Erev Rosh Hashanah 5785/2024: Jews in America: What's Your Noun?

 Jews in America: What's Your Noun?

             My tour guide in Vilnius is named Daniel.  Easy enough to remember.  We meet just after a heavy downpour on the outskirts of what was the Jewish quarter of Vilnius, Vilna in Yiddish, in Lithuania, and also the ghetto.  This is the place around which my Sabbatical travels centered, and Daniel was going to teach me about it.  I’m here particularly to learn a little bit more about where my grandparents, Leo and Sheva, their names listed in our Book of Remembrance, had come from, and the world that they had grown up in.  That world is disappeared.  Daniel teaches me a lot about Vilnius before the war as we walk the narrow alleys of the old town.  There were times where half of the city’s population was Jewish, he said.  Imagine, every other person on the street speaking Yiddish. 

We pass by the building that used to house the Ramm Printing Press, one of the largest Jewish presses in the world, famous for typesetting the Talmud in the way we’ve been studying it ever since.  From this building, Jewish thought and religious texts were spread like never before.  In this building were also printed Yiddish literature, Chassidic teachings, and an occasional Socialist pamphlet.  What a world that must have been, the world that brought my grandparents to life.  A world where Jews mixed and mingled with the society around them, and lived as Jews outwardly.  A world in which they were the society at large, and maintained connection to their identity, though not all in the same way.  Only remnants can now be seen, echoes of a distant past.   A street named for the Jews.  Faded shop names in a Yiddish that now almost no one on the street speaks or understands.

            Though I am certain I mentioned it, and it’s clear in my email signature, I learn at the end of my tour that Daniel didn’t know that I was a rabbi.  Which helps explain why he was somewhat taken aback at some of my questions as we meandered the cobblestoned streets and passed where the great Synagogue had stood, now a construction site awaiting possible rebuilding.

He seems a bit flummoxed when I ask him, because I am a rabbi after all, to define his Jewish identity for me.  He doesn’t seem to understand the question.  So, I elaborate.  “How do your Jewishness and your Lithuanianness work together?”  He shares with me that it’s complicated and that for him, they are two separate parts of who he is.  In fact, he moved to Israel when he was in his 20s, and gave up his Lithuanian citizenship, and now if he wants it back, he has to forfeit his Israeli citizenship.  The two cannot coexist, he seems to say.  And, he doesn’t have a problem with that, because in many ways that’s how it has always been: The Jews of Europe, no matter how integrated, no matter what percentage of the population, no matter how many shop windows were in Yiddish, were almost always other.

I don’t know why I asked Daniel that question right there, but I’m grateful he answered me and took me seriously, because I think that this personal heritage and history tour gave me an opportunity to reflect on my own identity in the face of my personal history.  Jewish Identity and what it means has been an interest since before I was even considering the rabbinate.  My Master’s Thesis was predicated on interviews of eighth-graders asking them about their Jewish identity.  Among the questions I asked my eighth-grade subjects was a question that I had been grappling with myself at the time, and which I imagine is also on many of our minds as well, as we navigate the interesting times we’re living through.

So, I’d like to ask all of us tonight to think about and answer for ourselves the following.  If you had to define yourself, would you say that you are a Jewish American or an American Jew?  Would you say that you are first and foremost an American or first and foremost a Jew?  I do recognize that among us are family and loved ones who are not Jewish, and so I ask for you to think about this question and how you would define someone in your life.  American Jew, or Jewish American?  What’s the difference?  As I see it, following standard grammar, it’s a question of which is your noun and which is the modifier?

Perhaps for you there is no distinction between the two.  The way I understand it, it’s the question of whether we feel that we are Americans who happen to be Jewish, the same way that our neighbors are Americans who happen to be Catholic.  Or are we Jews who happen to live in America the way we’ve lived in other places before?  Where does one part of our identity begin and the other end?  Can we, and do we, find balance between the two?  Has that balance changed in the last number of years?  Has that balance shifted for us since October 7?

Some of us had maybe thought for some time that we were Jewish Americans.  The last number of years, with the Tree of Life shooting, the Charlottesville rally, and the ugly antisemitic responses to the ongoing wars in Israel maybe made us feel more like Jew was our noun. We sense the increased antisemitism, and we feel it.  I’ve spoken from this bima before about the rising antisemitism coming at us from all sides.  This past year especially has forced us to ask whether this is the new normal: additional security assessments and hired guards just to send our kids to school.  We’re right to be skittish.  We’re right to be vigilant.  We’re not right to give up on Judaism in America.  And we’re not right to give up on fighting for the kind of America that made this nation a haven and a home for Jews unlike any history has ever seen.

This past year has seen much handwringing about the state of American Judaism.  In The Atlantic, Franklin Foer describes it as the end of the Golden Age of Jews in America. 

“America’s ascendant political movements—MAGA on one side, the illiberal left on the other—would demolish the last pillars of the consensus that Jews helped establish. They regard concepts such as tolerance, fairness, meritocracy, and cosmopolitanism as pernicious shams. The Golden Age of American Jewry has given way to a golden age of conspiracy, reckless hyperbole, and political violence, all tendencies inimical to the democratic temperament. Extremist thought and mob behavior have never been good for Jews. And what’s bad for Jews, it can be argued, is bad for America.”^[1]

Joshua Liefer’s hot off the press book Tablets Shattered describes what he calls the end of An American Jewish Century.  “It is…no surprise that the prevailing emotions of contemporary American Jewish life are anxiety and division.  American Jewish life is marked more by conflict than consensus than at any point since the first half of the twentieth century because the foundations of American Jewish life that were built in the last century have begun to crumble.”^[2]

Liefer here, and Foer in his article, look to the declining role of major Jewish institutions in America, like Federations and Jewish denominations, including the Reform movement, which have sizable endowments, and declining influence and membership.  On a smaller scale is the synagogue, with overall declining numbers of members and more mergers and dissolutions.  Foer and Liefer also put much emphasis on shifting and diminishing connections to Israel and Zionism.  They see it as on par with a crumbling institution in terms of the influence on the Jewish American community.  The rocky foundations were made evident on October 8.

I’m curious if Liefer considered subtitling his book “The End of a Jewish American Century.”  Either way, both of these works see the changes in American Judaism as indicators that we cannot trust that the life we have lived as Jews in America will continue in the same way.  On this I agree.  And, I believe that it will be the Jewish community’s ability to recreate itself which will hopefully give rise to a new Jewish American Century.

Nowhere in history, until the establishment of Israel, have Jews been able to even ponder that question that I asked us all to consider.  When Napoleon emancipates the Jews they must declare on oath that they are French first.  When Germany emancipates the Jews, many find that the only way to true equality is through conversion to Christianity.  My tour guide Daniel certainly couldn’t conceive of being a combination of Jew and Lithuanian.  And yet here, though imperfect, Jews have been able to ascend the social ladder in business, politics, and media in unprecedented ways.

We are a people of hope and a people that no matter the circumstances have always been able to adapt.  Though my trust in this nation has been shaken over the last years, I have come to disagree with my friends who say America and the West are completely lost and the only future for Jews is Israel.  I still believe in America, a nation as hopeful as our people.  A nation, like Judaism, which asks us to live up to high ideals.  It is these democratic ideals of this great nation, the norms established through fight and protest, and the expanding of rights to broader and broader groups of citizens which are the bedrock of why America has been different. 

We ought to pay attention when those norms are challenged.  We ought to pay attention when the liberal “small-d” democratic order is strained by those who would not agree to play by the rules, or who believe the rules don’t apply to them, or who fix the rules or the referees in their favor.  This is a danger to Jews in America because it is a danger to America.  We ought to pay attention and speak out when politicians use antisemitic images in mailers or mainstream antisemitic ideas.  We also ought to pay attention and call out when tactics that have been used against Jews in the past are used on other groups, accusing them of spreading disease, stealing jobs, or being responsible for missing pets or people. 

Things are also not always as bleak as they may seem, and it would be a disservice to our history to not acknowledge that though there are many, many faults and much work to do, America has made significant progress.  Earlier this year, Rabbi David Wolpe offered the following anecdote, imagining a conversation with his great-great-grandfather. “Great-great-grandfather,” he says, “There are antisemites at Harvard!”  The reply: “There are Jews at Harvard?”  “Yes, but some of them hate Israel.”  “There’s an Israel!”

Living outside the Land and now the State of Israel, there are what my friend Rabbi Josh Franklin describes as two reactions, each based in the Babylonian Exile.  When in the 6^th century BCE, some 2600 years ago, our ancestors were sent away from their home by force, the Psalmist, as one reaction to the new reality, records that they offered a song of lament:

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat, sat and wept, as we remembered Zion.  There on the poplars we hung up our lyres, for our captors asked us there for songs, our tormentors, for amusement: “Sing us one of the songs of Zion.” How can we sing a song of Adonai on alien soil?  If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither…”^[3]

The attitude expressed here in Psalm 137 is one of defeat, destruction, and exile.  One of being forced to give up traditions and worrying that a connection to the past, to that which provided a sense of identity and place would be lost.  In the aftermath of these last years, we can mourn, we can bemoan our lot, we can hang up our instruments and await redemption.

The second is a reaction like the prophet Jeremiah who, witnessing and living through the exile, offers the people the following advice from God:

Build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their fruit. You should take wives and give birth to sons and daughters; and you should take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there, do not decrease. And seek the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you and pray to Adonai in its behalf; for in its prosperity you shall prosper.”^[4]

We have experience living a Jeremian lifestyle.  In America’s prosperity, the Jewish community has prospered.  In America’s freedom, Jewish communities have been free to evolve, develop, improvise and experiment, to become less insular, or more. 

Additionally, Jeremiah teaches us that we are supposed to do two things, seek the welfare of the place and pray to God on its behalf.  We are accustomed, at least on the High Holy Days, to offering a prayer for our nation, though our Siddur does include it in its Shabbat section, and most siddurim around the world include a prayer for the government.

Prayer without action, we know, is in vain, which is perhaps why God first says to seek the welfare of the city: Doresh et Shlom ha’ir.  Seek the peace of the city.  Work toward peace, do what it takes to make the nation in which you live the best it can be, the most open to difference, the most tolerant, the most fair, the most merit-based, the most open to creativity, the most open to dissent, and the safest for all its inhabitants.  In this nation, we don’t just work toward it, we get a say, we get a vote.  We can use what we know is good for the Jews to make decisions about who will lead this great nation that allows us to hold on to both our Jewishness and our Americanness with pride and with a sense that they belong together, not bifurcated, not split from each other, not in opposition to each other.

It’s the end of my tour with my guide Daniel, and we are back in the center of old Vilnius, just a block from my hotel.  The skies have cleared.  The restaurants dry off their chairs and tables out in the plazas, awaiting the tourists for dinner.  I thanked Daniel for the wonderful tour and the good conversation.  I wish him well and take a moment to reflect on the history I have seen.  And as I look around, I imagine what it might have been like  for my grandparents, and their families and friends to have lived in this place.  And I wonder how they would have defined themselves as they walked these very streets.

Shanah Tovah.

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^[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/04/us-anti-semitism-jewish-american-safety/677469/

^[2] Liefer, Joshua. Tablets Shattered. Dutton, USA p 17.

^[3] Psalm 137

^[4] Jeremian 29:5-7

Kol Nidre 5784: A Life of Awe

 A version of this sermon was delivered on Kol Nidre at Temple B'nai Torah - A Reform Congregation, Wantagh, NY on Kol Nidre 5784.

           The time I spent at glass school this summer spanned two Shabbats.  On both of them, I made a point to go and pray.  There I was, on Friday night, following a road into the woods, past all the cabins, looking for a place with a great overlook of the sound below.  One thing I neglected to take into account, unfortunately, is that I was on the West Coast, so unlike our Shabbat on the beach, I was going to have to pray with my back to the beautiful view.  The water is on the wrong side of the land out there...  Luckily, the view of the tall trees is equally majestic.

           So, I found a place.  And, having scoped it out in advance, I knew I had a view of the water below and the skies above.  I knew I was surrounded by trees older than anyone I would ever know, towering into the heavens above.  And I also remembered that the mystics in Sefat would greet Shabbat on a cliff, overlooking the Mediterranean, watching the sun set, facing west, so I prayed Kabbalat Shabbat facing the water, and then turned to the east when I got to Barechu. 

The spot I picked had light that filtered through it and shone in a color I had never seen in light before.  An orange, amber glow, soft and ethereal.  I stood in that light, deep in prayer, I basked in God’s creation, and I made my way to the Psalm for Shabbat.

           I adjusted my tallit and I continued.

           Mizmor shir l’yom haShabbat, tov l’hodot l’Adonai!

           A song, a psalm for the Sabbath day, it is good to praise Adonai.

           I’m in the right place for it.  I’ve got the right view.

           It’s just me and God, so I’m singing out fully into the woods, over the cliff, my prayers hovering over the waters like the primordial spirit of God, making their way to the heavens, and all around me.  If someone had come upon me, I’m not sure what they would have thought.  But they would have seen me swaying to the rhythms of the prayers from my heart and soul, my fringes sweeping the underbrush.  They would have heard me, passionate and off pitch, praising God’s creation.

           Mah gadlu ma’asecha Adonai!

           How wonderful are your creations, Adonai!

           And finally, I understood the psalmist.  I knew where King David found the inspiration for these words.  I felt it.  I saw myself as ever so small under these giant, extraordinary trees, and even smaller compared to God and the universe.  I felt the light slipping away as the Earth turned toward its day of rest.

           Tzaddik katamar yifrach, ke’erez balvanon yisgeh.

           The righteous flourish like a palm, they shall thrive like the cedars of Lebanon. 

           The last words of the psalm exited my mouth, and I was still, tall trees towering above and around me.  It was quiet.  I took a deep breath.  Woah.  I was in awe.  I allowed myself to dwell in that moment, to bask in that awe, to let it wash over me like the amber light of the evening.  And soon I felt my face form into a smile, almost a laugh really, as I was overcome with a sense of the Divine, with a new understanding of awe.

I gotta tell you.  I felt like the Baal Shem Tov or Nachman of Bratzlav, communing with God in the woods.  It was freeing.  It was intimate.  It was personal.  It was expansive.  It was awesome.

           We call these the Days of Awe.  What do we mean when we say this word?  According to Dr. Dacher Keltner at Berkeley, “Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.”[1]  Awe is an experience.  Awe is about opening up to something more.  On our calendar, these are the Days of Awe because we are supposed to open ourselves up, especially on Yom Kippur, to an experience of awe.  We are supposed to open ourselves to God, to possibility, to the community around us.  We are supposed to walk away from this 25-hour fast changed by that awe.

Awe makes us stop and say “woah.”  Literally.  A vocal expression of awe is among the most universally understood sounds.  It doesn’t matter where a person is from in the world, nine out of ten times, they will understand: “oooh,” “ahhh,” “wow,” and “woah.”  Anthropologists and linguists believe that as early as 100,000 years ago, our ancestors, before language had even been invented, were declaring their awe with a “woah.”[2]  Awe is at the core of what it means to be a human in this world.

In English, awe comes to us from the old Norse word agi.[3]  This word referred to fear, dread, horror, and terror.  In Hebrew, the origin of the term awe is similar.  We use the word awe to translate the word yirah, which is the same word in the Bible as fear.  Yira gives us the word Norah, like yamim nora’im, literally the days of awe.  We hear the word in Un’taneh Tokef, which describes the holiness of this day as awesome and full of dread.

One famous use of this verb we heard at Rosh HaShanah, on Moriah.  When the messenger of God stays Abraham’s hand, the rationale given is that now God knows that Abraham is “yirei Elohim.”[4]  So, which does it mean?  Is Abraham afraid of God, or in awe of God?  Well, there’s certainly beauty in thinking that it can mean both.  And on this day when we come face to face with God’s judgment and God’s mercy, it makes sense that fear and awe comingle. 

We often think of awe as stemming from an encounter with something big, grand, and overwhelming.  It sounds frightening.  The truth is that awe and fear share similar reactions but are actually not really near each other on the spectrum of human emotions.  Even though our language often puts fear and awe next to each other, our experiences don’t.  When plotted with other emotional experiences in a controlled experiment, subjects placed awe closer to admiration, joy, and aesthetic appreciation and far from fear, horror, and anxiety.[5] 

What’s the difference if at that moment on Moriah Abraham fears God or is in awe of God?  Fear can represent coercion.  Awe implies devotion.  If Abraham brought his son to the mountain out of fear, it means something entirely different than if he did so due to his awe of God.  Abraham’s relationship with God is one of awe, of being present with something that transcends the world.  And, if that’s Abraham’s relationship with God, that should be our relationship with God as well, for Abraham sets the model for us.  We are inheritors of awe!

           Awe makes us blurt out an “Amen.”  Awe makes us take a beat, take a moment, take it all in. 

           What is it that elicits awe?  What experiences cause us to have no choice but to instinctively declare: “Woah!”?  According to Dr. Keltner’s research, there are eight wonders of life that lead to an experience of awe. 

           We might think that most people, when prompted to describe a moment of experiencing awe, would relate something like the story I began with, a story of beauty in nature, or prayer.  But in actuality, the most prevalent source of awe was what Dr. Keltner describes as moral beauty:[6] experiencing other people’s courage, kindness, strength, or overcoming.  More than anything else, participants described witnessing another person channeling their better angels.  We elicit awe from others when we live lives of courage, kindness and strength.

           A second wonder of life is what Emile Durkheim called collective effervescence, where we feel like we’re buzzing or crackling with some life force that merges people into a collective self, a tribe, an oceanic “we.”[7]  Think of the wave at a football game.  You see it coming, you anticipate it, and collectively all around you, so does everyone else.  And when the undulating mass of humans makes its way toward your section, you join in, lift your arms and body and sit back down.  You were a small part in something much bigger.

           Third on this list is nature.  The fourth wonder is music.  It’s no wonder Taylor Swift concerts have yielded such a response.  The fifth is visual design.  The sixth wonder has to do with moments of deep spirituality.  The seventh with experiences of life and death, particularly birth moments and death moments.  The last wonder is the experience of an epiphany.

           All of these call us to moments when we see ourselves as part of something more.  All of these allow us to move away from our ego.  To sense more than ourselves.  To discover how we fit into that something more.  But awe is not a bingo card to fill out.  It’s not about collecting all eight to get to awe.  It only takes one moment in any category to feel awe.  It only takes one moment to take our breath away, to give us goosebumps, to wow us.

           All of Yom Kippur, if we allow it to be, can lead us to these wonders of life.  When we all chant together and beat our chests in unison at our great acrostic confessional, we feel that collective effervescence.  When our friends and family work hard to atone and to apologize and when we, also, make efforts to overcome our pride and find contrition: these can be moments of moral beauty for us and others.  We gather together in community for prayer.  We intone ancient melodies and words.  We implore God in moments of spiritual dedication.  The music of these services is grand and powerful.  We are called to consider our lives and come face to face with our mortality.  We invoke the memories of those we’ve lost.  We hopefully, by the end of the day, will come to some realization of who we hope to be in this next year. 

This whole day, Yom Kippur, HaYom, The Day, is an exercise in providing us moments of awe.  You may not blurt out a “woah” after the Vidui.  But if you take a moment to appreciate that hundreds of us here together, millions of Jews around the world, are all coming together to say these words on this day, the beating on your chest may take on a different feeling, especially if you open yourself up to it!  Our sins may be an alphabet of woe, but our worship is meant to be an acrostic of wow!

           Our ancestors, both ancient and more recent, put together this day of awe and passed it down to us.  And so there must be a point to it.  The reason, though, is not awe.  Awe is not the end goal.  Rather it’s what awe does for us.  Among other reactions, awe can make us less self-centered, ready to see the world differently, and more giving.

           In experiments conducted on awe and its effects, Dr. Keltner discovered that people who had experiences of awe and were then asked to take a selfie made themselves smaller in the photo than folks who did not have an awe experience.[8]  There was proportionally more background in the selfies of folks in awe.  Awe leads to a “small self.”  People who felt awe practiced tzimtzum, contraction, a divinely inspired quality of making space for others.  If we make space for others, we consider their opinion and we may be ready to reconcile. 

           Awe also undoes what psychologists call our default self, the part of us which focuses on how we distinguish ourselves from others, makes us competitive creatures, and helps us to achieve our goals.[9]  Modern society prioritizes this default self.  Awe is here to help us move toward our more communal natures, to remind us that while the self is important, it’s not the only thing; we’re part of something more, something greater.  Awe leads us to a more interdependent, collaborative understanding of the world.  More balance.  “We sense that we are part of a chapter in the history of a family, a community, a culture.”[10] 

In another experiment, participants were asked to help make paper cranes[11] for victims of the 2011 tsunami in Japan.  Those who had an awe-filled experience just before the request stayed longer and made more cranes than those who did not experience awe.  Awe can make us more giving and willing to offer our time.

It is awe that leads us to teshuvah, tefillah, and tzedakah.  It is awe that can help us to temper judgment’s severe decree, if only we let it!  Our traditions place before us a smorgasbord of awe on this day: from the Kol Nidre with its call to the heavenly court, to the reenactment of the service of the High Priest, to the story of Jonah who survives in the belly of a fish for three days, to the open aron tomorrow, as the sun is setting, and we rush to get our prayers in before the gates close and we usher God into the heavens with the last, long shofar blast.  Yom Kippur is a day of awe whose goal is that we make ourselves smaller, more communal, and more giving.

Awe makes us see the world differently.  Awe allows us to see what we don’t know, and to realize that we don’t know everything.  An experience of awe can be fleeting.  It’s also true that awe begets awe.  The more awe we experience, the richer it gets.[12]  Folks who went on an awe walk once a week over eight weeks found that their experience of awe increased over time, not decreased due to repetition as you might expect.  Awe begets awe.

Yom Kippur calls us therefore not to a day of awe, or ten, but to a lifetime of awe!  The awe we can feel over these 25 hours is meant to be taken with us so that we can live a life of awe.  A life where we value others.  A life where we see ourselves as part of a community.  A life where we give of ourselves.  A life where we do not believe we know everything.  A life where we see ourselves not at the center, but as part of something more, connected to others and to God.

The sun set on my prayer in those Washington woods.  The amber light faded.  The darkness descended upon me.  I took off and folded my tallit and trekked back to my cabin, reflecting on the experience feeling like I was reflecting God’s light. 

In 23 hours, the sun will set on our Yom Kippur prayers.  We’ll fold our tallits; we’ll put away the red books until next year.  But the awe will stay with us if we let it change us.

Our tradition gives us this day of awe to teach us to live a lifetime of awe.

 

G’mar Chatimah Tovah. 

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[1] Keltner, Dacher PhD.  Awe: The Transformative Power of Everyday Wonder. 2023; Allen Lane. p 7

[2] Keltner. p 58

[3] Ibid. p 19

[4] Genesis 22:12

[5] Keltner. p 21

[6] Keltner 11

[7] Ibid p 13

[8] Ibid p 34

[9] Ibid p 34

[10] Ibid p 37

[11] Ibid p 41

[12] Ibid p 106

Yom Kippur Yizkor 5776 - The Power of Tears

A version of this sermon was delivered at Temple Emanu-El of East Meadow on Yom Kippur, 5776.

A few years ago, an artist named Rose-Lynn Fisher decided that she would take samples of different kinds of tears and photograph them under an optical microscope. What she discovered was that each tear and each type of tear she photographed gave her a unique artistic composition. She turned these prints into an exhibit she calls The Topography of Tears. Fisher writes: “The random compositions I find in magnified tears often evoke a sense of place, like aerial views of emotional terrain. Although the empirical nature of tears is a chemistry of water, proteins, minerals, hormones, antibodies and enzymes, the topography of tears is a momentary landscape, transient as the fingerprint of someone in a dream.”[1] 

Tears are indeed meant to be momentary, transient, like life. But Fisher, by photographing all these tears, has given them permanence, just as our memories do for our loved ones.

Did you know there are different kinds of tears? The saline that streams down our faces differs depending on the situation. There are actually three different kinds of tears, according to doctors. Basal tears lubricate and protect our eyes each time we blink. Reflex tears are triggered by irritants like onions or smoke. 

The tears in our eyes this day, The Day, however, as we remember our loved ones of blessed memory seem to be unique to humans. No other species cries emotional tears. Emotional tears are triggered by happiness, loneliness, fear, sadness, and grief, among many other emotions and in all combinations. What’s even more interesting is that some studies suggest that these three kinds of tears while similar are all slightly chemically different. Our bodies know when we’re reacting or when we’re expressing emotion. Fisher discovered the difference firsthand, noticing that the tears she photographed were each so different from one another.

In one print titled Tears of Grief, Fisher presents a mostly barren print, with jagged, rectangular intrusions seemingly disconnected from each other, as if the grief has ripped apart the structure. 

Tears of Remembrance, on the other hand, has a darker tone to it, as if the darkness represents the memory washing over similar rectangular forms to those found in Tears of Grief. Those forms come together in this print, as if to tell us that remembrance is an act of piecing together those pieces after the grief that we have felt. 

That these two contain similar characteristics is not surprising; grief and remembrance are so closely intertwined.

All of the science and art about tears is so powerful because tears are universal to the human experience. Those same scientists who study the chemical make-up of tears also work to determine why we cry, what evolutionary purpose does it serve? One thought is that tears are a silent way for us to signal that something is not right. Our tears show our neighbors and our community that we are in pain and in distress and that we long for someone with whom we can no longer speak, with whom we can no longer laugh until we cry, and without whom we feel a void. Tears tell those around us that we need comfort, that we need a caring hand, that no, everything is not ok, not fine.  

Whether one day, one week, one month, one year or many, many, years have passed since we lost our, husband or wife, our partner, our mother, our father, our sister or brother, our child, our grandparent, our friend, the loss is still felt. That loss, though we grow more accustomed to it, will never register as normal. We may have adapted to that void, but the tears still flow to signal that we do not forget. Our tears tell others that we are in pain.

As much as our tears signal our community to action, they also are a signal to each of us. Our tears tell us that our emotional selves still long for those we have lost. Our tears tell us that our souls cry out for the connections we have lost, the friendships, the loves, the laughter, the shared experiences. Our tears serve as a personal, individual yizkor, a personal, internal, physiological and emotional act of remembrance so powerful it has no choice but to come out, so powerful, it could not be left within. And so we cry. And we ought to. Our tears tell us that we do not forget.

As much as tears speak to our neighbors and friends, and as much as our tears equally serve as a form of memory for us, they also speak to God. The psalmist teaches us: “God is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”[2] God knows when we are broken, and God is close to us in our moments of sadness. Perhaps God’s comfort comes through the acts of our neighbors and friends who, after witnessing our tears, are called to comfort us, and sit at our side to remind us that though one we have loved may be gone, love itself is not gone. Perhaps God’s comfort comes from the very real comfort we feel after we have had a good cry, after we feel as if we have let out all the emotion within us, at least for the time being, and all we can do is move on. Perhaps God’s comfort comes because God accepts tears as prayers. When we just can’t find the words to say, and all we can allow ourselves to do is cry, God will accept that. The Talmud[3] teaches us that “though the gates of prayer may be closed, the gate of tears is not.” For the psalmist writes,[4] “Hear my prayer, O Eternal! Hearken to my cry! To my tears do not be deaf.”

Our tears are prayers to God, each one of them. When we cannot find the words and all we have are our memories, our tears tell God all that God needs to know. Our tears of grief and our tears of remembrance call out to God. Our tears of sadness and our tears of loss implore God wordlessly. In this way, their memories truly are for a blessing. Today, as we allow our memories of them to flow through us, let us view our tears as an extraordinary gift from our beloved ones of blessed memory. Let us weep, let us cry, let our tears stream down our faces! And let those tears that their memories evoke indeed become our conduit to God, a prayer to the Eternal and a way for each of us to feel God’s presence. In that way may we be comforted.

[1] http://www.rose-lynnfisher.com/tears.html
[2] Psalm 34
[3] B. BM 59a
[4] Ps. 39:13

Interfaith Thanksgiving Sermon - Rededication to Thanksgiving

A version of this sermon was presented on November 24, 2013 at the East Meadow Interfaith Thanksgiving Service held at East Meadow United Methodist Church.

Good evening.  I’m Rabbi Daniel Bar-Nahum and I am the newly installed Rabbi at Temple Emanu-El of East Meadow.  First, let me thank Rev. Stevens for her hard work in hosting and planning this special service.  I have come to learn quickly that one of the many traditions of this service is that the newest clergy in town is honored by giving the homily, and I thank you for this honor.

I must say that I am very excited because this is truly a once in a lifetime opportunity.  Let me explain what I mean by that, because I don’t mean that I refuse to do this ever again, God forbid!

Tonight, I have a once in a lifetime opportunity because this year, for what is ostensibly the first time in history, and the last time ever, the holidays of Thanksgiving and Hanukkah coincide such that Thanksgiving, which is this Thursday is also the first day of Hanukkah.  As Jews, we begin our holidays the evening before, so we will be lighting our candles beginning on Wednesday evening this week.  In the years 2070 and 2165, the first candle of Hanukkah’s eight will be lit on Thanksgiving night, so the first day of Hanukkah will not be on Thanksgiving, but rather Black Friday, which is a sermon for another time.

This coincidental celebration is a quirk of the confluence of the Hebrew and American calendars.  Let me explain, briefly.  Thanksgiving is always the 4th Thursday of the month, that part’s easy.  Hanukkah is always the 25th of the Hebrew month of Kislev, which usually falls in mid-December. But, the Jewish calendar is based on the moon, and lunar months are only 29 or 30 days.  This means that a Jewish 12-month year is always a couple weeks shorter than our January to December 12-month year.  We make up for this shortfall of days by adding an additional month, a leap month, into our calendar 7 out of every 19 years in a system that I trust the internet to tell me about.  This is why Jewish holidays seemingly drift around the calendar.  They shift a couple weeks earlier for a couple years and then we adjust the calendar and push everything a month forward.

This year, Hanukkah is as early as it will ever be and Thanksgiving is as late as it can ever be, and even though the calendars do cycle, the first day of Hanukkah and Thanksgiving Day will never again coincide.  In the spirit of truth, I must admit that calculations have shown that this will actually happen again in the year 79,811. This is why this year’s homily is truly a once in a lifetime opportunity for me!

Tradition tells us that Hanukkah celebrates an important victory for Jewish worship and Jewish autonomy.  In the 2nd century BCE, the Syrian Greeks led by Antiochus had outlawed Jewish worship in Judea, in what is modern day Israel.  The Jews revolted against the Greek decrees and fought to maintain autonomy of their nation and their worship.  The Greeks had a habit of taking over religious sites and converting them to Greek temples to their gods.  The Greeks did this with the Temple in Jerusalem.  When the Maccabees defeated the Greeks, they rededicated the Temple in Jerusalem to God.  The work Hanukkah means dedication or in this case, rededication.  Hanukkah is about a fight for religious freedom.

Thanksgiving is also about religious freedom.  When the pilgrims made their way to these shores, they did so in order to maintain their identity and their religious convictions.  They came from a place where the political and religious turmoil did not allow them to worship as they saw fit.  These two holidays, Thanksgiving and Hanukkah celebrate, at their core, freedom of worship and the ability to choose how to worship.

There is much that we can simply take in about Hanukkah and Thanksgiving, but there is more that we can be challenged to do and to think about.

Thanksgiving is also a day when we pause, with our compatriots all across this country, and recognize the blessings and the gifts that we have.  As we gather together on Thanksgiving, we look around at our families and our friends, at our homes and the festive meals we have been planning for days and are blessed to set upon our table.  In the midst of the parades and the football, the sales and the anxiety of the upcoming Holiday Season, we pause and reflect on what really matters.  We recognize those aspects of our lives which are deserving of thanks and we name them.  “What am I thankful for this year?” we ask.  And then everyone gets a turn to share. This small ritual of Thanksgiving is so important because it highlights an important aspect of what it means to be American and what it means to be a person of religious conviction: thankfulness.

What will you answer when it is your turn?  How will you find ways to show your thanks on Thanksgiving Day?

One element of thankfulness is recognition.  A quick look at the psalms shows us that when we thank God, we name those things for which we are thankful.  From Psalm 136: “O give thanks to the Eternal, for He is good, for His kindness is forever…Who makes the heavens in wisdom…who stamps firm the earth on the waters, who makes the great lights…”  It goes on to name the many miracles that the Eternal wrought for our ancestors in ancient days.  The Psalmist is teaching us that to be thankful is to recognize our gifts and name them.  When we look at our families and our friends, our coworkers or even strangers whom we have invited to share our bounty, and we name that for which we are thankful, we participate in thanks of recognition.

Another aspect of thankfulness is appreciation.  It is not just about naming those things for which we are thankful.  By giving ourselves over to appreciation, we recognize in others and in the Divine Presence those elements which make our lives special and which give it true meaning.  Appreciation involves an understanding of why what we have is special and why we are so fortunate to have it.  Those facets of our lives which we appreciate most are often those which are intangible.  The laughter following a decades’ old family joke.  The smell of the one recipe without which it’s just not Thanksgiving.  The sense of warmth of a family gathered together.  The memories of Thanksgivings past, our loved ones of blessed memory vivid in our minds.  These intangibles are the sustenance on which a thanksgiving meal is truly built.  When Hannah, in First Samuel (2), prays to the Eternal with words of praise for God’s might, she does so in thanks for the family that was granted her when it seemed impossible.  Hannah appreciates what God does for her and so she prays a prayer of thanksgiving.

Thankfulness seems easy when broken down this way.  First, naming: what do I have that I am thankful for?  Second: Appreciation, how do I feel about having these things?  A two-step process.

Unfortunately, too often we don’t take the time to do this.  Too often we expect.  We expect that we will have the comforts of life to which we have become accustomed.  We expect that everything will work exactly as it should all the time.  That which we expect is the common, the habitual, the usual.  And, rather than be thankful on a daily basis for these pieces of our lives, too often we take them for granted.

Toward the beginning of a Jewish morning service, there are two blessings juxtaposed one right next to the other.  One is called Asher Yatzar and one is called Elohai Neshamah.  These two blessings, respectively, thank and bless God for the miracle of a working body and the miracle of an independent soul.  These two blessings are traditionally the first two blessings one recites upon waking each morning.  Each morning, therefore, Jewish tradition asks us to wake up, recognize the expected, and thank God for them.  Rather than take for granted the working of the body, mind and soul, we ought to recognize the blessings inherent in them and thank God for them.  In our modern lives, too much is expected, not enough is revered, and even less is taken for what it is, a blessing.

But that is not the case on Thanksgiving.  On this one day, seemingly everyone takes the time to say thank you and appreciate what they have.  On this one day, seemingly the entire nation pauses in a moment of gratitude.  This year, as Hanukkah, a festival of rededication, and Thanksgiving coincide, I challenge us: how can we rededicate ourselves to a spirit of thankfulness?  Thankfulness for the daily gifts which we have.  Thankfulness for the miracles of every day modern living.  Thankfulness for the easy and the hard in life.  How can we make it so that Thanksgiving and the sentiment surrounding it are the rule, not the exception?  How can we begin to live our lives in the spirit of gratitude rather than the spirit of expectation?

A couple of suggestions.  First, bring back the dying art of the handwritten thank you note.  A note of this kind requires that you name and appreciate.  And, the recipient knows that you are appreciative and that their work did not go unnoticed.  Second, start a gratitude journal.  Every day, take one to two minutes and write down one thing, or many, for which you are thankful.  Jot it down in a notebook and name and appreciate the blessings in your life.  These notes can serve as a form of prayer, which is the third suggestion:  When you pray, be sure to thank God.  Thank God for the good.  Thank God for the challenging.  Thank God for the usual.  Thank God for the unusual.  Show God your appreciation!  “Shout out to the Eternal! … Worship the Eternal in rejoicing; come before God in joyous song.  Know that God made us and we are God’s.  Come into God’s gates in thanksgiving, God’s courts in praise.  Acclaim God, bless God’s name, for the Eternal is good, God’s kindnesses and God’s faithfulness last for all generations.” (Psalm 100)

Let us all commit to making this year’s Thanksgiving the day we decided to begin in earnest showing our appreciation for our lives and for the many gifts and blessings we have.  Yes, life can be difficult at times and sometimes we may feel like there is very little to be thankful for.  But when we work hard at finding even the smallest of things… When we are thankful daily, habitually, we are more keenly aware of the world around us, our relationships, and our needs.  We are also, and perhaps most importantly, more aware of God’s workings in this world.  And, when we are aware of God’s working in the world, we are better able to see our place in the ongoing work of Creation.  We find ourselves rededicated not just to thankfulness, gratitude and appreciation, but, like the Temple in Jerusalem, rededicated to the Eternal.  Rededicated to serving God with gladness.

May God bless us all with many gifts over these next weeks.  May God look down upon us with favor.  And let us all be willing to say thank you.

Happy Thanksgiving