Sermons and Divrei Torah
Do Not Fear, My People
by Rabbi Elyse Goldstein
(Sermon - Rosh Hashanah 5762)
A world gone insane. A world gone mad. Easy to feel those things,
to think those thoughts in the wake of last Tuesday's surreal
events. I don't even want to call last Tuesday's events a "disaster"
because the word "disaster" conjures up something natural, something
predictable like a tornado or a ship sinking. No, disaster doesn't
describe it either. "Unbelievable" doesn't describe it either,
because after the attack on the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem
I can believe almost anything is possible when hate is a motivator.
Every Jew in this room, every Jew in the world, after months of
suicide bombers in Israel believes it is possible for human hatred
to run deep enough to kill without remorse. Shimon Peres said
on Tuesday: "Tonight, all Israelis are Americans." But what is
equally true, is that as of Tuesday, all Americans are Israelis.
In America, Starbucks shuttered all their facilities and shopping
malls and office buildings all over the country were closed to
the public.On the other hand, the Israeli response to terror is
to act with resolve; streets are cleaned immediately and it's
a return to business as usual as quickly as possible. Sbarros
is reopened already. Every bombing or drive-by shooting reinforces
the national sense of unity and purpose - precisely the opposite
reaction the terrorists hope to evoke. Terrorists wish to strike
the fear of randomness into the hearts of ordinary people; to
disrupt daily life so we make no plans, we wait and see. Freeze.
Go numb, go back to sleep, close the blinds. Panic and retreat
from the chores, the shopping, the market places, your work, the
schools, the churches and synagogues. To destabilize quickly through
instant and mass anxiety. The real aim of terrorism is to demoralize,
and to that, we will not give a victory; for it is our New Year,
our unique brand of hope and confidence as the days grow darker
and shorter and the weather grows colder and the natural inclination
is to stay inside and retreat– just then we declare a holiday
and a new beginning and we are so crazy with this that we insist
even on eating outside as the leaves fall all around us. So we
will put uniformed police in front of the BJC and we will go on
with our service and our shofar will be blown and we will wish
each other a good and sweet New Year and some, some tiny piece
of the terrorists plan has been thwarted by our every-day-ness,
our yontiff -ness in spite of, in light of. Maybe thats really
what Mjugl rua, a light unto the nations means: our historical
tenacity can shed a light in this darkness. The "we go on and
pick up the pieces/pack your suitcase and find another place to
live" of Jewish history, through the thousand pogroms and deportations
and unexpected changes; this peculiar proficiency should be the
Jewish gift to New York and Washington this week.
I weep for people I've never met, who've been killed by people
who believed there could be a God cruel enough to condone this
carnage. I think of tomorrow's story of the Akedah as a warning
against the kind of fanatiscism that would allow a person to even
imagine their God would call on them to sacrifice their son. The
test of Abraham was not to bring Isaac up to the mountain, but
rather, to curb his own passion for the invisible God who called
him. The test was to restrain his zealousness, surely not to sacrifice
his son on the altar of his own cause. Indeed, the midrash has
Abraham so resolute to sacrifice Isaac that the angel has to call
him twice, because the first time he refused to put down the knife.
Don't touch the boy, says the angel, don't even inflict the slightest
wound on him, Abraham: the stark Jewish reminder that above all
law, above all ideal, above all religious slogan, stands the sanctity
of human life. Remember, the first and possibly most legalistic
religion in the world gave us the admonition
tbwh ta hxd wfn xuqp: saving a life cancells Shabbat and all,
yes all other commandments.
I weep for those who teach that the answer to political frustration
and economic deprivation–which does exist, to be sure–but that
its antitode is suicide. I weep for those who instill hopelessness
instead of hope.
Unbelievable, people say. The thing that is really "unbelievable"
is the long standing perversion of religion that would have mothers
brandishing pictures of their "martyred" sons with pride and conviction
that they now have a special seat in some heaven reserved for
such murderers. The unbelievable thing is that young men who die
inflicting pain and suffering on "the enemy" have others who share
their extreme views and respect their actions; who knows how many
others are taking flight training right now and living comfortably
middle-class suburban lives in the capitalist country they hate
so much? The unbelievable thing is as James Travers wrote in Saturday's
Star, "The Middle East is littered with formal and informal shrines,
often decorated with gruesome pictures, honouring those who brought
violent death to others..."
Over the past year of intensified attacks against Jewish civilians,
many Israelis felt that the world did not fully comprehend the
extent of base hatred that motivated young men to blow themselves
up in shopping malls and train stations. Why couldn't we explain
that while Israel stands on the front line of the fight against
radical Islamic fundamentalism, the United States and Western
values are the larger target? As the Western media labeled the
perpetrators of attacks against schoolteachers and infants "activists"
or "guerrillas," we shook our heads in disbelief. As the U.S.
and Israeli flags burned together at violent protests in Ramallah
and Nablus, we wondered who was paying attention. Osama bin Laden
identifies with the Palestinians but his attacks were not on the
settlements; and the reaction of kids handing out candies and
dancing on Sultan Suleman Street in East Jerusalem and in Nablus
last Tuesday had little to do with the "occupation."
So lets have hope, but not without anger. Not without righteous
indignation. As Lance Morrow write, "As the bodies are counted,
into the thousands and thousands, hatred will not, I think, be
a difficult emotion to summon. Is the medicine too strong? Call
it, rather, a wholesome and intelligent enmity... Anyone who does
not loathe the people who did these things, and the people who
cheer them on, is too philosophical for decent company."
Anger, righteous anger, but not at Islam itself; or at Muslims
of good conscience who are equally outraged at the perversion
of their religion. When Baruch Goldstein and Yigal Amir did their
best to pervert Judaism, all of Judaism didn't take the rap. But
anger at the clerics and the imams who continue to politicize
their religion and made it impossible for us to even take part
in a so-called "interfaith prayer service" scheduled for last
Friday at Queen's Park because we could not get reassurances that
no anti-Israel statements would find their way into Scriptural
readings and poetry. And I appreciated the outpouring of interfaith
grief and sharing of anger last week from my Christian colleagues,
but I am angry at their silence when teenagers were blown up at
the Dolphinarium and whole families exploded in Sbarros. I cherish
all the freedom-loving, moderate Muslims who went to candelight
vigils last week but I expect them to scream out in outrage at
the continued destruction of human freedom and dignity in the
name of Islam by the Taliban in Afganistan. I'm not angry enough
to paint with one brush the extremists with the moderates and
I don't want anti-Muslim sneers any more than I want anti-Semitic
remarks. I think the non-Jewish world has learned the old adage
we Jews have known for so long: if someone hates me, they will
soon come to hate you, too. But anger, yes anger, at the social
acceptance and even glorification of religious extremism which
is far more widespread in the Arab world than we had previously
ever wanted to believe.
The instinct for revenge is strong. "Kill 'em, nuke 'em, destroy
'em" read the editorial in the New York Post. But do we meet barbarism
with barbarism? Do we descend into hell to meet evil and root
it out by living in hell and becoming evil ourselves? As Richard
Stengel wrote in Time magazine, "...we also must be vigilant about
those who want to rush us into unthinking judgments and actions
to satisfy a hunger for vengeance. We show our strength and confidence
not in precipitous action, but in patience. 'Patriotism is the
last refuge of the scoundrel,' Samuel Johnson once wrote. Nationalism
is a dangerous emotion, first cousin to the kind of extremism
and fanaticism that motivates those we seek to defeat. We will
lose the fight against terrorism if we embrace any of the same
values that motivate it, for then we will have defeated ourselves.
In this case, we don't want to meet the enemy and find that he
is us."
I lie awake at night, my head filled with contradictory images.
A friend of mine sends me a message by phone from Jerusalem, "We
are safe and sound here. Isn't that ironic?" On Tuesday afternoon,
the Catholic Archdiocese of New York holds an emergency Mass;
while the American Jewish Congress holds an emergency blood drive.
Yasser Arafat gives blood on Wednesday, and on Thursday cancels
his trip to Syria, which is on the US list of countries that support
terror,but his adviser Bassam Abu Sharif is sure to say the trip
was canceled because of the Israeli incursion into Jenin and because
Israel closed its airspace after the attacks. The Palestinian
Authority organized an afternoon candlelight march to the US consulate
in east Jerusalem to commemorate the victims, while Palestinian
officials accused Israel of using the attention focused on the
attacks to escalate their military presence. Local Muslim leaders
strongly condemn the attacks, while the Kitchener office of the
Islamic Humanitarian Service grouped "demolition of homes and
occupying other people's lands..." with hijacking as acts of terrorism.
The game of "moral equivalency" goes on. The terrorist attacks
on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon should give a great
deal of pause to those who feel that the Middle East conflict
is a war of "equal evil" committed by both sides.
Even to suggest some good can come out of this feels like blasphemy.
Yes, the spin from the media in all but the Arab world is decidedly
pro-Israel. The few lone voices blaming Israel or the American
involvement in Israel are much meeker and milder than I had first
imagined, and the world-wide editorials equating America with
Israel in a united struggle are, in fact, overwhelming. On Wednesday,
one New York editorial said it clearly, "Yesterday's attacks were
intended to raise the price of US support for Israel to unacceptable
levels. But the United States and Israel are in this together-
as are the rest of the Western democracies." It has been said
that in the war against terrorism, Israel is the world's miner's
canary. Before subjecting themselves to potential threats of noxious
fumes, miners used to lower canaries into their mines to see if
the air below was breathable. The sad lesson of Tuesday was that
the fumes of terrorism smelled in Israel are more toxic and widespread
than anyone in America could believe. Last month world leaders
called on Prime Minister Arik Sharon to exercise "restraint" in
the face of the mounting death toll, and the joke going around
now is that Sharon called President Bush on Tuesday night and
urged him to "exercise restraint." But the fundamentalist terror
groups hate the West and modernism and would despise both even
if there had never been an Israel. And who among us would want
the raising of support for Israel to be at such a heavy human
price? It's terrible even to speak it.
So what words can we speak? These: we who have lived through many
a night of terror bring a message of hope by the simple act of
celebrating our New Year in the face of all our inclinations not
to do so.
This is what I will tell my children: the world has not gone insane.
There are madmen in the world, but the world is not mad. There
is evil in the world, but the world is not evil. buy jk M'qula
arju- and God saw that it was good. This is what I will tell my
children: Live by the Torah. Follow its teachings carefully, and
if you do, you always remember that every human being is created
in God's image, that the Divine spark shines in every eye, not
just yours. Do not think the Torah would ever give you permission
to hurt anyone else. I will teach them to hold this piece of Talmud
in their hearts every day: "The one who destroys a single life
has destroyed the world. The one who saves a single life has saved
the entire world." This is what we can say: Do not give up hope,
and do not lose faith. We who find it hard to believe in the intangible,
the irrational, the things we cannot touch have such strong faith
in big, tall buildings. Frankly, it is easier for me to have faith
in the irrational notion of God right now than in the rational
notion of human achievement. But I will not give up on both of
those faiths, and I hope you do not either.
It is easy to give in to despair. It is easy to be numb, to grieve
at the pictures and the inevitable dozens of "human interest"
stories of the ones who got to work early and the ones who got
to work late, the ones missing and the ones found. But we have
done it before. We can do it again. We are the people who have
lived through every evening and then rejoiced at every morning,
as it says in Psalm 30:6, "In the evening there is weeping, but
joy cometh in the morning." That is why we light yartzeit candles
but we also light Shabbat candles. We desperately need Rosh Hashana,
an island in the storm, the joy that cometh in the morning. We
need Rosh Hashana to remind us that all is not lost, that there
is still holiness and sweetness. Tuesday's tragedy certainly puts
our small problems in perspective, and gives us an extra sense
of blessing as go back to our intact homes and intact workplaces
and hold our loved ones ever closer.
In gematria, the ancient Hebrew mystical assigment of numerical
value for letters, the year 5762 equals the phrase jme arjt la,
"do not fear, my people." So while the governments debate, we
common folk will give blood and we will give money. We will say
kaddish for the dead and psalms for the living. We will not let
evil conquer us, the kindly and decent folks who still make up
most of this planet. We will cast our small sins in the water,
and hold up our small piece of the sky, and pray that this time
of rage and destruction pass quickly. On this day of Rosh Hashana,
when tradition tells us that the fate of human beings and nations
are weighed in the balance, we ask God for healing and comfort
for those who have been injured and to those grieving for the
loss of loved ones. We pray for strength for the rescue workers,
and for vision for the leaders and the people of the United States,
that they may bind their wounds and begin the work of reweaving
their country's torn fabric. We recall the words of Reb Nachman
and pledge to try and live them: All the world is but a narrow
bridge. And the most important thing is: not to be afraid of it.
Shana Tova.
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...
