One generation goes, another comes. But the earth remains the same forever, so wrote Ecclesiastes. And as each new generation appears, the fondness for the older one seems to increase.
“I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words… When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth think of themselves as exceedingly wise; they are [disrespectful] and impatient of restraint”. Despite what my children believe, I am not the author of those words. Those words were spoken by the Greek writer Hesiod in the 8th century BCE.
And yet in every age the sense that the future dims derives not only from the deficiencies of the youth, but also from the diminishment of the culture itself. After a period of growth and advancement, cultures and empires seem to turn inward with self doubt and see the end near at hand.
Adam Gopnick in the New Yorker Magazine reviewing three new books on the decline of the United States and Europe, writes, “Decline has the same fascination for historians that love has for lyric poets. Yet the coming catastrophe is always coming and never quite getting here…The population bomb that didn’t go boom is an anchor tied to the ankle of the global warmers, while people who want to set up China as the new Yellow Peril are obliged to explain why the Rising Sun stopped rising…
“Yet the idea of decline is emotionally magnetic, because life is a long slide down and the plateau just passed is easier to love than the one coming up.”
But surely this sense that the West and the United States are bloated empires, heaving their last breaths as new empires emerge out of former third world nations is not only a literary conceit. Read the economic data – poverty is increasing, industry is declining, the recession that we are in threatens to stay for a very long time, and the state of our economy is being determined by fewer people. Global strategists at Citigroup came up with the term “Plutonomy” in 2005 to describe a country that is defined by massive income and wealth inequality; there is no “average” consumer in Plutonomies– only the rich “and everyone else.” The New Republic needed only one word for their recent cover story on conditions in America: Doom!
It is easy to fall prey to the cry of the declinist.
Oh and if you are Jewish, how much the more so. We have been so good at declinism and pessimism for so long that the scholar Simon Rawidowicz penned a famous essay in the 1960’s called, “Israel: the ever dying people”. Rawidowicz wrote that “The world makes many images of Israel, but Israel makes only one image of itself – that of a being constantly on the verge of ceasing to be, of disappearing”. Jews are good at many things and one of them is fretting about our demise.
Look at the promotional literature and program funding priorities of Jewish organizations, be they communal or religious. I assure you the words ‘Jewish continuity’ will be found somewhere in the material. The programs don’t seek to define what we Jews are continuing but lurking underneath the innovations and initiatives is a fear, a gnawing anxiety, that we need to do something because we, the Jewish people, are in danger of disappearing.
Of course the good news is that after thousands of years of hand wringing we are still here. Rawidowicz analyzes this anxiety and suggests that one of its decisive psychological elements is the general sense of fear of losing ground, of being deprived of possessions and acquisitions. In this way American Jews have a double dose of such anxiety because that is exactly how most Americans feel in our current climate. As Jews this anxiety also derives from a fear of not knowing what tomorrow will bring while knowing what many yesterdays brought our people in the past.
What I would love to now do in this sermon is tell each of you that as difficult as it may appear to us, everything is really OK. But … I can’t. Things are pretty bad, economically and politically, in this country and one would have to be a naïve Pollyanna to think they are going to improve significantly any time soon. In the immortal words of John McCain: ‘It’s always darkest before it’s totally black.’
However, as Jews we are forbidden to despair. This was the directive of Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav to his Hasidim. Dr. Rawidowicz points out that Judaism’s message from its origin was one of universal optimism – salvation, happiness and perfection for all peoples. The essential motif of these Days of Awe is the optimistic concept of teshuvah, repentance, that you can correct your faults.
Just how powerful this idea of repentance is was expressed in a teaching by Resh Lakish in the Talmud [Yoma 86b] “Great is Teshuvah: – it turns premeditated sins into merits”. Commenting on this passage, Rabbi Shmuel Eidels known as the Maharsha wrote, “How very strange that teshuvah should make sins meritorious! It looks like the sinner is rewarded for having sinned! How can this be? Only because when one does teshuvah and corrects his transgressions, (he does so by) increasing the amount of good he does… Good deeds are added to the world that would not have been done had the penitent not done the teshuvah motivated by the sin.”
An example of this is one of wicked kings of Judah, Menasha, a descendent of David “who did what was displeasing in the sight of the Lord”. He permitted polytheism and idolatry after his father Hezekiah removed it. However in 2nd Chronicles it explains that after the King of Assyria defeated Menasha in battle and exiled him to Babylon, he prayed, humbled himself and was returned to Jerusalem. The medieval ethical text, Orchot Tzadikim points to Menasha as an example of one who despite a life of evil was able to do teshuvah in the end and begin to make amends for his actions. So that is a lesson in and of itself. But there is more. The author of Orchot Tzadikim could not have been aware of what modern scholarship using the tools of archeology and comparative literature have suggested about Menasha’s reign. There is evidence that Menasha, who ruled longer than any other Jewish king, may have, during his reign and after the destruction of the northern Kingdom of Israel, built up the economy of the kingdom of Judah, , to such an extent that the Kingdom of Judah was able to thrive in the face of fierce enemy empires. His success paved the way for his grandson Josiah under whose reign monotheism was entrenched in ancient Israel’s practice and ritual and under whose direction the book of Deuteronomy was written, the last of the books of the Torah. What this suggests is that during the wicked reign of Menasha the foundation was laid for Israel’s commitment to monotheism and the completion of the Torah.
This is not the only example in which constructive long lasting and affirmative changes were made under the direst circumstances.
Rabbi David Hartman in his recent book The God who Hates Lies writes that “(With the destruction of the Temple and the defeat of Jewish sovereignty) “the question naturally arose : where can the living God be found? For the Talmudic Sages, it was Halakha that replaced history as the new medium with which to encounter the living reality of God. …The living God is experienced in the rich variety of opportunities to connect every life activity to consciousness of mitzvah.”
The traumatic destruction of the Temple may not have involved as great a loss of life as the Holocaust but it undermined the very fabric of Jewish life. The center of the Jewish world was erased, the basis of atonement was lost, access to the Divine Presence was obstructed.
And yet out of that dark period, Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai and his disciples found a pathway to build and develop a religious expression that opened up many more opportunities to commune with the living God.
In more recent history the Holocaust stands out as the saddest and bleakest period in our 2000 year Diaspora. Hitler succeeded where so many others failed in destroying not only one third of our people but entire Jewish cultures as well, cultures that will never return. And yet only a few years later the State of Israel was declared. While one can never state enough times that the State of Israel was not a response to the Holocaust, nevertheless one can see a spiritual connection between the two events. For thinkers like Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, the creation of the state of Israel is one of the preeminent signs of the Jewish people’s voluntary affirmation of its continuing relationship to God. In his words, “Coming after the incredible destruction of the Holocaust, the creation of Israel and the rebuilding of Jewish life constitute an unparalleled reacceptance of the covenant.” [Jewish Way, p. 92].
The message for us is that when conditions are dire we must not give up or in to our fears but rather dig deeper and begin to set down foundations for the future, without concern whether we are the last generation or not.
The same is true regarding our congregation. In membership numbers and finances we are smaller. It is not anything we could have prevented – the Jewish community of South Bend is demographically older, there are no new businesses or industries here to bring Jews to the community the way it was 60 years ago. Even Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal have eulogized South Bend as a dying city. Over the last 20 years we have at least been able to maintain our size but Temple is much smaller, the Elkhart synagogue closed, Sons of Israel closed.
Now it is Ok to be small. Pastor David Ray who has written extensively about the small church spoke to the conference that I and two colleagues organized this past summer for rabbis serving small congregations. He reminded us that small is good. God chose Israel not because it was the largest of peoples but the smallest. Small means intimacy, small means concern with the entire community. A small community does not have an interfering bureaucracy; change comes more easily to small communities because discussion and interactions can be held face to face immediately between individuals who already have established relationships.
Nevertheless, the sense that the end is drawing near is more palpable in small communities. We have a smaller volunteer pool to depend on, and less margin for error in our budget. The board took a survey on synagogue morale recently and I am pleased that overall on a scale of 1-10 the participants scored synagogue morale as very high. But the lowest average score came on the question of “Does our congregation have a bleak or bright future?” It was right in the middle a 5. And it is easy to understand that uncertainty. Fewer members, smaller youth classes, larger financial deficits lead one to jump on the declinism bandwagon.
But in the words of former Chicago Bulls coach Phil Jackson, when the Bulls were down 20 points at half time in a playoff game, “Guys, this is great. We have them right where we want them”. The same is true for us – we should look with great anticipation and excitement even as our numbers are smaller For now is the time when each of us must stand out and acknowledge that I can’t depend on others to keep Sinai going strong, it has to start with me..
Here are a few ways that each of us can help strengthen our congregation’s foundation:
One of the core achievements of our congregation is daily minyan. But the minyan keeps going because a smaller group of regulars makes sure it does not slip. We need more of you to come and make a commitment to minyan, even if you can’t come every week, fix a day or two days in the month, let Mike Levin and Erv Karlin know when you will come and start that your spiritual journey. It is crucial to develop good habits and davvening and minyan are no different. Come once a month, get used to the siddur, the rhythm, the morning or evening community and it will be easier to grow that habit. As long as we have a daily minyan at Sinai, Sinai will remain strong.
Another benefit of coming to daily minyan is that this year I plan to use our five minute D’var Torah to study with the congregation some of our greatest Jewish texts. Each month will be a different text and each minyan we will study a small piece of the scholar’s writings. This may possibly lead to a dissertation idea for my doctorate so coming to minyan will help me out in long quest to complete this doctorate.
Other learning opportunities will include the continuation of Pirke in the Pub and a new monthly class on Jewish parenting and grand-parenting at Uptown Kitchen. As always our Thursday lunch and learn continues as we study the Book of Kings.
Over the last ten years our strongest davveners and Torah readers have come from our post b’nai mitzvah. This is wonderful and a tribute to Cindy and their parents. But high school students, the stinkers, grow up and leave after 4 years. We need more congregants to feel comfortable as prayer leaders and Torah readers. We have a wonderful opportunity to advance Torah reading skills with Ron Adelsman’s class that will begin after the holidays during and after Shabbat lunch. I don’t mean to embarrass Ron but he is one of the finest Torah readers I have ever heard and it is really a gift to study with him. So do it!
And if you can read Hebrew, you can lead Hebrew davvening. The more of us who know how to lead worship services the stronger our community because it becomes a self sustaining community.
And if we want continuous quality programming, cultural and holiday, dinners and social gatherings we need volunteers to organize that. The reconstituted program committee that Judy and Richard Wein are chairing have about 5-6 wonderful volunteers. But you can’t expect the same six people to plan programs such as our end of summer picnic and our upcoming Simhat Torah dinner and celebration and a November Havdalah concert without burning out. We need 15-20 volunteers willing to develop different cultural or social programs.
And to remain self sustaining we need everyone to keep up their financial commitments to Sinai. I won’t tread on Mike’s territory for his Yom Kippur appeal but I will just state that this congregation came into being in the midst of the Great Depression, it did not hamper those individuals from starting a grand new project.
One more suggestion for strengthening this congregation’s foundation – that is to recruit. We need to actively recruit Jews to join us in South Bend. We do that by making this congregation even more active and attractive than it already is by doing the aforementioned activities. We promote the activities and positive community values of our congregation and our city. And we speak to the sons and daughters of Sinai Synagogue who moved away about returning, we put a link on our web site saying “Interested in moving to our great community? Ask us” and listing the names of professionals in our community who could speak to potential newcomers about job prospects.
This is how we build in the midst of declinism. Simon Rawidowicz pointed out the reality of the ever dying Israel – an ever dying Israel is an ever living and ever creating Israel. Let that be our people’s fate and our congregation’s fate, to be on the verge of dying so that we may go on living and thriving.