The Song of Humanity: Kol Nidre 5777/2016

If you’re a parent, or a grandparent, you probably know that Beverly got a wonderful gift this summer:  a new playground at the Dane Street Beach. It was built thanks to the efforts of Rich and Josie Marino, in memory of their young daughter, Bella. Shortly after the playground opened, I had the pleasure of standing with a group of parents as we watched our children climb and swing and spin and do all of the other things kids do on a playground.

Of course, as a parent, it makes you feel so happy, to see your children play that way, with nothing to worry them or make them afraid. We want our kids to be able to play in this innocent way; and as parents we also have to try to anticipate anything that might threaten them.

           So as we watched our children playing on that beautiful summer day, someone brought up the issue of “stranger danger.” When do you start warning your kids about strangers? And how best to do it?
          One of the parents suddenly spoke up in a stern voice:  “You know what I tell my son,” she said. “DON’T. TALK. TO. STRANGERS. Because they will KIDNAP you and they will KILL you!”

          The rest of us didn’t know what to say. It’s tough to blame a parent for being protective of her child. But, isn’t it possible to teach our kids to be cautious of unfamiliar people without teaching them to be utterly terrified?  -  So that they will still do things like say something adorable to random adults on a checkout line at the supermarket?

          And the more I thought about it, the more I realized: This dilemma never goes away. We continue to face it as adults, as a community and as a nation.

We face it when we see refugees from Syria fleeing for their lives. We want to help them – but we may hesitate to do so, because we fear there might be terrorists in their midst.

We face it when we see police officers abusing their power – but fear that attempts to restrain that abuse might result in danger to police officers, or to us. 

And we face it as Jews when we stand-up for justice, based on our Jewish principles, only to find ourselves sometimes attacked for being Jews.  Yes, this is an infuriating phenomenon that is happening with increasing frequency in our country, especially on college campuses.

          What, you may be wondering, has any of this to do with Yom Kippur, this day of repentance, this day of teshuvah?

I found myself drawn to this problem – which I call “stranger danger in the adult world” – while studying the third movement of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook’s poetical manifesto, the Four Fold Song. Those of you who were here for Rosh Hashanah will remember it, I hope. In any case, let’s have a look at it again.  Please follow along now, as I read the first two paragraphs:

          There is a person who sings the song of the Self. He finds everything, his complete spiritual satisfaction, within himself.

          And there is a person who sings the song of the Nation. She steps forward from her private self, which she finds narrow and insufficiently developed. She yearns for the heights. She clings with a sensitive love to the entirety of the Jewish nation and sings with it its song. She shares in its pains, is joyful in its hopes, speaks with exalted and pure thoughts regarding its past and its future, investigates its inner spiritual nature with love and a wise heart.

          Now, on Rosh Hashanah we discussed the Song of the Self and how it differs from the discordant song of selfishness. Then we discussed the song of the Jewish Nation, and how the ancient ties shared by people in this sanctuary can lead to a unique intimacy and friendship in the present. And we discussed our congregation’s plans to further increase, and deepen, our relationships and connections.   

          This evening, I want to talk about how difficult it can be to sing the next song – the Song of Humanity – in today’s world. Please follow along again, third paragraph:

          There is a person whose soul is so broad that it expands beyond the border of Israel. It sings the song of humanity. This soul constantly grows broader with the exalted totality of humanity and its glorious image. He yearns for humanity’s general enlightenment. He looks forward to its supernal perfection. From this source of life, he draws all of his thoughts and insights, his ideals and visions.

          Our tradition teaches that all human beings have a spark of the divine within us, that we are all b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God.  This doesn’t necessarily mean that God looks like us. The image of God is within us.  Our job is to manifest that presence in God’s world, in large measure, through our relationships with others. When I treat another with the dignity that the image of God deserves, when I am treated with such dignity, the divine flows between us, and through us, and has an impact on healing the world. That is Judaism in essence.

          And there is so much healing to be done in this world! Elie Wiesel, whom we lost this year, may his memory be for a blessing, wrote:  “Human rights are being violated on every continent. More people are oppressed than free. How can one not be sensitive to their plight? . . . . As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true. As long as one child is hungry, our life will be filled with anguish and shame. All these victims need to know they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.”

          That is why we must bear witness and stand-up to all assaults against liberty and human dignity:  Racism, xenophobia, homophobia, trans-phobia, Islamophobia, misogyny, terrorism and all expressions of hatred and divisiveness – all things we are seeing too much in our country and world.  Our God is one of compassion and justice and our duty is clear.

          But how are we to react when we step forward to do this work and are met with resistance or rejection from those who ought to be our allies? For there is an epidemic of anti-Semitism in America today of a sort that I never experienced growing up.  It is bold and insidious and often couched in anti-Zionist ideology.

It tells ludicrous lies such as:  The 9/11 attacks were planned by the Jews (this message was recently scrawled on a playing field at Marblehead High School); or the Zionists are secretly, and systematically, poisoning the children of Palestine.

          Of course, these are extreme examples that originate from extremist sources. But the rise of a more mainstream anti-Semitism, particularly on college campuses, is in a sense more disturbing – precisely because it is in the mainstream

          Listen, for instance, to the beginning of a recent essay by one Benjamin Gladstone, a Junior at Brown University: “Last semester, a group came to Providence to speak against admitting Syrian refugees into this country. As the president of the Brown Coalition for Syria, I jumped into action with my peers to stage a counterdemonstration. But I quickly found myself cut out of the planning for this event: Other student groups were not willing to work with me because of my leadership roles in campus Jewish organizations.”

          I wish I could tell you that this is an isolated incident, but it is not. Last year at UCLA, when Sophomore Rachel Beyda was nominated to the student council judicial board, which is equivalent to its supreme court, she was asked: "Given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community, how [will you be] able to [consider cases with] an unbiased view?" Then, according to the New York Times, “for the next 40 minutes . . .  the council tangled in a debate about whether [Rachel Beyda’s] faith and affiliation with Jewish organizations, including her sorority and Hillel . . . meant she would be biased in dealing with sensitive governance questions. . . The discussion  . . .  seemed to echo the kind of questions, prejudices and tropes — particularly about divided loyalties — that have plagued Jews across the globe for centuries.”

          But perhaps the most explosive example occurred two months ago when the Movement for Black Lives, a coalition of over 50 organizations including Black Lives Matter, released a policy platform with concrete ways to address the very real systematic racism in our country.

Stacey Aviva Flint, a Jew of color, wrote in Tablet magazine, in addition to “documenting the grave issues facing Blacks today… To my surprise…the platform crossed the Atlantic to denounce Israel as an apartheid state committing genocide and advocated for boycotting it.”

Jewish leaders across the political spectrum denounced this part of the platform.

          It may be tempting under these circumstances to simply throw up our hands and say: “To heck with it! Why should I try to help people who misunderstand me, who may even hate me?

          Unfortunately, that response simply does not jibe with the moral obligations of Judaism, so eloquently described by Elie Wiesel and Rav Kook. Keeping our mouths shut and “minding our business” would surely be our most comfortable option. But in the words of Stacey Aviva Flint, “Comfort is not an option . . . Jews must take risks to speak up for the powerless . . . . I choose discomfort.”

           The leadership of the Jewish Community Relations Council wrote, “As we dissociate ourselves from the Black Lives Matter platform, we recommit ourselves unequivocally to the pursuit of justice for all Americans, and to working together with our friends and neighbors in the African-American community, whose experience of the criminal justice system is, far too often, determined by race. We will not allow this profoundly disturbing development to deter us from values and principles we hold dear.”

          But how, then, do we stand-up for these values and principles? Rav Kook, Elie Wiesel and Martin Buber all had the same answer, a single word: Relationships. We must seek friendship – true friendship, of the sort I discussed on Rosh Hashanah – with individuals willing to seek friendship with us. 

          Let me reiterate:  I am not reciting some touchy-feely notion I came-up with on my own. On this, the holiest evening on the Jewish calendar, I am conveying to you one of the most precious fundamentals of our creed.

“When we set ourselves apart from others,” writes Martin Buber – perhaps the greatest Jewish philosopher of the twentieth century – “we become mere egos. It is only when we set out to form relationships with others that we become “human” in the best sense of that word. When we seek to be true friends to one another – that is when the smoldering fire of holiness within us lights up in both ourselves and our friends.”

          We should do this for its own sake, not for any reward.  And yet, I might as well tell you:  The rewards can be very great. I realized last May when our synagogue was vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti. As many of you know, we convened a meeting here in this sanctuary and invited Robert Trestan from the Anti-Defamation League to lead a discussion about anti-Semitism in our community.

I invited numerous Beverly clergy to attend this meeting and five of them came: the Reverends Kent Harrop and Beth Longhead from First Baptist; Reverend Kelly Weisman Asprooth-Jackson from First Parish Unitarian-Universalist; Myozen Joan Amaral from the Zen Center; and Reverend Manny Faria from St. Peter’s Episcopal. Rev. Tara Olsen Allen from Second Congregational wanted to be here, but was unable to attend.

It was a nice turnout; but as we stood together on the platform to sing Mattisyahu’s peace anthem, One Day, I realized something: All of the pastors who stood-up for us that night were individuals with whom I, and others in our congregation, had personal relationships. They’d been to our house for dinner – in fact, most of them came to a Passover Seder that Chuck and I hosted - and we’d been to their homes; or I’d shared long walks and deep conversations with them; or we’d met together in common cause on behalf of the needy.

Several of them spoke about this when they expressed their support for our community. That’s not to say that other Beverly clergy who weren’t here didn’t care about what happened.   But there’s no doubt about it:  Relationships matter. 

          I’d like to say a few words, in particular, about our relationship with First Baptist. For years now, we’ve held Monday Night Suppers for the needy in their building. In recent years, many of us have gone on Reverend Kent’s contemplative kayaking trips – to enjoy God’s creation in silence. Earlier this year, Reverend Kent told me that he wanted to host with me a public discussion on the meaning life – in a bar. Of course, I was pleased by the offer. “But Kent,” I asked him, “why in a bar!?” His eyes lit up as he answered me: “Because…I want to call it:  A Rabbi and a Baptist Minister Walk Into a Bar.”

          The point is, the folks at First Baptist are our true friends, who are willing to stand with us when we are under attack. Recently, I walked into their lobby and saw, prominently posted on a bulletin board, a newspaper article, under the heading “Our Friends at Temple B’nai Abraham.” It was the Salem News’ coverage of the dedication of our Czech Memorial Torah Scroll last year.

And let me add – this is important – when Rev. Kent came to our synagogue to stand with us after we were vandalized, he brought along two large poster boards full of beautiful handwritten messages from members of his congregation, expressing their revulsion at the vandalism and their solidarity with our community. You see:  Relationships matter.

          Yom Kippur is a time to commit, or recommit ourselves. And so I pledge to redouble my efforts to help this congregation – us - form relationships that build bridges. Not long ago, I was pleased to join with other local clergy in forming the Beverly Multi-faith Coalition. I was also invited by Mayor Cahill to join the Beverly Human Rights Committee, along with the Superintendent of Schools, the Chief of Police, and wonderful community leaders representing Beverly’s diversity – all with the aim of combating hate and bringing people together.

And to this I add joining with ECCO, an Essex County interfaith community organization.  One of its missions is to bring congregations together for things like potluck dinners, to forge relationships across race, and class.  To listen to each other’s stories, to challenge each other’s worldviews when necessary, and to work together to better our community and country. 

I hope you, too, will think about dedicating, or rededicating yourself to forming new relationships – particularly, relationships with people who may fall out of your comfort zone.

Shortly before she was murdered in Auschwitz, Rabbi Regina Jonas -- the first ordained female rabbi in history -- wrote that,

“Unselfish dedicated love toward

all [God’s] creations

[is what] upholds the world.”

Surely, if she could cling fast to these ideals in the face of such inconceivable persecution and suffering, we, too, can do so despite the insults and provocations that will surely come our way.

          Tomorrow we will consider the last part of Rav Kook’s Fourfold Song, The Song of the World.  But on this night of teshuvah, I ask us to consider how we will sing the song of humanity in this new year.  As we chant the litany of sins in our liturgy, we know that they are in the plural “we” because we are all responsible for each other, and we can each make a difference in this troubled world by drawing more divinity into it. 

           Let us go forth, holding in our hearts Elie Weisel’s most famous statement, which is both a prayer and a poem: “The opposite of love is not hatred, but indifference.”