Rabbi Mendel Futerfas was imprisoned for years in a Siberian
gulag for running Jewish religious schools in secret in the Soviet Union; he
was there together with another prisoner who was a tightrope walker.
The Rabbi asked him what is the secret to his art – What
does one need to master? Balance? Stamina?
Concentration?
The secret, he replied, is always keeping your destination
in focus. You have to keep you eyes on
the other end of the rope. But do you
know what the hardest part is?
When you get to the middle?
The rabbi ventured.
No, it’s when you make the turn. Because for a fraction of a second, you lose
sight of your destination. When you
don’t have sight of your destination that is when you are most likely to fall.”
Our lives are a journey.
We don’t always know where that journey will lead. On the way we feel like we are walking on a
tightrope, balancing our needs, wants, and hopes and dreams with those of our
loved ones and friends, searching for meaning and purpose.
For the Jewish people, we walk on this tightrope, each of
us, and our communities, aware of threats that persist into the 21st
century: Anti-Semitism, anti-Israel
movements, and Muslim extremism.
We are meant to have our hands up to support each other, we
are klal Yisrael, the nation of Israel, we strive live by the wisdom of the
Rabbis, ‘Kol yisrael arevin ze bazeh’, but tragically in the debate and discussion on
issues and challenges over the centuries, including the recent and ongoing
debate about the Iran deal, there has
been a breakdown and disrespect in Jewish communities around the country when
we needed to support each other the most.
As we stand here together seeking teshuvah, repentance and
renewal of faith, faith in ourselves, in our community, faith in God, we want
to mend our community to ensure that when we are in this position of debating
crucial ideas and policy decisions that impact us we, as a people, will make
healthier decisions.
We must not fall victim to taking
our eyes off our destination, being divided in the way that oppressors and
terrorists hope to divide us so that we will be weaker, and end up tragically,
more open to the very threats that we are trying to prevent. The response to the Iran deal was exactly
what the regime wanted, exactly what anti-Semites want, as an example, the
folly of headlines that 300 rabbis sign a petition to support the deal and 600
sign up to oppose the deal. We must heal
and close the painful divide between us, so that we can live in the spirit of
eilu v’eilu, these and these are the words of the living God, our perspectives
and theirs, though vastly different, deserve our attention.
As I said when I first visited WJC this past spring, and this
summer as well, whether with Prime Minister Netanyahu or each of us, this issue
is not political, it is an issue of a threat to our families. Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother Yoni died trying
to save Jews from terrorists in the airport at Entebbe. We now look over to Israel at our family,
whether we have relatives there or not they are part of our larger family. We are concerned not so much about the
details of an inspections regime as much as we are concerned about the safety,
the peace of mind, and the security of our brothers and sisters who are
continuing to create and promote democracy at home and abroad, who have
provided health care to refugees from the fighting in Syria, who have treated
senior PLO and Hamas officials in Israeli hospitals, who showed up in the Philippines,
in Haiti, and in Nepal after the devastating earthquakes. Flush with billions in petro dollars – do
countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia reach out beyond their borders with help
like this during humanitarian crises or do they continue to repress their
populations and sponsor terrorism abroad along with advancing their own
territorial ambitions? Continue to
segregate women and perform public executions, as in Saudi Arabia – executions
for ‘crimes’ such as apostasy and sorcery.
And still, despite Israel’s efforts, despite the efforts of Jewish
in North America to speak up and speak out on behalf of those oppressed around
the world, anti-Semitism rears its ugly head.
Our children on college campuses confront unprecedented vilification of
Israel, the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement, and academics teaching
anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism as part of the curriculum, often supporting student
hate-groups and under the protection of tenure rules.
Our teacher Rabbi Jonathan Sacks,
former chief Rabbi of England, urges us toward awareness, to see how
anti-Zionism has become the new face of anti-Semitism, and he urges us also in
response to never internalize the messages – to respond in pride of our
identity, in strength, and solidarity to threats that have tragically
materialized these past several years into unspeakable horrors, the murders of
innocents at a Jewish day school in Toulouse, in Denmark, Belgium, in Paris,
even here on American soil – we remember the murder of a security guard at the
Holocaust museum in Washington DC, the murders committed at the JCC of Greater
Kansas City.
And no matter what our stand on this deal or any foreign policy
decision relating to Israel, or about Israel’s actions, it is critical that the
American Jewish community become more
united rather than less, that the Jewish community find ways to live up to the
expectations of the Rabbis who teach us, machloket
le’shem shamayim sofah lehitkayem, a disagreement with Heavenly intent will
in the end find resolution.
This
statement is difficult to translate – How can there be a conflict, a
disagreement between people, that happens with heavenly intent? Our disagreements pit one person against
another, one ideology against another, one perspective on facts and realities
against another?
And what
does it mean sofah lehitkayem? That literally ‘in the end it will be
upheld’. Whose point of view will be
upheld? How can a disagreement itself be
upheld if there is no resolution?
Rabbenu
Yonah helps us untangle this complicated, and as we will see, thoughtful
statement. He explains, there will
always be disagreements amongst people, whether over one matter or another. The teaching, the lesson is, that only in the
case that the conflict is centered upon and concerning holy and meaningful ideas
that only this type of conflict will have lasting positive influence on our
lives and in fact will ‘add’ to the years of life. If we have substantive disagreements,
thoughtful debates, and we are willing to listen with empathy – then we will
fulfill the Rabbi’s teaching.
Conflict can
engage us rather than divide us, sharpen our senses and our perspectives,
motivate us to be more active, and also to come closer to rather than pull away
from others.
The Rabbis
here also teach us that the righteous way to be is to say ‘What’s mine is yours
and what’s yours is yours’. We work best
as human beings when we are willing to share, and also when we are willing to
allow others to be who they are and to represent their views.
And we
cannot then allow differences of opinion about Jewish issues of all kinds to
push us away from our friends, our communities, and from God. God is neither Republican nor Democrat,
neither conservative with a small “c” or liberal. It is dangerous when we begin to quote verses
from the Torah that support one and only one point of view because, as a
character in Chaim Potok’s ‘The Chosen’ once said, quoting an ancient teaching,
the ‘Torah contains everything and its opposite.’ One prophet says “We should turn our swords
into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks,” (Isaiah) and another prophet
(Yo’el) says, “It’s time to turn our plowshares into swords and our pruning
hooks into spears.” This summer we read in
the Torah about how the community should execute a stubborn and rebellious
child, but we also know that our ancient Rabbis limited this legislation to
such a degree that it would never be possible to carry out such a sentence.
We know of
many religious groups that quote from their holy texts to support all types of
horrible and inhuman agendas. We know
who ISIs is and who others like them are and what they have done in this world
– slaughtering civilians, destroying ancient sites, expanding their territory
with heavy weapons and bloodshed. We’ve
seen how their fight, and the fight within and between many nations in the
Middle East persist precisely because groups within the Muslim world are
fighting each other. The Iran-Iraq war
alone between 1980 and 1988 claimed 1 million lives of soldiers and civilians
combined.
We reflect
on these grisly stories and on the way the Middle East seems to be unraveling,
and the way that there has been name-calling and other divisiveness within the
Jewish community in recent debates, and we appreciate the way New York federal
legislators wrote, in an open letter in August, “No matter
where you stand on the Iran deal, comparisons to the Holocaust, the darkest
chapter in human history; questioning the credentials of longstanding advocates
for Israel; and accusations of dual loyalty are inappropriate.”
Back here,
then, to welcoming in our New Year – a time of celebration, when our
differences disappear, when we are all equal in God’s Presence.
A favorite prayer from our Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
services brings home just how central unity is for us at this time of year,
unity within ourselves – repairing the broken places in our lives, unity in our
community – making sure that we all feel welcome and have a seat at the table, and
unity amongst our people. After all, our
prayers all call us to repent and seek forgiveness as a ‘we’ – Ashamnu, we have sinned, Al chet she’chatanu,
for the wrongs we have committed, Avinu Malkenu chonenu va’anenu, Our Parent Our Sovereign, please have mercy and compassion on us.
And the boldest statement of them all, “Ve’ye’asu kulam agudah
achat la’sot retzoncha bi’levav shalem,” Let us be united wholeheartedly to
carry out Your will.
An ‘agudah achat’ is a binding, that we be bound
together, all of us.
What we are after as a community is not being
homogenous. Unity does not mean giving
up our firmly held beliefs – it does mean a willingness to stay in dialogue
when a discussion or decision may not go our way.
It does mean that we are willing to heal ourselves and
help a community heal when there has been conflict and dissent, when there has
been little communication or partnership, and systems have broken down – we see
this in families, in business, on sports teams, in schools, everywhere.
The question is “Can we be builders?” What is a builder? Columnist David Brooks shared a story about
the Woodiwiss family. The Woodiwiss family is one that experienced two serious
traumas. The first, Anna Woodiwiss died
after being thrown from a horse – she had been working for a service
organization in Afghanistan. The second,
five years later, younger sister Catherine was struck by a car while riding a
bike to work. She is enduring a series
of operations and a slow recovery. In
reflecting on these traumas, and how we respond to crisis, she distinguishes
between firefighters and builders.
Firefighters are those who show up at a moment’s notice at a crisis
moment. Builders are those who are there
for the long haul, who walk alongside victims over time.
It is not better to be a firefighter rather than a
builder and vice versa. In our community,
we have both and both are important. The
spirit of the builder though is critical whether in creating our community here
on Long Island or in nurturing unity and strength amongst the Jewish people.
When the dust settles from the current debate and crisis, we will
still be facing forces like anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism that do not
discriminate between J Street and Aipac or between Israeli Jews and Jews in
North America or anywhere else.
Today we rededicate ourselves to be friends and
ambassadors to our fellow Jews of all stripes.
Please join me this year as we create exciting and innovative
collaborations with our fellow Jewish congregations, and with local faith and
community groups, to help break down invisible walls that divide us and help us
to strengthen each other. Our best efforts may not change policy
decisions at the highest levels, but right here in our neighborhoods, we have
an extraordinary opportunity to make our synagogues, our Jewish community, the
most positive presence, leading the way in teaching the lessons that come right
out of these fall holy days – how to be a mensch, a thoughtful and engaged
human being, unyielding in establishing communities who not only preach unity,
but pursue it – exactly the way our brothers and sisters in Israel have been
striving for 66 years to fulfill the teaching of our Rabbis in the Middle
East, the most volatile region in the world, the teaching, in a place where
there are not good people, set the example and be an Adam, a mensch.
The Shofar is a call to assemble, to come together, to
move together into the New Year.
And it is my prayer that we make our disagreements to be in the name of Heaven, with Heavenly
purpose, the purpose of keeping us together as a people both at times of crisis
and times of relative peace.
As we reach up and support one another on the tight rope
into the New Year – may our feet guide us safely in these days of transition
into what we hope will be a year of blessing.
L’shana Tovah.
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