Sermons and Divrei Torah
In God's Image
(Sermon - Yom Kippur Day)
What do you think is the most important verse in the Torah? "Love your neighbor as yourself"? What about "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God"? How about "teach it unto thy children"? Any other suggestions?
Rabbi Hillel, In Pirke Avot, asks the same question, and I wholeheartedly agree with his answer. He says the most important verse in the whole Torah is found in Genesis: "b'tzelem eloheim bara otam: In the image of God were they created." Hmmm...not what we wear, not what we eat, not even Shabbat, not the building of the mishkan, but the simple, elegant statement that we are all created in the image of God.
All of us. The Bible tells us. But do we believe it? Do we act as if we believed everyone was made in God's image? Perhaps the easiest answer to that question is how we talk, and how we act, towards other people. We all believe we are decent folk; I know we all want to be decent folk. But do we believe that the other people who populate this planet are also decent folk? If we really believed that every human being is created in God's image, then simple decent behaviour toward others would flow.
Now its not that easy, I admit. When I am in a disagreement with someone over very fundams, I have to keep repeating to myself "she's also in God's image." When I am really angry at someone, I have to keep reminding myself, "he is created in God's image too." Sometimes I wish God would have thrown the disagreeable and nasty possibilities aside when creating some of us, but I have no choice. I think we use this idea of everyone being created in God's image as a platitude, as a "spiritual sound bite." I think we would act differently if we really practiced it, rather than just mouthing it.
Three examples. First, a Shabbat dinner this summer with friends. Having just returned from our sabbatical, the talk turned naturally to Israel. I mentioned the Kolel mission and my hope that Jews would choose Israel this year as a travel destination. Simple enough. But how can they, a fellow diner asked, when there is no peace to be had with the Arabs? The talk started to turn toward politics, and we all analyzed the now failing road map; the conversation was fraught with pessimism and disappointment. How could we not feel disappointed when we had put our deepest hopes on this fragile peace plan? But then, the discussion turned ugly- in my mind, at least. "Well, they multiply like rabbits, they are a drain on the system and we can't control them because they don't understand higher reasoning..." Who, I wondered, are we talking about here? Blacks? Women? Ultra-Orthodox Jews? This kind of racism wouldn't be accepted at any polite dinnertime table except the Jewish one I was at. I spoke up, "Look" I said, "I remember learning that we are all created in Gods image- even our enemies are human beings. We may disagree with them, we may even hate them- but we don't have to demonize them into animals. " They all looked at me, rolled their eyes with that "oh yeah she's some kind of peace loving hippie from the 60's" look and the dialogue halted. I don't care how left or right you are, how hawkish or dovish. I support Israel passionately and will always defend its right to safe borders and its existence as a Jewish homeland. Say what you want about the peace process. Express frustration, even rage at the suicide/homicide bombings and the lack of a Palestinian moderate leadership with whom to dialogue. Name and punish the culprits. Fine. But to coat simple down home racism with a respectable Jewish veneer? Not fine.
Second example: One day this summer I happen to mention that a friend of mine has finally joined a synagogue that she is very happy with. She had been looking for years for a shul that would make her feel spiritually uplifted and challenged and whose members would share her passion and her commitment. She had tried several different liberal synagogues but never quite felt she got what she needed. The synagogue she finally joined happened to be Orthodox, and as a result, she has become more observant. The person I was talking to, an active Reform Jew, turned up her nose and said, "Oh, yes, I heard- she's gone over to the 'dark side.'" Now I don't think she was referring to the colour of the suits worn by men in that community. While I am not Orthodox, and I personally may disagree or be uncomfortable with certain tenets of Orthodoxy, I would never suggest any other Jew or Jewish movement is the "dark side." Second example, flip side: A few summers ago, I was interviewed by Toronto Life about Jewish feminist notions for a general article on Jewish feminism they were writing. In the article I spoke of some of the ways we could reclaim feminine imagery of God and even reclaim the term goddess in a monotheistic way. The next Shabbos, an Orthodox rabbi in Toronto mentioned the article and wondered aloud if Rabbi Elyse Goldstein- using my name from his bima-isn't really practicing paganism. And then, the very same Shabbat, another Orthodox Rabbi, in another orthodox shul in Toronto, blasted Reform Judaism from his bima as a home for the weak and the lazy. And that very Rosh Hashana, a full page ad appeared in the Jerusalem Post with a "loving warning" that if you hear the shofar blown in a Reform synagogue, you haven't heard the shofar at all. Now I have my share of critiques of Reform Judaism- along with critiques of all the denominations, by the way, because I subscribe to Rabbi Yitz Greenberg's maxim, "I don't care what denomination you belong to, as long as you're ashamed of it.."- but I cannot stomach such pejoratives and slurs- from either "side" of the denominational debate. We don't want "them" to talk about "us" in dismissive ways, and "we" shouldn't talk about "them" in negative ways. But since when did we become a "we" and a "them?" We have this wonderful notion of "Klal Yisrael"- that is, that all Jews are one community. That no matter how divided wea re on philosophical lines, we are one people. How can we be one people when we talk about ourselves as "us" and "them?" Are we not all created in God's image- though we may disagree-even vehemently- about how to best exercise that Divine spark in each of us?
Who needs enemies when we have friends like this? When people convert to Judaism, the one thing they always laud is the concept that no matter what, all Jews care for and respect each other as Jews. Am I supposed to tell my conversion candidates this is a myth? That we really don't talk about each other as if we were all made in Gods image, that some of us feel we are more God like than others, and that some of us believe we can speak in Gods name.
This is the time of year we Jews say is the day of judgment. Have we not learnt that the only one we stand in judgment before is God? That we have no right to judge each other?
Third example, also from this summer, perhaps the most blatant example I have ever seen of the inability to see Gods image in another human being, based on what he or she does in the bedroom. A Vatican tirade in the realm in which it is least expert, the area of human sexuality and the right of loving, monogamous human beings to enjoy companionship, family, stability, commitment and public acknowledgement of that commitment if they are gay.
Are we all in God's image if we say that our society is based on a fundamental inequality, that the pleasure and intimacy of marriage depends on a definition which fits only one kind of God's creature but not another? We heard this summer that the prime minister risks eternal damnation and hell if he legalizes gay marriage. To know that in this country, which protects the separation of church and state- a separation that makes it possible for us as Jews to enjoy the kind of freedom we do enjoy here- mps, city counselors, and mayors are being told not to vote their personal conscience, not to vote their constituents conscience, but to vote their Catholic church's dogma. As Jim Coyle wrote in the Toronto Star, "If only the Vatican devoted one half of the fervor in recent decades to confronting its own internal sins, failings and crises." And then the piece de resistance- the Vatican's insistence that "allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children." Coyle continues, "It takes some nerve, after all, given the church's dogged silence maintained in the face of real and actual violence visited on children by members of its own clergy."
And the Jewish community hasn't done much better. Articles in the Canadian Jewish News have all come from the traditional right wing section of the community claiming to speak for all Jews when it questions both the legitimacy of gay civil marriage and the rights of gay Jews to have a Jewish ceremony to solemnize their love. Of course there are rabbis divided on this question- when have rabbis not been divided on any question? But there are a growing number of rabbis who will perform Jewish ceremonies for gay Jewish couples and their voices also speak for "the Jewish community." And since when is "the Jewish community" made up of straight people talking about gay people? Studying the issue, debating the issue as if again its we- the straight Jews- and them- the gay Jews.
How much longer can religious institutions of any creed maintain the position that homosexuals are welcome in our community as long as they don't express their most fundamental being? How much longer can so many of the world's religions publicly profess or quietly intimate that many of Gods children are, shall we say, damaged goods, defective merchandise, wrong headed and willfully stubborn, worthy of our "compassion" and "tolerance" but not equality and justice? Perhaps the most eloquent "religious response" I have read came from a Muslim couple, Tarek Fatah and Nargis Tapal, whose own heterosexual marriage was opposed because one was Shia Muslim and the other, Sunni Muslim. They wrote an op ed piece as practicing Muslims, acknowledging that the traditional interpretation of their faith does not permit same sex marriage, but wondering why the opponents of marital bliss for anyone who would wish it need to use their religion to predict moral disaster. They say simply, If your belief does not permit you to marry someone of the same sex, then don't marry a person of the same sex. Pretty simple. But like the Catholic Church, Judaism and Islam have had their share of dire predictions that this issue is the "last nail in the coffin of human morality." Last nail, this young Muslim couple asks. They write, "Not the Holocaust, not the genocide in Rwanda, not the massacres in Bosnia..Not murder, not hunger, not rape, not war, not honour killing, not illiteracy...?" Again, in Coyle's words, "How can anyone take seriously the allegation that those who seek to take part in one of society's most mainstream and stabilizing institutions- the institution of marriage-are somehow threatening the fabric of society?" I thought more stable, loving Jewishly committed families was the point. I thought losing 6 million of our people would have been enough to teach us to stop pushing people out and start bringing people in. I thought it would have taught us that in the post holocaust Jewish world it is simply ludicrous to be gatekeepers to those who are Jewish and who opt in. Let me promise you something. Its hard enough to be a Jew. Its doubly hard to be a Jewish woman. Its triply hard to be a gay Jewish woman. You take a gay Jewish woman who wants in, who says I love this tradition and I value this Torah and I teach it diligently unto my children and I speak of it when I lie down and when I rise up. You want me to tell that Jewish woman she cannot Jewishly acknowledge her love for her partner and create a Jewish family because she is gay? I certainly don't know how many straight couples sitting here today break the various and sundry Torah laws around sexuality, how kinky their so called "straight' sex is, how loving they are to each other in the bedroom. Now, I am a rabbi, and so my job is to safeguard Jewish tradition, but I do not have to safeguard the Jewish community's fear of not looking like the Cleavers of the 50's with mom, pop, 2.2 kids and a dog.
The week after the Vatican edict, my friend Adrienne Rosen wrote an op ed piece for the Star. In it, she asks a simple question: why would her marriage to her partner of 18 years diminish anyone else's marriage in any way? Why would it supersede anyone else's rights to their own relationship? She writes, "Those who believe they are being robbed of a special status should examine what they perceive they have been robbed of." The only ones being robbed, I believe, are gay and lesbians, created in the image of God.
Now I know many people will go home from this service and say Rabbi Goldstein spoke about gay marriage. Or she was sympathetic to the Palestinians, or she blasted the Orthodox and Reform denominations. I think people may go home and say that, because the deeper message, that is, how do we act as if every person we share this earth with is an equal partner with us and in the sight of God; how do we live with the awesome notion that every human being has a Divine spark, and we have to act in a certain way if tyhat is accepted as truth. This morning's Torah reading reminds us that scapegoats are cast into the wasteland. It would be too glib to say that "those who are different from us are the scapegoats" because that statement means we haven't yet challenged who the "us" is. What makes someone "different from the norm" when we haven't yet fully examined what or who will be our norm, and who has the right to define the norm. There are two goats- one for God, and one for Azazel. Modern Hebrew uses the word Azazel for "hell." Well I say hell is when we allow ourselves to be divided into those for God and those for Azazel, as if we all aren't just goats trying to do our best to find our way out of the wilderness. As if God's love is conditional upon our nationality or our religiosity or our sexuality.
The rabbis offer a midrash to explain the verse b'tzelem Eloheim- in God's image. Contrasting a human king -melech basar vadam, literally a king of flesh and blood, with the Divine king, they say, for when a human king makes coins, he uses one die, and all the coins come out the same. However, when the Divine Ruler creates human beings, using the die of the Divine Image, not a single one comes out exactly like another, yet all are cast of the same substance. What is so amazing about being human, is that we understand what it means to be human. Rabbi Akiva said, Beloved is humanity for they were made in the Divine image, but it was by a special love that it was made known to us that we are in the Divine image. That knowledge gives us tremendous power, and tremendous responsibility. I pray that this year we focus less on speaking for God, and more on listening to God, and seeking out God's face in the face of anyone we encounter. 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...
