Rabbi Noah Farkas Sermons

This past year the Jewish community lost three great luminaries. A few weeks ago we lost Gene Wilder, who knew how to mix the subtleties of emotional tragedy into a cocktail of comedy, storytelling, and sweetness. Earlier this year we lost Elie Wiesel, the voice of a generation of survivors of the Shoah, who gave the world the phrase "Never Forget," and taught us that "The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference." Just last week we lost Shimon Peres, who never let go of the dream of Israel and its hopes for peace. Each of these men was Jewish. Each of them was affected by their Judaism differently, but all lived very different Jewish lives.

These three Jewish men, the prankster, the prophet, and the Prime Minister shared a sense of Jewishness. Being Jewish was the clothing each of them wore, sort of like a tallit that wrapped around them. For Gene Wilder, it was his sense of sweet Yiddishkeit. For Elie Weisel, it was the memory of the Holocaust. And For Shimon Peres, it was the bravery and the energy of founding the Jewish national homeland. We can learn so much from their lives -- about how to be, what we should remember and how the next generation of Jewish men and women will take up the most important questions about their Judaism. Each one of these men represents to me the greatest and most significant orienting ideas of Jewish life in the past century. Each one had an answer to the question, "Why be Jewish?" But with their passing, there is a real fear that something is shifting in Jewish life. The tectonic plates upon which 20th Century Judaism was built are sliding and shifting. I’d like to take a a few minutes to explore what these foundations, and then say what I feel is indeed coming next.

Gene Wilder was born one Jerome Silberman. His father was from Russia, his mother a descendant from Poland. He grew up in Chicago going to an orthodox synagogue, although he was never really observant. He became a comedian at age six when his mother was struck by a heart attack. The doctor said to him, "Try to make her laugh." Gene said, once in an interview, "And that was the first time I tried to make anyone laugh."

He went on to use his sense of Yiddishkeit, his Jewishness to make the whole world laugh. He made cowboys Jewish. He made Broadway Jewish.  

He even used his Yiddishe Kup to make a British candy factory owner, Willy Wonka, Jewish.

Why do I feel Jewish?" Wilder says, "because of my parents' love and embracing, because they gave me confidence. If my mother hadn't laughed at the funny things I did, I probably wouldn't be a comic actor."

In the twentieth century, Wilder represented the child of immigrants, whose families came from the Old World and brought them into the New. Judaism for Wilder, was about family and culture, as well as being "other." He brought his Yiddishkeit, a sense of a unique outside perspective and forced it into the larger American society, through culture, kindness, and not a small dose of kvetching.

This Yiddishkeit is one of the major orienting ideas of Judaism of the last century. It’s a sense of community, of belonging, of feeling like you’re part of something small and something large. The inside/outside feeling of being both Jewish and American. The dual identity of his generation was enormously influential in America, and enormously creative. We built parallel worlds for ourselves within American society. We created art, music, comedy for America but also just for ourselves. We built country clubs and resorts for ourselves because we couldn't get into the American ones. We built delis and schools for ourselves. We created charities and aid societies for America and for ourselves. Yiddishkeit is a major foundation of Jewish life that has become a major foundation of American life.

When you can buy a blueberry bagel 24 hours a day, you know something of Yiddishkeit has become very American.

Judaism for Wilder was about morality and family. Whether it's because of the Shoah or because he, like so many others, had a Jewish wellspring on which to draw, Wilder never felt the need to be religious. Judaism was his DNA, he could be Jewish without a second thought. Without intention. Jewish was just who he was.

What made Wilder so unique is that behind his smile, his laughter was always a bit of sadness, a sweet cry which allows us to be pessimistic about the future while laughing at it all the same. I'm sure many of you feel a little bit of this fear today.

And with his passing, it marks the shift in our Jewish foundations.

When the joke’s not funny anymore, what’s left?

The old ways of being just don't work anymore. Wilder's sense of Jewishness is fading.

We look around and say, the youth, they don’t care as much as we do.

We look around and say, they are not affiliating like we did.

We look around and say, they don’t care for other Jews as Jews as we did.

I can quote you studies and reports that say that affiliation is down, observance is down, giving is down, attendance at services is down. But the truth is the old metrics aren't working because the Jewish community itself is changing. We are becoming more diverse. Over 10% of the national Jewish community describe themselves as being Jews of Color. 17% of Valley Beth Shalom members are are Persian. Another 5% are non-Ashkenazi-Israeli. Another 3% are Latino. That doesn't include the very high percentages of intermarriage nationally. Peaking at one point at over 50%. If they choose to raise their kids Jewish, which many do, they also incorporate their own cultural markers into Jewish life. We are becoming ever more a multi-ethnic religion. Yiddishkeit itself is fading. It’s moving from the foreground to the background. Yiddishkeit cannot answer the question, “Why be Jewish?” on its own.

So, what will take its place?

(Spoiler, something wonderful, built on its foundations, but you have to hold on for that).

Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet, Hungary, in 1922, Wiesel was raised in the warmth embrace of a living Hasidic community. In Summer, 1944, Wiesel and his family were deported to Auschwitz. In January 1945, as the Russians drew near, Wiesel and his father were forced to march to Buchenwald in Germany, where his father, mother and younger sister died. After the war, he became a journalist and author. He was the founding Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

For Elie Wiesel, Judaism had a very different resonance. Never really the humorist, he described a world crushed into dust and burnt into ash, in the Kingdom of Night. Where Wilder made us laugh, Wiesel made us cry.

In one book, One Generation After, Wiesel relates that it the beadle's custom to rush to the synagogue each morning to ascend the bimah and shout first with pride, and then with anger: “I have come to inform you, Master of the Universe, that we are here.”

Then came the first massacre, followed by many others. The beadle somehow always emerged unscathed. As soon as he could, he would run to the synagogue and, pounding his fist on the lectern, he would shout at the top of his voice, "You see, Lord, we are still here."

After the last massacre, he found himself all alone in the deserted synagogue. The last living Jew, he climbed the bimah one last time, stared at the Ark and whispered with infinite gentleness: “You see? I am still here.” He stopped briefly before continuing in his sad, almost toneless voice: “But You, where are You?"

For Wiesel after the Shoah, there are no more miracles and miracle workers. The gates of heaven were locked up, bound with heavy chains and a padlock the key to which, we have misplaced.

The theological thinking behind Elie Wiesel's words can be found in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech and it goes like this: "Yes, I have faith. Faith in God and even in His creation. Without it no action would be possible. And action is the only remedy to indifference: the most insidious danger of all.”

The solution to the crisis of faith was to survive and to build goodness into the world.

My father’s favorite Jewish liturgy is the paragraph in the Passover Seder that says, “Vay’hi sheamda La’Avoteinu v’lanu” In every generation there have been those who arose over our forefathers and us to kill us. “V’HaKodesh Baruch Hu Matzeilenu M’yadam”, and the Holy Blessed One saved us time and again from them” They rose to smite us. To expel us. To burn us. But they are all gone and we are still here. Our very survivorship is the testament to our theological veracity.

And so let us survive. Let us never forget.

Wiesel’s Judaism is that of the survivor. Cloaked in night, always living, striving, to take a step forward despite our past. There once was something grand and beautiful before Auschwitz, but no longer. And now that both our enemies and heroes are gone, we are left.

And so let us build monuments to the past, and let us build schools and synagogues to teach our youth of what happened to us and how we must survive through the era of what has been called the "Eclipse of God."

"Let us add another commandment to our canon. A single commandment whose weight is greater than the other 613. A commandment that is the loadstone. We are commanded to survive, to never forget, and most importantly to not give Hitler a posthumous victory."

For world Jewry, Wiesel's vigor during the greatest tempest in modern history is a paragon of survival and the core spirit of Jewish life. "Why be Jewish?" it could be asked, "because we must survive to prove our strength, and to shoulder on!"

Yet with every passing day, there are fewer survivors. There are diminishing numbers of Jews who witnessed personally the depth of depravity in the tofets of Europe. The commandment to "never forget" bites deeper now for the first time. The younger generations will only know survivors through video, audio, and written accounts. They will not know what the hands of one who lifted the dead feels like. They will not feel the shudder that crosses the faces of survivors when they open up about the past. The Holocaust is quickly becoming history, and not living memory. But how?

When I see younger Jews they tell me that it’s hard for them to relate to the Shoah because they are becoming less proximal. It’s certainly part of who they are, it is a foundation, but survivorship is not the reason to be Jewish. Like Yiddishkeit, the memory or the Shoah moves from the foreground to the background.

And so the same fear wells up within us again.

Did I do right by my kids?

Did I honor the memories of my family?

Who will become successful, and who will fail?

Who will stay Jewish, who will not?

How will they answer the question, “Why be Jewish?”

The fear is real.

So, What will take its place?

(Spoiler alert #2 , something wonderful, built on its foundations, but you have to hold on for that).

Which brings us to the third of these luminous men. Luckily, from the same wellsprings of modernity that brought us Jewish humor, and Jewish survivorship in the 20th Century, sprang Jewish courage. Shimon Peres was born Szymon Perski. At a young age, he was renowned for his oratorical brilliance and was chosen as a protégé by David Ben Gurion to endeavor to build the State of Israel. He began his political career in the late 1940s, holding several diplomatic and military positions during and directly after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. He served in nearly every position in the Israeli government. In 1963, he held negotiations with U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Thirty years later he negotiated the Oslo accords with President Bill Clinton, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize. His last negotiations with an American President were with Barak Obama. Ten Presidents in all.

Shimon Peres was the last of the founders. Peres saw the rise of kibbutzim. He saw the draining of the Hula Valley to create farmland.

He saw skyscrapers rise from the marshes of Tel Aviv.

He saw the railway built and the airport built.

He saw the desert bloom and Jerusalem united.

He saw a poor country become a wealthy one, and he never stopped dreaming.

He wrote, “To dream is simply to be pragmatic.” He said, “They called me a dreamer. But today, when I look at Israel, we all can see clearly that the greater the dream, the more spectacular the results.”

He built a country that solved its water crisis.

He built a country that has brought medical technology to the whole world.  

He built a country whose values include being the first on the ground to respond to natural disasters.

He built a country that is a light unto the nations.

He saw it all.

The founding of the State of Israel released an enormous amount of energy into the world Jewish community. Its influence over Jewish identity cannot and must not be understated. I'll give you one quirky moment that sums it up. Growing up, on Friday night it was the only night we set the dinner table with two forks. One for the meal and the other for gefilte fish - from a jar. We would serve it with challah. Growing up, when my father said Kiddish with an Ashkenazi accent. He said Kaddish with same accent Yisgadal v’Yisgadash Shemei Rabba .

Now, around my table, we eat hummus with our challah. And we say choomoos, not "hummus." Sarah makes it fresh every Friday from a recipe that our Israeli friend taught us. I say Kiddish and Kaddish with Sephardic pronunciation: Yitgadel v’Yitgadash Shemei Rabba.

The founding of the State of Israel and the return to Land is the third great orienting category for American Judaism in the past century and Shimon Peres saw it all. But the energy that came from being a founder is also shifting. With his death comes the passing of a great moment in Jewish history.

For many younger Jews, Israel’s existence is a fact. It’s no longer the actor on the stage of Jewish life. It is the stage, set and the scenery for Jewish life. Which means that supporting the state of Israel is part of being Jewish, but not the reason for being Jewish. Israel as an orienting foundation to answer the question “Why be Jewish?” is moving like Yiddishkeit, like survivorship, from the foreground to the background.

And that’s a good thing. It’s what the Zionist dreamers wanted. Not to create another Jewish community group or organization but the actual terra firma on which Judaism and Jews can live.

It's the fruition of Herzl and Ahad HaAm, not the denigration of their work.  

But when we feel the tectonic plates of Judaism shift beneath our feet, that same fear quakes to the surface.

Why don’t some of the young fight for it like we used to?

Why don’t they feel inspired by Israel like we did?

The fear is real. What will take its place?

With the deaths of these three cultural icons, Gene Wilder, Elie Weisel, and Shimon Peres, the prankster, the prophet and the Prime Minister, we are seeing a major shift in our community's evolution. The three greatest orienting ideas for Twentieth-Century of Jewish life. Yiddishkeit -- Ethnicity, Remembering the Shoah, and Founding of the State of Israel -- All of these ideas which gave rise to the answer "Why be Jewish?" are now moving from the foreground to the background of Jewish life.

And so what is taking their place? What will become of us? Let me show you why I am so optimistic.

It’s actually from Judaism’s oldest and most enduring truth it’s call to holiness and it begins in the very beginning of our Torah:
When God wandered through the Garden of Eden, God saw Adam and Eve hiding amongst the fig trees. They had become deeply afraid and ashamed, for they ate the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Suddenly things mattered to them. Mortality mattered. Modesty mattered. Success and failure mattered. The future mattered. Before it was like an eternal vacation. Just living it up naked in the garden, but now everything was different. When you know you are going to die, suddenly everything matters. For Adam and Eve, who knew the difference between life and death between good and evil, the world came into a sharp and screaming focus… And it was terrifying.

And God called out them. Ayekah? Where are you? Not because God didn’t know. But because God says Ayekah, a special word, used only once, to call upon Adam and Eve, to not be afraid.

To come on out of the bushes and have a chat.

To be in relationship.

To renew themselves despite their fear.

It’s the most enduring question of faith. God calls out everyday, saying “Where are you?”

How are you making your life holy?

The priestly writer reframes what begins as a call into a commandment. “Kedoshim T’heyu, Ki Ani Adonai Kadosh.” “Be Holy, says God, for I am Holy.”

But how?

Over my near decade here at VBS, I have come to know thousands of people. There are five generations in our community. All with differing narratives, with different sensibilities. With differing understandings of what it means to be Jewish. Here is what I’ve learned from these conversations.

In any of these generations, I have yet to meet someone who never experiences wonder. I have never met someone that does not understand the spiritual power of being present for each other. I have never met anyone who isn't moved by a Brit Milah or a baby naming. Who doesn't have some appreciation for being called to the Torah.

I’ve never met anyone who doesn't dream for themselves and for their children. Who doesn't aspire to be a better father or mother, brother or sister, son or daughter. Who doesn’t rise for Kaddish when asked. Who doesn't feel small when you look at the stars and feel big when you look at a little one saying HaMotzi, or when she puts that ring on her finger, or when he breaks the glass.

It’s why we dedicated an entire month to one idea and to ask the question Ayekah, where are you? To draw your attention to the holiness in your lives.

I can prove it to you right now. When we asked “Ayekah? Where are You?” over the last six weeks, you rose to the occasion and showed the community your enduring drive for holiness in new and creative ways.

We aksed you to write down your answers. I've collected a few from the hundreds you wrote. I'll share some now.

When asked about “Where are you with your relationships?” someone wrote, “I am noticing that my children will only be at home for a few more short years. I am trying to make sure that I am present for them in this time that we still have living together in one household.”

Another wrote, “A lot of people love and respect me and I have a lot of friends who love me for who I am rather than who they want me to be.”

Another wrote simply, “ I love mom.”

When asked, “Where are you with your Creativity?”

You responded, “I would like to find some time rediscovering this creative side and on our family photo scrapbook and other creative outlets."

Another wrote, “Always trying to be creative in all areas of life...even making a sandwich.”

And another, “I need to make more time to dance.”

When asked, “Where are you with your Heshbobn Hanefesh, your Personal accounting?”

One said, “Doors are opening, as other doors have seemingly been shut. I am walking through these wonderful paths and not looking back."

And another said, “Transitioning. Reaching in to find the courage to move into a new stage. To find clarity to meaning vigor, truth, discipline, and Joy.”

And with your sense of renewal, you wrote, "I work every day to allow myself to create a new path in my life that includes learning, laughter, fun, friendship, and most of all gratitude-- healing."

Another wrote, “ I renew myself as a new mother through the laughter of my child, the love of my husband, and the very occasional sip of wine.”

Each of these moments represents the real grist of life. Each of these is a mundane everyday moment that lives in the background, but by being asked Ayekah, you moved them to the foreground. We called and you answered.

At every instant, you can love your neighbor, treat the poor, find common cause with a stranger, hold the hand of an infant, or hold the hand of a dying friend. At every instant, God calls on us to renew ourselves.

Every time a moment passes you have the opportunity to unearth its holiness. Every time you have a smile, a dream, a moment of relationship, of tranquility, at every moment it is open to holiness. When we pray, we bring those moments to the surface. Judaism attunes us to the great broadcast of holiness, every day. We name those moments through acts of blessing.

We say:

Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech Ha’Olam Asher Kidashanu B’mitzvhotav.

Praised are you God, Ruler of the Universe, who makes us holy through mitzvhotav, the sacred path of life.

The sparks scatter everywhere, Martin Buber said, "They cling to material things as in sealed up wells, they crouch in substances as in caves that have been bricked up, they inhale darkness and breathe out fear; they flutter about in the movements of the world searching where they can lodge to be set free.”

Holiness is timeless.

There is no less holiness in our time than there was the day the Red Sea parted or that day the world stood still and hushed themselves at Mt. Sinai, or the day the new tablets were forged. Or when, over a crackling radio, the State of Israel was declared or when over another radio, the words Har Habayit B’yadaynu, were cried out, “The Temple Mount is in our hands.”

You must know that you didn't leave holiness behind in your youth. It wasn't left in your mother's kitchen, or your father's study. It wasn't left in your Hebrew School classroom or your kindergarten menorah. It wasn't left with your toy shofar, or at your Shabbat dinner table. You didn't leave it behind with your Bat Mitzvah training. It's not just sitting in your tallit bag that you never open anymore. You didn't leave it behind at your grandparent's seder table. The call to holiness is still with you. Every single day. “Kedoshim T’heyu, Ki Ani Adonai Kadosh.” Become holy now. It's yours to have, it's yours to keep forever.

As Annie Dillard wrote, “There were no great heroic times of which we are nothing. There was no pure generation of which we only pale in comparison." We are all together, ambivalent, irascible, knowledgeable, fearful, and yet passionate, loving, and just. It is a weakening and enervating idea that only the ancients knew God in some "Once upon a time" and we have lost our way. There has never been a more holy age than ours and no less a holy age than ours.

And let me tell you to for those who feel that great fear I speak of: What is to become of us?

Remember what God said to the first Jew whose world was changing around him. God said to Abraham, "Al Tira" - "Don't fear."

Don’t fear the future, because a new generation is rising. It might not look like your Judaism, it might not behave like yours, Jews might not look like you, act like you, but it is rising.

I see Asian Jews and black Jews, Latino Jews. I see scruffy Jews and clean polished Jews. It is rising.

I see it in mediation services. I see it in the Playground Minyan. I see it in wilderness trips. I see it in political engagement and social service projects. It is rising.

I see it in learning circles and cooking circles. I see it on college campuses and in silent retreats. I see it in High Holiday services in sanctuaries and ballrooms. I see it High Holiday services in tents, at camping sites and in even in bowling alleys. It is rising.

I see it in heavy metal-klezmer music and hip-hop yiddish. I see it in graffiti artists and makeup artists. I see it in tattoo artists. It is rising.

I see it in Pride marches and civil rights marches. I see it on Birthright buses and party buses. It is rising.

It is rising.

It is rising.

It is rising.

On Hannukah when we light the candles of the menorah, Shammai believed that we start with eight candles and end with one because that's the order of sacrifices in the Temple. It's the way of the past, to remember and honor what was. And so must we. Hillel said, no. "Times are a'changing." We add light to the darkness, not the other way around. We add candles because, at its core, Judaism believes in Ma’alin Bakodesh V’Lo Yordin. We always, always, go up in holiness, joining one light to the next, and we never go down. One generation to the next. One candle to the next. Letting more and more ideas, more and more light flow into the Hanukiah of life. We rise by adding new ideas, new songs, new joys, new cultures to Judaism. The future is different, it is strange, but it is bright, and it is holy.

While three great icons have passed, Gene Wilder, Elie Wiesel, and Shimon Peres, the prankster, the prophet, and the Prime Minister, their memories will not be forgotten, they will always be for a blessing. But now as we look forward, we will add our candles to theirs, giving the next wave of Judaism a bright future.

Gmar Hatima Tova.