Sermons and Divrei Torah
Who is the Enemy?
by Rabbi Elyse Goldstein
(Sermon - Rosh Hashanah 5760)
On September 9, 1999– last Thursday– a true breakthrough in Mideast
peace occurred. After tough bargaining and several stalemates,
Ehud Barak and Yassir Arafat made a deal, ratified by the Knesset,
to be signed at Sharm el-Shech in Egypt, in the presence of Madeline
Albright and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarek. Albright was quoted
as saying that both Arafat and Barak “made very difficult decisions
and proved that negotiations work.”
That difficult negotiation is grounded in the Torah portion read
in traditional synagogues this morning- the story of Hagar and
Ishamel in Genesis 21. Though the Reform machzor replaced that
reading with the story of creation for thematic reasons– today
is called the birthday of the world and so the creation story
makes sense–the traditional reading forces us to take a hard look
at the enmity between two brothers, which becomes the enmity between
two peoples. Ishmael is cast out with his mother Hagar, and the
two brothers who once were close are forever sundered, through
no act of their own but through the hostility of their mothers.
Sarah believes Ishmael is a threat to Isaac. The text says they
are playing with each other, using the Hebrew word mitzachek,
but to make the expulsion of Ishmael make more sense, the rabbis
suggest that this Hebrew word has incestuous or violent overtones.
With the casting out of Ishmael and Hagar, we begin a history
of long and bitter rivalry which may actually end with Barak and
Arafat. There is an amazing sense of promise to this new year,
to this actual morning when we reread and thus replay that exact
story. But what will be most difficult, I think, is not the political
contours, not land-for-peace, not secure borders, not even the
inevitable struggle over settlements. All of that will have to
be worked out by wise politicians and insightful strategists,
neither of which I am and none of which belongs on a pulpit on
the holiest day of the year. But the spiritual questions which
the handshake opens up, the existential questions of peace lead
to the kind of soul-searching that is at the heart of Rosh Hashana.
For the possibility of peace between the children of Ishmael and
the children of Isaac will force us to ask: just who is the enemy?
It will force us to look again at our stereotypes of those we
hate, both near and far, and wonder what it is in others that
we cannot stand, which we stand for in ourselves.
Charles Lamb once said, “Don’t introduce me to that man. I want
to go on hating him, and I can’t hate a man whom I know.” The
Palestinians are women and children and men and teenagers and
university students and lovers and painters and poets. They are
not all black-veiled with eye slits and hand grenades. They are
not all fundamentalist terrorists. I do not want them to paint
all Jews with the same brush, so as much as it goes against the
Jewish grain, as much as it displeases the Jewish establishment,
as much as it sounds left-wing and naive, I cannot hate the Palestinians
as a whole. I can hate the actions of the few, and I can hate
a government’s policies, and I can hate a clergy which incites
violence. But I cannot hate a whole people, and yes I pray there
are Islamic preachers this week who will challenge their flocks
not to hate my whole people, but even if there aren’t, I’m doing
it, and that makes a difference. I’m not going to wait around
to guarantee that the “other side” is preaching tolerance for
me to start preaching tolerance.
Like Golda Meir, who said, “I only blame the Arabs for one thing:
forcing our sons to kill their sons” I also hate the absurdity
of war and the use of violence to secure peace. But I know that
in hating a whole group of people, we feed the part of ourselves
that loves to hate, the darker side of the human need for a scapegoat.
In hating, we give away a piece of our own humanity when we allow
ourselves, even for a moment, to dehumanize the “other.” In hating
the foreigner, it becomes easy to hate the home-born. In hating
those far away, I allow myself to stereotype and disdain those
close by. Anger is not only anger, and hate is not only hate.
It is like a seed, lying buried, but when fed and watered it flowers,
and like a weed, eventually takes over all the other other parts
of your garden. It’s useful to have an enemy. They take the blame,
they take the rap, you get to pour your own angst and self-doubt
and reserves of old disappointments and rejections and projections
of anger at all the other people in your life onto this far away
stranger.
But sometimes not so far away. There are the enemies closer to
home.
This summer, I had to face this question over and over again as
Kolel went through a very emotional transition. Many of you know
that, after 8 years of living out of two offices in Thornhill
and renting space here, there and everywhere, we are ready to
buy a building and make it home. Last May we put an offer in on
what seemed to be the perfect place, only to be engaged in a summer
long struggle over the same building with another group of Jews,
who happen to be from a very different place than we are on the
Jewish spectrum. Much of my vacation time was spent in lawyers
meetings and over the phone. In the end, we decided not to pursue
a public legal battle with other Jews. They bought the building,
and we are going to find another perfect site. But the amount
of bashing and name calling on both sides was becoming simply
hateful, and we spent a lot of time in an adversarial position.
At one point, they were the enemy. At another point, we were the
enemy. And both communities got a perverse amount of pleasure
from having each other in a position where we could pour out our
wrath on the unseen “wrong kind” of Jew.
I don’t want to live this way anymore- always angry at “them”
because “they” delegitimize us, obsessed with what “they” think
of us or how “they” keep Shabbat or why “they” wear what they
wear. People constantly ask me “Does it bother you that the Orthodox
don’t accept you as rabbi.” Not at all. You know why? Because
I accept me and you accept me as a rabbi. We liberal Jews are
constantly looking over their right shoulders; someone is always
more “religious” than us and that makes us feel that either “they”
are wrong, or we must be wrong. A liberal Jew starts keeping kosher
or wearing a kippah or doing Shabbat and their family goes crazy.
“You're turning into an Orthodox fanatic!” I have Kolel students
who merely come once a week to a Torah or Talmud class and their
friends are jumping all over them. “You’re going to go overboard-
next you’ll be wearing fur hat and long black coat and be one
of them!” Them, we say with a distasteful spit. I’m proud of my
kind of Judaism and I’m proud of my kind of Jews but I don’t need
to gain my pride by defaming anyone else, as it says in the Talmud,
Derech Eretz Zuta, “Seek no honour through the disgrace of others.”
You be the best Jew you can be in your own way, and let others
be the best Jews they can be in their own ways. Rabbi Israel Salanter,
founder of the Musar movement of the last century, once said,
“Most people worry about their own financial needs and their neighbor’s
soul. Better that they should worry about their neighbor’s financial
needs and their own souls.” Look, I sometimes feel honestly that
my form of Judaism is the right one, for me, for you, for anyone–as
Joseph Telushkin writes, “After all, you worship God in your way,
I worship God in His”– but that does not make anyone my Jewish
enemy. And yes, I pray there are Orthodox rabbis preaching interdenominational
cooperation this morning, but even if there aren’t, I’m doing
it, and that makes a difference. I’m not going to wait around
to guarantee that the “other side” is preaching tolerance for
me to start preaching tolerance.
Friends, the Orthodox are not the enemy.
Neither are those who are not “there yet” in their Judaism. Those
of us who study Torah, who are passionately committed to Judaism,
who keep Shabbat, we find it easy to judge and put down others
who do not. The philosopher Franz Rosenszweig was once asked if
he puts on tefillin, the black boxes or phylacteries worn by some
at morning prayer. “Not yet” was his answer, now a famous slogan
of those searching to enhance their Judaism with more ritual and
more tradition. There are those among us today who will continue
to pray long after the shofar is blown on Yom Kippur- perhaps
daily, at home, perhaps finding a synagogue for Shabbat, perhaps
joining a chavurah or small group who pray together in homes or
other places. Avot de Rebbe Natan teaches, “A person should not
say ‘I love the learned and hate the unlearned’ but rather, ‘I
will learn to love them all.’” When I was a congregational rabbi,
it really irked my regulars that I wouldn’t use the High Holiday
pulpit to excoriate and vilify the “once a year” folks who had
bought tickets to our service but hadn’t joined our shul. If you’re
going to love Judaism, I used to tell them, you have to learn
to love Jews- wherever they are at the moment they are there.
And you are here-not at the cottage, not at the mall, not at home
in front of the T.V. Of course I hope you will find this holiday,
this service powerfully meaningful. Of course I will try and convince
you to do more Jewish things, practice more Jewish traditions,
come and study Torah. Wait for tomorrow’s sermon! But the not-yet
committed, the Jew who comes to synagogue just once a year, the
intermarried, the secular Jew- they are not the enemy.
Isaac and Ishmael reconcile finally at their father Abraham’s
death. Is there anything sadder than enemies at a funeral, two
shiva houses, feuding siblings at the grave? Many of us don’t
speak to an old friend or a sister or a brother or a parent. We
have made them the enemy because of something they said or did
many years ago. A boyfriend breaks up with us, an ex-spouse doesn’t
agree to all the demands for dividing the property- they are the
enemy. We can’t sit next to them at a wedding or Bar Mitzvah,
we mock their attempts at reconciliation, we blame them for their
stubbornness. Like Sarah and Hagar, we hand our children our own
old grievances, and expect them to be loyal to us and to our old
anger.
Author Edgar Watson Howe wrote, “You needn’t love your enemy,
but if you refrain from telling lies about him, you are doing
well enough.” Lashon harah, spreading slander and bad mouthing
and tales out of school are the treats we give ourselves after
a long and hard week with people we find it difficult to deal
with. We say everything that we feel, and then we feel better.
So many enemies, so little time.
Now, I am not talking about bombings or terrorists raids or vicious
attacks or sexual, physical or verbal abuse. It is too easy to
get caught up in the extremes of teshuva-repentance-than to talk
about what it would mean for simple folks like you and me to repent.
Whenever I teach about forgiveness, someone always asks about
the extremes- an abusive parent or spouse, the Holocaust, a rapist.
For extreme acts, there are war tribunals and jails and the civil
courts. Confucius taught “repay kindness with kindness but repay
evil with justice.” I’m not suggesting that we stop hating evil,
but we skirt the tougher inner spiritual issues when we mask the
conversation with extreme cases.
In the simple cases of most of our lives, it is far too easy and
comfortable to place blame on everyone but ourselves.
Psychologists have already taught us that we hate most in others
what we hate most in ourselves. We project our own shortcomings
onto those closest to us. We criticise the faults in others that
we fear lie deep within ourselves. We want everyone to change
but us. It’s their fault, their problem, their intolerance, their
bad manners, their leaders, their obstinance, their stubbornness,
their obsessions that lie in the way. It doesn’t matter if it
is the Palestinian “enemy” or the Orthodox “enemy” or the neighbour
or coworker or brother or sister or parent or ex-spouse “enemy.”
Psychologists have already taught us this but we need Rosh Hashana
to write it and seal it into the book of our hearts. We need to
turn around-teshuva, lashuv, to return- and see the enemy within.
Perhaps the story of Sarah and Hagar is traditionally read today
because just hearing the tale of Hagar sent out into the desert
with a jug of water, a loaf of bread, and her son, forces us to
empathize with “the other” and to see in full form their humanity.
Empathy is such a powerful gift. It transforms not only the one
with whom we empathize, validating and supporting them, but it
transforms us, as well, challenging us to make room for someone
else’s reality beside our own. Stephen Covey, in his wonderful
book called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, calls
this the ability to “seek first to understand...then to be understood.”
Covey notes, “People do not see the world as it is; they see it
as they are.” Empathetic listening within the other’s frame of
reference, he teaches, is placing yourself in the other person’s
skin first, trying to figure out why they are saying or feeling
what they are, before you launch into getting your own feelings
and needs met. He writes, “Next to physical survival, our strongest
need is psychological survival. The deepest hunger of the human
heart is to be understood, for understanding implicitly affirms,
validates, recognizes and appreciates the intrinsic worth of the
other...you acknowledge and respond to that most insistent need.”
With the gift of empathy, Rosh Hashana becomes not only our own
New Year, filled with the possibility of personal renewal, but
the New Year of release and liberation for all those we have locked
up in our hearts and refused to let go of in our anger, our hurt,
our mistrust.
Rosh Hashana is about forgiveness- not just getting it, but giving
it. The laws of teshuva command us to forgive, which may be even
harder than the mitzvah of seeking forgiveness. It was Shakespeare
who wrote “to err is human, to forgive, Divine” but Judaism teaches
that to err is human, and to forgive, is to be fully human. Maimonides
in the laws of teshuva reminded us that the person we forgive
need not even “deserve” to be forgiven. Forgiveness is not a withdrawal
slip from a limited bank account that we dispense grudgingly because
we think it will deplete our supply. Forgiveness withheld isn’t
power, though we often mistakenly think it is. Forgiveness withheld
is powerlessness, for then we don’t control the bitterness, it
controls us.
Rabbi Mordecai Finley once said, “The great thing about forgiveness
is that when you let someone out of jail in your heart, you cease
to be a jailer.” What a feeling of release it would be to let
all those people out of the jail in our hearts, to throw away
the key, and to concentrate on being free to know and improve
our own selves. Other people take up so much space in our heads.
We’re worried about everyone else’s behaviour, the way they eat,
they way they dress, the things they believe in, the things they
say. Our minds are so cluttered with them there’s no room for
us. My friend Joel Rose says, “That person’s taking a lot of space
up in your head- and they’re not even paying rent.”
I know there are those who will think that “loving your enemies”
sounds Christian. It’s actually from the prophet Isaiah who admonishes
us, “Say- you are my brothers- to those who hate you.” Isaiah
had a point there. Those we hate are our brothers, in more ways
than one. They are our mirror image, our flip side, in a way.
I’m not saying we have to love our enemies. Just the opposite.
I’m suggesting that we have to stop loving them, have to stop
renting out for free so much space in our lives for them, and
release them from releasing us from the onus of self-reflection
and self-chastisement and self-improvement.
There is a midrash that suggests that the shofar’s call is actually
a cry- the cry of Hagar as she leaves her home. How odd that the
rabbis should choose this woman’s cry– the mother of our present-day
“enemy”– to be the sound which echoes in our new year. How odd
and how appropriate. The shofar is inviting us to clear our heads
of all the stereotypes and “thems” we carry into the new year.
The shofar challenges us to hear the cry of the enemy as our own,
to hear in Hagar’s wail the cry for empathy, and in that cry,
we empty ourselves of anger and fill ourselves with compassion
for all the “others” we have in our lives. Hagar’s cry makes us
hear the cry of all those we have stereotyped, and demonized,
and fictionalized, and rationalized. As Marsha Pravda Mirkin has
suggested, “This family story is a cautionary tale of how lack
of empathy comes back to haunt us. Through it we come to appreciate
that many of the disconnections we feel and are called upon to
repair during the Days of Awe result from lack of attention and
lack of empathy. Emapthy is the active ingredient of teshuva,
propelling us to turn in a direction that is closer to ourselves,
our loved ones, and God. On Rosh Hashana we ask God to be empathetic
toward us, even though empathy was so often lacking in ourselves
and in our foreparents.”
In the book of Deuteronomy we are told, “You shall not hate your
brother in your heart.” The Rabbis question why the phrase “in
your heart” is necessary. We might think, they say, that it was
alright to hate if we do so quietly, and personally, and privately,
as long as we don’t manifest it with cruelty or abuse. But the
Torah is teaching us something deeper. We will be free to love
fully only when we unlock the jails in our hearts and let the
prisoners go free, with our blessings, and our forgiveness. May
the sound of Hagar’s shofar cry be the key to that unlocking.
Sermons and Divrei Torah
Additional Resources
Elul: Period of Preparation
Yamim Noraim: Days of Awe
Rosh Hashanah: Introduction
Shofar Symbolism
The Custom of Tashlich
Yom Kippur: Introduction
G'mar Chatima Tova...
