Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

Rosh Hashana, 1997

by Harold M. Schulweis

A personal note. This past summer I had the last of my wisdom teeth extracted by an oral surgeon. I tell you this not to apologize beforehand for any diminished wisdom in my talk, but to tell you that during the entire procedure I found myself repeating again and again the six words of the Sh'ma. On the doctor's table I was a Jew by extraction. I wondered about that reflex, that intuitive turn to the Sh'ma in my anxiety and I remembered how on other more serious occasions, how on the hospital gurney I turned repeatedly to the recitation of the Sh'ma. Why the Sh'ma? Why did I chose it above all other verses for comfort? What collective memory singled out the Sh'ma?

There are 5,845 verses in the five books of Moses. But only one verse -- the Sh'ma -- is chosen by the tradition to be recited twice daily throughout the year ("When you rise up and when you lie down.”)

This is the verse first taught to the young child, and is recited on the death bed of a Jew.

It is the Sh'ma that is written by hand on the parchment of the mezzuzah on the doorpost of our house and written on the head and the hand of the cubicles of the tefillin phylacteries.

The Sh'ma is the only verse that according to our liturgical tradition must be recited with full concentration of mind and if there is no kavannah, then one has not fulfilled his duty.

And it is with the Sh'ma that we will conclude the Neilah on the Day of Atonement.

Of only one verse is it written that one must recite it so that it is audible to oneself -- "l'hashmia ozno" -- the ear must hear the sound of the lips. And that one should enunciate each of these words clearly, especially the last letter of the last word. You must dwell on the articulation of the "daled.” How well I recall my zayde who when reciting the Sh'ma placed his right hand on his eyes in concentration and prolonged the last word e-c-h-a-d.

Why such a pervasive and persistent reiteration of the Sh'ma? And why the prolonged emphasis on the last word of the Sh'ma, "echad"?

Because "Echad" is the foundation of Jewish spiritual wisdom and my relationship to God. Because it holds the key to my self-understanding: who I am, whose I am, what is my task in life.

Wherever I turn, whether to the mystical or rationalistic aspect of the Jewish tradition, whether I turn to Halachah, to the law, or to Aggadah, lore, "echad" is the golden thread running through Jewish spirituality. "Echad" is the magnet that draws together all of the filings of our belief system and holds it together.

If I had to pick one word that would sum up the thrust and yearning of Jewish faith, it would be "echad.”

"Echad" is the singular attribute ascribed to God. It does not say Hear O Israel the Lord our God is omnipotent or the Lord our God is omniscient or the Lord our God is eternal. It says the Lord our God is "echad" is one. As the Zohar puts it, if you isolate any of the attributes of God: wisdom, mercy, justice and deify, you turn God into a idol. God is whole, entire, "echad" is one.

Echad, but not one in the mathematical sense, one as opposed to two or as opposed to three, or as opposed to twenty. To believe in Echad is to understand God as the Great Connection, the Nexus, the Binding, that links me and you within the great chain of being.

To recognize God as Echad is to believe that everything and everyone is connected, that we all belong to each other and in the deepest spiritual sense that we are, all of us, cosmically connected. To believe in 'echad" is to know that nothing is isolated.

If "echad" is the singular word of the Torah, there is one singular Hebrew letter that appears more often than any other letter in the Torah. It is the letter that begins each and every column in the scribe's Torah, except in the beginning where the letter is "beth" as in Bereshit, in the beginning. But aside from that, every column of the Torah begins with the Hebrew letter "vav,” and "vav" means "and.” "And" is a conjunction, a connection between sentences and ideas that unites nouns and verbs.

Pay attention to the "vav" in your life. Pay attention to the "vav" which unites you to the world. Listen carefully, because looked at superficially the world is filled with discordant notes, strident sounds, cacophonous voices that dramatize the division, the interruption, the separation, the disconnection, the disjunctions of life. The prayers that follow the Sh'ma each begins with vav. V'havta -- "and you shall love" -- v'hayah "and it shall come to pass" -- v'yomer "and the Lord spoke unto Moses.”

"Echad" is another way of seeing. Rabbi Nachman believed that every leaf, every blade of grass and every tree prays to God. Look at that leaf. You may see it as an isolated, discrete, distinct, separate object. But look at the leaf deeper and wider. The leaf, the blade with veins and stems, is attached to twigs and branches, and the branches are part of the bough and the trunk. Down below are roots that absorb water and minerals from the soil beneath. Up above the chlorophyll in the leaf traps the stores the light of the sun. This leaf is connected to soil, to earth, to water, and to air.

With the vision of echad we see the intertwining, the deep interdependence of all things. And God is the Connective Tissue of the life of the world. Echad is the goal, the way to discover the unity behind the diversity, the oneness behind my fragmented self. Before I recite the Sh'ma in the morning I gather in one hand the separate fringes on the four corners of the prayer shawl that symbolizes "yichud" the act of unification. What stands in the way of "echad"?

"Echad" has a most powerful adversary. That adversary is idolatry. Idolatry like "echad" monotheism is a way of thinking, a way of understanding, a way of seeing the world, my family, myself. Idolatry is not what we learned in Sunday School, the worship of stones, stars, trees or mountains. The essence of idolatry is the worship of a part as if it were the whole -- the deification of a part as if it were the whole. Idolatry segregates. Here God, there man; here the sacred, there the profane; here divinity, there the satanic; here heaven, there hell; here this world, there the other world; here the god of Egypt, there the god of Mesopotamia.

The classic case of idolatry in the Torah is the worship of the golden calf. The people poured their precious possessions into the making of a golden calf. "Here it is. This is thy God O Israel." But idolatry is not a matter of a calf. It doesn't have to be a calf and it doesn't have to be gold. Idolatry can be a stone or it can be a wall. It can be a place, it can be an idea or an ideology. It can be a country. It can be a guru. Everything can be made into an idol. The Kotzker said even a mitzvah can be made into an idol. It is to deify a part of the world or a person, or myself as if this were the whole.

Echad warns against idolatrous thinking toward others and toward yourself: be wary of splits, bifurcations, polarization, hard disjunctives, either/or labels.

To believe in echad is to understand that God is in this world. And there is, for the Jew, no escape from this world to another, no escape from nature and history.

Echad means that God is connected with the world and especially with humanity, with you and me. Therein lies the uniqueness of Jewish spirituality. The unity and connection between God and man and woman is expressed in the core concept that follows from "echad.” The correlative concept of "echad" is called "tzelem Elohim" the image of God. No other religious tradition takes more seriously the belief that God creates the human being in God's image and in His likeness. God and the human being enjoy a unique spiritual kinship which lies at the heart of our ethics, and our law.

By way of illustration, why in Jewish law is the deceased buried as soon as possible after his death? Because the biblical verse in Deuteronomy 21:22 says "If a man commit a sin worthy of death and is hanged on a tree, the body shall not remain all night on the tree. But you shall bury him the same day. For he that is hanged is a reproach to God." (Killath Elohim) But why is it a reproach to God? The Midrash (Tannaim on Deuteronomy 21:22) offers an audacious parable.

"There were once twin brothers who were identical in their appearance. One was appointed king while the other became a criminal and was hanged. When people passed by and saw the criminal hanging, they exclaimed 'The king is hanged.'"

The analogy is awesome. God and the human being are portrayed as twins. To do violence to man is to desecrate God.

In Judaism, violence strikes the face of God. Know whom you put to shame, for in the likeness of God is he/she made." (Genesis Rabbah 24:8) That God and man may be considered as twins, even as a metaphor, expresses the deep union between divinity and humanity.

This spiritual twinship is basic to Judaism.

The twinship, the covenantal oneness between God and you does not mean that all is in the hands of God. The believer is not swallowed up by God. To believe in "echad" does not mean passivity, resignation. It means is Jewish tradition that God and man are interdependent. "Echad" means activism. We are, in the language of the rabbis, "shutafim l'kodesh baruch hu" -- we are partners with God.

That unified Jewish metaphor has tremendous political, sociological, ethical and psychological implications. Look at the calligraphy of the Sh'ma, the way it is written in the Torah and the way it is replicated in the stained glass window. Two letters are singled out to be written larger than others. The ayin and the dalet. It spells out the word "ayd" which means witness.

Would you know your moral identity? Who you are? What is your task in the world? What you are born to do?: the Jewish answer is you are a witness of God. As Isaiah 43 puts it "Ye are My witnesses that I am the Lord your God" to which one of the commentaries adds "This means that God says 'If you are My witnesses then I am God but if you are not My witnesses it is as if I am not God.'" God depends on our testimony. God depends on the testimony of our behavior. The answer to the questions we ask, Does God exist? Is God good?" is another question.

The question turns reflexive. In good Jewish tradition, it answers a question with a question. To the question "Does God exist?,” I answer "Do you exist?" To the question "Is God good?,” I answer "Are you good?" To the question "Is God compassionate?,” I answer "Are you merciful?" To the question "Does God intervene?" I answer "Do you intervene?" To the question "Does God really care?" I answer "Do you really care?" The reality of God is proven behaviorally, not theoretically. I authenticate God not with my lips but with my limbs. I affirm God by the confirmation of my convictions. I verify God not by my rhetoric but by my righteousness. Verification is derived from two Latin words, "veri" which means truth and "facere" which means to make. We verify, we make truth, we authenticate God. We offer personal testimony and if we lie in our lives, we shame God. This human-divine interdependence is a consequence of our belief in the wholeness of God and our awareness that we are created in His image.

Because you are created in God's image, you can imitate God. How in the world do you imitate God who is described as a devouring fire? We come to the marrow of Jewish belief. Listen to the Talmud (Sotah 14a) "As God makes coats of skin to clothe Adam and Eve; so you who are imaged in God's form, clothe the naked. You see to it that those who shiver in the cold are warm.

As God visits Abraham when he is sick so you who are created in God's image visit the sick and remove from the sick one sixtieth of his illness.

God buries Moses so you attend to the dead. As God comforts the mourners, you comfort the mourners."

By what right can I, mere flesh and blood, fallible, finite being, even think of imitating God? Because I am spiritually connected, because of "echad,” because there is no ineradicable split between us. No original sin breaks the mirror of my divine image. I am God's active witness.

And with the vision of "echad" I know what my life career is all about. This is Jewish self-awareness. I need God. Who needs me? God needs me. I am needed by the One who inscribes me with His image.

Who am I? I am God's crucial witness. When I lift up the fallen, when I heal the sick, when I defend the innocent, when I comfort the frightened I affirm the divine image in me.

To believe in "echad" means that as a Jew, I cannot approach the divine by reaching beyond the human. I approach God through becoming human through polishing and burnishing the image of God within me.

It is to fall in love with the image within.

To be one with God is to love God.

Following the Sh'ma the verse says "And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might. How in the world can one love God who is not a person, who has no arms, no legs no lips? One of the familiar commentaries says "Do not read it v'ahavta -- you shall love. But read it v'ihavta -- make God beloved. Act in such a way that when people observe how you behave, they will believe in Godliness, in goodness, in hope, in compassion, in love."

So what? Why does the ethical monotheism of Judaism loom so large?

Real belief has real consequences. Belief is the mother of behavior.

If you believe that God is "echad" you cannot look at His creation or His creatures as if they were outcasts, pariahs who stand outside the boundaries of God's beneficence. If God is "echad,” you cannot treat the poor, the foreigner, the stranger, the immigrant with laws different from those of the native born. If you believe God is "echad,” you speak differently. If God is "echad" can we label His creation, the work of His hands, with the insult of shikseh or shegetz or schwartze or faggot or goy? We language God's world. Be careful of your language. You are dealing with God's one creation.

Listen to the language of our prophets who understood the consequence of God's oneness. Listen to the prophet Malachi(2:15) "Have we not all one Father? Did not One create us all? Why do we break faith with one another profaning the covenant of our Father?

Listen to the pleading of Job 31:15 "Did not He who made me in my mother's belly not make him? Did not One form us both in a womb?" Or the prophet Amos 9:7 "Are you not unto Me as the Ethiopians O children of Israel?"

With belief "oneness,” your relationship to the world is effected.

Please take a second look at the marvelous stained glass window of the Sh'ma you will see the reflection of Jewish universalism. For the artist (Plachte Zwieback) surrounded the Sh'ma with eighteen different languages of that verse -- in French, Romanian, Spanish, Russian, Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian, Latin, Greek, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, English, German, Arabic, Korean, Italian, Hawaiian, Marathi.

"Echad" is the Jewish contribution to the world. Judaism is no provincial sect. It embraces all humanity, all cultures, all civilizations, all religions, all races, all creeds. And we are to love God with all our heart, and with all our soul and with all our lives.

Closer to home, if God is one, how dare I delegitimize those who think or pray or interpret the Bible or the Talmud differently. How can I denigrate them or their rabbis? How can I threaten them with excommunication or curse them with anathema? How dare I point to my own denomination and my own movement and my own shul as if it is exclusively authentic and all the rest heresies. To raise my own denomination as the only authentic one, is it not the sign of idolatry? Idolatry is a worship of a part as if it were the whole.

All denominations are tempted to deify themselves and demonize all others. Did God create sects? Did God create denominations? Shall we reduce the oneness of Judaism into an ultra-sect? Therefore, I am very proud that we at VBS will this year be acting out our faith in "echad.” We are launching the first pluralistic outreach for all those who seek to become part of Judaism. And the unique part of this outreach program is that the faculty will consist of Orthodox, Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist rabbis. And each spiritual seeker will choose his/her own rabbinic court and their own affiliation. We are not converting to any denomination, we are turning men and women to the wholeness which is called Judaism, a faith that believes in one God, in one Torah, in one people. Let them choose and live their choice with love. And I call upon you to help bring the seekers into the oneness of God and the oneness of people.

And me and you?

Let us not forget the "echad" in ourselves. Echad speaks to my own internal self. Idolatry is the worship of a part as if it were the whole applies to my own self as well. When I take a part of my self and say "this is who I am,” whenever I ignore my wholeness, the complexity, the subtle interconnection of my talents and dispositions and temperaments, and place a label on one of them and say "this is who I am,” there is the stigmatizing of idolatry. Whenever I interpret my stumblings and my errors and judge myself a failure or a loser or a sinner, I violate the sanctity of my belief in oneness. The gods of idolatry are blind and deaf. Shall I point to my failure and ignore the moments of success? Shall I dwell on mistakes and call myself stupid? Or shall I point to my victories and call myself "genius"? That megalomania is also idolatrous.

When I take a part of myself and say "this and only this is who I am,” when I reduce the variety of gifts and talents of my humanity to the wholeness of my person and say "I am a business man" or "I am a provider and that is all" or "this is my career and that is all that I am.” Then turn to the Sh'ma and remember "echad" -- your wholeness. You are more, much more, than the shape of your body, or the identification cards in your wallet. Do not be small in your eyes. For to believe in the oneness of God is to be enlarged. I am connected to one God. I will not shrink myself, I will not reduce God to an idol and depress the image in me.

Do not be large in your eyes, and swollen in your mind. Have we not seen the tragic consequences of idolatrous thinking: we read it in the biographies: this beautiful woman, this starlet, who sees herself only as a beauty, whose entire value is in her looks, in how she looks to others, and who then experiences age, wrinkles, graying hair, a thickening of her waistline and coarsing of her skin feels that life has betrayed her and turns suicidal. She is a has-been. Idolatry of the self is dangerous. Or this man who has sold his entire life to his career, to his job, and whose entire being is designed to prove that he has "made it,” and who now ages, his energies lessened, his situation altered, his memory less sharp, finds his morale collapsed, the meaning of his life ruined. He has worshipped a small part of his self as the whole of his meaning, and looking back over his obsessions, he sadly writes his epitaph in water.

And what idolatry does to the self it does to others. It fragments people, friends, my spouse, my children into either/or categories. Either/or is the cruel seduction of idolatry. She, he, they are....either saint or sinner, either genius or dolt, either beautiful or ugly, either loyal or treasonous, either chosen or rejected -- this is the language of idolatry. When you put the either/or axe to others, you split them, falsify them, and reduce yourself.

Either/or splitting can apply to ideas and ideology as well as to persons. I have wrestled with these false options all my life. Either you love your people or you love humanity. Either you have fidelity to God or to human beings. Either your loyalty is to ritual or ethics. Either miracle or illusions. Either obedience or apostasy. Either/or split thinking is taunting. It reminds me of the cruel teasing of my aunt, "And who do you like more, your father or your mother?" She would not let me get away with both. She insisted either/or -- either Papa or Mama. Only once I answered "Not you Tante."

Idolatry thinks in terms of either/or hard disjunctives. "Echad" thinks in terms of both/and conjunctives. That both/and is the secret of monotheism, the unity in diversity, the quest for wholeness. "Echad" is our wish.

It is a struggle to find the both/and, to find the "vav" in our lives. But the prophetic tradition sensed the struggle. And every time we recite the Alenu we end with the words of the prophet Zachariah who says "On that day the name of the Lord shall be one.” "Shall be one?" Yes, for the prophet God is so yet one, for there is bifurcation, so much exclusion, so much false either\or options that pace and negotiations and resolutions are beyond us -- and the dissolution of both\and results in warfare between peoples and within peoples and within the self.

As God is one, as God's name will be One, let us use our heart and minds to be one and to become one. Sh'ma Yisrael. Let us heal the fragmented condition of the world and the self and may the New Year bring us closer to Oneness.

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