Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

Rosh Hashana, 5762 / 2001

by Harold M. Schulweis

This is not the sermon I prepared to present to the congregation.  September 11 changed all that, and much more. You don't select the sermon. Life selects the sermon. I looked at my original sermon and realized that it could not be given on this Rosh Hashanah. The night before I could not sleep. Nor did you. Insomnia is a Jewish trait. As someone once noted, “Jews can't sleep and they won't let the world sleep.”

We have experienced events of biblical proportion. The skyline of my beautiful city of New York has been severely altered and in its place, a void. Human nature abhors a vacuum. Our task is to learn how to fill that vacuum. As you stare at the television set and watch the crash repeated over and over again, that grotesque, bizarre, surrealistic event that looked more like a science fiction monster movie than a televised photo of reality.

The earth was tohu vavohu: “It was unformed, empty and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” An insanity. I remembered a strange story told by Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, the great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov who created the Hasidic Movement. The story tells of a king who called his counselors together and said, “I've heard a terrible report that the harvest this year is of such a threatening character that if we eat of it, we will go crazy. It will make you insane. What are we to do? Not to eat of the harvest is to starve. But to eat of the harvest is to be mad.” And he resolved, “Let us eat because we must not die. But let us remember that we are all insane.” Maybe if we remember that we are insane, we will someday be able to do something to return to normalcy.

We live in a global village. What happens in Islamabad has its resonance in New York City, what happens in Damascus reverberates in the Pentagon. The new awareness of globalization is deeper than economic, political and social change. September 11 ushers in a paradigm shift.

The world of negotiation, reason, pluralism, democracy, individualism, universal suffrage, free elections, free speech has been vitiated by a noxious miasma of hate, greed and envy; envy of capitalism, envy of our advanced science and our advanced technology.

How are we going to enter the 21st century after September 11? Will we ever be the same? This begins a different century. In the 20th century, the most terrible, horrible century in history left all of us as Jews saddened, angry, full of resentment, the secretion in a sealed vessel of prolonged impotence. A deep melancholy had descended upon us. Forty percent of a people decimated, one million five Jewish children slaughtered because of their Jewishness. Would we continue our lives as a normal people, this traumatized abused people, so bitterly disappointed by states and church? What do you do in such devastating times?

After the second destruction of the Temple, the rabbis faced a new world. The Talmud Shabbat tells of a rabbi, Shimon Bar Yochai, who was sick and tired of hearing of Roman civilization, aqueducts, engineering, technology, statecraft, and saw them as products of a corrupt and corrupting civilization. He would have nothing to do with this civilization. He runs away into a distant cave with his son, Eleazar. There they buried a hole in the sand of the cave so that their clothes would not be worn out. They studied eternal truths: the Torah. They prayed and fasted. For twelve years they did not leave the cave , until one day they heard that the Roman emperor had died. They left the cave, and to their horror they saw Jews plowing the fields and sowing seeds into the ground. Angry, they shouted, “You are giving up eternal life and dare to be concerned with the worldly pleasures of this moment? Everywhere they looked, everything their eyes beheld was burned up by their rage. They saw factory, a field, agriculture, and the material products were destroyed. A “bat kol,” a divine echo was heard to cry out: “Did you come to destroy My world? Did you come to destroy the world? Go back into the cave.” A telling tale.

In tragedy, the temptation is powerful to escape into a cave. For some it means insulating yourself into “the dahled amut shel halachah –  the four cubits of the law. For some, the cave means filling it with goods, toys, with pleasures, games to distract oneself from the world outside. They will have nothing to do with the world. They live in a cave and act out the mantra: “Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die.” Such is the seductiveness of the cave.

The story turned my thoughts to funerals and the shivah. Often when someone has lost a child, a parent, a sibling, a spouse, they don't want to be with anybody. They would have their own private grief and their own sorrows. They would enter a cave. They cover the mirrors because they would not even look at themselves. They want to be alone and away from everybody. They want the dark silence of the cave. But here the members of the community appear to help them say Kaddish. For Kaddish you need a community because in Judaism, you can do nothing holy without community. “Kedusha” requires “kehillah,” communion calls for community. Even the seven blessings at the wedding are not recited without the presence of the minyan.

The mourner says,  “Let me alone.” But the community replies “We're not going to let you alone.” You are not abandoned and you are not alone. You are part of the community and we want you to know that. At the end of seven days a fascinating folk tradition emerged. At the conclusion of the seven days, the comforters take the mourner by the hand and take him or her out of the house, out of the cave into the streets and return the mourner to the marketplace. It is a gesture of the community declaring: “Your place is not in the cave. God is the King of the cosmos, not the King of the cave. If you retreat into the cave, it will not be your security, it will be your sepulcher. God is “melech ha-olam” – “King of the universe.” God is in the minyan. “Do you recall My voice in the book of Leviticus: ‘I will be sanctified in the midst of the children of Israel.’” Not in the sanctuary and not in the cave; not on a mountain, but in the midst of the Jewish people.

How are we to respond to tragedy? With the wisdom of two millennia. Globalization is not an alien notion in Judaism. Look at the Haftorah of Yom Kippur, from the sixth century before the common era, which the rabbis chose to be studied. In it, the prophet Isaiah speaks to a people who are in exile some place in Babylonia, who complain, “Where are You God? Look at us, we are fasting. Are You blind? We are afflicting our souls, are You blind?” And God says “Who needs your fasting? Did I ask of you to bow your head like a bulrush? Did I want you to spread sackcloth and ashes over your head, or beneath your feet? I want you to move out of the cave! Undo the bands of the yoke, deal your bread to the hungry, cover the nakedness of the impoverished, get out of the cave.” As the sages in the Ethics of the Fathers declared, “One hour in this world with repentance and the practice of good deeds is worth more than the entire world in the future.” Get out of the cave. Look about you. There are one billion chronically undernourished people in the world. One quarter of the world's population, ten billion children die every year from malnutrition. That is part of the Jewish agenda. There are people choking from the poisoned atmosphere, from toxic waters.

Ours is a global faith. Let us rid ourselves of small-mindedness. Let us return to the global Judaism that is our inheritance. Early in the book of Genesis, we were told to be the custodians of the universe. See to it that this world is protected and treasured. Judaism is a world religion. A world religion has to deal with the world and the religions of the world. We have to have some contact with Islam. One billion people. How can we have any contact with one billion people especially hearing what is preached in so many Mosques? I do not apologize for our anger and frustration. But we know that not all Muslims are cut of the same cloaks anymore than all Christians are cut of the same cloth. We cannot afford the luxury of cynicism. Abraham Joshua Heschel, my teacher, was severely criticized by his fellow rabbis when he decided to fly to Rome, to Vatican II in 1965, to speak with Cardinal Bea to urge the Catholic Church to eliminate the dreadful schema pledged to use their energies to convert Jews to Catholicism. Heschel's critics said, “We don't believe that you are going to succeed.”

And Heschel responded; “Because you don't believe, we should not try?” And we know what happened. We know that the Jewish aspect of the Vatican II revolution took place because of persistent Jewish-Catholic dialogue. For the first time in two thousand years a Pope entered into a Roman Synagogue and prayed and referred to Jews as “our elder brothers.”

Despite its slow moving ways, the Church recognized diplomatically the State of Israel. The Church introduced a new catechism which cleansed the most anti-Judaic aspects of Christian liturgy. How did it come about? Because we refused to remain in the cave. We know better. Here in this very synagogue, Cardinal Mahoney of Los Angeles not once but on two significant occasions, along with his Monsignori and his nuns, spoke and prayed and chanted with us.

When I was ordained in 1950, I recalled being asked to speak together with a Catholic priest and a Protestant minister in an interfaith dialogue. The priest said embarrassingly “You know, you've got to build a platform for me that will be higher than yours.” Both the minister and I in an ecumenical burst of surprise asked “Why?” The priest replied “Because we cannot give the impression that we are all on the same level.” A deep disappointment, but fifteen years later in Oakland, at my first congregation, Bishop Begin of Oakland – who prior to Vatican II would not step into a synagogue or allow his Catholic parishioners to enter the shul – came to the synagogue and addressed a congregation filled with Jews and Catholics. If it could happen with Catholics, it can happen with Muslims. Slowly. some mainline Muslim clergymen are becoming aware that their Koran has been hijacked. We will hear from more moderate Muslim leaders that according to the Koran, it is wrong to commit suicide, to murder innocent people, to abuse the concept of Jihad as if it refers to a war against other people. Jihad refers to the struggle against the interior evils that contaminate the world. Is this all rhetoric, all public relations? You say you don't believe. But because of our disbelief shall we not try? It is a beginning and out of beginnings worlds are created.

Beginning this October, you will witness the beginning of this season's Keruv program, made possible through the generosity and thoughtfulness of Jess and Lil Beim. We offer six sessions on Judaism and World Religions. We will present leading scholars and practicing clergymen from Buddhism, Mormonism, Catholicism, Protestantism and Islam. I want you to be there and bring your Muslim friends. You don't have any Muslim friends? Make some Muslim friends and bring them here. I spoke to Dr. Nazir Khaja, after many, many conversations, and said “Your picture is going to be in the papers. I want you to talk about the Koran as a religious person understands it. Because most people don't know the Koran or the Sharia.” I knew he would face many pressures coming to the synagogue. He answered resolutely and bravely, “I will come.” Religion owes humanity. Religion, throughout history, has done a miserable job in bringing God's people together. Religion must transcend it's divisive parochialism.

Why will we be doing this? Because the cave is not the place for Judaism. Judaism is a world religion.

On April 12, an evening chaired by Elaine Gill and her committee, will welcome the Princess of Bulgaria, the daughter of King Boris. The king was forced by the Sobranie, by the Bulgarian parliament, people like Demeter Peshev and by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church whose prelates said to King Boris “We will lie down on the track if you deport our Jews from Bulgaria,” because this was the obsession of the Nazis.

Fifty thousand Jews in Bulgaria were saved. We have to celebrate that. We must be here. Because we are vital citizens of a world religion. Get out of the cave.

Today, our children ask real questions. Why should we be Jews and why should we be loyal to Judaism? They live in a new world. Don't give them yesterday's failed answers. “Be Jewish so not to give a posthumous victory to Hitler.” But do we affirm our Judaism because Hitler said “no”  Are we Jews out of spite or out of conviction? We have to live Judaism affirmatively, not in spite of Osama Ben Ladin or Saddam Hussein. Out of the cave we have got to engage the mandates of globalized Judaism. Our children have to learn how profoundly compatible Jewish thinking is with global universalism. Let them hear the rabbinic words from the Tana D'bay Eliahu: “I call heaven and earth to witness that whether it be Gentile or Israelite, men or women, slave or maidservant according to the deeds that they do so will the Holy Spirit dwell upon them.”

Let them understand the vision that led our rabbis to chose to read aloud the book of Jonah on Yom Kippur. Jonah is a Jewish prophet who doesn't want to preach to the pagans. He runs away from God. And the rabbis said that's a book you've got to read on Yom Kippur. Why that book on Yom Kippur? Because the prophet Jonah says I was going to run away far from Palestine. God only dwells in Palestine. So, I will flee from God's province, but Jonah is spat out onto the shores of Ninveh. Ninveh is the capital of Babylonia that is destined to destroy Jerusalem in the 6th century B.C.E. Here is Jonah (Machzor page 413), who doesn't want to preach to the people of Ninveh. And when God saw their works that they turned from the evil way, these wicked people turned, did t’shuvah. And God repented of the evil which He said He would do to them and He did it not. God repents. Why does God repent? Because people repent. Jonah is unhappy. “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly. And he was angry and he prayed unto the Lord and said 'I pray Thee, O Lord, was not this my saying when yet I was in mine own country? Therefore I fled beforehand unto Tarshish for I knew that Thou art gracious and compassionate and a long-suffering God.” I knew You were a forgiving God and that if You may see that people changing, You will change. That's not good for Your reputation as an unchanging Deity. I want to protect Your immutability, Your power, Your word. But God explained, “You are a fool Jonah. Do you think that I am a God because I am stubborn and punitive and vindictive?  I am a soft God. I am the Mover of the universe who Himself is moved.” That's a God few people understand. God forgives the penitent enemies of the Jewish people.

One final word. They have said that American youth is corrupt, that American youth is concerned only with sex, drug addiction, dissonant music, vulgarity, coarseness and selfishness. But look at what happened. Lines upon lines of young Americans enlisting to become inducted voluntarily into the defense forces. Lines upon lines of young people who gave blood.

There is a lesson for us here. Our children don't want to live in a cave. They yearn for idealism. They yearn for sacrifice, for altruism, for passion and they want to find it in Judaism. Don't spoil and don't overprotect them. Give them a Judaism of world prominence that makes a significant difference in the international community and they will not disappoint you. Jews want idealism. We have got to give them Jewish goals, Jewish purpose, Jewish idealism, Jewish humanitarianism, Jewish sacrifice.

I finish as I began. Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav said. “I don't know what to do. If you eat of this harvest, you'll go crazy. If you don't eat, you'll starve.” So eat, but understand that it will make us crazy. But eat and understand that you are insane and you may find a new path back to normalcy and greatness.

We are a great people. And now is the moment, more than ever in the history of the world, when Judaism in its globalized form can introduce a renaissance of Jewish values, ethics and morality may we have a year of peace and purpose.

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