Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

Yom Kippur 2009

by Harold M. Schulweis

Looking back over the last year, I must confess to you that I am overwhelmed by the flood of new vocabulary which is unfathomable to me:  Hedge funds, leveraged buying, derivatives, economic meltdown, recession, toxic assets, phantom stocks, banking bailouts, subprime mortgages.”  And you thought  that my sermons were unintelligible?   I’m overwhelmed by this economic language.  But more is involved than vocabulary.

Marxists and Capitalist sages argue that economics, and economics basically alone, is the basic substructure of world culture.  Sophisticated analysts argue, and they’re very convincing:   Once you cut through the rhetoric, and once you cut through the debates on health care, on education, on insurance, on energy, on Green Revolution, global warming, dealing with corrupt tribal lords in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya — oil, uranium, water — the bottom line is money.  That is the ultimate line.  It’s all about money. 

You remember a couple of years ago, there was a campaign in which the mantra was, “It’s the economy, stupid!”  With due respect, it’s not “the economy stupid,” it’s the immorality of it all. Underlying the rise and fall of Dow Jones averages, of the rattling against the cages against our own security, is a radical challenge, not only to economic and political system, but to our motivation in life.  For what?  How, after all of this, how do we raise our children now?  How do we live now?  What’s the meaning and purpose of life now?  Do we remain the same, or do we change the motivation of our life?

The economic depression will be over.  Not the moral depression.  We will go on selling and buying as usual—cars, computers, films, videogames—but improved commerce and more entertainment will not cover over our fatigue, our exhaustion, our distrust, the large hole left in our national soul.

And the issue is not money.  Money is as much the root of evil as wine is the cause of intoxication.  Wine can be used to serve the pagan god Dionysius, to cast us down to stupefaction.  Or, the cup of wine can be raised for sanctification of our lives.  Wine is not our problem.  And money is not our problem.  Judaism has never asked of us vows of poverty.  Poverty for Jews is not a sign of piety.  As the Yiddish writer Sholom Alecheim put it, “If you see a poor man eating chicken, rest assured that one of them is sick.”   Jewish ethics doesn’t call for ascetic suffering.  Money is not the villain.

Money is power, and like all power, money is ambivalent.  With money you can feed the poor; you can clothe the naked; you can build hospitals and clinics and construct houses of worship and orphanages.  Or, with money you can build weapons of indescribable fear:  cluster bombs, rockets, missiles, nuclear terror that can blot out the sun from our world.

Don’t blame money. And don’t blame the silver or gold coin.  Because if you take even the smallest coin and place it hard against your eyeball, that small coin will block out the entire world and leave you blind and bewildered.  The issue is not money, and the fault is not to be found  in capitalism or socialism.  Corruption and exploitation can be found in any economic system. 

What is it then?   We have lost our way.  We have lost our way in the wilderness of no purpose, we have become slaves to the Golden Calf.  You remember in the desert, they danced a mad dance before a golden god whom they constructed in their own image.  The Golden Calf is alive. Open the pages, flip the channels.  Idol worshipers are bombarded with the scandals du jour:  mendacity, bribery, manipulation, fiduciary betrayal, marital infidelity, distrust of the broker and the broke.   

We  have outsmarted ourselves.  We are very smart.  The renowned economist Milton Friedman summed up the role of business: “The only obligation of a business is to make a profit.”   Profit engulfs the entirety of our lives.  Profit is the raison d’être, it is the reason that we exist.  It is the ultimate explanation and rationale for everything:  for getting a B.A., or an M.A., or an Ph.D.; for choosing our professions and vocations; for even choosing our mates, and evaluating our talents.  How much can you get for it?  What’s the cash value of the talent?  Does it generate revenue?  You and I have seen how material acquisition can destroy families in the process of settling family estates, and challenging wills.  We have quantified life.  One question permeates every part of our being, and that is “How much?”

The bottom line is greed, and the color of greed is green.  That’s the real “green movement.”   You’ll remember in that remarkable movie (which I predict will have a sequel) called “Wall Street,” Gordon Gekko pulls no punches.  And he’s convincing.  He’s speaking to all of us:  “Greed is good.  I create nothing.  I own.  I own.”    And his argument in the movie, and in life, is very compelling:  “Come on, now. Business is business.  All this talk about confidence, and trust, and ethics, and conscience, and moral sensibility.  Keep it for the Rabbis’ sermon.  This is a Barnum and Bailey world, and there’s a sucker born every minute.”  

There will always be suckers.  Always!  Naïve, trusting, ignorant men and women in matters of economics.   The deaf, dumb and the blind, like me, who cannot read the small print in the contract, and don’t know how to navigate the labyrinth of loopholes.  They can’t differentiate NASDAQ from NASCAR.  They can’t know the difference between a donut hole, or a bagel. 

There are always suckers, and there will always be suckers.  But that’s the world.  “We’re not running a charity here.  This is life, the burden is on you.”  That’s the basic motto, the mantra of Sodom and Gomorrah: “Caveat emptor” — let the buyer beware.

It’s not Jewish. It’s not Jewish. Jewish is “Caveat venditor”  — let the seller beware.  

Your ancestors and my ancestors knew, millennia ago, the subtle seductiveness of sharp shrewdness.  They knew how to take advantage of trusting souls, they knew how easy it was.   So our ancestors transmitted the fire of conscience into the marrow of our bones:

Leviticus 19:  “You shall not curse the deaf.  You shall not place a stumbling block before the blind.”   Why not?  What better targets than the disadvantaged?  The deaf can’t hear, the blind can’t see.  But our Torah said, and our tradition said, “They can’t hear and they see. But you can hear and you can see.”  And I can hear, and I can see.  You can feel, and you know how the heart of those taken advantage can be crushed by the arrogance of Ponzi piracy.  We have seen the hollow eyes, the fallen faces of the tricked.  The Talmud called it “Genavat daat,” — a wonderful expression — “stealing the mind.”  In the first century, our rabbinim, our sages said, “Don’t whisper false information or give advice out of avarice, or use intelligence to snare the innocent.”

“Still, all of that is nice, Rabbi.  But business is business.”  No, that’s not business, by the way.  That’s robbery.  Offering false information for gain is like stealing money out of the tin cup of a blind beggar.

Do we want to be addicted, and our children to be addicted, and our country to be addicted, and our civilization to be addicted, to profit alone?   What else is there?  What else is there?  What for?

The basic rationale for our lives is given in the Holiness Code, Leviticus 19.  Your function in life, my function in life, my raison d’être is “Kedoshim tiyu” – “You shall be holy, for I the Lord am holy.”

“Holy”?  You’re talking to me about “holy?”  You mean I should live a life of self-deprivation, of endless prayer, of ashes on my head, of vows of poverty, of vows of chastity?  But that’s not the Jewish understanding of “holy.”  Open up the Holiness code, Leviticus 19, and it tells you what it means to be holy.  This is your DNA. This is your moral heritage. The first measure of holiness is honesty:  Honest balances on your scales, honest weights, honest business dealings, honesty in commerce.  The Talmud teaches that at the end of my life the first question I will be asked is, “Nasata v’nata bemunah?”  —  “Did you deal honestly in business?  Did you deal honestly in commerce?”   That first question in the Talmud that is asked of us is not about fasting, it’s not about praying, it’s not about keeping the Sabbath, it’s not about keeping kosher.   It’s “How did you deal with money?”  How did you do business?”

When you close your hand and make a fist against the left side of your chest and you read the “Al Chet”  — you have plenty of time to read it.  Look at it and see not a word about transgressing rituals; not single word about ritual observance.  But only about — look at it carefully, look at it in English — fraud, falsehood; bribery; extortion; betrayal of others; envy; swearing falsely; breach of trust; and confusion of values.

The great moral ethicists of the 19^th century, Rabbi Israel Salanter, said it beautifully:  If you find a blitz trop, if you find a blood speck in a fertilized egg in a chicken, the egg is unfit to eat.  But if you should find on your money a speck of blood from those whom you have squeezed, from those you have cheated, from those you have profited from that money is treif. 

We’re not angels.  We never said we’re angels.  Actually, we’re better than angels.  Read the Psalms:  “You are but little lower than God.”  Angels may have wings, angels may wear shrouds.  But shrouds have no pockets.  But you and I, we  have pockets.  What goes in and what goes out of my pocket, how I conduct my business relationships with you.  That tests my holiness.

What has money to do with holiness?  Everything.  Everything! Money talks.  And after Yom Kippur, you’ll take out the wallet, and you look, at the dollar bill, and your coins, and you will see “In God We Trust.”  But you can trust God in Heaven only when God’s children on earth are trustworthy.  Trust begins on earth.  Our disappointment in our lives is because we have become so clever that we have a new kind of imperative, “Distrust your neighbor as yourself.”  Our disappointment is that you can’t trust the creditor.  The creditor!  “Creditor” is  a very important word.  It comes from the Latin, credere, from which the word credo is derived.   “Credi – to trust.”  Life’s credo is to believe, to trust, to entrust.

And that’s why you recite the word, “Amen” so often.  “Amen,”  “Amen,” “Amen,” “Amen.”  After every single benediction. Why?  Because, “amen,” it’s root, is emunah.  And emunah is “trust.”  There can be no benediction unless we really mean to say, emunah

Look at the entire arc of our Bible and our Talmud.  There’s one life-long struggle, from the beginning of the bible, past the Talmud into our lives.  And that struggle is against Avodah Zarah,  which means, “idolatry.”  Let me tell you what idolatry is, plainly:  Idolatry is not the worship of stars, or the worship of trees, or the worship of mountains.  Idolatry is the adoration of selfishness.  The squinting selfishness that cares for no other, that sees no other, that feels no other, that imagines no other, that loves no other, and paradoxically, selfishness is my deepest foe.  It kills myself.  That’s the self that was celebrated by Sodom, “Sheli sheli, v’shelach sheli” — “mine is mine, and yours is mine.”  That is the unholy narcissism of idolatry. 

From its very inception, for millennia, Jews fought the idolatry of the omnivorous selfishness of man.  And the Bible burned it into our souls.  When our ancestors were farmers, way before the Industrial Revolution, they learned what is in the Bible, what is holy.

And when you reap the harvest of your land, don’t reap it all the way to the edges of your field.  Leave a portion of your field to the poor and the stranger.  This is called “Peah.” 

And when you reap the harvest in your field, and you overlook a sheaf in the field, and you forget to take it, “lo tashuv l’kachto”  —  don’t turn back to get it.   You forgot some sheaves?  Let it alone.  Leave it for the stranger, the fatherless and the widow.  This is called Shikchah.” Because there is holiness in forgetting.  And if in harvesting if you drop some olives or grapes, don’t go over and pick them up.  Let it lie there, for the stranger and the poor and the orphan.  This is called “Leket.”   

Holiness in Judaism is the struggle against selfishness, against the omnivorous, acquisitive, ruthless ambition that reduces the human being to biting fangs and tearing claws, red in tooth and claw. 

So, he’s right, Gordon Gekko. He’s right!  He says, “I own, I own.”    He’s right, it’s true.  He does own it.  He owns the keys to the debtor’s house.  He owns the pledges.  But he doesn’t own the human being behind the debt.  So, thousands of years ago, your ancestors and mine had it written in the Torah, taught, “And when you make a loan do not enter the home of the debtor to seize his pledge. ‘Bachutz tamod’ — stand outside. Yes, you own the material pledge, but you don’t own the human debtor. 

In Judaism not all is fair in love and war and business:

“And if a man is needy, return the pledge to him before the sun sets.  He is impoverished, and his pledge often is his nightclothes.   Return it to him by sundown.  ‘Bameh yishkav’  — in what then shall he sleep?  And if he should cry out to me, I, God, will hear.”  

We have lost our way, and its much more serious than economics.  Civilization is caught in the thickening web of excess.  You remember in the Bible, a remarkable section, when our people were in the desert, freed already from slavery, gluttony overcame them.  What about manna?  What about liberty?  What about freedom?  Give us meat, give us meat! “T’nu lanu basar. T’nu lanu basar.”  And Moses answered, as the Bible says: “The Lord will give you meat and you shall eat.  Not one day, not two, not even five or ten or twenty.  But a whole month ‘til it comes out of your nostrils and it becomes loathsome unto you.”   It’s your people.  It’s my people.  Is there a more graphic description of nauseating excess?  Can you eat more with a mouth already full?

In our world, there is no “dayenu.”  That’s why it’s a marvelous song.  Dayenu – Enough! Enough!   No dayenu,  no “enough.”  Global culture is seduced by insatiable “moreism” — more things, more property, more cars.  Taller cars, bigger cars, heavier cars.  “More” is insatiable.  It’s contagious.

Do you think children are not affected by our culture?   Children smell it, they inhale the culture!  A recently released Josephson Institute Report, based on 29,760 high school students here, revealed “entrenched habits of dishonesty” in young people:

• 30 percent admit stealing from stores and from their parents;
• 36 percent use the internet to plagiarize their assignments
• Cheating in school increases. A substantial majority, 64 percent, cheat on tests. Here, there is no gender difference: Boys and girls together.   No difference between public and private schools, and no difference between religious or secular schools.

Papa said, “The Ganzeh velt is Moishe Kapoyer.”   Very difficult to translate but the refined translation is “The whole world is topsy-turvy.”  So the Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben Gurion, would practice yoga every day before attending his daily political briefings with the cabinet.  Practicing yoga, Ben Gurion would stand on his head.  And when asked why, he answered, “So I can see the way the world truly is.” Moishe Kapoyer.

How do you know the world upside down?   Let me put it to you as simply as I can, and for me, as importantly as I can: When the means become the end and the end becomes the means.  Once profit is the ultimate end, then any means is okay.  If what is valued in society is not what you truly know, but only the score on the test; if what is measured is not your character, your empathy, your softness, your feeling, but the grade, why shouldn’t I cheat? 

If profit is the real end of life, ultimately, I mean ultimately, cut through all the rhetoric… if profit is the consummate purpose of life’s end, why shouldn’t smart CEOs stand up before Congress, raise their hands and swear before God and man that tobacco is not addictive?  If profit is the sole rationale, why shouldn’t sports figures use steroids?  Steroids grow muscles, and bigger muscles and larger biceps raise the number of home runs and the number of knockouts.  Why not smear a little plaster-of-Paris in your boxing gloves and knock ‘em out?  The more knockouts, the more home runs, the more profit, the more gold, the more gold.

Children inhale culture.  They read, as you do, of pharmaceutical companies that suppress reports of the side-effects of their medication, and of technological manufacturers who did not reveal or recall faulty pacemakers and faulty defibrillators.

If the primary and ultimate end of life is profit, why not profit in kidneys?  Why not buy human organs from the poor and sell them in the free market for profit?  Business is business.  Have we come to this?  Have we really come to this?  Are we salable parts, have we only become commodities to each other?  Idolatry is the worship of the part as if it were the whole. Now, a new definition:  Idolatry is the worship of parts.

Be careful.  Be careful of the obsessive pursuit of gold that twists and deforms the dignity and the decency of my humanity.  All that glitters is not gold. 

• On Yom Kippur, the High Priest who entered the Holy of Holies, had to shed his vestments of silver and gold and dress in linen.  Holiness is not opulence.  
• And remember you.  Do you remember yourself under the chuppah?   When you gave your wedding ring to your beloved under the chuppah, it was by ritual Jewish law unbejeweled — to teach us that love is not measured by the size of the carat.  In the holiness of love, it is not what you own that I need; its what you are that I crave.  Gold is deceitful and silver is vain, but those who love each other are holy to each other.

“So, what do you want, Rabbi?  Do you want laziness? You want Sloth?  You want indolence?  You want passivity?” Is that what I’m asking, “no incentives?”   Absolutely false. What Judaism demands of us and of our children is an ennobling motivation worth living for; and uplifting rationale, an incentive for life.  

Do I advocate lowering the standards of accomplishment and achievement of my children, of myself, of my grandchildren?  No.  To my children, to my grandchildren, I say:  “Study, work, choose a vocation or profession, develop your skills, marry, raise a family, but for God’s sake use your God-given talents to sanctify life.  Because to live only to have is to lack nothing… except yourself.” 

Be good to yourself.  Sanctify your yourself.  Be kind to yourself. Soften the hardness of your heart. Wipe away the tears of the afflicted.  And be first!  Be first!  First in honesty.  First in kindness.  First in righteousness.  Graduate with a summa cum laude in mentschlicheit.   Profit, yes, but profit with honesty. Money, yes, but money with morality.  Investment, yes, but investment with integrity. 

And when the evil inclination tempts us with moral shortcuts and whispers, “Why not?  Why not curse the deaf and trip up the blind?  Why not a quick Ponzi scheme?”  … there is a Jewish answer: That’s not me, that’s not you, that’s not us.   That can’t be the reason for the survival of the Jewish people over four millennia of Jewish civilization. That’s not my people’s legacy.  I know my people’s goodness, I know their charity, I know their compassion, I know their altruism and I know idealism.

We are meant for something greater, we are meant for something grander — for a life of service, for a life of goodness and holiness.  We were meant to bring a little peace of heaven into earth.

Love yourself.  Selfishness will kill you.  When I steal, it is not from another.  I steal from myself.  When I lie, it is not to another.  I lie to myself.  And when I kill, it’s not someone else who dies — it is I who dies. 

But when I help lift the crushing weight from the back of the oppressed, I am uplifted.  When I bind the wounds of those who bleed, it is I who receive a transfusion of moral plasma into my veins. 

So begin here.  Begin with this family, this VBS family.  Create a culture of honesty and truth and love, and transform yourself.  Transform ourselves out of economic crisis into moral compassion.  Out of recession, reverence; out of depression, elevation.  

You are you?  Who am I?  “Atem Kedoshim” – You are holy.  And I will confess to you at the end of my life, at the end of your life, it’s not death we fear.  We fear only that we have not lived.  Let us live for something ennobling that outlasts us. 

L’chayim.  A life of goodness.

* This document, or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced without the written permission of the author.