Shabbat Shuvah 5773: Kick It Up A Notch

This is always a nail-biter of a week.  Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat of return, falls in the middle of the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, the Ten Days of Repentance, bracketed by Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  We have spent two days acclaiming God’s kingship and judgment, and every day in our tefillot we remind ourselves of “Sefer HaHayyim,” the Book of Life, and where our names may be inscribed and sealed.  We are supposed to be thinking about selihah, forgiveness, and teshuvah, repentance, and the whole range of human emotions surrounding those activities.  

And I hope that at least some of us are thinking about what will make this coming year, 5773, different from 5772.  If these Ten Days come and go without any deep consideration, then why go through the High Holy Day motions?  Why pray or fast or listen to the shofar?

Amidst all of this, we read this week Parashat Vayelekh, which rarely stands on its own, because it is usually coupled with Parashat Nitzavim.  It is not a particularly substantive chapter, being relatively short, but it does include this curious verse:

Deut. 31:19

וְעַתָּ֗ה כִּתְב֤וּ לָכֶם֙ אֶת־הַשִּׁירָ֣ה הַזֹּ֔את וְלַמְּדָ֥הּ אֶת־בְּנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל שִׂימָ֣הּ בְּפִיהֶ֑ם לְמַ֨עַן תִּֽהְיֶה־לִּ֜י הַשִּׁירָ֥ה הַזֹּ֛את לְעֵ֖ד בִּבְנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃

Therefore, write down this poem and teach it to the people of Israel; put it in their mouths, in order that this poem may be My witness against the people of Israel.

Here in the Torah, God’s command is delivered in the plural imperative (“kitvu” = “you (pl.) shall write”).  It seems to be addressed to Moses and Joshua, who have been called into an executive session with God.  Some commentators understand this to refer to the “poem” that we read next Shabbat in Parashat Haazinu, following immediately in the Torah after what we read today.  But the verse is interpreted in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 21b) by the 4th century sage Rabbah as the mitzvah / commandment that we must each individually write our own personal copy of a sefer Torah.  Elsewhere in the Talmud (Nedarim 38a) the reason given that the whole Torah is required rather than just the Haazinu poem is that the latter is not a sufficient “witness against the people Israel,” as the verse suggests.  Only the entire Torah can fulfill that role.

Of course, the vast majority of us are unable to write our own sifrei Torah because of the intense training that it requires, so many of us fulfill this mitzvah through various other means, like contributing funds to help purchase a sefer Torah, or by filling in a letter in a new scroll with the help of a sofer / scribe.

 

What I love about this particular mitzvah, regardless of how we may fulfill it, is the implication that we should not be Jewish by proxy.  Judaism is a do-it-yourself tradition, or perhaps more accurately "do-it-yourself-in-the-context-of-your-community."  We build our own sukkot (actually, I’m building mine on Sunday; yes, I know it’s a little early, but we should never hesitate to fulfill a mitzvah), we lead our own Pesah sedarim, we atone for our own sins.

Ever seen those ads in Jewish newspapers about saying qaddish?  All you have to do is send a few bucks to some yeshivah in Israel or maybe Brooklyn, and a reliable, trustworthy, and frum yeshiva-bokhur will recite qaddish for your loved one on your behalf.

This practice is condoned by the Shulhan Arukh, Yoreh De’ah 376:4, but really only as a last resort.  Rabbi Isaac Klein, in his standard Conservative compendium of halakhah / Jewish law, A Guide to Jewish Religious Practice, suggests that this should be “discouraged unless there is no alternative.”  The Conservative movement’s brand-new authoritative work on halakhah, The Observant Life (which all of you should own), recommends against this practice as follows:

In the end, saying Kaddish serves a deeply therapeutic function for the mourner.  Knowing that a good friend, either of the mourner or of the decedent, is saying Kaddish can serve that function only slightly.  Paying a stranger to say Kaddish for a parent cannot serve that function at all.

As much as is possible, ours is a tradition of personal action.  While there are some cases where it is customary or even mandatory for somebody else to fulfill a mitzvah on your behalf, the vast majority of mitzvot are meant to be performed by the obligated party.

My very first student pulpit, when I was in cantorial school, was at a smaller synagogue in Old Bridge, New Jersey.  Once a month I would stay with Rabbi Jonathan Lubliner and lead Shabbat services.  It was about a mile’s walk from his house to the synagogue, and I remember walking with him several times on Shabbat morning when we would be greeted by congregants who were driving to shul.  Occasionally, they would even drive slowly alongside us and chat.  Rabbi Lubliner pointed out to me, “They don’t feel the the need to walk to synagogue, but they think it’s very important that their rabbi does so.”

Now, I understand that not everybody can live the way the rabbi does, and our community does not expect that.  But I suppose that we could raise ourselves up as a community, that we could be an inspiration to one another and to other congregations like this one, if we were to aim higher.  Why not “kick it up a notch”?  Select a mitzvah that particularly speaks to you but that you have never taken on.  Can’t think of a mitzvah to tackle?  Come talk to me and we’ll find one that will inspire you.

Here is a suggestion for a New Year’s resolution.  Make your relationship with Judaism (and God) more active.  Here are some do-it-yourself ideas:

• Build your own sukkah (it's not too late!)
• Have some friends to Shabbat dinner
• Pick one day a week to come to morning minyan (we need people!  Wednesday we had to call three)
• Join us on Midnight Run as we go into the city to distribute food and clothing to needy people
• Learn to read Torah or lead a service
• Come to one of the new adult learning offerings to expand your Jewish horizons
• Make it a point to discuss a piece of Jewish text at your Shabbat table.  If you need material, you can use the weekly thought that Rabbi Stecker or I send out in the Thursday afternoon email from Temple Israel (Have you never opened that email? You should.)
• Go visit Israel (again, if you've already been)

But wait! You’ve all heard me say things like this before.  Here is something new:

Write your own Torah.  And by this I do not necessarily mean a sefer Torah.  I mean, metaphorically inscribe a piece of Torah on your soul.

The medieval halakhic authority known as the Rosh, Rabbeinu Asher ben Yehiel, a German halakhist of the 13th and early 14th centuries, actually interpreted the mitzvah of writing a sefer Torah differently from most other commentators.  He understood the verse quoted above not as referring to the scrolls that we use for reading, but the books that we use for study: the humash (printed Pentateuch) that you all followed along with this morning as we read the Torah, or the volumes of Mishnah or Talmud or all the other works of rabbinic literature.  The point, argues the Rosh, is that if the purpose of this mitzvah is to make sure that we learn the words of Torah, then producing a scroll that is used only for chanting in the synagogue will not fulfill that role.  But purchasing books that have been produced for study will fulfill the mitzvah.

And I’m going to take the Rosh’s suggestion a bit further.  Call it a New Year’s resolution if you will, but I would like to suggest the following:

1.  Spend a few moments over the remainder of the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah (or, failing that, let’s say you have until Hoshanah Rabbah, the seventh day of Sukkot, which is traditionally thought of as the last day to seek repentance for the past year) finding a Jewish text that resonates with you.  Going with the Rosh, t doesn't need to be from Torah itself.  (If you want suggestions, give me a call or send me an email.  I will gladly suggest something appropriate.)

2.  Write it down on a piece of paper (or if you’re good with computers, print it out) in Hebrew, English, or the language of your choosing.

3.  Stick it on the fridge, or tape it to your computer monitor at work, or put it on a sticky note and attach it to your favorite credit card, or take a picture of it with your smartphone and make it your background screen.  Then, whenever you see it, you will reinforce the text.

4.  Commit it to memory, and make it part of you.  Imprint it on your soul.

I’ve picked my text already.  It’s from the Prophet Micah, one of the season’s favorites, and is enshrined on a lovely print just to the left of the water fountain downstairs.  We read it in the haftarah for Parashat Balaq:

הִגִּ֥יד לְךָ֛ אָדָ֖ם מַה־טּ֑וֹב וּמָֽה־יְהוָ֞ה דּוֹרֵ֣שׁ מִמְּךָ֗ כִּ֣י אִם־עֲשׂ֤וֹת מִשְׁפָּט֙ וְאַ֣הֲבַת חֶ֔סֶד וְהַצְנֵ֥עַ לֶ֖כֶת עִם־אֱלֹהֶֽיךָ׃

[God] has told you, O man, what is good
And what the Lord requires of you:
Only to do justice
And to love goodness
And to walk modestly with your God.

I think this is a sublime encapsulation of how we as Jews should go about life, and I would love to be able to refer back to it whenever I can.  So I’m going to make this verse a part of me for the coming year, in (partial) fulfillment of the Rosh’s understanding of the mitzvah from Parashat Vayelekh.

What’s your soul-text?  Find one.  Let me know if you need help.  Shabbat shalom, and gemar hatimah tovah.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, Sept. 22, 2012.)

Rebirth Through Teshuvah

Judaism, unlike some other religious traditions, does not see people as fundamentally evil or sinful.  We are all born with a clean slate, and if we write unsavory things on it, they can be erased.  On Yom Kippur we strive to achieve this "factory reset" by enveloping ourselves in the symbols of purification: the fasting and abstention from various bodily pleasures, the wearing of a white kittel (simple robe usually worn by clergy, although anybody may do so), the beating of one's chest for the Viddui / public confession.  Some also have the custom of immersing in a miqveh / ritual bath on the day before; this is one in which I engage with solemn enthusiasm.

As we work our way through the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, the Ten Days of Repentance that are bracketed by Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, it may be helpful not only to ask forgiveness from those we have wronged in the past year, but also to focus on the idea of rebirth.  As one rabbinic story puts it:

Said the Holy One to Israel: "My children, if you turn this day, changing your bad ways, you will become new creatures, not the same people as before.  Then will I consider you as if I had created you anew.  And then shall you, newborn, be as the new heavens and the new earth that I shall create." (Mahzor Lev Shalem, p. 195).

Within our reach is the capability to be effectively reborn.  All we have to do is to seek teshuvah / repentance.

Gemar hatimah tovah.  May you be sealed for a pure year.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

Rosh Hashanah 5773: Why Be Jewish?

Goldie Cohen, an elderly Jewish woman from New York, goes to her travel agent. "I vont to go to India."

"Mrs. Cohen, why India? It's filthy, much hotter than New York, and very crowded."

"I vont to go to India."

"But it's a long journey, how will you manage? What will you eat? The food is too hot and spicy for you. You can't drink the water or eat fresh fruit and vegetables. You'll get sick.  And can you imagine the hospital, no Jewish doctors?"

 

"I vont to go to India."

The necessary arrangements are made, and off she goes. She arrives in India and, undeterred by the noise and crowds, makes her way to an ashram. There she joins the long line of people waiting for an audience with the guru. She is told that it will take at least three days of standing in line to see the guru.

"Dats OK," Goldie says.

Eventually she reaches the guru’s entryway. There she is told firmly that she can only say three words.

"Fine," she says.

She is ushered into the inner sanctum where the guru is seated.  As she approaches him, she is reminded: "Remember, just three words."

Unlike the other devotees, she does not prostrate at his feet. She stands directly in front of him, folds her arms on her chest, fixes her gaze on his, and says: "Shmuel, come home."

 
Ladies and gentlemen, we are all Jews by choice.

Usually, that is a term reserved for those who were born into another faith and became Jewish. We often refer to converts to Judaism not as “converts,” but as “Jews by choice.”  In Jewish tradition, a Jew is a Jew is a Jew, whether born Jewish or not.  A Jew by choice is first and foremost a Jew.

But the reality of today’s marketplace of ideas is that we are ALL Jews by choice.  We have all made the choice to be here today; we choose to celebrate Pesah with family, or light Hanukkah candles together, or to eat only kosher foods, or bring our children for berit milah or bat mitzvah.

The ability to opt for something different, to start over in a new place with a new identity, is the hallmark of the American character.  Personal autonomy -- individual choice -- has always been placed at the top of our pile of values.  We do not ask our children, “What do you need?”, but rather, “What do you want?”  We reinforce from birth that we have choices. (I’m not sure if this method always works out so well for parents, but that’s the subject of a different sermon.)

Our people arrived on this continent in 1654, almost 360 years ago.  The first American Jews resisted Old World rabbinic control for decades; to this day, this country has the only significant Jewish community in the world that has never had a chief rabbi.  Meanwhile, Robert Zimmerman became Bob Dylan, Issur Danielovich Demsky became Kirk Douglas, Sandy Koufax became a hall-of-famer even though he did not pitch on Yom Kippur, and full assimilation and interfaith families became inevitable features of the American Jewish landscape.

Shmuel, the Jewish guru, chose something else.  For whatever reason -- perhaps he could not find that path within Judaism that led to spiritual satisfaction and so he found another option -- he and others like him have left the fold for other pastures.  But far more of our young people today are exercising their freedom of choice by simply opting out of Jewish life, not necessarily to become gurus in ashrams, but becoming what is increasingly known as “Just Jewish,” or not Jewish at all.  A friend of mine from my Cornell days casually announced on Facebook that he was “no longer Jewish.”  When I asked him if that meant that he had converted to another religious tradition, he told me that he had not.  He had simply stopped practicing any Jewish rituals and disconnected himself from the faith of his parents.

And he is not alone.  What is the fastest-growing religious tradition in America today, across all demographics?  None.

I have been thinking about this quite a bit lately, because I think that we, those of us who are still committed, who are still invested in the traditional aspects of Jewish living, have to start making the case to ourselves about why Judaism is valuable.  Why be Jewish?  If we can answer that question for ourselves, we have a better chance of making the case to others for whom the inclination is to drop out.

Why be Jewish?

We need an answer to that question, one that we must share with our families and friends.  I’m particularly concerned with our children who are in the parking lot, or at home on Facebook.  I’m concerned that the ultimate result of the freedom of choice that modernity highlights will be that Judaism will cease to play a role in the lives of its descendants.  And I am particularly concerned that our Judaism, the open, non-judgmental, progressive, egalitarian practices that we represent here at Temple Israel.  We are the inheritors of Rabbi Mordecai Waxman’s principles of Tradition and Change, principles that I know many of us hold dear.

So the question should be asked and answered, re-asked and re-answered.  Why be Jewish?  And some of our children and grandchildren will no doubt find the answers not compelling enough, and will, like Shmuel and my college buddy, end their relationships with Judaism.

But some (and, I hope, many) will choose Judaism, will choose our open, tolerant approach to tradition.  Just like we in this room have done.

One traditional response to the question of “Why be Jewish” is that of faith.  The Torah tells us that if we embrace the mitzvot / commandments of Jewish life -- Shabbat, kashrut, tefillah, lifecycle events, holidays, and so forth -- we will be rewarded by God.  

But let’s face it: that does not work for everybody.

So we have to find another way.  We have to make other arguments for why choosing Judaism is a good idea.  

Here is another way of looking at this, one way that has worked for me.  I’m going to call this “the History Argument.”

There have been Jews in this world for at least 2300 years, and arguably as many as 3500 years.  Every one of us in this room is the descendant of at least 100 generations of Jews.  Our ancestors have followed these ancient customs and laws for millennia.  Who are we to question their adherence to Judaism?  Who are we to break the chain?

I choose Judaism because my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents and on and on and on were Jews.  They carried their faith through war and peace, East and West, through slavery and oppression and liberation and migration, from place to place and nation to nation.  Likewise, I want my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and on and on to continue these practices as well, wherever they end up and in whatever circumstances.

Tradition, sang Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof.  The key to our lives is maintaining our tradition.

The History Argument may work for some of us.  My suspicion is that for most of us who are under the age of 30, that will not work very well at all.  As humans, we are much better at living in the present than acknowledging the past or envisioning the future.

So we need some better reasons to be Jewish.  I’d like to propose the following:  What makes Judaism valuable today, and in an ongoing way are the Jewish values that we share. These shared values can be called the Internal, the External, and the Holy.

1.  Internal: Judaism values learning and mandates critical thinking.

2.  External: Judaism encourages us to relate well to others.

3.  Holy: Judaism offers a glimpse of the Divine.

First, let take a closer look at the Internal:  Judaism values learning and mandates critical thinking.

As I grow in my own relationship to what we call Judaism, I am ever more fond of the statement found in the Mishnah, tractate Pe’ah 1:1: Talmud Torah keneged kulam.  The study of Torah outweighs all the other mitzvot, including honoring your parents, performing deeds of charity, and making peace between people.

That’s right.  Learning is the highest value in Judaism, going all the way back to the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans, nearly 2000 years ago.  In the wake of that destruction, our ancestors grappled with the question of how to maintain our distinctiveness, and they settled on learning.  Judaism would become a tradition that would be related from teacher to student.  No more priesthood, no more hierarchy; Talmud Torah, the learning of Torah is the great equalizer of Jewish history.  Only a small elite could perform the sacrifices in the Temple, but everybody could learn and relate our Jewish stories.

“Why do Jews always answer a question with a question?”  
“How should they answer?”

We are a people who ask questions, who challenge, who seek wisdom.  And the critical thinking piece is essential.  Unlike some other religious traditions, which urge followers to check their intellect at the door, Judaism encourages us to question, to argue, to disagree.  There is never one answer in the Talmud; there is always a second opinion.  

We are the original critical thinkers, and every single one of us can benefit from Judaism’s rigorous pursuit of study, learning, and debate.  That is the Internal reason to be Jewish.

Second, the External.  Judaism requires us to relate well to others.

One of the best-known stories of the Talmud is as follows: a potential convert who approaches the sage Hillel and asks him to teach him all of the laws of Jewish life while standing on one leg.  Hillel lifts a leg off the ground and says, “Do not do unto others what is hateful unto you.  All the rest is commentary.  Now go and learn it.”

The second part of his statement, the “Go and learn it” part, refers back to the learning that we just discussed.  But the first part, the part about not doing unto others what is hateful to you, is the key to being Jewish in relationship to others.  We have to treat each other well.  

And let’s face it: treating your neighbor respectfully is not so easy.  We live in a fundamentally selfish society, in which independence is prized above all else.  We compete against each other for resources, for access to good schools, good grades, good jobs, and good business deals.  We learn from a young age that performance outweighs learning, that bringing in a good salary can sometimes justifiably conflict with being a dedicated parent.

But the Torah and Judaism ask us to re-examine those equations.  Ve’ahavta le-reiakha kamokha - love your neighbor as yourself (Lev. 19:18).  Honor your parents, says the Torah, even when it might be inconvenient to you.  Pay your employees a fair wage, says the Torah, even if it cuts into your own profits.  If you find your enemy’s ox suffering under a heavy load, says the Torah, you must help lift it up.  Don’t put a stumbling block in front of the blind; don’t curse the deaf.  From Pirqei Avot: Al tifrosh min hatzibbur - do not separate yourself from your community.

Today (yesterday) we enter/ed the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, the Ten Days of Repentance, bracketed by Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  On these days we can ask for forgiveness from God for those transgressions of mitzvot bein adam lamaqom, commandments that are between us and God.  God will forgive us if we ask.  

But regarding those violations of mitzvot bein adam lehavero, the obligations between people, only those we have personally wronged can forgive us for what we have done to them.  We can only be forgiven with the help of our haver, our buddy, spouse, child, parent, sibling, coworker, boss, employee, neighbor, or enemy.  As Jews, we take this human partnership seriously.  

And that’s another great reason to be Jewish, the External reason.

Third: Holiness. Judaism offers a glimpse of the Divine.

Last spring, we hosted the noted professor of Jewish education, Dr. Ron Wolfson.  Dr. Wolfson’s work is primarily to help synagogues become more welcoming.  But he also reminds those of us who work in synagogues that we are not a business, whose bottom line is a dollar amount.  Our bottom line is qedushah, holiness.  That is the one thing that you can get here at Temple Israel that you can’t get at the gym, or the supermarket, or at Amazon.com.   

Why do we maintain the rituals of our ancestors?  Why do we read the Torah from beginning to end every year?  Why do we offer classes and discussions on various topics in Jewish text and law and philosophy?  Why do we recite the lengthy prayers in this mahzor?  Because that is how we Jews get access to God.  And let’s face it: despite the growing secularity of American society and among American Jews, most of us still want some access to God.  And the place to do that is here.

But we also stand for the qedushah / holiness that you can get outside this building.  Why do we bless our children on Friday night?  Because setting aside that holy moment with your kids, a pause from the insanity of the week, reaffirms everything that is sacred about life.

Why do we give tzedaqah / charity?  Why does the Temple Israel Chesed Connection, which goes out into the community to help people in need?  Why does the Youth House feature Mitzvah Corps, which brings 8th-graders to soup kitchens and retirement homes and the ACLD group-living home for disabled adults? Because there is nothing holier than reaching out your hand to others who have less.  

Why do we sponsor the PJ Library program, which provides absolutely free Jewish children’s books to kids in our community?  Because the holiest thing a parent or grandparent can do is to teach our tradition to the next generation.  (Call our office to sign up for PJ Library!)

Why be Jewish?  Because Judaism offers a connection to God, moments of holiness.

***

I’m going to conclude with the words of French-Jewish writer Edmund Fleg, a secular Jew who, like Theodor Herzl, rediscovered a connection to his people in the wake of the trial of Alfred Dreyfus in the 1890s:

I am a Jew because the faith of Israel demands of me no abdication of the mind.

I am a Jew because the faith of Israel requires of me all the devotion of my heart.

I am a Jew because in every place where suffering weeps, the Jew weeps.

I am a Jew because at every time when despair cries out, the Jew hopes.

I am a Jew because the word of Israel is the oldest and the newest.

I am a Jew because the promise of Israel is the universal promise.

I am a Jew because, for Israel, the world is not yet completed; we are completing it.

I am a Jew because, above the nations and the faith of Israel, we place humanity.

I am a Jew because above humanity, which is created in God’s image, Israel places God’s oneness and divinity.

****

Why be Jewish? Because Judaism offers a framework for living, a set of shared values that if applied properly, will enable your inner spirituality by turning on your mind, will enhance your outer relationships, and will, once in a while, offer contact with God and qedushah / holiness.  As we move forward, those of us who continue to be Jews-By-Choice will draw on these offerings of Judaism, gaining inspiration as well as inspiring others.  

Epilogue: A congregant came to me last week to tell me that she has found her path through Judaism at Temple Israel, but she had to work quite hard to seek it for herself.  When he was here in May, Dr. Wolfson told the story of his having visited a synagogue, and upon arriving he found the front door locked.  He looked around the building for a good twenty minutes, and when he finally found his way in and met with the rabbi, he was told, “Everybody knows you go in through the kitchen!”

Some of us are self-motivated seekers; others are not.  If you can’t find the kitchen door and you need an entry point to learn more, to participate more, to step up your relationship with the faith of your parents and grandparents, give me a call, shoot me an email, friend me on Facebook, find me on Twitter, or whatever.  I would be personally thrilled to help you find your way.


~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Monday morning, September 17, 2012.)

Ki Tavo 5772: More Light, More Selihah

One of the things that connects us most to the High Holidays is the set of melodies that we associate with this time of the year.  

From “Kol Nidrei” to “Avinu Malkeinu” to “BeRosh Hashanah Yikkateivun” and so forth, these tunes are strongly associated with the themes of the holidays: teshuvah, tefillah, tzedaqah (repentance, prayer, and charity), malkhuyot, zikhronot, shofarot (kingship, remembrance, shofar), and of course the opportunity to seek atonement, purity, and redemption for the coming year.

An often-overlooked melody that is nonetheless widely known is what we referred to in Cantorial School as the “selihah” mode.  Selihah means “forgiveness.”

 

Usually, selihah mode is used for passages that have to do with selihah or selihot, that is, asking for forgiveness.  Starting tonight, when we begin the recitation of selihot, and continuing particularly on Yom Kippur, when we recite the selihot prayers several times during of the course of the day, we assume the musical posture of asking for forgiveness from God to complement our obligation to ask for forgiveness from those around us.

As such, this melody should ideally serve to remind us about the need to think about teshuvah, about repentance (insert Pavlov joke here).  It should help “get us in the mood” for the start of the New Year, which we want to enter pure, with a clean slate.

There is only one more week before Rosh Hashanah.  That’s right!  One week! I hope that everybody has already put some thought into those things for which we need to seek forgiveness, and not just the lunch menu for Monday afternoon.  But while much of the focus of this period is on individual teshuvah, there is also, I think, an obligation to national teshuvah.  Teshuvah for the Jewish people for things that we have done this year.

Usually, a sermon draws on the day’s Torah reading and connect it to us, our lives, our families, and so forth.  I am going to take a little diversion from that pattern and instead draw on today’s haftarah, the prophetic reading that followed the Torah reading.

One major theme of today’s haftarah is light.  As you may have noticed, today’s was the sixth haftarah of consolation, the sixth of seven such haftarot that fall between Tish’ah Be’Av and Rosh Hashanah that trace the redemption of Israel after the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem.  The themes of these haftarot, all drawn from the book of the prophet Isaiah, hint at the coming High Holidays - they attempt to reassure us that God has not forgotten us, that we can be redeemed, that our return to God will herald a new age with new opportunities.  

The opening verse of the haftarah invoked the theme of light with a clause that we know from the Friday evening piyyut, Lekha Dodi (Isaiah 60:1):

ק֥וּמִי א֖וֹרִי כִּ֣י בָ֣א אוֹרֵ֑ךְ

Qumi, ori, ki va orekh
Arise, shine, for your light has dawned.

This is but one of several references to light in the haftarah.  Light is also a common theme in rabbinic text and particularly kabbalistic text, and in tefillah, in Jewish prayer.

But light is also a theme in everyday Jewish life.  In particular, something that Isaiah points to in the third verse of the haftarah (Isaiah 60:3):

וְהָֽלְכ֥וּ גוֹיִ֖ם לְאוֹרֵ֑ךְ וּמְלָכִ֖ים לְנֹ֥גַהּ זַרְחֵֽךְ׃

Vehalekhu goyim le’orekh, umlakhim lenogah zarhekh.
Nations shall walk at your light, and kings at the brightness of your rising.

The “you” here is us; our light is meant to inspire others.  We refer to this principle as Or Lagoyim, a light unto the nations.  As Jews, we must be Or Lagoyim. We must behave in an exemplary manner in the eyes of the rest of the world.  

Why? Because we the Jews are meant to be an inspiration to the world. Because God gave us a template, the Torah, for living properly.  And because we cannot afford to fan the flames of anti-Semitism. We cannot give our enemies support/fodder by giving them examples of our bad behavior to cite.

Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, seized upon the principle of the Jewish people and the Jewish State as being Or Lagoyim.  He said:

History did not spoil us with power, wealth, nor with broad territories or an enormous community lot, however, it did grant us the uncommon intellectual and moral virtue, and thus it is both a privilege and an obligation to be a Light Unto the Nations.

This is one reason that the symbol of the State of Israel is the menorah, the seven-branched candelabrum that was used in the Temple in Jerusalem.  It is incumbent upon all of us, kelal Yisrael, the totality of all those included in the Jewish fold, to be Or Lagoyim, to fill the world with light.  As such, we have all the more reason that in this season of teshuvah / repentance, we as a people need to be asking for selihah.  

I mentioned in this space a few weeks back the incident in downtown Jerusalem where a gang of Jewish youths attacked Arab teens, seriously injuring one.  A crowd of as many as 100 bystanders watched, and nobody attempted to stop these boys, even from kicking the victim when he was down and already clearly injured.

On the heels of this, just this past Monday, vandals set fire to the main entrance of the Trappist monastery at Latrun, right on the main highway to Jerusalem, and spray-painted on the exterior wall, “Jesus is a monkey,” and the names of recently-evacuated settlements.

The monastery dates to 1890, and the twenty monks that live there produce wine and live mostly in silence.

Now of course, we do not yet know who perpetrated this, and certainly Israeli police are investigating.  But it seems likely that this crime was committed by radical members of the pro-settler movement, and particularly part of a series referred to as “price tag” attacks. The most prominent of these attacks, you may recall, was the burning of the mosque in the Israeli Bedouin town of Tuba-Zangariyya last October; in June, there were several incidents, including the burning of another mosque near Ramallah, and vandalism in the mixed Jewish/Arab coexistence village of Neveh Shalom, also near Latrun.  The so-called “price tag” label has been found spray-painted on some of the sites; it is a threat from the radical fringe that Israeli and Palestinian society will have to “pay” for the evacuation of settlements for the sake of peace.

If the vandalism at the Latrun monastery was another in the series of “price tag” attacks in retribution for evacuation of illegal settlements, we as a people have much for which to atone.

Ladies and gentlemen, they are us.  Those on the fringe, those vandals, they are our cousins. And this is not acceptable.  

Yes, all of these incidents have been condemned by everybody, left and right. Yes, there are bad apples in every barrel.  But these bad apples are ours, and the damage they do to the image of Judaism and Jewry to those outside of our tradition is irreparable.  This is a classic example of what my grandparents would have called in Yiddish a shanda fur di goyim - a shameful act in the sight of the non-Jews.

In this season of teshuvah, in which our collective repentance is as essential as our personal repentance, we have to ask ourselves, in this time of reflection and teshuvah, what have we done to enable these criminals?  What have we said? What have we thought?  What have we left out?  What are we doing that has allowed them to think they can get away with it and that it is even honorable?

Our tradition teaches us that the destruction of the Second Temple at the hands of the Romans in 70 CE was brought upon our nation due to our having committed the sin of sin’at hinnam, causeless hatred.  The innocent, God-fearing Christians and Muslims who have suffered at the hands of our people are victims of this same transgression, and we cannot tolerate such grave injustice in our midst.

The prophet Isaiah predicted that our redemption would make us Or Lagoyim, a light unto the nations, not a shanda.  The perpetrators of these “price tag” attacks, and their ideological supporters, should be cut off.  This is not us.  And right now, as we close in on the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, the Ten Days of Repentance, we need to be chanting in the mode of selihah.

After all, shouldn’t the world hear about the good things that Israel and the Jews have brought?  Shouldn’t the nations hear about the culture, the technology, and the academic achievement with which the State of Israel nourishes the world community?  Shouldn’t the anti-Semites of this world be required to answer to the democratic principles upheld by the Jewish state, its protection of personal liberty, its free and critical press, its commitment to the rights of everybody in Israeli society, including Israeli Arabs, women, gays and lesbians, and other minority groups?

How can we, as a people, offer up the absolute worst offenses against others, attacking the holy places of other religious traditions, for the entire world to see?  Ladies and gentlemen, we must maintain the upper hand by maintaining our respectability, by not sinking to the level of the enemies of peace.  We must uphold Isaiah’s vision of Or Lagoyim, of being the nation to which others look for inspiration.

Tonight begins the recitation of the selihot prayers, and with that the onslaught of musical hints at the coming potential for repentance and redemption.  We will hear tonight an intricately-crafted musical experience that is designed to get us in the mood for teshuvah. 

And we should all be chanting in selihah mode.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, Sept. 7, 2012.)