Rabbi's
Sermons
Rosh HaShanah 5770
Day One
September 19, 2009
Shabbat Morning
As we enter an autumn of national discontent and our
season of internal disquiet, let me take you back to a cold January morning
earlier this year. Bill Allen, former editor of National Geographic magazine,
described it in this way: Just yards from where slaves were auctioned and on the
steps of a building constructed with slave labor, an African-American took the
oath of office in a peaceful passage of power to lead the most powerful nation
on earth.
Many people, as I did, undoubtedly saw the ceremony through
eyes misty with tears of joy and hope. Joyful at once again seeing the
remarkable proof that, as de Tocqueville wrote, "Here the people rule." Joyful
at seeing the sacrifices of generations of heroes justified… Joyful at feeling
that yes, we can fulfill the promise of America.
Never have I been as proud to have served my country in its
armed service. Never have I been as proud to say, "I am an American."
Edwin C. Marshall, of our own Indiana University described “a
day in which millions of men, women, children, family, friends, and strangers
came together under one calling to share the joy of celebration. …For those who
journeyed from across town and across the globe to brave the harsh elements of a
freezing dawn and an equally frigid morning, it was a day of transformation and
renewal. The National Mall reflected the multicultural, multiracial,
multiethnic, and intergenerational mosaic of a "common humanity." … (E)veryone
found comfort in the harmony of spirit and the community of fellowship.
The community of fellowship – that is what so many Americans,
including those who voted against Obama, sensed on the day of the President’s
inauguration. It was not just the historic nature of the moment but the feeling
that America as a nation had passed a threshold together, a day when a core
value of our society had been achieved: that we should choose leaders not based
on the color of skin, nor ethnicity nor faith tradition but by the measure of
their character. The coalition of voters that elected Obama was ethnically,
racially, politically, and economically diverse. The sense of coming together as
a nation inspired the positive emotions of that day.
We do not know if the administration of President Obama will
be successful or not. But that is not my point this morning. Rather it is that a
community, or a society, can discern a sense of its own purpose when it draws
together to act on its values and lives up to its commitments.
Our Sinai community knows the energy that comes from uniting
for a sacred purpose. I know it is true because I read it in a book.
This summer the Avi Chai Foundation published its findings
from a survey of Jewish supplemental education programs. Learning and Community:
Jewish Supplementary Schools in the Twenty First Century, Edited by Jack
Wertheimer, included a chapter about our congregation written by Susan Shevitz
and Marion Gribetz, two prominent Jewish educators who had visited our synagogue
two years ago for this purpose.
In a long and complimentary chapter about our congregation
they write: (I have changed the words slightly because all the congregational
programs were kept anonymous so they could more honestly assess the programs)
“It is impossible to separate the strands that link Sinai
members to each other and to Jewish life. Supporting each other in happy and sad
times , celebrating Jewish and other holidays together, learning and socializing
with each other, working on group projects and using one’s talents to help the
group -- all these are part of the Sinai experience. The learning for the
children as well as adults, doesn’t come only from classes. It comes from
experiencing how their community operates and then enacting its norm. The
content present in the classes has real life implications. From the youngest to
the oldest students, people practice what they learn. What they learn is
reinforced by many others – not just by their parent but their friends, their
friends’ parents, and the other congregants…Because of its size and location,
the ties among the community members are powerful. There is a sense of shared
identity, experience, place and commitment that shapes Sinai’s efforts to
further Jewish education and nurture Jewish life.”
What Shevitz and Gribetz found in their observations of our
congregation was not just that we are very nice people who treat each other like
extended family. They recognized that it was a sense of commitment to each
other, to the synagogue community and our Jewish values and heritage that
created the kind of community we have at Sinai. To put that sense of commitment
in Jewish terms, they are suggesting we act this way for the sake of mitzvah.
Mitzvah of course means commandment, usually understood as an
act commanded by God for us to fulfill. In common idiomatic usage though it
means a good deed. But in both usages lies the notion of doing an act not out of
free will but out of commitment, compelled by another or an ideal.
Catharine Clark our rabbinic intern this summer, in her final
sermon to the congregation discerned this broader understanding of mitzvah in
our daily minyanim. She spoke about the blessings that she encountered at Sinai
and the first blessing she noted was our daily minyan. What was special in her
opinion was not simply that the minyan offers an opportunity to those who need
to fulfill the obligation of reciting Kaddish, but that through one’s commitment
to participate regularly in minyan, members of the community learn about the
circumstances of fellow minyan goers and others in the community. Our daily
minyan becomes a welcome sanctum to our normally disconnected lives.
Tradition tells us we are obligated to davven three times a
day, but I think I know our minyanaires well enough to say that this is not the
prevailing reason why they come. Yet it would be a mistake to conclude that
those who come to minyan be it once a week, or twice a week or everyday do not
feel compelled to come by a sense of commitment. That commitment might be to the
Divine, or to their parents or loved ones for whom they are reciting Kaddish; it
might be for their own personal spiritual well being, or a commitment to Jewish
tradition; or in Nate Cossman’s immortal words, “Rabbi, I don’t come to minyan
for me, I come to minyan because someone else needs a minyan”. All these reasons
express a sense of mitzvah – commitment or obligation. This the goal of living a
life of mitzvah – to see our daily behaviors or ritual deeds through the prism
of Jewish commitment.
Attaining such regularity in our minyanim also occurs
because Mike Levin, and Erv and Corky Karlin make the ultimate commitment of not
only attending daily but of encouraging and cajoling our people to come when
regulars are not available. We should all recognize their remarkable work and
applaud them for that.
Due to our minyan, which I believe is the only twice daily
minyan in the Conservative movement in a congregation our size, we were
recognized by the organizers of a Conservative movement led project, called the
Mitzvah Initiative, and urged to participate in it. We are one of only 50 out of
700 Conservative congregations in the country and one of the only small
congregations involved.
In 2007 when Dr. Arnie Eisen became Chancellor of The Jewish
Theological Seminary, which is the rabbinical school and fountainhead for the
Conservative movement, he wanted Conservative Jews to engage in reflection and
study about the meaning of mitzvot in our lives. We are a movement which still
considers itself bound by halacha, Jewish law, and yet so many of our Jews do
not consider themselves bound by the Jewish legal system. But our Jews do engage
in mitzvot – people keep kosher, they put up mezuzot on their doors, they give
tzedakah, they come to minyan. So we observe mitzvot but don’t see ourselves
bound by halacha. Is this reasonable, logical? Is it a contradiction or a
different way of making sense of our Jewish faith? The Mitzvah
Initiative was developed to facilitate dialogue, about the very notion and
practice of mitzvah in the lives of Conservative Jews. The goals of the Mitzvah
Initiative strive to create discussions among Conservative Jews that would
enable them to: Recognize a broader definition of mitzvah linking each discrete
mitzvah action to a larger concept of holiness; Integrate behavioral change,
that is actions and deeds, which grows from an understanding of mitzvah and
commandedness; and Look at the idea and practice of mitzvah from the specific
perspective of Conservative Judaism and create a sense of community from a
shared vision of mitzvah practice.
The opportunity to participate in a nation wide Mitzvah
Initiative was very special - special because our congregation was sought out
for participation due to our reputation in the movement and propitious because
it coincided with a number of internal discussions going on within our Sinai
community.
It is no secret that the numbers of the Jewish community in
South Bend have diminished significantly even within the last 15 years. Our
region is not attracting new faces and the economy has made things even more
difficult to recruit new Jewish families. This is what led our Federation to
create a committee to promote Jewish growth to our area. We encourage the
actions of this non denominational group to grow and develop Jewish life in
Michiana and we pray for its success, but in the meantime our congregation like
Temple and Federation have found it more and more difficult to fill the
volunteer jobs that make our different communities go, whether it be joining a
synagogue committee or helping Yad B’Yad prepare lunches or finding teachers for
FEAST and Hebrew school. Sisterhood has been discussing for two years now what
direction it should go in – how to restructure itself within the new realities
of our egalitarian society. While we all recognize that in any congregation, it
is the youth programs that are most likely to draw in new families and garner
significant participation for the sake of the kids, what about those whose
children are no longer in our youth programs? How do we create a significant
space for those of you whose children have left home for university or to create
their own families? What programming, other than minyan attendance, can meet the
social-spiritual needs of this important group in our community?
All of these concerns really relate back to one concept –
that of the meaning of mitzvah for us. What is our understanding of the notion
of Jewish commitment? What are the needs in our synagogue community or greater
Jewish community that must be met and what can each of us do to achieve that? Do
elderly in the community need to get to the doctor but have no ride? Are there
job opportunities out there with which we can assist our currently unemployed
members? Does the November Yad crew have enough help? Do we have enough regulars
for our Friday night minyan?
But the reverse should also be asked, what am I doing in my
life right now that constitutes mitzvah? Of course lighting candles on Friday
night counts, but what about volunteering time at the Hospice in town? Isn’t
that mitzvah work? Keeping kosher is a mitzvah but what about insisting that
Textbooks in our schools describe Israel’s birth and history with accuracy not
discriminatory bias? Should we think of that kind of advocacy as mitzvah?
This is what the Mitzvah Initiative attempts to do, to put
the actions that we do and that we might do as individuals and as a synagogue
community, in proper perspective. For our congregation, though numerous tributes
have been paid to us, resting on our laurels is not sufficient. Now is the time
for us to turn to each other in honest dialogue and determine how we would like
to see Sinai Synagogue develop in the future and how does the concept of mitzvah
fit in that discussion.
This is not something that I as rabbi can determine; it is
not really a resolution for a committee. This is an issue that our congregation
must have with each other.
And so I propose to Jim and our board of directors that a
small committee be appointed to figure out a way to divide up the congregation
creating a number of simultaneous discussion groups so that all members of the
community have the opportunity to participate in these mitzvah study/ Sinai
development sessions.
We will also use the Jewish Theological Seminary’s Mitzvah
Initiative materials in our daily learning sessions at morning and evening
minyan. I plan to devote a series of Shabbat sermons beginning in October using
these materials which I plan to make more of a dialogue with the congregation
then a speech about mitzvot. So we will have a number of occasions to reflect
about the meaning of mitzvot and how we can best come together as individuals
committed to enhancing and expanding our Sinai community.
During the Days of Awe we seek to make amends for the wrongs
we have committed between ourselves and God and ourselves and fellow human
beings. Of course we all know that Yom Kippur atones for wrongs between us and
God, but only after we have appeased our fellow human beings is Yom Kippur’s
atoning salve effective. Are our relations with other humans more important than
our relationship with God? No, rather when we hurt or transgress against another
human being we also transgress against God, since each human being is created
“b’tzelem Elokim”, in the image of God. The positive message of this lesson is
true as well – that when we seek the Divine we most easily find God in the
community of those created in the Divine Image.
There was once a man who would go from village to village
asking the same question: Where can I find God?” He journeyed from rabbi to
rabbi and never found a satisfactory answer. One would say, “Pray my son and you
will find God.” Another would say “Study, and you will find God.” Yet another
response was “Forget your quest, God is within you already”.
One day he arrived wearily in yet another village and found
the rabbi, and again he asked his question: Where can I find God? The rabbi
paused and said simply, “You have come to the right place , my child, God is in
this village. Stay a few days, perhaps you will meet God”.
The man was puzzled but intrigued and followed the rabbi’s
advice. He stayed and for the first few days would ask people if they had seen
God. They simply smiled at him and asked if he would like to join them for a
meal. Eventually he began to assist villagers with chores and their other needs.
Sometimes the rabbi would meet him and ask if he had found
God yet. The man would pause, sometimes he would understand, and sometimes not.
But he continued to participate in village life. He came to share in their life:
He went to synagogue on Shabbat and prayed with them. Sometimes he really
prayed, sometimes he just mouthed words. He would help the elderly by chopping
wood for winter. He played with the children after school. He offered to run
errands for the ill. He shared in the joys and sorrows of his fellow villagers.
And during these days he began to believe that God was in the village. He was
not sure exactly where God was but sensed God was there. In fact at times he was
sure that he had met God.
One day, for the first time, the Rabbi came to him and said,
You have met God haven’t you?” And he said, Yes, I think I have. But I am not
sure why I met God or how or when. Is God only in this village?
The rabbi looked at him, “My son, God is not a thing that you
can look for and acquire. God is found in our deeds, in our interactions and in
our commitments. When you became a part of this village, you found God. Now you
are free to go.”
And the man went back to his town and prayed with his
countrymen, and studied with them, worked and celebrated with them. And God went
with him.
May this year be a year of blessing and health, of strength
and vigor, in which we too sense the Divine in our lives through our
relationships, our commitments and our concerns.
