Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

Yom Kippur, 2007

by Harold M. Schulweis

I received my most valuable lesson in philosophy from Tante Esther. Tante Esther was my family’s “Auntie Mame” — a strong, smothering, irrepressible woman.

When I was a child of four or five, Tante sat me on her ample lap and whispered into my ear, “Tell me the truth, Hershele. Who do you love more: Papa or Mama?” I was flustered. My mind was trapped. Should I answer “Papa,” it would betray Mama. If I said “Mama,” it would be little Papa. If I said “both,” Tante would accuse me of fudging. If I said, “neither,” it would be a total lie.

I was impaled on the horns of a hard disjunctive: “Either/or.” “Mama or Papa.” Of course, I never answered her.   But, under my breath, I whispered, “Not you, Tante.” I think she heard me, because she never again asked me that question.

In retrospect, Tante’s game taught me a life-long, valuable wisdom. Because of Tante, whenever I hear a question framed as “either/or” a red flag appears. Watch out for the “Fragestellung” ! The shaping of a question.

“Either/or” is a vise. You hear it on the radio, and on television and in newspapers’ daily discussions. Are you either a Republican or a Democrat? Are you either for capital punishment or against capital punishment? Are you either for withdrawal of troops from Iraq, or are you opposed to withdrawal of troops from Iraq? It is very appealing and it makes for good, swift, sharp entertainment. Black or white, yes or no, don’t straddle the fence, don’t answer with “on the one hand” and “on the other hand,” “however” or “it all depends.”

In an impatient world, we want absolute answers. No qualifications, no nuances. In personal life, and on Yom Kippur — Saint or Sinner? Success or Failure? Handsome or Ugly? Thin or Heavy?

So, Tante’s “either/or” question taught me to be wary of the mindset of “either/orism”. Whenever the question is framed “either/or,” I know I must think again. And as a rabbi, I hear it often in all fields — academic, social, theological. Either mercy or justice, which superior? Either the bible is infallible, or it lies? Either reason or emotion, which important? Either conscience or law, which? Either liberal or conservative, which should I chose? “Either/or” is the way to stop real discussion.

Frequently, I hear the ghost of Tante Esther in surveys: “Tell me, are you religious?” “No.” “Are you an Atheist?” “No.”   “Do you pray?” “No.”   “Are you opposed to prayer?” “No.”   “Are you a member of the synagogue?” “No.”   “Are you opposed to the synagogue?” “No.”   “Are you a Zionist?” “No.”   “Are you an Anti- Zionist?” “No.”

“Either/or questioning” leads to “neither/nor answers” because either/or doesn’t allow breathing room for a third answer: a tertium quid — something which cannot simply be placed in one category or the other. If you must choose either black or white and you cannot chose green or purple or grey, you will end up color-blind.   Either/or thinking places your mind in a double-bind.

Yiddish humor has a name for “neither/nor Jews,” products of cross-breeding of a hen and a rabbit. “Nisht a hin un nisht a her.”

One such “either/or” option is widely posed by Jews, especially on college campuses, so-called universities: “Do you love the Jewish people or do you love humanity more?” Do you love your particular people, or do you love the nations of the world?   “Papa or Mama?”   Once again, I feel trapped.   If I say, “I love the Jewish people,” it sounds as if I don’t love humanity. If I love humanity, it sounds as if I do not love my own people.

If I say, “I love the Jewish people more,” I sound to others as like a chauvinist, a parochial, provincial individual.   My talk revolves around only Israel, about Jews, anti-Semitism or the Holocaust. And it reminds me of the sharp exchange between Claire Booth Luce, not compassionate toward our people, and a Jewish friend, “All you Jews talk about is anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. It’s boring. You people are obsessed.” The Jewish friend had the wit to retort, “I feel the same way about your people. All you Christians talk about is Jesus and the Anti-Christ. You’re obsessed with the crucifixion of Jesus.”

But on the other hand, if you say “I prefer humanity, I prefer internationalism,” you ignore the lot of your people.   My great teacher of philosophy (next to Tante Esther) Sidney Hook, in his “Out of Step,” once confessed,

“During the Holocaust I and my friends were so enthralled with loving the world that to pay attention to Jewish suffering was a mere provincial sentimentality. The result was that tens of thousands of Jews defended every cause but their own — every nationalism, all people have a right to its own state except the Jewish people and the state of Israel.” 

Loyalty to Judaism or humanity? Papa or Mama? But to be a Jew — to adhere to Judaism — is to be a humanitarian. To be a Jew is to be concerned with the world and with people because the heart and soul of Judaism reaches out to the universal. The Jewish God is “boray ha-olam” — creator of the universe.

Think of it. After Simchat Torah, we begin studying Genesis. In our biblical tradition the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis deals with the creation of heaven and earth and moon and sun and stars, and on the sixth day the human being, Adam and Eve, were created. And for eleven chapters we hear about heathens and pagans and gentiles, but not a word about Jews. Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Mr. and Mrs. Noah —not one Jew.

And what did we read about on the very first day of Rosh Hashanah? Hagar and Ishmael — two “pagans,” who many regard as the heirs of Islam. And the biblical point of the story is how the Angel of God (Malach Adonai) protected Hagar and Ishmael. That’s Jewish universalism!

On this afternoon of Yom Kippur, we will be studying the Book of Jonah — Jonah, a Jewish prophet who is called to preach to Ninveh, to non-Jews, to Babylonians.   And when Jonah does not want to preach to “them” because they are heathens, non-Jews, God chastises Jonah: Forgive the pagan citizens of Ninveh. “You are to be a prophet to all the peoples.” That’s Jewish universalism!

When we read the Prophet Amos, in the very first chapter God tells the Jewish prophet to prophesy. To whom? To Jews alone? Tto the heathen people of Damascus, and Gaza, and Tyre, and Edom, and the Ammonites, and Moab, as well as to Judah and Israel. That’s Jewish universalism!

Abraham, the first Jew, challenges God. For whom? In order to defend the pagans of Sodom and Gomorrah.  

Malachai, the last Jewish prophet in the Bible, spoke these words to the world:   “Have we not all one Father? Did not one God create us all? Why do we break faith with one another?”  

The Prophet Amos teaches a Jewish God, who cares about people of other races and nationalities. There’s more than one Passover Exodus.   “Are you not as the children of Ethiopia?” God reminds the Children of Israel I brought Israel up from the land of Egypt, but I also redeemed the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Arameans from Kir. So don’t foist either/or options on God. God is not either/or. God is the God of Jewish particularity and Jewish universality.   God doesn’t only speak Yiddish or Hebrew. God speaks Esperanto.

Judaism “begins at home” like charity begins at home. It begins, but it does not end, at your home. But it better begin at your home —if not, it will never go beyond your home.

George Santayana observed “You can’t speak in general without using any language in particular.” Judaism is our particular language through which we address the world and share our experience.

Because of our particular Jewish struggle out of slavery and expulsion and xenophobia we have, as a people, been sensitized to the struggles of others. Natan Sharansky, the dissident Russian Jew, said that only after returning to his Jewish roots did he become active for the rights of Pentecostals, Catholics, Ukrainians, Crimeans and Tartars.

Embrace the winds of abstraction.   Jewish belief does not think “either/or.” The ideal of Jewish monotheism is “both/and.” Hear O Israel, the Lord is ‘Echad.’ ONE. “One” means overcoming your split thinking. “One” is the golden thread that runs throughout Jewish thought and belief, Jewish mysticism, Kabala. Oneness is a Jewish frame of mind.

Beware of split thinking, schizophrenic thinking!   When you are confronted with “Either/Or,” think again! Look for “Both/And” — Yes, there is night and light, but there is ONE day.   Yes, there is evil and good, but one person. There are broken Tablets and whole Tablets, but both are placed in the Aron Kodesh.  

Yes, there are differences, but don’t make them into warring opposition. That’s the heart of Jewish wisdom, Jewish ethics, Jewish self-analysis. What do we recite twice-daily? The Sh’ma.   How does it end, the last word? “Echad.”  

Because of that “either/or,” “right-or-left” split thinking, some find it difficult to understand why, for example, we of the Jewish World Watch should be concerned with the people of Darfur, or with the commemoration of the 92nd Anniversary of the massacre of the Armenian community.   As someone put it to me sarcastically, “Listen, Rabbi, even if you count women, can you get a minyan in Darfur?" He may not have realized it, but it was he reducing Judaism to a minyan, to a sect, to a cult or to a tribe. Trivializing the genius of “both/and” oneness.

Wait a minute….   I don’t like how this is going. This is not a good sermon.

Should I give mountains of more and more citations from prophets and Jewish sages to show the breadth and depth? Will I win loyalty, pride in Judaism, its ethical monotheism? No! Hold on! None of this works. You’re not going to convince yourself of the ethical character of Judaism and the Jewish people or your children by citing Jewish scriptures, from the Talmud and from Jewish philosophers. It won’t work, because quotational Judaism won’t work. We want our children and children's children to be proud of being Jewish. But it won't work by teaching history or citing scriptures alone. For history tells them about what we once did, or what we once said or what we once were in the past.

When you rest on the dry laurels of the past, Jewish pride shrivels up. What is missing is the present tense.   If we talk about what Jews were, not what Jews are; what Jews believed, not what Jews believe; about how Jews acted, not how Jews act today, we are reduced to antiquarian “has-beens,” frozen, buried fossils of history.

Sociologists have wondered, as you have, of the many Jewish children raised in an Jewish home, attending Hebrew schools and day schools, having Bar and Bat Mitzvahs and confirmations, and then leaving for college and university where suddenly the enthusiasm and the pride cools. Certainly they were taught history, did a great haftorah. But knowledge of the past is not enough. Antiquity isn’t contemporaneity.

“Either/Or” forces the false choice between yesterday and tomorrow. It is one thing to study the history of the Temple and of Jewish prayers, another to come to the synagogue to pray. It is one thing to know the history of Zionism, and another to visit Israel today. One thing is to learn history, but it is not “making” history.   What we and our kids need is a Jewish present. Who are we now, what do we believe today, do we act today? Pride cannot be inherited. Pride must be earned.

How? Imagine yourself a Jewish child: Now they see pictures, photographs of emaciated children every day and they know how their Judaism confronts to genocidal torture. They want to know how their Jewish teaching of the dignity of every human being, how the Jewish commitment to bind the wounds of the hemorrhaging has an impact on world events today. Don’t quote! DO!

I speak to Jewish children, from our and other congregations, and have watched what they do and what they work for and what excites them as Jews. It’s under our nose! Don’t miss it. What explains the phenomenal responsiveness of what began three years ago as a local proposal at VBS, the formation of the Jewish World Watch? Why have sixty congregations — Reform Conservative, Orthodox, Reconstructionist — comprising two-hundred and fifty-thousand Jewish members of synagogues joined the Jewish World Watch today? Look at the kids’ I.Q. – “Idealism Quotient.”

I have seen the gleam of idealism in the eyes of youngsters who have raised funds to build medical clinics, water wells, latrines, and send aluminum solar cookers, mosquito nets to help fight malaria. Ask them! “Do you love Jews or humanity?”   Judaism or humanitarianism? They won’t quote — they will point! Our kids will not question “What’s Jewish about that?”

Let me share with you a Jewish “now.”   A number of months ago, the Jewish World Watch held an educational gathering one of the largest African-American churches in Los Angeles, the AME Church. One of the people who spoke was a man called Mohammad Yayah. He comes from Darfur, and he said, in these words, "I am an Arab and I am a Muslim, and my family are Arabs and Muslims. And they have been persecuted by Arabs and Muslims. There is only one people that has, as a people, defended our lives, protected our dignity, protested against the tyranny of Sudan. That is your people." There were a thousand people at the church gathering — Jews and Blacks — and they stood, held arms, and sang and we Jews were very proud.

Not just Jews! At the end of the service, having heard what the Jewish World Watch is doing and continues to do, on behalf of those people who are living through the hell of genocide, a middle-aged African-American came over to speak to me. He was visibly nervous and said, "Rabbi, I want to apologize to you. In the past I have not spoken well about your people. I pledge to you that the kind of words that I spoke will never come out of my mouth again." We embraced, and we parted, and I realized that that man and so many others do not know the greatness and the goodness of Judaism. That man may have had some contact with a landlord or a loan broker, but he does not know about the working conscience of Judaism and of the Jewish people.  

We, too, and our children, must know who we are, what moves us now and how we act today.

I love Tante Esther. She encouraged me to think, and her memory I offer this personal meditation:

* * * * *

NOT OURS

"With all due respect, Rabbi,

why spend energy, time, urging us to shout protest,

to lift up people ground mercilessly

into the parched soil that grows only ghosts?

They are a different fate and faith.

a different geography and history.

a different language, a different culture.

Have we not burdens enough?

Theirs are not ours."

 

How respond?

What answer would satisfy?

There is no utilitarian benefit that will accrue to us

for the spending of our passions.

Would it not be wiser to turn a blind eye and to seal lips to silence?

 

The question is honestly presented,

the answer must not be less forthright.

It is not a quick and simple answer

but one that lies deep at the core of our being.

We are Jews, and we have been raised as Jews.

And we have faith in our God who is the God of the entire globe,

Who plays no favorites but embraces all His children,

especially the lame and the poor and the sick

and the frightened and the pariah the lepers of our society.

Are God's children not ours?

 

If a child not the color of my skin is tormented by savage hate,

if a child not my own is beaten by men on horseback,

smitten with whips and swords and hacked to pieces,

can our Jewish faith say to us

"Sorry, but they are not ours" ... ?

 

If a woman Black, Muslim, Christian, Animist

is frightened and raped and humiliated,

her future wiped out,

will our Jewish soul say,

"Sorry, they are not ours" ... ?

 

If starvation hovers over the emaciated skeletal forms

of those I do not know

does our Jewish heart merely sigh,

with our hands neatly folded,

“Sorry, they are not ours" ... ?

 

 

Can we live with ourselves,

can we sleep the slumber of peace when the shrieks pierce

our pretended deafness?

Can we shrug with regret and whisper,

when an entire people is hemorrhaging,

and their dreams are drained away, can we say

" Sorry, not ours" ... ?

 

When we pray to the God of ha-olam,

the God of the entire universe,

whose children must be protected,

whose orphans and widows

must be lifted up from the depths, can we mutter,

“Sorry" … and then conclude,

"Amen"...?

 

The Rabbis taught us to pray

not with lips alone, not with eyes shut.

We are taught to pray with hands, minds and spines.

Build hospitals, water wells, latrines.

Send aluminum solar cookers,

that little girls and trembling women

are not forced to forage for wood with which to fuel their fires,

and become vulnerable to predators

who burn deep brands into the skins of the shamed.

Are they not ours?

 

We have been better taught by our prophets,

and our patriarchs and our sages:

Be the fathers and mothers

of the fatherless and motherless.

And if they are abandoned by the world,

exposed to all kinds of diseases,

gather our children close.

Prepare knapsacks

with mosquito netting, shoes, medication

and colored pencils

along with a note in a language not our own

- in Arabic - "You are not alone. "

 

We have memories deeper than the ravines

in which they threw our people.

The noblest vindication of our dead

is that their children and children's children

will staunch the wounds of innocent men, women and children.

We'll never allow the genocide of others.

 

The Prophet answered the question:

 

"Is such the fast I desire?

A day for men to starve their bodies?

Is it bowing the head like a bulrush

And lying in sackcloth and ashes?

No, this is the fast I desire:

Unlock fetters of weakness.

Untie chords of the yoke,

Let the oppressed go free;

Break off every yoke.

Share your bread with the hungry,

Take the wretched poor into your home;

When you see the naked, to clothe him,

And not to ignore your own kin. "

Not an easy faith, ours. Not a faith set to dogmas,

but a faith that offers no excuse… whoever, wherever, whenever.

It is our religious and spiritual challenge — make “both/and” out of “either/or.” Integrate, unify, make whole the splintered! Stitch together the Torah garment!

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