Yom Kippur, 5763, Rabbi Kelman
Yom Kippur
5763
Rabbi Kelman
Living a Life of Tensions
Adonai imachem.
Last year, when Kol Nidre fell within days of September 11, I taught a midrash about fear: Tno rabanan - There are five instances of fear cast by the weak over the strong: the fear of the mafgia over the lion; the fear of the mosquito over the elephant; the fear of the spider over the scorpion; the fear of the swallow over the eagle; and the fear of the kilbith over the Leviathan". It was a midrash about five kinds of fear where I taught with the hope of making some sense of the fear we were all experiencing. The message was, ultimately, one of hope. This year, I'd like to explore another feeling that I believe many of us are experiencing: the tension that we feel in our lives of being pushed and pulled in two directions.I hope that this message, too, will be one of optimism and hope.
As a child, my parents bought me two little Scotty dog magnets - one black and one white. I remember spending many hours playing with them, trying to gauge the exact spot where the dogs were sort of perfectly balanced with each other. I would try to manipulate the two little dogs in such a way that the pull emanating from the white one, would match the push from the black one so that there would be an exciting dynamic that existed.I liked the fact that magnets were capable of both attracting and repelling at the same time. It was fun to be able to play with the different tugs and to experience the tension that was created by the two magnetic poles. Sometimes, though, I'd miss that magic point of equilibrium - and hear the click of the two dogs clamped together. Sometimes, I would even allow them intentionally to come together - and feel, well - bored!
Just last year, a colleague gave me a little box as a present. In it were two scrolls woven by an artist and friend, Laurie Gross. On one are the words: "For me, the world was created"; on the other are woven the words: "I am but dust and ashes." This is her creative way of understanding the Midrash that says that we are to carry these two verses with us in our pockets at all times. "For me the world was created" - "I am but dust and ashes". One verse - an optimistic, dynamic concept putting 'me' in the center of God's universe; and the second - the kind of verse that shakes you into confronting your mortality. Two contrasting messages that we are required to carry in our pockets at the same time. On 9/11, when we saw the pictures of the dust over Manhattan, it was real humans being reduced to "dust and ashes"; but when we saw the heroism of police and firefighters and citizens who stopped to help and give blood, it was the feeling - "Oh, I get it, that's why we are here in this world, on this earth". In our own daily life we live in the balance of these two ways of experiencing human existence.
I love those images - of the magnets and the two scrolls, and I am beginning to understand them now much better because of a teaching that I learned when I studied with Abraham Joshua Heschel, z"l, who taught us about the concept of polarity in human existence: that to be a fully aware and alive and functioning Jew, we must live in this life cognizant of the reality of pushes and pulls and of the tensions that these forces create. As Heschel says: "Since each of the two principles moves in the opposite direction, equilibrium can only be maintained if both are of equal force. But such a condition is rarely attained. Polarity is an essential trait of all things. Tension, contrast and contradiction characterize all of reality ...However, there is a polarity in everything except God. For all tension ends in God. God is beyond all dichotomies." (God in Search of Man, p. 341). This must be the real meaning of the Shma - God is One.
Often, I find myself (and, many of you as well, as I reflect on conversations that I've had over the years) trying to find the magical balance point between two concepts that are in tension with each other. The tension is so evident and powerful, with so many issues. There is probably no resting place where we can all be bored! And if you are bored, perhaps you're not paying attention! Choose your issue: Israel, terrorism, war with Iraq, Afghanistan, the economy, belief in God, the synagogue, even relationships - seem to me to be much more in constant tension this year that ever before. Choose your own metaphor - magnets or verses - but the tensions are real. The question is: how can we hold onto the two "verses" at the same time?
This erev Yom Kippur, I'd like to explore some of the pushes and pulls and resulting tensions that I believe we faced in the year gone by and which accompany us into the coming year. I believe that they ultimately are spiritual ones.
The first is the tension of belief and doubt - of faith. By faith, I do not mean simply an "I believe" perfunctory statement, but rather a profound struggle and search for evidence and meaning. This year more than any perhaps, it seems that it is really difficult to sustain a belief in God. Where was God on 9/11? Why doesn't God just step in a fix the Middle East? Questions - questions - questions - all of us have them and so many of them. And many of us have learned not to rely on one answer alone, but to be prepared to live within a system of doubt - and faith. Of both magnetic poles or verses. We struggle - at once being pulled in one direction of a sense of permanence in this universe and at other times feeling like our beliefs are no longer capable of withstanding the pressure of the world of rational logic that we supposedly like to believe is ours. How can we sense the divine in the overwhelming morass of information and experience? How can we face the challenge of uncertainty at a time when we have more facts, more information, and more ways of gaining immediate access to world events? Many have called this a search for 'spirituality' or a search for 'meaning'.
Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman, in his recent book, The Journey Home: Discovering the Deep Spiritual Wisdom of the Jewish Tradition, tells the story that in 1975, while lecturing about the Passover experience at The University of Notre Dame, one woman wanted to know: "You've talked for a week about every conceivable aspect of Passover experience, but not once have you addressed anything spiritual. Isn't there such a thing as Jewish spirituality?" Now, 25 years later, after a great struggle, he says he is finally prepared to respond.
While the search for spirituality is endemic to North America and to the Jewish community, actually, he claims, it is to be found in Isaiah's vision of the heavens with its daring visions of harmony, hope, and awe - or Micah's demand that we live profoundly here on earth. The path to this spirituality requires "a deep reading to elicit the underlying construction of reality that the authors took for granted, and then a consideration of the texts' grid of reality as an alternative to the way we usually think about things." Larry's point: "Religious spirituality cannot come through shortcuts. It is reached only by serious engagement with ancient texts that can be made to translate into spiritual answers for modern dilemmas. This book is a map of such authentic Jewish wisdom. It is not a self-help, simple book of recipes easily culled. It is a profound understanding of how to live within this tension of a life of uncertainty.
As he writes:
"The only thing we can say for sure now, is that nothing much is for sure...At its core, spirituality is the sense that things all fit together despite momentary fears that they are falling apart. It posits connectedness where there seems to be none. The search for spirituality is the yearning for shapes when old contours have eroded, for belonging when the old structure (such as family) to which we belonged have broken down all around us, for meaning in a world so fragmented that we ask again and again, with the hit song of the baby-boomer generation, "What's it all about, Alfie?" Part of us wants to return to the old days when families could be counted on and the streets were safe for walking. Another part of us, however, knows that the new world of elective identity is not all bad. It does, however, require that we find something to hold us together and connect us beyond ourselves, as we go about choosing the paths that will take us through the labyrinth of life.... Oddly, enough [he concludes], it turns out we can go home again; to a home we never knew we had.... The Jewish ideal is a sacred community, a community where our daily regimen together suggests that there is more in heaven and on earth than is dreamt of in most philosophies; where, in short, there are rumors of angels and moments when, angels or not, we are willing to posit the reality of God."
The second tension is what Steve Cohen and Arnie Eisen have pointed out: the tension between the "sovereign self" and life in community. In their remarkable book: The Jew Within: Self, Family and Community in America, these two authors investigate Jews who are in the middle in terms of Jewish involvement; the 60% who are marginally and intermittently involved and not those on either end of the involvement spectrum. This class of people is probably best reflected in the statement of one of the interviewees:
"I'm Jewish - born and bred. No one can take that from me. I observe - when I am free to and when it makes sense. The major point is - what you do is fine - each has to decide for him and herself. And if you ask me by what criterion I choose - or you choose for that matter - clearly, it is and should be what is meaningful to you or to me. On the most basic level, Judaism talks about the relationship of each of us to God, a very personal kind of thing. For that reason, I shall not judge you, and I ask that you don't judge me. In any case, wherever I am today, I doubt I will be there tomorrow. As a Jew, I am on a spiritual journey, and I cannot tell you where I will be next year. That is my greatest achievement."
If I were to describe this young woman, and some of this I learned from a colleague Rabbi Ben Segal, I would understand her in terms of six different indices that for me shake my own thinking about Jewish identity when they are all combined. The first is Inheritance: this Jew sees her Jewishness as a gift of birth, not something earned or lived up to. Second, Choice: One chooses one's Judaism, even if it was his or hers all along. In the "old days", at least there was some norm. Today the choice in and of itself is not only legitimated, it is raised to the level of principle. The third element is that of autonomy. There is an interesting account in the book of a young woman who does a Passover Seder by herself. She simply wants to do it her way. Fourth - personal meaning - as one respondent in the study said: "Yom Kippur - and every other ritual occasion, for that matter, is a very 'personal' holiday, so if you're not feeling very connected it's hard to observe it." It is not surprising that this leads to a non or even anti-judgementalism. Everything is OK, since, we are all on a journey (which is the final element). All of this paints a picture of an intensely personalized, totally individualized Jewishness.
What we learned years ago from the book Habits of the Heart (the wonderful - now classic - of which Ann Swidler was one of the authors), this smacks of "Sheilaism" of a "religion" created for and created by a woman named "Sheila" for herself, her very own religion with a participant of one - herself.
This tension has a rather ugly possibility - namely, that the rule of the sovereign self produces an era where we each believe that we are our own god - and we thereby lose a sense that there is any authority beyond us or any community in which we function. Idolatry of the self has the potential to destroy the entire world. And if I had to choose one word to characterize this tension, it would be "choice" as characterized by the phrase that I hear over and over: "but we are all free to choose".
The third tension has to do with the "truth" and who owns it and how it is displayed. Let me explain. I have a friend who always begins his opinion with the introductory phrase: "The truth is ..." Maybe this was the year to relearn the lesson: that no one has the monopoly on "the truth". Even the fundamentalists who claim to have God on their side don't. And even those who can quote the most Biblical texts don't. I want to be slightly daring and use Israel as the example. Almost every Jew I know cares deeply about the State of Israel. Almost every group or Jewish institution I know claims that the State of Israel lies at the core of its identity. This year their "loyalty" was tested. There were those who claimed to have a monopoly on the absolute right way to approach protecting the existence of the State of Israel. Others proclaimed that the State of Israel, while pursuing peace, was doing so in a way which was unacceptable - even, in some instances, un-Jewish and perhaps even anti-Jewish. The group Rabbis for Human Rights, for example, was repeatedly hounded and pounded by many who believed that their activities were endangering the very existence of the State. The Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, Rabbi Jonathan Sachs, has actually been vilified and condemned by many when he voiced his serious concerns just last week that some of the actions taken by the Israeli government were not in keeping with the moral mitzvot and prophetic proclamations. He may have been in error about where he chose to voice his opinions, but he certainly had the right to voice his opinion. Ver veist! - who knows, as my bubby would say. Who knows for sure! As a colleague put it to me beware of - anyone who claims to have sole ownership of the truth, rather than a perspective on reality.
I have heard over and over again that even here, in our very own Netivot Shalom community, some people who have an absolute love for the State of Israel are intimidated and afraid of expressing their concerns because others are so sure and insistent of the "truth".
Three tensions that we all live with: faith, choice, and truth. These are, for me, at the beginning of 5763, the three tensions that are uppermost in my mind.
I feel compelled to present these tensions, to carry around the image of the two magnetic dogs or the two verses woven into two pieces of cloth, and to try and offer some possible responses to how we deal with these tensions in our lives.
- Living with these tensions is not simple - it requires work; it requires study; it requires learning from the depth of our tradition. These three tensions are not new; we've just made them more prominent in our own lives. Others, from Biblical times till now have brought their wisdom to the table, let's understand what they had to say. The disagreements are printed, brought forth, studied. It is a dynamic, interactive process of Limud - study. It is a commitment to engage with the text to study.
- Tensions are very much a part of Jewish tradition. It's not an easy tradition and there have always been individuals who stood forcefully for their own positions and their right to hold that position. Look at the Talmud - actually, at any page of the Talmud. Somehow or other, each of the authors, the rabbanim, found a way to make public the most difficult of issues -from the bedroom to politics - to talk about the proverbial 'elephant' in the living room, to disagree about its very nature, and to do so with a unbounded degree of respect for each other. They could each present the pushes and pulls of the tension producing issues and did so within a system that still allowed for them to doven together the next day, or to give tzedakah to each other when needed, or to have a meal together on Shabbat and be at each others shiva minyans. The educated community heard all voices. They lived and practiced Kavod haberiyot - respect for the 'other'.
- Each of our major religious heroes throughout the ages, held onto the very core of our faith. They said "Shma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Ehad" - twice each day. Because that statement of belief was their starting point, they could then argue about the existence of God, or the process by which God plays an active or inactive or passive role in our world, or just how it is that we experience the Divine in our lives. Each of them shared a core belief - Emunah which gave them a commonality of discourse.
- None of us can afford to go it alone. We are together in these struggles. We are being tested - or, if that formulation doesn't work for you, we are testing ourselves. And we gain strength from others - and from this very community, this synagogue which must be a place where it is safe to question our beliefs and even our politics. This is our home - a home of our own - and every home must be a safe environment for discussion. But I remind you, that this tension of how we deal with issues of faith, choice, and truth needs to be played out 'leshem shamayim'- for the sake of heaven - respectfully and safely in the context of a Kehila Kedoshah - a holy community.
Limmud, Kavod Haberiyot, Emunah and Kehilah Kedoshah - study, respect for all God's creatures, faith and the holiness of this community - are four responses to being pushed and pulled. Maybe that is what is meant by that very popular statement "kawl haolam kulo, gesher tzar meod" - the whole world is a very narrow bridge. We are not at either end. We are always on that bridge - and it's narrow. We need space for ourselves and we need to make room for others,
One Midrash sums it up quite nicely. There is a very puzzling phrase in Psalms 127:4. oy'vim bash'ar the enemy in the gate. The Midrash asks: What exactly does this mean? Said R. Chiyya bar Abba: Even a father and son, a master and disciple, who study Torah together at the same gate can become enemies; yet they do not stir from there until they come to love each other. (Talmud Bavli, Kiddushin 30b). Through study, through intellectual, respectful debate of the pushes and pulls of our lives can ultimately come that love that enables us to become a kehila kedoshah a holy community. The text implies that this is a natural human phenomenon that we reach the point of disagreement which can lead us to see our companions as enemies but we don't stop there. We continue to learn together and we come out on the other side. It almost implies that the depth of that love is dependent on sticking with the process through the hard times.
Throughout the coming year, there will be other tensions that are already on our communal agenda, among which are the role of the non-Jew in our Jewish community, the very nature of our Shabbat morning services, and the role of Halacha in a Conservative congregation when it impinges on the 'free choice' of the individual.
Living a life of tension with those two verses written on pieces of paper or cloth in our pockets is what this day is all about. May we all come to learn how to tell our stories safely, to be comforted when we need it, and celebrate when appropriate in this synagogue which we need to call our home.
To quote a friend, Rabbi David Ellenson, "May this year somehow be a sweeter and more peaceful one for you, for Israel, and for the entire world." Tizku l'shanim rabbot u'ne'i'mot - may each of you and those whom you love merit many years of pleasantness.