Seventh Day Passover 5785: Caught Between

 A version of this sermon was delivered at Temple B'nai Torah - A Reform Congregation, Wantagh, NY on Shabbat 7th-day of Passover 5785 (April 18, 2025)

Tonight on our calendar, we arrive at the last day of Passover.  Tonight, we also commemorate the crossing of the sea.  Tradition tells us it was on the night of the seventh day that God parted the waters to allow the Israelites to walk on dry land toward their freedom and the promised land.

Just before the Israelites leave Egypt, after the commandment about the pascal sacrifice and how it will be offered in the future and by whom, we read, and not for the only time: “תּוֹרָה אַחַת יִהְיֶה לָאֶזְרָח וְלַגֵּר הַגָּר בְּתוֹכְכֶם There shall be one law for the citizen and for the stranger who dwells among you.”[1]  We hear this idea over and over again in our Torah, that there is to be one law for the citizen and stranger alike.  We are not supposed to oppress the strangers for we know what it was like to be oppressed strangers in the land of Egypt.

The Haggadah reminds us that we are each supposed to see ourselves as if we were personally freed from Egypt, because of what God did for me, when God brought me out of Egypt.  So tonight, on this fateful anniversary, we put ourselves in the ragged sandals of the Israelites.  Let us imagine that we have witnessed the plagues, that we have put the blood on our doorposts, and that we hurriedly packed our dough and our timbrels in our sacks just a week ago.  We are amidst the mixed multitude that took their first free steps on the 14^th of Nissan and has been walking now toward an unknown destination, only remembered in dream and in song.

Imagine what it must have felt like to be in that crowd, on the shores of the sea, and to suddenly learn that Pharaoh has changed his mind.  To feel so trapped, surrounded, caught between the choices of a return to slavery and bondage or certain death in the waters of the sea.  How do we even decide in that moment what to do?  How do we decide when the answers on both sides are equally terrible?  How do we get out of the stuck?

In the Torah we know the answer.  God calls on Moses to raise his staff in his hand and for the waters to part.  We don’t have to choose between bondage and drowning because God gives us a third option.

This feeling of being stuck between two bad choices is made most real in our sacred and powerful story of redemption.  The Jewish people being caught between two bad options is not reserved for the Torah, or for our history.  Today, we are again caught between two bad options as American Jews.  On one side, we have the rising and ongoing antisemitism of our society and the world.  On the other side, the current government’s fight against antisemitism, which brings with it a disdain and a disregard for the rule of law and due process rights.

Like the commandment in the Torah, due process is granted, according to our constitution, to all people.  The language of the Constitution is clear in the Fifth Amendment: “No person…shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”  The 14^th Amendment goes on to add that no state has the right to: “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”  The Constitution doesn’t say citizens.  The Constitution doesn’t say Americans.  The Constitution doesn’t say anything about race, national origin, or immigration status as a disqualifier for these rights.  Nor does it say that one’s faith or religious practices or beliefs disqualify someone from these legal protections.

As Jews we know personally what it means when rights are stripped from a group of people by a supremacist regime.  We know what it means when the protections of a state are capriciously taken away or denied, when those protections we believed would keep us safe are trampled on and forgotten.  A new pharaoh arose over Egypt who did not remember Joseph.  The unsaid ending of this verse of Torah is that the new Pharaoh went back on an agreement and undid the decree allowing Jacob and his family to dwell in Egypt in peace.  Throughout Medieval Europe, Jewish communities lived at the pleasure and under the protection of local lords and nobles, until those nobles tired of the Jews or owed them too much money, and so changed their minds, and terrorized them and kicked them out.  In the 20^th century, German Jewish citizens’ rights and protections were stripped from them by the Nuremberg Laws, solely because of their Judaism.  Jewish citizens of Arab nations were expatriated and deported from lands in which they’d lived for centuries and generations.  It is in part thanks to the due process rights guaranteed to all people that Jews have been able to thrive as we have in this nation.  It’s what has made this nation different.  No one can take anything away from us just because of who we are, where we come from, or what we believe.  At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. 

Today, in this nation, students whose beliefs are unpopular with the regime have been denied and deprived their due process rights.  Other strangers who live among us have been snatched off the street without court or tribunal and sent to prison camps in another country to languish.  The reason behind much of this is allegedly to fight against antisemitism.  In order to keep the Jews safe, the reasoning seems to be, we need to take away the rights of a few, select others.  In order to keep the Jews safe, we have to do away with the rule of law.  This is a false choice that we have been asked to make. 

This false choice has been called out this week by a statement from the Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist movements in America as well as HIAS and the Jewish Council on Public Affairs.  This statement reads, in part:

“In recent weeks, escalating federal actions have used the guise of fighting antisemitism to justify stripping students of due process rights when they face arrest and/or deportation…Students have been arrested at home and on the street with no transparency as to why they are being held or deported, and in certain cases with the implication that they are being punished for their constitutionally-protected speech. Universities have an obligation to protect Jewish students, and the federal government has an important role to play in that effort; however, sweeping draconian funding cuts will weaken the free academic inquiry that strengthens democracy and society, rather than productively counter antisemitism on campus.

These actions do not make Jews—or any community—safer. Rather, they only make us less safe.

We reject any policies or actions that foment or take advantage of antisemitism and pit communities against one another; and we unequivocally condemn the exploitation of our community’s real concerns about antisemitism to undermine democratic norms and rights, including the rule of law, the right of due process, and/or the freedoms of speech, press, and peaceful protest.”

The pretexts being used against students to deny them their rights now extend to anyone suspected of being here illegally, anyone with the wrong-looking tattoo, or anyone born in another country, or with brown skin. 

Remember not to oppress the strangers for you were strangers in Egypt.  No person shall be deprived due process of law.

We are stuck, as Jews in America, today.  Between those purporting to be on our side and “fighting our enemies” with us or for us, and the laws of this land which have kept us safer than anywhere we’ve ever lived other than under our own sovereignty.  The rule of law has made it possible for us to call ourselves Jewish Americans rather than Jews in America.  The rule of law is why, when a synagogue is attacked or a Jewish Governor’s residence is firebombed, we can expect justice.  Due process is why our religion cannot be used as evidence against us.  We are being put into this position between the sea and the Pharaoh and what are we supposed to do?  Where is God to part the waters and lead us on dry land?

Whether or not any of these students have done things that put their immigration status in jeopardy is a legitimate question to be taken up by an immigration court and judge, with appropriate legal representation for the accused.  Whether or not we agree with these students and believe that some of them should be deported ought to be secondary to our belief in, advocacy for, and dedication to the rule of law and due process.  I don’t like what Mahmoud Khalil believes, what he says, or what he stands for.  And I believe that he deserves the same rights as anyone else and everyone else. 

There shall be one law for stranger and citizen alike.  No state shall deprive any person of due process of law. 

I am proud to be a member of the CCAR who joined in authoring and promoting this statement.  I am a believer in the promise of America and our rules and laws.  Or at least I have been.  We are in early dangerous stages of a shift in the very foundations of this nation, and it must be called out for what it is unkind, and ultimately un-American and unconstitutional.  These immigration raids and deportations in the name of Jewish safety have left us once again with no good options.  If we call out and fight for the rule of law, we are cozying up to antisemites and being a party to our own destruction, no better than kapos. 

If we allow for the degradation of the rule of law, we put ourselves and our families and communities at more risk and peril, perhaps not today, but certainly soon.  The point of the powerful and overused ‘first they came for” poem is not who they came for first.  The point is the last line.  “Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.”  Will you say something before it personally affects you?  That’s the question inherent in the poem.  When the laws stop applying to some, when the law is exercised with prejudice and based on whims of preference, ultimately no one is safe.  When legal residents are mistakenly sent to El Salvador and there’s no check and balance, no empathy, and no attempt to right a wrongful deportation, not one of us is safe.  When immigration agents are judge and jury, no one is safe.

A false choice is put before us.  We can and should fight antisemitism in all its forms, from left, right, and center with vigilance and determination.  As the CCAR statement makes clear: “It is both possible and necessary to fight antisemitism—on campus, in our communities, and across the country—without abandoning the democratic values that have allowed Jews, and so many other vulnerable minorities, to thrive.”

This is the path on dry ground.  This is our third option.  Not to allow for antisemitism nor to allow for the decay of our legal foundations.  The way through the waters to the promised land is paved with our voices and our belief that we can have and deserve both a nation and a society in which we are safe and in which our lives are protected under the shelter of due process. 

It was not Moses or his staff that parted the waters that day.   It was a man, Nachshon the son of Amminadab, who looked around and said that there must be another option.  Neither willing to die at the hands of the Egyptians nor willing to drown, Nachshon believes deeply that God will ultimately come to save.  So, he takes the first steps into the water, before anyone else, and he keeps going until the water is up to his nostrils.  Only when he is almost fully engulfed does God finally part the waters for all the people.  Nachshon had such deep faith to take those steps, and real courage.  To take the steps onto a third path is not easy.  It can be overwhelming and scary.  It requires a lot of courage and the expectation of discomfort.  But we have no choice; our other options are untenable. 

We all have to be Nachshons, declaring that there is a dry path before us, if only we take it.  We all have to be Nachshons believing in the promise of a better future and willing to do the work to get to it.  Willing to say that neither of the easy paths is safe for us, so we will forge a new path.  When we take those first steps, when we live by the rules of our tradition which work in tandem with the rules of our free society, we call upon God’s presence to be at our side and ultimately to redeem us. 

There shall be one law for stranger and citizen alike.  No state shall deprive any person of due process of law.  

We are at the border of the sea.  The Pharaoh is behind us and closing in.  Do we have the courage to take the first steps?

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach

[1] Ex 12:49

Israel Today and Tomorrow

A version of this sermon was delivered at Temple B'nai Torah - A Reform Congregation on Shabbat Ki Tissa 5783, March 10, 2023

            I became a citizen of the United States in 2006.  After the one-sentence English test and the 10 question American History oral exam, all the new citizens are brought into a room to take the oath.  Just before taking the oath, the group and any visitors are shown two videos.  One, a message from the sitting president, welcoming us as new citizens.  Then, they show us the music video for the song “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood.  Don’t get this confused with Irving Berlin’s God Bless America.  No this is the country-rock anthem.  The chorus has the following lyrics.

            “I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free.

            And I won’t forget the men who died who gave that right to me.

And I'd gladly stand up next to you, And defend Her still today

'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land

God Bless the U.S.A.”

         On that day, I was so proud to finally be an American.  I had waited so long to take that oath.  I was denied citizenship once, which is a story for another time, but on that day, I was proud.  Flag-wavingly proud.  I finally had the right to vote and the ability to add a US Passport to my Israeli one.  But, it was 2006.  And the sitting president whose greeting I heard was George W. Bush.  And, without getting into it too deeply, and in what is no shock to any of you, I’m sure, I was not so proud of that man as our President.  I was not proud of the anti-gay marriage fervor that helped keep him in office in 2004.  I was not proud of the unjustified and destabilizing vanity war being waged in Iraq.  And so there I was, a new American, deeply proud of my country, raising my hand, swearing allegiance, and at the same time not proud of its government and many of its actions. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about the juxtaposition of those two videos they showed us and how they brought up conflicting emotions of pride and shame.  These are emotions I’ve felt comingled again as Israel’s government has not lived up to the promise of its founding documents and principles, most recently with the crisis over the courts.  In the last few years, Israel has had election after election, a byproduct of its fractured society.  In that respect, Israel is no different than many other nations in this day and age of polarization.  In the last few years, Israel has barely had a stable government for more than a year at a time, as factions which used to get along or at least be willing to work together have polarized and decided that they will not work with each other.  In this most recent election, a governing coalition came together with the most extreme right-wing-religious parties.  This is not a government to be proud of.  This is not a government that is seeking to promote a Zionist vision for Israel that I believe in.  But, just because we have issues with the government, does that mean we stop our support for the nation?  Do we stop waving that flag?

How are we supposed to respond to this current crisis?  How can we be proud of and support Israel at a time like this?  Can and should we even be Zionists in a time like this?  Should we be Zionists anymore if this is what Zionism has come to, a government where ministers call for the wiping out of an Arab town, a government that is predicated on expanding settlements rather than achieving a lasting peace?  A government that traffics in antiquated religious sensibilities that run contrary to the majority of Israelis’ viewpoints and practices?

The short answer is yes, we need to be Zionists.  Yes, we need to support Israel.  But it may be time for us to change what that means for our community and for ourselves as individuals.  As this evening’s worship shows us in deep and powerful ways, as much as Judaism survives throughout the eras and generations, it also constantly adapts.  It is nimble, our Judaism, and it always has been.  Anyone who tells you otherwise is at best misreading history.  Our relationship with Israel hasn’t always been one way.  As is often demanded of American Jews, our relationship has been: yes Israel, right or wrong.  As the times change, so too must our relationship with our homeland.  And as Judaism and humanity progresses, so too must our Zionism. 

In 1885, a meeting of the Central Conference of American Rabbis in Pittsburgh declared the following: “We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.”[1]  We are no longer a nation, these Rabbis said, but a faith group.  We are no longer expecting to go back to Zion.  We do not hope for a Jewish State.  This is 1885.  Before Dreyfuss, Before the first Zionist Congress.  This is 1885 in a time of expanding rights for Jews across Europe and America.  What need did our people have for a homeland when every nation was now a homeland?  It was also, of course, a time of violence and pogroms across Eastern Europe, leading to waves of immigration of more traditionally minded Jews to these shores.

            But of course, these Pittsburgh ideas were not universally shared beliefs among American Jews, and Zionism became a fixture in Jewish circles.  By the early 1920s Rabbi Stephen Wise opened his Jewish Institute of Religion in New York in competition to the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati.  The JIR was proudly Zionist and in favor of free pulpits, rather than clergy hemmed in by their boards, prevented from speaking as they wish.  In the long run, we know Rabbi Stephen Wise’s direction for Reform Judaism, once on the fringe, became the norm.  Pulpits are by and large free, and as a movement we are unabashedly Zionist.

            In 1937, Reform Leaders once again gathered, this time in Columbus, OH.  Fascism was on the march in Europe.  The era of expanding rights for Jews and other minorities in Europe had ended.  An era of contraction and unimaginable destruction was on the horizon.  That, coupled with the growth of the Zionist project in Palestine, meant that Reform Judaism had to shift its perspective.  The Columbus Platform stated about Israel: “In the rehabilitation of Palestine, the land hallowed by memories and hopes, we behold the promise of renewed life for many of our brethren. We affirm the obligation of all Jewry to aid in its upbuilding as a Jewish homeland by endeavoring to make it not only a haven of refuge for the oppressed but also a center of Jewish culture and spiritual life.”[2]  By 1937, Reform Jews in America were supporting the project of Israel, in favor of it, even if not necessarily for themselves, and cognizant of its potential role and importance as a place of refuge for their coreligionists.  How prescient they were, and how unfortunate that the land did not become such a refuge for 6,000,000 of our siblings. 

            By the 1976 conference in San Francisco, the Reform Platform included the following:

We are privileged to live in an extraordinary time, one in which a third Jewish commonwealth has been established in our people’s ancient homeland. We are bound to that land and to the newly reborn State of Israel by innumerable religious and ethnic ties…We have both a stake and a responsibility in building the State of Israel, assuring its security, and defining its Jewish character. We encourage aliyah for those who wish to find maximum personal fulfillment in the cause of Zion. We demand that Reform Judaism be unconditionally legitimized in the State of Israel.[3]

This is in the aftermath of the six-day war and the Yom Kippur War.  Israel is no longer a small little nation; it’s now asserted itself.  Jerusalem is now under Jewish control and the Reform Movement has already established its campus there.

            By 1997, the Reform Rabbinate focused a declaration solely on Zionism.  In that document, we read: “Even as Medinat Yisrael serves uniquely as the spiritual and cultural focal point of world Jewry, Israeli and Diaspora Jewry are inter-dependent, responsible for one another, and partners in the shaping of Jewish destiny.”  The responsibilities enumerated for those of us in the diaspora deal with security, peoplehood, connection and focus on Hebrew.  The responsibility for Israel was described as follows:

Medinat Yisrael exists not only for the benefit of its citizens but also to defend the physical security and spiritual integrity of the Jewish people. Realizing that Am Yisrael consists of a coalition of different, sometimes conflicting, religious interpretations, the Jewish people will be best served when Medinat Yisrael is constituted as a pluralistic, democratic society. Therefore we seek a Jewish state in which no religious interpretation of Judaism takes legal precedence over another.

Has Israel lived up to its end of the bargain?  Given that Israel had no say, perhaps it’s better to ask whether our hopes for what Israel could be for us have been met?  The answer, particularly today, as we orient our hearts to the east is no.  Israel does not allow for equality of the various streams of Judaism.  Israel does not recognize our leaders as clergy, nor our life cycle as valid under religious auspices.  Israel allows for discrimination against women, minorities, and liberal Jews in the religious sphere.  And because religion and life are so intertwined there, it bleeds over into the society as a whole.

And yet, as the nation of my birth, and the homeland of our people, I still love Israel and still hope for the best version of Israel to emerge from this melee, for the prophetically called people to live up to the aspirations of peace and justice and light, for the society to allow for the variety and diversity that makes Israel so beautiful and special.  I believe it is still possible.  Because to be a Zionist today must mean not just supporting Israel, but pushing Israel to be the best version of itself.  The protestors in the streets these last two months agree.  They want an Israel that is democratic, predicated on social justice, and free for all.  They desire an Israel that strives for peace and security, that follows the rule of law, and that is not led by cult of personality.

            So, what’s happening now, and how do we respond to it?  If our heritage is one of looking at the changing times and adapting alongside them, what ought our next step be, and how do we do that in such a way that also keeps our connection to our history and our emotional and spiritual connection to this place that we call our homeland?  How do we maintain our pride?

At the root of the current crisis is the reality that Israel, though a parliamentary democracy, has no constitution.  There is no document that guides the way the government works.  There are laws that have been passed by the Knesset known as “Basic Laws” which guide and govern the functioning of the state and its institutions, and those laws together form a sort of constitution, though not codified or ratified by the populace.  Because Israel is a parliamentary democracy like the UK, what we know of as the Executive Branch of government is formed by members of the legislative body.  So the law makers are also the law enforcers.  This works well when there is a robust and independent court system whose role it is to overturn any laws that undermine certain basic human rights, or which go against the Declaration of Independence.  The Supreme Court of Israel is then the only place the minorities or protected classes can find any recourse from a law passed by the Knesset or a municipal policy.

The governing coalition is seeking with great haste to pass a law which will give the legislature, the Knesset, the ability to overturn any supreme court decision with a simple majority of 61 votes.  They have rebuffed President Herzog’s request to slow down the process.  The changes mean that any governing coalition, right, left, or center, can overrule the Supreme Court, on any case.  Rights of Arab Citizens of Israel, the Druze, Women in the public sphere, liberal Jews, Bedouins, the LGBTQ+ community, all minorities really are all therefore at the whim of whoever happens to be in charge. 

According to the coalition, this is a reform meant to check the power of a corrupt and overly powerful and influential state institution.  According to the opposition, while the court may indeed need reforms, this is a judicial putsch designed to centralize power in the Prime Minister’s office.  It is a turn away from a democracy, imperfect though it may be, to an illiberal democracy akin to Hungary, where the leader is not questioned or challenged.  According to the former VP of the Supreme Court, who spoke to the assembled Reform Rabbis in Jerusalem, Elyakim Rubinstein, this is akin to removing the Senate from the judicial confirmation process in America.  It removes a check and balance on which the society relies in order to function for all.

This is a leap toward dictatorship, or at least a step, the opponents say.  They are right.  Israelis have been coming out into the streets for the last number of weeks against this bill.  The most recent round of protests counted some 400,000.  That’s somewhere between four and five percent of the population.  That’s no small number.  In addition, the protests are growing.  There are reservists from elite units of the military, fighter pilots, security officials, entrepreneurs, and investors, all warning of the ramifications of the passing of this bill.  It will weaken the democratic character of Israel.  It is already causing a questioning of the chain of command, which for a nation whose military service is compulsory unless you’re Orthodox is a scary thought.  The pilots don’t want to serve for a nation that doesn’t live up to its ideals.  The reservists don’t want to serve a military which fights for a nation that doesn’t protect and preserve rights for all its citizenry.  The investors are worried that money will leave the country, alongside the talent.  Start-up nation may shut itself down.

At the protest I attended in Tel Aviv, along with 160,000 others, the chants were for first and foremost democracy: “de-mo-cra-tia!”  The chants were pro-democracy, pro-Israel, and pro-checks and balances.  At that protest, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, leader of the American Reform movement said:

We're here out of solidarity and out of concern, a concern shared by the vast majority of Diaspora Jews.  The Israel we love is Jewish AND democratic.  We can’t imagine a Jewish State that isn’t democratic but unfortunately there are those who can.  We know how precarious it can be to live as a minority. But we also know that our concepts of equal rights for all, our rule of law, our independent courts --our democracy—is what protect us.[4]

This is indeed a message that the leadership of the Reform Movement in 1885 could not have predicted.  Judaism changes.  Jews change.  Israel changes.  None of us should sit by as the land of our 2000-year hope becomes less than it could or should be after 75 years as a nationstate for the Jewish people.  None of us should be ok with this change because we feel that eternal connection, we know that something is different there for our people, no matter whether we drive on Saturday or not.

            It is time for us to change how we approach Israel and our Zionism.  It is time for us to invest in the places where the vision we have of Israel are most coming to fruition.  It is time for us to support wholeheartedly, and with all the shekels we can, the Reform Communities of Israel and the Israel movement for Progressive Judaism.

            One of the most powerful aspects of my recent trip to Israel was seeing the beauty, the diversity, and the joy in the Reform Jewish community in Israel.  Unlike a generation or two ago, where Reform Judaism was seen as an import from overseas, an American or European brand of Judaism incompatible with Israeli society and Israelis, today, Reform communities are thriving From Jerusalem to the Aravah to Haifa, even without government funding matching Orthodox institutions.  Thanks to the Hebrew Union College Jerusalem campus, Israelis are being trained as Reform Rabbis, bringing a different Judaism to the people: a Judaism that is inclusive, joyful, egalitarian, grounded in respect and dignity for all, and homegrown.  The melodies are familiar, but also there is a growth of Israeli Reform liturgy and music for it.  You know some of it from pieces we sing here.  Reform Judaism of Israel can establish the infrastructure to challenge racism, classism, inequality, and patriarchy.  They already do.  Israeli Reform Judaism is the product of and torch bearer for a Zionist vision that I can be proud of.  You want to support Israel, don’t plant a tree, don’t buy a bond, don’t send your money to AIPAC.  Send it to the IMPJ. 

            Just like at my citizenship ceremony, there are two videos playing before us today.  In one is an Israeli government which seeks to contract rights, mandate a particular form of Judaism, and consolidate power.  In the other, we see Israel brimming with potential, with those who seek a Jewish and Democratic state, with those who see that there is room for everyone and every expression of Judaism.  They see an Israel ready to make peace, an Israel ready to defend herself when necessary, and an Israel inspired by the prophets of God to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly.  They see the Israel of my dreams, of our hopes, and they need our help to make it so.  They represent the potential for a Zionism we can be proud of.  Let us help liberal Judaism thrive in our homeland, and let us work together to bring about the best iteration of our 2000-year old dream!  For, if we will it, it is no dream.

            Shabbat Shalom

---

[1] Pittsburgh Platform of Reform Judaism

[2] Columbus Platform of Reform Judaism

[3] Centennial Platform of Reform Judaism

[4] Rabbi Rick Jacobs's speech to the demonstration in Tel Aviv, February 25 2023

Rosh HaShanah Morning 5783: This Year is Next Year!

 A version of this sermon was delivered at Temple B'nai Torah - A Reform Congregtion in Wantagh, NY on Rosh HaShanah Morning 5783.

Every year, as these High Holy Days approach, rabbis across the country debate whether or not to touch on topics that might be too divisive.  “Shouldn’t we come up here onto our pulpits and speak words which unite?” many would say.  “Aren’t there enough things that we agree on?  Do you have to focus on those things which divide us?”  Well friends, we take our cues from the Prophets.  From Isaiah who calls us to righteousness.  From Jeremiah who calls us to end corruption in our institutions.  From Ezekiel who saw far into the future.  And so, I know that when the times call for it, it must be done.

Therefore, I begin my remarks this morning with some trepidation, and I ask that if what I am about to say offends you, you at least hear out my argument.  A couple of weeks ago, in Queens, not that far from us, The Chicago Cubs swept the New York Mets at CitiField.  It was so far the only sweep the Mets have suffered this season.

Now, trust me, I don’t bring this up to rub salt on a wound, because let’s face it, not only would that be a not great way to start 5783, but also it was not two weeks later that the Cubs were eliminated from the playoffs while the Mets have secured their spot.  I don’t bring up these three games, whose aggregate score was 15-6, to insult the Mets or their fans.  I don’t mention these three late season games to make myself feel better about a mediocre rebuilding year for my beloved North Siders.  No, I bring it up because of what those three games represented for Cubs fans like me.  

After a season of fewer ups than downs, a season of selling off some of the last pieces that came together in 2016 to finally win the World Series, a season of treading water, those three games in mid-September allowed for us wayward devotees of Wrigley to hold on, for just a little longer, to our most precious of commodities, our hope.  There was no real chance for the Cubs, yet those three games rallied the fans and made it all the easier when the time eventually came to say: “There is always next year.”  

Can you think of a more hopeful statement?

Even though we’ve had a rough go of things of late, experiencing more downs than ups, suffering so many losses one right after the other, even though it may feel like the last two years were an exercise in watching the world around us spin more and more out of control, our tradition teaches us that we are not allowed to give up on hope.  We are not allowed to look at our world and only see the problems before us.  We are not allowed to consider the world as unredeemable, our neighbors as unredeemable, ourselves as unredeemable.  We believe in redemption, calling out to God as the ultimate Redeemer.  We believe in a better future, even when our present is complicated.  We believe in hope.  It has been passed down to us.

As we take our first steps into 5783, let us do so with hope in the future and for the future.  Let us declare that today is next year!

What is it in our tradition that calls us to hopefulness?  The first of our ancestors to use the term was Jacob, who, from his deathbed, blesses his children in turn.  In the midst of his blessing for Dan, Jacob utters the phrase: “liyishuatecha kiviti Adonai, for your redemption, I have hoped, O Adonai.”   In this moment, Jacob is in the middle of blessing his sons and grandsons, setting them up for their future without him, teaching them one final lesson, and seemingly out of nowhere, he utters this call to the Eternal.  Some commentaries  explain this as separate from the blessing, as an aside by Jacob, perhaps due to his faltering health.  Others redouble the prophecy and read in an allusion to Samson.  

Jacob declares his hope at the end of his life, surrounded by the next generations.  Jacob has experienced all of life’s ups and downs.  He is the weaker twin, born second.  His mother manipulates him into coercing his father to giving him his brother’s rightful blessing.  He has to flee his home.  He is conned by his father-in-law.  The love of his life is taken too early from him.  His daughter is sexually assaulted.  His sons conspire to massacre a town and then sell one of their brothers to slavery, only to tell Jacob that Joseph is dead.  He endures so much trauma and hurt, enough that anyone would lose hope.

Yet we also know that God chooses Jacob over Esau.  That in being forced to work so many years, Jacob grows more powerful and wealthy than he could ever imagine.  The son he thought dead later becomes his and his family’s lifesaving provider and has risen to be vice-pharaoh of Egypt.  Along the way, he has seen angels come and go, and he even bested one angel in a wilderness wresting match.  His victory prompts the angel to rename him Yisrael.  

Rather than consider these words of hope in the midst of blessing as merely an aside, what power there is in considering them a part of the blessing to his progeny.  Jacob has lived a life.  And then, at the end, unprompted, Jacob reveals to us how he survived it all.  Hope.  God, I always hoped for your salvation.  It takes more than a blessing from a parent; and Jacob ought to know.  It takes hope.  

We are B’nai Yisrael, descendants of Jacob, blessed with that same hope in our spiritual DNA.  

What blessings of hope will we utter as we make our way into this new year?  What lessons about hope will we teach our children and grandchildren?  

Jacob teaches the generation after him an important lesson about what it takes to make it through this world.  It takes hope.  Jacob’s lesson is passed down through the generations.  Because, while the seed of hope is planted in Jacob’s sons, it is the daughters of Israel who will sow its yield.  

When the people of Israel cross the parted waters and are reborn into freedom and covenant, they honor God’s wonderous act with song.  In famous words, Moses and the people Israel sing a song of salvation and redemption: Who is like, you, O Adonai, among the Gods that are worshipped!?  And then Miriam, the Prophet, takes out her timbrel to lead singing and dancing, followed by all the women taking out their timbrels.  Nowhere earlier in the Torah does it tell us that the women readied their instruments.  Nowhere does the Torah indicate that the women were packing their drums.  We read about the unbaked bread, but no timbrels.  So, the sages, understandably, ask where the women got these “tupim,” these rhythmic instruments in the desert.

Well, sometimes the rabbis answer out of logic.  If the women had them, they must have packed them.  But, why would they?  The Midrash answers that the women packed them, because they were righteous, and because they knew that God would redeem them.  The women’s righteousness is their hopefulness.  Packing for celebration in the shadow of the devastation of Egypt is an act of hope.  The Israelite women have hope, even in the aftermath of enduring a terrible, genocidal regime, they hope in God’s salvation, they believe in it, they expect it.  So, they pack their instruments, always ready to break out into song.  Hopeful at every turn.

Imagine the scene in Egypt as they’re packing to go.  Imagine what their families say to them as they are packing the seemingly useless instruments.  You didn’t have time to raise the dough, but you remembered your drum?!

The drums are only useless if we think we’ll never have occasion to use them.  What timbrels will we pack for the year ahead?  What can we have at the ready so that we are prepared when our hopes come to pass, when we have no choice but to celebrate and dance?

As the inherited hope passed from of Jacob to the generation of the exodus, so too has that hope been come down to us.  Hope is our inheritance!

But is hope enough?  Is hope supposed to pay our grocery bills, our energy bills, our synagogue bills?  Is hope enough to end the difficulties we see all around us?

Of course not, and our tradition understands that alongside hope, more is sometimes needed.

When the people are ready to enter the Promised Land, Moses sends scouts to check it out before they make their way into it.  Is it even possible to conquer?  What’s in there anyway?  When the scouts return, 10 of them tell the people that they will not be able to conquer the land.  There are giants there and they will devour us!  There is no hope to fulfill God’s promise.  They spread this story among the people, causing them to lose hope as well.

But Joshua and Caleb come back and say that it is true that there will be challenges, but that with some hope, and knowing that God is on their side, they will be able to overcome anything laid out before them.  

What does this story teach us about hope?  It teaches us that the place of hope can sometimes be a lonely place.  Joshua and Caleb, the two scouts who come back hopeful, are the minority.  They are outnumbered.  It’s only through God’s intervention that their plan to move forward takes hold.  In spite of overwhelming negativity, they remain hopeful.

But Moses understands, perhaps from this episode, that hope is not enough.  And so at the end of his life, when he passes the mantle of leadership to Joshua, Moses tells the people and tells Joshua exactly what they need.  Chazak v’ematz, Moses tells the people, and then Joshua.  Alongside hope, you need strength and courage.  Alongside hope, you need strength to make it through the difficult times.  Alongside hope you need courage to try and also courage to be ready for when, inevitably, hopes are dashed.

It is for this reason that the Psalms teach us to put these two ideas together.  At the end of Psalm 27, which we have been reading each day of the month leading up to the High Holy Days, in the last verse of that psalm, we read: קַוֵּ֗ה אֶל־יְ֫יָֹ חֲ֭זַק וְיַאֲמֵ֣ץ לִבֶּ֑ךָ וְ֝קַוֵּ֗ה אֶל־יְֹיָֽ Hope in the Eternal, be strong and courageous in your heart, and hope in the Eternal.  As we have been readying ourselves for these High Holy Days, these last words of Psalm 27 reverberate in our ears, leading us to next year.  Hope, strength, courage, and hope.  There is hope for our future, if we are only strong enough to make it there and courageous enough to fight for it.

I want to share one more story about hope, about Tikvah, because I know that when we use that word, we cannot help but think of Israel, whose National Anthem, Hatikvah, announces that we are a people of hope.

Some of you know that I spent about a week in Israel this past summer.  While I was there, I have to tell you, the traffic was…ungodly.  Why?  Everywhere you look, construction and infrastructure projects.  In Tel Aviv, I don’t think there’s a highway that’s not torn up, and major parts of the city are enduring a big dig for a new subway and surface construction for a new light rail.  Imagine if the LIE, Southern State, Northern State, Meadowbrook, and the Wantagh were all under construction at the same time, and also Hempstead turnpike and Jerusalem were too.  It was a mess.  It certainly took strength and courage to drive around!

And then, just a couple of weeks ago, Israel announced and touted a brand new tunnel that is a part of the entrance to Jerusalem, which will hopefully reduce the traffic burden on the holy city.  That tunnel and all that construction in Israel are symbolic of the od lo avda tikvateinu attitude, of the sense that our hope is not lost.  The tunnel represents a sense that the future is bright and busy and peaceful enough that this major highway tunnel was a good investment.  The tunnel and the subway and the light rail represent the hope that Israel is not going anywhere anytime soon.

So, what am I supposed to do about the Cubs?  Well, with all the strength and courage that I can muster, I hope for next year.  There is always next year.  Next year is unformed and void; it hasn’t been created yet.  It is potential awaiting formation, promise awaiting fulfillment.  Next year is a winning season.  Next year is traffic free.  Next year is a chance to do it right.  Next year is opportunity granted.

There’s always next year is a statement of hope.  Next year starts today!  Rosh HaShanah is a celebration of hope, called from mountaintop to mountaintop by blasts of the horn, celebrating the hopeful future that is laid out before us.  It reminds us that where we are going is not yet determined.

Will we bring our timbrels with us?  Will we teach our children the importance of hope, even when life can be difficult?  Will we maintain our hope, even when we are outnumbered, and trust that our hopeful vision is worth the strength and courage we will need to bring it about?

For we certainly know that it will take courage and strength to make the world into what we want it to be.  It will take courage and strength to make ourselves into what we aspire to be.  All of that is sure.  What is also sure is that we cannot and will not accomplish either of these sacred tasks without hope.

Shanah Tovah.

May this year be your next year!

Erev Rosh HaShanah 5781: Fail in the Most Beautiful Way

 A version of this sermon was delivered at Temple B'nai Torah - A Reform Congregation, on Erev Rosh HaShanah 5781, Friday, September 18, 2020.

In the world of international soccer, there is no more beloved team than Barcelona.  They are record breaking in terms of their achievements, holding more records than I have time to list this evening.  They are the fourth most valuable sports team in the world, and my nephew Myles can often be seen sporting their kit, though that is more my brother’s influence.  Apparently, Myles is more of an Arsenal fan.  Barcelona’s success is known worldwide, and other football clubs know what it means to come up against them.

Last year, Barça as they are known, met with Liverpool in the Champions’ League semi-final.  These games are played on aggregate scores, which means that two games are played, one at each home stadium, and at the end, the team with the most goals wins.  Well the first leg of the semi-final saw Liverpool lose 0-3 at Barcelona.  And then Liverpool lost its two star players to injury before the second match in Liverpool.  In response to these difficult odds…  In recognition of the longshot his team had been at the outset, and the even longer shot they had become, Liverpool head coach Jurgen Klopp had some words of wisdom for his team, who would need to score 4 goals in 90 minutes.  He told his team his plan: “Just try.  And, if we can do it, wonderful.  And if not, then fail in the most beautiful way.”

Fail in the most beautiful way.  A powerful statement and a difficult concept.  With these words, Klopp gave his players permission to not achieve success.  He gave them the opportunity to take all the pressure off the result and instead focus on the method.  Try hard, he told the team.  Try as hard as you can.  If you fail, let it at least be an effort worthy of a defeat playing the beautiful game.

The notion of failure, of not achieving our goals, has been on our minds so much these last months.  So many of us have faced disappointment after disappointment.  Many of us feel like we can’t seem to succeed at everything that was put on our plates.  Some of us feel like we haven’t succeeded at anything.  Many of us have had to juggle so much out of the ordinary, and then when things don’t go perfectly, or even well, or even mediocre, we judge ourselves for the failure. 

Failure is a part of success.  And so in this new year, as unknown challenges and pressures will mount around us, let us all take a cue from Coach Klopp: try, and if it cannot be, let us fail in the most beautiful way.  Let us put our efforts into our goals, but if and when they don’t pan out, let us all at least be able to say we tried beautifully and failed beautifully.  Because at the core, that’s what Coach Klopp was telling his team, that if the effort is beautiful, then the failure ought to be seen as something beautiful as well.

Our tradition has something to say about failure, and it starts at the very top!  Today as we celebrate Rosh HaShanah, we rejoice with blasts of the horn the anniversary of God’s creation.  Hayom Harat Olam, we intone at our Shofar service.  “This is the day of the world’s birth!”  Yet we know that while we celebrate today, 5781 years ago, things didn’t go so smoothly.

Adam and Eve can’t be trusted not to eat of the fruit.  The Evil Inclination goads the snake into causing trouble and mischief.  The first humans break the rules, and Eden, the paradise created for humanity’s every need, is lost forever.  Generation after generation of humanity show God that this grand project of creation, this crowning achievement of existence for which God contracted in order to make space, has only come to evil.  There is too much wickedness on the earth for God to abide.

“The Eternal saw how great was man’s wickedness on earth, and how every plan devised by his mind was nothing but evil all the time.  And the Eternal regretted that They had made man on earth, and God’s heart was saddened. The Eternal said, “I will blot out from the earth the men whom I created—men together with beasts, creeping things, and birds of the sky; for I regret that I made them.”[1]

God’s heart was saddened and filled with regret.  What powerful emotions from God.  The sadness of the failure, the regret over the outcome.  All leading to a rash decision.

We know what God does next.  God sends the flood, to wipe clean the earth of its wickedness.  “For in seven days’ time I will make it rain upon the earth, forty days and forty nights, and I will blot out from the earth all existence that I created.”[2]  God throws in the divine towel.  God decides that the project is too far gone, not even worth reforming, and that it’s time to start over.  God doesn’t give up on creation, God starts again.  Sometimes, it just doesn’t work.  Better to cut your losses and move on, right?  Sometimes, sure.

Nothing is impossible for God, and yet God still accepts that the first go around at creation was a failure.  God tried all that God could and still came up a little short. 

So, if God fails, what hope do we have?  Well, that’s not quite the point.  If God fails, why on earth should any of us believe that we’re not also going to make mistakes, that we’re not also going to put all our effort into something and come up short!?  But, when that happens, we have to remember that God failed beautifully.  When God describes the creation, over and over again, God says it was good, even very good!  But even things that start out good, don’t always end the same way. 

How many of us created pandemic and quarantine goals, like color-coded schedules for our kids, and gardens of vegetables to tend?  How many of us put together a list of all we wanted to accomplish now that we had some additional time around the house?  How many of us made it past a few weeks?  Probably some, and that’s great.  But a lot of us, and I include myself in this, especially if you were to see the state of my garden, just couldn’t keep it up.  Screen time went up for everyone.  Pants became optional.  The weight of everything we have been dealing with got to us.  The unexpected stresses of being home all the time and changing all our routines was too much to allow for our creations to flourish.  The weight of the reality around us was for some of us too much to hold onto while also aiming for these goals.  But we tried.  If we failed, we did so beautifully because we tried and aimed for success.

Now, we know that a reboot is how God responds to failure, but is that the best way?  To wipe clean and start over from scratch, eliminating all good with all bad?  Even God recognizes that this is not the ideal turn of events.  Once God starts over, God reminds us that never again will God destroy the earth.  One of the first things Noah does once out of the Ark is build an altar to God.  Then we read, “The Eternal smelled the pleasing odor [of Noah’s sacrifice], and the Eternal said to Themself: “Never again will I doom the earth because of man, since the devisings of man’s mind are evil from his youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living being, as I have done.”[3]  An interesting turn of phrase here in the Hebrew, which, when describing God’s inner monologue says:  Vayomer Adonai el libo: God spoke to God’s heart.  After reading of God’s sad heart before the flood, we now read that God speaks to God’s heart, to comfort it, to make a promise.  God speaks to the heart of things and decides that even if things get bad again, God won’t seek to destroy and start over.

So, if the first example of responding to failure, shaking the etch-a-sketch clean, is less than ideal, what then?

To find another answer, we need to look closer to our own metaphysical realm as humans and think about Moses.  His story is marked with a series of difficulties and setbacks, and yes, failures in a beautiful way, though we don’t often consider them that way when we look at the totality of his life and achievements.

But let’s take Moses’s most famous accomplishment, freeing the people from Egypt.  Did he succeed?  Sure, just check the haggadah!  But before he succeeded, he failed.  Fully 11 times God sends Moses to Pharaoh in order to demand the people’s release.  Once with the staff and snakes and then 10 more times, once before each plague.  11 times.  Plague after plague, with the power of God behind him, and each time, he comes home to Tziporah and his neighbors with nothing to show for it. 

“Are we free yet, Moses?” 

“No, not yet.  But God’s cooking up something great for tomorrow!” 

“Whatever you say, Moses…How ‘bout now?” 

“Well, actually, now we have to make bricks without straw.” 

“Oh, well, thanks so much, Moses!  Some redeemer you turned out to be!”

Each time, Moses does what he is asked and sends a wave of destruction against Egypt.  Frogs, fleas, locusts, darkness, flaming hail, over and over, each time the answer ultimately, no.  Finally, after the 10^th plague, Pharaoh relents.  Moses has achieved success!  And then, just as they are about to taste freedom, Pharaoh’s mind and heart change, and he pursues the Israelites to the Sea of Reeds.  11 times Moses sought freedom for the people.  11 times he failed.  11 times Moses came before the Pharaoh.  11 times the people are disappointed.

Moses shows us the power of failing beautifully.  He does all he can with each attempt, and when it doesn’t work, he tries again.  Each time, he learns more and more about the power of failure.  And each time he comes back stronger.  Remember he didn’t even want to talk to Pharaoh to begin with!

“Was it for want of graves in Egypt that you brought us to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, taking us out of Egypt?  Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, saying, ‘Let us be, and we will serve the Egyptians, for it is better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness?”[4]  God may have hardened Pharaoh’s heart; the people blame Moses for the failure.

But Moses doesn’t give up.  He tries again.  As we read in Proverbs, “Seven times the righteous falls, and yet gets up.”[5]  He trusts in God, and he knows that if he has failed, he has done so beautifully, and he is willing to do so again.  It would take a miracle for the people to survive this!  Moses, bolstered by his previous attempts knows that God will come back again, tells the people not to fear, even before God tells Moses to part the waters.  And finally, Moses succeeds in freeing the people from Pharaoh’s grip.  Only took him 12 tries!

Moses not only learns as he goes, he learns about the importance of failure and learning from mistakes.  Only a few months later, as the Israelites are at the foot of Mt. Sinai, and Moses is up above talking to God, Moses and God experience a failure together as the people revolt against God, Moses, and Aaron, building the Golden Calf. 

God recognizes what’s going on.  “They have been quick to turn aside from the way that I enjoined upon them. They have made themselves a molten calf and bowed low to it and sacrificed to it, saying: ‘This is your god, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!’”[6]

God sees this as a failure.  The people have turned aside from me, God says.  They have acted basely, God tells Moses.  True to form, God has a suggestion about what to do next.  “Now, let Me be, that My anger may blaze forth against them and that I may destroy them, and make of you a great nation.”

Moses, however, has learned what it means to pick up and try again.  It is only in trying again that the failure can truly be beautiful.  “But Moses implored the Eternal his God, saying, “Let not Your anger, O Eternal One, blaze forth against Your people, whom You delivered from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand.  Let not the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that He delivered them, only to kill them off in the mountains and annihilate them from the face of the earth.’ Turn from Your blazing anger, and renounce the plan to punish Your people… And the Eternal renounced the punishment God had planned to bring upon God’s people.”[7]

In response, Moses heads down the mountain with the tablets of the Ten Commandments, and upon seeing the ruckus down below, in anger and frustration after having defended the people, he smashes the tablets and punishes the people.  Moses has failed again, this time in bringing the word of God to the Israelites. 

Ultimately, Moses will need to go back up to reinscribe a new set of tablets.  But when the time comes to place the tablets in the Golden Ark, whose cherub’s wings serve as the shelter of God’s presence amidst the people, both the broken set and the whole set are placed alongside each other for the journey ahead.  We learn from our failures when we bring them with us.  We learn from our failures when we build on what was and try again.  And when we do all of that, we fail beautifully because we did not give up and we did not give in.

It took a lot of miracles for the Israelites to escape to freedom.  It also would have taken something akin to a miracle for Liverpool to score four goals in 90 minutes in order to beat the powerful Barcelona.  And yet, that’s exactly what happened.  Barcelona was defeated.  Because Liverpool was given the freedom to fail, but to do so with integrity of effort and gumption, they succeeded.  Because they allowed themselves the freedom to not achieve everything ahead of them, they in fact accomplished more than anyone thought they could.  Liverpool didn’t cower and run away.  They didn’t lose faith.  Instead, they accepted that it might not go their way and continued to play hard.

We have to imagine that Moses, somewhere around the 6^th plague, had a sense that each time he went to Pharaoh, he was going to be rejected.  And yet, he did not flee from potential failure.  He did not lose faith.  Instead he faced it head on and ultimately succeeded.

This year 5781 begins as there is so much uncertainty around us.  Can I tell you something that is certain?  We will all fail at something in the year ahead.  We will all have plans that go sideways and opportunities that we miss, and goals we won’t score.  But, if we make a commitment to ourselves tonight, that each challenge we face will be with the understanding that if we must fail, we ought to do it beautifully, well then, maybe we just cut ourselves a little slack.  And maybe the failures of the year ahead may lead us not to despondency for what we did not achieve, but to pride in how we did not achieve it, pride in our beautiful failures.  And then to the realization that we can try again.

Here’s to a year of beautiful failures!

Shanah Tovah!

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[1] Genesis 6:5-7

[2] Genesis 7:4

[3] Genesis 8:21

[4] Exodus 14:11-12

[5] Prov. 24:16

[6] Exodus 32:8

[7] Ex. 32:11-12, 14