Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

It is long past the denominational caricaturing that depicts the Orthodox as crazy, the Reform as lazy, and the Conservative as hazy. The old stereotypes have been supplanted by a more serious fragmentation that tears at the fabric of Jewish identity, continuity and character.

The most serious challenge to Jewish living does not come from without, from anti-Semitism, the missionary or the cult –  but from within. The threat does not come by way of physical genocide but by spiritual suicide.

We have been warned. Repeatedly the sages of the Talmud cried out that the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed not because there was no study of Torah or lack of observance. The Rabbis traced the legal cause of the destruction to "sinat chinam,”  causeless hatred. That sin the Rabbis weighed as serious as the three major transgressions of murder, idolatry and harlotry (Talmud Yevamoth 62b)

Another Talmudic source explained that the destruction of Jerusalem came as a result of those judgments that were based strictly and only on the letter of the law (Talmud Baba Metziah 30b). The disaster that befell the disciples of Rabbi Akiba did not come from external forces, but because "the scholars did not treat each other with respect”  (Talmud Yevamoth 62b).

We are one people. That is the underlying predicate of the Torah. The oneness of God is correlated in our tradition with the oneness of the people. We are pledged to be God's witnesses. But the exacerbating divisions among us disqualify our testimony to God's unity. As the Midrash put it, "The Divine Presence does not dwell among a people with a divided heart" (Numbers Rabbah 15:14).  We have broken God's heart.

The covenant between us is to choose life "that you may live, you and your seed" (Deuteronomy 30:19). But there is no guarantee that we Jews will continue to live. We are a choosing people. We are what we choose. And we are choosing apartheid.

We have excommunicated each other. We do not speak with each other. We do not pray with each other. If Buber is right that "all real living is meeting,” we are growing moribund daily. We do not meet with each other. There is greater dialogue between Arafat and Rabin than among us.

Jewish institutional isolation is not an abstract theoretical matter. It affects our children. Consider the children. Forget for the moment the overwhelming majority of our children who are untouched and unaffiliated with any form of Jewish educational or experiential life. Put that aside. What of the children of the affiliated?

They are raised in separate universes, separate Hebrew schools, separate day schools, separate summer camps, separate youth activities. A people barely 2.6% of the general population in America is made smaller yet by our de facto apartheid policies. Jewish youth of the affiliated is bifurcated, trifurcated and more. Our youth is robbed of the vital critical mass needed for creative survival.

We may with our voice cry against out-marriage, but each day we shrink the dating and marriage pool among us by our insulating programs and our denominational myopia. Our children do not pray together – what do they have in common to pray about? Our children do not play together, what have they to celebrate in common? We have approached the dangerous precipice warned of in the Bible: "In time to come, your children might speak to our children saying, 'What have you to do with the Lord God of Israel?'" (Joshua 22:24). We read that on the hills of Efrat in Israel, Jewish children are exposed by protesting settlers to danger in their sit-in struggles against the government.

Consider what we are doing to our children in America while we are engaging in our apartheid battles. We insult each other in the name of religious ideology or political ideology. While our angry silence mounts, we wield an irresponsible sword of Solomon to cut the living children into halves. We deny wholeness, our children the evidence of a people.

Still we love our children and we want to see them as Jews, we want to see them form Jewish households and Jewish families. Our children are our dreams. If we can find no transcendent ideological cause among us to help transcend our divisions, can we not for the sake of our children create opportunities in which they can break out of the incestuous denominational ties? Is there no wisdom in our national religious and secular institutions to bring Jewish children together, to join them in common Jewish causes whether of tzedakah or gemiluth hasadim, acts of decency and righteousness? Are there no leaders among our educators and youth directors and rabbis who will organize song fests, plays, retreats, experiences in which our youth will from time to time encounter other Jewish persons so that they are confirmed in their belief that we are, after all, one people? Are there no leaders among us with the courage to break down the castes that create outcasts? Is there no Jewish will to reach out to the untouched and the untouchable among our young people? The cry must come from the adult world, from parents who for the sake of their children will not allow the iniquity of our divisiveness to be visited upon the heads of our children. Their children are at risk. They must speak to their leaders.

When Pharaoh challenged our leaders asking them with whom they will go forth out of the land of bondage, they answered, "We will go with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters." (Exodus 10:9)

For God's sake, for our people's sake, for our children's sake let us follow the wisdom of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. "Only causeless love may overcome the ruination of causeless hatred." Causeless love is no mystic's dream. Love is a matter of life and death.

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