Rosh HaShanah Morning 5782: If Not Now, When?

 A Version of this sermon was delivered on Rosh HaShanah Morning 5782 at Temple B'nai Torah - A Reform Congregation in Wantagh, NY.

            Like many of you, I’m sure, when I was growing up, my family would go out for Chinese fairly regularly.  At least once every couple of weeks, if not more often, we’d all pile into the car and make our way, excited at the prospect of kung pao chicken and using chopsticks.  Every few years, the Chinese restaurant of choice would change, as we discovered new favorites.  What never changed, though, was what happened at the end of the meal.  With the check, without fail, arrived a plate with fortune cookies, small, folded, crispy, thin cookies with a vaguely positive or philosophical message written on them.  “A chance meeting opens new doors to success and friendship.”  Or, “Patience is bitter, but its fruit sweet.”  Or, “It is now and in this world, that we must live.” 

Over the years, lucky numbers and Chinese translation made their way onto these small slips of paper, too, and novelty fortune cookies were sold at the candy store where I worked in high school.  At the restaurants, there was usually one cookie per person, but on those occasions when we’d get extra, if we didn’t like the fortune the cookie offered, we’d take another, hoping for better luck.  I once got one that said, no joke, “Everyone agrees you are the best.”  I didn’t open another fortune for a year…

            Now, I don’t want to burst anyone’s bubble, but fortune cookies aren’t actually Chinese.  At best, historians can determine, they are Japanese in origin and date to probably the middle of the 19^th century.[1]  The fortunes are meant to be fun, not prophetic.  I mean, who would live their life based on advice on small slips of paper?

            Reb Simcha Bunim,[2] a 19^th-century Polish Chassidic rabbi, advises that we all walk around with two small slips of paper, one each in our two side pockets.  On one slip of paper is to be written: “The world was created for me alone.”  On the second slip of paper is to be written: “I am but dust and ashes.”  Why carry around these two conflicting pieces of advice?

According to Simcha Bunim, “When feeling lowly and depressed, discouraged or disconsolate, one should reach into the right pocket and, there, find the words: “The world was created for me.”  This message comes from the Mishnah, the Jewish law code of the second and third centuries.  The phrase is found in a discussion about the creation of humanity.  The Rabbis debate the meaning of Adam being created alone, asking what meaning there is in Adam’s singularness.  At the end of the discussion, the text advises that “since all humanity descends from one person, each and every person is obligated to say: The world was created for me, as one person can be the source of all humanity, and recognize the significance of his actions.”[3]

            On the other hand, according to Rabbi Bunim, “when feeling high and mighty one should reach into the left pocket, and find the words: “I am but dust and ashes.”  This pocket-phrase is of much earlier origin, coming from the mouth of Abraham during his debate and negotiation with God at Sodom and Gomorrah.  Abraham presses God not to destroy an entire town, for perhaps there are 50 righteous people, and it is not just to kill them because of the sins of others.  As God agrees to Abraham’s terms, Abraham senses an opening and responds in seeming humility: “וַיַּ֥עַן אַבְרָהָ֖ם וַיֹּאמַ֑ר הִנֵּה־נָ֤א הוֹאַ֙לְתִּי֙ לְדַבֵּ֣ר אֶל־אֲדֹנָ֔י וְאָנֹכִ֖י עָפָ֥ר וָאֵֽפֶר׃  Abraham spoke up, saying, “Here I venture to speak to my Lord, I who am but dust and ashes.”[4]  After this genuflective statement, Abraham asks God if God is really firm on that 50 people number.  The negotiation continues and God’s final offer is that if there are ten righteous souls, God won’t destroy Sodom. 

            Abraham’s tactic of humility in his conversation with God comes at a moment when the Torah tells us that God chooses Abraham for favor.  Abraham has already been selected to begin the covenantal relationship with the Eternal.  This moment is different. God asks Themself: “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?”[5]  In this moment, the Torah describes God’s internal monologue.  God decides that it’s not a good idea to keep Abraham in the dark, and so God chooses to inform Abraham because of their special relationship. 

In this moment of divine selection, in this moment of communion with God, Abraham’s head could have swelled.  He could have seen himself as more than just in the image of the divine, but as somewhat divine himself.  After all, it’s not just that he listens to God, God listens to him!  Instead, Abraham defaults to humility.  Simcha Bunim wants us to remember that even in those moments when we think that everyone agrees we’re the best, even when it feels like God is shining on us uniquely, we are to remember our patriarch and recognize that we are but dust and ashes.

            This is an important way to live life, to be sure.  Both of these phrases have to do with our relationship with God, what we call ben adam lemakom.  The world was created for me alone; created by God, for me.  I am but dust and ashes, only here and with a soul because God breathes it into me pure every day.  These slips of paper in our pockets are about how we see ourselves in relationship with the cosmos. 

These Days of Awe remind us that as much as we are here at services in the service of repairing our relationship with God, the harder work, and probably more meaningful work, is to repair our relationships with each other, what we call ben adam lechavero.  And so, while Simcha Bunim has a point, this coming year, as we move through this complicated, damaged world, perhaps we change the slips of paper in our pockets, the way we regularly require novel fortune cookie wisdom.  Let’s put those two slips of paper in the geniza and find something new.  Or to paraphrase Rav Kook, perhaps we take something old and make it new again.  I want to direct us back toward the sagely proverbial advice of the great Rabbi Hillel.

The details of Hillel’s life are sparse.  What we know of him is mostly based on his teachings which survive in rabbinic literature and the stories in that literature that open very small windows on that world.

Hillel is well known for the following advice found in Pirke Avot: “אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי. וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי. וְאִם לֹא עַכְשָׁיו, אֵימָתָי: If I am not for myself, who is for me?  And, if I am for my own self alone, what am I?  And if not now, when?”[6]  He is so well known, in fact, that this very statement has been found in fortune cookies, and not just at the kosher places!

Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz calls this teaching the raison d’être of Judaism, the reason for being.  He explains that, “Hillel reminds us that it is challenging to find the proper balance between religious self-preservation and self-sacrifice.”[7]

Self-preservation and self-sacrifice.  With this understanding, Hillel’s words from 2,000 years ago ring true in our ears today.  Self-preservation in the face of a seemingly unending pandemic.  Self-preservation as we made difficult choices.  Self-sacrifice in order to protect ourselves, our families, our neighbors, and our communities.  Self-sacrifice as we kept ourselves at social distance, as we cancelled gatherings, holidays, weddings, High Holy Day plans… again…

If I am not for myself, who is for me?  And, if I am for my own self alone, what am I? And if not now, when?  These statements are meant to be understood and lived in tandem.  They are offered as a set.  Three legs of a stool that, when lived out, hold up society.

If I am not for myself, who is for me?  Hillel begins his advice with a recognition that the self has worth.  He reminds us that sometimes we have to put ourselves first, because we may not be able to rely on others.  We have to make decisions that further our lives.  We put on our own oxygen masks first.  Self-preservation.

And, if I am for myself alone, what am I?  Ultimately, we also know that if our own needs are not met, then we cannot be there for others.  But once we’ve seen to ourselves, we must look out for others.  We are followers of Torah, guided by its principles, called to witness the covenant with the Eternal God, whose refrain over and over is to care for the vulnerable, the orphaned, the widowed, the stranger, the marginalized, the oppressed, the immunocompromised, in our midst.  If we take care of only ourselves, Hillel asks, are we a part of society?  If we take care of only ourselves, and we fail to take into account the wellbeing of the community, are we living Jewishly?

When we fall victim to rampant individualism, what are we?  When we spend more time looking into the phones in our palms than the faces of others next to us, what are we?  If we fail to act on climate change and leave a less inhabitable world for our children, what are we?  If we continue to sell weapons of war and don’t work to protect our schools, our malls, our theaters, our concerts, our houses of worship, from them, what are we?!  If we take a woman’s autonomy of body away from her, what are we?  If we fight against simple, proven, life-saving policies, like vaccines and masks, what are we?

And if not now, when!?  We have to live both of these statements now, in the present, meaning at all times.  Because if we choose not to, self-preservation and self-sacrifice are out of balance. 

This notion that we have to live in a way that balances self-preservation and self-sacrifice is discussed philosophically in ideas of the social contract.  But as Jews, we don’t speak in contracts, we speak in covenants.  Hillel’s statement is a societal covenant. 

And so is his other most famous teaching.  The story goes that once a Roman soldier came to convert, on condition that the rabbi would teach him all he needed to know while he stood on one foot.  Addressing himself first to Shammai, the legionnaire made his request and was promptly pushed aside.  The Roman went next to Hillel who calmly responded, as he stood on one foot: “What is hateful to you, do not do to another.  That is the whole Torah, the rest is commentary.”[8]  Hillel reformulates language from Leviticus, language which we read at Yom Kippur afternoon, from the centerpiece of the Torah, the Holiness Code, in which God commands us to be holy as God is holy.  In that Holiness Code, God commands us: V’ahavta lereacha kamcha, Love your neighbor as yourself!”[9]  In order to love your neighbor properly, you must also love yourself. For if you hate yourself, then you’ll hate your neighbor too. Love yourself, but not only yourself, and only then can you ALSO go beyond yourself to love the other.

V’ahavta lereacha kamcha, Love your neighbor as yourself, is a command of God.  It is also a sacred responsibility.  God invites us to be in covenant with God, and commands us to be in covenant with each other.  Our relationships, our community, our society require sacred responsibility for each other, especially in difficult times like this pandemic.  This responsibility is required not just when times are tough, though, like after a natural disaster, but always!  If we neglect these responsibilities for too long, if we focus only on ourselves, we may find ourselves in the position of Abraham desperately seeking 10 righteous among our community.  It was a lack of concern for the other, a lack of a sense of sacred responsibility for the other, and for the vulnerable, which the midrash points to as among the egregious sins of Sodom, which cause God to condemn that city.

God calls us to be in covenant with each other.  And this morning’s Torah reading, a stark and complicated one, but one which bears out the dual covenants that these days ask us to reaffirm.  God calls Abraham to the mountain to sacrifice his son, Isaac.  God is testing Abraham, the Torah reminds us.  God is affirming that Abraham is a willing participant in the divine Brit, the covenant.  God wants us to believe and follow God’s ways, and in return we are blessed by God.  Abraham has to prove his belief, and so he does.  Abraham is to sacrifice of his family in order to preserve the blessing of God.

After a back and forth, perhaps hoping God might change Their mind, Abraham takes his son up the mountain.  He is ready to sacrifice that which is most precious to him for his covenant with God.  And then, as had been planned all along, God stops him.  And in so doing, God teaches all of us that there is no covenant with God when we don’t care about the lives of others.  There is no covenant with God when we sacrifice our future.  

There is no covenant with God when there is no covenant with others.

Why doesn’t Hillel just tell us these statements?  Take care of yourself.  Take care of others.  Do it now.  Hillel’s are not the only questions in all of Pirke Avot, but they are the only advice framed as such.  Why does he phrase them in the form of a question?  The Rabbi in me wants to answer that a question is always better because it leads to more discussion and more wisdom.  The teacher in me knows that helping others come to a conclusion can lead to enduring learning.  I would guess that even without educational theory, Hillel understood this intrinsically.

Hillel understood human nature.  When he reframed Leviticus for that Roman soldier, he put it in the negative: Don’t do what is hateful to you.  Why?  Because he understood that sometimes stopping a bad action is easier to do than starting a good one.  These High Holy Days take us to task with regard to God.  Hillel knew that in order to truly live out the covenant we have with others, we have to take ourselves to task.  We have to ask ourselves these questions over and over because we are always changing, even though we know the answers stay the same,.  We have to ask ourselves over and over because in so doing, we have the opportunity to constantly adjust our actions.  We have the chance to turn, for teshuvah, always, because we’re always checking.

If I am not for myself, who is for me?  And, if I am for my own self alone, what am I? Put these statements in your pockets.  Speak of them when you walk on the way.  Think of them when you lie down and you rise up.  Because in doing so, we recommit to the covenant we have with each other, the covenant which God commands us to forge.

If not now, when? 

Shanah Tovah.

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[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/travel/16iht-fortune.9260526.html

[2] Based on Buber’s Tales of the Chassidim, and other sources

[3] Mishnah Sanhedrin 3:7, including comment from Rashi on BT Sanh. 37a

[4] Gen. 18:27

[5] Gen. 18:17-19

[6] Mishnah Avot 1:14

[7] Yanklowitz, Rabbi Shmuly., Pirke Avot a Social Justice Commentary.  CCAR Press 2018

[8] BT Shabbat 31a

[9] Lev. 19:18

Erev Rosh HaShanah 5782: Olam Chesed Nibaneh

 A version of this sermon was delivered on Erev Rosh HaShanah 5782 at Temple B'nai Torah - A Reform Congregation in Wantagh, NY.

            You may have missed the headlines, but this past May, Europe was in crisis, and on the brink of collapse.  No, I’m not talking about Brexit, or the effects of the COVID pandemic.  I’m not even talking about the voting at the Eurovision song contest this year.  No.  Earlier this May, in a brazen act, a farmer moved a large stone some 7.5 feet, out of the way of his tractor.[1] 

            Now, you might be wondering, what could be so brazen about moving a stone?  Even a large stone?  Aren’t farmers allowed to do that?  Shouldn’t he be allowed to keep his tractor and equipment safe?  Well, this farmer lives in the town of Erquelinnes, Belgium, which shares a border with the French town of Bousignies-sur-Roc.  When this farmer moved that large stone out of his way, what he didn’t realize is that the stone had been placed there deliberately and with purpose.  Not by God, but by a border commission in 1819, tasked with dividing up Europe in the aftermath of Napoleon’s loss at Waterloo four years earlier in 1815.  I imagine some of us are thinking back to High School history courses when we last might have heard these names.  When the Belgian farmer moved that stone, he moved the border 7.5 feet, making Belgium bigger by 7.5 feet and France smaller by 7.5 feet, though I’m sure they measured in meters.  And he did this all by moving a stone out of the way of his tractor. 

            Quite the accomplishment for a small-town farmer: creating an unintentional international incident, that if it couldn’t be resolved amicably, would necessitate the formation of a border commission, the likes of which hasn’t been convened since 1930!  Quite the chain of events unleashed by an innocent desire a man had to properly farm his land. 

            The farmer obviously had no idea what his simple action might lead to.  He had no sense that by just doing his work, going about his day, he might create such a firestorm.  Not all our actions have such earth-changing consequences, but this season of our New Year and these Days of Awe ask us to consider our actions, all of them, big and small, and their ramifications, big and small. 

What do we create when we act?  What might we destroy? 

This is the question that weighs on our souls on these days that bring us to the border between heaven and earth.  We cannot move the border between earth and heaven, but our tradition makes clear that we do have an effect on the heavens.  These hours spent in our houses of worship, pleading before and praising God, remind us all that our actions not only affect those around us in this world, but the heavenly realm as well. 

What we do, will do, and have done will cause us to be written and inscribed in the book of life, we pray.  As we begin these days of repentance, prayer, and charity, we might ask ourselves what these prayers mean and how we are supposed to understand them.  Do we believe that God is sitting up in heaven with a quill pen keeping track of everything we do in a giant ledger or on a long scroll?  Maybe we imagine God crouched over a laptop with an Excel spreadsheet of our deeds, each of us getting a new tab, the sum of our actions automatically updating with each entry.  However we might imagine it adding up, our deeds have a metaphysical effect: our actions affect even God Themself.  They can temper judgment’s severe decree! 

These cause-and-effect beliefs are hard for our modern sensibilities.  When the rabbis of old teach that our deeds affect the heavens, they do so in part to remind us that if our actions can impact God in heaven, imagine the impact they have on earth.  If every one of our actions matters so deeply to God, then we are called to mimic the Divine Concern and consider how every one of them matters to us and to those around us.

What we do matters, every moment of every day.  It is all taken into account by God, and so it should all be taken into account by us.

The ancient rabbis explained that Divine Concern for the effects of our actions.  In Pirke Avot, the collection of teachings from the earliest generations of Rabbis, we read that “Rabbi Eliezer, son of Yaakov, says: One who does a single good deed acquires a single defender. One who does a single sin acquires a single prosecutor.”[2]  Rabbi Eliezer here teaches that our deeds essentially assemble a collection of lawyers to plead your case before God.  The good deeds amass a team of defendants, and the bad deeds amass a team of prosecutors. 

In The Talmud, “Rabbi Joshua ben Levi said: All the commandments which Israel performs in this world will come and testify on their behalf in the world to come.”[3]  Rather than serving as the attorneys, according to Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, our deeds serve as witnesses, testifying on our behalf before the throne of judgment.  Though he doesn’t elaborate, clearly some would testify for the prosecution and some for the defense.

Rabbi Shmuel Eidels, known as the Maharsha, who lived in Poland in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, goes even further in a teaching on this very passage of Talmud.  In his commentary, he teaches that “in each action of a person’s hands is created a spiritual being based on the deed, as it is said, the one who fulfills a commandment gives strength to the host of the heavens,” [4]  Our actions, the Maharsha teaches, create.  It’s not just that the actions call forward the prosecutors and defenders, he says.  It’s not just that the actions themselves take the stand.  No, all of our actions are moments of creation.  Positive actions create a force in the heavens that buttresses the foundations of God’s abode.

The Maharsha goes on to explain that the opposite is true as well.  “And thus…one who commits a sin removes strength from the host of the heavens, and gives strength to the side of impurity, and they are witnesses who testify against him.”[5]

Doing the right thing is heavenly infrastructure.  By following mitzvot, and living up to our moral standards, we strengthen God.  When we miss the mark, when we sin, we chip away at the heavens and strengthen the case against us in the heavenly court.  These High Holy days allow us the opportunity to make up for those times we’ve missed the mark.  We enter the sanctuary of our souls hoping that our prayers, our contrition, and our commitment to deeds of lovingkindness will begin to make up for those times.  But the Talmud and the Maharsha remind us that focusing on this only on these days is not sufficient because our actions every day are moments of creation.  These days are supposed to guide us for the rest of the year.

The Maharsha’s teaching that every one of our actions is a moment of creation means that every action we take allows us the opportunity to mimic the Divine, to participate in the act of creation.  Every action in our lives has the potential to be another Big Bang, another moment of B’reishit bara!  This potential is exciting, as we embark on this new year, because it gives us another chance to build upon that infrastructure.  It gives us another chance to hold ourselves accountable.  It gives us a chance to improve.

God tried out other versions of existence before committing to this one.  The other ones were not good.  In an interesting midrash, Rabbi Judah bar Simon teaches that the world we live in today was not God’s first attempt.[6]  He asks why the Torah, in describing the first day of Creation – on which God speaks light into being, separates light and darkness, and names day and night – why on this first day of existence, does the Torah say, “And there was evening.”?  For Rabbi Judah bar Simon, the “and” is superfluous.  This is to teach us, he says, “…that there was a time-system prior to this.”[7] And the midrash adds a teaching of Rabbi Abbahu, who said that, “This [‘and’] teaches us that God created worlds and destroyed them, saying, ‘This one pleases me; those did not please me.’”[8]

This one, though, as we read in the Torah, is good and, ultimately, very good.[9]  So when God created something that God wasn’t especially proud of, God tried again.  Rabbi Avi Stausberg teaches that the successful creation of the world was only made possible by the creation and destruction of previous attempts.[10]

It took God a few tries to get it right.  Rabbi Natan Zvi Finkel, in his essay “Destruction and Building,” explains God’s repeated attempts at creation by looking at the book of Proverbs, which teaches that the world was created with wisdom.[11]  “…In the destruction of the worlds, there is great wisdom…However this is not really destruction at all, rather it is the way of wisdom: through the different attempts to build worlds and their destructions, the foundation is established upon which the world is based.”[12]  Destruction leads ultimately to wisdom when we are inspired not to make the same mistakes a second time.

If we have the same creative power as God, then, like God, we have the ability to discern wisdom from our mistakes and use it as the foundation of our world.  That’s what these days are about.  Discerning wisdom from our mistakes, from the moments we destroyed, the moments we chipped away at heaven, the moments we moved the border.  Whether God is keeping that ledger or not, these days, reflecting on our deeds, call upon us to take stock of what we created and what we destroyed.  And, these days teach us that even from those moments of destruction, there is the opportunity to create again, with every action of our hands.

Today is the birthday of the world!  Hayom Harat Olam!  These words remind us that among the many meanings of this Rosh Hashanah, today is a celebration of creation and God’s creative power.  We marvel at it and celebrate it.  With a simple speech act, God sends all of existence into being.  We sound the shofar to recall the moment when, out of Tohu vavohu, out of an unformed and void cosmos, God spoke existence into being. 

And, at the same time we marvel at our own divine creative power, at the power we have in our hands.  According to Rabbi Finkel, we are obligated to use it.  “A person is obligated to be similar to God in all God’s attributes, so too is it obligated upon a person to create worlds like God.  As it is taught [in the Talmud]: ‘Be similar to God.  Just as God is merciful and compassionate, so should you be merciful and compassionate.’”[13] 

Because it’s not only wisdom that God uses as a tool of creation.  The Psalms teach us Olam chessed yibaneh, that God created with chesed, lovingkindness.[14] And as God creates with lovingkindness, we are called to mimic that lovingkindness in all that we build and all that we create.  We are called to show love for ourselves, and for others.  In doing so, we forge ahead and build upon a sturdy foundation.  We partner

Tonight, we enter the year 5782 with blasts of the horn and praises of God.  Ahead of us are untold opportunities to change the world, to create with wisdom, compassion, and deeds of lovingkindness.  Let us take up the charge and hear the sound of the Shofar calling us to build a world of chesed.  Let the sounds of the shofar call us to repair, through our actions, the heavenly realm, so that God’s presence may continue to be strongly felt.  For if we participate in the work of creating a world founded on wisdom and built from love, then God’s presence will truly be felt around us and through us.  And then, it will truly be a Shanah Tovah.  A good year.

Ken Yehi Ratzon.

Amen.

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[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/belgian-farmer-moves-belgium-france-border/

[2] Pirke Avot 4:11

[3] BT Avodah Zarah 2a

[4] Maharsha on Avodah Zarah 2a in Chidushei Agadot

[5] Ibid.

[6] Bereishit Rabbah 3:7

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] See Gen. 1

[10] Rabbi Avi Strausberg, Hayom Harat Olam – We are the Creators.  https://www.hadar.org/torah-resource/zokhreinu-lhayyim-memory-and-promise

[11] 3:19

[12] Rabbi Natan Zvi Finkel, as quoted by Strausberg, Rabbi Avi., Hayom Harat Olam – We are the Creators.  https://www.hadar.org/torah-resource/zokhreinu-lhayyim-memory-and-promise

[13] Ibid.

[14] 89:3

Kol Nidre 5779 - Emet

In the attic of the Altneu Shul, the old/new synagogue in the Jewish quarter of Prague, rest the remains of a creature of legend, giant, foreboding, formed of clay: the famous Golem.^[1]  The creature was created out of necessity, by the chief rabbi of that old city, Judah Loew ben Bezalel, known as the Maharal.  His father’s name, Bezalel, perhaps hinting at his creative prowess, named for the chief Israelite builder in the Torah.

Prague at that time was a city of violent hatreds between the different groups, and the Jews were not spared.  Another blood libel and more false accusations and scapegoating all lead to a feeling of unease and impending danger among the Jewish residents, and their rabbi decided that something had to be done about it.  And so he and his son-in-law snuck out of the Ghetto, and under the dark of night formed a creature out of clay hauled from the banks of the river, and named it Golem, from the word in the psalms meaning shapeless, describing humanity before creation.

After fashioning and forming it into a human likeness, the rabbi and his son-in-law began to intone words of prayer, spells really, from the Kabbalistic—the mystical—tradition, seeking to breathe life into the nostrils of the beast.  But the creature did not move, did not breathe, until finally, the rabbi knelt down beside it, and carved into the wide forehead of clay three Hebrew letters.  Aleph, Mem, Tav.  The word: Emet.  Truth.

No sooner did the rabbi finish the final letter than the creature sprang to life, breathing heavily.  The rabbi commanded the Golem to awaken and instructed the creature that its one purpose was to protect the Jews, to guard the Ghetto at night, and to find those placing false evidence against the Jewish community.  The creature of truth was to ferret out the lies.  By day, Golem was instructed to help out around the synagogue, and if anyone asked, his name would be Joseph.

The rabbi, however, could not anticipate that as anger against the Golem grew from those outside the Jewish community, so too did the Golem grow, until it was almost too big for the rabbi to handle.  Golem could swat away an angry mob with his bare hand.  But, the result was unfortunately more vitriol, not more peace.

The Emperor, seeing what was happening, summoned the rabbi to him, and demanded to know when this might stop, when the monster might no longer persist, as the people were frightened.  “This stops when the Jews are no longer in danger,” answered the rabbi.  With that, the Emperor guaranteed the Jews’ safety and commanded the rabbi to destroy the monster.

The rabbi agreed but said that if the Jews were threatened again, Golem would return, and even stronger.

The rabbi went to find the Golem and came upon him in the cemetery reading the many tombstones.  “Joseph.  The Jews are safe now.  It is time to return you to the earth from which you were born.”

“But I don’t want to,” Joseph replied.  “What if I don’t obey?”

“You have no choice.”  And with that, the rabbi reached up with his staff and quickly erased the first letter, the silent Aleph, from the Golem’s forehead.  With that, emet, truth, became met, death, and the Golem breathed no more.  Again a lump of clay.

The Golem, emblazoned with the word Truth, is set out to protect from the dangers and results of lies, the dangers of falsehoods, the dangers of alternative facts.  The Golem, emblazoned with the word truth like a crown, seeks out those who would cause harm by trafficking in stories created to enrage a populous, in fantasies of malfeasance constructed to elicit harm, and to divide the community.

Would that we had a Golem today!  Given the battering truth has taken, however, I fear that we’d all be in danger.

           

Much like the middle of the 16^th century, when this version of the Golem story was written, truth is under assault in our society and our nation today.[2]  Our leaders and their surrogates are so brazen as to tell us that what we see with our own eyes and what we know to be reality is not so:  “3,000 people did not die in Puerto Rico.”

Truth has become relative. There is no longer a sense of shared reality.  We have lost the ability to live peacefully alongside one another because the world we live in has been divided into sides, each holding on to their own facts, even if those facts are not supported by evidence.  Feelings and opinions have taken the place of facts, statistics, and news.

This shift in our culture away from a shared sense of truth did not suddenly appear.  No, it is the unfortunate ends of a politics based on cynicism, greed, and the hunger for power.  There has been in the last generation an overextension of the recognition that people experience life in different ways.  It is important, probably even necessary, to understand how a person’s narrative relates to the truth.  And it is important to honor those narratives and the many stories of our families, friends, and neighbors.  But, extending this line of thought to say that everyone’s personal narrative is true and aligns with facts brings us to a dangerous point of relativism.  If every feeling and emotion is held as truth, and every story is equally true, then bigotry, hatred, and prejudice become valid expressions of a person’s identity, not something to be shunned or at least questioned.  Hannah Arendt would argue that it is the inability to distinguish between fact and fiction that lays the groundwork for the rise of totalitarianism.[3]  Truth, and the search for it, therefore, is a weapon, and perhaps the most important, of democracy. Truth is under constant assault, and it’s getting worse by the day.

Some of this truth decay[4] has to do with technology.  We have diversified how we get our information.  There are many options for news: in print, on TV or radio, and online.  We choose where we get our news, and often we choose a source based on what we already believe, confirming our biases and putting us into echo chambers.  The democratization of information can be an asset, allowing for more and varied voices to be heard and amplified, allowing for the panorama of America to be painted in more hues than ever before.  However, disparate mass media combined with immoral impulses has become a detriment to society rather than a benefit.  Lies have been weaponized to attack our sensibilities, our communities, and our nation.

On this day of confession, we are, at least partially, to blame.  Al chet shechatanu: We have, in the last decade, reprogrammed ourselves and our minds, thanks to the devices in our pockets.  We now expect immediate information and answers.  And no matter what we find when we search, we assume it to be true. 

Today, within milliseconds of asking, we have information shining brightly back at our faces, and we tend to trust that information, partially because it all looks the same.  But we don’t know or ask who put it there, or whether we should trust it.  We used to have to go to an index, look up a subject, then open a second book to find information.  Truth required curiosity.  Truth required effort and persistence.  Truth required experts in a field.  Truth required reasoned debate, objectivity, the scientific method.  Today, all that truth requires is that we ask Siri or Google and see what comes up on our small HD screens.  The convenience is intoxicating and addictive.  The immediacy of information has trumped vetting whether or not the information is true, factually accurate.  And, studies have shown that the first piece of information we receive is usually the one we will believe, whether it is true or not; and Google does not rank results based on accuracy.

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The rabbis who composed Pirkei Avot, Chapters of the Fathers, were concerned with helping the people lead ethical lives, and they gathered their wisdom together.  In that famous tractate of Mishnah we read about what holds up our world.  We read at the end of Chapter 1: “Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel used to say: ‘On three things does the world stand: On justice, and on truth, and on peace,’ and then he quotes the prophet Zecharia: ‘As it is said (8:16): “Judge with truth, justice, and peace in your gates.’” [5] 

In his 18^th century ethical text Mesilat Yesharim, The Path of the Just, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato takes the baton from the rabbis of Pirkei Avot.  He explains the importance of this teaching from Rabban Shimon Ben Gamliel.  He writes: “Truth is one of the very foundations upon which the world stands.  As this is so, when you speak falsely, it is as if you are nudging at the world’s foundation.  Conversely, when you are careful about truth, you are likened to someone who maintains the world’s foundation.”[6]  Truth telling keeps the world upright. Lies cause the world to crumble if we are not careful.  It is only the truth, alongside justice and peace, which holds everything in balance.  Without truth, we shatter the underpinnings of creation.

The Talmud, in tractate Shabbat, shifts the focus of truth from the foundation of the world, to the foundation of God.  “The truth is God’s seal,” our sages teach us.  Luzzato elaborates that, “if God has chosen truth as God’s seal, its opposite must certainly be abominable to God.”[7]  God doesn’t just prefer truth; falseness and lies are an abomination to God.  Speaking truth is a Godly act.  Being truthful allows us to be like God, to emulate the divine!

When we chant from the Torah, we recite blessings composed by the ancient rabbis.  The blessing after the Torah reading refers to Torat Emet, a Torah of Truth, picking up on a verse from Malachi, one of the minor prophets of the Bible.  The Torah, as God’s word, is true, we remind ourselves.  When God speaks to us through our scriptures, we believe it. 

On these High Holy Days and our festivals, as we open the Holy Ark, containing the Torat Emet, the Torah of Truth, we announce that God is Rachum vechanun, erech apayim, v’rav chessed ve’emet: compassionate, gracious, endlessly patient, loving, and true.  Truth is not just in God’s words, but truth is an attribute of God, equal to God’s kindness and compassion.   

But what kind of truth are we talking about when we are asked to speak the truth like God?  As people of faith, how are we supposed to understand the concept of truth?  The word emet is used throughout our tradition.  What kind of truth does it describe?  Is it merely that which is, as professor Adele Berlin describes, whatever is authentic, valid, and trustworthy? ^[8]

Professor Baruch Schwartz of Hebrew University explains that there are two kinds of truth for people of faith: empirical and religious.  Empirical he says, “is obtainable…only through the scientific method…Religious truth pertains to that which is outside the realm of the empirical. It consists of the teachings accepted as normative by the community of believers with regard to God and what God expects of them.”[9]  We hold in our two hands, simultaneously, empirical truth and religious truth.  When we learn more about our world, the realm of religious truth shrinks.  When we experience the awe of God, however, it grows again.  As moderns, we are always working to find that balance between these two truths.

Are we supposed to understand Emet as empirical truth, based on science and evidence?  Or are we supposed to understand it as something else, referring to the more universal, ethical, and religious truths which cannot be codified and cannot necessarily be observed?  Maimonides would say both.  He teaches that truth is about two kinds of perfection: intellectual and ethical.^[10] 

We might think that all references to truth in our tradition, in our scriptures and sacred texts, deal only with the notion of religious truths.  But the Torah gives space for the human search for empirical truths, truths beyond the religious and cultural understandings.  In Deuteronomy, no less than three times, the Torah advises that we search for truth.  In Chapter 13, relating to news about idol worshipers in a town, the Torah advises: “You shall enquire and search and interrogate thoroughly and behold if it is true, the fact is established…”[11]

Of these examples, Dr. Isaac Sassoon teaches: “In these scriptures, the Torah assumes that emet can be ascertained by means of human striving and, moreover, that humans are endowed with the capacity to distinguish emet from sheker (falsehood).  These verses… [allow] emet [to equal] empirical truth.”[12]  The Torah makes space for us to discover evidence.  The Torah makes space for us to find those truths which exist regardless of belief.  The Torah asks us to do the research, to find the facts, and then to make a decision based on the reality of the situation, not just based on an accusation or on hearsay.  The Torah knows that it cannot be the end all of our knowledge and that all the answers are not within.  There is truth to be discovered!

Because there are two kinds of truth, it is up to us to distinguish between them.  Because there are two kinds of truth, which we equally value, it is up to us as Jews in the 21^st century not to allow them to be conflated.  We must be speakers of truth and know what kind of truth we are speaking.

But speaking truth is not the only divine quality we ought to emulate.  For God not only speaks the truth, God is a judge of truth.  Yom Kippur is a day which is filled with imagery pushing us and prompting us to ponder our mortality.  We plead with God over these 26 hours of fasting and soul-affliction to be inscribed into the Book of Life.  Kol Nidre is sung with an ark void of Torahs.  The ark in Hebrew is called the aron, and that word also means casket.  When we see the open and empty ark, we see our end, in the hopes that coming so close to our mortality, we might finally repent.  It is at the end that we learn that God is the judge of truth, as we recite the blessing Baruch Dayyan HaEmet, blessed is the judge of truth.

This blessing, recited upon hearing the news of a death, puts God into the position of judge and arbiter of our lives, able to see the truth of our actions and our intentions, no matter how we might try to falsify who we have been.  God sees the truth, and God judges based on that truth.  This is the entire purpose of Yom Kippur: to stand before God the judge, to lay out our truths to God, as if God didn’t already know them, to speak the hard words of confession before God, and to let God decide on our fates, on how we will make it through the New Year. 

Just as when we bless God as feeder of the hungry, we understand that as an internal call to feed the hungry in our midst, we must seek to emulate the God of dayyan haemet.  Just as when we bless God as redeemer of the captive, we understand that as an internal call to us to work to end oppression, and we must seek to emulate God as judge of truth.  We must seek out the truth and all make a commitment to do God’s work on Earth, each of us becoming dayyanei emet, judgers and arbiters of truth.  We must each become golems.  When truth is under such assault, being a judge of what is and is not true is a divine call, a divine action, and a divine imperative. 

This evening, we began our worship, after a few introductory prayers, with our Kol Nidre, so beautifully sung by our Cantor, choir, and musicians.  The text of this prayer is really a legal formula that seeks to prevent us from becoming speakers of falsehoods before God in the year ahead.  As Dara Horn puts it: Kol Nidre is “for the kind of vows one [makes] in complete desperation, when catastrophe or stupidity or some other smallness of the imagination [makes] life unbearable, when one [needs] to break the laws of the universe and [sees] no other way but to sign over a first-born child, or a first-true-love, or one’s ability to enjoy being alive.”[13]  We announce that any vow we might make to God, any promise we might make in a tight situation, isn’t really a promise.  We know that we won’t hold up our end of whatever vow we make before God.  By nullifying them in advance, we hold up the truth we know we will put aside in that moment of passion.  By nullifying our vows on this night, we prevent ourselves from being liars in God’s presence.  By this formula, we render ourselves truthful before God for the year ahead, from this Yom Kippur to the next.  But it only works between us and God. 

Every day of the year ahead, we ought to strive to speak the truth, to hold the world’s foundation firm.  Let us go into this year with Emet written on our souls if it cannot be written on our foreheads, such that we might do the hard work of seeking out truth in all its forms.  Let us make truth our seal, as it is God’s.  Let us be dayyanei haemet: arbiters of what is true and what is not. 

Our nation depends on it. 

Our faith demands it. 

G’mar chatimah tovah.

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[1] Adapted from Rabbi Jennifer Gubitz’s version of this story in her sermon: “The Golem and Truth.”  Based on a retelling by David Wisniewski in Golem

[2] Much of this is inspired by Kakutani, Michiko The Death of Truth. 2018,Tim Duggan Books

[3] See Kakutani, pp. 11, 13

[4] Ibid.

[5] Avot 1:18

[6] Mesilat Yesharim, trans. By Ya’akov Feldman.

[7] Ibid.

[8] http://thetorah.com/torat-emet/affirming-the-torah-as-authoritative-and-authentic/

[9] http://thetorah.com/torat-emet/empirical-truth-vs-religious-truth/

[10] From Pirke Avot Commentary by Kravitz and Olitzky on Avot 1:18

[11] Deut 13:15

[12] http://thetorah.com/torat-emet/truth-must-be-ascertainable/

[13] Horn, Dara. Eternal Life. P. 50