Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

Yom Kippur, 1993

by Harold M. Schulweis

"By authority of the heavenly Tribunal and of the Court below with divine sanction and with the sanction of this holy congregation, we declare it lawful to pray together with those who have transgressed.”

This opens the revolutionary proclamation that declares the interdependence of heaven and earth, the unity between the law above and the law below, the dignity and power of the holy congregation. This correlation of the two tribunals is the background that authorizes the power to loosen the bonds.

It proceeds not with a prayer but with a legal formula, one that is recited three times which deals with the power to nullify vows. It ends with the declaration, "Our vows to God shall not be vows, our bonds shall not be bonds and our oaths shall not be oaths."

How strange to begin a day of solemn resolutions by nullification of oaths. We Jews honor our vows.: "Be not rash with your mouth nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God.” (Ecclesiastes 5)   A vow in Judaism is sacred. In the Bible, Deuteronomy 23:22, "When you vow a vow to the Lord your God you must pay it without delay. Be careful to keep any promise you have made with your lips."

The rabbis insist: "Your yea shall be yea and your nay, nay.” How then dare we begin with the nullification of our vows to God? What in our tradition gives us the power to annul, to absolve, to nullify, to release?

Observe the three proof texts from the Bible on that same page. The first, "And the congregation shall be forgiven,” the second, "Pardon the iniquities of this people,” and the last, "The Lord said I have forgiven according to thy word.” Why are they selected? The quotations come from the book of Numbers that report the sins of our people in the desert. Now that they have left the bondage of Egypt, they do nothing but murmur, complain, betray or seek to return to the fleshpots of Egypt. They are unable or unwilling to take destiny into their own hands and enter the promise land of Canaan. In the absence of Moses they construct a golden calf to worship.

God is angry with this ungrateful people and declares "How long shall I bear with this evil congregation that keeps murmuring against Me?” And after the insult of the golden calf (Deuteronomy 9), God says "I have seen this stiff-necked people. Let Me alone that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven." God has sworn to destroy this people and "if God, Master of the universe has proposed an oath, who can nullify it?" (Isaiah 14:27)

How do our ancestors understand this exchange between Moses and God? Consider the imaginative rabbinic reconstruction in the Talmud (Brachoth 32) and Midrash (Exodus Rabbah 43:4). When Moses heard that God said, "Let Me alone that I may destroy them," he wondered “What does it mean that a powerful, omnipotent God cries out to be let alone? Who is stopping Him, who can stop Him?”  He immediately understood. Then Moses seized hold of God's garment and would not let Him go. And he said "I won't let You go, God, until you forgive and absolve this people. You cannot abandon this people. You have given Your word. You cannot go back on Your promise to make them a great nation. It is unjust. What did You expect of Your people? You brought them into Egypt, they lived there as slaves, were raised in an atmosphere of idolatry and superstition and of the deification of Pharaoh.” God is moved by Moses' defense.

And God said to Moses, "But Moses, I have already sworn, I have already taken an oath. I have made an oath. What can I do?" And Moses said: "But Master of the universe, did You not teach us that if someone makes an oath that person can consult a scholar who may absolve the oath. Come to me, Master of the universe." And then Moses wrapped himself in a prayer shawl and sat down as if to judge God. And God before the seated Moses to gain release of His vow. And Moses asked: "Do you regret Your oath?" And God answered: "I regret the evil that made me issue that oath." And then Moses replied, "You are absolved God. You are absolved of Your oath. There is no oath and there is no vow." "And the Lord said, “I have forgiven according to thy word." God forgives according to man's word. Man's word can override even exonerate His oath.

What is being said here? Certainly the tradition is not saying that God is weak or wrong. The rabbis are advising us that God is not the Grand Inquisitor. God does not say to those who believe in Him, "You must obey Me, follow Me blindly, bite your tongue, shut your mouth, bind your hands and bend your knee. I am not your Pharaoh. I am the loving God who created you as a free spirit. I have created you with a mind and with a heart.”

Therein lies the heroic conception of Jewish spirituality. Believers do not grovel before a Master, but stand before God with dignity of one who knows himself to be loved and created in the image of God.

I call attention to this Judaic tradition because it is not the conventional portrayal of Judaism. In the classes of comparative religion, we and our children in college and universities are exposed to the God of Judaism as an imperial, inflexible, wrathful commander who gives orders. Judaism is nothing but obedience. That was the caricature that the New Testament drew of Judaism, a legalistic system devoid of the spirit of love. From Baruch Spinoza in the seventeenth century, to Immanuel Kant, and from Kant to Fichte and Hegel, the legacy was handed down that Judaism is nothing but obedience. That characterization of Judaism has been internalized even by Jews who think of Judaism as at its core an authoritarian, legalistic tradition.

That characterization is distorting and hurtful. It misses the spiritual distinctiveness of the Jewish stance before God. Moses' nullification of God's vows is not the first or last time that he or the prophets or rabbis have exhibited the heroic spiritual humanism of our faith. Examine to this section in the rabbinic commentary incorporated in the sacred text of Numbers Rabbah 19:33 –which is rarely taught or preached or explained – but which exemplifies the uniqueness of Jewish faith.

Here the conflict is over nothing less than the wording of the Ten Commandments, twice recorded in the Book of Exodus and the Book of Deuteronomy. "I, the Lord thy God visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children unto the third and fourth generation.” The rabbis did not take this statement attributed to God lying down. Through their moral imagination they saw Moses rising before God and declaring: "Master of the universe, Terach, Abraham's father worshipped idols but Abraham discovered and loved but one God. King Ahaz was a cruel king but his son King Hezekiah was a man of great spirit. King Ammon was wicked but his son King Josiah was a righteous leader.” Is it fair that the righteous be punished for the sins of their fathers?" Now, it’s nice to have such rhetoric, but what is important is how the tradition, how God responded to such a critique. (Can you imagine a rabbi talking to God in this fashion, or to the chairman of the Board of Directors? Moses couldn't keep a job as a Rabbi in most congregations.)

What does God respond? God says: Moses, you have instructed Me. I shall nullify My words and confirm yours. Moreover your instruction will be recorded in your name, in the statement (Deuteronomy 24:16) "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children nor the children be put to death for the fathers. Every man shall be put to death for his own sin.”

The implication of this genre of confrontation is far-reaching. God does not shut Moses up. He does not say "You finite, mortal cipher. How dare you challenge or contradict the Master of the universe!" Neither God nor the tradition consider this challenge to God as insubordination, treason, lèse majesté.  When Moses reminds God of His morality – as Abraham did at Sodom and Gomorrah – "Shall the judge of the earth not act justly?" God is fulfilled. God's relationship to His people is like that of a parent. Moses' moral assertiveness is what every father and mother hopes to see in their children. Moses appeals to God in the name of God against God. Moses knows that the God within God will not sanction injustice. God has a conscience. God recognizes in the protesting voice of Moses' conscience His own voice.

Note well that the prophetic conscience, that at times of crisis, is critical of Kings and governments and laws, does not end in anarchy, in anomie, in lawlessness. The result of Moses' critique is the responsiveness of law to moral conscience. It yields a heightened sensibility. Those who fear conscience and are ready to call it heresy fail to appreciate that conscience is the motivation and energizing of a nobler law. Those who are nervous about the elevated status of conscience forget that it is Jewish conscience that keeps Jewish law alive, responsive, and spiritually refined.

Law and conscience are not enemies. Judaism knows that you need law, that with law there is anarchy. There is no civilization without rules and regulations and structure. Hence, the propriety of the rabbinic aphorism "Pray for the welfare of the state for were it not for the fear of government a man would swallow up his neighbor alive!"

You cannot live without law, but you can live with law only if it is invigorated by the fresh air of conscience. For the Rabbis knew, as Nachmanides put it, "You can be a scoundrel within the letter of the law" – naval b'reshuth ha-torah.  If you exclude conscience from your decisions you turn halachah into another form of idolatry.

Without Jewish sensibility the law can become a peoples' straight-jacket. Jewish law is meant to be liberating, it is meant to crystallize the moral spirit of Judaism.

Consider the celebrated case cited in the Talmud (Baba Metziah 83a). Some porters accidentally broke a barrel of wine that belonged to Rabba Bar Huna. The rabbi owner seized their garments and the workers promptly went to Rab to complain about the seizure of the garments. Rab ordered Rabba to return their garments. Rabba was surprised at the verdict and asked the judge Dinah Hachi, "Is this the law?" The judge answered "yes.” And to support his ruling quoted a verse from Proverbs 2:20 "Ye shall walk in the way of good people.” Then the workers returned to the judge "We are poor men. We have worked all day and are in need. Are we to get no wages?" And Rab, the judge said to Rabba the owner, "Go and pay them.” Rabba was surprised at the verdict and said, "Is this the law?" And the judge answered "Yes, it is the law." And he backed up his position with the same verse from the Book of Proverbs (16:2) "keep the paths of righteousness."

What is going on here? Can you base a ruling on monetary matters on the basis of a single verse in Proverbs "to walk in the way of good people" or to "keep the paths of righteousness"? After all, the Bible itself tells us (Exodus 23) "Do not give preferences to the poor man in law.” Come now, the porters are responsible for the breakage and the owner has the right to seize hold of their garments as security. That may well be true without the leaven of conscience.

I'm not speaking about the conscience of super heroes, of Moses or the prophets. I am speaking of your conscience and mine. How does this address me and you? Do you have a conscience? What does it have to do with your religious life? Where does it come from? Is it something with which you are born? Either you've got it or you haven't? Is there such a thing as a Jewish conscience? There is no word for conscience in the Bible or for that matter in the Talmud. But for that matter there is no word for religion in the Bible. But surely the Bible is a religious book and as surely conscience is the spirit that hovers over the depths of Jewish law and lore. It is difficult to define conscience.

There is a mystique about conscience, a spiritual dimension that carries with it a sense of inner compulsion, something I have to do or say not out of submission to an outer authority but to an inner authority. There are positions I must take despite the fact that they are not in my best self-interests, and that I know will not redound to my popularity. There are times when I know that I can get away with it, that I can remain silent or times when I can cut corners and no one will be the wiser and something within me says "no.”

Most of the time, I don't appeal to my conscience. Most of the time I can open a book or study a section of the law or follow an authority. There is an accumulated wisdom, a collective conscience on which I rely. But there are moments when its not in the book, or sometimes when there is an authority who has pronounced a decision that runs against the grain of my moral intuition, that calls on me to say something that is not politically correct, that is not smart, not good for my reputation. Then I experience, as you have, a kind of restlessness. The topic can deal with discrimination, with the pariahs of society, with civil rights or women's rights. That irritation and compulsion Jeremiah expresses (20:9) "If I say I will not speak any more in His name, then there is in my heart a burning fire shut up in my bones - and I weary myself to hold it. I cannot." Conscience doesn't enter the picture only with grandiose political policy and it didn't start in my adult years. It started with trivia. I remember a few instances. I remember as a small child being sent to the grocery store and receiving more change than I should have. I remember the dilemma. And having returned the money to the grocer who barely acknowledged the heroism of my deed - come home to blurt out what I had done. Everything depended upon papa's and mama's responses. Was I a patsy who knew nothing about the real world of cutting corners, of picking up my good luck and the grocer's carelessness? My parents never knew how important their response to my confession was for the shaping of my character.

A second memory. My father never crossed a picket line. He wasn't poor or a worker but crossing a picket line was treason. Decades later, my son, Seth and I set our hearts to see a movie. As we drove by, we discovered to our horror that there was a picket-line. I couldn't cross the picket line. My son understood. Whether Papa was right or wrong is arguable. Surely there are strikes that are not honorable. But conscience does not tell me everything. It doesn't tell me whether this is a good or bad strike. It doesn't tell me how to vote on this tax plan or that health plan but it informs me with a fundamental way of considering things, a basic way of looking at the world and at myself.

Conscience stirs up ultimate questions about ourselves: who are you? what moves you? what makes you? what makes you cry? what makes you feel? what makes you sacrifice? Conscience cultivates a sensibility, an awareness, a body of concern.

Conscience is not innate. I am not born with a conscience. I am born into a community of conscience. That is the soul and heart of my Jewishness which I have internalized. It is what I think is meant by a "yiddishe neshamah.” Not something racial or innate but cultivated.

What formed my Jewish conscience? I thought of an instance that I recall from my youth. I was a young man in Talmudic academy high school.

Rabbi Samuel Mirsky was interpreting a verse. I remember the way he sang the verse and stopped his punctuation. "When you lend your neighbor any manner of loan you shall not go into his house and fetch his pledge. You shall stand outside.” And then he said it again - "You shall stand outside and the man to whom you shall bring forth the pledge unto you." Why? he asked rhetorically. Why should I stand outside when I am the creditor and my pledge, my money is inside? Why? Because he may be your debtor but you must respect his dignity, his privacy. And he went on, "And if he be poor you shall not sleep with his pledge when the sun goes down." And then he cited another verse: (Exodus 22:25) "And if you take your neighbor's garment as a pledge you shall restore it to him." Why? Mirsky interpreted the verse and then read on "For that is his only covering. It is the garment for his skin. Where shall he sleep? and when he cries unto Me I will hear him for I am a compassionate God."

He was not teaching socialism or capitalism, he was transmitting the soul of Jewish law - the conscience of the law. Jewish law is not for the sake of law. The law has a purpose, a goal, a conscience. It won't tell you how to vote, but it will tell you however you vote, keep in mind the homeless, the hungry, the beaten, the sick, broken, the pariah, the stranger in your midst. Those are God's children. You will find a solution, or program but only if you have not lost your conscience. But if there is no compassion, no pity, no feeling, and your heart becomes hardened - you lose yourself, and your God. That conscience is the inner witness of God. You have it. I have it. We have to have the courage to bend down and listen to the "still small voice" within. It is your spiritual self. It is your authentic self.

I want to correct the formulation of that question. It is not do you have a conscience. You don't have a conscience. You are your conscience. And if you don't have it, you don't have a self.

Conscience is critical in your relationship to your family, to your friends, to your community. Jewish conscience does not spring from nowhere. It continues to frustrate sociologists and political scientists that while people vote their economic self- interest, Jews who have the incomes of Episcopalians vote like Puerto Ricans.

There are some who sneer at the stupidity of Jews whose voting patterns on foreign aid and civil rights and welfare proposals. To them, we must appear like fools to be the first and loudest voice of protest against the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia. The Grand Inquisitor must be laughing. What a delicious irony to have Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor from Hungary, turn to the President of the U.S .at the dedication of the Jewish Holocaust Memorial Museum and say, “Mr. President we must intervene.”  The irony is that Wiesel urges intervention against the killing of Croats and Muslims. Croatia, whose pro-Nazi puppet state and its vicious anti-Semitic Ustasi movement slaughtered thousands of Jews.  What made American Jewish organizations – A.J. Congress, ADL, A.J. Committee, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs – meet with Administration officials and members of the Senate to protest continued action? Self-interest? Jewish conscience triumphed over the urge to get even with the sons and daughters of the Croats and the Muslims. Remember that Jewish conscience is not inborn, which means that Jewish conscience can be lost. Jewish conscience is not in the DNA. It is not automatically inherited. The heart can be hardened, coarsened, grow cold. Jewish conscience can die and when it dies the soul of Torah dies. The Meiri said that the death of a person is comparable to the burning of a Sefer Torah. When a Torah is burned we tear our garments. When a person dies we tear our garments. The Meiri explained: Just as the Torah teaches laws, so the human heart discovers obligations to teach.

That is your task. Fathers, mothers, grandparents, you may or may not know the law, or the prescribed ritual, but you know the heart. Teach your children character. Teach them to feel. Teach them to be outraged at injustice. Teach them the Jewish heroism to nullify the evil decrees. Cultivate their conscience – give them a Jewish heart, give them Jewish dignity. When you cultivate Jewish conscience you give your child an inviolable sense of self and of Jewish community.

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