Rabbi Daniel Liben Rosh Hashannah 5771
Moment by Moment
Shannah Tova! A friend recently turned to me in minyan with a quizzical expression and asked, “Rabbi, Jews don’t believe in ‘being born again,’ do they? I thought about this for a moment and then I replied, “But of course, we do.” It’s what these holidays are all about. Not the kind of sudden, change-your-life in a flash of religious awakening being born again, but a more constant, ever present awareness of the process of renewal. Hayom Harat Olam- Today the world is born again, and so, potentially, are we. Consider this: if Rosh Hashannah were nothing more than a commemoration of a long ago event, the anniversary of the Big-Bang moment in which God began the work of creation, and then left it to its own devices, then there would be no religious meaning to this day, and little hope that our world, so in need of healing, could ever change. Judaism, however, makes a different claim. In our morning prayers, we say, not once, but twice, in the first of the two blessings before the Shema, “Hamechadesh b’tuvo bchol yom tamid maaseh bereshit:” God renews in His goodness the work of creation continually, every day.
And if the world is renewed each day, then aren’t we, who inhabit this planet, and who are sustained by the same Divine life-force that sustains all creation, are we not renewed each day as well? Our lives are filled with infinite possibilities, which we only sometimes have the courage to glimpse, and the paths we travel are often unpredictable, and surprising.
Listen to this story about a man named Noah Alper. Way back in May 1969, when he was a senior at the University of Wisconsin, he was incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital. Fear of being drafted into the Vietnam War, personal issues and a steady diet of psychedelic drugs, converged to send him barreling over the edge.
He writes, ”one day, while confined to the maximum-security ward, I peered out a small bathroom window through a dense security screen. As I looked out towards the leafy manicured grounds, I made a vow that someday I would rejoin “The Outside” and escape the imprisonment of my own thoughts.
Alper was released from the hospital almost a year later. He could not have known then that, thirty years later, he would sell his business, Noah’s bagels, the largest bagel retailer in the United States, for $100 million dollars. After selling the company, he picked up his family and traveled to Israel, in order to study at The Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. Alper writes: Soon after our arrival, in Elul, I was sitting in Yakar, a neighborhood synagogue, during Kabbalat Shabbat services. Surrounded by ecstatic singing, clapping, and faces filled with joy, my gaze was drawn outside through a window covered by wrought-iron bars. I looked at the rustling leaves of a tree, and was emotionally transported back to the bathroom at the hospital.
The promise I had made to myself half a lifetime ago was fulfilled. I had returned to the green verdant world to build a family, a career, and a future.”
How could that twenty year old kid, stuck and scared, imprisoned by bars both physical and psychological, have predicted where his life would have ended up? How can any of us? Sometimes, to be born again is to have faith that the world is not as narrow as it seems, and to allow yourself to imagine possibilities that have yet to unfold.
Sometimes, our renewal is foisted upon us, born out of adversity. In this past year of continued unemployment, underemployment and economic uncertainty, so many people who thought the arc of their professional careers was long ago determined, have had to find the courage to try to reinvent themselves and to discover new and different strengths. It is not easy.
Often, renewal and rebirth come at a painful cost; and force us to give up old dreams of who we once thought we were, or of how we saw our lives unfolding: The young person, for example, who decides to reveal to his family that he is gay, or the spouse who finally decides that she is able to let go of a failed relationship, are reshaping their core stories in ways that demand courage, and faith in an uncharted future.
Change is not easy, even when it is necessary. It is not easy to let go of old assumptions, to modify the stories that we tell ourselves that define who we are or what we stand for. But when we are open to seeing the change as a rebirth, then it feels like a returning, a teshuvah, a going back to something authentic, even though it may be stepping in to something new. We loosen up on the tightness with which we cling to our stories, we allow ourselves to hear a different story than the one we assumed to be true. That’s how we are continually born and reborn again.
Rabbi Rami Shapiro suggests that the words Rosh Hashannah , literally , head of the year, should be re-read as “Rosh Shena,” or “ Head Changing Day,” because you can't have a new year with an old head. A new head, he suggests, is a story-free head. Our stories define us. If our stories are positive and loving then we are optimistic and loving. If our stories are negative and fearful, then we are angry and afraid. A new head is story-free. A new head engages reality with compassionate curiosity, going into what is without the baggage of what was or what is supposed to be.
Day to day, getting a new head doesn’t mean rewriting the entire story of our lives. Most of the time, our born again moments are not radical transformations; rather, they are subtle shifts in our understanding of self and our understanding of others, an opening of a door, or a slight change in where we draw a boundary. I’m not referring to simply learning new facts, but to our ability to take that information deeply into our hearts, into the place where we hold our most important stories. This is possible because we are willing to hear, to allow for the truth of other stories to modify our own. Let me share with you two small examples from my own experience this past summer; one having to do with an item in this summer’s headlines, and the other, with an unusual trip to Israel, an interfaith clergy study tour that I had the honor of co-chairing.
First, the news item: On July 31, former first daughter Chelsea Clinton married Marc Mezvinski. This was an American royal wedding. And, like all high profile celebrity weddings, it received a lot of press. In the Jewish media, the focus was particularly on the fact that it was also an intermarriage. Everyone had an opinion: The groom wore a tallt and a Kipah- this was a good thing. The Saturday evening wedding was at 6:30pm, hours before Shabbat was over – a bad thing. A minister co-officiated with a Rabbi- this was a good thing, or a bad thing, depending on your views about these matters. The bride and the groom incorporated Jewish symbols, including not only a huppah, but a ketubah, a Jewish marriage contract. A good thing or a bad thing? You decide. Dr. Arnold Eisen, the Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, and a former professor of both the bride and the groom, when they were at Stanford University, skipped the ceremony out of respect for the Sabbath, but attended the reception: In Conservative circles, a controversial thing.
It seems that everyone had an opinion. We all had judgments to make, based on the philosophical positions we hold regarding intermarriage, as well as rooted in our personal family experience. And when we judge, we usually begin with the rehearsed positions that we have taken in the past, the stories, that like computer programs already loaded, pop up first on our screen.
So here are some of my long held views on the subject of intermarriage: First, on a macro-level, it is problematic for the future of the Jewish people. We are barely more than two per cent of the American population, a sociologically insignificant number. Thus, even in homes where only Judaism is practiced, it is a challenge to educate, to inculcate, to live a real Jewish experience that will be meaningfully passed on to the next generation. At the same time, we don’t live on the macro level, but on the personal level. Every couple is unique, and deserves to be seen as such. And, unlike in decades past, intermarriage is not seen by most Jewish partners as a rejection of their Judaism. Perhaps some non-Jewish partners may someday choose Judaism for themselves, perhaps not. This past spring and summer at Temple Israel, we celebrated with five members of our community who became Jews by Choice. Either way, we have an obligation to reach out and to support every couple that chooses to raise a Jewish family. Synagogues can not say this strongly enough: If you are part of a Jewish family, then you are part of our family.
At the same time, I have always counseled couples who are intermarrying to have a civil ceremony, rather than to blend, and to misappropriate the rituals of their respective faith traditions. Christian and Jewish rituals express very different values and commitments, and their integrity should be respected. This advice, I strongly suspect, is largely ignored by couples and their families, who not only don’t see the harm in mixing religious symbols, but who feel the need to affirmatively express their own tradition in the ceremony.
Well, here is where I felt the shift in my story, a rebirth, if you will: when I saw Chelsea and Marc’s wedding picture. In a celebrity wedding that was remarkably private (even Hillary’s boss wasn’t invited), in which the release of information about the wedding was tightly controlled, the wedding picture that the couple chose to release to the world was all the more pointed in its message: The groom wearing a tallit and a kipah, gazing lovingly into the eyes of his bride, with the huppah and the ketubah clearly displayed in the background.
Time was, I might have sniffed judgmentally at the interfaith Ketubah as inauthentic. My head may still tell me that, but my heart tells me something different, because I know couples who display them proudly in their homes. And I have seen families, under the most tragic of life circumstances, make life and death decisions based on the Jewish commitments that that Ketubah represented to them.
About a year ago, a young man who grew up in Temple Israel called me for some advice. His bride-to-be was not Jewish, but he wanted to incorporate some aspect of Judaism into the wedding. Problem was, they were planning a destination wedding in a somewhat exotic location, and no Rabbi would be available. He knew that, even if the wedding was local, as a Conservative Rabbi, I am forbidden to officiate. But, what readings could I suggest that could be used in his wedding? Well, I wished him and his bride every heartfelt blessing on their upcoming marriage. But as to his question, I couldn’t think of a Jewish ritual or text that I thought would be appropriate for the ceremony. I hope I would answer with more wisdom, with a more listening heart, if given the opportunity to replay that conversation. Chelsea’s wedding reminded me of how my story on an important issue to me has evolved over time.
Although we barely notice it, we are continually shedding our old skin, as dead cells are replaced by new ones. What does it take for us to be born into a new heart, as well? It takes what Solomon, the wisest of Biblical Kings, prayed for. He asked God for a Lev Shomea, a listening heart. Although the western tradition prejudices the intellect in favor of the emotions, Biblical Hebrew knows no such dichotomy between mind and heart. Sometimes, it is only the Lev Shomea, the listening heart, that will lead us wisely to the truth we need to know.
Now the same week that Chelsea and Marc were getting married, I was part of an interfaith clergy mission to Israel, sponsored by the JCRC, Boston’s Jewish Community Relations Council. I was one of three Rabbis invited to join the trip, along with two members of the JCRC staff, and about 15 Boston area Protestant ministers and Catholic priests. The purpose of the trip was to both educate, and to build relationships with Christian community leaders, so that they might better be able to understand and convey Israel’s story to their communities. For the Rabbis on the trip, this was a chance for us to share intimately with our Christian colleagues the Israel that we love and to which we are so devoted. And the JCRC did a masterful job in putting together a program of multiple narratives and perspectives that conveyed the complexity of Israeli society and politics.
Together, we toured Christian and Jewish holy sites, and at each place, one of us took responsibility for leading the entire group in a prayer or a reflection. That Friday night, several of the clergy came with me to welcome the Sabbath at Kehilat Kol HaNeshama. I chose this synagogue to take them to because it offers a prayer book with English transliterations, and a style of prayer characterized by spirited congregational singing, punctuated by meditation. Rather than sit politely and observe, as I might have done if invited to attend a church service, my Christian counterparts threw themselves into the affair with gusto, singing and praying with this congregation of Jewish Jerusalemites, a mixture of natives, former Americans, and visitors from around the world, with a fullness of heart and being. Something shifted for me. Older assumptions about religious boundaries and borders were adapting to the reality of my personal experience.
Over the seven days, we heard stories- many stories. We met with Ethiopian immigrants in Haifa, and Kibbutzniks on the Lebanese border. We heard from peace activists, and from West Bank settlers, from experts on military ethics, holocaust survivors, Arab Israelis, and we even had tea with the Palestinian Mayor of Bethlehem. And, although these narratives were often conflicting, together we listened, and were able to hear the truth that was in all of them. Let me share with you just two of the stories we heard from two women we met that week.
Nadia Ismail is an Israel Arab from the town of Nahif, near Carmiel, in the Galilee. Nadia founded and runs a group that empowers Israeli Arab women to educate themselves, and to enter the work force. She is originally from Haifa, and is well educated, well spoken, and forthright in her views. Although her work has born much success, she was not shy about sharing some of the obstacles with us. One woman from her town, for example, successfully interviewed over the phone for a job at a bank in nearby Carmiel. That is, until she arrived at the bank in traditional Arab dress and was told, sorry, your appearance is too traditional; I don’t think it will work out for you here. I can still hear the frustration in her voice as she shared this story with us. Nadia, too, dresses in traditional Muslim attire.
Nadia also gave us a brief tour of the crowded streets of Nahif, which sits on a mountainside overlooking the industrial park of Carmiel. “That’s our village’s land, you know. The JNF took it, and now we are in the position of having to buy back our own land if we want to expand the village.” Well, the issues of land title and of the allocation of government resources are much more complicated than Nadia presented. But, never the less, this is her perspective. Nahif sits crowded on the hill, while Carmiel expands. I did not agree with every detail of her story, but I could hear the truth in it, nonetheless. And yet, in spite of what she perceives as injustices perpetrated by Israeli society, Nadia is committed to the vision that there is a place for Arab Israelis, and that a more equitable place at the table can be claimed through grass roots efforts like hers.
A few days later, we headed south to Sderot, near the Gazan border. There, we met with Linda Bialis, a young, idealistic film maker from California. A few years ago, Linda decided to make her first trip to Israel because she had heard about the unrelenting attack of Kassam rockets from Gaza on the town of Sderot. She was confused by the lack of media coverage this was getting in the US, and decided to travel to Israel to make a film about it. The story she found was one of every-day heroism of Israelis under fire. It was also the story of her film, “Rock in the Red Zone,” a remarkable and totally unexpected blossoming of Sderot as a center for alternative rock music in Israel. This new music scene was the response of Sderot’s youth to the ongoing reality of living with rocket attacks.
While making her movie, Linda fell in love with one of the subjects of her film, got married, and made aliyah. How could you not love Linda’s story? It had all the elements of the Zionist narrative that I wanted my Christian counterparts on the trip to hear: the courage of innocent, ordinary Israelis under fire, the ability to deal with the tension of war through the arts rather than through violence and despair, and the idealism of American Jews who are so inspired by the reality of Israel that they change the course of their lives in order to be a part of it.
But the “truth” is multifaceted, as listening to both Linda and Nadia’s stories reminds us. Yet, acknowledging the truth of a narrative that is different from my own does not negate the truth of my own story. As our bonds of friendship and of trust grew in strength, this group of clergy pilgrims shared honestly, and struggled to make sense of it. Israel is a miracle and an inspiration, both for the Jewish people, and for the world. And it is also a country like other countries, and a very young one at that, that has challenges to overcome and injustices to redress. If this seven day journey through Israel, hardly my first trip to a land that I think I know quite well, was in some way transformational, it is because it was a week of listening, not only to facts, but to stories of real people, stories that often challenged my own, stories of the heart. That is the only way we grow.
We live in an age of increasing intolerance and polarized public discourse, in which the Lev Shomea, the listening heart, is in such short supply. The left demonizes Israel, while the right demonizes Islam. This week, Time magazine scandalously blames Israel for the failure of peace talks which have barely begun, with a slanderous front page headline claiming to explain Why Israel Doesn’t Want Peace. My suggestion: don’t buy the issue, but read it online, and write a letter of protest. At the same time, fringe Christian ministers, who plan to burn Korans this week on the anniversary of 9\11, get far too much press than they deserve. And normal Americans across the country are divided on whether Muslims even have the right to build an Islamic community center in New York City. We mistake stubbornness and close-mindedness for steadfastness and loyalty, and we demonize every opinion that is different from our own. We say, “that’s my story and I’m sticking to it,” instead of listening to what is true, now, in this moment, and allowing our story to grow.
As a community and as individuals, the best thing that we can do is to tone down the rhetoric, and listen to each other, broaden our conversation. As one final example, let me talk about Israel, and the ways in which we choose to support her. Many of you know that Temple Israel led the second largest New England delegation to the annual AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington last year. Nearly 8,000 supporters of Israel, Jews and non Jews, spent three days learning, lobbying our congressmen, and sending a strong message on the importance of the American-Israel relationship to Washington. I love the fact that AIPAC is successful in its mission, which is not to support a particular Israeli political agenda, but to focus Congress on the importance of the American/Israel alliance. That support is crucial to Israel’s long term survival. At the same time, I understand that some of us who love Israel perceive AIPAC to be monolithic, and feel a greater sympathy for JStreet, which is more interested in supporting and encouraging particular Israeli policies, that support the realization of a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians. It saddens me to hear American Jews polarize into either\or positions around these two organizations. And it saddens me that here in our own congregation, some of our members feel that the robust support that AIPAC enjoys leaves little room for them to express support for Israel in their own voice. There needs to be a respectful place for all of our voices on, this issue, as well as on many of the issues that we find difficult to discuss, some of which I touched upon today. Because that’s where the possibility for growth lies, in listening to each other’s real concerns, hopes and fears.
Even after all the books and journals have been read, after all the rhetoric of the pundits have been evaluated, our work is not complete until we have listened to the lived experience of others and we hear what it is that our listening hearts have to tell us.
My friends, may this be a year in which the seeds of peace and tranquility finally take root in the Middle East. May this be a year in which we are guided by the wisdom of our hearts and our intellects, a year in which fear fades and faith is renewed. And may we realize the possibility of being born and reborn again into the truth revealed in every moment.
I want to conclude by reminding you of the words of an old Shlomo Carlebach song: “Return again, return again, return to the land of your soul. Return to who you are, return to what you are, return to where you are born and reborn again.” Please sing them with me.
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