Yom Kippur Evening Sermon: Remember That You Were Strangers

Kol Nidre Sermon 5776

You may have noticed that on my desk in my study there is a framed picture of me deeply engrossed in conversation with President Bill Clinton. That picture was taken in President Clinton’s second month in office, after he had given a major foreign policy speech at American University, where I was the Hillel director at the time. I had returned from Haiti shortly before Clinton’s speech, and AU’s then-president Joe Duffy had arranged for me to be part of the platform party so that I might get the opportunity to speak with the President for a minute or so.

During his 1992 campaign, candidate Clinton was critical of the first President Bush’s policy of having the U.S. Coast Guard intercept Haitian refugees on the high seas and return them to Haiti. But once he was elected, he announced that he would keep that policy in place. The Washington office of Haiti’s deposed president Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide asked for a delegation of rabbis to visit Haiti and explore the human rights situation there, and I was invited to be part of that group, which went to Haiti shortly after Clinton’s inauguration in January 1993.

There were ten of us in that group and most of us didn’t know each other before we met at JFK airport. Our first night in Haiti we met at our hotel with some of the Catholic clergy who were our hosts, and they asked us to go around the room, introduce ourselves and tell why we had come. All ten of us cited precisely the same reason: the story of the MS St. Louis, a German ocean liner which crossed the Atlantic in 1939 with 908 Jewish refugees. The ship docked first in Cuba, where the Jews were denied entry; they then came to New York, were denied entry once again, then sailed to Canada, which also refused to allow them in. The St. Louis went back to Germany and most of its passengers died in the concentration camps. Seeing refugees fleeing persecution and being sent back by the United States to possible death was not something we as Jews could sit by and watch. So we came to Haiti to see what could be done. We spent several days meeting with clergy, educators, labor leaders, journalists, as well as a representative of the U.S. Embassy. We wrote a report which I was able to present to the President and shortly thereafter, the policy was changed -- I do not know what role, if any, our report played in that decision.

“Never Again” is the rallying cry of our generation. We remember the suffering and murder of our people and we vow “Never Again.” But what exactly does “Never Again” mean? Is our mandate as Jews simply to make sure that what happened to us once will never happen to us again? Or is it to make sure that what happened to us, never happens to anyone ever again?

Jews are a people of memory, indeed memory is commanded in the Torah. We are commanded to remember Shabbat; we are commanded to remember what Amalek did to us when we left Egypt, attacking the weak and the stragglers; and 36 times in the Torah, we are commanded not to mistreat the stranger, because we are to remember that we were strangers in Egypt. The Torah is quite clear. The purpose of memory is not simply to enable us to better look out for ourselves. It is to give us guidance in how we are to treat others as well. Otherwise, the commandment not to mistreat a stranger is meaningless.

The Anti-Defamation League was founded in 1913. Although it is often believed that the ADL was founded in response to the lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory superintendent from New York who was falsely accused of raping and murdering one of the female workers in the factory he managed, the Leo Frank case took place in 1915, two years after the ADL’s founding. Among the cases of “defamation” that the League was a response to was an article published in 1908 by Theodore Bingham, the Police Commissioner of New York City, in which he asserted that over fifty percent of all crimes in New York were committed by Jews. 1908, of course, was at the height of Jewish immigration to this country from Eastern Europe. Bingham and others of his ilk asserted that Jews brought criminality, low moral character, poor sanitation, were taking jobs away from native-born Americans, etc. People objected to the fact that many of the Jewish immigrants were not literate in English and many never learned it. In this, they were right; my father tells me that his grandparents lived in this country for decades and never learned English, which is why he grew up in a Yiddish-speaking home, since his grandparents lived with them.

While no one would deny that anti-semitism still exists in American society, the kind of virulent hatred that our grandparents and even our parents grew up with is long gone. I mentioned in my sermon on the second day of Rosh Hashanah that Jews are the most highly regarded religious group in the United States, and tonight I want to share with you some of that data. According to a 2014 Pew Forum report , on a scale of 1 to 100, with 50 being a neutral opinion, Jews rated a 63, followed by Catholics with a 62 and evangelicals with a 61. The three groups that Americans view unfavorably are Mormons (48), atheists (41) and Muslims (40). Jews are regarded favorably by every other group surveyed, with evangelical having the highest opinion of Jews of any non-Jewish group. Evangelicals rate Jews at 69 but we do not return the favor, giving Evangelicals a 34.

Anti-semitism is far from the biggest problem we face; indeed, it is the lack of anti-semitism which has made it much easier for Jews to assimilate into general society and give up their unique identity. But as Mordechai said to Esther, “think not that you shall escape just because you are in the palace .. if you are silent, you and your family shall perish while deliverance shall come from some other place.”

Less than a week ago at a rally in New Hampshire, a supporter posed the following question to presidential candidate Donald Trump:

Q: We have a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims. We know our current president is one.

A: Right.

Q: You know he’s not even an American.

A: We need this question. This is the first question!

Q: But anyway, we have training camps brewing where they want to kill us. That’s my question, when can we get rid of ’em?

A: We're going to be looking at a lot of different things. A lot of people are saying that, and you know, a lot of people are saying bad things are happening out there. We’re going to be looking at that and plenty of other things.

Trump has been roundly criticized for not “defending” President Obama from the accusation that he is a Muslim. But that criticism misses the point entirely. The questioner wasn’t asking Donald Trump if President Obama is a Muslim. He seemed, rather, to be asking Donald Trump when America will get rid of its Muslims. Trump's response --  “we’re going to be looking at that and plenty of other things.”

In fairness, that is the kind of answer that, as one columnist put it, a car salesman would give to a potential customer who said something outrageous. And as a rabbi I have on occasion had people say outrageous things to me, or in my presence, and rather than confronting them and getting into an unpleasant argument, I’ve simply smiled and nodded and said “uh-huh, uh-huh.” But here was someone advocating at best mass deportations of citizens and legal immigrants who are Muslims, and at worst genocide.

Conor Friedersdorf writing in The Atlantic gave what would have been the correct answer which should have been given by someone who aspires to lead our country: “Sir, President Obama is not actually a Muslim. He is an American. There are no known terrorist training camps in the United States, and if one was discovered, the Obama Administration would aggressively shut it down. And there is never a time when the United States will get rid of American citizens with inalienable rights to life and liberty, nor would I want to get rid of Muslim Americans even if it was totally legal. They are my friends, neighbors, and business associates. Some put on uniforms and fight for this country. The overwhelming majority are law-abiding patriots.”

I hasten to add that I don’t think Donald Trump actually supports “getting rid of” American Muslims. But he has tapped into a reservoir of nativism and racism in our society and I have no doubt that some of his supporters would endorse those measures. And I know that some of my Muslim friends and acquaintances whom I have met over the years through my interfaith work, are convinced that the time is coming when they are going to be rounded up and put in camps as we did to Japanese-Americans during World War II.

It’s not only Donald Trump. Over the past Dr. Ben Carson, a person I admire, made the statement that Islam and the US Constitution were incompatible and that no Muslim American should ever be allowed to be elected President. Proving, I suppose, that being a person of color and having fought hard to overcome bigotry does not immunize one from oneself being a bigot. And of course, John F. Kennedy went through something similar when he became the first and so far only Catholic to be elected president, and had to address fears from some Protestants that if a Catholic became President he would take his orders from the Pope.

President George W. Bush faced a tremendous challenge after the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001, in fighting against Islamist terrorism while respecting American Muslims and their liberties. Here is what he said in a speech in 2002: "America rejects bigotry. We reject every act of hatred against people of Arab background or Muslim faith. America values and welcomes peaceful people of all faiths -- Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu and many others. Every faith is practiced and protected here, because we are one country. Every immigrant can be fully and equally American because we're one country. Race and color should not divide us, because America is one country." Later that same year he spoke at the Islamic Center in Washington DC and said: "Here in the United States our Muslim citizens are making many contributions in business, science and law, medicine and education, and in other fields. Muslim members of our Armed Forces and of my administration are serving their fellow Americans with distinction, upholding our nation's ideals of liberty and justice in a world at peace."

President Bush got it right. There are Muslims who are dedicated to our nation’s ideals of liberty and justice and there are Muslims who are not. The same can be true of adherents of any other religion or of no religion at all.

Jews and Muslims in America actually have a lot in common. We are non-Christian religions in a mostly-Christian society. Jews and Muslims follow similar dietary practices and there are a number of colleges and universities which have a dining hall that is certified as both kosher and halal. Neither Judaism nor Islam recognizes a civil divorce as sufficient to end a religious marriage and both religions have their own courts to adjudicate disputes within the community as well as personal status -- so if you support a law making so-called Sharia courts illegal, understand that this makes a criminal of every rabbi who has ever participated in a conversion or overseen delivery of a religious divorce since any such law to be remotely constitutional would also have to criminalize Jewish Batei Din as well as Catholic canon law tribunals.

Muslims do face a challenge in learning how to live in a multicultural, multireligious secular democracy. Jews are used to living as a minority while Muslims on the whole are not. But there are many American Muslims, some immigrants and some native-born, who are aware of the challenge and are working on all kinds of ways to counter any tendency towards extremism and help integrate Muslims into American society. Many European societies have serious problems of home-grown Muslim extremism because they have neither encouraged nor permitted Muslims to integrate. When a society tells the Muslims who live in it that they can never really be full participants, it takes away any incentive for them to do so. We must not repeat that mistake here. The bargain that America has always offered, albeit sometimes reluctantly, is that you learn to live by the same norms as everyone else does and we will treat you like we treat everyone else. It’s got to be a two-way street; we can’t reasonably expect Muslims to be loyal Americans and then tell them that they will never be true Americans, their religion is contrary to the Constitution and no one of their faith should ever be permitted to attain the highest office in our land.

That’s why the case last week of Ahmed Mohammed, the 14 year old science nerd who brought a homemade clock to his suburban Dallas school and was arrested, handcuffed, and held for several hours without being permitted to see a lawyer or his parents is so disturbing.

Let’s be clear -- if the school administration thought there was even the remotest possibility that the young man had a bomb, they absolutely had a duty to investigate. But the administration quickly realized it wasn’t a bomb. If you suspect there is a bomb in the school, you evacuate the school and call the bomb squad. They did neither. You don’t bring the suspected bomb into the school office and take pictures of it, and you don’t transport a suspected bomb in a regular squad car to the police station. What Ahmed was originally charged with was bringing a “hoax bomb” to school, a device which could reasonably fool people into believing it was a bomb and cause panic. Once it was clear that the device was not in fact a bomb, there was no danger, and even if it was necessary to question the young man there was no need to handcuff him, perp walk him out of the school, and violate his legal rights under both Federal and Texas law to see a lawyer and his parents. You will never convince him that this didn’t happen at least in part because he is a Muslim. You cannot tell him that the very fact he is a Muslim makes him perpetually a suspect and then expect him to love this country the way that you or I do.

This is not about Jews in the narrowest sense but rather about what kind of country we aspire to be. Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka had an Orthodox Jewish conversion; she, her husband and their two children are active members of an Orthodox shul in Manhattan and are traditionally observant. Many of Donald Trump’s staff both in his campaign and in business are Jewish. I know less about Ben Carson’s attitude towards Jews but he is strongly pro-Israel and belongs to a denomination, the Seventh Day Adventists, whose members feel a strong affinity with Judaism.

Nevertheless there are two reasons that Jews need to stand up to any manifestation of hate speech and stereotyping. The first reason is that our tradition demands it; we are taught to love the stranger and to respect the tzelem elohim, the divine image, in every person. The second reason is that once unleashed, you never know where the demons of racism are going to go next. As Conor Friedersdorf wrote: “When you gain politically by demonizing ethnic groups, or by pandering to those who do, you go from arguably likable eccentric to villain. You go from having kids who think “my dad’s a bit embarrassing, but he means well” to kids who’ll feel ashamed of what you stirred up for years after you leave politics. Those are the best case scenarios. The worst-case scenario is remote, but horrific: that’s where you’re the careless fool who ends the legacy of mostly responsible behavior on this issue, loses control of the forces you’re enabling, and watches in horror as your actions harm a lot of innocents.”

That’s the reason that the Anti-Defamation League on Monday condemned the words of both Trump and Carson, writing that  “we urge all presidential candidates to avoid innuendo and stereotyping of all sorts, including against people based on their faith, particularly American Muslims and, instead, to confront all forms of prejudice and bigotry. Remarks suggesting that all Muslims follow extremist interpretations of Islam have no basis in fact and fuel bigotry.  Whether directed against Jews, Muslims or others, such baseless comments breed hate and have no place in a presidential campaign or in public discourse.” And that is why the ADL earlier condemned Trump’s demonization of Mexicans and other immigrant groups.

Martin Niemoller was a German Lutheran pastor. He was a political conservative and initially supported Hitler, but by 1934 he had turned against the Nazis and was one of the founders of the Confessing Church, an anti-Nazi Christian group. For his activities he was imprisoned and spent 1937 to 1945 in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps, narrowly escaping execution. After his release he wrote a poem which many of you know:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Never again. Never.

Writing Our Own Story -- Sermon for Rosh Hashanah 5776

There is an old joke about David Ben Gurion debating with some of his inner circle whether or not to declare the statehood of Israel upon the British pullout in 1948. If the state were declared, five Arab states would immediately attack the nascent Jewish commonwealth, not to mention the Palestinian Arabs who were already fighting against the Jews. How could Israel possibly prevail in such a situation?

Ben Gurion is reported to have said: “either the usual thing will happen, or else a miracle will happen, but either way we shall win.”

He was asked to clarify what he meant, and he is supposed to have said: “either the usual thing will happen, and God will save us; or a real miracle will happen, and our soldiers will win the war on their own.”

I’ve heard this joke a number of times and even used it on occasion, but it occurs to me that there is no way that Ben Gurion could have said what was attributed to him. First of all, Ben Gurion was at best an agnostic if not an atheist; more significantly, the whole point of Zionism was to no longer wait for God to deliver His people but rather for us to take matters into our own hands. Ben Gurion had every confidence that his troops were well-positioned to beat the Arab armies, no matter what others might think. He would not have relied on a God he didn’t believe in to rescue the newly-created Israel Defense Forces.

I suspect rather that this joke was born in the Diaspora, because it reflects a certain mentality of the Jew-as-nebbish, the Jew who can’t fight his own battles, the Jew as Woody Allen or Richard Lewis, that is widespread among many Diaspora Jews.

The semi-official motto of Conservative Judaism is “Tradition and Change,” which like most mottos is a gross oversimplification. And anyway, aren’t “tradition” and “change” opposites? If we uphold tradition we are resistant to change; and every change is a move away from tradition.

But as Conservative Jews, we understand that Judaism has a history, that it did not one day fall intact from the sky but rather was developed over centuries by our ancestors. We see that the tradition itself often contains more than one explanation for the meaning of a certain practice. The Sukkah is said to stand for both the booths in which our ancestors dwelt during their sojourn in the desert, and the ananei kavod, the Clouds of Glory, which accompanied them on that journey. Shabbat is a reminder both of the Exodus and of Creation; Shavuot symbolizes both the beginning of the harvest and the giving of the Torah, Et cetera, et cetera, and so forth. The practices tend to remain constant but the meanings attributed to the practices change over time.

Prof. Arnold Eisen, the Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary wrote about this in his seminal work "Rethinking Modern Judaism." Professor Eisen described certain of our religious observances as "regular performances which lend performers the conviction that they are carrying on the essence of their ancestor's faith and practice even while they alter both belief and observance to suit their new circumstances." Or in less academic prose, we convince ourselves that we are doing precisely what previous generations of Jews did, even while we modify both the practice and the significance we ascribe to it. That is why for Israeli Jews, Chanukah is about the Maccabees and their restoration of Jewish national independence, while for American Jews, Chanukah is about freedom of religion.

A classic example can be found in the Chanukah song which in Hebrew is called "Mi Yimallel". The first verse is "mi yimallel g'vurot yisrael, otan mi yimneh?" which means "who can recount the heroic acts of Israel, who can count them?" The verse is based on a Psalm verse which might be familiar to you as it is part of Birkat HaMazon, the Grace after Meals; Ps. 106:2 -- "mi yimallel g'vurot adonai?" "who can recount the heroic acts of God?"

Do you see what has happened here? A verse from Psalms which talks about God's saving power has been transformed into a secular Zionist paean to Jewish heroism. This is perfectly in keeping with the Zionist ethos which emphasizes, not reliance on God but rather reliance on our own actions.

So the psalm verse has been transformed once by its emended inclusion in a secular Zionist Chanukah song. But coming to America it has been transformed again because in English the song begins "Who can retell the things that befell us, who can count them?" The emphasis is not on the heroic acts of God nor those of Israel, but rather on "the things that befell us." This is in accordance with what the great historian Salo Baron called the "lachrymose conception of Jewish history" which sees Judaism primarily as a series of tragedies and oppressions perpetrated against the Jews by others.

Adherents of Baron’s “lachrymose conception” -- which he simply described but did not himself adhere to -- posit that Jewish history is primarily about what others have done to Jews. This is precisely why for many years the study of history in mainstream Israeli schools essentially skipped everything from the end of the Second Temple period through the rise of Zionism in the late 1800s.  Jewish history for Ben Gurion and the other early Zionist pioneers was most emphatically not supposed to be about what others had done to Jews. It was about what Jews themselves had done, and thus there was basically nothing in the two thousand years since the destruction of the Second Temple that was worth studying.

I remember back in 1975 when the UN General Assembly passed its infamous -- and subsequently repealed -- resolution declaring that Zionism is a form of racism. And how in response we all began wearing buttons declaring that we were Zionists. A few years after that I became a board member of one of the constituent organizations of the American Zionist Federation and I’ve served as a delegate to two American Zionist Conventions and one World Zionist Youth Congress (when I was still young enough to qualify!) I was an unsuccessful candidate for the World Zionist Congress ten or fifteen years ago, on a slate headed by the late great Theodor Bikel, and some of you may recall that in one of my Friday morning e-mails to the congregation a few months ago I urged you to vote in the elections for the upcoming Zionist Congress and included the link which would allow you to do that. And, of course, I lived on a border kibbutz for two years and slept most nights with an Uzi under my bed.

Most Jews over the age of 40 or so -- unless they are either Haredi or extreme leftists -- will proudly claim the mantle of Zionist. But what does it mean to be a Zionist? Most Israelis would say that we American Jews are not Zionists because a Zionist makes aliyah. The Likud says that the Israeli Labor Party is not really Zionist because a real Zionist supports Jewish settlement in the entire Land of Israel. The Labor Party says that the Likud is not really Zionist because its policies will lead to a bi-national state whereas Zionism is about creating and maintaining a Jewish state.

The best definition of Zionism I have seen lately comes from an unlikely source. Amna Farooqi is a senior at the University of Maryland and grew up not far from here in Potomac. She is a Muslim of Pakistani descent but had mostly Jewish friends growing up and gravitated to Hillel events from the start of her college career. Taking a course in Israel Studies, she said, she “fell in love with Zionism, because Zionism became about taking ownership over the story of one’s people. If Zionism is about owning your future, how can I not respect that?,” according to an interview published in the Times of Israel. Last year she spent a semester studying at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

This Muslim woman understands what Zionism is -- taking ownership of our people’s future. As I heard writer Leon Wieseltier say at the AIPAC Rabbinic Symposium late last month, “Zionism is a conclusion that we draw from Jewish history.” Because if we don’t write our own story, someone else will write it for us.

The great Israeli novelist Amos Oz has often said that Zionism is a surname, a last name. It can be preceded by many first names -- socialist, religious, revisionist, and so on. This has been the case ever since the Zionist movement was created and no group in Israel or the Diaspora owns a monopoly on the term Zionist. Throughout the history of Zionism there have been those who sought to create a socialist Utopia and those who wanted a nation of respectable intellectuals and shopkeepers; those who wanted a state governed in accordance with halacha and those who had no use for religion; those who wanted a Hebrew republic on both sides of the Jordan River and those who favored a bi-national confederation with the Arabs; those who saw Israel as the only place where Jews should live and those who saw Israel as a center of Hebrew thought and creativity enriching the lives of Jews wherever they lived.

What all of these conflicting visions had in common, however, was the idea that it was time for the Jews to take charge of their own destiny. From now on, Jewish history would no longer be a litany of what other people had done to the Jews; rather, it would be the tale of what the Jewish people, working together, had managed to accomplish.

Over the past two years, our congregation has teamed with our neighbors at Shaare Torah to participate in the Shalom Hartman Institute’s “iEngage Project.” Hartman is an Israeli educational center based in Jerusalem, and it created the iEngage Project to change the nature of the relationship between Diaspora Jews and Israel from one based in a narrative of crisis to one based in shared Jewish values.

To quote at some length: “The Jewish community is largely unprepared for today’s uncertainties about the relationship between Israel and world Jewry. The core feature of the "traditional” Israel narrative was the precariousness of Jewish survival. In this narrative, Jewish existence, both in Israel and around the world, was viewed as threatened by inevitable and sometimes imminent danger. This inspired the creation of a Jewish identity in which the survival and perpetuation of the Jewish people and the defense of Jews in danger became central values. Political, economic, and cultural success among world Jewry, coupled with growth in Jewish vitality and creativity, have diminished the compelling nature of this narrative as has the success story that is Israel. Without denying the dangers that Israel still faces on a daily basis, its military power and prowess along with its economic vitality, render a narrative of crisis less meaningful.”

But it is not only about Israel that Jewish leadership projects a narrative of crisis.  Some of you may know Robert Hyfler, who worked for our local Jewish Federation for many years before going on to work for the national umbrella organization of the federations. In a recent article, he wrote that many Jewish professionals project “a crisis of confidence . . . not in themselves, but in those they seek as clients and supporters. . . They are awash with questions as to our collective viability as a community, our demographic future and the set of historic values, both Jewish and American, that define us.”

I began my rabbinic career as a Hillel director, and I started working for Hillel at the same time that Richard Joel became its International Director. Richard revolutionized the way Hillel operates, and one of the things he did was to transform the way Hillel raised funds. He urged us not to raise money from fear, as many Jewish organizations do, but rather from hope. Tell potential donors about all the good things you already do, and then paint a picture of how much more you could do if you had better funding. No one, he would say, wants to give money to buy new deck chairs for the Titanic.

We worry about whether the Jewish community is engaging the next generation of Jews, but the narrative of crisis and decline is, as the Hartman Institute points out, a major barrier to that engagement. Because the idea that we are constantly under threat does not jive with the lived experience of the Jews we are trying to attract. They have grown up in a society where Jews are the most well-regarded ethnic and religious group in the country, where Jews though around 2% of the population are 10% of the membership of the Senate, where no profession is closed to them, where colleges compete for Jewish students by opening kosher dining halls. They have grown up in a world where Israel is ranked the 4th best place in the world to raise children, where Israel has the 11th strongest military in the world and the 24th highest per capita Gross Domestic Product.

My friend Rabbi Danny Gordis, with whom I once shared an office suite at the University of Judaism, wrote in the Jerusalem Post recently that rabbis should talk about Israel on the high holidays but not about the Iran deal or other political issues. Rather, he said, we should encourage our congregants to think about what Israel means to them and what our lives would be like if there were no Israel. “What would be the impact on American Judaism? on Hebrew language? on Jewish literature and culture? on the sense of pride that so pervades American Jews that they can scarcely imagine a world in which they didn't feel it.

The subject isn't Chicken Little's "the sky is falling," but gratitude. How does that tiny, highly imperfect, always embattled country across the ocean affect our lives, wherever we may live outside Israel?”

In a similar vein, Robert Hyfler urges us to abandon our despair: “despair at the normalcy in people’s lives, despair at the impact of many of their own successes and the future of the vital and still efficacious network of voluntary structures that in times of both crisis and quiet undergird day to day Jewish life.  . . despair at the naturally evolving nature of our relationship with Israel.”

Hyfler continues: “We should be concerned about this unraveling and consciously change the narrative to align our institutional thinking with how large numbers of American Jews live their lives and view their Jewishness within those lives. There is a need for a clear affirmation of an American Jewishness which celebrates our universalism, our Americanism along with our bedrock Jewish rootedness.

After 350 years in America it is time to unpack our bags. Doing so would proclaim that Jewish life in America is, and will continue to be, healthy, dynamic, autonomous, robust and evolving. We must rediscover and reinterpret the humanism that is the legacy of both the New World and important themes in classical Jewish religious practices and thought recurrent in the diversity of communities from whence we came.”

Every morning of the year the liturgy contains Shirat HaYam, the song at the sea which our ancestors sang after crossing through the Red Sea. When they got to the shores of the sea, the people turned against Moses. Moses assured them that God would deliver them, but when he then turned to God, God told Moses simply to tell the Israelites to go forward. It is only when they did so that God split the sea on their behalf. For millennia, we have been at our best when we combined our faith in God with a commitment to action. We cannot depend on God to do everything for us, but neither can we assume that our own resources alone are equal to the task.

At this time of year we conclude our services morning and evening with Psalm 27.  In it, David says “though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear; though war break out against me, even then will I be confident.” He concludes with a charge to all of us : “Hope in Adonai; be strong and let your heart take courage, and hope in Adonai.” While our generation faces challenges, they pale in comparison to the much graver challenges which our ancestors faced and over which they triumphed. Hope in Adonai; be strong and let our hearts take courage, and hope in Adonai.

Why I'm Not Giving a Sermon about Iran on the High Holidays

I’ve never quite understood the expectation that rabbis talk about current issues in the news during their Shabbat and High Holiday sermons. There are occasions when the need to do this is obvious; for example, on the Rosh Hashanah after Hurricane Katrina I gave a sermon exploring the age-old question of why bad things happen to good people and the Jewish response to tragedy. But I can’t recall a single time when I have either endorsed or opposed a specific piece of legislation from the pulpit, let alone urged congregants to contact their representatives to vote a certain way. I certainly think Judaism gives us guidance as to how we should approach the burning issues of our lives; I couldn’t be a rabbi if I didn’t believe that. But that’s a far cry from rabbis having special insights into the details of legislation greater than that of any other educated person.

But I’m beginning to think that my perspective on this question is an idiosyncratic one. I regularly  receive emails from organizations on both sides of the argument about the nuclear agreement with Iran. Some urge me to speak against the deal, others urge me to speak for it; some simply assume that I’m going to be speaking about it and therefore offer me resources to help me in writing my sermons.

I’ve never felt the need before to explain to my congregation why I’m not going to speak about a certain subject but that is exactly what the purpose of this message is -- to explain to you why I’m not going to give a sermon about the Iran nuclear agreement.

First of all, I’m not sure that I have anything to say about it that you don’t already know. We have members who know much more than I about the ins and outs of negotiating international agreements. We have congregants who understand the science better than I and congregants who understand the political dynamics better than I. While I do have a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service degree, I was hired to be your teacher in matters of Jewish thought, law and lore, not political science, international relations, or nuclear physics.

But even if I thought that I had some special insight that only I could give you, I suspect I would still not talk about Iran on the High Holidays. And the reason is simple: the debate over this issue has become so acrimonious that I fear bringing it into our sanctuary will simply be an occasion for sinat hinam (hatred) and lashon hara (evil speech) to infect the atmosphere of our holy place.

To be certain, neither side of this debate is solely responsible for the incredibly poisonous atmosphere that has been created. The liberal website Daily Kos ran a cartoon of Democratic Senator Charles Schumer, one of only two Democratic Senators who has so far said they will vote against the agreement, which called him a “traitor” and gradually changed the American flag in his office to an Israeli one. On the other side, a website lets you know whether your Senator is “standing up for America” (by opposing the deal), “standing up for Iran” (by supporting the deal), or is “on the fence.” Somehow, supporting the policy of the President is “standing up for Iran” while opposing it is “standing up for America.”

The sad irony here is that there is across-the-board agreement that Iran must never under any circumstances be permitted to develop nuclear weapons. The argument is over the best way to make sure that doesn’t happen, and I submit that neither side can say with absolute certainty whether the agreement will in fact make it harder or easier for Iran to go nuclear. Either course of action carries with it risks both known and unknown.

Additionally, despite the millions of dollars being poured into lobbying and advertisements, despite the fact that a significant number of Jewish Federations and Jewish Community Relations Councils have taken positions against the deal, it is almost certainly going to go into effect. According to the rather bizarre “Corker-Cardin Compromise” which governs the vote on this agreement, the agreement goes into effect unless two thirds of both the Senate and the House vote to disapprove. While it’s quite likely that a resolution of disapproval will get a majority in both houses, it is almost certainly not going to garner the 67 votes it needs in the Senate to override President Obama’s inevitable veto. Whether this is good or bad, whether you or I or AIPAC or anyone else agree or disagree with it is irrelevant, it’s what’s going to happen.

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago in a discussion of Masada vs. Yavneh, there comes a time when we need to make peace with the inevitable and salvage what we can from a difficult situation. Instead of continuing to fight with each other about the Iran agreement, we ought to concentrate on what truly unites us. That is what I think High Holiday sermons should be about, and that is what I hope to do in a few weeks.

L’shalom,

Rabbi Charles L. Arian

Masada or Yavneh?

One of my favorite texts in all of rabbinic literature is Avot D’Rabbi Natan 4:21, the tale of a discussion between Rabbi Joshua and Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai after the destruction of the Temple -- through which they both had lived. Rabbi Joshua is grieved at the sight of the Temple ruins; Rabban Yochanan comforts him, saying that we have another means of atonement which is no less efficacious -- acts of lovingkindness (gemilut chasadim.)

Rabban Yochanan is a fascinating figure. He was the head of the Sanhedrin (that is what the title Rabban means) during the revolt against the Romans from 65 to 73 C.E. Shortly before the Temple was destroyed, he had himself smuggled out of Jerusalem and struck a deal with the Roman army, allowing him to relocate the Sanhedrin from Jerusalem to Yavneh on the Mediterranean coast. It was Rabban Yochanan’s pragmatism in realizing that there was no point in fighting the world’s only superpower that allowed Judaism to continue. The Zealots continued to fight, resulting in the destruction of the Temple. Some of those who survived retreated to Masada where they continued to hold out for another three years, eventually committing mass suicide in 73 C.E.

There is something paradoxical in that Masada has become a place of pilgrimage but few American Jews have ever been to Yavneh or know the name of Yochanan ben Zakkai. The Zealots of Masada were certainly brave but their course of action lead to a dead end -- the destruction of Jerusalem, hundreds of thousands of Jews slain or enslaved, and ultimately mass suicide (certainly a violation of Torah law). Rabban Yochanan was denounced by the Zealots as a traitor and a sellout but the establishment of the Academy at Yavneh lead to the creation of the Mishnah and the transformation of Judaism from a system of sacrificial worship focused on one geographical location to the “portable homeland” of Torah study, prayer, and acts of lovingkindness. 

We may for whatever reason admire the Zealots of Masada but we are here today because of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai and his followers.

אוֹי-נָא לָנוּ כִּי חָטָאנוּ -- Woe unto us, for we have sinned (Lamentations 5:16)

I went to sleep last night distressed because an Israeli man who wears the garb of a pious Jew stabbed six participants in the Jerusalem Gay Pride parade yesterday. I woke up this morning to learn that overnight, Jewish terrorists who also wear the garb of pious Jews set fire to a Palestinian home in the West Bank, burning alive an 18 month old baby and severely injuring several other members of the same family.  On the walls of the house the attackers spray painted Hebrew graffiti, one saying “Revenge” and the other saying “Long Live King Mashiach.”

The attack on the Gay Pride parade is almost unfathomable in that the exact same assailant had done the exact same thing ten years earlier. He was convicted, sentenced to 12 years in prison, and was released three months ago, early, for good behavior (as is the norm in Israeli prisons.) I do not understand how the Israeli Police, knowing of his past behavior, that he was unrepentant, and knowing of the Gay Pride parade and its route, let this person within 100 yards of the parade. It’s simply shocking.

The arson attack unfortunately came as no surprise. It is part of a series of “Price Tag” attacks which an extremist fringe of radical settlers conduct every time a government or court decision goes against them when they seek to build on privately-owned Arab land and so on. While the fact that Israel remains a country of laws and that therefore court decisions often do go against the settlers is cause for pride, nevertheless the quiet toleration and looking the other way when these kinds of attacks occur is simply not acceptable.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has forcefully condemned both of these attacks, and I absolutely believe his condemnations are sincere. Nevertheless, there are parties and Knesset members within his coalition that tolerate if not actively encourage this type of violence. For example, earlier this week Motti Yogev, a Knesset Member from the “Jewish Home” party which is part of the governing coalition, called for the Supreme Court building to be bulldozed after it ruled against the expansion of the Bet El settlement. Although his words were condemned, no further action has been taken nor is any contemplated.

Today is Tu b’Av, the (very minor) Jewish holiday which celebrates love. Tomorrow morning we will read Parshat VaEtchanan which contains the following words:

וְאָהַבְתָּ, אֵת יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ

While we normally read this as “v’ahavta,” “you shall love the Lord your God,” the Hebrew text as we find it in the Torah scroll has no vowels. Therefore it can also be read as “v’eyhavta,” “you shall cause the Lord your God to be loved.” How do we cause God to be loved? By loving others, gay or straight, Arab or Jew, black or white, native or immigrant, Latino or Anglo, able-bodied or disabled. Unless we love our neighbor we do not love God, no matter what garb we wear.

Mexico and the Iranian Nuclear Agreement

Keleigh, Berkeleigh and I returned late Tuesday night from a week’s vacation in Mexico. Our trip was planned well before my recent illness and surgery. We had considered cancelling -- I always buy trip insurance -- but my surgeon said there was no reason to cancel and in fact, swimming in the Caribbean would be good for my recovery and for the healing of the surgical incision.

I do lots of research before travelling to any destination and I spent a good deal of time on the Tripadvisor.com discussion boards for the Yucatan Peninsula, the area of Mexico to which we travelled. The amount of fear and misinformation floating around is just extraordinary. People are told that travel to anywhere in Mexico is extremely dangerous; or that it’s OK to go there as long as you don’t leave your resort (the resorts are gated and have their own security). People are advised not to rent a car because the roads are terrible, the police will stop you and demand bribes, and the rental car companies will cheat you.

While there is a lot of violence in Mexico, most of it is fighting between rival drug-smuggling gangs and takes place in areas near the US-Mexico border, over 2000 miles away from where we were. Advising someone to avoid all of Mexico because of violence in Juarez is like advising someone to avoid all of the United States because of violence in Chicago. Playa del Carmen and the rest of the Riviera Maya is incredibly safe, certainly much safer than most US urban areas. We rented a car and explored up and down the Caribbean coast, went shopping in Mexican department stores like Chedraui and Soriana, and even had dinner at the home of a worker at our resort whom we befriended. All of this was aided by the fact that I still remember much of my high school and college Spanish, but I am sure we would have had just as much fun and just as enlightening experience even if I didn’t.

The point of all this is to say that one is generally better off making decisions from a basis of actual knowledge rather than fear or misinformation. Over the next 60 days the US Congress will be called upon to affirm or reject the recent agreement between Iran and the six major world powers. It doesn’t surprise me, but it does disappoint me, that so many organizations had reached a position either for or against the agreement even before the ink was dry.

There is really no reason for you to look to your rabbi for advice about a nuclear weapons treaty, as I have no particular expertise in this area (it was not covered in the rabbinical school curriculum in the early 1980s when I was in school). I will tell you that at first glance the fact that the Iranians will receive notice before inspectors visit their facilities raises some serious concerns -- as one CNN commentator put it, “how many violations would the Health Department find if they had to give restaurants advance notice of inspections?” But other articles I’ve read point out that nuclear facilities are not like restaurant kitchens and if something is happening which isn’t supposed to happen, the evidence can’t be just hidden in a few hours or days.

Most of the smartest commentary from folks like Jeffrey Goldberg, Aaron David Miller, and Robert Satloff has been ambivalent. Is the deal a disaster? No. Is it perfect? No. Will failure to ratify it lead inevitably to war? No. Is it better than no deal at all? Maybe.

My plea and my prayer as you consider your own position, and as you consider your communications with Sens. Cardin and Mikulski and Rep. Delaney, is that you read as much as you can from knowledgeable and reputable sources. And that we all keep our eye on the prize -- no one on either side of the debate wants to see Iran get a nuclear weapon. Those with whom you disagree want the same thing as you, they just differ with you on the best way to achieve it. Let’s keep the discussion civil in the days and weeks ahead.

Passover Thoughts -- Indiana and Elsewhere

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said that “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.” As Jews, we can take pride in the fact that it is our story of our liberation from Egypt which has, more than any other, inspired the human quest to make the world a more just place.

In the last week or so, this country has seen what I believe to be a decisive turn in the struggle for equal rights for gay and lesbian Americans. As I write this, the Indiana legislature is revising its recently passed “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” to eliminate the possibility that the law will be used to allow businesses to discriminate against gays and lesbians. The Georgia legislature is holding back on a similar bill -- after a number of Conservative rabbis were among the religious leaders testifying against it. The Arkansas legislature is revising its bill after Gov. Asa Hutchinson threatened to veto it, spurred on, he said, by a request from his own son.

I recognize that within the Conservative movement, within our congregation and in our society as a whole there is a spectrum of beliefs regarding the issue of same-sex marriage. My own position on the issue in terms of halacha is that I would if asked be willing to officiate at a same-sex ceremony between two Jews, but it is not kiddushin, consecrated Jewish marriage. This position has the “virtue” of seeming too restrictive to most gays and lesbians while at the same time seeming radically permissive to those on the more traditional end of the Conservative spectrum.

It should also be noted that federal and state laws carve out a great deal of autonomy for religious organizations to handle these issues in accordance with their own beliefs. No clergy person can be forced to officiate at a marriage he/she thinks is not religiously acceptable. No congregation can be forced to accept any person as a member or even to comply with antidiscrimination laws as long as the religious body asserts that its actions are doctrinally required. For example, a religious group that feels homosexuality is a sin is free to discriminate against gays and lesbians in hiring clergy, religious school teachers, and even church secretaries or janitors if it asserts that this is what their religion requires. This is unlikely to change any time soon, nor should it.

But a pizzeria, a bakery or a florist shop is not a church. As Charles M. Blow wrote Wednesday in the New York Times: “when you enter the sphere of commerce in America — regardless of your “deeply held religious beliefs” — you have entered a nondiscriminatory zone in which your personal beliefs are checked at the register, and each customer is treated equally.

This is not to say that a gay couple on the eve of commitment should want to patronize a bigoted baker for a wedding cake, but rather that the refusal to render services based on that bigotry is untenable.”

My paternal grandfather was one of six children but only five of them lived long enough to migrate from Belarus to the United States. According to family legend, one brother died when he fell ill during the week before Easter and the Christian doctor in their town, acting from his own “deeply held religious beliefs”, refused to treat Jews that week. So I am not predisposed to accept “deeply held religious beliefs” as a reason to discriminate against other people in commerce or the public square.

This Pesach, as we celebrate and give thanks to God for our freedom, let us commit once again to helping to “bend the arc” towards greater justice for all.