Inspiring Sermons by Rabbi George Gittleman

In the Torah reading cycle of the synagogue, which Yom Kippur interrupts, we are at the very end of the book of Deuteronomy, which of course is the end of the Torah. It is a remarkable portion because it includes in it the death of Moses who, after peering over into the Promised Land, dies by Divine kiss and is buried in an unmarked grave, buried by God, so it seems...

Moses the great revolutionary; Moses the law-giver; Moses, the right hand of God; Moses, the greatest prophet who ever lives is taken from the story, his story, our story, right at the moment when his mission would be fulfilled, his journey rightfully concluded.

It's a remarkable Torah portion because of the way Moses' life ends. Even more dramatic, epic (I would say), is the way rabbinic tradition, especially the midrash tells the story...

In the Torah, Moses is mostly passive. He once begs God to let him pass over into the Promised Land, but God only consents to a viewing from the Jordan side; from then on Moses seems to silently accept his fate. Seems to be silent, but the Rabbis of old, the great sages of the Talmud, (the Oral Torah) took every opportunity, every gap in the story, every ambiguous word or phrase, as an opening to re-write the story, to describe another Moses who, far from accepting his fate, argues, begs, cajoles God to let him live and to let him finish his journey, complete his mission, complete his life before he dies. In the end even Moses must die; he is a man, human, flesh and blood. In the Torah's version Moses' humanity is lost in the text silence. In the Rabbis' version, as you shall see, Moses' struggle becomes ours, as he longs to live, so do we, as he yearns for completion, so do we, as he dies an unfinished story, so do we.

Let us turn to the midrash...

When Moses realized that the decree [of death] had been sealed against him, he drew a small circle around himself, stood in it, and said, "Master of the universe, I will not budge from here until You void that decree." At the same time, he donned sackcloth--indeed, wrapped himself in it--strewed ashes upon himself, and persisted in prayer and supplications before the Holy One, until heaven and earth--indeed, all things made during the six days of creation--were shaken...What did the Holy One do then? He had it proclaimed at every gate of every firmament that Moses' prayer be not accepted nor brought up to His presence, because the decree concerning him had been sealed.

Moses's prayers literally 'storm heaven's gates'. Even so, Moses must go the way of all humans, all earthlings � he must die.

Still, as the sound of Moses' prayer to Him above grew even stronger, the Holy One summoned the ministering angels and commanded them: Go down in haste, bolt all the gates of every firmament--for Moses' prayer was like a sword, ripping and tearing, and nothing could stop it.

In that instant, Moses said to the Holy One, "Master of the universe, known and revealed to You is the trouble and pain I suffered on account of Israel, until they came to believe in Your Name. How much pain I suffered because of them, until I inculcated among them the Torah and its precepts! I said to myself: As I witnessed their woe, so will I be allowed to witness their weal. Yet now that Israel's weal has come, You tell me, 'You shall not go over this Jordan' [Deut. 3:27]. Thus Your Torah, which asserts, 'In the same day thou shalt give him his hire' [Deut. 24:15], You manifestly turn into fraud.

The Torah says you should pay a laborer his wages on the same day. Moses here is using God's Torah to argue against God's decree that Moses must die. In affect, Moses is saying, you must pay me my wages, you must give me my reward- entry into the Promised Land. What Moses is saying is that his death � we would read here, death in general � is not fair...

Death don't have no mercy in this land...

Is such the reward for forty years of labor that I labored until Israel became a holy people loyal to their faith?" The Holy One replied, "Nevertheless, such is the decree that has gone forth from My Presence!"

Fair or not, Moses must die...

Then Moses said, "Master of the universe, if I am not to enter the Land alive, let me enter dead, as the bones of Joseph are about to enter." ... 'No' is God's reply... Then Moses said, "Master of the universe, if You will not let me enter the Land of Israel, allow me to remain [alive] like the beasts of the field, who eat grass, drink water, and thus savor the world--let me be like one of these." At that, God replied, "Enough. Speak no more to Me of this matter" (Deut. 3:26).

But Moses spoke up again, "Master of the universe, if not [like a beast of the field], then let me become like a bird that flies daily in every direction to gather its food and in the evening returns to its nest--let me be like one of these." The Holy One replied again, "Enough."

Life, in the end, even more than seeing the Promised Land, Moses yearns for more life...

When Moses saw that his prayer was not heeded, he went to implore heaven and earth, saying: Entreat mercy on my behalf. They replied: Before entreating mercy for you, we should entreat mercy for ourselves, for it is said, "The heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment" (Isa. 51:6). He then went to implore the sun and the moon, and said: Entreat mercy in my behalf. But these replied: Before entreating mercy for you, we should entreat mercy for ourselves, for it is said, "The moon shall be confounded and the sun ashamed" (Isa. 24:23).

Then he went to implore the stars and the planets, and said: Entreat mercy in my behalf. But these replied: Before entreating mercy for you, we should entreat mercy for ourselves, for it is said, "All the host of heaven shall molder away" (Isa. 34:4).

Then he went to implore the mountains and the hills, and said: Entreat mercy in my behalf. But these also replied: Before entreating mercy for you, we should entreat mercy for ourselves, for it is said, "The mountains will depart, and the hills be removed" (Isa. 54:10).

In other words, Moses sought refuge and help from the elements, but they too die in their own way. Nothing material is permanent, everything that comes into being must also go out of being..

Then he went to implore the sea and cried: Entreat mercy in my behalf. The sea replied: Son of Amram, why is this day different from former days? Are you not the same son of Amram who came to me with your rod, smote me, split me into twelve paths, when I could not withstand you because the Presence was proceeding at your right? What's happened to you now? As the sea reminded Moses of what he was able to do in his younger years, he cried out in anguish, "Oh that I were as in the months of old" (Job 29:2). [O sea], at the time I stood over you, I was a king in the world, but now, though I prostrate myself, no heed is given me.

You see here the Rabbis have a sense of humor, for a moment. It's pay back time for the Sea, which Moses (with God's help) split so that the Israelites could cross over. There is a bit of humor here until we see Moses' reaction: remembering how powerful he was when he was younger and how powerless he is in confronting death.

The saga continues...

Moses says to God: Master of the universe, shall the feet that went up to the firmament, the face that confronted the Presence, the hands that received the Torah from Your hand--shall these now lick dust?

The Holy One replied: Such was My thought [from the very beginning], and such must be the way of the world: each generation is to have its own interpreters of Scripture, each generation is to have its own providers, each generation is to have its own leaders. Until now it had been your portion to serve Me, but now your disciple Joshua's portion to serve has come.

Moses begs for life 'pulling out all the stops' arguing that he is too special, his role too important to die like every other men. God's response � no, each generation, in effect has its own Moses. Your time is over...

As Ecclesiastes says, "there is a time for everything under heaven..."

Moses then says, if I must die allow me first to be Joshua's disciple; and God allows him to try and see how it goes. Well you can guess what happens. Moses is miserable with envy.

Moses went over to Joshua and asked, "What did the God say to you?" Joshua replied, "When the Word of God was revealed to you, did I know what it said to you?" In that instant, Moses cried out in anguish and said, "Rather a hundred deaths than a single pang of envy. Master of universe, until now I sought life. But now my soul is surrendered to You."

After Moses became reconciled to his dying, the Holy One spoke up, saying: " 'Who will rise up for Me in behalf of evildoers?' [Ps. 94:16]. Who will rise up in Israel's behalf at the time of My anger? Who will stand up for them during My children's warfare [with enemies]? Who will entreat mercy in their behalf when they sin before Me?"

At that time Metratron came and, prostrating himself before the Holy One, sought to comfort Him: Master of the universe, Moses during his life was Yours, and when dead he will still be Yours.

Now that Moses finally accepts his fate, it is God who mourns... Some times we long for the suffering to end even if it means the death of those we love. We say to ourselves, "Death is better than a life of pain." Yet, when they die, it still really hurts.

God then sends his angles to gather Moses up but one by one they refuse until God sends the Angle of Death.

Now Moses is afraid. It is one thing to fill out the medical directive, it is another thing to face ones own death or to make that decision for another person...

At death's door, Moses bargains with God...

A divine voice came forth and said, "The time has come for you to depart from the world." Moses pleaded with the Holy One, "Master of the universe, for my sake, remember the day when You revealed Yourself to me at the bush; for my sake, remember the time when I stood on Mount Sinai forty days and forty nights. I beg You, do not hand me over to the angel of death."

God finally has mercy on Moses. He may have to die like every other creature of flesh and blood, but he doesn't have to die in the same way.

"Fear not, I Myself will attend you and your burial." God responds

But, Moses is not done yet... So much still to do, so many tasks yet to be completed...

Moses pleaded, "Then wait until I bless Israel. On account of the warnings and reprimands I heaped upon them, they never found any ease with me." Then he began to bless each tribe separately, but when he saw that time was running short, he included all the tribes in a single blessing. Then he said to Israel, "Because of the Torah and its precepts, I troubled you greatly. Now, please forgive me."

Here the Rabbis allow Moses to be our teacher � even Moses has regrets and yearns to be forgiven and fully accepted before he dies.

They replied, "Our master, our lord, you are forgiven." In their turn they said to him, "Moses our teacher, we troubled you even more, we made your burden so heavy. Please forgive us." Moses replied, "You are forgiven."

If only everyone could have such a deathbed seen... I see this as the Rabbis' shot at the ideal way to leave...

Again a divine voice came forth: "The moment has come for you to depart from this world." Moses replied, "Blessed be His Name! May He live and endure forever and ever!" Then he said to Israel, "I implore you, when you enter the Land, remember me and my bones, and say, 'Alas for the son of Amram, who had run before us like a horse, yet his bones fell in the wilderness.' "

Again a divine voice came forth and said, "Within half a moment you are to depart from the world."

Moses lifted both his arms, placed them over his heart, and called out to Israel, "Behold the end of flesh and blood." Moses arose and washed his hands and feet, and thus became as pure as a seraphim.

Then, from the highest heaven of heavens, the Holy One came down to take the soul of Moses, and with Him the three ministering angels, Michael, Gabriel, and Zagzagel. Michael laid out his bier, Gabriel spread a fine linen cloth at his head, while Zagzagel spread it at his feet. Michael stood at one side and Gabriel at the other. Then the Holy One said to Moses, "Moses, close your eyes," and he closed his eyes. "Put your arms over your breast," and he put his arms over his breast. "Bring your legs together" and he brought his legs together. ...

In that instant, the Holy One kissed Moses, and took his soul with that kiss.

At that, God wept along with the heavens, the earth, the ministering angels and all of Israel...

They wept for Moses and we weep for our dead. We weep, we remember, we long for more life, we struggle, we do battle even, yet we all must die, even Moses; it is the way of humanity, the price we pay for living...

Zikhronam L'brakha/May they be remembered for a blessing....

A woman was waiting at an airport one night, with several long hours before her flight. She hunted for a book in the airport shops, bought a bag of cookies and found a place to drop.

She was engrossed in her book but happened to see, that the man sitting beside her, as bold as could be. . .grabbed a cookie or two from the bag in between, which she tried to ignore to avoid a scene.

So she munched the cookies and watched the clock, as the gutsy cookie thief diminished her stock. She was getting more irritated as the minutes ticked by, thinking, "If I wasn't so nice, I would blacken his eye."

With each cookie she took, he took one too, when only one was left, she wondered what he would do. With a smile on his face, and a nervous laugh, he took the last cookie and broke it in half.

He offered her half, as he ate the other, she snatched it from him and thought... oooh, brother. This guy has some nerve and he's also rude, why he didn't even show any gratitude!

She had never known when she had been so galled, and sighed with relief when her flight was called. She gathered her belongings and headed to the gate, refusing to look back at the thieving ingrate.

She boarded the plane, and sank in her seat, then she sought her book, which was almost complete. As she reached in her baggage, she gasped with surprise, there was her bag of cookies, in front of her eyes.

If mine are here, she moaned in despair, the others were his, and he tried to share. Too late to apologize, she realized with grief, that she was the rude one, the ingrate, the thief. (Valerie Cox)

Rosh Hashanah has many names including: Yom Harat Olam/The day of the Worlds Inception, Yom Hazikaron/The day of Remembrance and Yom Hadin/The Day of Judgment.

I began with Valerie Cox�s poem this evening because tonight I want to explore with you the meaning and implications of Yom Hadin/The Day of Judgment as the header for the New Year.

The name comes from the Talmud where it says that on Rosh Hashanah God judges all of Creation. This ancient myth is played out the most explicitly when we pray Unetanatokef...

The imagery is this: God sits on his throne with the heavenly retinue behind him and two big books before him: The Sefer Hamavet/The Book of Death and Sefer Hachayim/The Book of Life. We, God�s subjects, pass before him and are judged; who shall live or who shall die, who by water, who by fire, etc.

For many of us, including me, this is the most challenging aspect of the Holiday Liturgy for lots of reasons. First, the myth of God as king is dead. In the ancient world a king was a good projection screen for God � they were powerful, scary, awe-inspiring figures. But in our age kings are impotent figureheads, not an image we would naturally relate to God!

Even if one can work with king as metaphor for God, the idea that God judges everyone and decides our fate in the year ahead is not only unbelievable to us, it also unbearable given the tragedies big and large that happens every year.

Did God blow up the deep water rig in the gulf and cause the oil to spill? Did God choose the cancer for our loved ones who struggled or maybe died from it in the last year? Does God decide who shall live and who shall die on the battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq? God in history is, for many of us, a mystery we simply cannot grasp.

So, when it comes to Yom Hadin, the Traditional understanding of this day � God as judge sitting on his throne, literally judging us, simply doesn�t ring true. What is true however is that some of us won�t be here next year. We might change the list of possible calamities � who by fire, who by water to who by cancer, who by financial disaster, and so forth; how ever we characterize it, the scary potent fact of our finitude is a real fact of life.

In fact, the one year that we actually edited unitonatokef out of the prayer book, people were livid! Why? Because we get that as dead as the old myths may be, they still carry a truth that we need to hear: stuff happens, life is precious and precarious, we are finite and have no time to waist, no time to loose.

Yom Hadin, the Day of Judgment. Ok, maybe this is not our favorite characterization of Rosh Hashanah. Nevertheless, we can find away to make it work; a judging God we can wrestle with. Getting control over the way we pass judgment on each other, now that is much harder and frankly more relevant, and why I started with the poem, The Cookie Thief.

It is no literary gem but it does illustrate how off base and distorted the judging mind can be; she�s convinced that this guy is eating her cookies. Her mind is overwhelmed with a host of judgments about him � �what chutzpa�, �how greedy�, �what a jerk�, She is thinking. No doubt, her stomach is in knots. She�s even ready to punch him out! What she doesn�t realize until it is too late is that the cookies in question are not even hers! All the judgment, ill treatment, the whole in her gut; it�s all based on a false assumption; her judging mind took her on an unnecessary and painful ride.

Judgments. We make them all the time. In fact, discernment, good judgment is a quality we hope for in our children and strive for in ourselves. But there is another kind of judging that is far less helpful and much more hurtful and that is when we make critical judgments about each other. Raise your hand if, when you arrived at services this evening, you didn�t have a moment of judgment about anyone else in the room, no internal comment about some ones hair or their clothes or their sent or... you name it, the judging mind is relentless in its search for the deprecating in others.

�Don�t be judgmental�, we are told yet it is so hard to shut the judging mind off. Why? What is it about being judgmental that is so attractive?

Jean Paul Sarte in his famous if not flawed work, Anti-Semite And Jew offers some insight into the power of the judging mind. In analyzing the Anti�Semite he suggests that the big gain the Anti-Semite gets out of demonizing the Jew is a false and irrational sense of right and wrong. You see, the minute the Anti-Semite labels the Jew as �bad� he, by default becomes �good� and all his behavior no matter how despicable, also becomes justifiable, even �good� in contrast to the �bad� or �evil� Jew.

In other words, judging others give us a false sense of our own goodness, or worth; in putting some one else down, we falsely elevate ourselves. That�s another unfortunate quality of the judging mind, it lies, making assumptions that seem true in the heat of the moment but turn out later to be false.

Jewish Tradition has lots to say about passing judgment on others. Hassidic lore and literature is especially focused on the foibles of judging others and that is where I would like to turn to now � a Hassidic story or two:

This is (supposedly) a true story about Rabbi Shmuel Shtrashun (1794-1872) He was a great scholar devoted to the welfare of the Jewish community of Vilna. He was especially concerned with the poor and even managed a Hebrew Free Loan Society to better their lives. Once, a simple Jew borrowed one hundred rubles for four months, promising to return it on the appointed day. Four months later, when the loan was due, he went to Rabbi Shmuel's home, but was told the rabbi was in the study hall. The man went there, and found Rabbi Shmuel deeply engrossed in a complex subject in the Talmud. The man laid the money in front of him. Rabbi Shmuel looked up, nodded, and went back to his studying. Certain that the rabbi had acknowledged his receipt of the money, the man went his way.

But Rabbi Shmuel had only nodded reflexively; his mind was totally concentrated on his study. He pored over the talmudic tome for a long time, turning pages back and forth. When he finished, he shut it and put it back on its shelf, oblivious of the money pressed between its pages.

Every week, Rabbi Shmuel would go over the account books to see which loans were paid up and which still had to be collected. When he came to the name of that Jew, he noticed that the loan was still outstanding. He summoned him and asked that he repay the one hundred rubles.

"But I already paid you!"

"You did not. It is written here that you still owe the money."

"I put the money on the table right in front of you!" the man insisted.

Rabbi Shmuel did not remember anything of the sort; he continued to demand payment. The man kept refusing, insisting that he had already paid. Finally, Rabbi Shmuel summoned him to rabbinical court.

When word of the case spread to the Jews of Vilna, the man fell into public disgrace. How dare he stand up against the famous scholar? He was, in effect, calling him a liar!

The hearing took place. Both sides were heard and the court ruled in favor of the poor man. It was one man's word against another's � there were no witnesses to the loan or the alleged repayment � and according to halakha (Jewish Law), in order to obligate a person to pay money, absolute proof of the obligation is required. The poor person was only instructed to take an oath that he had repaid the loan.

But the poor man had no sympathizers in all of Vilna. He was considered a thief, and a stubborn fool. His good name was ruined. People stopped talking to him. His son could not bear the disgrace and left Vilna altogether. Finally the man was even dismissed from his job. Still, he continued to insist that he had paid back his debt.

Time passed and Rabbi Shmuel needed to research the same tractate he had been studying when the loan was originally made. He pulled the volume down from the shelf and opened it up and discovered a sum of money�one hundred rubles! For a moment he was puzzled, wondering how such a large sum could have been misplaced there. Suddenly, it all came back to him. This was the missing money which the defendant had insisted he had repaid!

Rabbi Shmuel felt terrible. He had wronged a Jew. He had accused him falsely! Shaken to his core, he quickly summoned the man and said, "How can I possibly make amends for the anguish I caused you? I am prepared to make a public confession to clear your name. What else can I do to compensate you for your suffering?!"

The man stood before the rabbi. His face was gaunt, lined with the ravages of his ordeal. He said sadly: "My good name is already ruined. Even if you declare my innocence, people will not forget that I had once been accused of such a terrible thing. They might even think that you simply had pity on me and therefore decided to clear my name�despite my guilt. They will still consider me a liar and a thief. No, not even a public retraction would help me now. Besides, it would not bring my son back. He left Vilna out of shame." Rabbi Shmuel was thoughtful for a long time. How could he help the broken man before him, the man whose reputation he himself had ruined? Suddenly, he had an idea. "Tell your son to return to Vilna, and I will take him as a husband for my daughter! This will certainly restore your good name!"

Except for the happy ending (which seems contrived to me), the story of Rabbi Sh�muel and the loan illustrates the potential devastating consequences� the judging mind can have on those we unfairly or wrongly past judgment on.

Yes, we can hurt others, but what about ourselves? What does the judging mind do to us, the people harboring the potentially destructive thoughts? The following is one of my favorite Hassidic tales. Some of you, I am sure, have heard it from me before. It�s a classic story about the conflict between the Hassidim and the Mitnagim in the Jewish Community. The Mitnagim saw the Hassidim as flawed upstarts, dangerous innovators who were leading the people a stray. The story goes like this:

A mitnaged hears that the Hassidic Rebbe across town dances and celebrates with his disciples on the night of Kol Nidre, the evening of Yom Kippur. �How can this be?� He thinks to himself. �What an outrage!� �What Folly!� �I will go there myself and set them straight!� So he leaves his community and travels across town to where the Hassids worship and, sure enough, there they are dancing in a circle around their rebbe, their rabbi! Outraged the mitnaged rushes up to confront the rebbe who, calmly greets him as if he was expecting him to show up. The mitnaged is, for some reason speechless, it is as if time has slowed down and he is a distant observer. The rebbe, who is no ordinary man, tells him to observe his followers as they dance and whirl around them. �Notice their hearts�, he says. �They are glowing�, the mitnaged exclaims. �They are big and warm, full of compassion, so alive,� he says with astonishment. �Now�, the rebbe says, �look at yourself�. What does he see, a shriveled up, hard, lifeless lump. His judging mind has squeezed all the life out of his nishamah, his soul. He may be physically alive in the year ahead, but he�s dead inside and that inner sickness will eventually break down his physical wellbeing as well.

We don�t just hurt others with our judgments, we hurt ourselves as well.

There is a conflict in our community that�s felt by many people here tonight as well as some who are purposely absent, that I now want to address and that is the question of where we worship for the Holy Days. This may be uncomfortable for some. Nevertheless, I�d rather risk some discomfort than avoid discussing what is on our communal mind.

A little back ground. Ever since the passage of Prop 8 almost 2 years ago, Shomrei Torah has been struggling with our use of this lovely space which our LDS hosts give to us for free so graciously every year. The issue is that the LDS church took a leading role in funding and promoting Prop. 8, which denied same sex, couples the right to marriage. This is in direct conflict with Shomrei Torah�s mission to affirm and welcome all people regardless of sexual orientation amongst other things. A number of us including myself, have also been involved for years in the fight for marriage equality which that adds another layer of tension to the relationship.

We spent six months in deliberation over this question including hiring a consultant who led us through a process that resulted in us being here this year. But in spite of our best efforts, the question is still raw for some here tonight. Others in protest or because that just can�t feel comfortable here, refused to come all-together.

The great Talmudic sage Hillel teaches in Perkei Avot that one should not judge another until you have been in their place. Rather than taking sides and judging one way or another lets heed Hillel�s call, at least for a moment, and try to contemplate what it is like to be in the others shoes.

Let�s start with our Mormon hosts. How do you think they feel to find out that in spite of 13 years of unconditional service to us � the gift of their building with no strings of any kind attached � we are now questioning the appropriateness of being in their space. After all, they know we are on opposite sides on this issue and they still welcome us here. We can�t know for sure what they are feeling but we can assume that it doesn�t feel very good.

Now let�s stand in the shoes of those who feel we should worship elsewhere. For them our mission of inclusivity trumps the need to foster interfaith relations. They also feel that when it comes to civil rights, there is no other valid view; either you are for Marriage Equality or you are, by definition, a bigot. Some have judged this stance intolerant of those they disagree with; others have called them self centered, narrow minded, and divisive.

Those who argued to stay, besides appreciating the generosity of our Mormon neighbors, felt that it was precisely when we disagree that we should stay in relationship. A big problem in our world today, they argued was that, when groups disagree they disengage. These folks were branded by some as ignorant or insensitive, unprincipled or possibly even homophobic.

As for us, the leadership of the community; we managed to disappoint people on both sides. Some judged us as weak, ineffective or even hypocritical.

And finally, imagine being Gay � by the way, the LGBT folk in our community were not monolithic in their response to this challenge. They, like the rest of the congregation, fell on both sides of this issue. Nevertheless, there is one reality they all shared and that is having their family treated as a political football every election season.

Imagine being in the living room of your home with your kids watching T.V. when an ad comes on suggesting that you and your family were a threat to America, and that your very being, your essence was deviant, perverted and dangerous. Now imagine being asked to celebrate the most Holy time in the Jewish year in a space which sponsored those ads.

It�s very difficult to do as Hillel suggests and only judge others when you have been in their position. We can only guess what it is like to be the other. I think Hillel�s not so subtle message is to avoid judging others all together, a very tall order for most of us. Nevertheless, we at Shomrei Torah would benefit greatly from Hillel�s admonition, in regards to the decision about where we worship for Holy Days and any other challenging problem we confront as a community. What�s needed is less judgment and more compassion, less righteous indignation and more openness to truly hear the others perspective.

According to Jewish legend, when God first created the world it was founded under midat din, the attribute of strict justice. But soon after creation God realized that with such a foundation, the world could not be sustained, so God introduced midat rachamin, the attribute of compassion. Only then could the world be sustained. The New Year stands before us. We like God have a choice. We can live in the world with our own sense of � midat din � strict justice or judgment or we can choose to see the world through the lens of midat rachamin, compassion. One road leads to pain and spiritual, if not physical death. The other road is the way of healing and renewed life. The choice is up to us.

In Jewish communities around the world, people are gathering tonight to remember those murdered by the Nazis during World War II.

Commemorations will vary, but most will light candles as memorials to the slain, hear the words of survivors, pray and yes, there will be music of some kind or another. When I was asked by Alan Silow, the Executive Director of the Symphony to introduce the concert this evening, I hesitated for a moment wondering if my place was more in my own congregation than here with you this evening.

But it is a mistake to think of the Holocaust as something only of concern to the Jewish community. It is true that we were the Nazi�s main victims and one can not overstate the unimaginable trauma they inflicted on us � over six million slaughtered, whole worlds wiped off the face of the earth. It is also true that the Nazi�s killed approximately five million others � homosexuals, Roma (Gypsies), the disabled, political prisoners, religious people of conscience and others. Five million, close to the population of the entire Bay Area. Remembering the Holocaust calls attention to the most painful truth: genocide is a universal human problem. There were genocides before the Shoah � the Native Americans in this country and the Armenians in Turkey, for example, and sadly, there have been a number of genocides since World War II � Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and now, Darfur.

After World War II, a phrase arose in the Jewish Community � �Never Again!� �Never Again,� we proclaimed, would such a thing happen to us. �Never Again.� The phrase, �Never Again� is only truly meaningful, truly moral if it includes all people everywhere. To confront the Shoah is to confront the radical evil of genocide, a dark stain on the universal human heart. Until genocide is no more, we are all vulnerable, we are all responsible.

One of the cruel truths of genocide that was made horribly manifest in the Holocaust is the attempt, on the part of the perpetrators, to steal away every bit of the humanity from their victims; to brutalize them into oblivion. Some 2,000 years ago, a Jewish sage named Hillel, the greatest rabbi of his day, taught, �In a place where no one is human, one should strive to be human.� (Pirke Avot 2:5) This ancient teaching offers us a way to understand how and why the four composers who�s music we will hear tonight worked as they did under the most difficult of circumstances.

�In a place where no one is human, one should strive to be human.� We see in these four composers and in many others in the camps, various forms of resistance, heroic attempts to be human in a place where there was no humanity, where every effort was made to deny them the most basic elements of what it means to be, b�nei adam, a human being. To be human is to care for others. To be human is to learn, to teach, to pray, to sing, to create, to remember the past and to believe in the promise of the future. All this happened in the camps in spite of the constant threat of death, horrible violence, starvation, degradation, and disease.

A few examples:

Lillian Judd lives here in Santa Rosa. She is also a survivor of Auschwitz. She is a personal friend and hero of mine. She tells this story:

She was a slave laborer in a sewing factory. The workers there had to meet a certain quota every day or else� The Jewish Holy Day of Yom Kippur was coming and she and a few others decided that they would try not to work that day, but how? They made a few garments beyond their quota every day for a week and stashed them where no one could see them. On the day of Yom Kippur they would act like they were working but in fact they would not actually do the work and they would still meet their quota.

Yom Kippur came; they did their best not to work. In the end they were caught and beaten within an inch of their lives. Their plan failed but in a small way, they were redeemed by their heroic choice to assert their humanity.

�In a place where no one is human, one should strive to be human� Another example: Years ago I ran across a most unusual cookbook called, In Memory�s Kitchen. It was filled with recipes written by the woman interned at Theresienstadt; a cookbook written by women who were literally being starved to death. In spite of their hunger these women labored to leave a �memoir,� through food, a compilation of traditional dishes, of �dream� recipes, a cookbook not for cooking, but for remembering a time when the authors had children and husbands to feed, and reasons to feast and celebrate. This original manuscript, a hand-sewn notebook full of faltering script, is preserved in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. Michael Berenbaum, the renowned Holocaust scholar, writes in his forward to the book:

�For some the way to deal with this hunger was to repress the past, to live on only in the present, to think only of today, neither yesterday, nor tomorrow. Not so the women who compiled this cookbook. They talked of the past, they dared to think of food, to dwell on what they were missing� therefore, this cookbook compiled by women in Theresienstadt, by starving women in Theresienstadt, must be seen as yet another manifestation of defiance, of a spiritual revolt against the harshness of given conditions. As such, this work� is not to be savored for its culinary offerings but for the insight it gives us into the extraordinary capacity of the human spirit to transcend its surroundings and to defy dehumanization��

�In a place where no one is human, one should strive to be human.� Pavel Haas, Hans Krasa, Victor Ullman, Erwin Shulhoff, the composures we honor tonight, they strove to be human in a brutally dehumanizing place. Art, music, is an essential expression of our humanity. When survival becomes your daily dread, art becomes even more essential for life, �an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, �I am alive, and my life has meaning.�� (Karl Paulknack).

One can only imagine the struggles these artists experienced. One can only admire their courage. In truth, only those who were there can fully understand. We can only look in horror and in awe from a great distance.

I conclude with words from the final entry in Victor Ullmann�s diary. Victor Ullman composed 23 works while in Theresienstadt. On October 16th, 1944 he, along with most of the other cultural leaders of the camp, was transported to Auschwitz. He died in his second day there. His remains, like countless others, were turned into smoke.

He writes:

�I have composed quite a lot of new music here in Theresienstadt, mostly at the request of pianists, singers and conductors� It would be as irksome to count them, as it would be to remark on the fact that in Theresienstadt, it was impossible to play a piano as long as there were no instruments. Future generations will also not be interested in hearing about the appreciable lack of manuscript paper. The only thing worth emphasizing is that Theresienstadt has not hampered my musical activity but has actually encouraged and supported it. In no way have we merely sat lamenting by the rivers of Babylon; our cultural will has been adequately proportional to our will to live. And I am convinced that all who strive to wrest form out of resistant matter, both in life and art, will agree with me...� �To wrest form out of resistant matter�, to strive to be human in the face of inhumanity, to believe in the promise of the future even unto death; this is the legacy of our composers this evening, this is the prayer they left in their music we are about to hear.

What a pleasure it is to be here. I have known Sue for ten years. It�s amazing what you don�t know about someone: I didn�t know that she could sing so beautifully. One thing I�ve known all along is that Sue is one of the most humble and understated, yet talented clergy I know. I�m honored to stand and share the pulpit with you this morning.

I�m going to start by reading from the Torah, specifically the book of Exodus, Chapter 18. I�m only going to read seven verses, first in Hebrew and then in English. I thought you might enjoy hearing it in Hebrew...

1] Jethro priest of Midian, Moses� father-in-law, heard all that God had done for Moses and for Israel His people, how the LORD had brought Israel out from Egypot. 2] So Jethro, Moses� father-in-law, took Zipporah, Moses� wife, after she had been sent home, 3] amd jer two sons of whom one was named Gershom, that is to say, �I have been a stranger in a foreign land�; 4] and the other was named Eliezer, meaning, �The God of my father was my help, and He delivered me from the sword of Pharoah.� 5] Jethro, Moses� father-in-law, brought Moses� son s and wife to him in the wilderness, where he was encamped at the mountain of God . 6] He sent word to Moses, �I, your father-in-law Jethro, am coming to you, with your wife and her two sons.� 7] Moses went out to meet his father-in-law; he bowed low and kissed him; each asked after the other�s welfare, and they went into the tent.

I just read what is called Parshat Yitro, the Portion of Jethro. It�s actually quite famous in Jewish tradition, but not for those first seven verses. If we were to read a little further along, do you know what happens? Moses receives the Eseret Dibrot, The Ten Commandments from God on Har Sinai, Mount Sinai. So, most people just read through the first seven verses, to get right to one of the most important passages of the Hebrew Bible: the receiving of the Ten Commandments. In fact, that�s what I did for many a year. I�m not sure why, but last year when it came time to read this section of the Torah I looked over those first verses, and I was astonished at what I found. I was stopped in my mental tracks. It�s amazing how you can look at something a hundred times, but the hundred and first time you see it, you see something new, and something obvious that you had missed all along. That�s actually a really great lesson about scripture and also about life. Beware of saying or thinking, �Been there, done that.� Beware of that.

Judaism has the sense that everything can be found in scripture: Sheva Panim v�Torah, �the Seventy Faces of Torah. If you look into it deep enough, you can find what you need there. So, okay: I looked, and this time I saw something I had missed before. What came to me this time that I had missed all those other readings?

First let me remind you of what happened: Jethro, Moses� father in law, hears the news of �all that God has done for Moses and B�nei Yisrael� (the Children of Israel). What had God done? You remember the plagues? Can you name a few plagues for me? (Audience responds �frogs�) The kids love the frogs. You know, at our seder table we get little plastic frogs, and bugs and stuff and we throw them all around. Seder is the celebratory meal when we celebrate Passover. So there are the plagues, and then the splitting of the sea, etc.

Now Jethro heard all about the many miracles God wrought for the Israelites�, and he was coming back to meet Moses and reunite him with his family. He gathers up his daughter, Zipporah Moses� wife, and their two sons Gershom and Eliezer; and hits the road toward the Israelite camp. Now comes the part I just read. What is striking, if you read these seven verses carefully, is the repetition, especially of the fact that Jethro is coming with Zipporah and her sons in tow. In fact three times in seven verses the text makes this explicit. If you know anything about numbers in the Bible, both three and seven are special, magical, mysterious numbers. When they come up when reading your bible, you should wake up, because it�s telling you that there is something there that you will miss if you don�t read carefully. So, three times in seven verses it says, �Hey, I�m coming with Zipporah and your two sons.�

Verse two: �So Jethro, Moses� father in law, took Zipporah, Moses� wife, after she and her two sons had been sent home� and then, I�ll put parenthesis (before the revolution began), because it really is a story of a revolution, the exodus from Egypt. Verse five: He, that is Jethro, sent word to Moses, �I, your father in law, Jethro, am coming to you with your wife and her two sons.�� Now given the general economy of words in the Bible, this repetition is remarkable. Right? It�s there for a reason. It�s not just there because the guy or woman, most likely to be a guy, writing this wanted to be repetitive. It�s not there just for a literary device. There�s a reason why it�s there�

One would think that with all the buildup, there would be quite a reunion. After all, Zipporah and her sons had been apart from Moses for over a year. That they were sent back before the revolution began makes sense. It also stands to reason that they would meet up afterward �on the other sides�. Given all that happened and the time that had elapsed one could reasonably expect an emotional scene. You know, Moses running to greet his family, scooping Zipporah up in his arms, right? You could see that. And then you could hear the kids saying �Abba, abba!�, �Daddy, daddy!� Right? I could almost tear up, with the thought of the reunion after such a time apart, and such big things happening.

We even have biblical precedence for emotional homecomings or reunions. For example if you know your Bible: Jacob�what happens to Jacob when he reunites with his brother Esau, who by the way he stole the birthright and blessing from? They hug?! The Bible says they put their heads on each others� shoulders and they wept! I mean, for the Bible to tell us that, when it gives us such little detail in other places�.Abraham nearly kills his son on a mountain, and we know nothing about the emotion of the day, but here the bible tells us that Jacob and Esau wept on each others� shoulders! How about Joseph and his brothers? After Joseph really messes with his brothers if you go back through the story you will see that he gives them a really hard time. Of course, they sold him into slavery, and nearly killed him. You know, if you want to study dysfunctional families you study the Bible. Okay, so they were tough on Joseph but finally when Joseph reveals himself, what does he do? He wails. He cries and cries. All of Egypt hears him crying, says scripture. And then we have Jacob and Joseph when they reunite. Of course, Jacob thinks that Joseph is dead. But still when they reunite, it�s quite an emotional reunion. But not this time! Moses does greet Jethro. Verse seven: �Moses when out to meet his father in law, he bowed low to the ground and kissed him. Each asked the others welfare, and then went into the tent.� WHAT ABOUT ZIPPORAH!? Seriously, what about Zipporah? And what about his sons, Gershom and Eliezer? Where are they? Don�t they count? Don�t they matter? It�s astonishing really.

As a Jew, as a rabbi I have this other body of literature that pastors don�t really have so much. It�s called the Midrash: Ancient, sacred Jewish legends that are almost as old as the Bible, and considered, really, almost as authoritative. They are legends that are attached and associated with the Bible that usually fill in the gaps. Usually if I have a question like this I can usually go to the Midrash and find the answer. So, I looked there, and I found nothing! As far as I can discern, sadly Jewish tradition is silent on this issue. It�s simply not concerned. Zipporah and in this case her sons, are merely a means to an end, exchangeable property for cementing the bond between the men that poses them, Moses and Jethro. Ouch! That doesn�t feel good. This doesn�t feel good to me. This may not trouble the Tradition, but it certainly troubles me, and I think it also troubled the authorial voice of the Torah as well. �Authorial voice� is a fancy term for saying the voice that speaks through the Torah. Because I, like many, would assume that there is more than one writer, but I think that one voice comes through. And I am sure, well I don�t want lightening to strike, I�m pretty sure� I�m sure with a small �s�: that because of the way it is laid out here, because of these three references in seven verses, the Torah wants us to see this. You know sometimes the Torah teaches by what it says, and sometimes the Torah teaches by what it doesn�t say, what�s omitted.

It�s troubling, and it begs us to address this question: how does it feel to be invisible? How does it feel to be brought from the wilderness to the very edge of the tent, to the very edge of the tent but not let in; to be left out, as it were, at the edge holding a heavy emotional bag. One can almost imagine, and hear Zipporah trying to reassure her sons��Daddy is really important now, and very busy, but don�t worry he really does love you.� Even though he completely blew you off�didn�t say a word after over a year, he really does love you. How does it feel to be brought to the edge of the tent and not be let inside?

This is a painful question and one that cries out explication. It can also be a very personal question, painful and personal. Because I bet that some of you feel like Zipporah and her sons right now in some way in your life. And I want to come back to the personal in a moment, but let�s start with the community first.

Who is at risk in our community for this kind of treatment? Tizporah was a woman, and likely of brown skin. She was also a Medionite, not of the Tribe of Israel. She was in other words an immigrant, a resident who was not a citizen. I think it is fair to say that the large, mostly Latino immigrant population in our community is very vulnerable to this kind of treatment. Okay� you can mow my lawn, you can clean my house, you can empty my bed pan when I am in the hospital or the nursing home; but God forbid that you should get a drivers license so you can go to work for me. And if you get hurt on the job, or someone in your family is sick, who are you to think that you can come to the hospital and get good health care. Oh, and if you have kids, well your kids are really messing up our schools, why should we have to educate you? We�ll look the other way while you literally risk your life and the lives of your family to cross the desert to fill jobs we don�t want to do. We will let you do our most menial tasks but the minute you ask for compensation and benefits for the services rendered�we�ll send you packing because by the way you�re �Illegal.� Poor Mexico � so close to the United States, and so far away from God!

How does it feel to be brought to the very edge of the tent, and not be let inside? Both our congregations are involved in community organizing through the North Bay Sponsoring Committee. We are really just getting started, but it has been very worthwhile so far, correct? It is great having Sue involved, and I hear great things about what you all are doing. Like for example, you finally met the church right around the corner. Isn�t that unbelievable? And, you have some common cause, and your pantry is really going to get a boost from them. And of course the pantry is needed now more than ever. And then Sue has been talking about a garden that she has been developing and has gotten inspired for you all to create here, and I hear maybe the garden is actually going to happen. All thanks to this organizing effort.

It has been meaningful for us as well, and one benefit is getting to hear the stories from some of the Latino folk living in our community. I hate to generalize, but there is a large immigrant population, many of which are undocumented living in Sonoma County . We are in fact a mirror of the country as a whole where 15% of the workforce is immigrant and about 5% undocumented. We are talking millions of people, no one knows the numbers for obvious reasons�it�s hard to count right? but we are talking millions of people. The result is a growing, very vulnerable group of second class residents without the rights and protections of citizenship. I want to repeat this because it is important to understand. The result is a growing, very vulnerable group of second class residents without the rights and protections of citizenship.

The stories are really troubling. Every joint house meeting, when we bring the groups together, I have sat with people for whom Spanish is their first language. And the stories are heartrending. First you should know that as hard as the economic downturn has been for us, it has been much, much harder for them. We�re talking real poverty; we�re talking not being able to feed yourself. We�re talking about nowhere to go, no safety net for them. No healthcare, you know really scary stuff. Last week I sat with a group for a little while and heard a teen age girl my daughters age tell the group how afraid she was to walk to school�from home to school and back. Neighborhood safety for her is not a guarantee. But for my white kid on the other side of town�.totally safe. But most troubling, and I would say complicated of all, are the stories of checkpoints and car impoundments. So I am going to tell you a little bit of the story. You�ve seen it in the news actually, or read it in the paper.

The Santa Rosa Police Department has set up check points for drunk driving, they say. And in some cases it seems really to be that. And they have caught a number of people who have been driving while drinking; and that is a good thing. I was almost killed by a drunk driver. I used to drive a motorcycle in San Francisco. I was hit at a stoplight, flew a block in the air and landed on my head, broke open my skull and was unconscious for 14 hours. So, I think that is great, catch all the drunk drivers you want. But there is another problem. Sometimes these checkpoints aren�t set up when you would normally catch someone drinking and driving, like on a Friday night. Sometimes they are like four in the afternoon. This is for sure true in Petaluma, but it is not as clear what is happening in Santa Rosa. Although in my neighborhood I know that people have been stopped in the middle of the day, and it is not because they think that the drivers have been drinking. What happens is you get stopped and asked if you have a license. If you don�t then your car is impounded for 30 days, and in that 30 day time charges accrue and then there is thousands of dollars to get yourself out of this mess. It is complicated because one: we don�t want people to be driving without drivers licenses; two: we don�t want people driving under the influence; but three: we don�t want to pray on a vulnerable minority and take advantage of things they can�t do anything about. Do you see what I mean? They can�t get a driver�s license!

Now in one group I was with, a man went to Oregon, where he could get a driver�s license. He has a driver�s license from Oregon; he went to Oregon to get it! He still lives in fear, he has a family, he has to go to work, he has to have a car. The Oregon license won�t work; they will still impound his car. It is a complex issue, not simple, but what is simple, is when we see a vulnerable group being exploited and persecuted, that�s the simple part and the part we can do something about. You know, as a Jew, I am more than familiar with such treatment and where it can lead. And this is one of the things I hope we can work on together as we organize. We can see where the most vulnerable people are, whether it is in terms of immigration or health care, and see if we can find winnable issues to make them less vulnerable and give them more power through our collective power.

Okay, who else do we bring to the edge of the tent, but not let in. Well, how about the GLBT folk in our community? Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender. This is so painful. America � the land of the free, the FREE. The place where religion and state are supposed to be separated. The place where the minority is protected from the tyranny of the majority�as long as you are heterosexual. So close to the very edge of the tent but not, God forbid, let inside. Imagine your life partner, your spouse of twenty years is critically ill and in ICU in the hospital. But you can�t go and be with her because you are not considered �family.� Imagine, you and your partner have a child. It is your child, you raised that child, and then God forbid your partner gets sick and dies. And now you have to fight for the right to keep your OWN CHILD! Imagine, imagine being the faithful minister of a church, for years, with a long term spouse (I�m gonna cry), and not being able to publically acknowledge that and sanctify your union. This is very painful and wrong. To the edge of the tent, but not inside!

How about here in this church? Who here is brought the very edge of the tent, but not fully and truly welcomed inside. Lucky for you guys, I don�t know your church� so I can�t speak for you. But see�I know who some of the folk that I serve are, and maybe by sharing that story a little bit it will touch you as well.

One challenge we have is welcoming republicans�. I knew you would laugh, but seriously: liberal churches and synagogues are often proud of how inclusive they are, but their doors do not in actuality open, truly welcoming people with more conservative political views than the majority of the community. There�s a problem, because you can be a good progressive Jew, liberal when it comes to your approach to Jewish tradition, progressive when it comes to your approach to your religion (I would guess this to be true of Presbyterians also) and be a Republican as well. You can. And we have trouble honoring a true diversity of opinion in our community, and I am really unsettled by this. �Rabbi, you are so open and inclusive, except when it comes to my views.� It hurts. We should listen to that voice, we should be cognizant of this weakness we liberals have.

In truth I have never known a church or synagogue that did not consider itself a warm and welcoming place. Have you ever met a church that said �Oh yeah, we�re nasty. We are really mean and we don�t like people much.� Every church and synagogue considers itself a warm and welcoming place. The leadership may wonder, they may have an inkling that there are problems, but the church or synagogue in general will say they have a warm culture. And the other truth is this, I have never known any group or community where it has not been true that some people were brought in to the very edge of the tent �Come on, join us, oh we are looking for volunteers on this committee� and then when you show up you were shut out in either subtle or not so subtle ways. Is that true here sometimes? Never true? I bet it is. So you should do some soul searching. I think that Shomrei Torah is a very warm and welcoming place, but I can list a half dozen examples of where we think we are, but then a certain kind of person shows up in a certain situation and they are not actually welcome.

That�s a little bit about church and synagogue. How about in your own family? How about in your own home? Maybe you feel like the outsider, right now. Are you the person in your family that never really gets welcomed inside, either to the whole family, or your parent�s hearts, or your brother or sisters home? Maybe you are the one with the closed door, or the closed heart. One of the great things about our organizing efforts is that it encourages us to truly and honestly be more inclusive by actually talking to and listening (that is the key part) to each other. See talking inclusivity is cheap, but actually engaging one another, that is the real thing. Because it is hard to shut someone out to leave them at the edge of the tent, and not welcome them inside, when you know their story, their pain, and you see our shared humanity (your pain, your story) in them. And it is not just their humanity that we recognize when we truly see each other. It�s God. It�s God in me and it is God in you. It is God in us, and it�s God in them. Remember Torah teaches that we are created B�tzelem Elohim, in the image of God. The image is grand, the challenge is actually living it and seeing it in the other every day.

We would all like to think that this text and what it teaches by omission speaks to anyone but ourselves. �Not me. Not my family. Not my church.� Yet we know deep inside that can�t be true. Always someone is on the outside, and someone is being left out, and someone is in! I wish the Torah and Jewish tradition hadn�t left Tzipporah and her sons standing there at the edge of the tent ignored and alone. I wish the story was different. The text as it is, is an affront to my modern sensibilities. I don�t like it. Nevertheless, the picture of them just standing there, and the silence, the silence of the text is instructive on its own.

Kol ha�olam kulo gesher tsar m�od v�haikar lo l�fached klal: The whole world is a narrow bridge, but the essence, (really� the crux of the matter), is not to be afraid

(Rabbi Chaim Nachim of Breslav)

These days, this saying is best known as a Jewish camp song, but it is actually a very serious and deep teaching. Kol ha�olam kulo gesher tsar m�od v�haikar lo l�fached klal: The whole world is a narrow bridge, and the essence is not to be afraid. Fear. Rabbi Nachman teaches that the essential thing in life is not to be afraid. The focus of my thoughts this evening is fear because we are plagued by fear. In Hebrew the Holy Days are called the yamim noraim, which is often translated as the �Days of Awe.� But it turns out that in Hebrew the word for �awe� and the word for �fear� are the same. Traditionally the Holy Days were in fact a fearful time for our ancestors, and maybe it is so for some of us as well.

So think of the imagery for a moment. The book of life, we are told, is open and God is up on God�s throne, up there somewhere. And God decides who gets written in the book of life, and who gets written in the book of death. Who shall live and who shall die. That�s pretty fearful. God as king and judge, sitting in (it is a he in this case) his heavenly court, passing judgment on our lives in the year ahead. In truth I think it�s hard for us to relate to this aspect of our tradition because the myths are dead for us. When I say �myth� I don�t mean it in a pejorative or negative way. I simply mean �King� as majestic and all powerful doesn�t really work for us anymore; the kings that we know today are pretty impotent: right? So the idea of God as King is a �dead myth� for us, But not for our ancestors. In fact our Eastern European ancestors had a much more active religious imagination. And this kind of religious based fear was real to them. It was real to them in a way that we can�t really grasp. They trembled before their God. And these, the Holy Days, were a fearful time, this was a scary time, it was also a hopeful time; there is a disconnect between us and our tradition, from our past and today. Nevertheless, if we let go of the fact that the myths are dead, they are still meaningful. It is still awesome, for example, to recognize that some of us will not be here next year. Some of us in this room will not be here next year. And our fate, our destiny, our lives are in so many ways out of our control. The truth is we have not a clue what will happen to us, our loved ones, or our community. And when we bump up and face that fact, it can be scary. And then those myths come alive again for us as well.

Our European forefathers and foremothers had a lot to be afraid of in a concrete physical way. Poverty, disease, political instability, pogroms. Thankfully, we don�t have the same kind of raw existential threats crouching at our door as they did. Now our fear is more amorphous, like a bad storm or bad weather that�s in the distance. You can see the cumulous clouds, you can maybe see the flashes of lightening and maybe with a great delay hear the roll of thunder, but it hasn�t arrived to our door just yet.

We are living in a fearful time, globally. I am not going to list them all� Do I need to? Okay� beg me for mercy� Nationally, it is frightening. Locally, there is plenty to be afraid of right here in Sonoma County. And then of course it is an election year, and that is scary in itself. Both sides play on our fears. I think one side more than the other, but I will leave that for you to figure out for yourselves.

Kol ha�olam kulo gesher tsar m�od v�haikar lo l�fached klal: the whole world is a narrow bridge, and the essence is not to be afraid. Fear. Let�s start with the anatomy of fear: what happens to us physically when we are afraid. Imagine for a moment...I would ask you to close your eyes, but I don�t think we have our defibrillator working yet. Imagine for a moment that you are walking along a wooden path. You come around a corner, and there coiled up against a rock in the path is a huge rattle snake. It�s rattles a buzz, it hisses, and then it lunges out at you. It actually happened to Laura and me. It didn�t strike us, it barely missed us, but it ruined our trip to Yosemite.

This is what happens physically: various parts of the brain signal the nervous system and the organs to prepare to take action. The pupils of the eyes dilate. The bronchia in the lungs dilate to admit more oxygen, hairs stand on end, heart rate and blood pressure rise to supply the body and the brain with fuel, the liver begins to break down sugars for quick energy, blood vessels in the skin contract causing chills and sweating, the spleen pumps out white blood cells in case there is an injury, stomach and intestine enzyme secretions and muscle activity needed for digestions stop, and blood vessels in the stomach and intestines contract to divert blood to the muscles. The bladder and the colon prepare to empty. The central portion of the adrenal medulla floods the bloodstream with adrenaline. Breathing quickens, the entire body is in a state of high alert. Whew! This is what every rabbi goes through during the Holy Days, and it is called �fight or flight� in layman�s terms. The anatomy of fear validates what we feel: �freaked out�, overwhelmed frightened to death, scared �.!

Okay, but is it helpful, this �flight or fight� response? To really understand what this means to us, it helps to think in terms of metaphor. And the metaphor that I like to use is; a deer in the headlights. Now, picture a deer in the headlights: it is hunkered down a bit, eyes wide open, a car is coming, and it is thinking to itself that is a foreign looking, large object is coming toward it that doesn�t look safe! �I think it is coming after me!..., it is going to kill me! I know I should move, but I am a deer trapped in the headlights, and it�s going to run me over!� And then, guess what happens�splat!

When we are frightened we have trouble thinking and acting consciously. We lose our minds in large part due to the huge physiological reaction that fear causes � our bodies and our minds are flooded and overwhelmed physically: Kol ha�olam kulo gesher tsar m�od v�haikar lo l�fached klal: The whole world is a narrow bridge, but the essence is not to be afraid.

That�s a little bit about the physiology of fear. Now I want to move to how does Judaism help us with fear? And I want to offer a few spiritual responses. What I am about to share I learned from Rabbi Avi Weiss, who is a renowned Orthodox rabbi and teacher from the East Coast; he gave a seminar for the Northern California Board of Rabbis which I attended a while back. His first teaching about fear was from the famous medieval rabbi named Isaaac Abravanel. Rabbi Abravanel was born in 1437 and lived through the Spanish inquisition. He knew a thing or two about fear.

His teaching about fear comes from his commentary to the book of Genesis, specifically from the story of Jacob and Esau. We don�t have time for the whole story, but just remember that Jacob stole Esau�s birthright, he went away for a long time and he came back with his wives and kids and everything else. Word came to him that his brother was waiting for him with 400 men. He was afraid! His fear seems obvious to us but Jewish Tradition, which tends to glorify the Patriarchs wonders why a great man like Jacob, who we�re named after (he was latter re-named �Israel�), would be afraid? That is the issue that Abravnel is dealing with. And what he does is he makes a distinction between feeling afraid, acting out of fear, and acting in spite of one�s fear. Abravanel teaches that it is human to be afraid and to act out of fear. To run, to hide, to fight, that�s human. By the way, I have learned over time that if I act out against someone and please forgive me (and I am serious), if I did that in the past year to you. That if I do that, it is usually because I am afraid. I am afraid of failure, of judgment, of being alone, of death. Usually that is where that kind of behavior comes from. And I have also learned that if someone acts out against me, at me, they are usually acting from a place of fear. We become psychologically like a cornered animal reacting from a primitive place of self protection. It is not very pretty and it is not very helpful. And as we enter into the New Year, it is helpful to reflect on how we might have acted out in fear, and hurt someone or ourselves. Take a moment, just take a moment. Did you let someone have it because you were afraid in some way? Next time you let someone have it, when you go over it in your mind, ask yourself, �Was I afraid?�

Abravanel says this is human behavior, acting out in fear. However there is a higher ground we humans can attain, and that is when we act in spite of fear. The hero is not fearless; another word for the fearless is the foolish! The hero is not fearless. The fearless person in a real, dangerous situation is a fool. The hero is the person who acts in spite of her or his fear.

A few examples� One of my heroes, actually heroines, is Lillian Judd. I don�t know if she made it here this evening, but Lillian Judd is an amazing woman. She is an Auschwitz survivor, and she is one of my heroes. And she has many stories of how she acted in spite of her fear. I was having breakfast with her not too long ago. For the last decade I have had the privilege of breakfast at her house about once a quarter. She makes me mushroom omelets and so much other food that I don�t eat for the rest of the day! She cooks, I eat and she tells me stories. This is the story she told me when I asked her, �Tell me Lillian a story of acting in spite of fear.�

She said, �Well, I was in Auschwitz, and I was working in a little factory. And we were forced to cut curtains lengthways into pieces. And we had a quota that we had to make every day. And I struggled to make my quota every day. And if you did not make your quota you were either killed or beaten senseless. Some of the ladies knew how to sew, but I had not a clue how to do any of it, but I was holding my own. Someone told us that Yom Kippur was coming. And we decided as a group, me and the other girls that were there [they were 17 and 18 years old] that we were not going to work on Yom Kippur.� �Well Lillian,� I said, �How were you going to do that?� �We decided that we would make our quota and extra every day and we would hide the extra under our quota, so that when the day of Yom Kippur came, we would make like we were working all day, but we actually would not be cutting any fabric.� That is acting in spite of fear. It was not a happy story. They got caught. And she barely survived. But that is not the point, and that was not her point. She was illustrating for me, and all of us, how an everyday person can act in spite of their fear, in the most difficult situations.

Here is another example from one of the greatest teacher/Jewish thinkers I know, Moshe Habertal, who lives in Israel. He is a philosopher, a very gentle man. But he grew up in Israel, he served in the Israeli army. He was a tank commander. He tells a story of being ordered to take a village in the West Bank. He was told to go in his tank to the top of a hill overlooking a valley. �Just get your tank to the top of that hill.� He is driving his tank. There is a problem: there is a car in the way. �Look�you know a Styrofoam cup?� He asks. �Well that is what a car is like to a tank if you drive into it. It will just smush it like it is Styrofoam! So I have to ask myself, shall I just smush this Palestinian man�s car, and realize that for him that could have been twenty years of work to own that car, that car could have been his livelihood, and meant maybe everything to that family. Or do I stop my tank, get out of my tank, and go door to door finding out who�s the car it is and ask them to move it?� Obviously if he does that he is going to put himself in danger. So this is what he does: he gets out of his tank, he goes down to a couple of doors. They are not answering, no one is getting out. But finally someone does. He says �It is my car, thank you very much.� And he moves it, and Moshe moves his tank into position. That�s acting in spite of fear.

So those are kind of heroic situations, but these are not heroes. And what I want to say to you is that it can be true for us as well. Just by continuing to hope, to dream, to love and to live toward our highest aspirations, we can act in spite of our fears. It�s when we give up that we act in fear. So that�s one religious response taught by Rabbi Isaac Abravanel who lived through the Spanish inquisition and fled to Lisbon in the 15th century.

Another response to fear I want to teach you is from Rabbi Chaim Solovetich, one of the greatest Orthodox thinkers of the 20th century. He relates a story about a psychiatrist in his community who is ready to become ba�al t�shuvah that means born again religious. But there is one concept that is keeping him from making this transition and that is: yirat Hashem/ Fear of God. Yirat Hashem is a basic theological concept in traditional Judaism. He says, �You know Rabbi, I am really engaged now religiously. I see a lot of value in Judaism. But I am a psychiatrist, and I know that fear is a bad thing. And this is my stumbling block. If you can help me over this stumbling block I am ready to commit to a more Jewish life.� And this is what the great Rav said: �I am not a psychiatrist, but I know one thing; fear is a part of being human. Everyone has fear. Fear of failure, fear of loss of money, of aging, of sickness. There is however one great fear that pushes away all the other smaller fears. What is that fear? It is fear of the Holy One, Blessed be He.� I could leave you here, but you must be asking yourself what I asked myself. And that is, �What does this mean to us?� What does it mean?

Well let me tell you first what I don�t think it means. I don�t think he is saying, �just have faith.� And I will tell you why. This guy lived through the Shoah, the Holocaust. Not him personally, but he saw most of his community completely obliterated by the Nazis. He knows better than to say that if you have faith, things are going to be okay. I don�t believe that is what he meant to say. This is what I think he is teaching: one way to handle our fears is to place them in a bigger context. And this is hard, but actually it is not all about us. Even if it all goes wrong for us, there is a bigger picture that we are a part of, a higher order that we are connected to that exists and has meaning and purpose beyond what does, or does not happen to us.

It reminds me of a song by Leonard Cohen. I am not sure Rabbi Solovetich would appreciate me comparing the two. Sylvia Borstein, who many of you know, and who is a great teacher, mentor and friend to me has this inscribed inside her siddur, her prayer book. It goes like this: �And even when it all goes wrong I will stand before the Lord of Song with nothing on my tongue but halleluyah.�

In this way the higher fear yirat Hashamyim, can remove our lower fears, whether they are grounded in reality or not. There is a leap of faith required. But not that everything will be okay, or that God will take care of us. I wish it was that simple. The leap of faith is that there is meaning in our lives, doing the right thing matters, being kind is important, generosity is essential regardless of whatever else happens to us along the way.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt at his first inaugural address said, �There is only one thing to fear, and that is fear itself.� It was the height of the Depression, and at a low point for our country. Thankfully our financial woes are not as severe, at least not yet, as theirs were. Kein Ahora. Nevertheless, his words are instructive in two ways. First they acknowledge how debilitating fear is, something we have already spoken about this evening. In fact often the fear is worse than what is actually happening to us! Second, his words intimate a kind of confidence, faith really, in our country and that in the end our country will be okay. I will confess it is hard to have faith in our political leadership. I regularly have to take deep breaths when I read the morning news. You know we get the paper, we don�t get TV, I read the paper and I always see what is happening in the political campaign and depending on who is leading in the poles, I have a little minor panic attack. But, as challenging as it is for me to have faith in our political leadership, it is easy for me to believe in you. I have the greatest respect and admiration for the leadership of this community. I wish they were running the White House. I also believe in the spirit of America. The Jewish community has prospered here in America like at no other time in our history. America is a great, if troubled, country for us and so many other people.

We have reason to fear, but we have reason to hope as well. You know for the past 2000 years or so, Jews have been saying the Sh�ma: �Hear oh Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One.� We have been saying that prayer through thick and thin, in prosperity and in utter poverty, in security and at the edge of the knife of genocide. Wherever we have been, and whatever our lot has been, we have said, (singing) Sh�ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad. At times it seemed like a shout into the void. But saying the Sh�ma is our way of saying that we will not give up, we will not give in to fear. If God is One, then our world can be One. We can put an end to war, poverty, sickness and disease. We can stop the poisoning of our planet, reverse the effects of global warming. We can, in the biblical idiom, �feed the hungry�, �clothe the naked�.� If God is One, then we can all be One and together heal ourselves and our world.

So here we are. The New Year is upon us. We have not a clue what will be. Who will win the election? What will happen overseas? Who shall live and who shall die. We know there will be challenges; and we can imagine many frightful outcomes. But we also know that fear is the enemy, and coping with our fear is essential for a New Year of blessings for our selves, for our families, for our community, for our country. Kol ha�olam kulo gesher tsar m�od v�haikar lo l�fached klal: The whole world is a narrow bridge, but the essence, is not to be afraid.

Before I went to rabbinical school, rock climbing was my religion and my community. Really; I went to Yosemite almost every weekend. I would meet my buddies along the way - we all had VW buses… I was the only one without a tool box in mine, and I never needed to use one! It was a community of young men and women who spent all our spare time training (working out), fantasizing or talking about climbing a rock, or, when we were lucky, actually climbing. This is a story from that time in my life – over 20 years ago.

We were in Tuolumne Meadows, Tom and I.  Tuolumne Meadows is almost 9,000 feet above sea level. It has beautiful rock domes. Many of you can picture it, or if you can picture Half Dome, that is like the domes in Tuolumne . It was early summer when, because of the high altitude, the weather is unpredictable.

One beautiful, clear, morning me and my partner Tom set out to climb a new route – we’d actually seen others up there, we’d heard about it and we’d read about it, but never climbed it ourselves. We spent months fantasizing and preparing for this.  We left on Friday night with all the traffic…illegally camped, which a lot of rock climbers do because you can’t get a camping permit…true confessions! We got up at 4:30 in the morning, got our gear together, and hiked to the base of the dome.

It was awesome to behold – I mean just a beautiful crack system in the rock that rose up about 350 feet up into a roof, an overhang, and then you move under the overhang (this big roof), and then you have to make your way over it, and then there is another 400 feet or so of vertical climbing, but the crux is really getting over the roof. 

It is beautiful, these vertical scenes are so beautiful, you can’t imagine it unless you are a rock climber. And we are in this crack system and we have been climbing together for years, and it is going so smoothly; we don’t really have to speak, we just move. I will confess that once we hit the roof I was a little afraid. Most of my climbing life I wasn’t afraid, but once I hit this big roof I felt how high up we were, and I realized we had to traverse now…over and somehow make it through this overhang; a little fear crept in.

It was Tom’s turn though to be on the sharp of the rope, to go first. I was happy, we had planned it this way because we knew each other and we knew who would be afraid where.  Traverses are actually quite treacherous because as you move across the issue is you swing and swinging means the possibility of scraping or being impaled on any rocks that are jutting out from the face of the cliff.

So he does the traverse, and he does just fine. He gets to the overhang and there is a little break in the roof and he can kind of worm his way into it and over, and he makes it to the other side and he yells, I can actually hear him, and he pulls on the rope twice which is the sign that says he’s up there, and he pulls the slack out of the rope. I make the traverse, which is scary going both ways because I also swing some. And we make it up over the roof, and we basically think that we made it, the crux is over, there is about 400 more feet of vertical climbing to go, it was kind of a vertical gully, it was pretty easy and it was all gravy. For us it would be just a lot of fun, a beautiful day, at least it was when we started.

What we hadn’t noticed because we were so caught up in what we were doing is that big cumulus clouds had set in, the wind was picking up, and in a moment it began to thunder and lighting, and then rain, and then hail, and then sleet and we were in shorts and tee shirts; we instantly knew we were in trouble.

So what do you do? The problem with this kind of climb is that you can’t actually reverse your steps because you can’t reverse the traverse. Perhaps you have seen a picture or a film with climber’s running back and forth on the side of the rock… have you seen that in pictures?  It is very hard to go back when there is a traverse. We didn’t think we could just wait to be rescued because we feared we would die of hypothermia and I am not sure that we made the right decision, but at that moment it was clear to us that we couldn’t stay. That gully was like a river, it was pouring with water, it was really cold, and we were really wet. So we made a quick decision, and that was that our only hope of not freezing to death up there was to go straight down. That means to repel straight down. Repelling is not a big deal, but we didn’t know what was down there. We traversed and went up, we didn’t know what was down. All we could hope was that there was another route that we would run into that had something fixed in the rock to tie ourselves to, or someone else had also had to escape, like us, and had left us a path down. That was all we knew and it was my turn to go first.

So I am now on what is called “the sharp end of the rope” and I repel down about a 100 feet of so, and I am hanging now 500 feet above the ground. I am swinging a little bit back and forth looking for a ledge, looking for something in the rock, looking for some way to attach myself so I can bring him down and we can continue down. I am getting scared because the rope is 150 feet long.  I had tied a knot in the end so I wouldn’t repel off the end of the rope, but still I am getting close to the end of the rope. So I am going down, down, down, down, down, and right at the very end of the rope I see two “bolts” with little hangers that had been put in the rock, I don’t know how long ago. At first I was elated! I saw these two bolts and I said, “Great! Someone like us, had had this experience, or this was someone else’s route. I am going to just get over to those bolts, I am going to clip into them and we are going to get out of here and be fine.”

So I got over to the bolts and I look at them, and they are very rusty.  When I clipped into the first one I thought, “Okay one little bolt in a rock 350 feet off the ground is not much to hang your life onto.” It was rusty, and the second one was what we call a “spinner.” The little clip that you can hook into, it would spin which meant that it had been pulled out over time.  What am I going to do? I couldn’t go back up. It is freezing cold. It’s raining, sleeting, hailing. My hands are getting numb, and I am in a tee shirt and shorts 9,000 feet above sea level in the High Sierras. So I clip myself into both these bolts, I don’t put my weight on them yet.  I look at them and think, “I don’t know, maybe.” But, eventually I ease my weight onto them and they hold. And then I have to untie from the rope because Tom needs to pull the rope through in order for him to come down. So, I lean on the belay (the bolts in the rock that I am tied into), I untie from the rope and… I am still there.

I pull on the rope twice… Tom comes down. We are not able to communicate to each other. It is howling, it is nasty and we are freezing. So, Tom comes repelling down, and he is looking down as he comes and he sees my face, and he sees the bolts, and at first he has this big smile. And then he looks at me again, and he sees the look on my face. And he doesn’t say a word. We didn’t need to talk about this. He just looks at me, and I look at him. He comes right next to me. We look at these two bolts. I am hanging on, and soon he is going to be hanging on. He clips into one; he still has his weight on the rope. He looks at me again. I look at him. He clips into the other bolt. We still have the rope holding us, but he has to pull the rope through. Now we both have our weight on these two bolts. We are still there.

He pulls the rope down. We are hanging on these two rusty bolts, one of them is a spinner! We are not talking to each other, we don’t need to talk. We are very quiet and very still.

And now, we have to do it again, and this time it is his turn. And every time you shift you are worried that you will pull the bolt out. But you have to move around a bit. So we shift, and every move we wonder, “Are we going to live, or are we going to die?”

To make a long story short…We made it down that day. There was no great celebration… Latter I will admit we had more than a few beers. But not to party actually, but rather to numb the terror we had experienced. Not so much of our near death but rather of seeing our lives so clearly, so awesomely hanging in the balance.

That’s why I’m sharing this story tonight because it encapsulates what the Holy Days are all about – facing the fact that our lives are always, whether we recognize it or not, hanging in the balance.

Towards the beginning of the service this evening we read as we always do one of two scant references to Rosh Hashanah in our Makhzor:

“B’chodesh hashvi’i… In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, there shall be a sacred assembly, a cessation from work, a day of commemoration proclaimed by the sounding of the Shofar”

So what is that all about? Why did our ancient Israelite ancestors have this big day of commemoration on the seventh month, three or four thousand years ago? The calendar has changed by the way; the seventh month then is now this month, the month of Tishrei. I will tell you why: the Egyptians had the Nile, the Babylonians had the Tigris and the Euphrates; but Israel was completely dependent on rain. And what month did the rains come? They came… not in the seventh month, but in the eighth month.  So the seventh month was a time when the nation of Israel felt its life hanging in the balance. Remember, there was no National Water Carrier in Israel 3,000 years ago; if it didn’t rain, they starved.

In fact, if we ask the meta question – why are we here, what are these Holy Days all about? One timeless response is that like our ancient brothers and sisters, our lives too hang in the balance, all the time. And this is the time of year in the Jewish calendar when we are asked to really face it.

Some one here has a loved one fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan; others have relatives and friends in the Israeli army. Many in our community have lost jobs and homes. It has been a hard year for people, in our community and of course in our country. Many are concerned about their health, and our health care system. You know, there are hungry people in our community, people who are struggling to feed their families, Jewish families, from week to week. Jewish Family and Children Services has never had this much need for food to give to people.

And even if you don’t feel the anxious tug of one or another imminent threat to you or your family, you know if you are honest, that all our lives are like the weather in the High Sierras, things change and fast, unpredictably, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.

All our lives hang in the balance all the time, whether we are aware of it or not.

This is the main point of Rabbi Alan Lew’s book (may his memory be for a blessing) about the Holy Days, This Is Real And You Are Totally Unprepared.   It is a great title! Some of you may have known Rabbi Lew. He was on his way to becoming a Buddhist Monk, almost there, and then he got more involved in his Jewish life, and became a Conservative rabbi instead. He was actually a rabbi in Santa Rosa for awhile, he served Congregation Beth Ami. He served congregation Beth Sholom in San Francisco for over a decade. He came and taught at Shomrei Torah a number of times, including at Bible By The Bay last year. He died jogging two months after he was at Shomrei Torah. He was at a conference, went for a jog, had a heart problem, had a heart attack…young man, gone.

I now want to read a little from his book in his memory but also because… well you will see:
“Please imagine this: You are out for a social evening with those very close to you, family or close friends or both. The evening begins with a wonderful dinner, and then, out of some vague sense — or perhaps a very strong sense — of family tradition and obligation, you all go off after dinner to participate in a basically empty religious ritual. Or perhaps you are by yourself but you attend this empty ritual because you have very pleasant associations of having done so with your family and friends back in Cleveland or Detroit or New Jersey. Or perhaps it is not so empty for you…. Or perhaps you feel very little, but every year you harbor the hope that you will feel something this time.”
And he goes on and gives many examples, and basically he is saying…Imagine you come here tonight, but things look a little different. And the one assumption he is making is that all of us come with different expectations but none of us take it as seriously as it really is.
 “But this time as you enter the sanctuary, everything feels different. So you look more closely. There are three immense books at the head of the sanctuary. A presence can be felt in the room so palpably you can almost see it; it hovers over the table like a colloid suspension, a smoky mist. Now you hear a deep, disembodied voice calling out names, and every time a name is called, it is written in one of the books. There is no hand, there is no quill; the pages of the book simply rustle and then quiver, and when the rustling stops, the name is already written. It is written in the Book of Life, while sighs of relief go up all around the room; or it is written in the Book of Death, while a cold silence grips the sanctuary, amid much shuddering of shoulders and the sudden sucking in of breath; or it is written in the book of the intermediaries, those who will spend the next ten days in a state of suspended judgment, in the process of transformation, after which they will be entered into one of the other two books. All of a sudden you hear your own name being called, and you want to cry out, No! No! No! Not now! I didn’t realize this was real…. Please give me some more time. Let me do something to affect the outcome of all this. But the voice continues to intone your name and there is a rustling of the pages of the books, and your heart is gripped with terror as you wait to see in which one your name will be inscribed.”
(pp. 99-101)
Woah… The Book of Life and Death, a central theme of these Holy Days which we don’t generally like very much… We especially struggle with the prayer we will recite tomorrow and on the day of Yom Kippur that plays it out so horribly and so vividly every year – “Un’tane tokef k’dushat hayom…..  Who shall live and who shall die, who by fire and who by water…”

This past year there was a whole article in the Central Conference of American Rabbis Journal (you should all get it, you’ll love it!) that dealt with the challenges rabbis face with this prayer. A whole journal just on what rabbis do with this prayer! Certainly over the years many of you have seen me struggle with it. I always cry, and you always help me get through it.  One year I even edited it out of our services all together. We never received more complaints than that year! Really! Un’tanetokef is a prayer we can’t live with, or without!

And let me repeat what I have said countless times; I don’t buy the literal interpretation of it – the image of the books, the prayer itself and especially the idea that if we are good we get written in the book of life, and if we are bad…we die! Still as Rabbi Lew points out, the image, the metaphor, even the prayer, has something essential to teach:

“…This is a true story…and it is happening to you, and you are seriously unprepared. And it is real whether you believe in God or not… It makes no difference (what you believe). What makes a difference is that it’s real and it is happening right now and it is happening to us, and it is utterly inescapable, and we are completely unprepared. This moment is before us with its choices, and the consequences of our past choices, (as well as) the possibility of our transformation….” (pg 105-106)

I look out at this room, and I know that some seats that are full right now will be empty… some will die, some of us will die, some of us will live, and all of us will change in countless and often unimaginable ways in the year ahead.

Our lives really do, now and forever – at least as long as we live – hang in the balance. The question is, so what?  What do we do? What do you do if you are 400 feet off the ground hanging from two rusty bolts? Knowing how precious life is, how do we respond so that whatever life we have is as full and as blessed as it can possibly be?

According to our beloved un’tanetokef there three things we can do to get written in the right book: teshuvah, t’filah & tzedaka.

Teshuvah is poorly translated as repentance; but you know “return” is a pretty good translation, yet for me more and more it means telling the truth.  Almost anyone who has had a near death experience on a rock face, a car accident or a hospital (or anywhere else!),  will tell you that after wards it is as if a veil is lifted and you see your life in a whole new light.  Some of you are familiar with this. And I will tell you what happens to me as a rabbi. People go through near death experiences and they come to me, “Rabbi, I finally get it. I see the truth of my life. I see what’s important. I see the changes I want to make. I see it. I see it. I see it. And I am really afraid I am going to lose it!”  And mostly we do lose it. It is awfully hard to stay so clear. But still there is a moment of clarity, and sometimes we actually can make some changes.  When Tom and are were hanging off those rusty bolts I saw his heart beating in his chest, our friendship glowed, our lives were brilliantly illuminated. I wanted my mother! and my then girlfriend  who is now my wife. Life never felt more precious.

Our sages were smart, they figured out a way to get some clarity about our lives without the near death part! Sitting right here and now we can seek the truth of our lives and let those truths be like homing devises leading us back to who we really are.

The other side of this coin is that without telling the truth there is no hope for redemption. In the traditional liturgy we sing a song when the Israelites make it to the other side of the sea (Mi Chamocha), the song says… “Who is like G-Ad awesome and wondrous?” because God split the sea. In the traditional liturgy, right before we sing “the song” the theme of the prayer is “emet” - the truth.  These two things – truth and redemption - are related, because the seas only split when we tell the truth. Moses spoke truth to power (Pharaoh) and the seas split.  When you tell the truth, the seas can split for you and others as well.

I was talking to someone recently about this and he said to me, “You know the truth is scary!” This is true but, do you want to live in fear? Or do you want to face each day saying “L’chaim” to life? Do you want to be crippled by your lies, or be lifted up by what you really know is true. In the wisdom of our sages, Rabbi Hillel said that it was one thing that God created us in God’s image, it is another thing that God actually let us know. That it is up to us to fulfill that, and you do that by telling the truth. I am created in God’s image. I can do something! I can really be something special but I have to tell the truth about who I am, who I want to be, what is happening to me, what my dreams and aspirations are. I can’t live a full life without the truth.

Recently through our work with Communities In Conversation, I met an organizer named Joaquin. He’s a heavy set Hispanic man, a little younger than me, with a spouse & three young children. He was a civil engineer for 7 years before he became an Organizer. This is curious for lots of reasons including the fact that the skills of an engineer don’t neatly match that of a Community Organizer, and it was a big deal, given the family he came from to become an engineer. So, I asked what happened, why he made the change, and he told me the following story:

I grew up in San Diego where my dad actually still works, he refinishes pianos.  We lived in a kind of rough part of San Diego and the city decided to do some “urban renewal”.  They divided the area into three sections. They would buy a section; they would condemn it, and then buy the property from the people whose property they had condemned. Then they would by another section and condemn it, and buy the property. My dad’s section was the third section! My dad worked most of his life to build his business, and it was a decent business for him, but by the time they got to him he received just pennies on the dollar, and he had to start over.

I said, “Joaquin, you are an organizer so that you can do everything possible in your life to keep other people from suffering the way your dad suffered.” “Yeah, that is true.” He replied. So I said, “Joaquin, did you ever tell your dad that?”  He said, “No, I never told him that.” But still you can see how the truth of his life, drove him to change his life, from being an engineer to being an organizer.

One of the names of this day is Yom Hadin, the Day of Judgment. Traditionally it is God who judges, but I think we are the true arbiters. We don’t have control of whether we live or die but we do have a hand in what is written, we do decide all the time, how we will live,  and sometimes even how we will handle our death. That is one lesson we can walk away with right now, a question we can ask tonight. What am I holding back? What truths do I need to tell to be the person I want to be in the New Year?  In other words, what t’shuvah do I need to do now!

T’fila, prayer, how does prayer help us cope, “avert the evil decree” which in my mind is simply the reality that “stuff happens” unpredictably and unexpectedly. First I have to say that our finitude welcomes us in the morning everyday whether we see it in our reflection or not. Anthropologists will tell you that one impulse for prayer is to offer some sense of control in a world where we simply have very little. Others might call prayer a delusion, but I might simply call it comfort.  Just think about this evening and the feeling of all of us saying Shema… Or to sing Avinu Malkenu and realize we are singing with the whole Jewish world, and have been singing for 2000 years. It’s comforting. I also might point out that our ancestors walked through “the valley of the shadow” many times and made it out the other side, leaving us a “spirit guide”, a siddur, this prayer book of ours. It is imperfect: pray selectively; change it sometimes (notice that I do); but use it!

It is also worth noting that showing up, praying, questioning, confronting the prayer book (which I often do) wakes you up! Where else will you confront the existential issues that make up a meaningful life? We may not like this image of the Sefer Chayim & the Sefer Mavet, (the Book of Life and Death) but it sure gets us thinking! As for the idea that through prayer we can “avert the evil decree”…  I am not willing to say if prayer is effective or not. It sure doesn’t seem that way, right? A lot of people pray, bad things happen, a lot of people don’t pray, good things happen. But we still pray for people all the time – mi shaberakh our blessing of healing for example, and I personally pray, every day, at least these days every day. And sometimes I even beg for help…

We pray for people and ourselves, but we also expect that they will go to the doctor (!) and if we need to go, we will go as well. Theology aside, in the end prayer is very personal and I don’t think causation - whether it is effective in the sense of it changing what happens to us – is that relevant in as much as prayer “works” regardless of what happens, at least for me.

How about tzedakkah – often translated as charity but it is really a much bigger word stemming from the root – tzedek – justice. How does tzedakkah factor into our lives hanging in the balance?

It’s simple really – once we realize how precious and precarious all life is we also begin to see the Oneness of it all. It’s like a third sight we receive/special 3D glasses  – the message of the Shema becomes alive  – and we naturally want to act to make life better for everyone.

“The very first thing the Talmud has to say about Rosh Hashanna is, ‘All the inhabitance of the earth stand before God. As it says in the thirty-third psalm: “God fashions their hearts and discerns all their actions’.” (This Totally Real, pg. 71)

We all stand together as one heart.

Recognizing that really the life of the planet hangs in the balance is such a profound heart opener and potential motivator. Giving tzedakkah and of course I am not just talking about money here, I am talking about seeking justice in the world, (you pick the cause) may not keep us from getting cancer or a host of other things, but it sure can offer us a sense of connection, purpose and meaning that is lost when we are lost in our own numbness or indifference to a life that we take for granted but which is actually quite temporary, precious and unpredictable.

Martin Luther King is one of my heroes, I have very few. He gave a sermon that is known as “the Drum Major’s Speech” a few months before he died. He gave a lot of talks right before he died. He obviously had a prescient sense that his death was imminent. If you read his sermons you feel that he knew what was coming. And in this speech he said (I am paraphrasing now) “I don’t want to be remembered as the drum major. Do you know who is the drum major? The drum major is the guy up front with the staff.  I don’t want to be remembered as the drum major. I have received the Nobel peace prize, I have met with prime ministers and presidents, I have marched with famous people, I have gotten hundreds of awards, and this is how I want to be remembered:  Not as the drum major but as someone who helped someone, someone who fed someone, someone who cared for someone, someone who was on the right about the war question. I don’t want to be remembered as the drum major, I want to be remembered as someone who helped to make the world a better place. That is how I want to be remembered.”

This is real, these fragile precious lives of ours and we can be prepared, we can wake up to how really glorious if not also tragic living can be.

Teshuvah, coming home, being true to ourselves really helps.
Tefilah, prayer, showing up here and during the rest of the year makes a difference, as does our own ongoing generosity and search for justice in every way (Tzedakah).

I miss rock climbing; the vertical world is stunning to behold. I miss my old buddies and our camaraderie. Most of all I miss how alive I felt at those moments on the edge, when my life literally hung in the balance.  I don’t miss the danger zones that these moments of clarity required. The story I told is one of many really(I am embarrassed to say) and it is certainly more benign than the time I actually fell 50 feet to the ground, almost died and had to be rescued! Near death experiences have their value but when we have a choice, we’d do better to learn their lessons a safer way.

And that is exactly what the Holy Days offer; a wakeup call - think of the blast of the shofar - to the unsettling fact that yes, our lives are always hanging in the balance, and that while we have little control over “who shall live and who shall die”, we do have a hand in how we respond to what life brings us and even the way we handle death. It’s awesome to think about, really. And scary, and maybe that is why these days are called in Hebrew the Yamim Noraim, The Days of Awe….   Shannah Tovah.

 

The narrative of creation we just read is as controversial a portion as any in the whole Hebrew Bible. The crux of the matter is whether the account of creation in the Torah relates in any way to scientific understandings of how the earth was formed, life emerged, and so forth.

This conflict between creation and evolution is not one that we as a progressive religious community are engaged in, for the simple reason that we accept as axiomatic the basic premises of evolution. In fact, if we engage in this issue at all, it is to fend off fundamentalist trying to force schools to either abandon the teachings of evolution all together, or to include what they now call �Intelligent Design� in the curriculums for our kids. It�s hard to believe that this is where we are in our country, and it is scary to believe that depending on the outcome of the election this might become more of an issue in the years ahead.

This morning, I am not interested so much in that debate � creationism vs. evolution. I am interested in a broader question and that is �What is Torah? What is scripture to us?� If it�s not history, if it�s not science, then what is it? As a congregant in New Iberia Louisiana asked me when I was a student rabbi there 17 years ago, �What�s all the fuss about the Torah?�

At first, when she said that I thought �What a silly question - how could anyone ask such a question?� But the truth is, we liberal Jews � and Christians by the way- are not very clear about what scripture means to us, nor are we that engaged in the study of sacred texts. This leaves us both bereft of the wisdom they offer, as well as vulnerable to the use and abuse of these same texts by others who do not share our values. So this morning I want to address head on the question, �What�s all the fuss about the Torah? What does the Torah mean to us? What does it mean to be Shomrei Torah, the name of the congregation, which means Guardians of the Torah?� And I am going to be more of an educator than a preacher this morning, which means it could go on for a while. (laughter from congregation)

Okay, so we need to start with definitions: Let�s start with the word, the word �Torah.� Where does the word Torah come from? Where do you first find the word Torah? Do you know? It�s in the Torah actually. But the Torah does not know its own name. In fact the Torah is very unaware of itself. For example the creation story we just read�.who�s the narrator? Who�s saying, �In the beginning God created�? It�s very eerie. You know when you read a novel, or for that matter a history book or a text book, you know who the narrator is�the Torah is very unaware of itself. So actually the Torah does not know it is called the Torah. But the word �Torah� exists in the Torah, and it means usually something like �Toraht Kohanim,� for example, the law or the rules of the priests; or �Toraht Moshe,� the regulations of Moses. It means rule or law or instruction. That�s its root meaning, when you first encounter it in scripture. Okay that�s the word.

How about Torah the book �when we say Torah � the book � what do we mean? Actually we mean many things. It can be very confusing. Who has ever been confused by this? (The Rabbi is asking the audience, who respond by raising their hands.) For one thing we also say sometimes �chumash� which means �five� for the five books. But Torah, the book, can mean either the first five books of the Hebrew Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And they have different names in Hebrew, by the way. Okay that is the first meaning of Torah. Then we have scroll versus book. But sometimes when people use the word Torah they actually mean �Tenach� or Hebrew Bible, which some call the �old testament.� But we don�t really like the name �old testament� because if you had to choose between the �new� or the �old,� right? So really, the preferred term is Hebrew Bible. In Hebrew it is actually called Tenach, and that is an acronym like IBM � International Business Machines. Tenach means: Torah; Nevi�im, which means prophets; and Ketuvim, which means writings. So now we have Torah the word, and Torah the book � the first five books � or sometimes people say Torah the book, but they actually mean not just the first five books, but all of the books of the Hebrew Bible. Are you guys with me so far?

Okay now it gets more confusing because some people say �Go study Torah,� and they mean all of Jewish knowledge. And I�ll tell a story I have told many of you before about how to understand this.

When I got into rabbinical school I was a salesman working for a living. I applied, and got into rabbinical school and when I got accepted I was very excited and surprised and I received a long list of books to read before entering seminary. Well I was really happy to read the books, but there was one book on the list, it was a history of the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion. The history of the seminary, it was about 540 pages.

So I had chutzpah, I was not very politically adept then, and I called the Dean of Admissions and I said, �You know I am so excited to be entering the class to become a rabbi, and I love this list of books, but given all the stuff I need to know and I don�t know, it seems silly for me to read this one book, this history of the college, it�s like 540 pages, and there are so many other things I need to study.� And he said, �Well, you know, I wrote that book.� (much laughter from congregation) It�s a true story. He said, �I wrote that book, to me history is Torah, go and study it.� He actually was nice to me over time.

So we have the word, we have the book in its many forms, but it gets even more confusing because there is this concept in Judaism: the difference between Torah Sh�bictav the written Torah vs. Torah Sh�b�alpeh the oral Torah. You have to hold on to your benches now.

According to Jewish tradition, when Moses was up on the mountain he didn�t just receive the Commandments, he also received the whole written Torah, and what�s called the oral Torah. He came down the mountain with the Commandments; he wrote the rest down, that we have in written form. Then he told the rest orally to Joshua. Joshua passed it down to the Judges, the Judges to the Prophets, and the Prophets gave it to the Rabbis in the first 500 years of the Common Era, and they wrote it down. That oral Torah eventually got written down, and that is called the Talmud, which is actually the core set of documents that makes up the Judaism that we know.

Now this is important to understand because this oral Torah is pretty much what defines us as Jews. For example: almost all the rites for the Holy Days, there is a little mention in the Torah, but most, like 95% of the instructions are in the Talmud. We wouldn�t know how to celebrate any of our Holy Days without the Talmud. Let�s take Shabbat, where does it say in the Torah or the rest of the Hebrew Bible to light the Shabbat candles? I will give you my life savings, which is now a lot less, if you can find where it says to light Shabbat candles. It doesn�t. How about the prayers, where are the prayers? The rubrics of them are not found in the Hebrew bible, they are found in the oral Torah�. in the Talmud, and other books like the Talmud. One other example is Hanukah. Hanukah is nowhere in the Torah, the story of the miracle of light�it�s in the Talmud. Now there is what is called the apocryphal literature, which is part of the Catholic cannon, it has the book of Macabbis but that does not have our Hanukah story in it. So to really understand where Judaism comes from you have to at least begin to understand this concept of the written Torah vs. the oral Torah.

So here are some definitions. Of course the Torah is much more than definitions. There is Torah the symbol. Symbols are beyond words�so for example: what is a symbol that is beyond words? The American flag is a powerful symbol. Depending on when you grew up and what you went through it will mean different things to you. But it would be very difficult to describe how you feel about the symbol of the American flag.

Torah, Torah is a very potent symbol for us. Think about it. What happens when we open the doors of the Aron Ha Kodesh. We stand. How about when I walked around with the Torah, which is such a phenomenal experience? It is so powerful right? Can you describe that in words, can you write that down for people and would they understand it? Not really, because symbols are beyond words. Torah as a symbol encapsulates so much of our Jewish experience. It is a symbol of our antiquity our perseverance and our suffering.

I want to tell you anther story that I know some of you have heard many times. When I was in rabbinical school Dr. Gotchalk was the president of the seminary, a great scholar, a big Germanic man. He grew up in Berlin, he fled as a child, but he was there during Cristalnacht, the night of broken glass. His father was taken away, but he was spared and so was his grandfather. He was too young, his grandfather was too old. Their synagogue was destroyed. And when it was not in flames anymore, but it was smoldering, he went with his Grandpa, his Grandpa held him by the hand, and they went to what was left of their synagogue to try to find the Torah. They couldn�t find the Torah, but they went to the stream right next to the synagogue and the Torah had been torn up and thrown in the stream. And his Grandpa would hold him so that he could get the fragments of the text out of the stream. No this is this very rigid, brilliant, austere man, who told us this story at least two times a year, for the five years that I was at HUC seminary. Why? Why would this man tell this gut wrenching story over and over again? Why? Because it is the symbol of everything Jewish and as a child he witnessed this desecration. He could not get over it, it left a scar, and the way he dealt with it was to pass it on, at least the story to us.

Now according to Jewish tradition, the Torah in its symbolic form, is the closest thing to God. God�s eminence. God�s presence here. The Devine mind. The blueprint of creation.

Nachmonodies, the great medieval rabbi, he believed if we really new Torah, we could use it to create things. And in fact in the Talmud there are these great wild stories of Rabbis that change the letters and use them in different ways and create monster like creatures like a Golum and other things. They even create animals to eat. They do some really wild things. The Talmud has a lot in it.

So the tradition has a rather grand sense of what Torah means, which I love to explore, but which I honestly have trouble fully embracing. So what can we say about Torah without suspending disbelief? Torah exemplifies the Jewish value of Talmud Torah, of study. As one of my professors, Mark Washosfky says, �We praise God through the use of our minds.� Torah may not hold the truth, capital �T�, but it does represent the ongoing and never ending search for the truth. I believe Torah is no more or less true than any other sacred teaching. Rather, Torah is our home page. It�s our story. It�s the nexus point, the ground for the Jewish search for meaning.

Now this sounds really good until you pick up the book and read it. That is to say that Torah as a symbol is everything you want it to be, but the actual book is something else all together. Yes there are a number of essential, universal, profound teachings in the Torah: the Ten Commandments, the concept of betzelm elohim, that we are created in God�s image; love your neighbor as yourself; love the stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt; tzedek, tzedeek tir dof, justice, justice we shall pursue; these are all great passages. And by the way there are many challenges as well. It is really instructive to watch b�nei mitzvah students work with their torah portion. You know if they get one of the narratives, one of the stories in the Torah, it�s really going to be okay. But, if you get for example, in the book of Leviticus, tazria metzora which is all about leprosy�then you end up studying �I have a bald spot on the top of my head, and it is leprous with spots.� And actually you can work with that. But how about you get this instead: the commandments to the Israelites to commit genocide when they enter the Holy Land. So in the book of Deuteronomy it says, �When the Lord brings you to the land you are about to invade and occupy� you must doom them (that is the current people there) to destruction; grant them no terms and give them no quarter� (Deut. 7:1) And then it says to kill everyone: men, women, children and even cattle. That�s the Torah? That is when it gets hard. And that is when you are all the sudden surprised. We thought it was the tree of life! You told me all good stuff was in the Torah! But that is the Torah?

It is essential to understand that the Torah is not Judaism but rather the story � history, myth, rituals, laws and lore of the Ancient Israelites. Judaism develops from the Torah, but they are not synonymous. The Torah in its narrowest sense is the headwaters of a great river that has been flowing for centuries. But the Torah itself is not the river. In fact Torah in its raw form can be dangerous, is dangerous. As Shakespeare so aptly put it, �the devil can site scripture for his purpose,� and in fact he does.

arises through, in my opinion, a �no holds barred� study of Torah, utilizing the lens of Tradition, what our sages saw in it � how centuries of Jews have understood the text - and our own contemporary moral sensibilities as well. Actually, we come as equals to the page. And when we do this God shows up; community is formed; people�s hearts open and they talk about what really matters. Values are clarified and tested and our ancestors are brought back to life, resurrected like the dried bones of Ezekiel.

That�s a little bit about Torah the word, Torah the books, Torah as a symbol, and a clarification about what it actually means to read Torah. Now I want to go to the question, �What does it mean for us to be Shomrei Torah?� guardians of the Torah.

That�s a great question for us especially because we are calling this year Shanat Hatorah, the Year of The Torah. Do you know why? It is because we are having a Torah Scroll written for us in this coming year. Did you know that? Our own Torah, it is very, very exciting. It�s a one in a life time opportunity, to be a part of the writing of a new Torah scroll and we have an exceptional year of programming planned around what we hope will really bring us all together. Before I tell you more, let�s return to out question: what does it mean to be Shomrei Torah, guardians of the Torah?

I think being Shomrei Torah for us means being connected to the past while at the same time pushing out to the very edge of the future. As the late great Jewish Scholar another teacher of mine, Dr. Eugene Moholy would say, there are our �moorings and our reach�.

The moorings are tradition - the laws and teaching that our ancestors lovingly and so carefully transmitted to us. This includes things we relate to like �loving the stranger� (at least we think we relate to that) and things we struggle with like the fact that as good as crab cakes or bacon taste, they�re not kosher!

Another mooring is our history; remembering the past. Our Czech Torah for example, which is to us a sacred heirloom, we treasure and derive meaning from even as it�s writings fade and the parchment becomes brittle with age and use.

The Czech Jewish community was murdered by the Nazi�s but we have one of their Torahs and thus, they still live on in us. And you know there are, I think, 4000 Czech Torah scrolls and they were able to refurbish about 2000. Most of them are not being used anymore. If you go on line and Google Czech Torah scrolls you will find the amazing story of them. They were found in a warehouse. I guess when the Nazis destroyed the communities in Czechoslovakia they gathered all the artifacts of the soon to be extinct Jewish race, and maybe there were planning to have a museum, we are not sure. But, when they lost the war, those Torah scrolls were left. They were found and a British philanthropist from a London synagogue raised the money to have them moved to England. And what was found in those Torah Scrolls was unbelievable, little notes that said, �please, help us� �please remember us�, tears, blood. I mean the stories of these Torah scrolls are really, really something.

Our relationship with our Czech Torah, out of necessity must change, but even when we have our new scroll to use every week, our Czech Torah will remain an essential part of our heritage, our history, what it means for us to be Shomrei Torah. We will display it, and we will occasionally read it, and maybe at Simchat Torah maybe we will be able to unroll it completely so we that can feel our Czech ancestors smile with us as we dance with their Torah.

So, those are a few examples of our moorings, tradition, history, but what about �the reach?�

The �reach� for us are our lives in dialogue, and at times in confrontation with the text. Our current environmental crisis is a good and relevant example of the opportunity for dialogue with Torah because, as it turns out, our ancient Israelite ancestors were very much connected to the land.

Our forefathers and mothers were indigenous people, very much like the Native Americans, we are tribal. They saw themselves as part of a living, organic whole. They knew that their behavior had a direct affect on their environment. They left us, believe it or not, a �green� legacy. What we need to do is re-discover it. If we are willing to engage with the text, the Torah can teach us how to be a �greener� people as well. That is an example of dialogue, how about confrontation?

An example of confrontation would be the Torah�s admonition in the book of Leviticus that a man should not lie with another man like he lies with a woman. That phrase is the basis for the Traditional Jewish antipathy towards homosexuality.

Now here as progressive Jews, we must confront the text, challenging the legitimacy of its teachings, and ultimately, I believe, rejecting what it has to say altogether.

And sometimes our confrontation of the text leads to action as it should this November; it�s essential that we all turn out to vote in November against Proposition 8. And if you want to find out more about why we should do this, and how important it is, come to Shomrei Torah on Sunday afternoon. I will be speaking, as will a number of other people. We would love to see you there. We will fit you in somehow.

Dialogue, confrontation, those are just two of many examples I could give regarding how the Torah can be a living covenant for us, a grounding connection to our past � a mooring � and a load star for our future � a place to reach out towards.

This year, 5769, is Shenat HaTorah, the year of the Torah, for us!

It will be a great opportunity to explore and experience every aspect of what Torah means � we have classes for adults. It is not just pediatric Judaism. Seriously, it is one thing to be Jewish for your parents, and it is another thing to be Jewish for your kids. It is quite another thing to be Jewish for yourself.

We are also going to get to learn more about the history of Torot (our two Torahs) because it turns out that our Czech Torah is very interesting, but we also have a Torah that is even older, we didn�t know it, but it is older. It is probably from Yemen or Morrocco, and it is maybe close to 300 years old. They are not going away. They are a part of our precious legacy, and we are going to use them when we can. But we are also going to get to enter into the world of a sofer, a scribe and a rescuer and restorer of ancient texts. This guy�s name is Rabbi Youlus. I am not exaggerating, he is the Indiana Jones of Sophrim � he has risked his life to rescue Torahs. He has gone to Eastern Europe to save this Torah scroll that this guy said he would burn if no one would buy it off the internet. Rabbi Youlus went to Eastern Europe, and got his front teeth kicked out, and got beaten senseless. He did survive and he brought the Torah scroll back. He has a hundred other stories like this. This man is so committed to Torah in every form it is really something. He is a little exhausting to be around, but he really is an exceptional man. He is going to come regularly, at least three or four times during the year, with the scroll in progress. And we will actually get to participate in the writing of this scroll. So, most of it a scribe in Israel is doing, but Rabbi Youlus is going to outline the letters of one section for us, and we: men and women, Jewish and not Jewish, members of our community, and by the way members of the whole Jewish community because we want this to be for anyone in the Jewish community who wants to participate, everyone can participate in filling in a letter. Every one of us could fill in a letter of the Torah. Can you imagine what that is like? Imagine, what that means? How many centuries? You know the Dead Sea scrolls were found in these caves in Israel, they are at least 2000 years old, and they look very much like our Torah scroll today. So you fill in a letter, and then imagine� your kid�s grandkids come to Shomrei Torah, and they read the letter that you filled in. And then you know that your memory will be for a blessing.

To be Shomrei Torah is to be both a guardian of the past and a guarantor of the future � the moorings and the reach. Creating our own new Torah Scroll together is a profound way to be true to our name � Shomrei Torah � in the fullest sense of the word, in the year ahead.

Shanat HaTorah, the year of the Torah, Shanah Tovah, a good year to us all.

��

Tonight I want to go in search of sin. That�s right � �sin.� You see, we liberal Jews do many things well, like sex for example� That is to say, we can handle the topic of �sex� in a relatively open, honest, and I believe, healthy way. �Sin� on the other hand, is a subject that rarely if ever comes up in non-Orthodox Jewish settings. It�s a word that seems not actually to be in our vocabulary, except if you come during the holy days. And while I really� I love seeing everyone, and whenever you come you are welcome, I feel bad for you folks that only come during the Holy Days, because it is so much heavier. Trust us, if you come on Shabbas we won�t talk about sin. A point of fact: I have never in my 13 years as a rabbi here, and 5 years as a student rabbi serving a number of congregations� it�s actually fun to say where I was: in New Iberia, Louisiana (God love those people); in Jonesberg, Arkansas; Carry, North Carolina; and I spent two summers in Alaska, with Laura. And never once, in all those years, did I ever give one sermon about �sin�.

��

Of course, there are reasons for our relative silence. For one, the word �sin� is over-determined in English, carrying all the weight and connotations of Christian theology � and for Christians that is fine, but it is challenging for Jews. So, Original Sin, sin as death, sin and salvation through Jesus�that is a significant stumbling block for any Jewish conversation about sin. Another related issue is the challenge of translation. In Hebrew the word for sin is khet, or khatat or khatah which though translated as �sin� comes closer to "to miss the mark," like the root word of an archer who misses the mark. �Missing the mark� just does not get internalized into the English sense of the word �sin�. �

In other words, a Jewish conversation about sin must confront problems with language and theology. I think there is more however. Our aversion to �sin� goes much deeper. In the final hour, and this is that final hour, khet/sin, in Hebrew, in English, in any language, is about three things: relationship, responsibility and shame. And when that web of connectivity breaks down, the web of connection between relationship, responsibility and shame, we all suffer.

�

In fact, sin is a painful subject, and any sane person seeks to avoid pain if we can. But in the case of �sin� without pain there is no gain, no hope for what this day is all about, atonement and �at-one-ment�, reconciliation with the various parts of ourselves that make up who we are.

�

Besides, even if we�d like to talk about the weather, the liturgy is very persistent this time of year if you haven�t noticed� al khet sh�hatanu lifanekha� For these sins that we have committed; Avinu Malkenu, khatanue lifanekha��our Father our King we have sinned before you, we just read about all of those sins we have done collectively. So even if we wanted to talk about something else we would still find ourselves confronting the concept of �sin� in our machzor, our prayer book. Our Tradition is telling us something, so why not try and understand its message; let us go together in search of �sin�.

�

Well since we are searching, we might as well start in the beginning with the story of Adam & Eve, or what Christianity often refers to as �Original Sin.� The story of Adam & Khava (that is Eve�s name in Hebrew, Adam�s as well) is actually quite complex and almost universally misunderstood.

��

We won�t explore the story in full this evening, but I do have a few questions for you: For one, if God did not want Adam & Khava to eat from the tree of the knowledge of Good & Evil, why did God put the tree in the middle of the garden? Really? Why not put it on the side, or hide it somewhere? You can imagine telling your kids not to do something and then hiding it; but say to your kids�not to eat some candy, and then put it on the table in the middle of the room and then leave? What are they going to do? They are going to eat it!

Okay, a more important question is what would life be like if Khava hadn�t taken that first bite? Think about this. Boring! It would be no life at all. No, I am serious! No desire, or yearning, pain or exaltation, true love or love making and most important of all, no opportunity to become moral beings. It is precisely �The Fall� from �The Garden� that makes life as we understand it possible. We could not be fully human in �The Garden.� Khava which means �mother of all life,� gave us life by eating that forbidden fruit. We now should get on our knees and thank Eve for eating the fruit!

Judaism more or less rejects the standard reading of �The Fall�. Nevertheless, there are a few things we can learn about sin from its study. Remember, I said just a few minutes ago, that sin was about the matrix between relationship, responsibility and shame or regret. The main relationship in the tale is between God, Adam & Khava. Their �sin��is: disobeying God�s command. That�s pretty obvious. Shame is also central to the tale - what happens after they eat of the apple? The text says God opened their eyes, they could see each other and that they were naked, and they went to put clothes on. In other words, they were ashamed. As for responsibility well, they�re a little weak on taking responsibility. God has to actually come �down� to the Garden and call them to account. This is from the Torah: �They heard the sound of the Lord God moving around in the Garden.� (I wonder what that sounds like? I bet pretty scary. It would make Jurassic Park seem, you know, very mellow�) �It is a breezy time of the day, and Adam & Khava hid from the Lord.� How to hide from the Ground of All Being? �The Lord God called out to Adam and said, �Ayekah/Where are you?� You have to ask the question here:�Why does God, need to ask Adam where Adam is? The Alter Rebbe, one of the followers of the first Hassidic Rebbe the Baal Shem Tov, has a great answer. He points out: Gods is not asking Adam where he is for God; Gods� asking Adam for Adam, �Where are you Adam? Where are you?� In other words� what have you done? �Ayekah? That�s a great question for us on Yom Kippur � where are we? Are we where we want to be? Ayekah? Where are we?�So we see in this not so simple tale of Adam and Eve the matrix of sin - relationship, responsibility & shame.

� �

The next story that follows Adam and Eve is Cain and Abel, and again we see the matrix of behavior and consequence. Cain kills Abel�I�m going to move fast through this story. It is another complicated story by the way. You have to come to Torah study for a full exploration. Cain kills Abel, violating, you would say, his relationship with Able� but also with God, who in this tale is the Divine parent. Really, if you look through this story, God is like the parent that leaves two kids in the kitchen with an armed gun in the drawer, and then oops, something really bad happens. Cain, like his biological parents, Adam & Eve tries to shirk his responsibility. What does he say? � �Am I my brother�s keeper?� � And, once God busts him he must live with, �the mark of Cain�, nothing less than a metaphor for shame.

Relationship, responsibility & shame, this is the anatomy of sin. Let�s see how it applies to our times and our lives. We�re going to start with a very difficult subject, even more challenging for us to discuss than �sin�, but as grave a sin as any one can imagine � torture.

�� �

Torture is against the Geneva Convention and International Law. Torture is perhaps the starkest example of what happens when the connection between relationship, responsibility & shame brakes down:�The act of torture destroys ordinary social bonds and relationships...the torturer engages in what Harvard professor Elaine Scarry calls, �the unmaking of civilization.�� (George Gessery, �The Orgy of Power�, Northwest Review)�

��

There is no sin greater than the sin of torture, there should be no greater shame than the shame of being party to torture. Yet where is our shame? Where is our cry of anguish, regret, remorse? Where is it?! What am I talking about? You are probably saying �I didn�t torture anybody.� I am referring to the fact that our government, in our name is torturing people, in Guantanamo, in Iraq, in Afghanistan and in other detention centers we know little about.

� �� �

I�d read about the accusation of torture by US officials since Abu Gharib, but it really didn�t get to me until I heard the hearings last year for our current attorney general who, while willing to call water boarding morally repugnant was not willing to describe it as torture, or an illegal interrogation method. Do you know what water boarding is? It�s drowning someone over and over again. Right before they drown, you get them out of the water. So, there are many ways to do it. One is to tie them on a board, that�s why it is called water boarding, and forcibly pour water in their nose and their mouth until they almost die. Another is to tilt them back into a barrel of water until they almost drown. And there are various other ways it can be done.

Do you know when this technique was first discovered, invented? In the Spanish Inquisition! And if you Google �images/water boarding,� you�ll find a nice wood cutting from the 14th or 15th century of some inquisitors. And there is a guy on that board. And the chances are that the guy on the board being tortured is a Jewish guy. In fact there are chronicles of Jews who were water boarded during the Spanish Inquisition and I am sparing you the reading of them.

And water boarding � near drowning, over and over again is just one of many abuses not even disputed by our government. I got physically sick doing the research for this sermon. I was tempted to read some of the transcripts from US interrogation sessions � torture sessions. �I�ll spare you the details. But, lest you question the basic facts that our government is implicated in the torture of detainees, I�ll quote retired U.S. Major Gen. Antonio Taguba, who led the Army's investigation into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in 2003. He wrote in a preface to a document submitted to Congress June 16th of this year, "There is no longer any doubt that the current administration committed war crimes,"� "The only question is whether those who ordered torture will be held accountable.� (Rachel Kohn-Troster, RHR Web page)

�

We don�t like the language of sin, but by relinquishing it to others we allow them to define its meaning in distorted and even dangerous ways. How is it, for example, a sin for a same sex couple to marry but not a sin to torture a prisoner who, by our standards, which we�re very proud of, is innocent until proven guilty? By the way, according to the Red Cross, 70% to 90% of the detainees at Abu Gharib prison where there by mistake! Who knows the story at the other less known or scrutinized facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere! Where is our shame? Where?

For the sin which we have committed before You for averting our eyes.

For the sin which have committed before You for closing our ears.

For the sin which we have committed before You for the suffering and torture committed on others.

For the sin which we have committed before You with our full knowledge or without our knowledge.

For all these sins, forgiving God, forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement.

� ��

May we also gain the strength, courage and determination to demand of whom ever gets elected president that they stop torture by our hands and in our name! You know, regardless of what happens in this election, this is one issue that I think both men will want to work on. And I am thankful for that. For different reasons, I think both candidates are going to want to stop torture in our name. But we need to make sure. We need to make sure, and as you go out you are going to see that there is an interfaith group working on this for the religious community. You can sign up, you can get involved, we can make our voices heard.

��

You know, I wrote this sermon before the financial meltdown we are in the midst of. And I know we all need sanctuary from it. So I am not going to talk about it. Right? You don�t want to hear about it. But I just want to point out you could not ask for a better illustration of what happens when the matrix between relationship, responsibility and shame breaks down � right? Evil arises, and in this case in the form of shameless greed that might bring us all down.

I want to narrow the angle of our lens from the National scene to our community; specifically, I want to talk about another very difficult subject: Mental Health Care in Sonoma County. I think what is happening qualifies under my definition of �sin�; when the connections between relationship, responsibility and shame break down.

Sonoma County's mental healthcare system has been in the news quite a lot in the last year or so, because of what most describe as the collapse of the system all together. �Last June, the county shut down Santa Rosa's Psychiatric Emergency Services, the Norton Center; and this February Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital closed its psychiatric hospital on Fulton. They couldn�t afford to keep it open. (The Bohemian, 6/25/08).

In addition to the bad news about hospital closures, there have been an alarming number of deadly encounters between Sonoma County law enforcement and the mentally ill. In one incident, a distraught teenager was shot to death. When I mentioned to Laura, who works at Kaiser and is in health care, that I wanted to connect �sin� to our mental health system she said, �It�s not a sin, its murder!� Without the facilitates or the resources to care for the mentally ill, more and more of the burden of care falls in places simply not able to cope � Emergency Departments (where Laura works), law enforcement, jails, the streets. �Murder� may seem a little harsh, but in fact, mental illness if untreated is deadly.

�

For many, this is not a personal issue � you have no relationship to, or with people suffering with serious mental illnesses. For others, though here tonight this is very personal; you or your loved one has had to go it alone or get shipped out to somewhere else in the greater Bar Area. Either choice is a terror for someone who�s already terrified by life. And, even if you have the resources, such a dislocation from your home is a severe hardship. Let me tell you a few stories to illustrate my point. These are all true stories.

��

Imagine your elderly father due to a medication error has a complete mental breakdown. His only hope for treatment is a facility in San Francisco! But he lives in Santa Rosa. What about his wife for over 5o years? Where will she stay? How will she visit? She doesn�t drive any more. What about the transition home? You just bring him back up, and if there is a problem you run him back down? It�s a long drive. Who�s going to drive him? He is not fit to drive! His kids work. This happened to one of our members not too long ago. How about this?� Your otherwise healthy teenager starts to hear voices and is soon not safe to himself or his family. The closest facility for him is in Vallejo!! If he can get in!� Imagine, those of you with children � what do you do? Quit your job and rent a hotel room close? What if you have other kids in your household? What if you can�t afford to leave your job? But it�s your son? What do you do? This is also a situation very close to our home.

Okay one more example, and this is from Laura not from me. A colleague of her�s son is in his early 20�s, bright, talented � he actual has a law degree � but also seriously mentally ill and when he stops taking his medications, he gets sick. So to make a long story short, he stopped taking his meds, and was picked up by the police and thrown in jail � but he�s not a criminal, he�s mentally ill. What he needs is to get back on his medication. In jail he gets sicker and sicker, because they can�t make him take his medication. And they punish him more and more severely for the violations that he does while he is in jail. You know we could make the jail a scapegoat; we could also blame law enforcement. But they�re not trained mental health professionals. The jail is a jail! It�s not a mental health facility, and that is precisely the problem, we don�t have a facility. But it�s your son�What are you going to do? What are we going to do? What can we do? You realize right now, God forbid, someone could have a heart attack and there are three hospitals ready. But if you have a mental break down and you need help, there is nowhere to go, nowhere to go in this county.

��

Khatanu l�fanekha, we have sinned before You, by not paying attention and by not caring enough about the most vulnerable in our society to do anything to help them.

At this point you might be fairly asking yourself, �Rabbi why did you bring us these huge unsolvable problems? What can we really do to make a difference?� I struggle with this. And this is why.

��

I brought these two problems to you because evil flourishes in the dark, silence is sin�s side kick.� Part of being a person of faith is believing that if we shed the light of humanity on a problem, that alone can lead toward a solution; awareness is the beginning of change.

��

Advocacy is also important. You know, politicians care about public opinion. Our votes do count , our voices if we use them can make a difference.

I want to know narrow the focus even more to ourselves: the realm of the personal. Is �sin� as I have defined it meaningful? I think so because in the end, it is all about relationships � with other people � those our government tortures, or the mentally ill, or God. It is from a sense of connectedness that a feeling of responsibility arises, and then if we blow it, a sense of shame. It�s like one of those kinetic sculptures where you drop the ball in one spot and, if all the pieces are connected, the ball moves from one place to another. That connectivity is really the essence life as far as I can tell.

So let me ask�how connected are we in the congregation, at work, or at home? I ask because when the connections break down, we are more apt to hurt each other. We are more apt to sin. And the truth is I don�t think over all we are very connected. You can live for decades in the neighborhood and not know anything about what your neighbor really cares about. I mean, how many of us really know our neighbors; could talk about real issues with them? Some, some, but I don�t think very many. How about your coworkers? If you work at Shomrei Torah, we know ourselves too well. But otherwise, do you really know your coworkers, what really matters to them. The congregation, we think of ourselves a khemisha place, a warm welcoming place. By the way, have you ever met the congregation that thinks they are really nasty people? It doesn�t exist. And I think we are khemisha, but how deep are our relationships?

�

I am proud of Shomrei Torah, and I think that the relationships we have are often very thin. I think they could be deeper, that�s why we are starting Communities in Conversation, so we can deepen the relationships we have, find out what people really care about, and then maybe let our voices be heard. And one last question: how connected are you to your family? Do you know the emotional map of your children, of your spouse, of your siblings? It�s a good time to ask that question, and it is a good time to say, �in the New Year I will do better.�

How about our relationship with God or, if you prefer, our higher self, the part of us that demands more from us than simply what our personal need dictates? The more connected we feel, the more personal responsibility we take and when that happens we are more able to hear our own voice of conscious, saying, hatati lefnkha, I, I have sinned before You, what can I do to fix it.

�I�d like now to conclude, where we began, in search of sin in the Garden of Eden. There we found that sin was bound up in relationship, responsibility and shame. But life in the Garden was no life at all, thus Eve, who is often seen as the perpetrator of �original sin� is in actuality, Khava, �the mother of all life�.� To live is to be in relationship and relationships of any kind are a messy business. Failure in one form or another, is a given; it�s how we respond that is so important; do we allow ourselves to feel shame, can we take responsibility?

�

Khatanu l�fanekha, we have sinned before you. What else is new? The question is, will we recognize it for what it is and do something about it in the year ahead.

�

This past winter I had a three-month sabbatical a week of which I spent on retreat at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in West Marin. Spirit Rock, to be clear, is a Buddhist retreat center. And also to be clear, it�s a very familiar place to me. In fact, I probably sat there in silence on retreat, I think, seven times in the last eight years, and, three of those times, it was for a week of complete silence; two of these were for rabbis. It sounds just like a joke; rabbis go on retreat, and they can�t speak; and the truth is that this is the only way to get me at a retreat center with a bunch of rabbis for any length of time! But, I will say one thing: the first time I ever went there, Rabbi Michael Robinson was part of the group, and we both sat in silence next to each other for four days, and fell in love.

The heart, it�s bigger than the words, and the words often get in the way. It�s also important for me to say that Sylvia Boorstein is my mentor and friend, and she has been my guide for over a decade, as both a Buddhist scholar and quite a Jew. Now, you may be asking yourself, is this kosher? A rabbi going to a Buddhist retreat center? In truth, I have developed over the years what is basically a Buddhist meditation practice. So, is it kosher?

I think this is a reasonable question.

So I�m going to spend just a second here to answer this question with a question: Was the great rabbi, physician, philosopher, scholar Maimonides kosher? Would anyone even ask, �Is the Rambam kosher?� I don�t think so. The reason I asked this question is that in the 12th century, Rambam lived in Egypt amongst Muslim Arabs, and there he fell in love with Greek thought, with philosophy, and then he translated into Arabic, and he studied it; and he became, for all intents and purposes, an Aristotelian thinker. So much so that he argues that Moses actually was an Aristotelian thinker also! Moses as a Greek philosopher? So Maimonides��Now it�s true that they burned Rabam�s books for a few centuries. OK, but he did win the day. I�ll be happy and really flattered if people burn my books�I have to write them first! So, the short answer to the question is this �kosher� is simply that Judaism is not as hermetically sealed as you might think and over the centuries we did take on aspects of other cultures, of other philosophies, and we made them part of Judaism. And so, the Rambam did it, and I don�t mean to compare myself to Rambam, but I and many other Jews are doing it today with some aspects of Eastern thought. One last thing I�m going to say is that my interest is not in Buddhist metaphysics but is simply in their meditative technologies which have been translated faithfully for over 2500 years and are exceptional.

So, I�ve made Spirit Rock one of my spiritual homes over the years and its form of meditation one of my spiritual practices. I have done what the Talmud says, I have created a heart with many chambers �it�s a beautiful saying-- and one of the chambers allows me to meditate in a form that was passed down for many centuries, and I have been the recipient of some of its teachings.

The focus of this last retreat was called �Meta,� which is loving-kindness practice. It�s actually very simple. You wish yourself and others well. So my simple phrases are: �May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I be free from suffering. May I be at ease.� Now it may sound simple, even silly. But try doing that without a break 24 hours a day�we get to sleep�but every day, all day, for seven days without stop. Try it, and I don�t think you�ll say it�s simple or silly. Sylvia, speaking in the Buddhist context, calls it a purification practice. But what I quickly realized is that it is a great teshuvah practice-- wishing oneself and others well.

But first I need to remind you what teshuvah means and then I�ll explain. Teshuvah is probably the primary goal of the Holy Days. It�s translated in different ways; probably the most common and the most flawed is �repentance.� So, in this form of understanding teshuvah, we are to recognize what we�ve behaved inappropriately in some way and thus need to seek forgiveness for our �sins�. We�re then to commit ourselves to not repeat that bad behavior again. That�s the basics. We all have things we�ve done wrong, and we all need to go through that process, but actually, if you look at the word �teshuvah� in Hebrew, its root, �shuv,� means �to return.� So, I think another meaning, I would say, a deeper meaning, a meaning closer to the root of the word and these Holy Days, is to recognize who we really are and try to come home. And if, as our tradition teaches us, we are tselem elohim, we are created in God�s image, then it�s a recognition of who we really could be, an aspiration to try to be that person in the New Year. I�m going to quote from Rav Kook, the first chief rabbi of Israel, the great mystic of the 20th century. He wrote, �The primary role of teshuvah is for one to return to oneself, which is the root of one�s soul. In this way, one can return to God.� So, this meditative practice, �meta,� loving-kindness practice, creates an environment for the more traditional form of teshuvah, repentance, and also this more elevated form of teshuvah I am about to describe.

Well, the simple explanation is that, when we attempt to wish ourselves well, we inevitably end up confronting ourselves. You see, most of us, deep down inside, and sometimes right on the surface, don�t like ourselves. Who are we to be happy? Being at ease? Give me a break! Suffer? I was born to suffer! You know, I make it a little funny, but it�s not really very funny. I know this is true for me and, I think, for most folks.

And now, I�ll give you a couple of examples from my recent work as a rabbi teaching this practice in the congregation. Recently, I gave three classes on Thursday night to a meditation group; and then we held a beautiful retreat in our new synagogue all day, and we practiced this process. And this is what I heard from people: �May I be happy�?� This is an actual quote� I talked to someone about what their struggle was, and this is what she said: �I can�t be happy.� I said, �Why?� �Because I wasn�t there for my mother when she died..� That was over a decade ago�

What about healthy? Another person said,� Whenever I get to the word �healthy�� closing my eyes saying �May I be healthy��my late husband comes in my mind. Then, when I try to say,� free from suffering�, I just see him in pain.�

May I be at ease? �What does �at ease� mean?� another person said. �As a child of a survivor, I can�t imagine ever being at ease.�

Wishing oneself well, self-love is very challenging. The weight of our lives can simply be overwhelming, especially as Jews. But a great question to ask yourself for the New Year is �How heavy are you?� And I don�t mean on the scale. Could we set some of our unnecessary burdens down? It�s common to make a New Year�s resolution to lose weight in the physical sense. But what about the emotional weight of our lives? Why not resolve to let some of that go as well?

So I spent the first three days of my retreat wishing myself well, and it wasn�t going very well. �May I be happy, may I be healthy, yada, yada, yada, yada.� It just wasn�t happening. And the teachers there say, �Well go where the juice is�. I just felt nothing. I felt like�I don�t know�a recorder that was broken, just repeating over and over these things. But, on the third day, I had a breakthrough. I decided to switch out of the Buddhist mantra and go with Judaism. And I changed the mantra to �Elohai, n�shamah sh�natata be tahorah he,� �My G-d, the soul you have given me is pure.� Naturally, I was up on a hill with a breathtaking view of the coastal mountains�. very beautiful hills on both sides and the picturesque, Japanese style buildings of Spirit Rock below. It was probably 6:30 in the morning.

The sun was just coming up, and we were all�you know�pretty �out there� by then. Some of the people were walking�it was a walking meditation time. And I�m up on this hill bellowing, �Elohai, n�shamah sh�natata be tahorah he.� But I really didn�t care, because, finally, finally, I got it! �Tahora-he�: The soul you have given me, G-d, is pure. Pure! And no one can take that away. No matter what�s happened to you, no matter who you are, what you�ve done��Tahora he!� The soul G-d has given me is pure.

Now, we�re still responsible for our actions. So this horizontal plane between you and another person, bain adam v�chavero�there is no getting out of that responsibility. It�s still our lot. But deep down inside, no matter what: tahora he! The soul is pure; it�s in every one of us. I recently learned a beautiful teaching about this in the context of the blowing of the shofar. Rabbi Avi Weiss, a famous, well-known orthodox rabbi from Flatbush, New Jersey. He is renown in part because he works also with both the orthodox and the non-orthodox Jewish world. I went to hear him speak in San Francisco. And this is his teaching about the shofar. He said the sound of the shofar is the expression of the inner breath of the inner soul. Now hold on! He reminds us of the creation story. God forms Adam out of clay. V�yitzair adonai elohim et ha�adam afar min ha�adamah v�yipach b�apav nishmat chayim v�yehi ha-adam l�nefesh chayah. God formed Adam out of earth, blowing the breath of life into his nostrils; Sh sh sh sh�

And Adam became a living being. And this is what he said. �God blows the breath in, and, when we blow the shofar, it is a reversal of that breath. Elohai, n�shamah sh�natata be tahorah he. My God the soul you have given me is pure� (song). May we be happy! May we be healthy!

Teshuvah necessarily begins with the self. Mi sh�yodeah nafsho yodeah boro. One who knows his soul knows its creator. Forgiveness, compassion, love�it starts with the self. Our ability to love others is directly related to our ability to love ourselves. During my retreat, we started with the self and then branched out to other people, which is what we always do. So you start with �May I be happy,� and then you switch to others: �May you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be free from suffering.� And it�s best to start with folks who are easy to bless, like your family. When I was working on this sermon, I went to Sylvia�s book. I turned to the chapter on �Loving-kindness,� and in there folded was a note written by Levi and Sophie, written when they were�I don�t know, 7�that said , �Thank you for the game boy and the games. Love you, Daddy, Levi and Sophie.� It�s easy for me to wish my children well, so I started there�

So start there. Start with someone you can easily bless, and then move on to challenging people in your life. People you�d say �Happy! A pox on your family!� Or: �As much tsuris as you�ve given me, may you suffer forever!� You see, my guess is that there are people for all of you here tonight that you would love to bless, and there are people�maybe the best case scenario�you�d rather not think about at all. They�ve hurt us. They�ve let us down. They�ve disappointed us. We tell stories about them, sometimes in our head, which is better, and sometimes to others, which isn�t so good. And those stories may be true. Interesting! You know, the hurt voice, the angry voice, the disappointed voice, the resentful voice�it lies! So you may be sure that those stories you�ve been telling about folks are true, but, have you ever really listened to them and tried to listen objectively and asked the question, �Are these stories really true, or am I just telling them because they serve some need, maybe not a healthy need? The story, though, that we don�t tell is that they, like us, want to be happy, want to feel safe, want to be connected to other human beings, want to be forgiven and forgive, want to love and be loved. They may not know how to do it, and they may have totally blown it with you or someone you love. But that does not mean they are no longer human. And to be human is to want these things. And when we are in a space that�s negative, it�s toxic. Recognizing that, deep down, even those folks we perceive as our enemies want to be loved makes it easier not to hate and opens the possibility of loving-kindness. It also keeps us from hurting ourselves, because, if you notice, having ill will towards others is self-inflicted pain. Just see what it�s like. �I don�t like that person; he hurt me�. G�errrrrrr!� Feel that� It hurts us! It�s bad for us!... �May they be happy, may they be healthy, may they be free from suffering, may they be at ease.�

Tradionally, Jews wish each other well during the Yomim Nora�im, these Days of Awe. You could send a New Year card. Say �Shana Tova.�

So, OK, let�s take a moment now; and, if you�re comfortable with this, I�d like you to close your eyes and picture a loved one in your mind�s eye and simply say to them to yourself, �May you have a sweet New Year.� And, if you�re comfortable and they�re sitting next to you, hold their hand and think to yourself, �May you have a sweet New Year� (a few minutes elapse). Now open your eyes and wish the person sitting next to you a Shana Tovah (another time elapse). It feels good, right? It feels good! Now, imagine approaching a person, someone you�re struggling with, with such an open heart. Imagine starting the New Year with a heart ready to love yourself and the other. In essence, this second form of wishing well to others is an answer to what is, according to Rabbi Akiva, the great Talmudic sage, the most important wisdom of all, V�ahavta re�echa k�mocha, loving your neighbor as yourself.

Rabbi Romi J. Shapiro tells a great story that relates to this teaching: He was invited after the tsunami in Indonesia to come to a concert, a Christian music concert, to raise money for the victims of the tsunami. And it was organized by the evangelical community, and he felt a little uncomfortable; all these preachers and all these rip-roaring fundamentalists and this little rabbi. So they�re rocking out and raising lots of money and saying a lot of halleluyahs, and it�s his turn. And he gets up on the dais and he�s a little uncomfortable, and he says, �You know, I�m a rabbi and rabbis teach Torah. I�m going to teach you some Torah. He started with a question that�s very appropriate for the eve of Rosh Hashanah, which is, among other things, the birthday of the world. He asked them, �Why does the Torah say we are created in the image and the likeness of God, but after God creates us, God simply refers to us as �b�tselem elohim,� the image of God. What happened to likeness?� Why doesn�t God say after God created us that we were in the image and likeness of God? And this is the answer: He said, �Tselem elohim is God manifest. So look at the ocean; the ocean is God. The waves are us. We have no choice in that. We are God manifest. We are the waves whether we like it or not. But likeness�that is more potential.� And this is what he said to this huge crowd: �Being the likeness of God means that we have the potential to act in a godly manner. It means that we have, regardless of our ideology, theology, and politics, engaged each moment and each other with loving-kindness. Image of God, but not yet the likeness of God. You were born in the image of God, but living out the likeness of God is a choice; and you are making that choice right now, here, thousands of you, coming together to help people, most of whom you have never met. The people struck by this tragedy don�t look like you, they don�t believe as you do, they don�t� share your culture or speak your language or listen to your music. They couldn�t be more different. And yet, here you are. Your heart is broken over their tragedy, and your wallets and purses are open to be of service in their recovery. Why? Because moments such as these�and this is the most important part�we do not see the other as stranger but as neighbor, as an image of God. And when we see the image of God in others, we cannot help but act out the likeness of God ourselves.

V�ahavta re�echa k-mocha. Loving your neighbor as yourself is a profound Jewish ideal, but, in truth, it�s very hard to realize.

So, come with me and imagine, you�re having a busy day and you�re running late, and you�ve got to be somewhere real important, but you�re hungry and you, if you don�t have food, you�re going to take a dive right when you need to be together. So you�re running to Food for More or Whole Wallet�I mean, Whole Foods�and you get a healthy snack, and you go to the express lane, and it�s looking good. But then, you notice that the person in front of you is holding a little baby, and the woman checking out everybody is putting her arm around the baby, and now she�s taking the baby in her arms and now she�s giving the baby back. And your blood pressure is getting up, you�re sweating, and you�re trying hard to hold back all the nasty things you want to say: �Look, it�s the express lane and I�m in a hurry--don�t you get it?� You know, it�s all going on in your head, but you�re OK, you�re not saying it. It�s going on inside. Luckily, you don�t say a word and you don�t have a heart attack. You almost hit somebody with your car as you�re speeding away, but nobody got hurt, you got your food and you are on your way� This is what you don�t know. What you don�t know is that the lady who�s checking people out�her husband was killed in Iraq last month, and the baby that woman was holding�well, that�s her baby, and she only gets to see her baby one time during the day, and that was the time. That�s what we didn�t know. And this is the truth. There�s so much we don�t know about the other. Yet, we rarely really try to understand, lovingly, who they are.

Ahavta l�re-echa kamocha� means constantly trying to see the image of divinity in everyone. It�s hard.

There�s a bumper sticker I love that goes something like, �Don�t assume malice when it could easily be ignorance.� You know, it�s actually quite narcissistic to think that someone is out to hurt us. I�ll give you an example. Let�s say you�re in synagogue and you�re sleeping while I�m speaking. It never happens! But let�s say, OK, you�re sleeping. I could say, �that�s so rude!� I mean, I plan, I work, it�s no fun for me�. Other people see, and then other people think I�m boring, and�how could you do that? Or I could think, �You�ve had a rough day, you�re tired, and isn�t it nice to have a safe, comfortable space where you can sleep? But, seriously, it�s amazing the knots we can tie ourselves up in when we don�t see our relationships through the lens of loving-kindness. We tell distorted stories, and we hurt ourselves along the way.

I�ll give you another example�email. Emails are horrible things, bad in every way. Everyone knows I hate emails, OK? So you get an email. You can�t see their face, you don�t really know the context, you just see words, words you don�t like, on the screen and you react. And, unfortunately, then you hit the �send� button, right? And then you go back, like ten minutes later, you look again and you realize, �My God, they just said �Happy Birthday,� and I thought they said, you know, �You�re a �� or something like that.

Another example: I�m going to call it �an appointment with the rabbi.� True story; actually, all I�ve said so far is true. Sad but true. Not too long ago, someone came to see me. The appointment was in my calendar, but it didn�t say the purpose of the meeting, and neither Denise nor I remembered what it was about. Of curse, it�s always Denise�s fault! The time for the appointment had arrived, and I was picking up my study a bit. I realized I was feeling a little tense. Perhaps I was tired or anxious; I don�t really remember. But what I do remember is my utter surprise and relief when the person arrived and let me know she simply wanted to understand a Torah portion. She just wanted to study some Torah! I was blown away! I had assumed she was coming with a complaint or a problem. It often happens when you�re the rabbi, but not as much or as often as the story in my head that day. And that story was not helpful to me or the person coming to see me. Once I got out of the story, my heart opened. In fact, I was filled with joy and ready to serve. Loving our neighbor means assuming the best about others. When we do that, we are also more likely to be at our best.

So, after wishing myself well and various other people well, I, like the hundred and twenty other people I was �retreating� with, spent the last few days of the retreat blessing all creation, extending loving-kindness to all beings everywhere. This is a kind of like tree-hugging, and the truth is, once you get to such an open-hearted state, the beauty of a single tree can be overwhelming, and you seek it out to hug!

But quickly, for me, something else happened. I was confronted with the dark and foreboding shadow of the Shoah, the Holocaust. It turned out there were other Jewish folks there, and we had all pretty much had the same challenge. It was like this huge cloud that swooped in and hung very close. We were wishing the world well but what about all of our tormented, tortured and murdered ancestors? It was very, very hard. I asked one of the leaders for some help. He said, �Well, I�m Jewish, and I spent a week sitting in Auschwitz, and I can�t tell you how to work with this problem�.

What I found was this: I could work around it, but I couldn�t work with it. The best I could do was to keep it there �at bay�. Some things are beyond loving-kindness. But nevertheless, we have choices.�

Some of you may have heard of Shlomo Carlebach, Chassidic rabbi, really known for his music, great music. There are Carlebach shuls. His music is really sung everywhere and in our synagogue as well. And he went to Germany a lot; he played lots of concerts there, and people asked him�you know--he came from a Chassidic dynasty; he lost everyone. I mean, everyone was murdered in the most horrible ways. He lost it all. And they said, �You know, how can you go to Germany and play all these concerts, given, you know, what happened to your family?� And this is what he said: �If I had two hearts, I�d devote one full-time to hate. But I don�t. I only have one.�

Practicing loving-kindness may not change the world, but it certainly can change how we respond to it. The Talmud teaches that the world was created on Rosh Hashanah. This is called yom harat olam, the day of the world�s conception. And it says, on Rosh Hashanah, the world will also be redeemed. There is a great Jewish fantasy about what that means; I love it. You know the verse about �we will beat our swords into plowshares.� Has anyone ever seen a plowshare? �Our spears into pruning hooks.� �We will study war no more.� No disease, no hunger, no poverty, no homelessness, no oppression. The world will be perfected. It�s a great fantasy, and I love it. But reality starts with us, one open heart at a time.

The New Year is here. May it be a blessing for us all. May we be happy� May we be healthy�. May we be free from suffering�. and may we be at ease�

And let us say together, amen.

Shannah Tovah.

The Rabbis of the Talmud, the ancient repository of Jewish Tradition ask, an interesting question about the Holy Days.

Passover has the exodus from Egypt, Chanukah, the Macabian revolt. What about the yamim noraim, The Days of Awe, The Holy Days-- what historical events correspond to them?

Not a bad question considering how ancient and steeped in history we are. Well, according to their reasoning the Days of Awe commemorate the second giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai.

Let me remind you of the story: Moses comes down the mountain with the Ten Commandments in his arms, sees the Golden Calf and in a rage, smashes the tablets on the ground. He then goes back up the mountain and gets the second set.

The Rabbis of Talmud reason that Moses went up Mt. Sinai for the second time on the new moon of Ellul - the time these holy days are really suppose to begin, received the second tablets on Rosh Hashannah, and descended down the mountain with them in his arms some 3,500 years ago this evening.

Pretty wild story, but that is not all. There is a problem: What happened to the first set of commandments that Moses smashed?

The Sages couldn’t believe that the sacred fragments of the first set of tablets were just left on the ground. After all, the Torah reports that they were created by God alone. So what do the Sages say? According to the Talmud, the broken pieces of the first tabletswere placed side-by-side with the whole second set in the aron hakodesh. The broken and the whole, side-by-side.

The broken and the whole, side-by-side; so many lessons can be learned from this short teaching from the Talmud.

Earlier this year I saw a movie with my kids: "Because of Winn Dixie".

It’s a sweet film (great book) about a broken family in a broken southern town and a girl who manages with the help of her dog - Winn Dixie - to bring some comfort and some wholeness to everyone she touches.

How does she do it? She brings together both aspects of her life - the broken and the whole, for herself and those she meets in the town.

Her mom walked out on her and her dad, the town preacher, when she was a baby. Her dad won't talk about it. She persistently nudges him until he starts to speak of his brokenness. As he opens up to her and tells her the story they both heal.

She brings the broken and the whole together for them; he lost his wife, she lost her mom, but they have each other. It hurts but there is healing.

In the movie there is one thing that symbolizes this healing process and that is a candy called "The Litmus Lozenge." It was a best-selling candy and the sole industry of the town until it closed down. When the plant closed the town began to fail.

What is the secret of the Litmus Lozenge? It tastes both sweet and sad. In other words, it brings the broken and the whole together for every person who eats it.

The broken and the whole is a profound metaphor for our lives and at the heart of our Holy Day experience. Imagine what it would be like right now to taste the magicallysweet and sad flavors of a Litmus Lozenge. What feelings would it bring up for us? What pain? What joy? What longing? What sweet memory?

Returning to our story from the Talmud, we are all like those two sets of tablets.

We are all in some ways broken, we all experience loss, pain, real suffering. For most of us sweetness, wholeness, is also there – both, the broken and the whole make up who we are, b’nai adam b’tzelem elohim, and we bring that mix of broken and wholeness with us to these yamim noraim, these Days of Awe, these Holy Days.

This is my 10th year standing before you on Kol Nidre. I am honored to know and serve many of you. We’ve been through a lot together. We’ve had many celebrations, and we’ve seen sad and hard times as well. Even if we were meeting for the first time tonight, I’d know that some folks here are in mourning, others are struggling with a relationship, with physical pain, with mental anguish, some rightfully wonder if this will be their last Holy Days of their life, others are here for the first time without the love of their life.

Standing here, it is almost overwhelming to think about…

The broken and the whole – we are the broken and the whole, and the Holy Days, especially Kol Nidre, bring all this to the front of our being. Hard to hide when you are standing naked before God!

True for you and it is true for me as well. One example: the first Holy Day sermon I delivered here was on a very similar subject. At that time, my brother Willie was alive and he drove up from Santa Cruz to “see his little brother in action.”

 

I can still picture him sitting right over there … After services he came up to me and said, “You speak the truth bro, you really do…” It breaks me to think about it, but that is notthe whole story. That was over 9 years ago. He died 4 years ago. Since then his family has suffered and recovered in many ways. It was rough at first; they were broken wide open, but life does go on and they are now moving towards wholeness.

The broken and the whole - this is who we are, this is the human condition. We can't escape it.

We can not escape it, but we can work with it. In fact, many of the Holy Day rituals are designed to help us move from the broken to the whole. Three practices especially come to mind this evening –
1. The focus on introspection or a chesbon hanefesh;
2. The use of memory;
3. and being in community.

Essential to the Holy Day experience is the act of introspection. In Hebrew we call it a cheshbon hanefesh, an accounting of the soul. Ideally this ‘accounting’ starts in the month of Elul, but even if you haven’t spent a moment contemplating what your year was like and what you hope the New Year will be, the moment you set foot into the Synagogue (even when it is also an LDS church) you can’t help but begin to think about what is really true for you.

For some just showing up, just setting foot in a Synagogue, gets the whole process going. For others it’s hearing a certain prayer like avinu malkeinu that sets a chain of thought in motion. Perhaps seeing an old friend (or enemy) is what makes you stop and look inside. What ever it is, the Holy Days are set up to foster introspection.

We may spend the rest of the year running away from our brokenness, our pain, our deep longing, but during these Days of Awe, especially tonight, we are given this great, important, even profound chance to stop running and take a deep look inside. It may be painful, it may be hard, but it is the way toward wholeness.

That I believe is what Moses realized while he was on the mountain the second time. Remember, he had smashed the first set of Commandments, and climbed back up the mountain for the second set. He was up there a long time, 40 days and 40 nights according to the Torah. What was he doing up there? My guess is that he was doing a serious cheshbon hanefesh.

Think of what Moses had been through. He killed a man in his youth. Sure, the guy he pummeled to death was a tyrant, but it was murder all the same.

He'd shattered the first set of tablets. In fact, he struggled with anger his whole life. He had also abandoned his wife and children for the Israelite cause.

In other words, the tablets weren’t the only thing broken in Moses’ life. He had a lot to think about. It took 40 days and nights on the mountain, and a serious process of cheshbon hanefesh, before Moses was ready to receive the second whole set of tablets. Only after he faced his brokenness could Moses be a vehicle for wholeness for his people and himself.

What is true for Moses is also true for us. It's so basic - psych 101- yet it is not so easy to do. Sometimes it seems we would rather do anything than face the truth. The problem is this: there is no redemption without telling the truth. The secrets we keep, the lies we tell ourselves, the broken, shattered pieces of ourselves that we hold inside, they fester, they grow inside us like cancerous tumors, sucking our life energy away.

In an essay called "After The Fire," the author, Kate Wenner, painfully describes what happens when the broken past remains buried.

Kate was her father’s caregiver the last months of his life. His illness was unexpected, and swift. She writes, “He had gone…in eight short months from being a skiing, bikeracing, dating man of 70 to a shrunken, (and) exhausted soul with paper-thin skin…” He had been a difficult and harsh father who kept his children at a distance. But nowapproaching death, he would tell them something that brought them together in an unexpected way.

“When he was 14 years old, his mother and sister had deliberately set fire to their dry goods shop to collect the insurance money. It was late at night, and the couple that lived in the apartment above the store came running out from the flames, screaming and carrying their children in their arms. They could have easily been killed.” Her father had witnessed everything and had kept it a secret his whole life. After he told her the story he said, “I came from people who were despicable…to risk killing children so you can have a fancier store is evil. I was a part of that evil. Now you see why I am ready to die.” “But”, she reasoned, “you didn’t set the fire”. “No,” her father responded, but “I am tired of living with the shame. I’ve held on to it all these years. I’m exhausted from trying to cover it up, driving and driving myself. Dying is the way I can let go of it at last.”

A whole life of hiding, a whole life of secret shame that chased him like an angry dog, snapping at his heels, driving his family away.

We don’t have to wait until death to tell our secrets, to face our brokenness, to let go of our past. Nor do our families have to suffer endlessly because of what we can’t face. Yom Kippur is here, atonement is our promise if we only do our part.

Introspection, a cheshbon hanefesh, is one way the Holy Days encourage us to do teshuvah, to repair our brokenness and reach toward wholeness. Another important vehicle toward wholeness is the use of memory. For me, the best example of this is Yizkor.

Yizkor is the time we remember our dead. The longer I live, and the longer I serve our congregation, the heavier my Yizkor experience is. I sometimes wonder if there is another choice; do we have to remember our dead? Do we have to enter into that painful place of hurt and loss? I think we all know the answer to this question. If we want any hope of healing, any possibility for wholeness, acknowledging, and remembering ourlosses is essential. We pay now, or we pay later. There is no other way. It is not closure that we seek – there is no such thing until they put the earth on our grave.

Yizkor is more about perspective than closure. Boundless grief eclipses what is good and whole in out lives. Yizkor offers a framework for our grief so that our grief won’t overwhelm us. But Yizkor is not just about grief. It is also an opportunity to recall with fondness those we love and lose. Their smiling faces, and the qualities of their lives we strive to emulate. Yizkor can also be a time to re-affirm our place among the living. In this way, memory helps us move from broken to broken open, alive anew to what life still has to offer. The image that comes to mind for me is a geode. A geode is a round, nondescript hard rock that when broken open reveals a beauty and splendor which would otherwise never be seen.

Finally, there is the fact that we do all this intensely personal work in community. This is quite remarkable when you think about it. When else would you work in such personal ways in such a public setting? Imagine walking down the street, beating your chest and saying, “ al chet shekhatanu lifanekha, we have sinned before you…” I don’t think so. But our Holy Day journey is essentially a public one – why? Because on some level we recognize that our burdens, our brokenness, our pain is too much for us to carry by ourselves. Wholeness is not achievable in isolation. We need each other to be whole, only together are we really one.

That, by the way, is the wisdom in saying the vidui, the confessions out loud in community. I am sure none of us have transgressed in all the various ways listed. In fact, I would guess that many of them don’t relate to most of us. But some do, for some of us here tonight, and all of us have something we are ashamed of, something that is hard for us to bear by ourselves. Al chet shekhatanu lifanekha, we have sinned before you. We say it together so that no one will have to stand alone and all of us can acknowledge where we have gone wrong, what is broken and what can be made whole again.

Al chet shekhatanu lifanekha, we have sinned, we have missed the mark, we are broken and we shall be whole again.

Moses really started something when he broke those tablets. The rabbis of the Talmud were brilliant in putting the broken set in the aaron hakodesh with the whole set. The broken and the whole, that’s us, that’s fundamentally who we are. The question is, will we be broken or broken open? Will our losses crush us or will we continue to live for what is whole and good in our lives?

Redemption, redemption is not some future time of perfection. Redemption can not be found in forgetting, escapism or denial.

Moses and the Israelites never forgot who they were. The ark of the covenant with the whole and the broken tablets was at the head of the camp every day.

Yet, every day they got out of bed, packed their bags and continued on their way towards the Promised Land remembering, not just what was broken, but also what was whole; not just what was, but also what was yet to be.

We are Moses and the Israelites. Their mission is ours. The broken and the whole, they are in every one of us. The Promised Land, it’s theirs too, in the realization of who we are and whom we can become, now and the year ahead.

The Akeda, the binding of Isaac, is one of the most terrifying and challenging stories in all of Torah. It is also one of the core narratives of Rosh Hashannah, read in most synagogues either the first or second day of the year. Let me remind you of the story:

• From the book of Genesis 22
• Take your son, the one you love Isaac…
• We expect Abraham to argue…
• He rises early, burdens Isaac with the wood…
• They walk in silence…
• “Aba, dad, I’m carrying the wood…”
• They climb the mountain
• The sacrifice is prepared…
• The wood is laid out…
• Isaac is bound to the rock alter – hence the name akeda – the binding
• Abraham’s knife is raised, poised to slit his son’s throat when…
• “Al tishlakh yadkha al hanahar…Don’t raise your hand against the boy!”
• Abraham looks up and sees the ram caught in the thicket…
• The ram is sacrificed instead of Isaac
• Abraham is blessed: “…because you have done this and not withheld your son, I will bestow my blessings upon you and make your descendents as numerous as the stars of the heavens and the sands of the sea…”

This is a terrifying tale and I would skip it all together if it were not so relevant to our lives, especially today. I guess it is always relevant; that’s why we’ve been reading it on Rosh Hashannah every year for the past 2,000 years, give or take…

I can’t think of the Akeda without first thinking about Israel. Why? There’s the setting, har hamoriah, Mount Moriah which, according to Jewish tradition, is the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. That’s right; the near sacrifice of Isaac takes place at the same spot where the great Temple in Jerusalem was built!

Beside the physical setting of this “terror on the mountain”, there is the fact that over the years, Israeli’s have seen their own struggle for peace and security through the lens of this story as well. It is as if every Israeli son sent to do battle is in some way Isaac, and every parent, an Abraham or Sarah. God, God is the silent partner to the seemingly endless saga of pain and sacrifice.

The Akeda is such a powerful myth in Israel today that a whole genre of Modern Israeli poetry has developed around it. All the great Israeli poets have written on the subject, but tonight we only have time for one; a poem by Rachel, a renown poet of the early years of the state. Her poem is called “The Binding:”

The Binding:

And the boy climbs the mountain

On his shoulder a machine gun ready. -

But where is the lamb for a burnt offering, my son! asks the old

Father who stays at home.

I am going to the temple, my father, and on my way Mine and thicket, and on my way

The Angel my father.

Lay not thine hand upon the lad - he cries

Not now, not now

Not until the next war.

“Al tishlakh yadkha al hanahar…lay not thine hand against the boy!” That line is the climax of her poem, and the climax of the story in the Torah. It is also the universal cryof every parent who’s child is sent off to war, “

Al tishlakh yadkha al hanahar…lay not thine hand against the boy!”

In the Torah, Abraham does not ultimately sacrifice his child. In real life, not every Isaac comes home. And even when they do survive, when the knife is held back at the last minute, there is no guarantee that those who go to war and come home can ever truly come home again.

Isaac never does. If you read a little further on in the story, you’ll notice that while he and his father climb Mount Moriah together, Abraham returns alone! I guess they could not face each other after what had happened.

Isaac does not return with his father and, from that point on, he is a shadow of a man. We are told, for example, that he re-digs his father’s wells. What a stunning metaphor. The trauma of the terror on the mountain is so great that Isaac is unable to build a life of his own. Rather, he is caught in the shadow of his father’s actions, a shadow of a man. In fact, we hear very little from Isaac. He is mostly silent, he goes prematurely blind, when he does speak, it is the language of a weak and feeble man, easily tricked and manipulated by his family.

Thankfully, I have been spared war, and the horror of war. But I have spent enough time in Israel to get a glimpse of what war can do to the bnei adam, the plan, human beings that get thrust into the firestorm of military conflict.

During the first Infitada, the first Palestinian uprising, Laura and I lived in Jerusalem. We shared a mirpeset, a porch, with a young couple, Chen & Segal. They were in their late 20’s in school at Hebrew University. Chen was a tall, thin, gentle man, who happened to speak Arabic. His language skills came in handy, and he was often called for reserve duty serving in hot spots like Gaza and Hebron. I saw Chen go and return once while we were there.

I saw what Segal went through while he was away… she slept poorly, she cried a lot. By the time he returned, she had large dark circles under her eyes. I was shocked to see Chen after a month in Hebron. Chen left, healthy, quiet but happy. He returned gaunt, chain smoking, a shadow of the man he was.

So far we have focused on the Akeda as it is played out in Israeli society, but of course, this is not just an Israeli story. This is a universal human story being played out right now in our country as well. Israel is a small country and because of this, it is impossible not to feel the affects of the many wars. Almost everyone serves in the army at some time in their life and every family is touched by the trauma of war, or terror, or both. America is the big wide open, a place where one can easily hide from almost everything, including the fact that we are at war, right now, even as I am talking to you, right now. Right now someone could be dying from a sniper’s bullet, a road side bomb…right now.

We are at war. Almost every day someone’s son, someone’s Isaac, is killed in a myriad of different but equally effective ways and there is no end in sight. When will it end? What will be the ultimate price? Up until recently the war in Iraq was like the great white elephant in the room that no one was talking about. Now, thanks in large part to Cindy Sheehan, we are slowly starting to wake up to the fact that we are at war.

It is interesting to me that it takes the tears, indignation and determination of a bereaved mother to catch our attention. In the Akeda, the voice of Sarah, Isaac’s mother, is silent. The Torah does not tell us her side of the story. The midrash however, does fill in some of the gaps. For example, we are told that Abraham left early in the morning to avoid Sarah and that when he did speak to her he lied about what he and Isaac were up to. Interesting… He lied… The truth would be too damning! Abraham in his zealotry, in his blind faith, perhaps in his insanity, would sacrifice the child. Not Sarah.

The midrash teaches that when Sarah heard what Abraham had done, she died of a broken heart.

The statistics of the war in Iraq are alarming but they are too impersonal. Instead, I want to share an op-ed letter from the New York Times called “Lost Fathers”. It reflects, in some ways, Sarah’s voice, Cindy Sheehan’s voice and the voice of all those others Isaac’s, who’ve never come home:

As the daughter of a soldier killed in action, I'm worried sick about this generation of war-torn families. I read the growing casualty list from Iraq and think about the number of children who are being left fatherless — or motherless. I consider the fourth grader who stands alone at recess trying to recall her father's voice; the weeping bride who walks the aisle alone, wishing with every step that her father was there to escort her; and all those babies not yet born, their memories not yet formed.

I keep a photo of my father on my desk. In it, he's wearing combat boots, Army greens and a grin so sweet it makes my heart drip with sorrow….

I can remember what my father smelled like — sweat and sun-dried T-shirts — but I can no longer recall the timbre of his voice or the warmth of his embrace. Photos and memories are all I have left of him.

He went away in December 1965. "President Johnson has asked me to go to South Vietnam," he said.

"What are you going to do there?” I asked. "Help fight communism”, he replied.

I retreated to my room in tears. I cried, simply because he was going away and I was afraid he would never come back. "I'll come back, I promise”, Daddy said, wiping my tears as he sat on the edge of my bed.

Daddy kept his promise. He did come back: in a silver coffin, draped with a red-whiteand- blue flag.

The sacrifices didn't stop when the war ended.

My parents fell in love as kids. They expected to grow old together, but only Mama has grown old. She eats her soup, beans, and cornbread alone and remembers with heartache the man who enticed her to laugh on sunny days.

I'm troubled by the nightmares that surely await this generation of battle-scarred children. I know they will grow up, longing for just one more embrace. And like me, they are doomed to spend their lifetimes asking - wasn't there any better way?

Karen Pears-Zacharias’ letter brings home the irreversible, multigenerational affect of war on the survivors. For most of us, the war in Israel or in Iraq is happening to someone else. It is their sacrifice, their Isaac, their future that is at risk, not ours. Perhaps if our lives were on the line we’d be more awake to what is at stake?

One of the most chilling things about the Akeda is the silence of Abraham. What happened to Abraham’s voice? Where is the Abraham who, earlier in the story, was willing to argue with God over the fate of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, saying, “Will you sweep the innocent along with the guilty…?” How can Abraham be so silent when God demands the innocent life of his own son? Where is Abraham’s voice? Where is his voice as they are walking to the slaughter site? Every time I read this tale I want to scream: ‘Speak! Say something!’ In this story, the silence is deafening.

Where is our voice? Are we struck dumb like Abraham, lulled into complacency by our own distance from Iraq? Is Iraq too far away or are we too caught up in the good life here in Sonoma County to give a damn? How many Isaacs will have to be sacrificed before our voices will be heard?

Imagine, for a moment, that there was a draft, and it was your son or grandson, your nephew or friend who was about to be sent off to Iraq – would you be so silent, so passive, so acquiescent then?

I am not a pacifist, at least not yet. I recognize that there are times when war is necessary. Nevertheless, I stand in the long chain of Jewish tradition which sees war as the means of last resort, to be avoided except in self-defense. I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether our actions in Iraq are justified. I will suggest however, when it comes to war here or anywhere, our silence is not justified. At every turn it should be our voice that raises the question: is this necessary? Is there no other way? And when the answer is yes, there is another way, let us not be silent, rather, let us say:

“Al tishlakh yadkha al hanahar…Don’t raise your hand against the boy!”

Rosh Hashannah, the New Year is here. Unlike the secular culture where you party into the New Year, we take this time to do a heshbon hanefesh, an accounting of the soul. This is the time for reflection, introspection and reorientation. It is the time for teshuvah, a return to what we know is the right path.

As part of this process of teshuvah, of repentance and renewal, we blow the shofar. The shofar is our moral alarm clock. Its shrill sound is designed to wake us from our slumber, to arouse within each one of us the desire to do the right thing, to strive, yet again, to be the best people we can be.

This you probably know. What you may not is that the blowing of the shofar is also a remembrance of the Akeda. Remember, at the last minute a ram was found caught in a thicket and it was the ram, not Isaac, which was ultimately killed.

“Why do we sound the ram’s horn,” the Talmud, asks? “Because the Holy One, blessed be God said, ‘Blow a ram’s horn that I may remember unto you the binding of Isaac…and I shall account it to you as if you bound yourself.”

We are bound together with Abraham and Sarah and Isaac, the son that they nearly lost, the son that, in some ways, they did lose. We are bound by tradition and by circumstance. As much as things change, sadly, they stay the same.

But this is a New Year. Our tradition teaches that the doors of teshuvah, the doors of repentance, of renewal are always open. There is no point of no return. We can change, we can make a difference, we can find our true voice in the New Year.

As we enter the New Year, as we gather together to hear the piercing calls of the shofar, may we remember the Akeda, the near sacrifice of Isaac, the “terror on the mountain” and resolve to break the cycle, break the silence and shout with one voice - Al tishlakh yadkha8 al hanahar…lay not thine hand against the boy!” Not Isaac, not anyone, not now and not in the year that lies ahead.

I begin tonight with a story, an ancient tale, recorded in the Talmud some 2,000 years ago. The rabbis who first told this story lived in a very challenging time for the Jews. They had revolted against Roman rule twice, in 70 & in 135ACE, and been crushed both times. The great Temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed, thousands had been killed, enslaved or exiled. Yet, in the midst of all this chaos and pain the Rabbis, the ancient sages who pioneered the Judaism we know today, persisted in their work; they studied Torah, created new Torah and served their communities, passing the Tradition from one generation to the next. They were amazing men, with incredible minds. This story comes from that place of suffering, endurance and hopeful imagination.

One day, the time will come when God will bring the nations of the world to account for their sins. When that day comes -- may it come soon! -- all the great powers of the world (Romans, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, etc. All the persecutors of the Jews) will be brought before the Heavenly Throne and asked one question: did you follow the Torah of the Jews?

What an ironic question.

Each nation is brought before the Heavenly Throne, asked the question, 'Did you obey the Torah of the Jews?'

Each great power from the past tries to find a way to answer 'yes'. Their excuses are many but in the end, of course, none of them can honestly say they 'followed the Torah of the Jews.' They quake in fear for what is about to happen to them...

Then God says something like: "I'll make you a deal.do one simple mitzvah, and I'll let you off the hook, the mitzvah of dwelling in a sukkah."

Immediately, millions of sukkot go up, and all the nations of the world pile in... One problem... God sends a hamsin, a hot wind and they start to shvitiz...

It gets to be too much for them and all at once, like a heard of wildebeests, all the people sitting in their sukkot stampede out from under them, destroying everything in their path, trampling their sukkot into dust...

They fail the test, so it seems, and God prepares to judge them accordingly but there is a question (this is always the way of the Talmud).

We are taught to rejoice in the Sukkah, not to suffer in it! Therefore, Rabba, a famous rabbi from the Talmud, points out that the nations of the world really did fulfill the mitzvah!

"Ah", God replies, "You would be right but for one thing -- they didn't just leave their sukkot, they stampeded out of them, with no regard for the mitzvah or for their own loss" (Talmud, Avodah Zerah: 3 a-b, as taught to me by Rabbi David Hartman).

That's the story, a bit strange and hard to grasp, but profound all the same. The eekar, the essence is this -- it's not that we fail, it's not that we make mistakes. We are human, failure is built into our imperfect nature. We are going to fail; that is a given.

It's not that we fail but how we handle our failures that matters. Do we run away from our inadequacies, trampling over the remains of what we left undone, unconscious and without a care? Or, is there regret, remorse, some sense of loss and a desire to change? That's the eekar, the essence of the story, and of this Holy of Holy times: Yom Kippur.

You see, ultimately this ancient tale is being played out right now. The so called "nations of the world," are us! And here we are, standing before God, at least metaphorically, on this Holy of Holy days, being judged and seeking atonement. We like them, have failed to live up to the Torah, in any form; that's a given. The question is, are we prepared to do teshuvah? Do we care? Are we willing to look honestly at who we really are? Are we willing to try and do better next year?

In truth teshuvah, in the full sense of the word, is hard, really hard to do. It is always easier to run away from our failings than to face them, let alone make a change. On the other hand, realizing that failure is part of the human condition, that we are expected to fail, and that is ok, can be a great relief. In fact, according to the Talmud, God doesn't even expect full teshuvah. God recognizes how hard change really is (certainly Judaism recognizes this fact; why else would we be here, year after year!) The demand is this -- an acknowledgement of where we've faltered, and a desire to be a better person in the year a head.

That's enough, and that's what I want to explore with you now, via the traditional axis of relationships; ben adam l'havero, between a person and another, (the horizontal), and ben adam l'makon, (between a person and God), the vertical. We'll also add another axis I invented this year, ben adam l'olam, "between a person and the world." Let's start with the horizontal.

Many of us here tonight are parents. Some, like Laura and I have relatively small kids, others are "blessed" with teens, some folks' kids are long grown out of the house. Some here have lost their children. Parenting means different things to different people over time, but one thing that is universal about parenting is the sense of inadequacy we all feel. It starts during pregnancy -- is the baby (in utero!) getting what it needs? -- and goes on, as far as I can tell for ever, or at least for a long time. To be a parent is to feel inadequate, to live with a sense of failure on some level.

Sure, there is lots of nakhus... Nevertheless, rare is the parent who is free from worry, free from a sense of "I should have..." "I wish I had...", "If I only had..." A therapist friend once said to me half-joking: "Don't worry George, what they don't get from you now they can recover in therapy."

Lets face it, in the past year, those of us who are parents well, we blew it sometimes. Perhaps we were sharp with our kids, quick to anger, short tempered, even harsh. Maybe we were rushed and distracted by other things. There were also times when we just didn't take the time to figure out what they needed -- reacting instead of really listening. In other words, like any parent, there were times in the last year when we failed our kids. If we didn.t care, if we weren't concerned, if we didn.t want to be better parents, there would be reason to worry. The good news is, we do care, we do want to be better parents, and because of that -- Yom Kippur atones.

That's the point of the story, it's not that we fail, we all do; it's how we respond to our failures. One more thing - did your ask your children for forgiveness? I hadn.t thought about this until I heard a story from Rabbi David Hartman. He told me with tears in his own eyes about how his father would always approach him during the yamim noraim and ask for forgiveness...

If you don't have kids, please don't feel left out. I just used parenting as one example of the challenges of relationships ben adam lhavero. Whether you have children of your own or not, the dynamics are similar for all human relationships.

I don't know for sure, but I bet some folks here tonight would give their right arm to have a parent, a spouse, a sibling, or a friend say, "I'm sorry." I bet just knowing they felt remorse would be worth a finger or two. I am sure there are parents here that feel the same way about their kids -- they are hurting and deserve the salve of acknowledgment and yes, an apology. And of course, the same is true for any of our close relationships with other people. Feeling remorse, saying you're sorry goes such a long way.

I have the pleasure and the honor of working with lots of couples on their weddings. Traditionally, weddings are seen as a taste of the messianic future, and in wine country you really feel it! It is breathtakingly beautiful -- a glorious blue sky, a radiant bride and groom standing under the huppa, vineyards and mountains as a picture postcard back drop. When I am standing there with the couple I often say, half-jokingly to the groom that the 3 most important things he needs to know how to say are:

"You look great," (that one is hard to pull off, because no matter how you say it, it never comes out right!);
"I love you,";
"I am sorry." The truth is, it's not a joke, and it applies to all of us when it comes to our relationships ben adam l'havero... especially the words "I am sorry."
How about ben adam l'makom, between us and God? How do we fair there? If our approach to Judaism is any judge, let's just say, 'we have room for growth.' Why? I can't count how many times I have heard someone say about Jewish practice -- prayer, kashrut, rituals of various kinds -- "Oh we don't do any of that, we're Reform Jews!" It is as if Reform Judaism is defined by what we don't do, not by any affirmation of what we do take on as our own, what we do affirm as our mission in the world.

As a Reform rabbi it is not my job to tell you what you should do religiously. It is my place however, to lead the way toward informed choice. Informed choice, not the lowest common denominator is the standard of Liberal, Progressive, Reform Judaism. The ideal is not ignorance and a disdain for Jewish Tradition, the ideal is that we study, learn, question, struggle, try on, experiment and then decide.

Often, our knee-jerk responses to Jewish Tradition remind me of a child's response to new foods: "Yuk! I won't eat that!" "But you haven't even tried it!" We respond. "I don't care, I know already that I'll just hate it!" We struggle with our kids around issues like this, but do we struggle with ourselves? To sluff-off much of Jewish life without knowledge or experience and often with disdain is, from the stand point of our Talmud teaching tonight, to trample over the sukkah, to fail and simply not give a damn!

That we don't know enough, that we fail to live as full a Jewish life as we'd like; that's a given (I myself am constantly reminded how little I know about Judaism). What counts is our attitude, which I think needs an "adjustment." Franz Rosensweig, the famous 20th century German Jewish philosopher put it well when he said that he was a "not yet" Jew. What he meant by that was simply that he saw no reason to reject what he did not know. "Not yet" leaves the door open to change and growth. "Not yet", shows humility and an openness to what our tradition has to offer. "Not yet" also gives us the choice to say "no" or to find a new way, not yet known to the Tradition or even to ourselves. Franz Rosensweig came to his philosophy through personal experience;

About to convert to Christianity
Decides he should at least check out what he is about to leave behind
Shows up on Kol Nidre evening... overwhelmed by what he encounters
Makes an "informed choice" to realize his Judaism!
Let's stop trampling the sukkah, the sheltering presence of Jewish life and tradition. It's time we move from ignorance and disdain to a place of informed choice. It's time we consider the words "not yet" rather than "no way", it's time we seek to learn and to teach rather than to trample what we don't know.

We've touched on the two traditional axis... Now lets apply this concept, this way of judging life beyond ourselves out into the world -- ben adam l'olam. I am generally not a bumper sticker politician but there is one message pretty common on the old Volvos and VW buses of Sonoma County that sums up the situation. It goes like this: "If you're not outraged, you should be!" We live in a glorious bubble here in Sonoma County. It's like gan eden, a little paradise, a Shangrala, hidden away from the harsh realities of the world all around us. Occasionally we are reminded that there is a scary world out there. It crashes through our TV screens or it comes through our car radio like a message from outer space and we end up staying in our cars long after we arrived at our destinations to take in the complete story. NPR calls these experiences, "driveway moments."

It's pretty jarring when the broken world out there burst our bubble. The truth is it's often overwhelming. How does one imagine a school in Chechnya with 1,200 children in it blown up by terrorists, or the murder of tens of thousands of Sudanese civilians and the displacement of almost 2 million people? How about the daily casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the "collateral damage..."

I haven't even mentioned Israel, an on going tragedy more personal for many of us. And, as if that was not enough there is the environmental crisis which hangs over all of us like a mushroom cloud, yet most of us are barely able to acknowledge it exists.

Are you feeling overwhelmed and a bit beat up? That is often what happens when we leave our paradise here, and venture out into the rest of the world. The truth is you don't even need to leave Sonoma County to encounter a very broken reality. Just cross the tracks, and check out the other side of our town that is less white and much poorer and that other harsh reality will start to seep in.

So, what do we do? We can't "heal" the whole world! We're not, as far as we know the mashiakh. We do have an action hero for a governor -- the governator -- but even Arnold can't handle the list I just brought out. So why even go there? Why, because as our story teaches, the issue is not failure but attitude. The fact that we can't imagine the tikkunim, the repairs necessary to heal our broken world does not relinquish us from the responsibility of trying! In other words, to look the other way is to "trample the sukkah" in our tale from the Talmud.

The Talmud reminds me of a story I first heard Rev. Coffee, the long-time pastor of Community Baptist Church, tell here in Santa Rosa. It goes like this...

1,000's of star fish
a boy is throwing them back in the sea, one at a time
when confronted by a man who says, "Why waste your time, there are way too many for you to save?"
the boy responds, "made a difference to that one..."
Making a difference one at a time is what it's all about, and all we're expected to do.

Let's return back to where we started with that strange story from the Talmud and what it's really all about -- being human.

Being human means we are destined to make mistakes, to fail, to khet, to miss the mark. It's true in our relationship with our children, our spouses, our friends. It's for sure a reality of our spiritual or religious life, how ever we define them. And, out in the world, our sense of inadequacy can only be magnified.

I suppose if I wanted to send us all home depressed, I'd stop right here. But that is not the point of the story or the summation of what it means to be human, because, along with our imperfections we have the capacity, unlike the rest of creation, to be reflective. We are, b'nai adam, b'tzelem elohim, "children of the earth", yet wrought in the image of God. Our godliness is in part the ability to be conscious, to recognize in our strivings both our failings and a better way, in every aspect of our lives.

We take consciousness for granted but it is actually an essential aspect of our humanity, perhaps the single most important characteristic when it comes to our moral development. We don't have to make the same mistakes over and over again. We have built in us the ability to change our behavior.

I have a dog named Sarah. She is a large, loving 95 lb. lab mix. She loves to go for walks and often, especially in the summer, we go for strolls around the neighborhood after services on Shabbat evenings. There is only one problem -- cats! Cats seem to love to stretch themselves out on the still warm pavement, even late into the evening. Sarah is a sweet dog, as sweet as they come. But, when it comes to cats... Well you get the picture and the point is this: she's driven by instinct. She has no control... She doesn't spend a moment contemplating the moral implications of chasing cats. She just does... I love my dog, but I thank God I'm a human being that can think, that can, ponder, that can experience remorse, that can at least try to change my behavior.

Without self awareness, without the ability to reflect on our behavior there is no space, no hope, no place for teshuvah.

The philosopher Israel Knox puts it well when he writes:

"Teshuvah" or repentance, is a realization of our failure to span the gap between conscience and conduct. This gap between believing and living may or may not be surmountable, but the refusal to try and span it is a sin, and the will to bridge it is atonement."

(Jewish Spectator, 1963, pp. 7-9)
As we enter the New Year together may we have the will, the strength, and the courage to continue to bridge the gap between who we are and who we can be.

This famous medieval poem was written by Judah Halevi, the renowned rabbi, poet and philosopher who lived most of his life in Muslim Spain. "My heart is in the East and I am at the edge of the West" expresses the ageless longing of the Jewish people for Tzion, for Zion, for the land of Israel.

Halevi penned these words some time in the early 12th century. Years later he actually left behind .all the good things of Spain,. and attempted to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He made it as far as the port of Alexandria in Egypt, where he died 6 months after he arrived. He died, but his poetry lives on as a symbol of the yearning of the Jewish soul to connect with its spiritual center -- eretz yisrael, the land of Israel.

Israel--This morning, on the holiest day of the year, I.m going to speak about Israel. You think I would know better. No subject these days is more polarizing in the Jewish community than Israel. I know rabbis who have lost their pulpits over Israel. I know at least one community that recently declared a moratorium on discussing the current conflict for fear of their own implosion! Of course, Shomrei Torah is a much more civilized place. In fact, we are all over the map with people on the right, and left, and lots in between.

You think I'd know better than to touch this "hot potato", but the truth is, like Halevi, "My heart is in the East," at least part of it, as is the collective heart of the Jewish people; Israel is just too important not to talk about. Besides, I am now a rabbinic Fellow of a Jewish think-tank in Jerusalem called "The Shalom Hartman Institute." I was there for 3 weeks this summer and will be going back and forth to Jerusalem on and off for the next 3 years. It would be a waste for me not to share part of what I am learning and seeing there. In fact, that is my primary goal this morning, simply to describe part of my experience in the hopes that it will inspire you to want to learn and do more.

Jerusalem: About a week into my studies there I had a few hours off between lectures and I went to the Old City to buy the tallit I am wearing now. I walked through the Jaffa Gate and made my way quickly to the Jewish Quarter. I was headed for the "Cardo", a Roman ruin that is now a center for shops that sell mostly Judaica, Jewish art and ritual objects like this tallit.

Before you go into the shopping area there is corridor, left in its half-excavated state. There are pieces of roman pillars, large stones, the remnants of the ancient structures that were once there, and an inscription that describes what this was -- a Roman market which they built after they destroyed the Jewish Temple that once stood not far from here.

I stopped to look at the ruins and read the sign when a large group of Israeli children poured into the room, sat on the floor amongst the ruins and began to eat their sack lunches. It is difficult to express what I felt as I watched these kids simply eat their lunch. First, you have to picture a very diverse group of children -- white, black and every shade of brown, representing the Jewish families from all over the world who have immigrated to Israel in the last 50+ years.

Watching them innocently sitting there, I could not help but reflect on how different their situation is from ours. We take our security for granted, but for the majority of the 6 million Jews that live in Israel, Israel is their refuge, their not-so-safe haven from a very hostile world. Their parents or grandparents didn't just decide to come to Israel -- they fled for their lives to the only place that would take them.

And now here they are, a dream come true, at least from the point of view of Halevi's poem -- "My heart is in the East and I am at the edge of the West." However, it is not quite how Halevi pictured it.

Then again, he never even made it to "the ruined shrine," which is now all built up, and the truth is, even from our mythic beginning in the Garden of Eden, we've had to deal with disappointment.

Another thing that crossed my mind as I watched them eat their lunch is, they're having a field trip just like any other group of kids, and they are oblivious to the history, pain and danger of the place. They're just kids having fun with other kids, on a hot day in Jerusalem.

On the way back from the Old City I took a taxi. I hopped in the back seat and asked the driver the question I asked the driver the question I asked everyone I could: "Ekh ha matzav? "How is the "situation?" "K'tzat yoter tov. A little better," he responded. "Lama?" I asked. "hageder," "The barrier," He responded. He went on to say that since the wall had been under construction there had been many less terror attacks, life was more normal; there were more tourists - the bread and butter of the Israeli economy - and he had more work. Meanwhile, he pulled over to pick up another customer. She gets in the front seat, catches the drift of our conversation and a heated argument ensues between her and the driver, only the gist of which I could understand. Something like:

"How can you say such a thing! The Barrier is a disaster for everyone! Now 40% of the Palestinians are unemployed, they have no life and nothing to look forward to... except to kill us! What can the barrier bring but more hatred and bloodshed?!? We must find another way. The way we are headed is a dead end."

Her stop is before mine and as soon as she gets out of the cab, the driver turns to me and says, "at tzodeket, "You know, she is right." Only in Israel do you get "Point and Counter Point" in the back of a taxi.

Hageder, the barrier, is a big issue in Israel today. It's only partially completed, and its future is on everyone's mind. There does seem to be a consensus (a rare thing in Israel) that at least for now, there needs to be some kind of defendable border between Israel and Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. What's at issue is not the concept of the barrier, but how it is built, and where it is located. In fact, not too long ago, the Israeli Supreme court ruled that the barrier was permissible, and even necessary for now, but in places where it caused undo hardship to the Palestinians, or where it resulted in the unnecessary confiscation of Palestinian land, it must be moved. This is what they wrote:

"We are aware that this decision (to move the barrier) does not make it easier to deal with reality of Palestinian terror. This is the destiny of a democracy: She does not see all means acceptable, and the ways of her enemies are not always open before her. A democracy must fight with one arm behind her back."

It is hard to imagine the current American administration making such a statement, but that.s another sermon altogether.

I went to the geder. I saw first hand its size and its impact on both sides of the dividing line. We received 2 tours of the barrier. The first trip was with a grass roots Israeli organization, neither rightish nor leftish, just, as they put it, "tired of going to funerals."

As they took us around the geder, they showed little concern for the Palestinians. It was almost as if they did not exist. Their concern was for their children riding the bus to school, their family sharing a meal out, or their son, a soldier in Gaza or Jenine.

The other tour was with Rabbis for Human Rights. They offered another view of the same reality...

We actually spoke to Palestinians affected by the barrier.
They took us through check points and road blocks so we could experience its affect on daily life.
They showed us how villages were cut-off from their olive groves; families cut-off from each other.
However, in the end, even the Rabbis for Human Rights believe there needs to be a barrier, they are just more concerned that it be built in as humane a way as possible.

I am sorry if I am frustrating you with unresolved tension, no clear answer, no simple solution to the problems that torment Israel and the Palestinians.

Hamatzav, "the situation" is complex, at least if you are not an extremist on either side.

Another example, a lecture by Moshe Habertol, a renowned scholar, Professor of Philosophy at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and one of the authors of the Israeli's military rules of engagement. He is also, by the way, a man about my age, a father and a soldier in the reserves.

The essence of his talk was this: In the ideal, Israel has the highest moral standard of any army in the world:

Citizen army.everyone serves....
Takes education seriously....
Tries to operate from a moral frame work - it is, in that sense, a Jewish army....
Does that mean the Israeli army does not do horrible things? No!...

The problem is that the situation itself is corrupting. A few examples:

It is illegal for Israeli soldiers to target non-combatants. Sounds great in theory, but what if you can't tell a combatant from a non-combatant?

Palestinians do not identify themselves as soldiers.
For the Palestinian fighters, there is no .front. to the war, no separation between combatants and non-combatants.
Suicide bomber or a mother trying to get formula for her baby? Killer or a father looking for help to get through the check point...?
It is illegal for an Israeli soldier to unnecessarily damage personal property. Sounds good. Work this one out for yourself:

You are a tank commander ordered to drive your tank to the top of a hill in a hostile residential neighborhood. There is only one problem . a car is in the way. What do you do? Get out of your tank and go looking for its owner? Try to push the car out of the way without destroying it? Or, run it over, destroying the car - a devastating loss to the Palestinian owner - and completing your mission. You decide.

One of the principles of the Israeli army is "proportionality." In other words, only use whatever force is necessary, while weighing what damage might be caused by whatever action is taken. Makes sense in principle, but almost impossible to follow in practice.

How would you like to choose between killing a known terrorist along with his family, or letting him go to later blow himself up on a commuter bus or a crowded restaurant that you or your family may be in! How would you like to be the soldier that must decide whether to knock at the door of a suspected gunman, or knock the door down?

In the end, Moshe Habertol said (and I believe him) "The Israeli standards of engagement are the highest in the world, and regardless of what the press reports, the army tries to adhere to them." The problem is hamatzav. "The situation" is corrupting.

He does offer a partial answer: Withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza, the sooner the better. It's not that he believes it will end the war. If only it was so simple, it would however, allow Israel to regain some of the moral high ground it has lost as an occupier.

So far, I've shared mostly the challenges Israel faces. You should know, that in the midst of all the struggle, Israel is very much alive. Jerusalem was full of tourists of all kinds from all over the world. Also, thanks to the Birth Rite program, which sends college-age students to Israel for free, thousands of young people poured in and out of the country all summer long.

In addition, our seminary, HUC-JIR, still holds the first year of rabbinical school in Jerusalem and they had a record number of students this summer. I went to the opening night celebration and was so moved to meet so many young men and woman, excited to be starting rabbinical school and really excited to be in Jerusalem.

The matzav is the matzav, but life goes on. In fact, I rarely, if ever, felt at risk in Jerusalem while I was there and I saw things I would never experience anywhere else:

A teenager interrupting her dinner out to daven maariv
A Palestinian woman, covered from head to toe, rollerblading in Liberty Bell Park.
A Jewish Regge street band, playing Bob Marley's "One love, One heart, Lets get Together and feel all right," with a crowd of people, secular, religious, Israeli, tourists, all crowded around to sing and enjoy.
The color of Jerusalem stone as the sun sets on Shabbat.
Toward the end of our study, we and the 20 or so other rabbinic fellows from the institute spent a day at The Tokhnit, The Jewish Agency. The Jewish Agency is focused, more than any other, on what they call "Diaspora Education." Frankly, most of us didn't want to go for fear of being subjected to a day of diatribes about how we weren't doing more to support Israel. In fact, the opposite was the case. We had three presenters that day, and all 3 were trying to define with us, what the role, what the connection, really, what the relationship was between Israel and the rest of the Jewish world. This was unbelievable to us - even the Toknit, the center for "Diaspora Education" is searching for a new, workable framework for connections between us and them. Of the 3 speakers, Dr. Racheal Korazin was the most interesting. A professor of Hebrew Literature and a brilliant speaker, this was the framework she offered: Up until now the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora had been defined by "Solidarity and Censorship." The expectation of Jews living outside Israel was that we would support Israel unconditionally and if we did not, we would be censored.

Now she says, we need a new paradigm, what she called "Commitment and Critique." Commitment is essential. She, like the overwhelming majority of Jews for the past 2 millennium, sees a connection to the land and the people of Israel as essential. However, she recognizes there can be no real connection, no real relationship without dialogue, without give and take, without any real shared vision of what is and what can be.

I agree with Dr. Korazin. Israel needs us, and we need Israel and there are plenty of avenues for involvement that don't require unquestioning loyalty to every move the Israeli government makes. So what do we do? Where do we go from here?

What I'd like to see are 3 things:

1. Jewish communities engaged in Israel where all sides can be heard and where no one is afraid to speak. What I am calling for is an end to the model of "Solidarity or Censorship" and the beginning of a relationship that allows for dialogue and critique with the goal of creating a new generation of Jews committed to a New Israel, one we can all be proud to be a part.
Our own movement has shown great courage in this area. Rabbi Eric Yoffe, the President of the URJ, has been a strong supporter and when necessary, a serious critique of Israel in recent years, while at the same time working tirelessly to build bridges between Israel and the Diaspora. The same can be said for Rabbi David Saperstein (a Scholar-in-Residence here a few years ago), the director of RAC, not to mention ARZA, our movement's Zionist wing. Just reading their publications, like the magazine, "Reform Judaism", and utilizing the many resources on their websites will create a foundation where true dialogue and connection with Israel can happen.

As you leave this morning, please pick up one of the Israel resource pages we.ve put together for you. On it are websites, publications and a short bibliography of books on Israel and the Middle East.

2. Focus our energy on the progressive institutions already working in Israel.
There are literally hundreds of progressive Israeli organizations already in the trenches of Israeli life to choose from. I've listed a few of my favorites on the resource sheets you.ll find on the information table in the entrance way.

Right now I want to spotlight an opportunity to support Progressive Judaism in Israel that Shomrei Torah is already taking a leading role in - Hineini.

Hineini in Hebrew means "here I am". Hineini is all about helping build Reform congregations in Israel. You may not know this but our movement has been struggling in Israel on every level - for recognition, funding, and to get its message out to the Israeli public who knows very little about Progressive Judaism.

What's amazing is that in spite of all the obstacles, Progressive Judaism is actually making headway in Israel. New communities are being established every year, and more and more Israeli-born rabbis are being ordained through our movement. More important than that, where communities are built, people come! They come, for b'nai mitzvah, for weddings, for the Holy Days, and when they come they are exposed to a whole other way to view, not just Judaism, but the world. You see, Israel needs progressive religion for the same reasons we do - to model pluralism, inclusively, and the liberal democratic values that are a part of a progressive religious world view.

There are now over 30 Reform congregations in Israel today. So many lack the most basic of congregational needs and few can afford their own place to meet and worship (we can relate to that!). This is where Hineini comes in. Through Hineini, Reform Congregations in the states can support struggling Progressive congregations in Israel. In fact, earlier this year our congregation responded to the Hineini call by agreeing to adopt a new struggling congregation in Israel called, Kehilat Yozma, whose name in Hebrew means "initiative" and is also an acronym for Yahadut Z'maneinu, Moreshet Ha'Am-- Judaism of Our Time, Heritage of Our People.

This blossoming Reform community is in Modi'in, a new and growing city in the hills between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv where the Maccabees battled the Syrians for religious freedom more than 2,000 years ago. Kehilat Yozma is one of Israel's fastest-growing Progressive communities. Yozma has about 150 member families, but its diverse programming serves hundreds more.

As part of our participation in Heneini a number of months ago, we asked every congregational member to think about donating $18.00 in support of Kehilat Yozma. If you have already done so, great! If not, here's your chance to make a connection and make a difference in Israel. You will find more information about Henieni, along with the Israeli resource page I hope you will take with you when you leave today.

The 3rd thing we need to do is go visit. They say that every tour to Israel creates 15 jobs in Israel. Besides, there is no better way to learn about the country and its people than to visit. We don't have a congregational trip on the calendar yet, but we will in the coming months. I put my e-mail address on the resource sheet so that anyone interested in going to Israel with the congregation could let me know.

"My heart is in the East and I am at the edge of the West." Judah Halevi longed his whole life to be in eretz yisrael. He prayed facing east, toward Jerusalem, uttering many of the same prayers we say today. He died incomplete, a pilgrim on the way.

The 21st century is a far cry from the 12th century.

Our hearts are more divided; our prayers less focused in one direction. We've also learned that being in a sacred space is not as easy as we thought it would be, coming home, not as much a real homecoming as we had dreamed about for all those centuries.

So much for the mythic past or the messianic future - it is today's Israeli reality that we must face through increased knowledge and dialogue, commitment to progressive grass roots Israeli organizations and travel to Israel as well.

Libi v'mizrakh, v'anokhi v'sof maarav...

"My heart is in the East and I am at the edge of the West...."

Yiskor was the hardest of all the services to prepare for this year. I am not sure why. My guess is, as time passes and my list of losses grows along with yours – Yiskor becomes less theoretical;, less in my head and more in my heart, my soul, my guts.

For whatever the reason, this year, I found myself casting around for what to say, a bit confused, a bit unclear – not my norm.

What has emerged from my confusion is a more complex picture of the web of life and death, love and loss, human suffering and redemption and lots of fragments, like a ship broken at sea, its pieces rising and falling in the swell of the ocean, some pieces recognizable others not, flotsam and jetsam, mixed in with the foam, born by the current to who knows where…

The renowned American poet Billy Collins expresses well the complex array of feelings and connections between life and death in his signature poem – “Picnic, Lightning”:

Picnic, Lightning
“My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three."
Lolita

It is possible to be struck by a meteor or a single-engine plane
while reading in a chair at home. Safes drop from rooftops
and flatten the odd pedestrian
mostly within the panels of the comics, but still, we know it is possible,
as well as the flash of summer lightning, the thermos toppling over,
spilling out on the grass.

And we know the message
can be delivered from within. The heart, no valentine,
decides to quit after lunch,
the power shut off like a switch,
or a tiny dark ship is unmoored into the flow of the body's rivers,
the brain a monastery,
defenseless on the shore.

This is what I think about
when I shovel compost
into a wheelbarrow,
and when I fill the long flower boxes, then press into rows
the limp roots of red impatiens - ?

the instant hand of Death
always ready to burst forth
from the sleeve of his voluminous cloak.

Then the soil is full of marvels,
bits of leaf like flakes off a fresco,
red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick
to burrow back under the loam.
Then the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue,
the clouds a brighter white,

and all I hear is the rasp of the steel edge against a round stone,
the small plants singing
with lifted faces, and the click
of the sundial
as one hour sweeps into the next.

It is possible to be struck by lightening, or squashed by a falling safe, or killed by cancer, or by a drunk driver, or, or, or, or….

And, there are as many ways to live, as there are to die…

Death is something we all face. In that sense, it is the great equalizer – the worm makes no distinction. How we face it, how we experience it, who we lose and when, that makes it all so complex, so hard and always, always very personal.

For a colleague of mine, Yiskori s like having ice cream with her grandmother long gone…. It’s a lovely picture, but I know she has not lost a parent yet, or a sibling, or God forbid, a child,

Am I making sense? I am not sure…

Things happen…

I’m on my way to a wedding… haven’t worn this suit for a while…reached in the pocket of my jacket…what do I find? The notes from a funeral from a number of years ago…

I knew this man, I cared for him…for a moment, I picture him healthy, then not so good, then cold in a hospital bed…the family flashes before me… what pain, it hurts…. I can remember the quality of the light at the graveside, hear the earth hit the coffin…broken sobs… And then, I’ve arrived at the beautiful winery, a person, I think he works there, is telling me where to park…

As I walk over to where the huppah is, I happen to look down at my shoes…there is mud splattered on them…”Oh” I think, “I last wore these when I went down to Colma for another funeral….it’s always foggy there, the grass is always wet, a little dirt from the grave always gets on your shoes, but you don’t notice it….”

I try to rub it off… I can’t.

The huppah looks beautiful, it’s a beautiful day…the bride is always beautiful…life goes on.

Life goes on and we carry our losses along with us. We say, zikhronam l’brkha, “May they be remembered for a blessing.”

And, sometimes they can be remembered for a blessing…sometimes, but not always.

Lightening can strike and it does in more than one way; sometimes life can be more painful to us than death, some times, well…

It’s just not that simple, crisp or clean.

It is, after all, about death and life we are talking.

Tonight, I want to explore with you what it means to be a Jewish American through the lens of the various names for the time we have just entered. I would bet that everyone here this evening, if asked, would say that the Hebrew name for the New Year is – Rosh Hashanah, right? It's true, Rosh Hashanah, literally “The Head of the Year,” is one of the names of the Jewish New Year. However, like most things Jewish, our New Year has many layers of meaning, and thus, many names. There are at least three other names for the New Year that have special relevance when considering what it means to be a American Jew.

The first place the celebration of the New Year is mentioned is in the Torah. You would think that such an important holy day would have an elaborate write-up in the core text of the Jewish people. In fact, the opposite is the case. Of all our holy days, the New Year is mentioned the least. However, what does the Torah say about the New Year? In the Torah, our Rosh Hashanah is called by two names: Yom Hazikaron, Day of Remembrance, andYom Teruah,The Day of the Shofar Blast. Very little else is set down in the Torah about this important time of year. The silence of the Torah on this subject makes it nearly impossible to know what these days meant to the ancient Israelites. However, both names, Yom Hazikaron,and Yom Teruah,are packed with meaning for us today, especially if we use them as lenses through which to view our shared past, and our hopes for the future. Let's start with Yom Hazikaron,The Day of Remembrance.

What a history we have. Jews have been in this country for as long as this country has been in existence. We've shared in its trials and tribulations. We arrived with the first settlers in New Amsterdam, and later we participated in the great migration west. We've plowed her fields, fought in her wars, and in general, participated in most every aspect of her short but great history.

We’ve been here from the beginning, but for most of us, our Jewish American experience started with our parents or grandparents who came to this country as a part of the mass immigration from East to West that began in the late 19th century and ended in the early 20th century. When I think of America and the blessings of this country for the Jews, I think of the story of my grandparents, immigrants to this country and part of that mass of humanity that fled Europe for the hope of a new life on the promising shores of America.

My grandparents like many of yours, fled a Europe aflame with unbridled Nationalism and Anti-Semitism. There was nothing new about this. Poverty, insecurity and persecution were the almost daily story of the Jews of Europe for centuries. Still, the upheaval of the early 20th century was exceptionally brutal.

I don't know much about the story of my paternal grandfather, but I do know a bit about my maternal grandfather. His family was in the lumber business, and after their mill was set ablaze under questionable circumstances, they saw the writing on the wall and decided to head for America. They couldn’t all get out at once, so he was sent first to make his way, and then to help bring the rest of the family over. His story is no different then many. In fact, hundreds of thousands and later millions of Jews fled Europe, joining the mixed multitude of non-Jewish European immigrants: Russians, Poles, Italians, Germans, the Irish and others, all making their way to America. The numbers are staggering; between 1880 and 1920, over 3,000,000 Jews made their way from all over Europe to the teeming shores of the free world.

Sometimes I try to imagine their conversations as they made their momentous trip from the Old World to the New:

“What shall we do? Where can we go?”

“America! We shall go to America!”

“Yes, and in America they have freedom! In America you can be a Jew and not live in fear!”

They fled and they came merging with millions of other people with equally compelling stories. They brought with them little but their yearning for safety, prosperity and peace. Though they carried few bags, their shoulders were bent with the weight of centuries of tzurus: persecution, insult, rape, murder and constant fear.

“ Oh to live in America -- to be free, to not be afraid!”

I imagine them on the boat coming in to Ellis Island:
· the first sighting of land
· the rising flame of the Statue of Liberty

“Keep ancient lands your storied pomp,” wrote the Jewish poet Emma Lazarus. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to be free, the wretched refuse of your teaming shore. Send these, the homeless, Tempest tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the Golden Door.

They were “the tired”, “the poor”, “the tempest tossed”, and America was their “Golden Door" in so many ways.

My maternal grandfather was 12 when he arrived, one of seven, the head of the household. He arrived in this country with barely the clothes on his back, and like many a new immigrant, began his life here pedaling on the streets of New York City. He eventually moved from New York to Omaha, Nebraska, and traveled from there to the wide-open spaces of the Dakotas selling eyeglasses from farm to farm under the name “Dr. Van Wolf.”

Of course, he was not a doctor! His story is the classic story of first-generation success, for by the time my mother was born, he was a successful commodity broker, among other things, living in Chicago. In his lifetime, besides supporting a large extended family, he built two synagogues, and left a legacy of prosperity and a thriving Jewish community, which he could say he had a hand in building. Like many of our forefathers and mothers, for him in many ways the American dream was.

My paternal grandfather was also a boy when he arrived in this country. The son of a rabbi, he came, I am sure, dressed in traditional garb: a long black coat, a keipacovering his head, tzittzitdangling from his waist, and payus twirling down from the sides of his face. I can only imagine his astonishment when he got off the boat at Ellis Island. He was the son of a rabbi from a long line of rabbis that stretched back at least eight or nine generations. He fulfilled the expectations of his family and his yichus,his lineage, but in a very American way. He quickly shed hispayus,went to public school then on to Rabbinical School, not in the yeshiva, but to JTS, the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. He received his ordination there, became a Conservative rabbi, afar cry from the shtetle rabbi, and took his first and only pulpit in Louisville Kentucky. There was a vast difference between Louisville, Kentucky and Pinsk, Poland!

He prospered there. He married, raised a family, and built a synagogue. He was their rabbi for over 50 years and when he died, the streets were lined with mourners as the funeral procession made its way from the synagogue to the cemetery. He was yet another Jewish American success story.

That's just a taste of my family�s story. All things considered, there's nothing unusual about it. In fact, it's not even particularly Jewish, for America has been and still is �The Golden Door� for so many people.

It would be tempting to stop here, feeling warm and nostalgic about our past, but that would not be true to what really happened, nor would it be true to this holy of holy days. For as much as this day is a day of remembrance, it is also Yom Teruah,a Day of The Shofar Blast. For the ancient Israelites, the shofar was a kind of early warning system. �Shall the shofar be blown in the city and the people not tremble?� asked the prophet Amos. Maimonides, the great medieval rabbi, philosopher and physician wrote this about the shofar, �Awake, all you who sleep, arouse yourself, all you who slumber, search your deeds and repent, remember your Creator while you still have time.�

Yom Teruah,The Day of The Shofar Blast, demands that we move beyond nostalgia and good feelings to the truth of our existence then and now.

As much as this country has been a blessing for the Jews, she is far from perfect. First, we must acknowledge that much of what we have we fought for. The forefathers of this country had a great vision of justice and liberty for all, but from the very beginning, there was a gap between their vision and reality.

Many of you have lived through the changes in this country. You remember when housing deeds had clauses that forbad the sale to a Jew. You remember when schools, hospitals, whole professions were closed to Jews. I can�t say I have experienced much prejudice. I can relate, however, part of my father�s experience. I think one story will do:

When he was a child, every winter they would take a trip to Florida. It was something he always looked forward to. But as much as he looked forward to the trips, the shock of seeing signs along the road that read, �No Niggers, Dogs or Jews,� never left him. Times have changed; nevertheless, let�s not forget that what we have, we fought for. We had to fight, and for the most part, we have succeeded.

Nevertheless, we must remain vigilant, even today. For example, one of the major concerns in the design and construction of our new synagogue is security, and security has become an ongoing issue for the daily running of our Jewish Community. We�ve gone from greeting people at the door to requiring them to sign-in and wear a nametag. We used to encourage parents to help with religious school, now we require them to take part in our shomrimprogram. Shomrim means �Guardians� in Hebrew, and it is the program that we have developed to safeguard our kids while they study with us.

Even with our need for heightened security, America is an almost prejudice free environment for us. This, however, is not the case for many. America is far from colorblind; to this day people of color fight a daily battle against discrimination. This struggle is equally as intense for the gay and lesbian community. The brewing battle over the rights for gay and lesbian couples to marry is just one of many examples of their daily struggle.

The gifts of America: freedom, justice, prosperity, are not universal. The issue is not just prejudice. The mainstay of the American dream, economic freedom and prosperity for all is increasingly a question today. In fact, the gap between rich and poor has never been greater. This is especially true in California, and it is all the more evident in Sonoma County where the medium cost of a home is now over $400,000. California ranks 49th out of 50 states in the size of its middle class. According to a recent article in the PD, currently 38% of California workers make less than $12.50/hour, the minimum amount for two parents working full time to support two children. (The Press Democrat, Mary Bennet, Labor Day, 03’)

New luxury homes are being constructed all over the county, yet we can’t find the way to fund our schools, keep vital social services going or cope with the growing homeless population in the county.

One of the cornerstones of our success in America has been the promise of economic justice. Without economic justice, not only are our gains at risk, but also the moral foundation of our prosperity stands on shaky ground.

Not only are America's gifts not universal, the fundamental values of equality and freedom first envisioned by the great forefathers of this country and written into our Constitution are fragile at best. Liberties written in stone have been blown apart by War and fear. It happened during World War II with the internment of Japanese Americans, and it happened during the cold war as well when the label “Communist” often lead to the loss of a job, public disgrace, and in some cases, incarceration and even death.

Perhaps you are thinking that we have learned our lessons, and those things like the Japanese American internment, or the McCarthy era blacklisting could never happen today. I'm not so sure. Since September 11, our country has steered a course perilously close to the dissolution of the rights and privileges that make this country so great for the others and us that live here. No doubt, security is a real issue, but is the Homeland Security Act, or the Patriot Act necessary or helpful? Could it be that these new laws rather than making us more secure, threaten the rule of law and the basic rights of privacy fundamental to living in a free society?

We may be tempted to say that racial profiling, holding people in jail without charge and the liberal use of all kinds of surveillance with limited checks and balances are necessary. Perhaps they are necessary. We may also be tempted, if not with a little embarrassment to think, “Well these new laws won’t affect me. I’m not a terrorist, nor do I fit the profile of a terrorist.” However, surely we know from experience that the safe today can be the persecuted tomorrow.

Also, where in Judaism does it teach that justice only applies to us? Should we not be just as concerned about injustice to others as we are about the rule of law when it applies to us? I don’t have the answers, nor am I convinced that our government’s policies are wrong or without cause. Still, Yom Teruah, the Day of The Shofar Blast, calls me to question the direction we are headed, even while Yom Hazikaron calls me to appreciate the many ways the Jewish community has been blessed here as well.

There is one more thing I want to say about Yom Teruah. I fear that we, as a prosperous minority in this country, have fallen asleep. Fat from our success, happy in our relatively newfound freedom and prosperity we have fallen asleep to our responsibilities as Jews, the heirs to the prophets, the spokespeople of the oppressed. There was a time when we were at the head of every battle. Where are we now? Are we still on the forefront of the fight for justice and equality in this country? Are we still attuned to the cries of the oppressed now that we are relatively free from oppression? Yom Teruah, the Day of The Shofar Blast, calls me – really all of us, to ask this and many other tough questions.

It is one thing to be the spokespeople for the oppressed when you are oppressed; it is another when you are in power. Are we passing the test?

Finally, I have one last name for the New Year I want to share with you, and that isYom Harat Olam – The Day of the World’s Conception! I love this name more than any other because it speaks so boldly of the promise of the future, at conception so little is determined and so much is possible. It is as if every year we begin at the beginning again – no set patterns, no old habits to break, a wide open playing field, a tabla rasa, a blank slate, on which we can write our story for the new year.

Now, the names all come together: Yom Hazikaron,the Day of Remembrance, gives us the opportunity to reflect on where we come from, to recognize our blessings and to assess what is missing in our lives. Yom Teruah, the Day of the Shofar Blast, keeps us honest in our reflection, jarring us from the tendency to be nostalgic about the past, and naive about the future. Moreover, Yom Harat Olam is the nehemta, the message of hope, the promise that nothing is truly fixed and in all of us is the possibility of teshuvah,return and renewal in the coming year.

America has been good to us, but it has not come easily, nor has our success been shared by all of its citizens. Therefore, as we remember our blessings, we must also hear the shrill call of the shofar. The call of the shofardemands a response, which seems overwhelming. Yet, in a world conceived anew every year, the potential for positive change is almost infinite. We can make a change; we can make a difference in the year ahead!

God bless America for being that lamp of freedom and that “Golden Door” for so many people.

God help America to become a place where all, regardless of the color of their skin, their religion, their sexual orientation or their country of origin are truly free, and where prosperity is universal and sustainable for all.

Tonight I am going to speak about memory. Looking over my sermons these past years, it�s interesting to note that �memory� has been a perennial theme for me. Not surprising since the experience of memory is such an essential part of our Holy Day experience, especially Kol Nidre.

Kol Nidre. There is awe in these ancient words that transcend the times. Kol Nidre sings to us from the graves of our ancestors, like a haunted wind, it blows into our souls touching us in a very deep place.

The history of Kol Nidre is cloaked in mystery. The first known mention is in the 9th century, but its roots probably go back as far as the first or second century of the Common Era. The words of Kol Nidre are very old, ancient even, but that, in itself, is not unique to our tradition; most of which is ancient and very little as stirring as Kol Nidre.

Besides the words themselves, we have the melody, a deep eerie chant of origins unknown. Some say that the music of Kol Nidre comes from Spain during the inquisition. Marranos, Jews forced to convert to Christianity under punishment of death, once a year would secretly meet on erev Yom Kippur and chant Kol Nidre, an absolution of vows. Thus, they would seek forgiveness for their apostasy, pouring out their souls, expressing their loss and their humiliation through the words and the plaintiff melody we still use to this very day.

No one really knows the origins of Kol Nidre. Its history is obscured by the centuries. The truth is, we don�t need to nail down the facts of this ancient rite to feel its power, for the power of Kol Nidre and the import of its message transcends its origins. Its power lies not in its history, but in the wellspring of Jewish memory from which it draws.

You see, more then anything else, Kol Nidre speaks to us of our collective past, of the world of our forefathers and foremothers and their lives, which live on through our memory. How else can one explain the power of this prayer?

The Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hassidism, and one of the greatest rabbis ever to live taught that, �Exile is in forgetting and redemption is in memory.� The Besht taught from the heart of Jewish tradition. He knew that one of our keys to survival was our ability to remember where we came from, our traditions, our stories and our rituals. In Judaism, there are countless examples of how this works; the Hebrew we pray in, the Torah we venerate and study, our Holy Day & Holiday cycle and of course, the ancient words of the liturgy including Kol Nidre. No doubt, the Besht has a point � memory in some ways is redemptive allowing us to survive and even thrive as a unique and distinct people while other great civilizations have long disappeared.

For a long time my thoughts on memory stopped here, with the assumption that it was a central, redemptive feature of our tradition, one of our secrets of survival. Recently, however, I�ve begun to second-guess the Baal Shem Tov, or at least to look more closely at memory and its role in our lives, as a people and as individuals. What I have come to realize is that in fact memory is a tricky thing.

Mark Twain once said, �I have such a good memory that I recall things that never happened.� Mark Twain was making fun, but in fact, his �tongue and cheek� remark about memory points to its mercurial nature. Without a doubt, memory is a great blessing, the vehicle that enables both nations and individuals to survive. Nevertheless, it can also be a curse, which can ruin our lives, deprive us of happiness and destroy our peace of mind. Memory can be troublesome for a number of reasons.

Memory can make yesterday seem better than it actually was. We can become nostalgic and sentimental about the past, about our childhood and family home, about �the good old days.� Thomas Wolfe once observed, �You can�t go home again.� Why? Because what once seemed grand as a child, quite likely now, looks small and maybe even shabby. The enormous tree you climbed is just a scrubby old pine, and the grand synagogue you prayed in, seems small, and dingy�. What changed? Not the tree or the Temple. As the author of Ecclesiastes put it, �Do not say, how was it that former times were better than these? For that is a question not prompted by wisdom.� (7:10)

We are a sentimental people. In fact, I think it is part of how we have survived the centuries of trauma. This seems especially true to me in regards to the way we view life in the shtettle, the old country. You know, back there in the old country, when life was simpler, more meaningful, and when everyone went to synagogue every shabbas! Back then, people really knew how to be Jewish! You know, like Fiddler on the Roof.

Our time in the shtettle was meaningful in many ways. So much of the Jewish life we take for granted developed there. Nevertheless, lets be clear; the old country was a tough, hard, oppressive life. We were mostly poor and powerless, and our days were marked by fear and persecution. There was little freedom, privacy, or the basic rights we take for granted. I think it is safe to say, that no one here would choose to return to the shtettle of old. We wouldn�t go back with a clear sight of what it was like, nevertheless, through the rose colored lenses of memory, it can look pretty good. �If I were a rich man��

This is true of the shtettle, and it is true in our everyday lives as well. The rose colored lenses of memory can be a real stumbling block to appreciating what we have in the present.

I encounter this often with people who relocate to Santa Rosa. Perhaps their spouse gets a job in the area. Or, perhaps a family moves aging parents/grandparents from where they have lived for many years to an assisted living facility here. In both cases, there is some real loss; the spouse without the new job may have given up a lot to come here, the older parent or grandparent may really miss home. The challenges arise when the past for these people become like the Garden of Eden, that perfect place from which everything else pales in comparison�. When this happens, when those �rose colored glasses� are on, it becomes very difficult to see the blessings of the present, how beautiful the county is, what a lovely quality of life we have here, how much better it is to be closer to our families and loved ones.

Sentimentality can also prevent us from honestly assessing what was unhealthy or even down right harmful in our past. The extreme example of this is battered women, who sadly talk themselves into believing that �he really wasn�t so bad.� Or, �so what if he hits me every once and a while, when we are together it�s so good. Besides, he really does love me and we need each other.�

That�s the extreme, but even if you are not a battered woman, it�s easy to fall prey to unhealthy sentimentality. Recently, a man I knew began to write his autobiography � memoirs of a sort. He told me about his project, and we were both excited; he had lived a rich and hard life and I thought his memoirs would be both interesting and therapeutic for him; then I received the first installment in the mail. It was as if he was writing about another person. His father was an alcoholic and he had struggled with addiction but somehow, when he went to write his autobiography, no mention was made of this difficult but important part in his life. He had struggled with his kids � lost touch with them, had real falling outs, the real hard stuff � it wasn�t there at all! In fact, when I read his memoir, it was like reading about the Brady Bunch or some other paradigm of the perfect American family. This surprised me, but worse than that, it really hurt his children and resulted in further distancing himself from everyone. In essence, his act of memory was more like an act of denial that shut the doors to any true act of teshuvah, or healing for him and his family.

For our memories to be redemptive, they must reflect what really happened. Redemption only happens, the seas only part, when we tell the truth. This is quite a challenge because it forces us to face who we really are, the emes of our lives, and the truth of our existence then and now.

Being too sentimental about our past is one pitfall of memory. Another real challenge to memory runs in the opposite direction, allowing the pain of the past to overwhelm us. In that sense, our past can be like a black fog obscuring our view, threatening to plunge us completely in the dark.

Lets face it; the shadow of memory looms large for us Jews. This is especially evident when it comes to the Shoah, the Holocaust and the centuries of persecution that led up to the Shoah.

The more I look at the effect of this collective memory on contemporary Jewish life, the more I see how problematic it is. We are a traumatized people. We suffer from a kind of collective Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome where we cannot move beyond our own pain, shock and grief. This is understandable. World War II was not very long ago. Our suffering was immense � beyond imagining � and the world has yet to fully come to terms with what happened. Nevertheless, there is no future for us, no redemption in our collective conscience, if it is defined by what the Nazis and others did to us. Somehow, we must find a way to remember our past without the pain of our long tortured history overwhelming us. We cannot bring back the dead, but we can live in ways that affirm who they were. Defining Jewish life and a Jewish future primarily as a response to our near destruction will do little to honor the memory of those millions murdered by the Nazis. Via Negtiva, �Never Again,� is not meaningful in itself. It must be followed up with a vision of a Jewish life worth living.

The toxicity of memory is not just a problem for us as a people. We as individuals struggle mightily with the shadow of memory as well. We suffer some of us more than others do, but all of us suffer. Sickness and failure are part of existence. The question is, not whether we suffer, but whether we are defined by our suffering? We sit here tonight, some of us alone for the first time. Others, even after many years, can�t help but remember with sorrow a loved one who was once here and is now gone. Some of us have personally experienced horrible things and they haunt us, stalk us like a hungry dog, waiting to snap up whatever pleasure we might get out of life. This is memory in its most toxic form. There is no redemption in this memory, just pain. For some, there�s little to do. Life can break us. For others however, there is a way to cool the fires of rage and pain that memory provokes. In such cases, it is a matter of choice.

An older colleague of mine tells a story. He watched two brothers in his congregation who sat across from each other in the front row of the synagogue for years. For years, they sat across from each other yet they hardly acknowledged each other�s presence. Finally, the rabbi asked what had happened. What was the response? �Well rabbi, me and David had an argument a number of years ago.� The rabbi interrupted. �How long ago.� Oh, at least 30 years if not more.� �What was it about?� he asked. His response, �To tell you the truth rabbi, I don�t even remember, but I sure was mad!� Now that is a toxic memory that is destructive beyond the memory itself!

This seems silly but it has an edge in which we all can relate. Perhaps you�ve heard the joke, which is really not so funny: �When me and my spouse argue she/he gets historical. You mean hysterical. No, historical, recounting every slight, every hurt, every disappointment over the length of our marriage.�

Sound familiar? Our memories can really hurt us. Sometimes there is little we can do to heal from the wounds of the past, but other times we can choose to put what happened in the past in its proper place, and move on.

Not so easy, I know. One of the reasons it is hard to stop nursing the pain of the past is that we actually get some comfort from holding on to our suffering. It temporarily fills a hole. One experiences this especially in mourning. Mourning hurts and a period of mourning is essential for healing (not closure�.) but what happens when mourning gets excessive�it is true, while we mourn, we feel some proximity to what we have lost. There is comfort there, but it is limited and limiting. You see, we can�t bring them back no matter how often we visit their grave or shed a tear. And, as long as we feed the part of our heart that yearns to mourn, we are not able to get on with our lives. This is true for us as individuals and I believe it is also true for the Jewish people as a whole. If we had two hearts, we could mourn the centuries of persecution and suffering with one, and love life with the other. The problem is � we only have one heart, and the Jewish heart cannot support all the sorrow of the ages while at the same time embracing life and the promise that life still offers us as a people and as individuals.

There is one other aspect of memory that I want to touch on tonight and that is memory that leads to guilt. What a Jewish topic!

A psychiatrist once remarked that his Jewish patients have guilty feelings about having guilty feelings!

The stereotype of Jewish guilt is surely exaggerated. Still it points to yet another slippery slope of memory. This is where memory and forgiveness begin to merge. I am young � 41 � and I am only in my 8th year as a rabbi. Still in those years, I have experienced second hand, more regret, more guilt, more self-flagellation then one can imagine.

There is so much power in the word �if�. �If I�d only called the doctor in time�; �if I had only slowed down�; �if I wouldn�t have moved so far from my parents�; �if I would�ve just spent more time with my kids�; �if I hadn�t looked away I could have saved him.�

Memories that lead to guilt are like leeches that suck the lifeblood right out of us. Guilt cannot bring back the dead, or save lost relationships or mend any wounds. Guilt may be a Jewish cultural norm, but it is not necessarily a Jewish value. In fact, the whole premise of these Holy Days is that we can rid ourselves of guilt by doing teshuvah. Jewish culture may foster �the guilt response�, but our tradition does not. In fact, one of Yom Kippur�s central messages is that there comes a time when all we can say is �we�re sorry� and if we are truly sorry, that�s enough � God takes care of the rest. Isn�t that what atonement is all about?

Is it true that memory leads to redemption? Sometimes; the truth is, we wouldn�t be here today if we were without our memories. Little is as precious to us as the chain of Jewish tradition that we pass down from one generation to the next primarily through memory.

Kol Nidre is an excellent example of the positive power of memory in our tradition. First, it stirs us, hard to be sentimental in the face of such an awe-inspiring ritual. Second, even though it wells up from the sorrow of our past, it somehow both sooths and agitates, comforts and awakens in us the feelings and the strength we need to do what this Holy of Holy days calls us to do � to look at ourselves with a naked eye and commit to change in the year ahead. Finally, if we pay attention to the words, we see that it says no to guilt, annulling what we did not accomplish in spite of our best efforts.

Where would we be without memory? We�d be like the pyramids of Egypt or the ruins of Rome. We�d be an echo of the past, a tired remnant of what was and what is lost forever. Nevertheless, a memory that leads to redemption is not such a simple thing. No, memory is just as likely to lead us astray as it is to guide us healthily into the future. Memory is both friend and foe, to be cultivated, but also to be guarded, not lest we forget, but lest we remember the wrong things and forget what makes life worth living.

Zokhreinu l�chaiyim, melekh Hafetz bakhayim, v�chatveinu bsefer hakhayim, l�ma-ankha elohim Chaiyim.

Remember us on to life Oh God who delights in life, and inscribe us in the book of life for your own sake, Oh God of life.

When I heard that the war began, my first reaction was a great sense of sadness, and a feeling of failure, not for me personally, but for all of humanity. As many of you know, I did not feel this war to be justified. Nevertheless, we are now at war, our troops are in harms way, people are killing and being killed. As we speak, missiles and bombs are raining down on Iraq. We are at war, whether we agree with the reasons for the war or not, the war is a reality we must deal with now.

It is important to recognize that we are a diverse community with many and conflicting feelings about what is happening in Iraq. Some support the war; others are out on the streets in protest. It�s also important to remember that some folks in our community may have loved ones or friends in harms way, serving in the armed forces, or living in the region. Let us be easy on each other during this trying time, recognizing that we are all to some degree exposed, and on the edge.

At times like these, the words of Isaiah come to me � "Fear not for I am with you, be not dismayed for I am your God, I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will sustain you through my power." (41:10)

I, like many of you, listened to President Bush�s short speech at the beginning of the war. What I appreciated about his short talk was that he did not invoke God except to say that we can all pray that our troops come home safely. This, I think, is the ground we all share, the wish, the hope, the prayer that our troops come home safely and more than that, that the Iraqi people�s suffering is minimized � that everyone comes home safely; if that could only be so.

As a student of history, I happened to be reading a book about President Lincoln�s second inaugural address. It was arguably, the greatest speech he ever gave, and perhaps one of the greatest speeches any president has delivered. Oddly enough, some of what he had to stay still rings true today.

In speaking about the soldiers on both sides of the conflict � north and south � he notes: Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His name against the other�. The prayers of both cannot be answered, the prayers of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. Woe unto the world because of offences! For it must needs be that offences come but woe to that man by whom that offence cometh.

I don�t know how many of you saw the picture in the Press Democrat of the American soldier in his desert fatigues, praying in a chapel. That picture moved me. I could imagine if in his shoes, what I might be saying, what I might be feeling�

"God, may I return home safely to hug my wife, to throw a ball with my son, to listen to my daughter play piano�to cuddle in bed with the whole family over a book�God, please, let me live, let my family live, let it all be ok�"

And then I thought, I could see his family praying, perhaps gathered around the kitchen table�"Protect daddy, please, please let him come back in one piece�please God, please�"

And then I could imagine an Iraqi soldier, scared beyond our reckoning, praying a very similar prayer to Allah, another name for the same God his American counter part is praying to, and his family at home, also begging that same God will bring him home in one piece as well.

This is the human ground we all share; this is the place that all hearts meet.

Lincoln�s words ring so true � "Both � pray to the same God; �.The prayers of both cannot be answered, the prayers of neither has been answered fully."

God, Adonai, Av Harachaman, Source of Compassion, rachem aleynu, have compassion upon us, our troops, their families and everyone else caught in the crossfire of this war.

Oseh shalom bimromav, You who are The Source of Peace, brings peace to us, and all the world, and let us say, amen.

I remember my first introduction to the Shoah ("Shoah" in Hebrew means "utter catastrophe," and is preferable to "Holocaust", which means "burnt offering"). I first learned about the Shoah through a newsreel/documentary I saw as a Fifth grader in public school. It was a gruesome film of unedited footage of the horrors of the Nazi death machine � you know the pictures. I don�t think I need to describe what I saw. The trauma of those pictures is already a part of most of our collective consciences, burned, like a brand, into our memories.

So, with little introduction, our well-meaning but poorly prepared teacher, let the movie roll� I remember that the boy sitting next to me started to laugh and another girl got sick and I� I wept quietly in my seat. How could this be? I asked myself� �How could this be?� I still don�t have the answer.

That was my introduction to the Shoah. It was also the end of a certain innocence I had about the nature of humanity, and the beginning of the realization that at the heart of humanity lays the potential for radical evil.

The Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hassidism, and one of the greatest rabbis ever to live taught that, "exile is in forgetting and redemption is in memory." The Besht taught from the heart of Jewish tradition. He knew that one of our keys to survival was our ability to remember where we came from, our traditions, our stories and our rituals. In Judaism, there are countless examples of how this works; the Hebrew we pray in today, the ancient words of the liturgy itself, the liturgical cycle. No doubt, the Besht has a point � memory is redemptive for the Jews, allowing us to survive and even thrive as a unique and distinct people while other great civilizations have long disappeared under the sands of time.

Yes, we�re still here and we still remember, but the weight of that memory has a price, and it is not so clear how redemptive memory is, especially when it comes to the Shoah. How does one redeem the murder of so many innocent people? How does one redeem one�s faith in humanity, let alone the creator of humanity? How does one move from the horror of the Shoah to the promise of the future?

There are no easy answers to these questions, no Excalibur to slay this ugly dragon, no magic elixir to take our collective pain away. Nevertheless, I do think there are things we can do that we have not yet done or done very well.

First, we must change the way we frame the Shoah in the Jewish Community. For too long the Shoah has defined contemporary Jewish life. We are a traumatized people. We suffer from a kind of collective Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome where we cannot move beyond our own pain, shock and grief. This is understandable. World War II was not very long ago.

Our suffering was immense � beyond imagining � and the world has yet to fully come to terms with what happened. Holocaust deniers abound, and virulent anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe, the seat of our destruction, and in this country as well, even here in Santa Rosa, as evident by the recent hate incident at the Junior College.

We must be vigilant, this we know. Nevertheless, there is no future for us, no redemption in our collective conscience, if it is defined by what the Nazis did to us. Some how we must find a way to remember the Shoah without the Shoah overwhelming us. We cannot bring back the dead, but we can live in ways that affirm who they were. Defining Jewish life and a Jewish future primarily as a response to our near extinction will do little to honor the memory of those millions murdered by the Nazis. Via Negtiva- "Never Again," is not meaningful in itself. It must be followed up with a vision of a Jewish life worth living.

Perhaps a start to this process is to honor the survivors of the Shoah, not so much for what they went through but how they carried on with their lives after the Shoah. We are great at seeking the stories of their persecution, but not at trying to understand the source of their great courage and wisdom in choosing life after walking through the shadow of death. Survivors of the Shoah are giants of faith and courage. Before it is too late, before they are all gone, we must learn, not just what happened and how they survived, but also how they continued to live long after the initial trauma of their horrible ordeal was over.

The next thing the Jewish Community must do is to recognize that the Shoah was not just about us. Yes, we were the Nazi�s main victims, but 5 million other innocent victims died in their hands as well � 5 million! That is close to the population of the Bay Area. Unimaginable� It�s time we shared our pain with the other victims of Nazi terror. First, it is their due� It is simply not right to act as if we were the only ones that suffered. It is their due, but it is also essential to our own healing as well.

Isolation is a sick partner to trauma, pain and grief. Our healing is tied, in part, to recognizing the suffering of other victims of radical evil. The weight of the Shoah lightens a bit when we recognize that it was not just about the Jews. Not only is the burden lightened, but also the chance for a real Tikkun, a real repair, a real healing opens up as well. Why? Because, as long as the Shoah is only about the Jews, only the Jews will care. In fact, by focusing exclusively on Jewish suffering, we, as one member of our community pointed out to me, have made the Shoah irrelevant to the rest of the world. Including the millions of non-Jewish victims of Nazi atrocities makes clear the fact that the Shoah was not "just a Jewish problem." Human rights, once they are denied to one group, are easily taken from others.

The German Reverend Martin Niemoller put it well when he reflected on his own experience:

In Germany, the Nazis first came for the Communists, and I didn�t speak up because I wasn�t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn�t speak up because I wasn�t a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn�t speak because I wasn�t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics, but I didn�t speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me�but that time there was no one to speak for anyone.

Reverend Neimoller�s remarks are almost clich� these days. This is a real shame because they are as true today as they were when he first wrote them some 50 years ago. There�s wisdom in his words, yet who hears the message? Who takes his words to heart enough to act on them? I am afraid the world has learned little from the Shoah, and that leads me to the last thing I want to say this evening.

A number of years ago Eli Weisel was asked to speak at the dedication of the Holocaust memorial in Washington D.C. He went and in his remarks, he said something that shocked people at the time. He said, there was no reason to stop building the complex now. We might as well start building the Bosnia wing. And, since then, we could add a number of other wings as well that would represent nearly every continent of the globe. You see, ultimately, the Shoah�s bloody finger points to a universal, global issue that includes the memories of millions upon millions of victims of genocide, before, during and after the Shoah. Those brave souls who came today to represent their communities, the Armenians, the Cambodians, the Native Americans share our fate and our future equally. Their suffering was no less grievous, their abuse just as reprehensible. Now, one may say, �wait a minute, they didn�t loose nearly as many people as we did�why they only lost 5 million people.� Or, one might comment, �they weren�t tortured like we were� or�. Quickly, if one steps out of one�s own grief, one realizes how absurd such reasoning is � suffering is suffering, the denial of human rights is a universal crime, the horror of genocide, a universal sickness we must all work to eradicate. "Never Again" is only a truly meaningful, truly moral slogan, if it is applied universally.

Emil Fakenheim, a Shoah survivor and one of the preeminent Jewish thinkers of the 20th century is famous for positing the 614th commandment. This commandment is in addition to the traditional 613 that have been a symbol of Jewish law and life for the past 2,000 years. His additional commandment, the 614th commandment is: to survive. Yes, survival is essential, but survival for its own sake is neither meaningful nor moral. As we move forward into the future; as we seek to redeem the memory of all those murdered by the Nazis, we must find a way to move beyond this notion of survival to one of human progress, where "Never Again" applies to all peoples, everywhere. This is a tall order, ideal in the extreme. It is also the only way to truly redeem all those who have been swallowed up in the vicious jaws of genocidal hate and brutality.

To be a Jew is to believe in the promise of the future. To be a religious person is to never give up on the potential for a transformed tomorrow. We have learned some painful lessons � if only it could have been otherwise. We have seen the darkest side of humanity; now let us show the way to the light of justice, compassion, truth and dignity for all humanity. Let us be as our prophets of old urged, an or l�goyim, a light unto the nations. This is our task; this is our mission. This is one lesson our fellow sufferers and we know too well, which, we can teach the rest of the world.