Tikkun Olam in a Very Broken World – Kol Nidrei 2014

This weekend, Jews and Muslims each have major holidays. This conjunction of the Islamic and Jewish calendars happens every 33 years. Muslims celebrate a major feast holiday, Eid Al-Adha. Instead of feasting this weekend, we Jews fast.

In discussing Tikkun Olam, the Repair of the World, in connection with the fast day of Yom Kippur, as I will be doing today, the actions of Mohandas Ghandi came to mind. Ghandi used fasting as a way to bring awareness to important issues and promote what he believed to be right. Once, he pressured the British and Indian leadership to reconsider a Constitution that would have enforced the Indian caste system and maintained the oppression of the “untouchables.” Another time, in fact, the last fast that Ghandi undertook, was an effort to encourage Hindus and Muslims in New Delhi to work toward peace. Peaceful relations between peoples was a primary goal of Ghandi’s life’s work.

While they may not have fasted, we remember the actions of other individuals as well. Twenty-five years ago, there were protests in China’s Tiananmen Square. Many thousands of people were involved in the protests, but it is the image of a solitary figure standing in front of a row of tanks that came to symbolize that pro-democracy protest movement. In this country, in Montgomery, Alabama, a half century ago, Rosa Parks, a black woman, tired after a long day at work, was sitting in the “colored” section on a bus on her way home from work, refused to give up her seat to a white passenger, and became a symbol for the Civil Rights movement. As I noted on Rosh Hashanah, individuals can make a real difference by inspiring others.

Yet, while there is more freedom today in China than there was in 1989, restrictions on freedom are still a prominent part of life there. In India, violence between Hindus and Muslims occurs regularly. In America, the Jim Crow Laws mandating segregation of public accommodations eventually were overturned and there has been progress, but discrimination still adversely affects minorities in America. The reality is that while individuals can make a big difference, they need a great deal of help from the rest of us to succeed. We have to do our part of the work.

Prejudice, oppression, and hatred remain a part of our world. And so, on this day when we contemplate how we live our lives and especially about how we act toward others, I am going to speak about discrimination in America, the concept of the Shandeh, bringing shame on one’s people, and the challenges we face in trying to overcome the prejudices we all have as we try to repair our world.

I’ll begin with a story from our own tradition. Take a moment and imagine. Close your eyes.

Think of yourself standing at the border of your nation, the only land you’ve ever known, looking out into an inhospitable land before you. You’re holding the hands of loved ones and friends. You’re tired. Exhausted to be more accurate. You don’t have much food to eat or water to drink. You’ve been traveling speedily because you have no choice but to do so. If you fell behind, they would have caught you and that would have meant oppression, persecution, and maybe even death. You yearn to move forward, to cross the boundary before you and to journey toward a place of freedom.

We have been in this place many times before as a people. My own grandparents and great-grandparents lived out this story in Eastern Europe.

Now, imagine yourself standing at the shore of a broad sea. You have no boat, but the pursuers still come after you. Some pray with teary eyes, minds filled with fear. Children look to the adults for answers. The adults look to their leaders. Their leaders plea for divine intervention. Yet, the waters do not part. It looks like there will be no escape.

Finally, you look on as one brave soul, perhaps believing with a degree of insanity that he could make it happen, begins walking out into the water. He has no idea how to swim. Carrying and wearing as much as he is, he’s not going to float well anyway. He walks out into the water until the water covers his head.

Suddenly, the waters part and there you and others, Nachshon and Miriam, Aaron and Moses find yourselves standing on dry land as you continue your walk to freedom.

Now, feel free to open your eyes so you don’t fall asleep!

That is the Midrash, the rabbinical tale of Nachshon, whose faith helped part the waters. The rabbis say that it wasn’t only Moses lifting his staff that made the waters part. It was instead that Nachshon believed that they would part and risked his life to demonstrate that. He had faith in God and because of Nachshon’s faith, the waters parted.

I recently discovered a version of this Midrash with a little modification at the end added by Rabbi Susan Talve, a friend, who is the spiritual leader of Central Reform Congregation in St. Louis, Missouri.

She shared a version of the story of Nachshon with her own ending at a community service in St. Louis following the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Here’s my version of the story with Rabbi Talve’s modification.

You look on as one brave soul, perhaps believing with a degree of insanity that he could make it happen, begins walking out into the water even though he has no idea how to swim. Carrying and wearing as much as he is, he’s not going to float well anyway. He walks until the water covers his head. You panic. He’s going to drown! You know it. So you rush to the water and dive in. You’re not alone in doing that. Many people accompany you, all diving in to save this one young man.

Suddenly, the waters part and there you find yourselves standing amid the waters on dry land as you continue your walk to freedom.

Rabbi Talve explained her version of the story in the following way: Nachshon, like so many of us who want to change the world and might respond in a desperate situation, wearied of waiting for a miracle to happen and acted rashly. What really parted the waters was that so many people rushed in to try to save him; not just his parents and those who knew him, but all of the others as well, risking their own lives to save the life of one child.

This ending and its explanation by Rabbi Talve make sense to me. One person can make a great difference. One person can be the catalyst for a movement, its Rosa Parks, but others need to jump in and help if the grand task is going to be accomplished.

Changing the world is not easy. A parting of the waters, as difficult as it may have been to accomplish, often merely allows for the first step on a long journey to be taken. Our tradition has the Israelites wandering through the wilderness for two generations, forty years, before we even entered the Promised Land after the waters parted.

Neither will the “promised land” of equality in Civil Rights and an end to discrimination and prejudice be reached easily. That destination will be reached only after a long and difficult journey as well. What has been accomplished thus far for minority rights has required blood, sweat, and tears and there is still much work to be done.

Rabbi Talve, in a recent article she wrote about the events in Ferguson, Missouri, argues that we continue to live in an America divided by gender, race, and class. As Rabbi Talve notes, in many municipalities across the country: 

Driving while black, shopping while black, just walking in the street while black, are crimes.  Talk to any parent of a black male and they will tell you about the "talk" everyone has with their child.  "Keep your head down, be polite, don't run from the police and…lose the attitude." 

A Grand Jury is now deliberating the case in Missouri and will decide whether or not Officer Wilson should be charged with a crime based upon the evidence. That said, the context of the shooting of Michael Brown is that of a broader national narrative: a history of conflict, prejudice, and discrimination. In that context, we encounter the rhetorical question that circulated at the time of Trayvon Martin’s killing by George Zimmerman and circulated again with the death of Michael Brown and events in Ferguson. It comes from The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem. I think it says what needs to be said about the way much of our society sees African American men. The question is:

At what age is a black boy when he learns he's SCARY?

It is, of course, a pointed rhetorical question, one that mocks the discrimination that forms its context. In relation to that, the questions I might ask are:

At what age, did you first experience discrimination and prejudice?  When do you notice that people are treating you differently, not because you’re simply growing up and, perhaps, are bigger and stronger than those around you, but because you look differently than they do? Dress differently? Or act differently than they do?

Those are questions with which Jews are familiar. While we Reform Jews may not be readily identifiable as Jews because of the way we dress, our more traditional brethren certainly are and at times they face discrimination because of it.

That said, in Jackson, Mississippi, only recently, a Reform Rabbi colleague of mine, Ted Riter, went to a restaurant as was asked whether he wanted his salad “Large or Jew sized” with the accompanying explanation being that the smaller salad was “cheap, like Jews.” The owner didn’t even know he was speaking to a Jew when he said what he did.

Many of us have overheard conversations about Jews being cheap or untrustworthy. Those words are not usually said to our faces. There is even a term still too commonly used that refers to someone trying to get the best deal from you. The verb used is “To Jew” and means to “act like a Jew” in bargaining. It is a term based in many centuries of Antisemitism, during which Jews were almost exclusively in businesses that required bargaining. Jews were money lenders, tax collectors, peddlers and middlemen in all sorts of business transactions.

While, for the most part, we have not been seen as being a physically scary people, religious based hatred of Jews, conspiracy theories, and simple lack of knowledge about Jews has produced fear of the Jews as a collective. Even in the modern world, there are people who fear that Jews lurk in the background of politics and economics, pulling the strings of leaders.

Fortunately, in America today, we’re unlikely to be pulled over or harassed because we’re Jewish, even if we wear a kippah. But that is not and was not always the case and it wasn’t all that long ago that many clubs excluded both Jews and people of color. Signs could be found on no few establishments in America only half a century ago that read, “No Jews, No Blacks, No Dogs.” The term for blacks was more often the “N” word.

It has taken no little effort by individuals, religious groups, and others around the nation to overcome the stereotypes often at the base of these aversions. There is much more to be done. We also know how easily dislikes are renewed and reinforced.

The concept of a shandeh, Yiddish for shame, has long been a part of Jewish life. A shandeh fur die goyim is something done by a Jew or Jews that is seen as resulting in embarrassment or taint on all Jews in the eyes of those who are not Jewish. No few people would cite the actions of Bernie Madoff, whose financial crimes reinforced the stereotype of Jews and money, as an example.

This problem of a Shandeh isn’t unique to Jews and Judaism, however, though the Yiddish term certainly is. American Muslims regularly face this problem as well and an African American minister friend of mine wrote along these lines the other day about Adrian Peterson, Ray Rice, and other NFL players accused of domestic violence as resulting in a negative reflection of black men as prone to violence.

We live in a nation in which only slightly more than 150 years ago, those professional athletes could have been considered property. We live in a nation where 50 years ago there were places where black and white athletes wouldn’t have been allowed to play together in no few places because of segregation. Today, laws may have changed, but our minds are still segregated to an extent. We apply different rules to different people, though we may try our best not to do so: sometimes because of their ethnicity or religion, sometimes because of how they dress or, yes, because of the color of their skin.

Our eyes can perceive differences in shade and color, but they do not force us to see those differences in shade and color as determinate of character and worth. Our minds do that. Our feelings do that.

When we ignore how our minds process difference, we can easily fail to realize our own prejudices. We can even allow our laws to enforce them—and as a nation, we have. It did not escape the notice of those protesting the events in a suburb of St. Louis, that in 1857, Dred Scott, a slave, after attempting to sue for his freedom at the Federal Courthouse in that very city, had the Supreme Court of the United States declare in a 7-2 decision that he had no legal standing in the court and even that he was an “inferior being.”

We, Reform Jews, with our belief that all people are created B’tselem Elohim, in the image of the divine, find such a thought unfathomable, not to mention horrifying, repugnant, and despicable. We also have experience with what happens when people come to be considered “inferior beings.” It happened to us only seven decades ago, after numerous times before that.

However, with the rapidity of technological change today, we tend to act as if society and human interaction change equally rapidly. While our society little resembles that of pre-Civil War America, 157 years are barely a blip on evolutionary chart. Much of our prejudice is connected to survival instincts, associating with those similar to us and avoiding those, even fearing those, who are not.

Reform Jews have been and remain at the forefront of combatting this challenging aspect of our humanity and our society, the ease by which we can discriminate and the difficulty we often have in overcoming it. When we add in socio-economic disparity, especially when historically connected to blessing and curse in many religious traditions including our own, the challenge we face is compounded.

Tonight, when we read the Kol Nidrei prayer, we spoke in the voice of the one forced to say “Yes,” when he or she meant “No.” We spoke with the voice of the persecuted minority, with the voice of someone fearful to stand up as Jew and say, “No!” We understand fear as a people. We understand being afraid of threats. Perhaps not so much today, but in past generations, we’ve had “The Talk” or something similar with our own children, warning them not to make waves, not to be noticed, not to trigger Antisemitism.

During the 1960s, as Jews came from the north to the south to aid in the Civil Rights struggle and were at the forefront of demonstrations, no few Jews in southern communities feared that they would face the backlash. However, throughout the Jewish year, we are reminded that we were once strangers. Our history is full of discrimination and persecution and threats against us, too often brutally carried out. We know how it feels and what it means to be considered “inferior beings.” We know the consequences that hatred can have and we should feel obligated to stand against it.

So, on this Yom Kippur, Atem Nitzavim! Here we stand, all of us arrayed before God. Again and again facing challenges.  Perhaps, we will be Nachshon, jumping into the waters before us, hoping that we can individually make a difference. Perhaps, we will be like Susan Talve’s rescuers of Nachshon, jumping in to save a life and parting the waters. Regardless, let us not be onlookers, complacent and silent, in the face of injustice.

Tomorrow evening, I will stand before the ark and read what I believe are among the most powerful words in any of our services over the course of the year:

Called to a life of righteousness, we rebel: arrogance possesses us. The passions that rage within us drown the voice of conscience: good and evil, virtue and vice, love and hate contend for the mastery of our lives. Again and again we complain of the struggle, forgetting that the power to choose is the glory and greatness of our being.

We can make the right choices. We can elevate the voice of conscience not only for ourselves, but for our communities. We can choose to overcome that struggle. Let us choose to stand up, even to march, for righteousness. Let us jump into the waters and change our world for the better.

May our fast indeed be the one of the Prophet Isaiah of which we will read tomorrow:

Is this not the fast, I look for: to unlock the shackles of injustice, to undo the fetters of bondage, to let the oppressed go free and to break every cruel chain?

And may we do as Isaiah suggests: Let us remove the chains of oppression, the menacing hand, the malicious word. Then shall our light blaze forth like the dawn.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah, May we all be sealed in the Book of Life for a good year.

Whatever Happened to Love Thy Neighbor? Kol Nidrei Sermon 2013

I have to admit that I am a big fan of Mel Brooks’ comedies. They are anything but politically correct, making fun of stereotype after stereotype. From the Producers  to Spaceballs, from History of the World Part I to Blazing Saddles, Brooks’ movies make us laugh, but they also make us think about the world in which we live and how we treat one another. Often, they make us cringe. As a recent PBS documentary noted, “Mel Brooks never met a stereotype he couldn’t upend.”

Perhaps, his most politically incorrect work is Blazing Saddles. Released in 1974, the film starred Cleavon Little as a Black Sheriff named Bart, no doubt after the famous outlaw “Black Bart.” Bart is full of Yiddishkeit and sophistication. He works alongside sidekick Gene Wilder and the people of a small western town to oppose the machinations of Harvey Korman aided by a very racist and ignorant Slim Pickens. Along the way, racist stereotype after racist stereotype is confronted head on. Brought to light, they appear absurdly ignorant and silly, but throughout the movie the viewer is confronted with the reality that some people really act this way and believe this stuff.

There are many verbal exchanges in the film that are very funny, very pointed, and very much inappropriate for a High Holiday sermon, but there is one story that I would like to share. It begins with a knock on the side window of the Sheriff’s office.

[Bart gets up and sees the same woman who insulted him earlier]

Elderly Woman: Good evening, Sherriff. Sorry about the (Insult and racial epithet) I offered earlier.

[Many of you know the exact words of that insult. Tonight, on Kol Nidrei, let us operate under the Jewish premise, Hu mei-vin Ya-vin, the one who understands will understand… She continued].  

I hope this apple pie will in some small way say thank you for your ingenuity and courage in defeating that horrible Mongo.

Bart: Well, uh... thank you, much obliged. Good night.

[Bart closes the window and smells the pie... but returns to the window when he hears another knock]

Elderly Woman: Of course, you'll have the good taste not to mention that I spoke to you.

Bart: Of course.

Elderly Woman: Thank you.

The bigger picture, pardon the pun, within the movie is a very Jewish narrative. Bart and his fellow railroad workers, all with dark skin of course, are driven by a taskmaster who does not value their lives at all. Bart strikes the overseer and flees. The narrative diverges of course, the move is a cowboy spoof, but throughout—with its outlandish violations of political correctness—one theme develops: When people of all sorts work together, they can overcome those who discriminate and hate. That message remains as appropriate for today as it was nearly 40 years ago.

Tonight, I would like to talk a bit about discrimination in our day and age and then I will answer two questions. How do we overcome hatred based upon difference? And bringing it into the context of Yom Kippur, whatever happened to ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’, the directive that we read in tomorrow’s Torah portion?”

Where we are today?

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “The moral arc of the universe bends toward justice.” In response, at the 50^th anniversary of March on Washington and Dr. King’s “I have a Dream speech,” President Obama stated that, “The arc of the moral universe may bend towards justice, but it doesn’t bend on its own,” one of the better statements concerning civil rights that I have heard.

As I look back at this past year with Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, with battles over Same Sex Marriage and Immigration Reform, with voter restriction efforts reminiscent of the early 1960s, I wonder how much of an arc there is at all. It appears as if the arc of the moral universe has been running pretty much parallel to justice for a very long time, never getting too close or at times rebounding in the other direction. In fact, sometimes, like when discussing the absence of concern about children dying in conflicts overseas, one wonders whether or not the “moral arc of the universe” curves at all.

I would more confidently say that there is a “moral arc within our lives.” We relate to those around us, to our family, our friends, but not necessarily to our universe, to all of humanity or all of creation. We are far more angered by relatively small injustices close to home than by massive injustices committed at a distance. We tend to care much more about our neighborhood and our neighbors than about others further away. We care even more by things affecting people whom we have met in person. Our personal moral arc is more likely to bend toward justice for them.

So what happens when our lives consist of waking up in the morning, driving to work alone in our cars, working in a cubicle or small office, interacting in person with few others at work to any substantial degree and then returning home? We might interact with a few people on Facebook, send a few emails, make a few phone calls, but too often for most of us, our actual person to person interactions are very limited both in number and duration. While we may indeed interact with those who are different from us, we are almost certain to avoid talking about that difference, especially if it makes us uncomfortable.

I’m not telling you to go out and act like the Elderly Woman in Blazing Saddles by confronting difference by airing discriminatory views, but I am going to tell you that avoiding addressing them or only doing so by looking at Google search results online, as those of us who are younger are wont to do, is not going to have the same impact as personal interaction. There is a big difference between speaking to a Sudanese refugee from Darfur about what it is like being an African Muslim in Des Moines and looking up “African Muslims in America” online. You may get a very different answer if you ask a Muslim woman why she is wearing a Hijab, a head scarf, than you would if you look it up with Bing. And if you look up different views about issues related to Judaism, after scrolling down through multiple links taking you to ultra-Orthodox websites which make no effort to represent Reform or Conservative perspectives, what answers you may find may not only confuse you, but could well mislead or anger you.

This brings me to the discussion to which I had the privilege to listen between Leon Wieseltier and David Wolpe about the Jewish people today when I attended a program for rabbis put on by AIPAC in Washington DC in August. Wieseltier began with an observation that defines our age. He said that:

“The Internet is the greatest attack on human attention—and Judaism is largely based upon attention and constancy of mind.” ADHD is not the disorder. Attention is now the disorder.

It is certainly humorous, but the implication isn’t. By this, Wieseltier meant that the practice of Judaism in general is under threat because Judaism requires regular participation in person and over a period of time. We, especially the younger generations, hardly do anything regularly over a period of time. Further, Judaism mandates that we be focused on what we are doing, that we pray with intentionality. In the internet age, we are easily distracted. We quickly click and look and then click and look away just as swiftly.

But the threat from the internet that Wieseltier noted is greater still:

You don’t support institutions with a click. You don’t support institutions by visiting the webpage. You support institutions by maintaining the boiler. Judaism operates in places and places need maintaining. We are a physical people.

Obviously, he was more than implying that there is an essential financial component. We need institutions and we need to be able to maintain them. We are also a people with the concept of a minyan. In the Jewish tradition, when ten Jews gather, the presence of God is with them, the dynamic changes. Connection to other Jews is vitally important and the primary place where that connection should happen is in our synagogues.

At the recent opening of this year’s Sunday school program, it was noted that an individual child being absent from class does not just affect that child’s ability to learn, it impacts others as well. In small groups, the absence of one child can make all the difference in another child feeling comfortable in attending or participating. We know this affects youth group activities as well. Kids want to know if their friends will be attending.

This doesn’t stop when we graduate from high school. Even as adults we feel much more comfortable seeing friendly faces and this is all the more true when we are feeling sad, insecure, or have something we are excited to share. Think for a moment about the times when people feel the greatest need to attend services. You got it. It is exactly at those times when we feel sad, insecure, or when we have something going on in our lives that we feel excited to share. The basic reason for a congregational community to exist is to be there at those moments. That is part of fulfilling the commandment “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” If we want that support, we should be there for others.

In that vein, there is the story of the supposedly religious Jew and avid golfer who decides to play golf all by himself on Yom Kippur instead of sitting through services and hits a hole in one. He’s so excited that he can hardly contain it. He shouts to God, “Thank you God! I’ve played for many years and finally, finally, I hit a hole in one. I thought, ‘God will strike me down for playing on Yom Kippur,’ but look! Look what happened today. The sun is shining. No one is out here to slow me down or hurry me up. And I hit a hole in one! You are so gracious, God. Thank you for not punishing me. I finally hit a hole in one!”

A voice calls down from heaven, “Who are you going to tell?”

We want to share our accomplishments and our joys. It is torturous for the golfer who hits a hole in one on Yom Kippur not to be able to share his joy. It is not all that different for those of us who have something we are eager to share to have no one with whom to share it. And let’s be honest, sharing it online isn’t the same as getting a high five from a good friend. We know well that there is an essential dynamic when we gather with other people, especially with our friends, that isn’t there when we are sitting alone in front of our computers at home or in our office. Hanging out with friends in person is far superior to a Google Hangout and that is much better that clicking the “like” button when your friend posts something on Facebook.

When it comes to liking life, clicking “like” isn’t going to get the job done.

It is not just that we need to put into action the directive to “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” We need to make sure we have neighbors in our lives. We need to interact with other people.

A significant nuance should not be overlooked. The term “v’ahavtah” does not mean “love” as in “like” or “appreciate.” It really means “be devoted to” or “act like you care about.” It is not an emotional term but a term of action. The “V’ahavtah” reading which follows the Sh’ma in every service is not about “Liking God no matter what you are doing,” though that is a nice sentiment. It is about “acting like you care about what God expects of you” no matter what you are doing or where you are or when. V’ahavtah l’rei-ekha kamokha, “Love thy neighbor as thyself” really means “Act like you care about your neighbor as much as you care about yourself.” It is a statement about how we should treat other people more than it is about how we should feel about them.

The problem, of course, is that we all too easily develop the belief that very few people whom we know well, or only a certain kind of people, qualify as our neighbors. We equip ourselves to treat others differently than we would want to be treated. The Jewish tradition is constantly working to correct that and throughout the year, we are reminded to “Remember the stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

We were just like those different people over there. We were just like the new people who moved into our neighborhood, the new kid at school, the new employee at work. We were just like that woman dressed differently, that man from a distant land having trouble speaking our language. We have been the “them” for generation after generation. We know what it is like to be oppressed and yearn for freedom. We know what it is like to be bullied and praying for strength. We know what it is like to not be called “neighbor” and to not be treated with care. We know from over three thousand years of history how that feels. It is in that context we are to hear “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

I am not going to tell you to stop sharing your joys and your sadness with “friends” on Facebook, some or many of whom, you may not really know. I am telling you that you need more than that in your life. I’m reminding you that life is much better lived not in isolation but among friends and neighbors. And that if you work at getting to know strangers, you might make them neighbors and friends.

And one last thing—a vitally important thing to mention on this night: tonight we come before God asking God to be gracious to us, to pardon our failings, to treat us kindly and generously, to be merciful. Our tradition challenges us: How can we ask that for ourselves if we are not willing to act that way toward others? To an extent, this day is all about those five words, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Shanah Tovah and G’mar Hatimah Tovah!

May we all be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life for a good and happy year!