Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

The sacred center of the Jewish sanctuary is the aron ha-kodesh, The Ark of Holiness. Open the ark and you will find in it no icon, no statue, no sculpture, no reliquary, no chalice. Only words. Only words written on parchment.

But these inspired words shaped the conscience of Western civilization and the character of the Jewish people. What is unique about this book of books? What is distinctive about the Torah? The uniqueness of the Jewish Bible is that it is written with love of Israel and all families of the earth, with a laser focus on the protection of the wounded and weak. Other annals or historic writings — in biblical, pre-biblical, and post-biblical times — were written at the behest of kings, royalty, from the viewpoint of the powerful. The Jewish Bible celebrates this worldly life, the ownership of vineyards and fields, all the permissible joys of this world— but it concentrates its attention on the lot of the vulnerable and the exploitable, the poor, the widow, the orphan, the fugitive slave, the migrant, the alien, the runaway slave, the stranger in your midst.

The Bible is not a political document left or right, nor is it an economic doctrine liberal or conservative. It is testimony of the collective conscience of a choosing people who brought to the world the God and Torah of compassion. Mercy, pity. “The world” – secular religion does not see us that way at all. “Compassion is not of the Jews”. Nor is love.

But truth be told, the Torah, as the spiritual foundation of compassion, is not only not known by the world, but is distorted. The Christian apostle Paul – Saul of Tarsus – himself a Jew by birth, stigmatized Judaism as nothing but law — stern, stringent, severe, inflexible legalism.

What is more, from Paul’s viewpoint, the of the Old Testament is no gift; the law is a punishment. The law in the Torah only makes us conscious of “original sin.” There is nothing to be done about this stain by using our own efforts and deeds. So, you are condemned to the world of Old Testament Law. “Old” meaning obsolete, irrelevant, in opposition to the “New Testament.” And harsh. Commanded by an unrelenting God.

The Torah Paul mistranslated as nomos, the Greek word for “law.” But in Hebrew, “Torah” is not “law,” it is “instruction.” And Christianity abrogated the law, and offered salvation by faith alone in the crucifixion and resurrection of God’s son.   With Paul’s narrative, Judaism is stripped of love, spirit, mercy, compassion, generosity, forgiveness.

That libel against Judaism and Torah enters the bloodstream of Western literature. I remember cringing in high school: Consider Shakespeare’s Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice,” demanding a pound of flesh to fulfill his legal contract against the hapless Christian. Consider Portia, who lectures Shylock, urging the Jew to forgive and pity: “The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from Heaven.”

We must, for the sake of honesty, return to the Jewish Torah, and know who and what we stand for. We and our children must be freed from the calumny, distortion, and aberration of the soul and heart of our faith. “You shall teach it to your children.” Too many don’t know their inheritance. Let us open the Torah, and let us learn anew.

In the Book of Exodus, in the Bible, Moses, who is told by a voice to return to his enslaved people in Egypt, Moses confronts the voice:

“Who are You? What is Your name? What are Your attributes? What do You want of me, and what do You want of the people?” And, for the first time in the Bible, God reveals His attributes.

Adonai, Adonai

El Rachum V’chanun

The Lord, The Lord

Compassionate and gracious

Slow to anger

Abounding in kindness and faithfulness

Extending kindness for a thousand generations

Forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin

And pardoning the penitent.

These are the “Thirteen Attributes of God,” God’s self-disclosure. Note well that God does not identify himself as omnipotent, all powerful, or omniscient, all knowing or infallible, without flaw. God reveals himself, as Psalm 68 puts it poignantly, as “Avi yethomim v’dayan almanot” — “Father of orphans and the protector of widows.” God’s major attribute, which we chant at funerals and at Yizkor, is El Malay Rachamim — “God whose essence is mercy.”

Why is it so important in source-book Judaism to know God’s character?   In our faith, God is not simply to be believed, God is to be behaved. God is not demonstrated by logic, God is emulated by morality. The reality of divinity is witnessed in the moral activity of humanity.

Godliness is to be imitated in our lives. Here, our Jewish tradition opens an audacious divine-human parallelism:

“As God is merciful, be you merciful; as God clothes Adam and Eve, so you are to clothe the naked; as God visits the ailing Abraham, so you visit the sick; as God buries Moses, you bury the deceased.”

Who are we mandated to feed, clothe, heal, bury, console? All who are destitute, struck down, impoverished, sick, old, bereaved.

By “all” do you mean Jews, or Gentiles? Monotheists, or pagan? How about idolaters? The rabbinic tradition in the Talmud makes it abundantly clear: “Mefarnasim aniyay akum im aniyay Yisrael.”   Jews are obligated to support the poor of the pagan along with the poor of the Children of Israel.

Jews are obligated to visit the sick of the Gentile along with the sick

of the Jews. Jews are obligated to bury the dead of the Gentiles along with the dead of the Jews. Jews are obligated to console the bereaved of the Gentiles as we do the bereaved of the Jews.

Isn’t it enough to heal, comfort and console Jews?   Why “them” ? It all depends upon what you think God is. Do you take the God of Judaism to be a tribal deity? Do you think that the God of Judaism prefers white over black, or white over red, or white over yellow?

Think! Did God, at Mount Sinai, say “You shall not murder Jews” ? God said, “You shall not murder.”   Did God say, “You shall not bear false witness against Jews” ?  God said, “You shall not bear false witness.” Did God say, “You shall not steal from Jews” ?  God said, “You shall not steal.” In Judaism we don’t make God provincial. Don’t turn God into a bigot. Don’t segregate God from His children, all His children. Don’t make God of the Universe a provincial idol.

The root of Jewish law is in the way it treats the “have not’s” of all God’s children. Hear, how from the book of Leviticus, it does not deny the pride of the owner. To own fields and vineyards is good. Enjoy your products! But if don’t reap your fields or vineyards to the very edge. Don’t pick your vineyard bare. Don’t gather up your fallen grapes; leave it, let it be for the poor and the orphan and the widow and the stranger. And our rabbis added, “He who places a basket beneath the vine while he was gathering grapes is a robber of the poor.” Leave it – for whom? – for the Jew and pagan alike. That is the powerful originality of Judaism, the ethical monotheism that shaped Western civilization and forged Jewish character.

And if a person is poor and himself depends on charity, let him give charity from the charity he receives, no matter how small. Sharing is a mitzvah for rich and poor, for powerful and weak. Beware of “sclerosis of the heart,” the plaques that block the circulation.

The soul of Judaism is rachmanoot. In Hebrew, rachamim is derived from the root, rechem, which means “womb.” It is out of the womb of Eve that life springs, and out of the womb of Eve that bears life with pain. No life without pain. No love without pain. No one who loves is exempt from pain.

Compassion costs. Charity costs. Kindness costs. Feeling costs. Community costs. All honor to the Jewish community: In times of prosperity and in times of austerity, from its inception, Jews taxed themselves; taxed themselves with tithes; first tithes, second tithes, third tithes.

All honor to the Jewish community: In every Jewish community, throughout our long history, the Jewish community organized itself into societies for the vulnerable: for orphanages; for homes for the aging; raising dowries for poor girls; creating societies for maternal help.

In medieval France, Jews made their burial caskets out of the tabletops of their kitchens, because the poor ate their food on those tables. Out of what nobler material could my casket be built more than from the table on which the hungry ate?

Rachmanoot? Compassion and law? That is the inspiration behind the law. The drive of compassion is the engine of code. Look at the book of Deuteronomy: “If someone flees from his master and seeks refuge from a cruel overlord, you shall not deliver the fugitive to his master. Let the fugitive dwell with you in the place he shall choose. You shall not wrong him.”

Unheard of. Unheard of in ancient times, the Code of Hammurabi, around 1900 before the Common Era, where the law is written whoever did not return the slave to his master but let him live with him is condemned to death.

Among Greeks and Romans, a recaptured bondman was branded with a red-hot iron. The fugitive slave law in the United States of America, in the time of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (in the 19^th century “common era”) legitimized the search for the pursued fugitive with bloodhounds. But in Torah, to return a human being to his master is inhumane. To refuse to feed the fugitive, the “undocumented,” in ancient Judaism was desecration of God’s name.

Not everyone likes or follows a life of compassion. Not even former slaves. Not those who danced around the Golden Calf. Not Korach in the Bible who rebels against Moses’ law. In the rabbinic commentary, you hear the imagined populist resentment of elements in the community:

“Moses, you ask too much of us. You ask for sacrifice and tithes and taxes and welfare and appeals. You drain us with solicitations. You speak of ‘community’ , always ‘community.’ But I know that community means responsibility. You talk mercy, pity, tzedaka. But, through your starry-eyed ethics, you make the indigent, the poor, the fallen, the failed, dependent upon the community.  You encourage the unemployed to become parasites, indolent, lazy. Let them pick themselves up by their bootstraps. (And what if they have no straps and no boots?) Let them gird their loins, let them learn individual responsibility, and gain pride in their autonomy and become self-made men and women like ourselves.

Moses can’t believe it. These were slaves? In bondage?

Moses, you are a man of reason. Give us a logical argument, a rational argument to explain why we should share our hard-earned wealth with those who, for whatever reason, have not, cannot, could not make it.   What does it profit us if we help support those who are lost their jobs or are unemployable? Will we be compensated, or rewarded, or thanked?”

I am dumb-struck by the power of the argument. It’s rational. Where is the logic of care? Where is the reason for protecting the unprotected? They want logic!

But in Exodus 22: If you take your neighbor’s pledge (for he owes you), restore it to him before the time the sun goes down, the garment is his only cover. Ba-meh yishkav — with what shall he sleep? And when it comes to pass, when he cries unto Me, I will hear, for I, God, am merciful.”

So they cry. What have tears to do with logic? It’s an appeal to our softer side, to the better angels within us. It’s pure sentimentality. Where’s the syllogism?

But still, if we see a dog beaten by its master, how do we feel? Are we moved? Do we do anything? Is it logical to care about a dog?

If we see a woman abused in public, how do we feel? What do we say? Should we intervene? Is it logical to care about a stranger? It is the throbbing of the bleeding heart.

Life is larger than logic!

Over and over again, the Bible repeats, “And the stranger shall you not oppress. For you know the heart of the stranger, for you were a stranger in the Land of Egypt.”

What kind of argument is that? It is a call to memory. Remember who you are and who your ancestors were. Sing with your children the celebration of our freedom, on Passover, to remember “Avadim hayinu” – we were slaves. Fast on Yom Kippur, to feel with the stomach what we know from Don’t forget the humiliation of the poor, of the unemployed, of the fired, of the immigrant, of those on the bottom of the heap, the refugees: They were you!

“Sh’ver tzu zein a yid.”   To be Jewish is hard. Not because of dietary laws or ritual observances. It is hard to be a Jew because Judaism at its nerve center is an ongoing struggle against self-absorption, against unhealthy narcissism, against selfishness, against the character of Sodom as found in the Talmud: Sheli sheli, v’ shelach shelach — “Mine is mine, and yours is yours.” So, don’t lean on me, don’t solicit me, don’t ask me for contribution. NIMBY – “Not in my back yard,” and NOMBY ― “Not on my back.”

To the rationale of selfishness, the Jewish Bible, the Prophets, the Mishnah, the Talmud, resists. “We human beings are not merely nails and claws and teeth that bite, and tear and consume. We descend from animals but we are not only animalistic. We are made of dust and of stars.” Don’t forget the stars.

Judaism opposes idolatry. Selfishness is the idolatry of the self. Selfishness is the death of community. Selfishness is the blindness that does not and will not see the other. The selfish think, “I do not want to belong. Belonging demands behaving. Let me live apart, privately, detached, separately. But separation brings sorrow. It is not good to weep alone, or drink alone, or to cry alone, or to laugh alone.

There is sorrow in the world. But there is also joy. And no joy is greater or more glorious than the joy of gladdening the heart of the poor, the downtrodden and the stranger in your midst.

Judaism understood throughout its career: without human empathy, community dies, and without human compassion, a civilization perishes. We are together, and together we will live.

A people of law rooted in the ground of rachmanoot. L’shanah tovah — for a year of goodness.