
Way back in chapter 12 when God first speaks to Abram, God begins: Lech lecha! (which literally means “go for yourself” but is usually translated as “get yourself going, or get going”) וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָֹה אֶל־אַבְרָם לֶךְ־לְךָ “And God said, Lech lecha from your country, from your birth place and from your father’s house, to a land I will show you”. God tells Abram with increasing specificity to walk away from everything familiar to him. Lech lecha, God says, which I would translate as “Let go!” Let go of your past that you may embrace your future.
And this morning, ten chapters later, God commands Abraham “Take your son, your special son, the son you love, Isaac and lech lecha to a mountain that I will show you.” This is the only other time in all of Scripture that lech lecha appears. And here too it refers to an increasingly specific command to “let go”. If back in chapter 12 God tells Abram to “let go of his past”, here God tells him to “let go of his future.”
Abraham has been told three times that his future, his progeny, will pass through Isaac, and not Hagar’s son Ishmael. “And God tested Abraham saying “Take your son (I have two sons), your special son (they’re both special), the son you love (I love them both), Isaac and lech lecha to a mountain that I will show you.”
If Abram passed the test in chapter 12, letting go of his past, did Abraham pass the test here, willing to let go of his future? Perhaps we can talk about whether or not Abraham passed God’s test after the Yom Kippur morning service when we get together for our afternoon dialogue. But now, I need to leap ahead to today, to my thoughts after returning from Israel, because today it’s important for me to share with you my fear that the State of Israel is failing her future.
Last July 19 the Knesset in Israel passed what was officially named “The Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People”. The Knesset vote was 62 in favor, 55 against with two abstentions. This Nation-State bill specifies that the State of Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people. The bill is rather short, eleven compound statements, most of which confirm current policy and accepted practice in Israel. In truth the law is mostly sound and fury and political theater designed to placate Israel’s right-wing. So it’s not what the bill actually says that’s troublesome, it’s the intention and the message behind the text that prompts my concern.
So here’s what it says that is already current policy and accepted practice:
But you might remember that there were heated responses to this bill last July. Most were reactions to these statements:
The bill speaks of the “Nation-State” of Israel. But let’s note the difference between the concept of “Nation” and the concept of “State”. A nation is based on the idea of a collective self-identified ethnic or cultural or religious identity, but a state is based on defending and representing all of its citizens irrespective of their identity or personal ideology. While a nation and nationalism by definition makes distinctions between groups, a state should not, cannot, discriminate based on national identity but must treat all its citizens equally. The state’s responsibility is to all its citizens, not only to those of an affirmed national identity. Managing the tensions between national identity and citizenship is a tricky balance.
But in the case of this nation-state bill, both of these precepts are being violated. The bill says that only Jews can claim national identity. And you should know that the first reading of this bill stated that the state could discriminate on the basis of religion and ethnicity because non-Jews couldn’t claim a “national identity”! That would have been nationalism at its ugliest. Fortunately that statement was removed. The new language however is not a great improvement: “The state sees developing Jewish settlement as a national interest and will take steps to encourage, advance, and implement this interest.” This reflects a clear preference for Jewish settlement over any other kind of settlement, and it sanctions, in black and white, the current quiet practice of funding Jewish communities over Arab communities in the Galilee and the Negev, to say nothing about continuing settlements in the West Bank. Shouldn’t an ethical state treat all of its citizens equally?
And then there’s this about Arabic.
And then there’s this statement devaluing us!
What’s so wrong about the “Nation-State Bill” if it merely affirms and doesn’t substantially change Israel’s de facto behavior?! What’s wrong with it is that it sanctions and empowers a growing and dangerous alt-right nationalism. It’s a nationalism that consolidates right-wing politics and right-wing Judaism at the expense of its stated democratic and egalitarian values. First and foremost, the bill is an affront to the 20% of the country’s citizens who are Arab Israelis. They will be the primary casualties of the bill’s most controversial clauses, and Israeli Arabs and their parliamentary representatives are rightly shocked by this development. Arab communities in Israel, not to mention those under occupation, are frequently denied purchase of property and development rights (and a litany of other forms of prejudice). This bill not only justifies that behavior but opens the possibility of further abuse.
Fittingly, the word ‘democratic’ is nowhere to be found in the bill’s text. Perhaps most shocking is that Prime Minister Netanyahu defended the bill saying, “The majority have rights too, and the majority rules.” Indeed, Netanyahu’s comments are consistent with his well-documented disregard for the country’s minorities.
Passage of this legislation was not smooth. As the Nation-State Bill was moving through the Knesset a protest counter bill was submitted affirming Israel as “a country for all its citizens”. But that bill was banned from debate on the Knesset floor. It was called it “preposterous” and “inherently racist” because calling Israel “a country for all its citizens” was an attempt “to undermine Israel’s Jewish character.” Apparently a debate on equality was too democratic for the region’s only democracy.
Three weeks ago we came home from a wonderful, enlightening, exciting and exhausting journey through Israel. It was everything I wanted it to be for our group of 25. We sifted for (and found!) 1st C artifacts from the Temple Mount and marveled at Israel’s cutting edge developments in energy production and bio-organic farming. We touched 3000 year old city walls and welcomed Shabbat at the Western Wall of Jerusalem’s Old City. We swam in the Mediterranean Sea and the Dead Sea and sailed on the Sea of Galilee. We toured the churches dedicated to Jesus’ birth and burial, and the synagogue of Tzvat’s mystic rabbi. We met with the Arab Affairs correspondent for NBC, a Bedouin woman entrepreneur, an Israeli and Palestinian in the West Bank who explained their peace initiative. We visited kibbutzniks and soldiers protecting the Lebanese border in sight of Hezbolah, and a leader in the Druze community who served us dinner, and the imam of an Achmaddian mosque who studied with a rabbi in Jerusalem. We walked and ate, studied and learned, celebrated and mourned the history of the State of Israel and the People of Israel. All in all a most fulfilling and satisfying trip. So I separate all that I received from Israel, from the concerned message I would give Israel.
Prime Minister Netanyahu is walking a dangerous path with his alt-right political and religious cronies. This hurtful and harmful nationalism is pointedly apparent in the Nation-State Bill. It is an affront to Israel’s Arab and Christian and Druze and Reform and Conservative minorities, even as it offends Diaspora Jewry worldwide. But even worse, Israel is sliding down a slippery slope toward an ugly, conflicted, non-democratic and non-Zionist one-state reality that will be denounced by U.S. Jews (and many Israelis), even as it fits into a larger and growing ultra-nationalist and racist world.
I’m happy that from inside Israel, those two weeks were a wonderful experience, but in coming home, and looking over my shoulder at the reality of what we left, I’m sincerely saddened that Israel may be failing her future.
Our Torah reading this morning begins with God testing Abraham. Will he “let go” of his future in order to satisfy God in the present? This morning we may ask the same question of Prime Minister Netanyahu: will he forsake Israel’s Zionist and democratic future to appease his nationalist and racist supporters?
To my 24 fellow-travelers, I’m happy and gratified that you saw and experienced the dynamic and historic Land of Israel that I so admire and respect. May this new year be a good year for us and for the State of Israel.
Ken yehi ratzon, “God willing”
Our Torah reading this morning from Genesis 22 comes ten chapters after the story of Abraham begins.
Way back in chapter 12 when God first speaks to Abram, God begins: Lech lecha! (which literally means “go for yourself” but is usually translated as “get yourself going, or get going”) וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָֹה אֶל־אַבְרָם לֶךְ־לְךָ “And God said, Lech lecha from your country, from your birth place and from your father’s house, to a land I will show you”. God tells Abram with increasing specificity to walk away from everything familiar to him. Lech lecha, God says, which I would translate as “Let go!” Let go of your past that you may embrace your future.
And this morning, ten chapters later, God commands Abraham “Take your son, your special son, the son you love, Isaac and lech lecha to a mountain that I will show you.” This is the only other time in all of Scripture that lech lecha appears. And here too it refers to an increasingly specific command to “let go”. If back in chapter 12 God tells Abram to “let go of his past”, here God tells him to “let go of his future.”
Abraham has been told three times that his future, his progeny, will pass through Isaac, and not Hagar’s son Ishmael. “And God tested Abraham saying “Take your son (I have two sons), your special son (they’re both special), the son you love (I love them both), Isaac and lech lecha to a mountain that I will show you.”
If Abram passed the test in chapter 12, letting go of his past, did Abraham pass the test here, willing to let go of his future? Perhaps we can talk about whether or not Abraham passed God’s test after the Yom Kippur morning service when we get together for our afternoon dialogue. But now, I need to leap ahead to today, to my thoughts after returning from Israel, because today it’s important for me to share with you my fear that the State of Israel is failing her future.
Last July 19 the Knesset in Israel passed what was officially named “The Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People”. The Knesset vote was 62 in favor, 55 against with two abstentions. This Nation-State bill specifies that the State of Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people. The bill is rather short, eleven compound statements, most of which confirm current policy and accepted practice in Israel. In truth the law is mostly sound and fury and political theater designed to placate Israel’s right-wing. So it’s not what the bill actually says that’s troublesome, it’s the intention and the message behind the text that prompts my concern.
So here’s what it says that is already current policy and accepted practice:
- The name of the state is Israel.
- Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people in which the State of Israel was established.
- The flag of the state is white, two blue stripes near the edges, and a blue Star of David in the center.
- The symbol of the state is the Menorah with seven branches, olive leaves on each side, and the word Israel at the bottom.
- The national anthem of the state is “Hatikvah”
- Unified Jerusalem is the capitol.
- Hebrew is the language of the state.
- The state is open to Jewish immigration
- Jewish holidays and Shabbat are nationally recognized
But you might remember that there were heated responses to this bill last July. Most were reactions to these statements:
- The state of Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people and their right for self-determination.
- The actualization of the right of national self-determination is unique to the Jewish people.
- Jewish settlement in Israel is a national value and should be encouraged
The bill speaks of the “Nation-State” of Israel. But let’s note the difference between the concept of “Nation” and the concept of “State”. A nation is based on the idea of a collective self-identified ethnic or cultural or religious identity, but a state is based on defending and representing all of its citizens irrespective of their identity or personal ideology. While a nation and nationalism by definition makes distinctions between groups, a state should not, cannot, discriminate based on national identity but must treat all its citizens equally. The state’s responsibility is to all its citizens, not only to those of an affirmed national identity. Managing the tensions between national identity and citizenship is a tricky balance.
But in the case of this nation-state bill, both of these precepts are being violated. The bill says that only Jews can claim national identity. And you should know that the first reading of this bill stated that the state could discriminate on the basis of religion and ethnicity because non-Jews couldn’t claim a “national identity”! That would have been nationalism at its ugliest. Fortunately that statement was removed. The new language however is not a great improvement: “The state sees developing Jewish settlement as a national interest and will take steps to encourage, advance, and implement this interest.” This reflects a clear preference for Jewish settlement over any other kind of settlement, and it sanctions, in black and white, the current quiet practice of funding Jewish communities over Arab communities in the Galilee and the Negev, to say nothing about continuing settlements in the West Bank. Shouldn’t an ethical state treat all of its citizens equally?
And then there’s this about Arabic.
- The Arabic language has a special status in the state.
And then there’s this statement devaluing us!
- The state will act to preserve the cultural, historical and religious legacy of the Jewish peopleamong the Jewish diaspora.
What’s so wrong about the “Nation-State Bill” if it merely affirms and doesn’t substantially change Israel’s de facto behavior?! What’s wrong with it is that it sanctions and empowers a growing and dangerous alt-right nationalism. It’s a nationalism that consolidates right-wing politics and right-wing Judaism at the expense of its stated democratic and egalitarian values. First and foremost, the bill is an affront to the 20% of the country’s citizens who are Arab Israelis. They will be the primary casualties of the bill’s most controversial clauses, and Israeli Arabs and their parliamentary representatives are rightly shocked by this development. Arab communities in Israel, not to mention those under occupation, are frequently denied purchase of property and development rights (and a litany of other forms of prejudice). This bill not only justifies that behavior but opens the possibility of further abuse.
Fittingly, the word ‘democratic’ is nowhere to be found in the bill’s text. Perhaps most shocking is that Prime Minister Netanyahu defended the bill saying, “The majority have rights too, and the majority rules.” Indeed, Netanyahu’s comments are consistent with his well-documented disregard for the country’s minorities.
Passage of this legislation was not smooth. As the Nation-State Bill was moving through the Knesset a protest counter bill was submitted affirming Israel as “a country for all its citizens”. But that bill was banned from debate on the Knesset floor. It was called it “preposterous” and “inherently racist” because calling Israel “a country for all its citizens” was an attempt “to undermine Israel’s Jewish character.” Apparently a debate on equality was too democratic for the region’s only democracy.
Three weeks ago we came home from a wonderful, enlightening, exciting and exhausting journey through Israel. It was everything I wanted it to be for our group of 25. We sifted for (and found!) 1st C artifacts from the Temple Mount and marveled at Israel’s cutting edge developments in energy production and bio-organic farming. We touched 3000 year old city walls and welcomed Shabbat at the Western Wall of Jerusalem’s Old City. We swam in the Mediterranean Sea and the Dead Sea and sailed on the Sea of Galilee. We toured the churches dedicated to Jesus’ birth and burial, and the synagogue of Tzvat’s mystic rabbi. We met with the Arab Affairs correspondent for NBC, a Bedouin woman entrepreneur, an Israeli and Palestinian in the West Bank who explained their peace initiative. We visited kibbutzniks and soldiers protecting the Lebanese border in sight of Hezbolah, and a leader in the Druze community who served us dinner, and the imam of an Achmaddian mosque who studied with a rabbi in Jerusalem. We walked and ate, studied and learned, celebrated and mourned the history of the State of Israel and the People of Israel. All in all a most fulfilling and satisfying trip. So I separate all that I received from Israel, from the concerned message I would give Israel.
Prime Minister Netanyahu is walking a dangerous path with his alt-right political and religious cronies. This hurtful and harmful nationalism is pointedly apparent in the Nation-State Bill. It is an affront to Israel’s Arab and Christian and Druze and Reform and Conservative minorities, even as it offends Diaspora Jewry worldwide. But even worse, Israel is sliding down a slippery slope toward an ugly, conflicted, non-democratic and non-Zionist one-state reality that will be denounced by U.S. Jews (and many Israelis), even as it fits into a larger and growing ultra-nationalist and racist world.
I’m happy that from inside Israel, those two weeks were a wonderful experience, but in coming home, and looking over my shoulder at the reality of what we left, I’m sincerely saddened that Israel may be failing her future.
Our Torah reading this morning begins with God testing Abraham. Will he “let go” of his future in order to satisfy God in the present? This morning we may ask the same question of Prime Minister Netanyahu: will he forsake Israel’s Zionist and democratic future to appease his nationalist and racist supporters?
To my 24 fellow-travelers, I’m happy and gratified that you saw and experienced the dynamic and historic Land of Israel that I so admire and respect. May this new year be a good year for us and for the State of Israel.
Ken yehi ratzon, “God willing”
“Owning Imperfection” Erev Yom Kippur 2018
When I was in 7th grade Religious School my rabbi, Leon Feuer, came to our class and introduced us to his “good friend”. I assumed he was a Catholic priest because he had a collar. The rabbi went on to say that Jews and Christians have a lot in common, and in fact there was really not much of a difference between Judaism and Christianity, between what we believe and they believe-- which immediately made me ask my 13 year old self “Then why be Jewish?”
Rabbi Feuer was wrong. There are significant differences between us, differences which draw Jews to Judaism and Christians to Christianity. The Church wants you to be “perfect”, and we know that we aren’t and aren’t in fact built to be perfect. The Church would remind you “What would Jesus, the perfect son of God, do?” We remind you “We all make mistakes, so when you make one, you need to fix it.” Jesus said “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Hillel said “Don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do unto you.” The former is often impossible, the latter, always possible.
Which brings us to Yom Kippur. Baked into our Jewish DNA is the recognition that as finite, limited, imperfect human beings we do make mistakes. Sometimes we make sloppy errors, sometimes it’s bad judgement, sometimes we knowingly purposefully do wrong. But our theology reminds us that God made us finite, limited and imperfect, and though God wants us to do the best we can, God understands errors, bad judgement even purposeful wrong-doing.
In the traditional daily worship of the prayerbook we privately, personally and silently ask God for forgiveness saying “Blessed are You Adonai our God who is gracious and ever forgiving.” But on Yom Kippur, in the public presence of the congregation, we out loud proclaim “This is Your glory: You are slow to anger, ready to forgive. It is not the death of sinners You seek but that they should turn from their ways and live.” In fact the very premise of this day is that we need to correct how we live because we indeed have the power to right the wrongs we have knowingly or unknowingly done. We are imperfect. That’s the way it is. We must deal with it and God must live with it.
Recognizing that we are imperfect, and deciding that we could be, should be better in the year ahead is an intellectual appreciation. The point of Yom Kippur is all about remembering, evaluating, accepting and deciding—intellectual activities. We’re supposed to think about who we were and are. And yet the irony, the reality of our Yom Kippur experience is that it is almost entirely emotional! What impacts us, moves us and affects us is our emotional response to the singing of Kol Nidre and the sight of the presented Scrolls, and hearing the expected and well-remembered melodies of the Holidays. The Yom Kippur experience has been designed so that we do not rationally engage in the process of repentance and atonement, not think about the consequences of our imperfections, even though that ought to be the whole point of Yom Kippur!
Here’s what I mean:
If we were allowed to really think about the theology proclaimed in the Yom Kippur liturgy we would reject it out of hand! Is God really spending tonight and tomorrow judging the worth of each one of us? If God is, and if God is going to indelibly “inscribe us” for a blessing or curse by sunset tomorrow, if we are sealed with that judgement in God’s great book, if that’s really what’s going to happen – then it doesn’t matter what I do, how I behave, whether I’m good or bad, in the new year! My fate in the year ahead is a done-deal. I can do whatever and behave however I want, and come next Rosh Hashana I’ll say “sincerely sorry”, and after Yom Kippur go my merry way assured my fate (whether good or bad) is already set for another year and there’s nothing I can do about it anyway! Either way, if God accepts my sincerity or not, my fate is sealed!
Is that really what we believe? Isn’t that a complete denial of free will? Aren’t we all about choosing right over wrong, making the world a better place? Isn’t that the Judaism we’re supposed to affirm? Does anybody say “It doesn’t matter how you live or how you behave because God has already decided whether you will be blessed or cursed”.
And to make the theological reality and the intellectual challenge of the evening even more striking, the Aramaic text of Kol Nidre, the original text, is a declaration which pre-annuls any vows we will make in the year ahead! We annul in advance, and therefore we’re not required to fulfill any pledge, oath, or promise made in the year ahead. Really?! Is it any wonder that our tradition prompts us to focus on tonight’s emotional impact, rather than its logical reality!
And so tonight and tomorrow, more than any other communal gathering we dismiss imtellectual honesty as we passively allow the liturgy and the music to wash over us, to carry us in its flow from sunset to sunset. The worship builds tomorrow evening to an emotional climax, we are lifted, we are released, and brought into the presence of the Most High in a final pointed plea for atonement. Carried along on the crest of this emotional liturgical tide we pass through the gates at the other end, comforted in the secure renewal of God's protection.
With its intense emotional investment, Yom Kippur seems to have escaped the intellectual skepticism of social sophistication that has chipped away at so many of our traditions. For many of us, this is the one religious experience which draws us into the sanctuary. There is no question that tonight makes one feel good, promotes a sense of well-being, prompts the satisfaction of having fulfilled a religious “ought”. And bathed in the aura of emotional well-being we tend to pass over the reality that we are indeed imperfect and what that means.
Yes, the emotional impact of the Yom Kippur experience is important, and soothing and comforting and fulfilling, but we really need to talk tachlis here, to “get down to business”. And the real business of Yom Kippur is dealing with our imperfections. And that requires an intellectual query into the reality of the human condition—just what Yom Kippur ought to be about!
To be human is to live a paradox: to know that we are incomplete, yet yearn for completion; to be uncertain, yet long for certainty; to be broken, yet crave wholeness-- these qualities we desperately desire. Completion, certainty, and wholeness are impossible precisely because we are imperfectly human—or better, we are “perfectly precisely human”. The paradox we live is that wanting to be better we are inevitably slipping and sliding, making mistakes. But that’s what it means to be human, it’s the way God made us.
On the other hand, if we think we can, or should, achieve perfection despite our inherent imperfections-- then life and living become a constant battle, and an eternal struggle to be or become what we can never be or become. We end up living in a world of either/or: success or failure, good or bad. And since we inevitably fail to perfectly achieve-- we feel we fail ourselves, and our God. But Judaism reminds us that life is always a balancing act. We live a series of ups and downs, we sometimes succeed and sometimes fail, and both success and failure are life-lessons that prepare us for what lies ahead.
If baked into our humanity is “necessary imperfection”, then what also makes us human is that we know it is so! Our Active Intellect recognizes and realizes that this is the challenge that we live with, and because we “know”, we are better equipped to choose. Thus we are more than mindless animals and less than angelically perfect as proclaimed in Psalm 8
Adonai our God, how majestic is your name in all the earth!. . . When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have formed; what are we that you are mindful of us, mortals that you care for us? Yet you have made us little lower than God, and have crowned us with glory and honor. You have given us dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under our feet . . . Adonai our God, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
We are both “more than” and “less than”, we live in the balance between Heaven and earth. Never either/or, we are both/and, as we were taught by Simcha Bunim, and 18th C Polish Rabbi:
Everyone must have two pockets, with a note in each pocket, so that he or she can reach into the one or the other, depending on the need. When feeling lowly and depressed, discouraged or disconsolate, one should reach into the right pocket, and, there, find the words: “For my sake was the world created.” But when feeling high and mighty one should reach into the left pocket and find the words: “I am but dust and ashes.”
The message of Yom Kippur is simple, it can be expressed in but one word: “humility”. We’re not as important as we might think, but then we’re probably better than our despondent low. And in recognizing that we live in the both/and, humble before God and before our better selves, we have within ourselves the ability to save ourselves. Humility is at the heart of Yom Kippur and also the essence of being human. And this we learn from the first chapter of Torah. There we read that God made Adam (“humanity”) from the adamah, from dirt, the ground. We are “earthlings” in the truest sense of the word. And the word “humility” comes from the Latin humilitas, a noun related to the adjective humilis, which may be rightly translated as “grounded”, or “from the earth”, since it derives from humus (earth).
On Yom Kippur one year the Rabbi fell to his knees with his forehead to the floor and said, “Before you O God, I am nothing.” The Cantor looking at him, thinking it couldn't hurt, and knelt with his forehead to the floor, next to the rabbi and said, “Before you O God, I am nothing.” Max Shapiro in the fifth row, watching and thinking that this was a pretty good idea, moved into the middle of the isle, knelt with his forehead to the floor and said, “Before you O God, I am nothing.” And the Rabbi nudged the Cantor and said: “Look who thinks he's nothing!”
On Yom Kippur our traditional liturgy tells us that we enter the congregation and stand before God to be judged, and pray that by sunset tomorrow God will inscribe us in the great Book of Life for a good year. I believe that in gathering here tonight and tomorrow we stand less before God and more before our own private selves. Are we what we wanted or expected from ourselves? Have we handled the ups and downs of the past year rightly, properly? Have we written ourselves well in the Book of Life, for we alone control our actions, we alone control how we are received by others and how we are judged by others and how we judge ourselves. We read on Rosh Hashanah morning and will again tomorrow morning: You open the book of our days, and what is written there proclaims itself, for it bears the signature of every human being.
This is the day on which we purposely and pointedly judge ourselves and forgive the sins of others. This is the day on which we promise a better tomorrow: both in how we treat others and how we look after ourselves. And God? God knows that we are imperfect and God gives us another chance to do the right thing.
Rabbi Elimelech of Lizensk was once asked by a disciple how one should pray for forgiveness. The rabbi told the student to observe the behavior of a certain innkeeper before Yom Kippur. So the student took lodging at the inn and observed the proprietor for several days, and on the night before Yom Kippur, he saw the innkeeper open two large ledgers. From the first book he read off a list of all the sins he had committed throughout the past year. When he was finished, he opened the second book and proceeded to recite all the bad things that had occurred to him during the past year. And when he had finished reading both books, he lifted his eyes to heaven and said “Dear God, it is true I have sinned against You. But You have done many distressful things to me too. However, we are now beginning a new year. Let us wipe the slate clean. I will forgive You, and You forgive me.”
Shana tova.
When I was in 7th grade Religious School my rabbi, Leon Feuer, came to our class and introduced us to his “good friend”. I assumed he was a Catholic priest because he had a collar. The rabbi went on to say that Jews and Christians have a lot in common, and in fact there was really not much of a difference between Judaism and Christianity, between what we believe and they believe-- which immediately made me ask my 13 year old self “Then why be Jewish?”
Rabbi Feuer was wrong. There are significant differences between us, differences which draw Jews to Judaism and Christians to Christianity. The Church wants you to be “perfect”, and we know that we aren’t and aren’t in fact built to be perfect. The Church would remind you “What would Jesus, the perfect son of God, do?” We remind you “We all make mistakes, so when you make one, you need to fix it.” Jesus said “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Hillel said “Don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do unto you.” The former is often impossible, the latter, always possible.
Which brings us to Yom Kippur. Baked into our Jewish DNA is the recognition that as finite, limited, imperfect human beings we do make mistakes. Sometimes we make sloppy errors, sometimes it’s bad judgement, sometimes we knowingly purposefully do wrong. But our theology reminds us that God made us finite, limited and imperfect, and though God wants us to do the best we can, God understands errors, bad judgement even purposeful wrong-doing.
In the traditional daily worship of the prayerbook we privately, personally and silently ask God for forgiveness saying “Blessed are You Adonai our God who is gracious and ever forgiving.” But on Yom Kippur, in the public presence of the congregation, we out loud proclaim “This is Your glory: You are slow to anger, ready to forgive. It is not the death of sinners You seek but that they should turn from their ways and live.” In fact the very premise of this day is that we need to correct how we live because we indeed have the power to right the wrongs we have knowingly or unknowingly done. We are imperfect. That’s the way it is. We must deal with it and God must live with it.
Recognizing that we are imperfect, and deciding that we could be, should be better in the year ahead is an intellectual appreciation. The point of Yom Kippur is all about remembering, evaluating, accepting and deciding—intellectual activities. We’re supposed to think about who we were and are. And yet the irony, the reality of our Yom Kippur experience is that it is almost entirely emotional! What impacts us, moves us and affects us is our emotional response to the singing of Kol Nidre and the sight of the presented Scrolls, and hearing the expected and well-remembered melodies of the Holidays. The Yom Kippur experience has been designed so that we do not rationally engage in the process of repentance and atonement, not think about the consequences of our imperfections, even though that ought to be the whole point of Yom Kippur!
Here’s what I mean:
If we were allowed to really think about the theology proclaimed in the Yom Kippur liturgy we would reject it out of hand! Is God really spending tonight and tomorrow judging the worth of each one of us? If God is, and if God is going to indelibly “inscribe us” for a blessing or curse by sunset tomorrow, if we are sealed with that judgement in God’s great book, if that’s really what’s going to happen – then it doesn’t matter what I do, how I behave, whether I’m good or bad, in the new year! My fate in the year ahead is a done-deal. I can do whatever and behave however I want, and come next Rosh Hashana I’ll say “sincerely sorry”, and after Yom Kippur go my merry way assured my fate (whether good or bad) is already set for another year and there’s nothing I can do about it anyway! Either way, if God accepts my sincerity or not, my fate is sealed!
Is that really what we believe? Isn’t that a complete denial of free will? Aren’t we all about choosing right over wrong, making the world a better place? Isn’t that the Judaism we’re supposed to affirm? Does anybody say “It doesn’t matter how you live or how you behave because God has already decided whether you will be blessed or cursed”.
And to make the theological reality and the intellectual challenge of the evening even more striking, the Aramaic text of Kol Nidre, the original text, is a declaration which pre-annuls any vows we will make in the year ahead! We annul in advance, and therefore we’re not required to fulfill any pledge, oath, or promise made in the year ahead. Really?! Is it any wonder that our tradition prompts us to focus on tonight’s emotional impact, rather than its logical reality!
And so tonight and tomorrow, more than any other communal gathering we dismiss imtellectual honesty as we passively allow the liturgy and the music to wash over us, to carry us in its flow from sunset to sunset. The worship builds tomorrow evening to an emotional climax, we are lifted, we are released, and brought into the presence of the Most High in a final pointed plea for atonement. Carried along on the crest of this emotional liturgical tide we pass through the gates at the other end, comforted in the secure renewal of God's protection.
With its intense emotional investment, Yom Kippur seems to have escaped the intellectual skepticism of social sophistication that has chipped away at so many of our traditions. For many of us, this is the one religious experience which draws us into the sanctuary. There is no question that tonight makes one feel good, promotes a sense of well-being, prompts the satisfaction of having fulfilled a religious “ought”. And bathed in the aura of emotional well-being we tend to pass over the reality that we are indeed imperfect and what that means.
Yes, the emotional impact of the Yom Kippur experience is important, and soothing and comforting and fulfilling, but we really need to talk tachlis here, to “get down to business”. And the real business of Yom Kippur is dealing with our imperfections. And that requires an intellectual query into the reality of the human condition—just what Yom Kippur ought to be about!
To be human is to live a paradox: to know that we are incomplete, yet yearn for completion; to be uncertain, yet long for certainty; to be broken, yet crave wholeness-- these qualities we desperately desire. Completion, certainty, and wholeness are impossible precisely because we are imperfectly human—or better, we are “perfectly precisely human”. The paradox we live is that wanting to be better we are inevitably slipping and sliding, making mistakes. But that’s what it means to be human, it’s the way God made us.
On the other hand, if we think we can, or should, achieve perfection despite our inherent imperfections-- then life and living become a constant battle, and an eternal struggle to be or become what we can never be or become. We end up living in a world of either/or: success or failure, good or bad. And since we inevitably fail to perfectly achieve-- we feel we fail ourselves, and our God. But Judaism reminds us that life is always a balancing act. We live a series of ups and downs, we sometimes succeed and sometimes fail, and both success and failure are life-lessons that prepare us for what lies ahead.
If baked into our humanity is “necessary imperfection”, then what also makes us human is that we know it is so! Our Active Intellect recognizes and realizes that this is the challenge that we live with, and because we “know”, we are better equipped to choose. Thus we are more than mindless animals and less than angelically perfect as proclaimed in Psalm 8
Adonai our God, how majestic is your name in all the earth!. . . When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have formed; what are we that you are mindful of us, mortals that you care for us? Yet you have made us little lower than God, and have crowned us with glory and honor. You have given us dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under our feet . . . Adonai our God, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
We are both “more than” and “less than”, we live in the balance between Heaven and earth. Never either/or, we are both/and, as we were taught by Simcha Bunim, and 18th C Polish Rabbi:
Everyone must have two pockets, with a note in each pocket, so that he or she can reach into the one or the other, depending on the need. When feeling lowly and depressed, discouraged or disconsolate, one should reach into the right pocket, and, there, find the words: “For my sake was the world created.” But when feeling high and mighty one should reach into the left pocket and find the words: “I am but dust and ashes.”
The message of Yom Kippur is simple, it can be expressed in but one word: “humility”. We’re not as important as we might think, but then we’re probably better than our despondent low. And in recognizing that we live in the both/and, humble before God and before our better selves, we have within ourselves the ability to save ourselves. Humility is at the heart of Yom Kippur and also the essence of being human. And this we learn from the first chapter of Torah. There we read that God made Adam (“humanity”) from the adamah, from dirt, the ground. We are “earthlings” in the truest sense of the word. And the word “humility” comes from the Latin humilitas, a noun related to the adjective humilis, which may be rightly translated as “grounded”, or “from the earth”, since it derives from humus (earth).
On Yom Kippur one year the Rabbi fell to his knees with his forehead to the floor and said, “Before you O God, I am nothing.” The Cantor looking at him, thinking it couldn't hurt, and knelt with his forehead to the floor, next to the rabbi and said, “Before you O God, I am nothing.” Max Shapiro in the fifth row, watching and thinking that this was a pretty good idea, moved into the middle of the isle, knelt with his forehead to the floor and said, “Before you O God, I am nothing.” And the Rabbi nudged the Cantor and said: “Look who thinks he's nothing!”
On Yom Kippur our traditional liturgy tells us that we enter the congregation and stand before God to be judged, and pray that by sunset tomorrow God will inscribe us in the great Book of Life for a good year. I believe that in gathering here tonight and tomorrow we stand less before God and more before our own private selves. Are we what we wanted or expected from ourselves? Have we handled the ups and downs of the past year rightly, properly? Have we written ourselves well in the Book of Life, for we alone control our actions, we alone control how we are received by others and how we are judged by others and how we judge ourselves. We read on Rosh Hashanah morning and will again tomorrow morning: You open the book of our days, and what is written there proclaims itself, for it bears the signature of every human being.
This is the day on which we purposely and pointedly judge ourselves and forgive the sins of others. This is the day on which we promise a better tomorrow: both in how we treat others and how we look after ourselves. And God? God knows that we are imperfect and God gives us another chance to do the right thing.
Rabbi Elimelech of Lizensk was once asked by a disciple how one should pray for forgiveness. The rabbi told the student to observe the behavior of a certain innkeeper before Yom Kippur. So the student took lodging at the inn and observed the proprietor for several days, and on the night before Yom Kippur, he saw the innkeeper open two large ledgers. From the first book he read off a list of all the sins he had committed throughout the past year. When he was finished, he opened the second book and proceeded to recite all the bad things that had occurred to him during the past year. And when he had finished reading both books, he lifted his eyes to heaven and said “Dear God, it is true I have sinned against You. But You have done many distressful things to me too. However, we are now beginning a new year. Let us wipe the slate clean. I will forgive You, and You forgive me.”
Shana tova.
“Belief and Truth” Yom Kippur 2018
I began last night’s message with this story:
When I was in 7th grade Religious School my rabbi, Leon Feuer, came to our class with a guest and introduced us to his “good friend”. I assumed he was a Catholic priest because he had a collar. The rabbi went on to say that Jews and Christians had a lot in common, and in fact there was really not much of a difference between Judaism and Christianity, between what we believe and they believe-- and immediately my 13 year old mind asked “Then why be Jewish?”
In my 40 plus years as a congregational rabbi I have sought out colleagues among Christian clergy. To this day I count several as my closest friends. I eagerly engage Jewish/Christian dialogue with Church leaders. I’ve studied New Testament texts and Early Christian history. I’ve interpreted Christianity to Jews and explained Judaism to Christians. And in each and every exchange I carefully explain that what separates Judaism from Christianity is not the presence or importance of Jesus. In fact I often say that if Jesus were to walk into our community today, looking for “his people”, he would ask for the local synagogue. And additionally, he would be appalled that there are churches and a Christianity and a religion that call him God.
And while Christians and Jews affirm the same Hebrew Scriptures (half of their Bible, all of ours), and though we certainly share ethics and values, religious hopes and ideals-- there are clearly principles, ideologies and doctrines that seriously separate us. Last night I spoke about one of those differences: that Christianity wants us to be perfect, wants us to be like Jesus; and because we aren’t we require the necessary intercession of the Christ to save us from ourselves. Judaism insists that we are by-nature imperfect, a condition “that we must deal with, and God must live with.” We alone are responsible for our misdeeds and God expects us to make them right. God tells us, particularly on this day: “You broke it, now you fix it.”
A second major difference is that the Church affirms that what God wants of us is, first and foremost, proper, right, correct belief. And so denominations create specific creeds and dogmas that define that proper belief. Judaism has no such creed or required a priori belief because what God wants from us, first and foremost is proper, right, correct behavior. We can talk more, if you wish, about Judaism’s lack of dogma, doctrine or creed when we gather in the break after this morning’s service.
Judaism and Christianity have many different understandings of religious ideas and concepts, all above and beyond who and what Jesus was. Christians and Jews both declare the importance of “salvation”, “redemption”, “covenant”, “commandment”, “sin” and “atonement”—but how we understand these notions is quite different. And this morning I would add another concept that separates us: what it means to “believe”.
Our western culture seems to understand “believe” (as opposed to “know”) as affirming or thinking that something is true even if it is not empirically proven. We don’t use “believe” if we “know” something to be true. We don’t say “I believe that A2 + B2 = C2” unless one is not convinced that it applies to all right triangles! (which it does!) If one says “I believe that my spouse has been faithful to me” the impression given is “maybe not” -- otherwise one would say “I know my spouse is faithful”. And if one says: “I believe that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in 1969”, our response is: “of course that’s true, are you some kind of conspiracy nut?” But this is in fact the way “belief” is used and understood in Christianity. One “believes” in the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, even if how that works is a mystery, even though it can’t be easily explained or empirically demonstrated. And because proper, right and correct belief is what brings one into the Church and affirms one’s membership—Christianity blurs the line between “belief” and “truth”, accepting as true that which has yet to be proven. But that is not the case for Jews or Judaism.
In Hebrew the word for “belief” is emunah. The same verb-root that gives us our English word “amen” and the Hebrew word emet (or emes), which means “truth”. We say “Amen” meaning “it’s the truth!” And you may be familiar with this Hebrew phrase from the traditional morning worship service: ani m’amin b’emunah sh’layma, “I believe with perfect faith…” There the verb m’amin (believe) and the noun emunah (faith) share the same root. At the core of emunah, “meaning belief, or faith” is the notion of “truth”, so that for Judaism, reflected in its language of Hebrew: something is true if it can be verified empirically. It’s true that A2 + B2 = C2. It’s true that Armstrong walked on the moon. And because we don’t use the word “true” for future events because that would sound silly, we say “I believe the sun will rise in the east tomorrow”. And “I believe that my car will start when I turn on the ignition” and “I believe that my flight to New York will land safely” and “I believe that I’ll live to be 75.” I “believe” those things because my experience is and has been that my car is reliable, and the vast majority of airplane flights are successful, and I’m in good health. My experience tells me that those things are “true”. In Jewish thought “believing” must mean experientially true.
As Jews we learn that to believe something to be true means that one has reasonable, if not empirical, experiential knowledge that it is. And it applies not only to cars and airlines but to religious truth as well. I “believe” in God because there have been moments in my life when I was intimately and acutely aware that I was touched by something bigger than me, more than me, a transcendent reality that momentarily confirmed that I was connected to a reality larger and beyond my own being. I can only describe those “moments of awareness” as momentary emotional flashs that confirmed a transcendent connection. They are not every day experiences, or even occasional experiences, but it has happened enough times in my life that I know that I am not existentially alone. I choose to call that transcendent Presence “God.” And I affirm it when I remind myself Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai Elohaynu, Adonai Echad. “Adonai Echad,” God is One, distinct, unique, singly infinite and absolute.
You know as well as I that there is no Jewish faith test. And if you say that it is the Sh’ma which is our required and necessary Statement of Faith, I would point out that it is purposefully vague, imprecise, and indefinite about what exactly we’re affirming about God.
For me, one of the great strengths of Judaism, one of the reasons I am a “Jew-by-Choice” despite being a “Jew-by-Birth” is that Judaism demands of me no abdication of the mind (to borrow a phrase from the poet Edmund Fleg). Judaism asks of me only that I accept that which is empirically true, or experientially true, or personally true.
But you say ‘Ah ha,— doesn’t Orthodox, traditional Judaism (“real Judaism” they tell us!) “believe” it’s true that God forbids cheeseburgers and driving on Saturday, and clothing of mixed wool and linen; and demands knotted strings on special undergarments for men and the mikveh once a month for women!?’ Don’t they “believe” it’s true that the words in the Torah Scroll were directly and perfectly and eternally written by God, and because Torah says we can’t light a fire on Shabbat, that the rabbis are correct that God doesn’t want us to turn on television Friday night. Don’t they “believe” all these things are true even if they are not empirically or experientially true?
So how is it that they believe as “truth” that Adam and Eve were the first humans, that Noah saved all the animals in the ark (except the fish), that God told Abraham to kill his son, that God split the sea for the Israelites? How is that any different from a Christian “believing” in the Trinity and the resurrection of Jesus?
But different it is! Traditional Judaism says that the experience of the two million Israelites in the desert at Sinai who witnessed the giving of Torah is historically, rationally, reliably, verifiably true. And to their own satisfaction they offer these “un-contestable” proofs that God alone wrote Torah and gave us the commandments. Here are five of their “proofs”, and I quote:
1 - Since many of the Torah’s laws are “socially suicidal,” they never would have been written by people, and must have come from God! Witness the 7th year sabbatical prohibition of working one’s fields. Does any other religion have such a law? No human lawmaker would be cruel or stupid enough to lay down a law that says farmers should not plant and reap every 7th year. Therefore, this law must have [logically, rationally, empirically] come from God. And additionally, our people wouldn’t have followed it if they had not believed it to be from God who would provide food during the sabbatical year. Therefore-- because the law runs counter to the rules of human society, it must be historically divine, must be true!
2 - And then there’s the Torah’s demand that three times a year, at the pilgrimage festivals all men are to travel to Jerusalem. Who would require that our borders and fields and communities would be open to attack, regularly, three times a year? These “suicidal laws” could only have come from God—and the fact that they were followed, and the people survived—prove it!
3- Look at the character of Moses. Since Torah harshly highlights the faults and foibles of its leaders it proves that the stories are not of human origin. Why? Because had we written them, they would have sounded more like the stories of the New Testament or the Koran, which are written by starry-eyed men extolling their heroes.
4 - The unique contents of Torah are in themselves an indication of its Godly origin. No human mind could have invented these elevated and sublime ideas, ideology, laws and systems of the Torah, certainly not in the cultural environment that prevailed at that time.
5- The persistent and ubiquitous presence of anti-Semitism, found throughout time and in so many places, proves that Torah is divine, for Torah predicts that we will be scattered among the nations, that we will be oppressed by others, and suffer at their hands. The fact that this is manifestly true even 3500 years after Torah was given us, “clearly and certainly proves its divine predictions.”
And here we come to the great divide between liberal and traditional Jews. What differentiates us from the Orthodox is not whether or not we eat cheeseburgers, or wear tzitzit. What differentiates me from an Orthodox Jew is that I don’t accept his proofs that Torah is divine. Without that acceptance, without this “convincing evidence”—Torah and all its derivative laws are not God-binding on me. Though that’s not to say that I might choose, for my own Jewish reasons, not eat a cheeseburger or to wear tzitzit. I might choose to follow the dietary laws of kashroot and the daily wearing of fringes because they and other expressions are historical reminders of my heritage, or because that’s what my grandmother taught me, or because it makes me feel special and different and “Jewish” to live that way.
But for the Orthodox community such choosing is simply beside the point and clearly for the wrong reasons. The commandments come from God. Believe that, and do them, because as you’ve heard, the rabbis have proven that Torah from Sinai is true.
What separates us from the Orthodox, Traditional, Jewish community is not “what” we do as an expression of our Jewish identity, but “why” we do it. What separates us is not “what” we believe, but “why” we believe it. It’s not unusual for Reform Jews, non-Orthodox Jews to be shomer kashroot, “kosher keepers” in their homes, but comfortable eating in restaurants and other homes which do not observe the dietary laws. And when challenged as hypocrites they explain that they keep a kosher home as a living memorial to parents, or because they want to welcome any Jew into their home and offer them a meal, or because in making that choice they continually self-affirm their Jewish identity. But outside their home, beyond the walls of their self-identified and defined Jewish lives, their identity is not defined by what they eat. There’s nothing hypocritical about that because that family is not saying that a kosher home or a kosher stomach is dictated or demanded by God! They have chosen to sanctify their home because it’s important for them, not because it’s important to God.
The strength of liberal, non-traditional Judaism is that it demands that what we do as individual Jews, what we believe as Jews, is true because it makes sense to us, because it is intrinsically meaningful to us. It’s not what I do, what I believe, but why I do and why I believe that completely and permanently removes me from the world of Orthodox Judaism. What makes my Judaism, your Judaism, “true” is that it is existentially, experientially correct, proper, authentic and personally “true”.
What is it that God wants of us? What is it that Yom Kippur asks of us?
That we live lives that are true to the values of Judaism. “What is it that God asks of you?” asks the Prophet Micah, “Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before God? [Micah 6:8]”
We “believe” that we should live those values because our conscience, our character, our ethics and inherent integrity know them to be “true” values. Our tradition brings us to Yom Kippur so that we might personally confirm these truths and collectively affirm them in community. As we read from Torah this morning: This commandment which I command you today is not too hard for you, nor too remote. It is not in heaven that should say, “Who will go up to heaven for us, and bring it down for us, that we may do it?” Nor is it beyond the sea that you should say “Who will cross the sea for us, and bring it back to us, that we may do it?” No it is very near to you, it is in your mouth, and in your heart and you can do it.
Judaism never asks us to believe anything which is not experientially, existentially true. And that, among other reasons, is why I am a Jew-by-Choice. And today especially we are prompted to be true to ourselves, to affirm the best that is in us, and improve what is not. To that end, to that task, to that life, and with that promise we enter our new year.
Shana tova.
I began last night’s message with this story:
When I was in 7th grade Religious School my rabbi, Leon Feuer, came to our class with a guest and introduced us to his “good friend”. I assumed he was a Catholic priest because he had a collar. The rabbi went on to say that Jews and Christians had a lot in common, and in fact there was really not much of a difference between Judaism and Christianity, between what we believe and they believe-- and immediately my 13 year old mind asked “Then why be Jewish?”
In my 40 plus years as a congregational rabbi I have sought out colleagues among Christian clergy. To this day I count several as my closest friends. I eagerly engage Jewish/Christian dialogue with Church leaders. I’ve studied New Testament texts and Early Christian history. I’ve interpreted Christianity to Jews and explained Judaism to Christians. And in each and every exchange I carefully explain that what separates Judaism from Christianity is not the presence or importance of Jesus. In fact I often say that if Jesus were to walk into our community today, looking for “his people”, he would ask for the local synagogue. And additionally, he would be appalled that there are churches and a Christianity and a religion that call him God.
And while Christians and Jews affirm the same Hebrew Scriptures (half of their Bible, all of ours), and though we certainly share ethics and values, religious hopes and ideals-- there are clearly principles, ideologies and doctrines that seriously separate us. Last night I spoke about one of those differences: that Christianity wants us to be perfect, wants us to be like Jesus; and because we aren’t we require the necessary intercession of the Christ to save us from ourselves. Judaism insists that we are by-nature imperfect, a condition “that we must deal with, and God must live with.” We alone are responsible for our misdeeds and God expects us to make them right. God tells us, particularly on this day: “You broke it, now you fix it.”
A second major difference is that the Church affirms that what God wants of us is, first and foremost, proper, right, correct belief. And so denominations create specific creeds and dogmas that define that proper belief. Judaism has no such creed or required a priori belief because what God wants from us, first and foremost is proper, right, correct behavior. We can talk more, if you wish, about Judaism’s lack of dogma, doctrine or creed when we gather in the break after this morning’s service.
Judaism and Christianity have many different understandings of religious ideas and concepts, all above and beyond who and what Jesus was. Christians and Jews both declare the importance of “salvation”, “redemption”, “covenant”, “commandment”, “sin” and “atonement”—but how we understand these notions is quite different. And this morning I would add another concept that separates us: what it means to “believe”.
Our western culture seems to understand “believe” (as opposed to “know”) as affirming or thinking that something is true even if it is not empirically proven. We don’t use “believe” if we “know” something to be true. We don’t say “I believe that A2 + B2 = C2” unless one is not convinced that it applies to all right triangles! (which it does!) If one says “I believe that my spouse has been faithful to me” the impression given is “maybe not” -- otherwise one would say “I know my spouse is faithful”. And if one says: “I believe that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in 1969”, our response is: “of course that’s true, are you some kind of conspiracy nut?” But this is in fact the way “belief” is used and understood in Christianity. One “believes” in the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, even if how that works is a mystery, even though it can’t be easily explained or empirically demonstrated. And because proper, right and correct belief is what brings one into the Church and affirms one’s membership—Christianity blurs the line between “belief” and “truth”, accepting as true that which has yet to be proven. But that is not the case for Jews or Judaism.
In Hebrew the word for “belief” is emunah. The same verb-root that gives us our English word “amen” and the Hebrew word emet (or emes), which means “truth”. We say “Amen” meaning “it’s the truth!” And you may be familiar with this Hebrew phrase from the traditional morning worship service: ani m’amin b’emunah sh’layma, “I believe with perfect faith…” There the verb m’amin (believe) and the noun emunah (faith) share the same root. At the core of emunah, “meaning belief, or faith” is the notion of “truth”, so that for Judaism, reflected in its language of Hebrew: something is true if it can be verified empirically. It’s true that A2 + B2 = C2. It’s true that Armstrong walked on the moon. And because we don’t use the word “true” for future events because that would sound silly, we say “I believe the sun will rise in the east tomorrow”. And “I believe that my car will start when I turn on the ignition” and “I believe that my flight to New York will land safely” and “I believe that I’ll live to be 75.” I “believe” those things because my experience is and has been that my car is reliable, and the vast majority of airplane flights are successful, and I’m in good health. My experience tells me that those things are “true”. In Jewish thought “believing” must mean experientially true.
As Jews we learn that to believe something to be true means that one has reasonable, if not empirical, experiential knowledge that it is. And it applies not only to cars and airlines but to religious truth as well. I “believe” in God because there have been moments in my life when I was intimately and acutely aware that I was touched by something bigger than me, more than me, a transcendent reality that momentarily confirmed that I was connected to a reality larger and beyond my own being. I can only describe those “moments of awareness” as momentary emotional flashs that confirmed a transcendent connection. They are not every day experiences, or even occasional experiences, but it has happened enough times in my life that I know that I am not existentially alone. I choose to call that transcendent Presence “God.” And I affirm it when I remind myself Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai Elohaynu, Adonai Echad. “Adonai Echad,” God is One, distinct, unique, singly infinite and absolute.
You know as well as I that there is no Jewish faith test. And if you say that it is the Sh’ma which is our required and necessary Statement of Faith, I would point out that it is purposefully vague, imprecise, and indefinite about what exactly we’re affirming about God.
For me, one of the great strengths of Judaism, one of the reasons I am a “Jew-by-Choice” despite being a “Jew-by-Birth” is that Judaism demands of me no abdication of the mind (to borrow a phrase from the poet Edmund Fleg). Judaism asks of me only that I accept that which is empirically true, or experientially true, or personally true.
But you say ‘Ah ha,— doesn’t Orthodox, traditional Judaism (“real Judaism” they tell us!) “believe” it’s true that God forbids cheeseburgers and driving on Saturday, and clothing of mixed wool and linen; and demands knotted strings on special undergarments for men and the mikveh once a month for women!?’ Don’t they “believe” it’s true that the words in the Torah Scroll were directly and perfectly and eternally written by God, and because Torah says we can’t light a fire on Shabbat, that the rabbis are correct that God doesn’t want us to turn on television Friday night. Don’t they “believe” all these things are true even if they are not empirically or experientially true?
So how is it that they believe as “truth” that Adam and Eve were the first humans, that Noah saved all the animals in the ark (except the fish), that God told Abraham to kill his son, that God split the sea for the Israelites? How is that any different from a Christian “believing” in the Trinity and the resurrection of Jesus?
But different it is! Traditional Judaism says that the experience of the two million Israelites in the desert at Sinai who witnessed the giving of Torah is historically, rationally, reliably, verifiably true. And to their own satisfaction they offer these “un-contestable” proofs that God alone wrote Torah and gave us the commandments. Here are five of their “proofs”, and I quote:
1 - Since many of the Torah’s laws are “socially suicidal,” they never would have been written by people, and must have come from God! Witness the 7th year sabbatical prohibition of working one’s fields. Does any other religion have such a law? No human lawmaker would be cruel or stupid enough to lay down a law that says farmers should not plant and reap every 7th year. Therefore, this law must have [logically, rationally, empirically] come from God. And additionally, our people wouldn’t have followed it if they had not believed it to be from God who would provide food during the sabbatical year. Therefore-- because the law runs counter to the rules of human society, it must be historically divine, must be true!
2 - And then there’s the Torah’s demand that three times a year, at the pilgrimage festivals all men are to travel to Jerusalem. Who would require that our borders and fields and communities would be open to attack, regularly, three times a year? These “suicidal laws” could only have come from God—and the fact that they were followed, and the people survived—prove it!
3- Look at the character of Moses. Since Torah harshly highlights the faults and foibles of its leaders it proves that the stories are not of human origin. Why? Because had we written them, they would have sounded more like the stories of the New Testament or the Koran, which are written by starry-eyed men extolling their heroes.
4 - The unique contents of Torah are in themselves an indication of its Godly origin. No human mind could have invented these elevated and sublime ideas, ideology, laws and systems of the Torah, certainly not in the cultural environment that prevailed at that time.
5- The persistent and ubiquitous presence of anti-Semitism, found throughout time and in so many places, proves that Torah is divine, for Torah predicts that we will be scattered among the nations, that we will be oppressed by others, and suffer at their hands. The fact that this is manifestly true even 3500 years after Torah was given us, “clearly and certainly proves its divine predictions.”
And here we come to the great divide between liberal and traditional Jews. What differentiates us from the Orthodox is not whether or not we eat cheeseburgers, or wear tzitzit. What differentiates me from an Orthodox Jew is that I don’t accept his proofs that Torah is divine. Without that acceptance, without this “convincing evidence”—Torah and all its derivative laws are not God-binding on me. Though that’s not to say that I might choose, for my own Jewish reasons, not eat a cheeseburger or to wear tzitzit. I might choose to follow the dietary laws of kashroot and the daily wearing of fringes because they and other expressions are historical reminders of my heritage, or because that’s what my grandmother taught me, or because it makes me feel special and different and “Jewish” to live that way.
But for the Orthodox community such choosing is simply beside the point and clearly for the wrong reasons. The commandments come from God. Believe that, and do them, because as you’ve heard, the rabbis have proven that Torah from Sinai is true.
What separates us from the Orthodox, Traditional, Jewish community is not “what” we do as an expression of our Jewish identity, but “why” we do it. What separates us is not “what” we believe, but “why” we believe it. It’s not unusual for Reform Jews, non-Orthodox Jews to be shomer kashroot, “kosher keepers” in their homes, but comfortable eating in restaurants and other homes which do not observe the dietary laws. And when challenged as hypocrites they explain that they keep a kosher home as a living memorial to parents, or because they want to welcome any Jew into their home and offer them a meal, or because in making that choice they continually self-affirm their Jewish identity. But outside their home, beyond the walls of their self-identified and defined Jewish lives, their identity is not defined by what they eat. There’s nothing hypocritical about that because that family is not saying that a kosher home or a kosher stomach is dictated or demanded by God! They have chosen to sanctify their home because it’s important for them, not because it’s important to God.
The strength of liberal, non-traditional Judaism is that it demands that what we do as individual Jews, what we believe as Jews, is true because it makes sense to us, because it is intrinsically meaningful to us. It’s not what I do, what I believe, but why I do and why I believe that completely and permanently removes me from the world of Orthodox Judaism. What makes my Judaism, your Judaism, “true” is that it is existentially, experientially correct, proper, authentic and personally “true”.
What is it that God wants of us? What is it that Yom Kippur asks of us?
That we live lives that are true to the values of Judaism. “What is it that God asks of you?” asks the Prophet Micah, “Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before God? [Micah 6:8]”
We “believe” that we should live those values because our conscience, our character, our ethics and inherent integrity know them to be “true” values. Our tradition brings us to Yom Kippur so that we might personally confirm these truths and collectively affirm them in community. As we read from Torah this morning: This commandment which I command you today is not too hard for you, nor too remote. It is not in heaven that should say, “Who will go up to heaven for us, and bring it down for us, that we may do it?” Nor is it beyond the sea that you should say “Who will cross the sea for us, and bring it back to us, that we may do it?” No it is very near to you, it is in your mouth, and in your heart and you can do it.
Judaism never asks us to believe anything which is not experientially, existentially true. And that, among other reasons, is why I am a Jew-by-Choice. And today especially we are prompted to be true to ourselves, to affirm the best that is in us, and improve what is not. To that end, to that task, to that life, and with that promise we enter our new year.
Shana tova.
“Yizkor Thoughts” Yom Kippur Afternoon 2018
On this Yom Kippur Afternoon, as we move through our traditional Yizkor/Memorial Service, I am reminded of the writings of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, my favorite philosopher. He wrote: “Death is not the end of being, rather it is the end of doing. As such, it is a dramatic break, a radical event: the cessation of doing.”
What ends is not what a life has already accomplished, only the ability to do more. And sometimes, in our sorrow over the absence of future tomorrows, we forget the permanent glory of the yesterdays. Heschel would say that we should not dwell on death-as-death, as an end-- rather it should be a reminder of what does and will always remain: our memories of moments shared.
There’s a pre-Kaddish reading in the old Gates of Prayer that reads: “Out of affliction the Psalmist learned the law of God. And in truth, grief is a great teacher, when it sends us back to serve and bless the living.” One of the lessons we learn whenever we gather together to remember lives past, is that none of us are so important, so powerful, that we can escape the laws of God and Nature. Heschel wrote: “Humanity without death would be arrogance without end.”
We do not like to speak of death, we fear it as an enemy. But if life is a pilgrimage, as we so often say within our Jewish tradition, then death is an arrival, that should be met not with bitterness but with peace, gratitude for what we have been, for what we have been able to do.
Death, to be sure, is the loss of further experiential possibilities, a loss that comes with a deep and abiding sadness. Death brings pain because it is the end of what we can do as partners in loving relationships, the end of what we can do together to increase the good in the world, to repair and redeem the world. But death is not the end of loving relationships, and it is not the end of our work to repair our world.
Our great task, therefore, is not how to continue our existence, but how to exalt our existence so that it lives beyond us. We must come to accept eternity not as perpetual future but as a perpetual presence that we, individually, have worked to establish within the community of man.
This afternoon we celebrate that kind of eternity, as we remember friends and family who have become a perpetual presence in our memories and in our midst. In Hebrew we say zichronam livracha: their memories are a blessing, for we sense their presence with us and in us, guiding and sustaining us as we seek to fulfill the values and ideals with which we have been so richly blessed.
On this Yom Kippur Afternoon, as we move through our traditional Yizkor/Memorial Service, I am reminded of the writings of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, my favorite philosopher. He wrote: “Death is not the end of being, rather it is the end of doing. As such, it is a dramatic break, a radical event: the cessation of doing.”
What ends is not what a life has already accomplished, only the ability to do more. And sometimes, in our sorrow over the absence of future tomorrows, we forget the permanent glory of the yesterdays. Heschel would say that we should not dwell on death-as-death, as an end-- rather it should be a reminder of what does and will always remain: our memories of moments shared.
There’s a pre-Kaddish reading in the old Gates of Prayer that reads: “Out of affliction the Psalmist learned the law of God. And in truth, grief is a great teacher, when it sends us back to serve and bless the living.” One of the lessons we learn whenever we gather together to remember lives past, is that none of us are so important, so powerful, that we can escape the laws of God and Nature. Heschel wrote: “Humanity without death would be arrogance without end.”
We do not like to speak of death, we fear it as an enemy. But if life is a pilgrimage, as we so often say within our Jewish tradition, then death is an arrival, that should be met not with bitterness but with peace, gratitude for what we have been, for what we have been able to do.
Death, to be sure, is the loss of further experiential possibilities, a loss that comes with a deep and abiding sadness. Death brings pain because it is the end of what we can do as partners in loving relationships, the end of what we can do together to increase the good in the world, to repair and redeem the world. But death is not the end of loving relationships, and it is not the end of our work to repair our world.
Our great task, therefore, is not how to continue our existence, but how to exalt our existence so that it lives beyond us. We must come to accept eternity not as perpetual future but as a perpetual presence that we, individually, have worked to establish within the community of man.
This afternoon we celebrate that kind of eternity, as we remember friends and family who have become a perpetual presence in our memories and in our midst. In Hebrew we say zichronam livracha: their memories are a blessing, for we sense their presence with us and in us, guiding and sustaining us as we seek to fulfill the values and ideals with which we have been so richly blessed.