All Too Prophetic - The Night BEFORE Poway

I offered this sermon the night before a 19 year-old man entered a Chabad Congregation in Poway, California, killed an Eishet Chayil, Lori Kaye z"l, and injured Rabbi Goldstein and two others.

Dvar Torah on Sri Lanka Attacks

April 26, 2019

Last weekend, on Easter morning in Sri Lanka, a series of explosions at Churches and at upscale hotels sent the overwhelmingly Buddhist country into panic. Over 250 people were killed in the terrorist attacks carried out by a Muslim Ethno-Nationalist terrorist group that had affiliated itself with Da’esh, the Caliphatist Terrorist group often commonly called “ISIS.”

Da’esh claimed that this attack was carried out in response to the attacks against mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. In that attack, of course, a Christian Ethno-Nationalist attacked worshippers at mosques. Following on the heels of a Christian Ethno-Nationalist attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, we have been increasingly concerned about rising violence based in religious conflict.

Christians generally respond differently to these kinds of attacks than we Jews do. To an extent, this is based on collective memory. We know well that when hatred of Jews becomes violence against Jews, it can spread quickly if we do not assert ourselves and have allies join us. We cherish our allies. When we have lacked them or they have failed to stand with us in generations past, our meager number has been overwhelmed time and again. Jews represent 0.2% of the world’s population. Two-tenths of one percent.

And we respond as a people, not as a diverse faith community as Christians do. We connect to members of Jewish communities everywhere, no matter what kind of Judaism they practice or if they practice Judaism at all. We feel their joy and their pain. We know the struggles of persecuted minorities.

It has been our role in many nations, to lead the fight to defend minority rights, to not only stand at the forefront of the cause of immigrants, but to walk into the waters of hatred, like the midrash tells us that Nachshon did when the sea split, demonstrating faith and courage. We walk into the waters of hatred with faith and courage that we will make those waters split too. We will part the waters of hatred and march ever forward toward the promised land in which our house will be the house of all peoples, welcoming, embracing. Not all of our brethren, of course, are similarly welcoming, but the vast majority are, around the world.

Others do not share this vision. Ethno-nationalists who believe that people who are like them are the only ones who should be able to live among them and who are willing to engage in violence to make that happen are among the greatest of threats to peace wherever they are.

There are certainly very fine people who are devoutly religious Christians, Muslims, and Jews. We know that. But there are no fine Ethno-Nationalist advocates for violence against anyone not of their in-group. It is not acceptable to allow political correctness or concern about harm done to the image of the broader group to avoid both severe condemnation of and taking action against Ethno-Nationists.

We condemn Kahanists. Those who preach Meir Kahane’s hatred were banned from the K’nesset for decades. A party that is somewhat related to it rose up and was again condemned even though it did not take close to the same position. Israelis and American Jews alike are concerned to even have one representative of that political party in the Knesset, as a member of the United Right party, and attention will be paid not to allow hateful views to impact how Israel treats its minority populations. Just as we will all pay attention to how confrontational rhetoric that at times may have crossed the bounds into overt bigotry will or will not result in changes in policy.

We also perceive the threats coming against Jewish communities from Christians and from Muslims in different parts of the world. We cannot understand attacking innocents. The lone example that people can name, Baruch Goldstein, stands out in glaring uniqueness in our people’s long history.

Never have we as a people believed that sacrificing ourselves to harm others will benefit us in the world to come. We’ve never had a tradition in which Jews would willingly sacrifice their own lives to harm members of other religious or ethnic communities. It didn’t even happen before or during the Holocaust when such extreme action under duress may have made some sense. Instead, our tradition repeatedly stressed, even then, “Whoever saves a single life, it is as if they saved the entire world.”

So it is all the more difficult for us to look at what happened in Sri Lanka and understand, how wealthy and successful educated people could, based on their religious views, calmly walk into the midst of innocents and commit atrocities. How a pregnant mother could do so, ending the lives of her two children as well in order to harm police officers. In our tradition, there is no question that we would rather die ourselves. That much has been proven by our history.

We respond to that level of evil, evil that we have seen in generation after generation, so often affecting our community—we respond to that evil with a commitment to not follow it with our own hatred as pained as we have been at many of those times.

Having just come through the holiday of Passover, we easily recall the story to mind. “Let my people go,” we said. “We cried out time and again.” “We walked away.” “When horse and chariot came against us,” we did not turn. “We walked on.” “When Amalek attacked the weak and vulnerable,” we pledged to remember. Only once from the time we entered Egypt to the time we left and wandered the wilderness did any Israelite lift a hand, and Moses fled for having done so. God fought our battles for us.

This Wednesday is Yom HaShoah, the day on which we remember and mourn. We do not do so with pledges of retaliation and vengeance, nor with anger and hatred. We remember to remind ourselves that it is our duty to never let it happen again, to never again allow that kind of hatred that could result in the slaughter of innocents to occur. This year, we not only mark the day amid a time of rising Antisemitism, but at a time when the world mourns the effects of irrational hatred.

It reminds us, as we look back into the darkness of the past and out into the darkness of the world around us, that our mission as a people has long been, “To be a light unto the nations,” a beacon in the darkness. And as Hillel said, “At a time when there is no humanity around you, be a human being.” That is our challenge. Let us be lights of caring and love amid the darkness of indifference and hatred.

Shabbat Shalom.

Words Offered at the Vigil for Tree of Life Synagogue

I stand before you, a descendant of immigrants from Eastern Europe. Warfare, economic hardship, and persecution forced them to leave lands where their ancestors had lived for generations. My 3 year old grandmother crossed borders guided by her 9 year old sister, smuggled out by beneath blankets by their mother in the back of wagon, under the cover of darkness, all afraid for their lives.

Eventually, they made it safely to America. America is a nation of immigrants, many of whom fled religious persecution in search of freedom. We are a nation who so prized our welcoming nature as to enshrine it on the Statue of Liberty in the words of Emma Lazarus’ “New Colossus,” words that greeted my grandparents as they came to Ellis Island:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door

These words do not come from nowhere. They are based on the words of the Prophet Isaiah:

Isaiah 58 This is the fast I desire: to unlock the fetters of wickedness and untie the cords of lawlessness; to let the oppressed go free and break off every yoke. It is to share your food with the wretched and take the poor into your home; When you see the naked, clothe them and do not ignore your own kin. Then will your light burst through like the dawn and your healing will spring up quickly. [When] your higher-self leads you, the weight of God is behind you. Thus [now], when you call out, God will answer; When you call out, God will say: Hineni, here I am.

We are all God’s children. Jewish tradition tells us that we are all created in God’s image. Sometimes, too often if you ask me, that image is reflected with more than a bit of distortion, emphasizing the worst aspects of our nature.

We Jews have seen the hate-filled faces before, through many generations in many countries. Too often, historically, the torches of hatred have entered Jewish neighborhoods and set synagogues, businesses, and homes aflame.

We don’t knock down or abandon places where violence has happened. We mop up the blood. We patch the holes in the walls. And we live with the holes in our hearts. In synagogues, like the one in Pittsburgh and so many others through the ages, we have stood holding the Torah, our tree of life, in those now sanctified places where people died, Kedush HaShem, martyrs in sanctification of God’s name. And God is right there with us, as we return the next day, and offer the same words of prayer and song, of peace and love, and of thanksgiving, words that have inspired generations.

Most of the time, historically, it has only been a small percentage of the local population that was involved in the violence. The vast majority of people, good people, stood by and watched.

Maurice Ogden wrote a poem called “The Hangman.” It’s a bit long for me to read to you this evening, but its theme is very important. Ogden’s poem is about a Hangman who comes into a town and begins to single out people for hanging. He begins with the weakest minority and then keeps dividing and dividing, singling out and singling out, until the very last person is finally hung upon the gallows.

The one who did nothing to offend, nothing to get in the way, of the one promoting violence and hatred of the other, of the immigrants, of racial or political minorities, of Jews or of other faiths. We will not be like the Hangman’s faithful servant. We will not stand by and allow age old hatreds against Jews to rise again unchallenged. We will not allow hatreds of any kind to spread.

*It was wonderful and, oh so appreciated, to see so many people there, over 1,000, including at least 150 members of the clergy representing numerous faiths, to support us and to have heard from so many who reached out in care and concern. It is our nature to be there for others in times of need, and we value the caring and support of our friends in the interfaith community in return.

We are a people who care deeply about everyone else. Caring for those who are ill and otherwise in need is a big deal for us. We are a people who see ourselves in Henny Youngman’s brief joke.

“A Jewish woman had two chickens. One got sick, so the woman made chicken soup out of the other one to help the sick one get well.” That is us.

We Jews know that human beings can and too often do act cruelly and inhumanely toward one another. Our tradition tells us that when we find ourselves among those not acting humanely, even if no one else is, our job is to be a mensch, to be a human being. As Hillel taught, “Bamakom sh’ein anashim, hishtadeil li-hiyot ish.”

“In a place where there are no human beings, strive to be a person.”

Jewish doctors and nurses treated the shooter when he was brought to the hospital. It’s what we do. It’s who we are.

And we expect the best of this country and its leaders.

We are like Moses Seixas, a Jewish congregational president in Newport, Rhode Island, who wrote a letter to the first President of the United States, George Washington, checking to see if the new nation’s leadership would indeed “give to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” And we expect that our government will live up to that ideal to this very day.

We are a people who look at a world filled with violence, a world filled with hatred, a world in which age old prejudices surface again and again, and believe, we can, with the help of our friends change it. We are a people who believe the words of Theodore Hirzl, “Im tirzu, ein zo aggadah,” “If you will it, it is no dream,” because we have seen our hopes amid the darkness become reality.

Confronted time and time again with opportunities to join the majority, to bring an end to difficulty, oppression, and great suffering, we have remained true to our beliefs.

Before Kings and Priests, before soldiers with swords or guns and mobs with torches, who all wanted us to say something else, believe something else, or simply to vanish from the face of the earth, we bravely uttered, “Shema Yisrael, Adonai eloheinu, Adonai echad!” “Here, O Israel, Adonai is our God, Adonai alone!”

Tonight, we come together to declare that we will not allow ourselves to remain silent as hatred is offered. We will not be cowed into silence. This is our country. This is our home. May it always be truly both the land of the free and the home of the brave… and let us be brave.

We will not stand idly by. No more. Never again!

Take A Census - Everyone Matters

“Take a census.” With those words, this week’s Torah portion, BaMidbar, and the Book of Numbers as a whole begin.

“Take a census.” Count all of the people.

It is said in a quote that is often, but questionably, attributed to Joseph Stalin that, “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” No matter its origin, there is more than a grain of truth in that statement.

When we deal with millions of deaths, like we do when we discuss the Shoah, it is difficult to conceptualize the numbers and certainly to connect. Learning stories of individuals, as opposed to a sweeping narrative of an entire conflict, becomes important. Those stories are what humanize the numbers.

This is one of the primary reasons why people are given a passport, a name and a story, when they tour the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. It is also the reason that Steven Spielberg colorized the dress of a young girl in Schindler’s List. In the movie, a wide array of violence occurring in the background to dozens of people shown on the screen, much less to the many tens of thousands of people who lived in the ghetto, doesn’t have the impact of seeing a single girl in a red dress walking down the middle of the street amid the violence and chaos going on around her.

Hearing that tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people have died in the Syrian Civil War is difficult to conceptualize in a way that makes it seem real. I remember as a child being awed by the crowd at the Cardinals’ baseball games. 45,000 people. Let’s round up to 50,000.

Roughly, ten times that number have died in Syria. Eighty times that, maybe more, four million people or so, are refugees. Can you picture 80 stadiums full of people in your head at the same time?

Rwanda, would require multiplying our stadium by sixteen.

The Shoah? 120 times the largest crowd that I could reasonably imagine as a unit and that only includes the Jewish victims, six million.

Moreover, that crowd at Busch Stadium? I didn’t count it. I experienced it. I heard it. I saw the sheer mass of humanity and was told it was 45,000. Families watching the game together, the diehard fans wearing everything Cardinals, the hawkers selling food and drink, shouting above the din, the roar of the crowd as the ball flies toward the outfield wall, the sigh as it goes just foul. That is how I conceive of 50,000 people. I can more or less comprehend that number, envision what that number of people would be like, as an experience. But 120 of those? Not for a moment. Realistically, not even a small fraction of that 120. How can I multiply an experience?

“Take a census,” we are told. Numbers. Large numbers. Tens of thousands here and thousands there.

When we watch the news, especially the most difficult stories, we’re often simply given statistics. In 2004, a Tsunami struck Southeast Asia. Approximately a quarter of a million people died. Five stadiums full, spread over the shorelines of a number of nations. Hard to imagine that scale

Sometimes, the numbers are all we’re told. Another shooting happened. Sometimes, they tell us the skin color of the victim. Sometimes an age. Usually, they give us a name. Rarely, are we given more, a story.

When things like the terrorist attack in Manchester, England occur, at first, we’re simply given casualty figures, cold stark statistics. So many dead. So many injured.

And then, used to seeing and hearing stories like that, we often tune out.

The names, faces, and the stories come to us too late to help us truly feel what we should feel. We get angry at hearing or seeing the numbers, but we don’t feel the numbers. We’re angry at the idea of the numbers, “more,” “so many,” and then we move on.

We watch the new episode of our favorite sitcom or perhaps the latest episode of our favorite reality TV show, depicting some other reality, some artificially created alternative reality, the stories of others.

When we see our reality depicted on the news, how quickly do we respond to the news? “Again!” “Another one!” “When will it stop???” Shootings, terrorist attacks, even genocides. “Never again!” And then we change the channel. Statistics.

Yes, many of the stories of survivors of the Shoah are similar to one another. The stories blur together—if you try to learn them all together. It is important to learn individual stories.

You may remember Peter Pintus, the former Assistant to the Rabbi of the Temple. Here’s a part of his story. Peter Pintus grew up a Reform Jew in Berlin, the son of a wealthy industrialist Jewish father and a Christian mother. On Krystalnacht, his father rode the subway train all night, staying safe. Eventually, both Peter and his father were arrested. Peter served in a work camp in a salt mine and was one of only a handful of survivors of the camp, having escaped into the woods on the last day of the camps existence, when the power to the fence was turned off. Eventually, he came to Iowa, became a part of the Jewish community and this congregation. And he shared his story with countless people over the years.

Each story is unique. Each person is more than a number. That is especially true when remembering the Shoah and the fact that so many people were treated as if they were merely a number, a number often tattooed on their arms.

“Take a census,” we are told. Not just the numbers, know the stories.

If I told you that 22 people were killed in Manchester, England the other night, you might well compare that number to some other event. How many died in Paris? How many are dying in Syria? How many died in Egypt today? How many this year in Chicago?

But if I told you about individuals, the numbers wouldn’t matter. Each life is precious. One, each one, matters. Our tradition says that each life is as the entire world. We do not mourn statistics. We mourn for people.

The news showed pictures of a young girl wearing an oversized police jacket that almost reached her feet being hugged by a policewoman as she stood outside the arena. It was cold outside. Millie Kiss, age 12, survived. Her mother, Michelle did not.

Several victims were parents waiting to drive their children home from the concert. Marcin and Angelika Klis both in their early 40s as well as Polish immigrants to England, and Alison Howe, 45, and Lisa Lees, 47, were all there to pick up their daughters.

Saffie Roussos was attending the concert with her older sister and mother, both of whom were injured by shrapnel and are being treated in hospitals. Saffie was 8 years old.

I could go on, but I think you get the point. Without these stories, we only have a number, 22. And these aren’t even the full stories, just snippets of who they were.

Our Torah portion commands, “Take a census.” But don’t just count, adding one to the next. Every individual’s story matters. If every individual matters, if each story matters, we matter—you matter—I matter.

That is the bigger lesson of the Jewish tradition. Every individual matters. Every person is important. We are not just Numbers.

Each of us is created in the image of God.

Each holy.

Each a universe.

Every person matters.