A version of this sermon was delivered at Temple Emanu-El of East Meadow at Kol Nidre 5778.
Kol Nidre. All our vows. On Yom Kippur we spend much of our time looking backward. Who were we in the last year? What did we do in the last year that was worthy of praise? Where did we err? Where did we miss the mark? Where were we kind? Where did our baser instincts get the best of us? All day, we look back; we repent for what we have done. And yet, at the beginning of our fast, as we take the first step on this 25-hour journey of purification, supplication, and abstinence, we look ahead. The abridged version of the Kol Nidre sounds like this, all the promises we make between tonight and next Yom Kippur, don’t really think of them as promises, because we know we won’t keep them.
Kol Nidre. All our vows. On Yom Kippur we spend much of our time looking backward. Who were we in the last year? What did we do in the last year that was worthy of praise? Where did we err? Where did we miss the mark? Where were we kind? Where did our baser instincts get the best of us? All day, we look back; we repent for what we have done. And yet, at the beginning of our fast, as we take the first step on this 25-hour journey of purification, supplication, and abstinence, we look ahead. The abridged version of the Kol Nidre sounds like this, all the promises we make between tonight and next Yom Kippur, don’t really think of them as promises, because we know we won’t keep them.
We look
forward, but not with hope. Rather, as
Catherine Madsen writes, “Kol Nidre is not an absolution, but a vote of no
confidence. It presupposes that we cannot be trusted: we make vows and fail
to fulfill them. We make the wrong vows,
we are inconstant, faithless and hapless.”[1] The Kol Nidre prayer, so beautifully and
movingly sung by our Cantor and choir this evening, preemptively recognizes
that we are not going to be as we want to be, hope to be, or wish to be. Life is not going to be as we want it to be,
hope it to be, or wish it to be. No, in
fact, life is often going to be hard. No
matter how hard we try to make it so, life will not live up to the expectations
we set for ourselves during this Yom Kippur.
Man, but if
this last year hasn’t proven the ancient Rabbi’s point! 5777 was a difficult year in a lot of ways,
and it didn’t live up to many of our expectations. There is much in the world that needs healing,
and much difficulty has come to pass in the last year.
Anti-Semitism has come roaring
back. We have seen this ancient hatred
bolstered on the right by the Alt-right movement, white-supremacists under
another name, dreaming of an ethnically cleansed America, emboldened by social
media anonymity, Russian interference, and an administration that traffics in
blatantly anti-Semitic imagery, messaging, and acquaintance, shouting "Blood and
Soil" and "Jews will not replace us."
Horrifying images, and shocking in America in 2017.
We see it coming from the left, as well, in the anti-Zionist movement and the BDS
supporters. According to the most
extreme on the left, Jews are the only group that doesn’t get the right to
self-determination. We are the only
people who don’t deserve a homeland, anywhere.
According to these folks, prominent on college campuses and hiding
behind innocuous names like Students for Justice in Palestine, and Jewish Voice
for Peace, Jews are akin to Nazis, guilty of the worst crimes against humanity,
and Israel ought to be a pariah state on its way to not existing. Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism because it
singles out Jews as a group and rewrites the history of the modern Jewish State
into a colonialist narrative that is historically inaccurate and intellectually
dishonest.
We Jews are caught betwixt and
between. But it’s not just on the
news. It’s in our high school, and
middle school, affecting our families, and causing us to rethink how we train
our kids for this new reality.
The climate is changing and seas
are rising, making winds blow stronger, storms more powerful, and weather less
predictable. Those in authority react
too late to the natural disasters and deny human involvement in the changes in
our atmosphere, exacerbating the problems for the next generation.
Guns continue to ravage this
nation. Since the start of the year,
there have been 333 mass shootings in this nation. 333.
Isis continues their fight in Iraq,
and the bloody quagmire of the civil war in Syria rages on, bolstered by
Russian weapons and a West unwilling to do more, because there is no good guy
to get behind. In Afghanistan the
Taliban is resurgent. There is ethnic
cleansing in Myanmar. North Korea has a
nuclear weapon pointed at us and our allies, and a leader seemingly unafraid to
use it.
In Israel, the government continues
to restrict the rights of liberal Jews and cede authority over religion to the
corrupt Rabbinical Authority, whose only interest is staying in power, not
furthering the cause of Judaism for the many.
The government there turns a blind eye to the detrimental effects of
settlement construction on the prospect for peace, and seems to have abandoned
the two-state solution.
In our own nation, racial and
societal tensions are seemingly at an all-time high. Women’s agency over their own bodies and
health choices are under attack. The
healthcare fight and tax code fight pit the few with power and money against
the many without either. Refugees
fleeing deadly conflict with only the clothes on their back find this nation’s
borders closed to them. There is an
opioid epidemic, coast to coast, taking lives, ruining families, and destroying
communities. Kids continue to go hungry,
even though we have more than enough food.
States and even the federal government continue to discriminate against
the LGBTQ community.
I could go on and on. Each day of this last year seemed to bring
new and difficult news. Each time my
phone buzzes with a NY Times alert, my heart beats a little faster, and I have
to steel myself for whatever may be coming.
Even if there is good news, like a first World Series victory in 108
years, or the powerful images of neighbors helping each other after the storms,
they are quickly overshadowed by the difficulties.
Each of these topics warrants a
sermon of its own on a day like today.
Each warrants our attention. Each
deserves a platform. And, truth be told,
I started a lot of those sermons in preparation for tonight. But each time I sat to write, the message
eluded me. Each topic seemed to be the
right one for this auspicious evening, the evening when we recognize our
mortality, and perch on the precipice of life and death. And yet, no single topic fit just right. The words did not come. The spirit did not guide me. The message did not form.
It is a tradition in Judaism that
we not end on a negative note or idea.
Sometimes, in a Haftarah for example, an extra verse is added or repeated
after the last verse, so that the portion ends on a positive note, word, or
idea, rather than a negative one. When
we read from the Torah, we don’t end on a negative thought; we try to finish
the Aliyah with a positive idea.
Likewise in preaching. Sermons
typically end with what’s called the nechemta, the moment of comfort for the
congregation, to recognize that hope, which we Jews hold on to more dearly than
anything except the Torah, is not lost.
Where is the nechemta this year?
Where is the hope? Where is the
comfort? Where will it come from when
the year ahead deals us its inevitable hardships?
I was looking in the wrong
place. I was looking outward for a
message of hope and comfort, when all along, as this day reminds us to do over
and over again, I was supposed to be looking inward. I was searching for some external thing that
would come and tell us all that things will be ok, and that we have reason to
hope. It was not to be found outside,
but inside.
In the year ahead, it is up to each
of us, and all of us, to work to be the nechemta, the comfort, the hope, when
the promises we make, and the promises God makes, are not kept. It is up to us to take that role and
responsibility, and work to make the nechemta come to be, to bring the hope and
the comfort this world sorely needs. Let
us vow this night, on the night when we recognize that the year ahead will be
filled with difficulties, let us vow to be the nechemta!
How do we do it? Well, first, let us recognize that we don’t
have to solve all these problems. That’s
not the point. We know we cannot do
that. But, just because we are not
required to finish the task, doesn’t mean we are free to desist from it.
Tomorrow afternoon, we will read
from chapter 19 of the book of Leviticus, known as the Holiness Code. It is called this because it begins with a
call from God: “And Adonai spoke to Moses, saying: ‘Speak to all the community
of Israel, and say to them: You shall be holy, for I, Adonai your God, am
holy.”[2] We are supposed to be holy, to be like
God. What does that mean? It means that we ought to channel our
divinely inspired instincts and qualities: the qualities of compassion,
generosity, and love. And, importantly for this day, the quality of
forgiveness. To bring comfort, we have
to be willing to forgive those who have wronged us, and that includes forgiving
ourselves.
God tells us what it means to be
holy in this chapter. Among the many
commands: Honor your parents. Keep
Shabbat. Do not steal. Do not deceive. Do not exploit your
neighbor. Do not take advantage of those
who are differently-abled. Don’t bear a
grudge. And then, right in the middle of
the reading, the greatest of the commandments: Love your neighbor as yourself. V’ahavta
l’reacha kamocha.
These commands, and the others I
didn’t mention, teach us what it means to live a life of holiness, one that
leads to being the nechemta. If
we look out for others as we look out for ourselves. If we honor and respect our traditions. If we listen to those with experience and
work to put aside differences, and not carry a grudge, we can become the nechemta
the world sorely needs.
But this chapter also has one more
lesson to teach us. Unlike the 10
Commandments which are in the singular in the Hebrew, most of these commandments
of holiness are given in the plural. Kedoshim
Tihiyu, which I will roughly translate as: Be holy, y’all! To be the nechemta requires
recognizing that we cannot do it on our own.
It requires being a part of a community, agreeing on what is right and
what is acceptable, and working together to bring about the comfort and the
hope the world cries out for.
Tomorrow morning, we will hear in
the Haftarah the famous words of the prophet Isaiah. “Is not this the fast I desire – to break the
bonds of injustice and remove the heavy yoke; to let the oppressed go free and
release all those enslaved? Is it not to
share your bread with the hungry, and to take the homeless poor into your home,
and never to neglect your own flesh and blood?”[3] It sounds like Isaiah would understand the
world we live in today. His time was
filled with callousness and cruelty, a focus only on the powerful and wealthy,
and not on the least fortunate, in direct opposition to the commands of the
Torah.
To be the nechemta, we have to help
those who are in need. If we can become
the hope or the comfort for even one person, we provide it for an entire world,
for the Talmud teaches that the soul of one is as the soul of an entire world. We are called to action by Isaiah, not prayer
or fasting, but action.
And Isaiah recognizes the powerful
effect of our actions and our desire and determination to become the
nechemta. “Then shall your light burst
forth like the dawn, and your wounds shall quickly heal, your righteous one
leading the way before you, the presence of Adonai guarding you form behind.”[4] When we reach out to those in need, when we
work to make the world better, we fill the world with God’s light and we become
the nechemta the world needs, and bring comfort and hope to those who need it.
Tomorrow afternoon, a number of
congregants will participate in a recitation of the Haftarah from the book of
Jonah. When Jonah arrives in Nineveh,
the large city, which takes three days to walk across, he is set to deliver
God’s message of doom to the city. He
makes it one day in and proclaims: “Forty days more, Nineveh no more!”[5] Jonah expects that, like him, the people of
Nineveh will not listen to God’s message.
He expects that, like him, they will try to flee from God and from their
obligation. But he is mistaken. In the very next verse, before Jonah even
says why God plans to destroy them, without even a moment in between for the
people to think about it, we read: “The people of Nineveh believed God.”[6]
The people proclaim a fast, the
king sits in sackcloth and ashes, and they are forgiven by God. Jonah doesn’t love the outcome. What he expected did not come to pass, and he
feels he was sent on a fool’s errand.
But we learn from the people of Nineveh the power of listening, and the
power of repentance, and atonement. If
we are to be the nechemta in the year ahead, we need to channel our inner
Ninevite, we need to listen, and be open to hearing even those messages we
don’t want to hear, and we need to be willing to change our ways when someone,
or God, tells us we’ve erred or missed the mark. We need to be willing to apologize and engage
in the process of self-reflection, every day of the year, not just on the 10th
of Tishre. To be the nechemta, we need
to be willing to be challenged to be better and do better.
Tomorrow morning, in the Torah, we
will read from the book of Deuteronomy the portion known as Nitzavim. It begins,
You stand this day, all of you, in
the presence of Adonai your God, your tribal heads, elders, and officials,
every man, woman, and child of Israel, and the stranger in the midst of your
camp, the from one who cuts your wood to the one who draws your water, to enter
into the covenant of Adonai your God, to establish you as God’s people and to
be your God.[7]
These verses renew the covenant with between the people and
God as they prepare to enter the Promised Land.
The list of
who was standing there is important. The
Torah tells us that to be the nechemta we have to make room for everyone, from
tribal head to water-drawer. Everyone
has a place and is it up to all of us to ensure that everyone has a place. When we make space for others, and work to
see in them the divine, the image of God implanted within, particularly when
they are ostracized or marginalized, we become the nechemta this world needs.
In
addition, we stand before God. To be the
nechemta sometimes requires taking a stand.
“The Talmud teaches, ‘If you see wrongdoing by a member of your
household and you do not protest – you are held accountable. And so it is in relation to the members of
your city. And so
it is in relation to the world.’ As Jews we are held accountable in
ever-widening circles of responsibility to rebuke transgressors within our
homes, in our country, in our world. One
medieval commentator teaches we must voice hard truths even to those with great
power, for ‘the whole people are punished for the sins of the king if they do
not protest the king’s actions to him.’”[8]
The words I just shared are, in
fact, words of protest. They have been
shared by hundreds of my Reform rabbinic colleagues across the nation in
fulfillment of our sacred obligation over these High Holy Days. Let us not be silent. Let us, without hesitation,
decry moral abdication wherever we see it, and always take a stand so that we
can be the nechemta the world needs.
The Kabbalists believe the world is
in a shattered state, and it is up to us to pick up the shards and repair them,
through the process of tikkun. Every act
of tikkun is an act of nechemta. Every
moment we spend working to fix what is wrong, is a moment we spread hope and
comfort to a world sorely in need.
No one knows what this next year
will bring. We only know that what we
expect will often not come to pass. But
we are not to be defeated by this knowledge.
No, we are to be emboldened to partner with God, to do the work of
providing comfort and hope, to be the nechemta.
I close this evening with Julie Silver’s Prayer for Fasting:
Do not wish me an easy fast.
Let my fast be difficult
Let me remember the hungry people of the world who have no choice,
no voice.
Let me understand that starvation and emptiness exist even
when there is plenty of food on the table.
And if my fast causes me pain, let me sit with the pain.
If my head throbs, let me handle it.
If my stomach grumbles, let me welcome the sound as I
welcome the shofar blast.
Let my fast be the call.
Let my life on earth be the response.
Amen.
G’mar Chatimah Tovah.
May we all be inscribed for life, blessing, comfort, and hope, in the New
Year.
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