Kol Nidre 5776: The Power of Speech

A version of this sermon was delivered at Temple Emanu-El of East Meadow, Kol Nidre, 5776.

Yom Kippur is a time machine. 

 You don’t believe me, probably, because Yom Kippur is not a stainless steel car with doors that open up. You don’t believe me because sometimes the day itself feels like it goes on forever. How can we be time traveling if it feels like our own watches aren’t even moving? Well, maybe you’re right. Maybe Yom Kippur isn’t a time machine for our bodies; but it is a time machine for our souls, and where we hope to go on Yom Kippur, well, to get there, we don’t need roads.

Yom Kippur allows us to look back at our past mistakes and make them right. And it allows us the opportunity to affect the future. It allows us to look at who we aim to be and work to make that happen. This day might not allow us literally to travel to that place, to make right what once went wrong, but it does allow us to change both history and the future. We change history by working to apologize, to speak our regrets, express our remorse, utter our contrition for any hurt and pain we have caused. We change the future by turning away from that part of us that caused the pain and hurt. We change the future by not letting the past dictate its outcome, by telling ourselves that we are supposed to work on this.

In the last year, perhaps in no realm has it become clear that we must send our souls through time to change the future than in the realm of our words and our speech.

Judaism understands speech as powerful. Speech creates. Speech changes. And, speech connects. Creation, change, and connection are all potent, positive, divine attributes of speech, but they are the hardest to come by. Easier, and for that reason more often utilized by our species, is the power that speech has to demolish, damage, and detach.

The world we have exists because of divine speech. “Bereishit bara’ Elohim et hashamayyim ve’et ha’aretz In the beginning of God’s creating Heaven and Earth, the earth was unformed and void.”[1] And then God spoke. God does a lot of speaking in the Torah. In the beginning, God speaks and suddenly there is order out of primordial chaos. God speaks and there is suddenly light and dark, earth and water, flora and fauna, fish and fowl, beast and human. Our tradition has always recognized the power of God’s speech.

“Baruch she’amar v’hayah ha’olam, baruch hu Blessed is the one who spoke and the world came to be, Blessed is God. Baruch oseh vereishit, baruch omer v’oseh Blessed is the one who creates everything, blessed is the one who creates by speaking.” Each morning we recite these words as the opening of psukei d’zimrah, the section of our morning service praising God for all God’s goodness, love, and gifts. And we begin by praising the creative power of divine speech.

But it is not just God’s speech which is noted as powerful. Rav Kook, the first chief Rabbi of Israel writes in an essay titled: The Power of Speech “Sometimes we can sense the connection between our speech and the universe…as our soul is elevated, we become acutely aware of the tremendous power that lies in our faculty of speech. We recognize clearly the tremendous significance of each utterance.”[2] 

Are we, with every word, recognizing the potential power of our words? Are we, with every utterance mimicking the divine, creative speech filled with blessing? Are we, with every simple expression, sensing the connection between our speech and the universe?

Or, are we just destroying?

There has been a lot of destructive speech this past year. Speech is amplified more than ever before, thanks to social media. And not just is it amplified, but the number of people whose speech we are exposed to have multiplied exponentially. This summer, the Jewish community in particular, witnessed the destructive power of speech, as related to the Nuclear Deal with Iran. The American Jewish community fractured between those who felt it was a good deal, and those who felt it was bad. Some felt one way for the United States and a different way for Israel.

The Jewish community of the past has had disagreements; the Talmud is based on disagreements, and this disagreement certainly won’t be our last. Disagreement is not the issue.

The many opinions over the imperfect deal have merit and deserve to be discussed constructively and with creative force. Instead, we resorted to name-calling, accusations and attacks. If you were for the deal, even reservedly, you were sentencing Israel to death and annihilation and capitulating to the Ayatollah. If you were against the deal, you showed dual-loyalty and were accused of being a war-monger. None of this speech is true because none of these words have nuance. Nuance is hard when emotions are high. Nuance is especially hard in 140 characters. And nuance is even harder to make into a soundbite.

Un-nuanced speech destroys. It destroys relationships and individuals. It destroys communities and it destroys years of hard work building alliances and friendship. Our community’s destructive speech altered the timeline, and the Jewish community in America will now have to work hard to reconcile after the difficult summer. It will not be possible if we do not go back to the past, and work to make what we said right. There can be no future if we do not commit to this today.

What the future requires is creative speech, speech that builds up. Speech that recognizes difference, yet maintains a level of respect, decorum, and a recognition that the other is indeed imbued with the same divine spark as we are. Let us strive to divine, creative speech in the new year.

According to Jewish Law, speech also has the power to change, to transform, matter and being, spiritually speaking. Some of you may search for chametz in the days before Passover. As we go around our houses’ corners with a feather and candle, looking for crumbs, we know that we can’t conceivably find each and every crumb from each piece of bread or every pretzel. So, the rabbis instituted a blessing which declares that any chametz, any leavened product, which we didn’t find is as the dust of the earth. With our words, we change the state of the crumbs from bread to dust.

Many of us have also, with our words, changed the status of our beloved. “Be consecrated to me, with this ring, as my spouse, according to the laws of Moses and Israel.” It is this familiar formula of the wedding vow coupled with the exchange of the rings that for Judaism renders a couple married. Without the words, the ceremony is incomplete. Speech in the form of a marriage vow changes two people into spouses.

When we speak, do we recognize the power our words have to transform? When we utter our words, do we recognize the power that they have to render us obligated, and do we take that seriously? When we talk, do we consider every word a promise or an oath, tied to our character and our trustworthiness? 

Or, do we only use our words to cause damage?

Words can damage, changing someone not for the better, not in a divine or sacred way, but rather in a hurtful way. All the more so these days because of the anonymity associated with speech on the internet. According to psychologists and neuroscientists,[3] speech damages not just in the present but in the future. Adults who report verbal abuse, particularly those who experienced that in adolescence show underdeveloped connections between the brain’s two sides and higher incidences of anxiety and depression. A fleeting word to one person lasts a lifetime for another. The damage that words cause in the present can be permanent and affect the future.

Words can also damage a reputation. Earlier this year, Brian Williams was suspended from his role as the anchor of the NBC Nightly News. Later, he was permanently replaced, and all because of words. His words recounting his experiences embedded with soldiers in Iraq were exaggerations. He made his story more exciting and harrowing than it actually was. This is no great sin, except that we have trusted our news anchors to deliver facts about the goings on in the world, and if one part of a story is made up, what else might be? It may not be fair, but it is the truth of the function of the press. Whether pride, misjudgment, or a bad memory were the culprit doesn’t matter much, not to his reputation and his future as a broadcast anchor. It is Yom Kippur, so it is important to recognize that Brian Williams has apologized, served out his suspension, and appears ready to do whatever it takes to earn back his reputation. In the new year, let us commit to speech that elicits changes for the good and commit to measuring each of our words as if they were a vow.

Speech has the power to connect. Robert Alter points out that it is only after woman is created from man’s rib that man speaks.[4] God commands the man about which trees he can and cannot eat. It is only after the man does not respond to God that God recognizes that “It is not good for man to be alone, I will make him a helping counterpart.” After woman is created, Adam finally speaks: “this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” The first words that Adam speaks are words recognizing that the two of them, the origins of all humanity on earth, are made of the same substance. Adam sees the connection between him and his helping counterpart and declares first what they share.

We also strive for that connection, when we speak the words of prayer. While meditation and silent contemplation are worthwhile and important ways to reach the Divine, as Jews we speak many of our prayers out loud and as a community. There is a power in a large group of people all saying the same words together. It connects us. It gives us a shared experience and a shared vocabulary. It tells us that our words are not for us alone and that our neighbor’s words are for us, too. We all work together in calling out to God, in praising God’s name, in praising God’s creative power.

We pray the vidui, the confessional, in the plural and out loud, because we are all in this together. We take responsibility for our actions as well as our neighbors’. If one of us sinned, then all of us are guilty. That connection to another, that feeling of, “I’m here for you because I know you are here for me,” that can come through prayer, if we recognize the power of connection through shared speech. We even ask God for that ability, Adonai sefatai tiftach u’fi yagid tehilatecha, Eternal God, open my lips that my mouth may declare your glory!” God is found in the space of the shared speech. 

And in our confessionals today there are many references to our sins of speech. Al chet shechatanu, for the sin we have committed with our words. For the sin we have committed by malicious gossip, for the sin we have committed by speaking slander. Judaism, and Yom Kippur especially, ask us to take stock of the words we’ve used in the past and work to prevent that harmful speech in the future.

When we speak, are we striving for connections to God, declaring God’s glory? When we talk are we endeavoring for relationship? Are our mouths uttering words of commonality and similarity? 

Or, are we only focusing on that which separates us?

For speech also has the power to detach, to disconnect us from our neighbors, those with whom we share so much. We use our speech to put people in boxes and categorize them, based on the color of their skin, their national origin, their sexual orientation, their size, only ever focusing on those parts that are different. We see in those differences only what separates, not that those elements make up the mosaic of humanity. Our political system is replete with speech that disconnects, and it comes at us from all sides. The speech of detachment gains quick points, because it draws us to our own corners, apart from each other, and it plays on our fears.

Hasty speech, speech that assumes, also disconnects because it disregards context and foregoes thought and reflection. Nowhere is this more true than in a comments section on any website. A single article or a single quote tells all that is needed to know to size up a person and welcome an onslaught of vitriol. One inappropriate comment renders a person a racist forever. One offensive joke, potentially made years ago, and we know right away and with great certainty that he’s an anti-Semite to his core. Their life, their history, their struggles don’t matter. All that matters is the opportunity to tell someone off, to shame them, to ensure that the right opinion is heard, often accompanied by hateful speech from so many anonymous arbiters, derogatory comments, and occasionally threats of violence. Our modern lives make it easy to communicate with one another from anywhere and everywhere, and yet we seem more detached than ever.

In the new year, let us commit to speaking with the purpose of connecting with our families, our neighbors, our communities, and even strangers.

The rabbis of old understood this struggle between creation and destruction, between change for good and change for bad, between connection and detachment. They recognized how difficult it was to err on the side of positive speech. Because of this, they added a prayer to the end of the Amidah, which we don’t recite out loud, because it is about the rest of our speech. It begins with the following words: Elohai netzor leshoni mi-ra…Oh Eternal, guard my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking deceit.” The rabbis put this prayer in to remind us of the purpose of our words of prayer, that they should be for good and truth, and we are to take the message with us after we pray, as well. These words, imploring God to help us choose our words correctly, end The Prayer, Hatefilah, and we say them to ourselves. Maybe we ought to begin saying it out loud, together.

Let us take their message from the past with us into the future. Yom Kippur is a time machine. Let us use our speech to remedy the wrongs of the past and create a better future built on creation, positive change, and connection.

Shanah Tovah.

[1] Genesis 1:1
[2] Orot HaKodesh Vol III p 285 (emphases mine)
[3] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-new-brain/201010/sticks-and-stones-hurtful-words-damage-the-brain
[4] Robert Alter to Gen 2:23 (thanks, Rabbi Elisa Koppel)

Rosh HaShanah Morning Sermon: Reflections on Race in America and America's Journey for Justice

An edited version of this sermon was delivered Rosh HaShanah Morning, 5776 at Temple Emanu-El of East Meadow.

           I awoke early this morning to get a jump start on this thing that I am supposed to do, before the heat of the day takes over and makes the journey too difficult.  I brought my servants, a donkey, and my son, Isaac.  Not my only son, but the one I have left.  Not that long ago, my other son, Ishmael, had to go.  His mother, Hagar, and my wife Sarah didn’t get along so well.  Sarah’s a little territorial; but I can’t blame her.  It took us so long to have this one child.  So many weeks, months, years of waiting, praying to a God that we can’t see.  And finally a son, just as those visitors told us we would have.  And now, this boy, this young lad, has to be given to God.  It’s what we do.  It’s just the way of the world.  I can’t explain it; it’s just the way things are.  Our neighbors send their sons to their gods, so I get it; but I’m not so comfortable with it.

We trekked this morning, looking for just the right place.  Somewhere high up, close to the heavens.  Somewhere that spoke to me.  Somewhere that told me this is the place that God wants.  And I find the perfect place.  High up this dusty, golden hill.  Higher than any of the hills around it.  That feels right to me.  I can’t quite explain it, but I sense that I’m in the right place.  Have you ever had that feeling of just knowing that something was right, like everything was pointing you in that direction?  That’s how this hill feels, like it’s the center of all that has been created.  The hill feels right, and the time of day feels right, and my belief in God feels right.  But what I’m about to do, I still…

I brought everything I needed with me: my knife, wood for the burning, and my son.  He’s so quiet this morning, but he does notice that something doesn’t add up.  “Dad,” he asks, “I see the knife, and I see the wood, but what are we going to give to God?”  He doesn’t really understand the way of the world, yet.  I would have taught him, but it seemed cruel to tell him what was coming, and besides, I don’t want him to be scared.  “Come this way, Isaac,” I say to him.  “Take a moment to rest here on these stones.”  My voice shakes.  Does he know how scared I am?  My hands tremble holding that knife.  How will I go through with this? 

Doesn’t this seem wrong?  That our young people should be killed off like this?  Why would God give me a son only to ask for him back?!  I’m no expert on God, but I know when something doesn’t make sense to me.  But so far, everything that I have been asked, I have done and everything that I have been promised has come true.  What am I supposed to do?  I believe with complete faith that God has my best interest in mind, is looking out for me, for us, for my family.  God was with me in Egypt those many years ago, when Sarah and I, in our youth, traveled there looking for food.  God was with me before that too, on the long journey to this land.  That feeling I first had when we arrived here, that’s the same feeling I have today on this mountaintop.  God called then and I answered then; and that’s all I’m doing now, right?  This is what a father does.  It’s an ordeal we all have to go through.

He’s resting there now, on the stones.  He’s got to know what’s going on.  He must have some idea.  He’s not dumb, that son of mine.  Maybe he doesn’t notice things as carefully as his brother, but he’s not dumb.

It’s time now.  I can’t delay any longer.  The knife is sharpened.  This is God’s design.  I have to hold it strong now, and I need to use, want to use all my strength.  I don’t want him to suffer.  I lift my hand as I look into his innocent eyes, which now belie his utter terror at what I’m doing.  His eyes ask me what I’m doing, why I’m doing it.  They scream out for his mother, but the rest of him doesn’t move.  He has the same resolve as I do.  Or maybe he just doesn’t want to fight me.  I have to do it now.  I have to just plunge that knife and not look back.  I have to just let God’s will play out, right?  Don’t I?  This is what we do?

But that fear in his eyes gives me pause.  In the tears quietly streaming down his face I sense betrayal, not just of his body, but of our relationship, our father-son bond.  I can’t do it!  I can’t make myself do it!  What will Sarah say when I return?  How will I ever look her in the face again?  I need to drop this knife now and gather my living son into my arms.  No God that I believe in would ask this of me!  No God would want a family torn apart by violence, by bloodlust.  No God would value the blood of our children over their breath, their souls.

I look up and see a ram caught in the thicket.  Let that be for God, not my son!  That will serve as a symbol of my trust in God, not my boy.  If God is not content with a man who values human life above all else, I cannot help that!  I only know what is right and I know that dropping this knife now is the right thing.  This I believe with complete faith.

*          *          *

Each year on Rosh HaShanah morning, we hear this famous story.  We heard it this morning, so beautifully chanted, the story of Abraham who is called by God to sacrifice his son Isaac as a test of fidelity.  The story is usually referred to as Akedat Yitzchak, the binding of Isaac.  The climactic moment of this story is the moment when, as the knife is about to be plunged into the boy, something stops Abraham in his tracks.  The Torah tells us that it is an angel of God who stays Abraham’s hand by calling out “Abraham, Abraham!”  This moment of divine intervention makes it clear to Abraham that what he is about to do is not what God wants.  Abraham senses that what he is about to do is not the right thing.  What he is about to do is actually abhorrent to God.  Abraham looked around him, at what his neighbors were doing, and said enough is enough: I am not going to sacrifice my son because it’s the thing that’s done.  That voice that called out to Abraham was indeed divine, but it may have come not from the heavens, but from a place deep in Abraham’s soul, in his conscience, that place that told him that this thing which was asked of him was not right – that thing which was just happening all around him was not the way the world should be. 

Abraham understands at that moment, but not until that moment, that God doesn’t want a child sacrifice.  It’s not until he sees his son beneath him and sees the life in Isaac that this epiphany comes to Abraham.  Abraham has a moment where he senses that just because the world works a certain way doesn’t mean it’s right, fair, or ought to continue.

In his breathtaking and crushing book Between the World and Me, Ta-Nahesi Coates describes the world as it is for black men living in America in 2015.  His book is written as a letter to his son, Samori, who at age 15 comes to a realization that the world is not as it should be.  Coates writes to his son:

That was the week you learned that the killers of Michael Brown would go free…would

never be punished.  It was not my expectation that anyone would ever be punished.  But you were young, and you still believed.  You stayed up till 11pm that night, waiting for the announcement of an indictment, and when instead it was announced that there was none you said: “I’ve got to go,” and you went into your room and I heard you crying.[1]

Coates’ son has a difficult epiphany about our great nation, and Coates uses his epistle to his son to explain that the reality of our nation is that racism is real, it is powerful, and it is engrained.  Coates book focuses on the fear Black parents have for their children and about their children.  He focuses on the origins of the racial issues in our nation, not to complain, but to recognize the reality and share what he has learned with his son, the way that his parents shared it with him.  Coates is, at this moment, a father who is desperately trying to save his son, though he does not have the ability to do so.  He is not the one wielding the knife.  He is not the one who established the system as it is, though as any father would, he sees it as unfair and not right.  The way of the world is not right.

            Coates goes on to describe a moment when he came to realize and recognize the injustice which still plagues this nation.  In the second half of his book, he recounts the story of another young Black man, gunned down in the prime of his youth.  A man named Prince Jones, whom Coates’ knew from their time at Howard University.  Prince Jones was killed yards from his fiancée’s home by an undercover police officer outside of jurisdiction.  He was shot eight times, five in the back, a result of a barrage of 16 bullets.  Coates describes his reaction to hearing the news: “I cannot remember what happened next.  I think I stumbled back…What I remember for sure is what I felt: rage and the old gravity of West Baltimore.”  Here, Coates is referring to his upbringing in difficult and dangerous neighborhoods of Baltimore.  The neighborhoods of Coates’ youth are the result of years of discriminatory policies around mortgages, (add more here)  The legacy, Coates realizes, of that neighborhood, always seems to pull a person back.  That gravitational pull… Even though Prince Jones’ family did everything supposedly right – Jones’ mother is a self-made physician, the family saved and moved to a safe neighborhood, and Prince was sent to the best schools and brought up to achieve the American middle-class dream – even this man, whose family did everything that they were told, hoping to gain entrée into a different life, even this man was not immune from overzealous and racially motivated policing.

           What is truly heartbreaking when reading Coates’ words is seeing that even with all the progress that has been made, the lesson Coates had to learn about how his life is valued by our nation is the same lesson he watches his son learn.  In the same way Coates came to understand in 2001 that the institutionalized racism of the past continues to have ramifications today, his son, in 2015, also learns.  There may not be Jim Crow any longer, but we are still a far distance away from true equality and equal justice under the law.  In some ways, we can perhaps relate to the first time we each learn and understand that anti-Semitism persists.  For us, however, anti-Semitism was never enshrined in the laws and customs of this nation.  Jews were never constitutionally considered less than humans.  Jews were not bought and sold and treated as property for centuries.

If you recall, last year, I spoke about race from this very same spot, and about how the shooting of Michael Brown was a wake-up call for me and was indeed a wake-up call to all of us and this entire nation.  Baruch ata Adonai Eloheinu Melech Ha’Olam pokeach ivrim, praised are You Eternal Our God for giving sight to the blind.  We have woken up; but as our eyes opened, we wiped the sleep away only to see that the true scope of the problem is much broader than most of us understood.  The Black community has known what has been happening.  They have been telling us, but we have not listened.  They have been telling us that their children are being killed, that their mothers and fathers are being taken away and incarcerated at rates much higher than white Americans, though statistically they don’t commit more crimes than white Americans.  They have told us that their rights are being violated and that they are stuck in a system that neither values their lives nor seeks to help undo the ramifications of generations of discrimination.  They have demanded fair and unfettered access to the voting booth and have been told by the High Court that the problems of the past are no longer problems.

I learned some of this from reading Coates’ book, but I learned more in Columbia, South Carolina, where last month, I participated in a Civil Rights March organized by the NAACP.  This year marks the 50^th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, which was brought to national attention by a march on Selma, AL led by Martin Luther King.  The march that I participated in began in Selma on August 1 and this week – tomorrow, in fact – the march will end in Washington, DC.  This almost 1000-mile-long march is the longest civil rights march in American History.  Traversing Alabama, Georgia, South and North Carolina, Virginia, and then Washington, DC, the march’s aim is to bring to light the myriad issues that still surround race in this nation.  If last summer’s violence and protests in Ferguson, Missouri were a wake-up call that there are still problems in this nation, this summer’s march seeks to make clear what the issues are, how complicated they are, and how long the road toward justice actually is.  It seeks people to proclaim that just because the world is one way doesn’t mean that’s how it needs to stay.

America’s Journey for Justice, as the march is called, aims to make the nation aware of the reality of being black in America, and why it is a markedly different reality than being white in this nation.  As a part of their endeavor, the NAACP reached out to the Reform Rabbis’ Association, the CCAR, hoping to find 40 rabbis to march alongside them, one a day, carrying a Torah the entire way.  As of last count, more than 174 rabbis, primarily but not exclusively from Reform congregations, will have participated over the 40-plus-day journey. 

It was a powerful experience to march through South Carolina’s capitol: to know that the absence of a Confederate flag was a new reality, to walk alongside so many who hope that the ideals of this nation be met.  And that’s what it was really all about.  We were required to march two by two, in straight lines, to keep us safe and in one lane of traffic.  As we marched the 13.5 miles in the heat of the South Carolina summer, I was struck by how varied the experience was.  There were moments of meditative prayer.  There were moments of learning.  And there were moments of epiphany.

A moment of meditative prayer: At one point during the day, all I could focus on was putting one foot in front of the other and staying in line.  It was all I could do to keep going.  Not from being tired or from any pain, but from the heat and the redundancy of walking for hour after hour.  Sometimes, when our bodies begin to move on autopilot, it frees up our minds.  In my mind, at that moment, as my feet rose and fell, the words of the prayer r’tzei came into my head: Retzei Adonai Eloheinu, b’amcha Yisrael u’tfilatam b’ahavah t’kabel.  Accept our prayers with love, O God! Running through my head.  

But I wasn’t praying, at least not in the typical manner of prayer.  I was praying in an entirely different manner.  I was actually living the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel, who, after marching at Selma, famously declared that he felt as if his feet were praying.  Every footfall of each of the marchers was a prayer.  Every step toward our goal, for that day, for the march, and for the future was a prayer.  It was a step in the right direction.  And from somewhere within my soul, I prayed that my steps would be accepted lovingly by God as prayer and that those prayers would one day be answered.

A moment of learning: At one point, I was marching alongside my 13-year-old niece, Arbel.  She and I struck up a conversation with one of the march marshals, named Jemiah.  Jemiah asked Arbel if she understood why she was marching.  Being 13, her answer was something like: “Well, my uncle is a rabbi, and he wanted me to come.”  That wasn’t quite what Jemiah was asking, but ok.  Jemiah went on to explain some of the difficulties that black people in America have endured in the past and continue to endure.  I knew that under segregation, black people were not allowed in hospitals, or were only allowed in black-run hospitals.  

I never really stopped to think about all the ramifications of those policies and laws, which were in existence as recently as 50 years ago, well within the lifetime of many here today.  So, I didn’t put together that not being admitted to a hospital meant that women could not give birth in a hospital.  If you were not born in a hospital, you did not get a birth certificate.  This means it is extremely difficult to obtain any kind of ID.  I had known about the discrimination.  I hadn’t stopped to consider its effects or what segregated hospitals might have to do with voting.  Voter ID laws, aside from policing a problem that doesn’t really exist, disproportionately affect black Americans.  I learned at that moment, how truly complex and enduring the repercussions of racism really are in this nation.  If we haven’t lived it, we can’t fully understand it. And, just because there are laws against it, doesn’t mean that it’s over.

A moment of epiphany:  Early in the day, shortly before I carried the Torah for the first time that morning, I looked up from my position in the phalanx and before me were people marching behind an American flag and the Torah.  Both of these objects are symbols which hold important meanings for me.  I never considered what they have in common.  I am a firm believer in the separation of synagogue and state, but I could not help but begin to realize what these two have in common.  They are twins, I realized.  They may be fraternal twins, but they are twins.  They both represent aspirations of freedom.  They both represent aspirations of justice. 

Freedom and justice are important concepts in our Torah.  We began the morning of the march by reading from the Torah a brief excerpt from Shirat HaYam, the song of the sea, which the Israelites sing with Moses and Miriam after their liberation from slavery, a freedom song.  This idea of freedom is so important to us as Jews that we sing the most famous line from that song each day, the Mi Chamocha, so that we never forget that freedom is a precious and divine gift. 

The Torah also commands us to pursue justice, as it proclaims Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof: Justice, Justice shall you pursue![2]  Why is the word justice repeated?  Because we are to seek justice for ourselves, and justice for others.[3]  We are to look at our sacred words and aspire to reach the goals they set out for us.  Likewise for the American flag.  It is a symbol of liberty and equal justice under the rule of law.  Though much of our nation’s history has seen us fall short of that goal, it is an aspiration toward which we must all work.  That aspirational nature of both our Torah and of our nation is why I love both – because they both call us to be better.  They both demand that we work to make the world what we want it to be, what it ought to be, when we look around and see the world not as it should be.  Like Abraham, we have to hear that divine within us and answer the call to look around and say that the way things have been done is not ok, that the status quo is no longer acceptable, and that as Jews who live in America, we take all minority rights seriously and that we believe that black lives matter in the same way we believe that all lives matter because we are a religion who believes in the sanctity of living beings.  God gives us the choice.  God sets before us life and death, good and evil, and God commands us to choose the side of life.  Be a people who values life, like the Eternal values life.

Marching in South Carolina was a way to live the values of freedom, justice, and life which are required of both our Torah and our citizenship.  Learning from those marching the entire 1000 miles was even more important because we all must start to learn about what’s really happening in our nation if we want to be able to fix it.  We have made tremendous progress in this nation.  Fifty years ago, it was state troopers who attacked the marchers in Selma.  This year, the NAACP march is escorted by state troopers in each state, clearing the way, stopping the traffic, ensuring safety and order.  That progress is important and it is critical to recognize and be thankful for it, but we cannot become complacent.  We must keep working, there are more steps ahead.

I have been invited to participate in the formation of a Black Jewish Coalition for Justice on Long Island, and while I don’t yet have much information, I will keep you informed about other ways to be involved.  If you are interested in racial justice, please be in touch with me.  We must work to meet with those whose lives and experiences are different from ours.  It is my hope that this coalition will serve exactly that purpose. 

Beyond grassroots local meetings, we can also advocate for change nationally.  Last year’s Supreme Court Decision, Shelby v. Holder, which undid a critical piece of the Voting Rights Act, may have been appropriate according to certain principles of law.  The day after the decision, many states introduced legislation to test just how far they could push the law.  The suggestion is not to flout the decision; that is not how this country works.  We must speak out against it by supporting new legislation to replace the overwhelmingly bi-partisan supported Voting Rights Act.  To that end, this past June, the Voting Rights Advancement Act was introduced in both the House and the Senate.  This new law would serve to reestablish, following the Supreme Court’s guidelines, certain provisions of that landmark legislation.  This new act, among other aims, seeks to ensure that last-minute voting changes won’t adversely affect voters, particularly people of color and language minorities.[4]  This is an important piece of legislation that we should favor vocally by contacting our representatives and letting them know that as Jewish Americans, voting rights and minority rights are important to us. 

In a few moments, we will hear the calls of the Shofar, the ram’s horn.  These calls are to be reminders of the willingness Abraham had to sacrifice his son to God.  These calls are supposed to awaken our souls to turn toward the good in the new year.  This Rosh HaShanah, as we hear the calls echo around us, let the sound arouse in us the voice of the divine which commands us to work to make the world as it should be and not settle for the world as it is. Let the calls pierce our souls and bring each of us to work toward the cause of Freedom, Justice, and Life, the cause of this nation, the cause of our Torah.

Shanah Tovah!           

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[1] Coates, Between the World and Me, p 11

[2] Deut 16:20

[3] Based on Rabbi Lawrence Jackofsky and David Toomin (RJ website)

[4] Info from RAC one-pager

Erev Rosh HaShanah 5775: Toward a New Food Policy at Temple Emanu-El

       It should come as no surprise to anyone here that I have had, over the course of my life, a complicated relationship with food. Looking back on it now, I know what food has meant for me emotionally and physically. I know what food represented for me and for my family. My mother is a trained chef, and my father’s parents managed restaurants, including the famous Ratner’s, while he was growing up, before they moved to Israel. When the Food Network premiered, it became the most watched channel in our home. I learned from my mother, and from these famous chefs on TV, how beautiful food can be and how happy it can make people.

       As Jews, this is not a concept foreign to us. Just think of the term Oneg Shabbat. When we say that word, we understand it to mean the cakes and cookies we share after services. Technically, it means: “Joy of Shabbat.” As Jews, we celebrate with food, we make a point to say that God’s abundance, which nourishes and sustains us, should also bring us joy and a sense of connection to God and to a spiritual life.

       Over the last year, as many of you are aware, I have reformed my relationship with food. By being on a very strict diet, I pay much closer attention to what is on my plate than ever before. It used to be that as long as it tasted good, it was good to go. Nowadays, I take care with, and pay attention to, carbohydrates, proteins, sugars and fats. I read labels in a way I never used to. These practices are practical, of course, but they also give me a real sense of mindfulness about my eating. At the same time, I had to break up with the Food Network. It wasn’t them, it was me.

       I also began to change the channel every time a commercial for food or a restaurant came on the TV. It was actually shocking how often I had to change the channel in those early days. Now, the commercials don’t bother or entice me. But there was a moment when I recognized the ubiquity of food in our culture and the ease with which we are able to obtain it. On the one hand, how wonderful that food is so easy to come by. On the other hand, what has this done to our relationship with food and our bodies? How different this modern age is than the age of our ancestors, whose lives and stories are shaped by the availability of sustenance, or lack thereof.

       Let’s take a moment to consider just a few examples from our Torah of when food plays a prominent role. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve are given free rein to eat any of the fruits in the garden, except for one.[1] Already, in the first story, there is a sense that God puts limits on what we are and are not allowed to eat. Abraham and Sara have to flee Canaan because of a famine, or lack of food.[2] When the visitors come to see Abraham and Sara to announce the birth of Isaac, Abraham hurries to prepare them a meal consisting of butter and cheese, followed by a choice calf from his flock.[3] Later, Jacob buys Esau’s birthright for a bowl of lentil stew.[4] Joseph interprets a dream about years of plenty and years of lean and saves Egypt from terrible famine.[5] And this is just in Genesis, and this is not an exhaustive list.

       Food in the ancient world was equivalent to survival. It was hard to come by and hard to hold onto. Food was so important that the abundance given proved to be the backbone of many religious sensibilities, including our own.

       Each of the Shalosh Regalim, the Three Festivals, Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot were tied initially to the harvests, and were celebrated by making sacrifices to God to say thank you for the yield, and please can we have it again next year. Regulations about what God allowed us to eat and what God forbade us from eating were an integral part of ancient Israelite culture and continue to this day. And finally, how we share our food and our yield with the less fortunate becomes a backbone of the morality God asks of us. Food in Judaism is therefore, worthy of praising God, worthy of regulation by God and worthy being used to define our relationships with others.

       Today, the ease with which we acquire food and consume it has stripped food of any of the mystery and sense of what it takes for food to arrive on our plates. Food is so easy to come by. If we wanted to, we could all take out our phones and have pizza delivered here in less than 30 minutes… It’s so easy to come by that we often forget how thankful we ought to be for it. It is so easy to come by that we often forget how much effort and energy goes into the farming and transporting, the stocking and shelving of the items that fill our carts as we wander up and down the aisles perusing the seemingly endless choices for every item we could hope for.

       Our connection to food has undergone a substantial change in the last century as farming technologies and genetic engineering have made food plentiful and consistent. We no longer take enough time to appreciate the true miracle that is having food on our plates every day at every meal. And it is precisely this appreciation of the miracle of food that has, for centuries, been the backbone of Jewish food culture.

       Now, when we talk about Jewish food culture, we’re not only talking about pastrami sandwiches on rye, or matzo ball soup, but about the ways we sanctify and make special those moments of nourishment. Jewish food culture involves separating and categorizing, knowing not only when we are supposed to eat, but when we are not. Jewish food culture has for millennia included what we are supposed to eat, and how and when we eat those things. It involves knowing and understanding where our food comes from and where our food goes.

       Beginning with the commandments of Kashrut in the Torah, Judaism has separated and categorized food. We are told what animals we are allowed to eat and what animals we are not allowed to eat. We are given both categories and specific species. This mammal ok, that one not. This category of birds ok, this other not. Insects no, except two kinds of grasshoppers. The commandment not to boil a kid in its mother’s milk, from which the separation of milk and meat is derived, appears just after instructions about sacrificing first fruits as part of festival offerings in the book of Exodus, a few chapters after the revelation at Sinai. This prohibition appears twice more in the Torah, once more in Exodus and once in Deuteronomy. We also categorize food by way of our blessings, separating and reciting specific blessings for, among other things, fruits from trees, fruits from the ground, fruits of the vine and grasses of the fields. In this way, Judaism reminds us where our food comes from and how it came to be on our table and on our forks, and ultimately the sustenance of our lives.

       As Jews, we make moments of nourishment sacred by recognizing God for the abundance we have by blessing the food at our meals before we eat, and by thanking God for the meals after we are done eating. As Jews we recognize where our food should be going. The harvest we gather is for us, with a portion given to God. But the corners of our fields and the gleanings on the ground are left for the less fortunate. 

       Remember the story of Ruth, which we read on the Festival of Shavuot, a time of the grain harvest. Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi are destitute and must rely on the gleanings on the threshing floor to gather enough grain to survive. These commandments inspire us to give of our abundance, as we do with our Island Harvest donations each year.

       Food culture was so ingrained in our forebears’ lives, because it was the work of survival. Recognizing its importance rendered food and eating worthy of praising God. The laws of Kashrut, the rules of food preparation and the mandated blessing were all ways to turn the very instinctive and important act of eating into a holy moment. To recognize that it is thanks to God that we have food to eat. Food, and the way we eat that food, is central to the lives of Jews.

       If food is so important to Judaism, why did the earliest Reformers make doing away with kashrut one of the hallmarks of their re-envisioned modern Judaism toward the end of the 19th century?

       Reformers did it for a couple of different reasons. First, the dietary laws set us apart. The cooking of goats in their milk was a common practice of the idol-worshippers, we learn from Maimonides. This prohibition, therefore, was meant to set us apart. And yet, this becomes a problem for modern Jews in modern contexts. The Reformers believed that Jews would surely not be able to eat in the modern world if they held firm to their kashrut standards. By maintaining sets of dietary laws, Jews maintained a status as other. Early Reform Judaism came about at a time when the goal was to blend in, not stand out.

       An additional reason why the early Reformers decided to do away with kashrut had to do with a new vision of what religion meant. For them, ethics was the name of the game and ethical practice governed their actions. If a ritual or an observance was merely that—ritual—if it didn’t serve an ethical purpose, if it bordered on the superstitious, if it was too much about the body and not enough about the mind, well, then, it was not acceptable to the early reformers. To them, kashrut was a remnant of the old Judaism, focused on what the body did, not how the mind thought.

       As a congregation which prides itself on having a more traditional outlook, we maintain a certain level of Kashrut, though it isn’t clear exactly what that means and whether our current standards are in keeping with how we hope to understand the food that we eat. We consider the labels on the foods we bring in, but is that enough? We separate meat and dairy, but often, as has been pointed out, there is only one sponge in the kitchen. Do we care about more than just the label Kosher?

       Recently, the Ritual Committee of this congregation took up the task of revisiting our Kashrut policy. The discussions were vibrant and many opinions were shared about what we can and cannot bring into our Temple. I believe this element of the discussion is important, but I also believe, and I believe Judaism asks us to consider, that there is more to having a spiritual and God-centered food practice than worrying about whether or not someone else deems the food fit for Jewish consumption. 

       

       What do we think about the food we bring in? What are we concerned about when we eat as a Temple community? Are we equally concerned with the ethics of the food we eat – how it was raised, farmed and cultivated, the wages the workers earned while harvesting, the effect on the environment? Are we equally concerned with the health standards of the foods we bring in – do we serve enough whole grains and vegetables? Do we adequately consider the safety of our congregants as relates to allergies? Do we adequately provide alternatives for those whose diets are limited due to health restrictions or disease?

       All of these questions ought to be asked of our community and we ought to take the time to learn more specifically and in depth what Jewish tradition teaches about food, how we can understand food and how we can relate to food. Over the next year, I am tasking the Ritual Committee to take up Food – not just Kashrut, but Food, to work toward a comprehensive food policy for this congregation moving forward.

       The current policy is a great place to start, but we deserve a policy that takes all factors-kashrut, ethics, health, safety, inclusion-into account. We deserve this because as people of faith, whose are created in the divine image, we ought to treat the food we put into our bodies with respect, care and diligence. 

       And I invite you to join us. If you care about how we eat and how we relate to food, join us. If you care about the ethics of food, join us. If you care about the standards we set as a community as they relate to food, join us. If you like to cook, join us. If you’ve ever helped out in the kitchen here, join us, and give us your input and your opinion about food. It’s good to know what the sages teach us, but it is equally important to know what we care about and how we relate to food.

       This year, 5775, is what’s known as a shmittah year, literally a year of release. This is a sabbatical year for the land of Israel. This means that all farming in the land of Israel, with some exceptions, must cease. No plowing, planting, reaping or harvesting from this Rosh HaShanah until the next. Seven years ago, the last Shmittah year, was the year I spent in Israel. Because of the religious obligation to the land, to allow it to rest in the same way we do on Shabbat, prices of produce went up, as more had to be imported and many fruits and vegetables were quite scarce. Everyone in Israel talked about it, because the connection between food and Judaism was so apparent. Even those who didn’t know or care about Kashrut, had no choice but to know about how Judaism was affecting the way they ate.

       Let us take this year, 5775, to pay tribute to food. Let us recognize the importance of food in our lives and cease to take it as a given. Let us rededicate ourselves to making eating a holy act, an act worthy of praising God again, an act worthy of the struggles of our ancestors. 

       The Talmud (Berachot 55a) teaches that while the Temple was standing, the altar and the sacrifices atoned for Israel’s sins, but now that the temple is gone, a person’s table atones for their sins. Do our tables atone for our sins? Are our tables worthy of that responsibility based on the food we put on them and the way that we consume that food? Are we maintaining a standard that allows our tables to be conduits for the holy and the divine?

Bon Appétit.

Shanah Tovah.

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[1] Genesis 2:16

[2] Genesis 12

[3] Genesis 18

[4] Genesis 25

[5] Genesis 41