A version of this sermon was delivered on Erev Rosh HaShanah 5776 at Temple Emanu-El of East Meadow.
“Aren’t
we a nice family?” A man I had the
pleasure of meeting while marching in South Carolina, a man named Middle
Passage, asked this simple, jocular, yet profound, question at dinner the
evening after the Justice March in South Carolina. Middle Passage took a bus 1300 miles from
Colorado to Selma to march for Justice, intending to march the entire distance
to Washington, DC. Middle Passage made
it his job to carry the American flag at the front of the marchers day after
day. Middle Passage served in the Navy
and had 5 open-heart surgeries in the decades before he joined the march in
honor of his brother. Yesterday, I learned
that Middle Passage took ill while marching in Virginia and could not be
revived. At mile 922. The culmination of that march is this week in
Washington, DC, and MP, as he was often called, will not see it. I marched alongside him at the front while
carrying the Torah. We didn’t speak much
during the day, we focused on the marching, but I gained the strength to
continue marching just by being next to him and his unwavering devotion. I didn’t want to stop while I was next to
him. I hope that I was able to do provide
at least a little bit of that in reciprocity.
This question he asked at dinner,
“Aren’t we a nice family?” wasn’t just out of the blue. After having marched over 13 miles in high
temperatures and humidity, we were all tired, and hungry. Middle Passage was seated alongside a few of
the local NAACP marchers, and my colleague and friend, Rabbi Lauren Cohn, as
well as a few other rabbis. I noticed
that there was only one space left at their table, but I asked if I could pull
up a table to join them, so that I could make room for my niece, but also
because after the long, hot day of marching alongside everyone, I didn’t want
us to all be seated at separate tables. I
added a table, and more joined us. So
there we were, all seated together, and Middle passage asked this question:
“Aren’t we a nice family?!” And we did
feel like family. Especially over
dessert: homemade vanilla and orange pound cakes, which had been lovingly
donated and served by a group of local NAACP ladies who came by just to bring homemade
cake. They were delicious.
It was a different question from
Middle Passage that led us toward an interesting and important conversation. Middle Passage, having marched with Reform
Rabbis for 25 days at this point, asked our day’s group of Reform Rabbis if our
liberalism with Jewish Law and tradition wasn’t just diluting Judaism. What a question. That’s a question that really requires an
all-day answer. And, it’s a question
that is important to have an answer for, especially if you’re a Reform Rabbi. So we talked, explaining that we find a sense
of sacredness in our decisions and in the process of making those decisions;
and that we value Jewish Law, but don’t give it absolute authority over our
entire lives and beings. And we
listened, about what they understood about Judaism and how much they had
learned by being on the march with, as one marcher described it: “40 days and
5000 rabbis!” We shared about who we
were and what we believed. And we asked
more questions. And we laughed. We were a family, because at that moment,
what brought us together, was more powerful than whatever differences we may
have had.
We got to the discussion about the
complicated definition of Judaism. Is it
only a religion? Is it a people? Is it a race?
That there is no one answer to this question should not be surprising,
but at one point during this discussion, I turned to a gentleman next to me named
Royal, who would be teaching us that evening, and tried to describe it the most
rabbinic way I know how: by asking a question.
“Do you feel pride when a person of color achieves something, like an
honor or a high elected office?” I asked.
He said that he did. I connected
this to the pride I feel, and I imagine many of us feel, when a Jewish person
does the same, or likewise the difficulty we have when a Jewish person does
something publicly immoral, like run a Ponzi scheme. I hadn’t made that connection so explicitly
between Judaism and the Black experience before. It was an important realization for me, and I
hope for Royal. It was an important
discussion for all of us, and it would not have happened without a willingness
to question and a willingness to answer honestly.
When I headed down to South Carolina, I
wasn’t expecting to come away with an appreciation for, and a desire for more inter-religious dialogue, but come back with it I did. In the next year, I’d like us to start
reaching out to different faith based communities and congregations in the
spirit of inter-religious dialogue because we will learn about others, and we
will learn about ourselves.
Our scriptures point to examples of inter-religious dialogue and its benefits for the Jewish community. One prominent example comes in the book of
Exodus. Moses’ father-in-law Jethro is a
priest of Midian. Yitro[1], as
he’s known in Hebrew happens to give name to the portion during which God gives
Moses the 10 commandments. This is technically
because the portion starts with his name, but also, many would suggest, because
of his prominent role in the narrative.
In many ways, it is Jethro who prepares the Israelites to receive God’s
laws.
Jethro seeks out Moses at Sinai, having
heard what God did for the people Israel in Egypt. And when Jethro arrives, he sees a harried
and tired Moses spending all day adjudicating all the Israelites’ disputes, the
petty and the significant, because at that point, Moses is the only one who
knows all of God’s rules. Remember, the
people have seen the plagues cripple Egypt and they witnessed God’s power at
the parting of the Sea of Reeds, but only Moses has heard God’s voice and
commands.
Jethro, as a priest in his own right,
has experience with these sorts of matters and he urges Moses to establish a
system of judges, who know the rules, who can help with the smaller claims, who
will help Moses carry the burden of being a prophet of God. No sooner does Jethro suggest this, than
Moses enacts it. And then, the next
thing that Moses does is ascend the Mountain.
The Torah tells us that Moses goes up and then God calls to him.[2] Is it only through Jethro’s prodding that the
entire system of Jewish Law and jurisprudence exists today!? Just like Moses, sometimes, we can learn a lot
about the best way to be who we want to be by looking at best practices of
others. If we want to know what might
work for us, we need to be willing to ask questions of others.
Now, the rabbis of the Talmud and commentators
on the Torah are not so comfortable with Jewish practice being created, or even
advised, by someone who is not Jewish.
The midrash and the Talmud make a point of saying that Jethro must have
converted to Judaism,[3]
though there is no evidence for that in the texts. The rabbis of blessed memory were living in a
time when reaching out to others was not so easy. They lived in a time when Judaism was under
attack and when focusing inward to thwart incursion was an important objective. We don’t live in such times. Our times are not perfect, and there are
those who still dislike Jews. But on the
whole, we are blessed to live safely in this nation. While the state of Judaism in America can
sometimes be complicated, and God knows that we have enough trouble talking
with our own, in this day and age, it is important to know who our neighbors
are, what they hold important and what they value. We may find we have much more in common than
separates us.
If we begin to have conversations with
other communities, we can begin to understand our neighbors, their practices
and beliefs, their customs and priorities.
We’re not aiming to agree with everyone about everything, because there
will be serious differences, and that’s not the purpose. But, if we begin to learn about others’
practices, we can hopefully come to a place of respect and understanding, which
is the goal. We could easily learn about
other faith traditions, and we should.
But it is more important to learn from them. We can read from and study their sacred texts
and histories, but it is an incomplete study, and would do a disservice to our
neighbors.
This is all on the individual
level. We will also learn about their
communities, how they handle difficult times, where they draw their strength to
continue in the face of the realities of an era in religious affiliation. It’s not just Judaism that is suffering
declining affiliation rates, after all.
What do these other communities do to engage their members? What do these other communities do to stretch
a budget? How do other communities
maintain their traditions while still moving forward? These are all questions that every religious
community asks, and we can learn a lot from each other.
But inter-religious dialogue doesn’t just
help us learn about others and what they do.
It also asks us to look deeply at ourselves. If we are to answer questions like the one
Middle Passage asked about diluting Judaism, we need to know what we believe
and how we came to that belief. We need
to know how to answer questions about God, Judaism, and the role of Torah in
our lives. We need to have a sense of
what we value, what gives us strength, and what troubles us. What we may find is that by engaging with
those who are different than us we come to a better understanding of who we
are, and come to have more pride, and dare I say faith, in who we are and what
we believe. Do we each have answers to
these questions: What do you believe about the divinity of the Torah? What do you believe about God’s role in your
life? What do you believe about the role
of Jewish Law? Where are you comfortable
drawing the line? And finally, the
follow up to all of these questions: Why?
These are important questions for Jews, and we take too little time to
answer these kinds of questions when we are insulated in our own community.
But we won’t just learn more about
ourselves and our beliefs; we’ll also find a new pride in our identities as
Jews. When I was teaching in Atlanta, I
worked with 7th and 8th-graders teaching Jewish Studies. Some of you who are or have been teachers may
groan at this, and yes, teaching middle school is an acquired taste, but I
loved it. The students were energetic
and witty. They understood our sacred
texts and their meanings in new and different ways. As a part of my research for my master’s
degree, I interviewed a number of 8th-graders about their Jewish
Identity. We had spent that year focused
on Jewish Identity. What I learned,
among many other fascinating findings, was that for these 8th-graders,
they felt the most pride in their Judaism when they were able to explain their
beliefs and their Judaism to peers who were not Jewish. They would go off to their summer sports
camps and summer academic programs and meet people of all different religious
traditions, and they would often have to explain what it meant to be
Jewish. They described a sense of pride
at being able to articulate what it was that made them Jewish.
Being able to articulate our Judaism to others serves another important purpose. While it is true that we live in unprecedented safety and security in this nation in 2015, there are still many people who have little to no understanding of Judaism. Imagine what we can teach others about Jews and Judaism. What impressions and understandings of Judaism can we share? What light can we bear to others? What appreciation of who we are and what we value can we impart? Just as we will come to understand others, we will strive to have others understand us. When personal and communal relationships are fostered, incendiary rhetoric can be tempered. That is an admirable and important goal in this era of 140-character character-assassinations and hyperbolic insinuation.
When Middle Passage asked, “Aren’t we a
nice family?” he was mostly joking, because of how different we all were, each
of us at that table for dinner. But
there was a profound understanding of the power of different people coming
together. The Hebrew word for family, mishpacha,
comes from a root meaning to join together.
So in many ways, MP was not at all wrong about his assertion. We joined together to share a meal. We joined together to march for shared
values. We joined together to share
about ourselves and learn from others.
In this new year, let us expand our family table to learn about others
and learn about ourselves. Let us expand
our understanding of other faith traditions and by doing so come to a better
understanding of our own.
Shanah Tovah!
[1] Thanks to Rabbi Josh Stanton
for his help seeing the fullness of Jethro’s relationship with Moses.
[2] Exodus 19:3
[3] See Rashi on Exodus 18:1, and
sources.
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