Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

I am myself an aficionado of televangelism. One of my favorite channels features the 700 Club of Pat Robertson. Every rabbi has to have his diversion. Mine is the 700 Club.

Rev. Pat Robertson ran for the Presidency in 1988, a man of considerable influence and tremendous charisma. He invited to the 700 Club the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who was the former head of the Moral Majority, on the program after September 11. They offered a supernatural religious explanation of the meaning of that terrible event. Rev. Jerry Falwell explained. “God will not be mocked. God continues to lift the curtain and to give us what we deserve.” Falwell shook his finger at the camera.

I have come to worry whenever political figures point their fingers at the audience. The Reverend declared, “I really believe that pagans and abortionists and feminists and gays and the A.C.L.U. and the American Way…  well, I point my finger in their face and say 'you helped that happen'.” The Rev. Robertson agrees.  He adds “Jerry, that's my feeling.” We've just seen the anti-chamber to terror. We haven't even begun to see what they can do to the major population.” Falwell was criticized for his statement, and later apologized for “the poor timing.” I wondered what timing had to do with his statement.

“Timing” is significant in evangelical Christianity. According to Falwell, Robertson and many of the evangelists we live in a pre-millennial dispensational era. We are living at the end of time, we are living in the last days before the great “tribulation.” That great tribulation refers to seven years in which there is to be a life and death struggle between God and the anti-Christ. This apocalyptic event is to take place in Israel on a genocidal level and will be horrifying for unbelievers. But real true believers will not be here for the tribulation. They will be “raptured,” ascend to a state of “rapture.” Rapture means that the believers are to be elevated to a different world in which Jesus as Bridegroom will take unto Himself the church as Bride. So when Falwell apologizes for “poor timing,” he may not mean what secular people may think. Poor timing means that his religious statements were premature. For the tribulation is not over, it may not even have begun.

But Jerry Falwell has his own theological profile. He knows who anti-Christ is. According to Jerry Falwell, as announced in 1999, the anti-Christ is male and Jewish. There is an odd but revealing kinship between Osama Ben Ladin and Jerry Falwell theologically. They share the same fundamentalist mindset. Thus, for example, if there is a catastrophe, a tragedy there is a ready explanation at hand. Tragedy is one of the ways in which God manifests His wrath and His discontent. Remember what Falwell said:  “God will not be mocked.” This tragedy for him means that the twin towers collapsed and the Pentagon was ruined as a punishment for secularism, humanism, pluralism, suffrage, voting, freedom of expression and sexual orientation. The fundamentalist mind-set, whether acted out in the name of Allah, God or Christ converges. They would all remake the world in the image of their own theocracy. Evangelists talk about Christian America, Islamic extremists speak of an Islamic republic.

I can read your minds because I read lips. You said, “Didn't the Rabbi leave something out? He didn't mention Judaism.” Coincidentally, a young man came to see me after the talk. He had returned from Israel, was there for a year, and during that time there was a big wedding at the palace in Jerusalem which collapsed. The rabbi of the city explained that the wedding hall collapsed because social dancing without a mechitza, a separation of men and women. Moreover, he added as proof of his theological explanation, the very night before there was another wedding with the same number of guests and nothing untoward happened. But that night there was a mechitza. This flows from the fundamentalist mindset. That mindset will say. as it has over and again, that when children in Israel were ambushed and their bus from Petak Tikvah was set on fire, serious rabbis instructed the people of Petak Tikvah to remove and examine their mezzuzahs since they may be flawed and thus responsible for the anger of God. Rabbi Avigdor Miller is a mashgiach ruchami, a religious advisor to some Yeshivas. He teaches that the Holocaust should be traced to the secular assimilationist Jews of Germany who then contaminated the East European Jews.

Theology makes strange bed fellows. The fundamentalist mind-set possesses an apodictic conviction that they have the single and exclusive truth, that they know the will of God, that they can read God's mind.

But with this mind-set we can distinguish between passive fundamentalism and active fundamentalism. Passive fundamentalism is firm in its claim to know God's will. Active fundamentalism not only knows God's will but activates God's will, joins the armies of God, tzevaoth Hashem ,the soldiers of God, the henchman Christ, holy warriors of Islam. Passive fundamentalists speak of God's will theologically. Active fundamentalists don't leave it to God. If they preach that abortion is murder, it doesn't end up in the pulpit. It eventuates in 55,000 reported cases of family clinics and doctors threatened with their lives. And the same applies to Islam. The preachment does not simply end with the sermon in the Mosque, it ends with the slaughter of 6,000 innocent people. If the active fundamentalist is Jewish it doesn't end up in a “shiur” at a Yeshiva, but with the slaughter of hundreds of Muslims mowed down by Baruch Goldstein, a graduate of my Yeshivah in New York. Active Jewish fundamentalists are not theoretical students. They may, like the believing Yigal Amir, end up assassinating the pursuer of peace, Yitchak Rabin.

When I collected my thoughts on this topic I became apprehensive. I was concerned that listeners would seize hold of this talk and say “You see, even the Rabbi says that there are many perversions, aberrations of religion. Why then should I be religious?” Why belong to a synagogue, why affiliate with organized religion? If all the finger marks of religion imprint xenophobic hatred, let me bathe in the pure waters of secularity: Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Voltaire, Jerry Springer and the other bona fide secular philosophers. By that thinking, you prevent me from criticizing religion because I would be afraid that it would encourage the listeners to throw the baby out with the bath water. If the rabbis fear criticism including self-criticism because it may be used to weaken faith, it would only censor the critical wisdom, and the idealistic passion of Judaism that can lift us to the heights of sane and moral faith.

What then is the response I hope for? I hope for Jewish wisdom based upon havdalah. Havdalah is not just the ceremony at the end of Shabbat or at the end of the festivals. Havdalah means “differentiation.” It refers to chachmah, the moral wisdom that distinguishes between good and evil, including good from evil religion. The Zohar teaches that in our world good and evil are intertwined.

There is nothing that is good in this world that doesn't have a residue of evil, and nothing evil in this world that doesn't have a spark of goodness. Therefore, when we listen to a preacher, teacher, guru, imman, rabbi we have to learn to ask whether the message unites or divides. Does it tear apart the children of light from the children of darkness, those who are chosen and those who are rejected, those who are loved from those who are hated?

We read of the Yom Kippur sacrifices. But consider who did atonement in the Temple and for whom was atonement done? Not only for ordinary people but for the High Priest and atonement for the Holy of Holies. There is nothing, no place and no one that doesn't have within itself a cipher of evil. Therefore, we must learn how to believe wisely, with the intelligence of havdalah.

A Jew is not a blind believer. Belief should enlighten, not darken our vision. Last night someone came to me and asked “What about Abraham's story that we read on Rosh Hashanah? Is he not a man with blind fidelity to God, willing to sacrifice his son out of blind obedience?” For me that is not the meaning of the biblical story. For me the meaning of that story is that Abraham initially does hear the voice and is prepared to violate the ethics. But then something revolutionary occurs. Abraham hears another voice contravening the initial imperative. The new voice comes from the malach Adonai, an Angel of Adonai who says “Stop. Stop. “Al tishlach yadcha el hanaar.” Do not stretch out your hand to the child. You will not grow close to God by removing your son from the world. This is the voice of healthy conscience that awakens Abraham from dogmatic slumber.

Judaism is a critical reality bound tradition. We know great prophets but we know neviyeh sheker -- false prophets.

We know the promise of messiahs but we know false messiahs. So we have to listen carefully. We have to read the signs and symptoms of a healthy religion. A healthy Judaism is a sane and healthy tradition that must be protected from the seductiveness of the fundamentalist temper whose conceit so often ends in the idolatry of power.

Judaism believes that one God created us all. There is no anti-Christ in Judaism and no Satan whose incarnation is so often traced to those who do not believe or pray our way. It is a moral religion that insists that Kol Yisrael yesh lahem chelec l'olam haba im chasidui umoth ha-olam — every Jew has a share in the world together with every righteous non-Jew, pagan, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jain, Shintoist.

On Rosh Hashanah you read two readings. On the first day of Rosh Hashanah we celebrated Hagar and Ishmael, the ancestors of the Arabs. God says to Hagar “Arise and lift up this lad, for I will make him a great nation —  l'goy gadol asamenu.” The point of the magnificent story is that God will not abandon the innocence, of children even those who may grow to be our enemies. The angel of Adonai protects Ishmael just as she does Isaac.

Again on Yom Kippur, we celebrate the citizens of Ninveh, the future enemies of Israel who change and whose repentance nullifies the initial decree of God. The Jewish prophet, Jonah, is angry at a God who changes His earlier warning against the Babylonians. Jonah wants a God whose will he knows and whose authenticity as a prophet is compromised by a God who is moved by the repentance of His earlier foes. God's response resonates with moral sense and sanity. God teaches us as He teaches Jonah. If My enemies change, I will change because I love the world. I didn't create only you. The world was not created only for Jews or Judaism.”

That is what we read on Yom Kippur and on Sukkoth. We read in the Torah that 70 animals were sacrificed on Sukkot in honor of the 70 nations of the world. That is the ritual of a sane and moral world religion.

On Pesach we will not read the whole Hallel on the last six days because it coincides with the days when the Egyptians were drowning in the sea. We call to mind that wonderful Midrash. When the angels gloat and shoot their little rifles in the air because the Egyptian enemy is destroyed, God says “Bonai tovim b'yam v'atem omrim sherah? My children are drowning in the sea and you sing songs?” Therefore we take ten drops of wine out of the cup because the death of our pursuing enemies diminishes our joy. That is the way of a sane and moral faith.

To be religious is to be wise. We speak of religion as unconditional faith just as speak of unconditional love. Both pop theology and pop psychology mislead. When I look at this woman who comes into my study beaten up by an abusive husband, her nose and teeth broken, I do not preach to her about unconditional love. I'm going to look to the sanity of the Bible that knows that marriage is holy but it also provides for a Jewish get, a dissolution of the union because unconditional love should not mean to bind a man or a woman in unholy matrimony. Equally, unconditional faith urges following whatever the guru says, whatever the imam says, whatever kodesh barchu allegedly tells you. But that subservience is dangerous. That kind of unconditional faith mocks the moral intelligence with which we were endowed in God's Image.

There are traditions which like the church father Tertillian claim “credo quis absurdum”— I believe because it's absurd. In my judgment that is an overture to insane and unhealthy faith that obedient unconditional faith calls for a “sacraficium intellectus,” a sacrifice of one's intelligence. As Martin Luther said, “Sacrifice your intelligence because where reason is triumphant, faith is dead.”

When I read the Ten Commandments I have come to realize the power of the third commandment: “You shall not take the name of the Lord in vain.” I don't believe it means not to curse.  I don't believe that it means not write the name of God. So write “G-d” —  Lord.  That is a trivialization of the commandment. No taking God's name in vain means not to project your hatred, bigotry and xenophobia onto God and declare that is what God wants. No. God did not identify Jews as anti-Christ, you did. God did not say that if you dissent from one of the laws of the sharia you are an infidel. That is not what Mohammed said. That is what you said in Allah's name. And when you excommunicate people because you don't like the way they think or the way they practice, that's not the God of mercy, that's your smallness projected onto God. When you ask where was God, look around you. God is not in the fire, in the missiles, in the terror. God is not in the crazed extremists. That's not what the Koran said. That is what sick believers say. Therefore, when we hear that question that comes in the wake of the hurricane, the earthquake, the airplane crash, “Where is God?”…  give them a healthy, sane, moral Jewish answer.

God answers that question like a Jew, with a follow up question. “Where am I?” God answers “Where are you?  You, created in the Image of God, you with spine, heart and mind. Why don't I intervene?  Why don't you intervene?  Do I care? Do you care?  Get out of the cave of apathy and indifference. Go out and build the cities. Go out and make a new world. Ferret out the evil because it is evil that seeks to destroy you. And after you bomb the cancerous terrorist cells, bomb them with bread, water, food and medicine.”  

Where is God? Are we blind to the moral heroism of the 300 firemen who lost their lives al kiddush ha-shem, going into the fire to save strangers? Where is God? Lower your eyes to ground zero, to the human beings clawing in the soil against obdurate soil to find a human limb, a hand, a foot, a body to give precious closure to the traumatized people who wait and wait outside. Where is God? Lower your eyes. Look down and see the greatness of human beings. Look about you to recover with wisdom the faith of moral sanity and health.

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