Thank you Pastor Tom Rice for your thoughtful introduction.
Mayor Hannen, Superintendent Rubin, Chief Greco…
To all of you, the Cranford community, first a thank you, thank you for welcoming us to Cranford six months ago.
The community has reached out to us in friendship, with support, and caring from the beginning, and so it is clear that there is already in our town the knowledge that what you do matters.
What wedo matters.
But we cannot take it for granted that we will always feel motivated to act, to do what is right.
We cannot take it for granted that we will know what to do if and when we decide to act.
2,000 years ago, a Rabbi named Hillel shared a piece of wisdom in my tradition that continues to live and light a fire for us, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?
If not now, then when?
There are many special days we observe throughout the year when we say, “If not now, when?” On July 4thwe remember courageous deeds of our ancestors in determining the freedom and future of our country. On Veterans Day and on Memorial day we honor the service and sacrifice of our soldiers. On each of these days, we rededicate ourselves to meaningful action to carry forward our hard won freedoms, at the very least, not to take our freedom for granted.
We can legitimately choose at times to be harmlessinstead of being helpful.
But the lessons of Holocaust remembrance that we take from today, from survivors like Mollie Sperling, is that there are times when we must act decisively. As we know, when dark forces spread, when the Nazi occupation in Europe spread over the continent, the people who tried to be harm-less were also burned by the fires of hate.
As an example of this, one day you may have occasion to visit Berlin, and you will see there in the center of a plaza, the Bebelplatz, the Empty Library Memorial, an underground memorial installation that is visible through a glass pane in the ground, it’s a room of empty bookshelves in remembrance of the Nazi burning of some 20,000 books written by Jews, Communists, and pacifists, on May 10, 1933 85 years ago.
Inscribed there is a phrase written by Heinrich Heine, “Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.”
Perhaps if some had doused the fire on the books, Heine’s prophecy would not have been so tragically fulfilled.
To spur us to action we need inspiration!
Who are our action heroes?
Who are our action role models?
The Avengers? The Justice League? Our teachers in school? Our clergy? Town leadership?
One of my action heroes was Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the many faith leaders who joined Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery on March 21, 1965. In reflecting on that day he wrote, “For many of us the march…was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.”
100 years before that, the great Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave who became one a leader of the abolitionist movement, made his escape from slavery at age 20 and he said, “I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”
Prayer is good and important. Prayer brings insight and awareness.
And then we must act.
Because what we do matters.
But how do we act when the odds are against us, when there’s no partner with whom to have a dialogue, when enemies of humanity like the Nazis looked upon Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, political opponents, Polish Catholic priests, when they look upon us as something less than human?
When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke on the evening of April 3, 1968 in Memphis, he knew the civil rights movement was still confronting great odds, significant resistance – that night, the night before he was assassinated he said:
“And another reason that I'm happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn't force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.”
Dr. King argued there was no other choice but to pursue justice because, as he also said, if any people are enslaved, then we all are. Violence against one person, against one people, impacts everyone.
And the reverse is true as well – in my tradition we say one mitzvah leads to another, mitzvah goreret mitzvah, meaning one good deed to one person leads to so many more.
We know how Ray Allen[1]asks just this question. In an interview, he was asked about whether he would take action to save others as many did during the Holocaust years, he says, “I would like to think that I was – that I would be that courageous….[and] that is I think the ultimate question that we live with every day…are we willing to fight for the next person when it doesn’t benefit us?”
Ray Allen asks an ultimate question about our theme today, what we do matters, and that question is whether we’re willing to act when we do not expect anything in return, or when the primary goal of what we’re doing may only benefit us indirectly.
Of course, if you remember from a few moments ago, the great Rabbi Hillel teach us, If I am not for myself who will be for me? But …if I am only for myself, what am I?
We ask these questions looking back on the 20thcentury, when across the world there were some 27 genocides by the United Nations definition. And now, into the 21st, at least 2 more tragically to add – South Sudan and the Rohingya in Myanmar.
In the face of such tragedy and loss, we might feel stuck, glued to our seats, wondering just what could each of us individually, or even us as a group, do in response to such hatred and pain?
I found inspiration for this dilemma in the immortal words of Anne Frank’s diary, Anne Frank, the young woman in Holland who wrote a diary during her time in hiding with her family in Amsterdam.
Anne Frank writes in 1944, dreaming about what she will do if she survives, “If God lets me live…I will make my voice heard. I will work in the world for mankind.”
What can each of us do to make a difference for just one person, in our schools, in our community, in our world?
For now, in this moment, I’d like to ask everyone to say hello, exchange greetings with the people sitting on either side of us – if it’s family or best friends turn behind you or reach in front of you – one action we can take right now is to get to know each other, to bring ourselves closer as a community. Take a moment, share greetings! – And we can do this at any time, when we’re walking in downtown Cranford, anytime.
And one more thing we can do -- on your way out this evening, please consider taking one of the yellow Holocaust memorial candles sponsored by the Temple Beth El Mekor Chayim Men’s club and Menorah Chapels at Millburn. You can light this candle at home tonight in memory of the victims of the Holocaust and victims of other genocides throughout the 20thand 21stcenturies.
And let’s always remember, what we do, matters.
[1]Ray Allen was an NBA basketball player who continues to be an advocate for Holocaust education. One of his articles appears here: https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en-us/articles/ray-allen-why-i-went-to-auschwitz
