A Version of this sermon was delivered at Temple Emanu-El of East Meadow on Rosh HaShanah Morning, 5777.
“When you work with the b’nai mitzvah, you have them for life!” This I learned from Lenny Kravitz. No, not from the musician; but from my teacher, the professor of Medieval Jewish Philosophy while I was in seminary. My professor has been around a lot longer than the musician, so he would call himself the original Lenny Kravitz. Rabbi Kravitz walks with a limp, due to his having one foot in this world and one foot in the world to come, he would joke with us, as he walked away, muttering in Yiddish. He preached, again and again, the importance of creating long-lasting relationships with our students. They have much to teach us, he reminded us constantly; and if you want them to grow to be Jews who care about their Judaism, their community, and their relationship with God and the tradition, you have to be in relationship with them. You have to work with them one on one.
“When you work with the b’nai mitzvah, you have them for life!” This I learned from Lenny Kravitz. No, not from the musician; but from my teacher, the professor of Medieval Jewish Philosophy while I was in seminary. My professor has been around a lot longer than the musician, so he would call himself the original Lenny Kravitz. Rabbi Kravitz walks with a limp, due to his having one foot in this world and one foot in the world to come, he would joke with us, as he walked away, muttering in Yiddish. He preached, again and again, the importance of creating long-lasting relationships with our students. They have much to teach us, he reminded us constantly; and if you want them to grow to be Jews who care about their Judaism, their community, and their relationship with God and the tradition, you have to be in relationship with them. You have to work with them one on one.
There’s not much from Rabbinical
School that I took as literally as this statement. It’s why each of our
b’nai mitzvah works with me to prepare a full d’var Torah for their bar or bat
mitzvah. But Rabbi Kravitz was also emphasizing an important value of
Judaism, which we learn from Pirke Avot, the ethics of our forebears, that “we
learn much from our teachers, even more from our colleagues, but the most we
learn is from our students.”[1]
It is true. In teaching we learn more, and when we are in a
powerful relationship, we open ourselves up to all that the other has to offer
us, regardless of their age, experience, or training. These powerful
relationships are not always, but can become, through our work, intentional,
covenantal relationships.
Judaism is based on the notion of
covenant: a relationship in which there is a back and forth, a sense of
reciprocity. It’s not always equal, and it’s not always easy; but to be
in a covenant is to agree on terms and abide by them. As Jews, we strive
to be in covenant with God, but also with our communities, with our families
and with ourselves. On this Rosh HaShanah and in the year ahead, let us
resolve to work on renewing each of our covenants.
The idea of and the phrase “renewing
our covenants” comes from another one of my professors, Rabbi Dr. Eugene
Borowitz, alav hashalom, who passed away this past January. He was the
preeminent Reform Jewish philosopher and theologian of the last half century, a
towering figure in the Liberal Jewish world, and he helped to put into words an
understanding of what it means to live as a Jew in the present day.
In his work, Dr. Borowitz strives to make
sense of a world after the Holocaust, a world where ethics are not and cannot
be considered relative. There is a universal ethical standard. He
teaches, that we come to understand our ethics, the ways in which we understand
right and wrong, through two complementary and equally important forces: a
commanding God and our autonomous selves. This means that to live a good
life we have to, respect and honor what God asks of us, and at the same time
give credence to what we are moved to do by our nature. Though we may not
understand God, we can feel compelled by God to act in the right way. In
renewing our relationship with God, by giving God a seat at the table when we
make a decision, we internalize our autonomy and our tradition simultaneously,
and emerge more ethical and more responsive to the world around us.
By engaging with our religion, and with a God
who asks of us, we renew the covenant which began all those years ago with
Abraham, who was promised progeny and property simply for obeying God. It
renews the covenant which was etched in stone at that powerful moment at Sinai,
which our people resoundingly accepted with the cries of “na’aseh venishmah!
/ all that you have spoken we will do and we will hear!” That pivotal moment at
Sinai for which each of our souls was present. It renews the covenant
which was solidified in Moses’ final speeches to the people:
You stand this day, all of you, before the Eternal
your God—your tribal heads, your elders and your officials, all the men of
Israel, your children, your wives, even the stranger within your camp, from
woodchopper to water drawer—to enter into the covenant of the Eternal your God,
which the Eternal your God is concluding with you this day, with its sanctions;
to the end that God may establish you this day as God’s people and be your God,
as God promised you and as God swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob.[2]
With
these words in Deuteronomy, Moses reminds the people of their history, of the
relationship that has always existed between them and God. And he makes a
point to remind the people, namely us, that this covenant is between God and
everyone. Men, women, children and even those who are strangers in the
camp. It doesn’t matter what you do, what your status is, or where you
came from, the covenant is open to all. We are the sands on the
shore that God promised Abraham. We are the stars in the sky.
How do we observe our covenant with God
faithfully? We do so by engaging in the commandments. Does this
mean we’re supposed to become Orthodox? No. But, there is something
to learn from those who commit to a life of honoring each of the available
commandments. While we may not agree with how they interpret Jewish law
and practice, a commanding God plays an active role in their decision making
process. Most of us don’t live this way; but, what would it mean if we
started to, even with one action a day?
The Talmud[3]
gives a powerful answer to this question of how we are to begin to live a life
of commandedness. We learn that the 613 commandments are consolidated.
The Talmud[4]
teaches that King David came and reduced the 613 to 11 principles, which make
up Psalm 15 and include such actions as walking uprightly, speaking truth, not
slandering, not taking bribes, and scorning the wicked. Then, the Prophet
Isaiah comes to reduce them to six: walking righteously, speaking uprightly,
despising oppression, denying bribes, not listening to slander and not looking
upon evil. Then the prophet Micah reduces them to three: Do justly, love
mercy, walk humbly with God. Finally, the prophet Amos reduces them to
one overarching commandment from God: Seek me and live. Dorsheini
vichiyu! Seek out God. Desire to have a relationship with God.
Desire to be a part of God’s covenant. That’s all we have to do.
On this day when we resolve to work on who we will become in the year
ahead, all we have to do is seek out God to be a part of God’s covenant.
So, we are left with a question: what
does it mean to seek out God? What does it mean to desire to be in a
relationship, to be in a covenant with God? To truly understand what this
means, we ought to turn to Maimonides, the sage of Golden Age Spain, who would
remind us that all that we can truly know about God is bound by our human
capacity. We cannot ever understand God fully, for we are mere humans,
but we can and indeed should use our experiences, our language, and our human
abilities to get as close as we can to that understanding. So, if we
desire to know what it means to be in covenant with God, if we desire to
understand how we go about renewing our covenant with the Eternal, we have to
look to the relationships and the covenants we have on the earthly plane:
namely, the covenants with our community, with our families and with ourselves.
By committing to renewing these covenants in the year ahead, we will come
to understand our covenant with God and how it may be renewed as well.
The Covenant with our Community
Hillel the elder is famous for
teaching the entire Torah on one foot. The well-known story from the
Talmud goes that a Roman soldier comes to Hillel’s friend and intellectual
adversary Shammai asking to convert to Judaism, but only if Shammai can teach
him all of the Torah while standing on one foot. Shammai scoffs at the
man and sends him away. The soldier then comes to Hillel with the same
request. Hillel says simply: What is hateful to you, do not do to your
fellow. The rest is commentary, now go and learn it.[5]
This iteration of the golden rule gets at the notion of a universal
ethic, but it was not until working with a student this past year that I
understood this golden rule as a covenantal statement.
Working with Noah Diamond, one of our
fine 7th graders at the time,
preparing for his Bar Mitzvah, he determined that the key idea in his Torah
portion was covenants. And so we discussed. “What’s an example of a
covenantal statement you know from the Torah?” I asked him.
He thought for a moment, and replied with the
Torah’s version of Hillel’s golden rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”[6]
There is a true beauty and simplicity in this revelation. We were
all at Sinai, but God’s revelation continues, and all we need do is listen for
it. Much have I learned from my teachers, even more from my colleagues,
but the most from my students.
V’ahavta lereacha kamocha. Love your neighbor
as yourself is indeed a covenantal statement, because it is about relationship.
It is about how we treat others and how we expect to be treated by them.
It is about empathy. God could have said simply: love your
neighbor. Love is all you need, right? But not for God, because God
demands that we not only love our neighbor, but that we see ourselves in them
and them in us. God demands that we commit to understanding who they are
as a means of showing that love.
Hillel was also famous for saying: “Al
tifrosh min hatzibbur / Do not separate yourself from the community.”[7]
Being part of a community means recognizing that each of us has a role.
It means understanding that we are able to do more when everyone
participates. There is a reason we are supposed to pray in community.
It is because when we are together in prayer, we see where our neighbors
are, what they need, how they are doing. We come to know the seasons of
their lives, and they come to know ours.
But Al Tifrosh also means remembering
that you are needed in the community. It means that when you can, you
come and help make a minyan so a neighbor can say kaddish, the same way you
would hope that someone would come for you.
When we commit to this relationship with our
community as covenantal, as being pursued because God asked us to love our
neighbors as ourselves, we open a window to the Divine. We make ourselves
responsible for each other, we care about what happens to each other and we
reach out when others are in need, or in mourning, or lonely, or struggling to
get by. It means we celebrate with our neighbors, too. When we live
this covenant, we create spaces of respect and cooperation where differences
are valued. V’ahavta lereacha kamocha. Love your neighbor as
yourself.
Our covenants with our Families
This morning we read the powerful
story of the binding of Isaac. Often we focus on Abraham and his
perspective, but this morning, let us focus on Isaac and Sarah. Much is
learned by the words that come immediately after this scene on Mt. Moriah, the
first words of the next Torah portion, known as Chayyei Sarah.
“Sarah’s lifetime—the span of Sarah’s life—came to one hundred and
twenty-seven years.”[8]
Immediately after the scene where Abraham almost sacrifices his son, we
learn that Sarah dies. The ancient rabbis teach that when two things
happen, one right after the other in the Torah, we understand that the first is
the cause of the second. Her grief and sadness over the binding of Isaac
is the cause of Sarah’s death.
But the Midrash teaches that even in the
midst of the worst moment, as he is tied to the altar, Isaac expresses concern
for his mother. From the Midrash[9]
we learn that Isaac, as his father lifts the knife, makes a final request.
“Father, do not tell my mother [of my death] when she is standing by a
pit or when she is standing on the roof, lest she cast herself down and die.”
In his fear, in his trembling, after he has finally realized what his
purpose is, what he is there for, Isaac does not plead with Abraham for his
life, but for his mother’s. He knows her well enough to know how this
affects her. Their relationship is so strong and close. In this
moment he thinks not of himself, but only of Sarah. And it is at this
moment, when Isaac puts his mother before him, the midrash goes on, that a
heavenly voice comes forth and says to Abraham “Do not raise your hand against
the boy!”
When Isaac puts his family first, God’s
presence is made manifest. Isaac gives us a key to the covenantal nature
of family. We are willing to give more for our families than for anyone
else. And we expect more of them. The covenantal relationship
between Isaac and both his parents is on display when he assents to his
father’s plans, even after he recognizes them for what they are and when he
asks about his mother.
Do we put our families first as often as we
can? Do we take the time we have with them for granted or do we cherish
the moments together? Do we regularly recognize the gifts that are those
who know us better than we may even know ourselves? Do we do enough to tell
them that we love them and that we appreciate them? Do we ask often
enough if they need our help? Do we ask forgiveness of them enough?
Do we forgive them enough?
When we do what we can for our families, and
see our family members’ real needs, when we put our family’s well-being first,
we call out God’s presence, and embrace our covenant.
Our Covenants with Ourselves
I have one more quote from Hillel for you,
once again from Pirke Avot. “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
But if I am for myself alone, who am I? And If not now, when?” [10] This
famous statement is indeed covenantal. It never struck me as such, until
this year, and truth be told, I would not have come to understand it as such
were it not for Noah Diamond, who taught me that God’s covenant is hiding
almost everywhere, if only we look for it.
When Hillel teaches these words, he intends
to remind us that of all the people that we are in some way or another
responsible for, that we care for, that we look after, we ought not forget
ourselves. “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” tells us that it
is ok to think of ourselves and ensure we’re doing ok. And this statement
comes first because it is true that if we don’t take care of ourselves, we
cannot be there for others. Our covenantal relationships cannot be
sustained if they are out of balance. If we give too much of ourselves,
and don’t look after ourselves, we may ultimately collapse. There is no
perfect equation or proportion, which is why Hillel asks the question rather
than gives the answer.
Are our needs being met? Are we making
the best choices we can for ourselves so that we can be there for others?
Are we looking at our own health of mind, body, and soul as a tool to
allow us to live in covenant with each other? Do we forgive ourselves
enough?
It is not selfish to care for ourselves; it
often allows us the strength to be there for others. It is also not
selfish to accept help from others when offered. We cannot be only for
ourselves, but neither should we neglect ourselves.
If not now, when? This phrase,
immediately following the other two is to teach us that we are to constantly
seek covenantal relationships, but we cannot do so until we make a covenant
with ourselves. What will we resolve to do in the New Year to take better
care of ourselves? What will we add to our routines and what will we take
out? What will we give up and what will we accept? What will we
learn in the coming year? How will we challenge ourselves to grow in the
coming year? How will we cut ourselves some slack?
Hillel here brings in a sense of listening to
ourselves and our needs, as individuals. Alongside the commanding God, we
must listen to our inner voice, which tells us when we need to slow down, when
we need to recharge, when we need to say no. When we listen to our bodies
and our souls, and pay attention to their messages, we give credence to a part
of ourselves which Dr. Borowitz describes as critical to being a Jew in our
times. We cannot be for ourselves alone, and we cannot be for others alone.
And we expect the same of our neighbors. This is what it means to
be in covenant.
When Rabbi Kravitz taught us about working
with the B’nai Mitzvah, he was talking about creating a covenantal
relationship, where each finds value, each finds purpose and each finds
meaning. He was talking about the kind of relationship where the two
emerge changed for the better. He taught that because of this covenantal
bond, we will “have them for life” and this makes sense, because a covenant is
to be eternal. Our covenant with God is eternal. By seeking out the
covenants in our lives, with our communities, with our families and with
ourselves, we come to see and feel the presence of God in our lives, and by
embracing and renewing these covenants, we renew our dedication to and
relationship with God.
The blessing we say when we see a rainbow
goes as follows: Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech haolam, zocher hab'rit
v'neeman biv'rito v'kayam ma-amaro. / We praise You, Eternal God, Sovereign
of the universe, who remembers, is faithful to, and fulfills Your covenant with
and promise to creation. God’s covenant with all of humanity is sealed
with the rainbow Noah sees after the flood. This blessing reminds us that
God has, so far, upheld God’s part of our covenant. We are still here,
and the world keeps spinning.
May 5777 be the year that we remember, renew,
and fulfill our covenants.
Shanah Tovah.
[1] Pirke
Avot 4:6
[2] Deut.
29:9-12
[3] This
textual citation inspired by Rabbi Nikki DeBlosi, PhD.
[4] TB
Makkot 23b
[5] After
TB Shabbat 31a
[6] Leviticus
19:18
[7] Pirke
Avot 2:5
[8] Genesis
23:1
[9] Tanhuma Vayera 23, Based on: http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/sarah-midrash-and-aggadah
[10] Pirke
Avot 1:14
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