Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

May 13, 2002

by Harold M. Schulweis

Rabbi Melchior, we are honored by your presence and moved by your presentation. You have come to us from Zion with a message of urgency. We recognize the gravity and the consequences of our response.

We are gathered here not as spectators nor auditors. This is not a lecture, not a discourse on current events.   This is a matter of life and death in which the character of civilization is being decided, in which the future, not only of Israel but of humanity itself, is being measured.

This is our generation's moment in history.

We are the generation in whom the echo of the cry of the survivors rings clear. They addressed us with the cry "Never again."

Never again is an oath, a pledge, a resolution and a promise, a mandate calling upon us to fulfill it with our heart, mind and will.

Never again is the sound that declares the revolution in the Jewish collective psyche. Never again is the answer to the unspeakable condition of Auschwitz and the manifestation of the rebirth of Israel.

Never again will we allow ourselves to remain defenseless, landless, homeless, powerless, helpless, hopeless.

Never again will we depend on the good will and the benevolence and altruism of other sovereignties, church or state, religious or secular.

Never again will we fold our arms and prayerfully depend upon supernatural intervention and ourselves do nothing.

Never again will we forfeit our responsibility, our determination, our energy. We remember the desperate cries of men, women and children who sought sanctuary, who sought to escape from the merciless predators and who found before them and around them locked doors, closed shutters, sealed borders, and all avenues of refuge denied.

Never again will we be taunted by the accusation of passivity "Why did they go like sheep to the slaughterhouse?"

Never again will be stand idly by and witness the torture and destruction of our innocent families.

We know ourselves to be an old-new people. Zionism is the determination of a people to enter history. For too long we have been irrelevant to history, we have written history and we have studied history while others made history. We rationalized our non-involvement and spiritualized our distance from history by contentment with the world of ideas and books alone. No one more than our old-new people prays each day, each service for peace. No one more than our old-new people knows the horrors of war, of persecution, of pogrom. No one knows more the degradation and humiliation of persecution and pogrom and Inquisition. But no one knows better the tragedy of powerlessness, the disgrace of impotence and the denigration of weakness.

“Never again” does not guarantee that there will be no suffering, no wounding, no maiming, no death and no dying. But it does mean to choose to enter the cross-fires to answer the bombings of the murderers with courage and willing defense and that such pain is far preferable to being shoved into the ovens of the crematoria.

We are an old-new people with an ancient collective memory. We recall in our sacred history that when our people were pursued by Egyptian hordes intent on throwing us into the sea, our leader Moses pleaded to God for intervention and God responded, "Why do you cry unto Me? Speak to the children of Israel and go forward." Now is the time to go forward. Israel will not be redeemed except for the work of their own hands. We understand the gravity and we understand as well that this is not a war against Israel or against Jews alone. This is a war against forces that are both jealous and contemptuous of the achievements of Western civilizations and of the values of Western civilization, a civilization that is profoundly rooted in the insights and intuitions, beliefs and fidelities of Jewish civilization. Israel is the sole democracy in the Middle East.

We are the barometers of the moral condition of nations. We are the first to feel the disaster and the threat. The old coal mines had no gas detectors. Instead canaries were kept in the mines. When coal gas escaped, it would poison the birds for they were more sensitive to it than humans. When the birds were poisoned, the miners knew it was time to go to another vein or to move in another direction. History will bear out that our people have been the canaries in the coal mines of world events. As that shrewd observer Franz Kafka noted, "When a Jew is beaten down, it is mankind that falls to the ground." It may begin with Israel but its intention is that which is decent and sacred in Western civilization that is being challenged. The juxtaposition of the interests of the United States and of Israel is not accidental.

Rabbi Melchior, as the poet once said, "Our heart is in the East though we live in the West." You have come to us with a message of monumental importance and we will not fail to respond to your call. There are many blessings in our tradition, blessings on the occasion of lightning or storm or seeing a rainbow or seeing the ocean. But for tzedakah, for acts of righteousness there is no bracha, no benediction for tzedakah. And some explain that when there is this need, this crisis, there must be nothing to interrupt or to delay the mitzvah of tzedakah. For the very act is the benediction. We meet in the synagogue. It is the proper place to gather. Here we have prayed, here we have studied, here we have engaged in dialogue, here we have met during festivals and fasts. Here, we have dreamt of our future which is tied to the future of the world.

We know that we were not created for war. We know that this remarkable State was not created to destroy but to build and to help. We will once again be able to restore peace and prosperity to its surrounding neighbors, to those exploited, manipulated and robbed of their rights as human beings created in the Image of God. As partners of God we will bring peace and harmony to the Middle East. For we are instruments of divinity and our prophets have taught us to live for a day that violence shall no more be heard in your land neither desolation or destruction within your borders. They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree and none shall make them afraid for the Lord Himself has spoken it.

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