Sermons and Divrei Torah
A Jewish Mission
by Rabbi Elyse Goldstein
(Sermon - Kol Nidre 5765)
A Jewish woman travels all the way to India to seek enlightenment. She journeys several arduous days to reach the summit of the highest mountain, where the master sits. She is told that for a rare audience with him she must limit her question to three words. Three words: perhaps "We exist- why?" or "where is G-d" or "meaning of life?" Finally she gets to the master, and hesitating for a moment, looks him in the eye and says, "Harold, come home."
For her, that was a mission. That was the meaning of her life- Harold come home. For those of you who read the Douglas Adams's series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy you know the answer to the question of the meaning of life. After seven and a half million years the computer built for this purpose divulges it: forty-two. "Forty-two!" the characters yell. "Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?" "I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is."
I know what the question is. It was posed to me this summer by some 12 year old girls when I was working at a Jewish summer camp for a week. On Shabbat each cabin gets a rabbi to do a one hour program with them after morning services. My cabin chose the old "stump the rabbi" thing that people seem to love. How many words are there in the Bible? Which animals exactly did Noah take? How did the world populate after the garden of Eden since, according the Torah, Adam and Eve only had sons? (That's a good one...) But in the corner there is one girl looking for a fight. She keeps throwing the hard curve balls at me: yeah, well what about the Holocaust? And how could a loving God let my grandma die? The other girls are now starting to laugh and snicker with each question's increasing difficulty. They seem to wonder if I can have the answers to the really tough ones. Finally the girl in the corner stands up, puffs herself up to full height and exclaims, "OK, Rabbi- so what is the meaning of life?" That's it- the girls shriek with laughter and "oh boy, she really got me on that one, didn't she?" They seem satisfied that they had stumped me.
But I do have an answer, and I've had it all my life, I tell them. Judaism gave me that answer—but the thing is— the girls don't believe it. Because those girls don't think Judaism has the answer. With all the stuff they've learned in Sunday school or even day school, with all the Bible stories they know and all the candle blessings they can recite by heart, they have no idea that Judaism has articulatable answers to the most important questions in their lives. They have no idea that Judaism can give their lives meaning.
What happened? What happened to make them think of Judaism as a burden, as a bore, as barely tolerable-maybe-even-sort-of-a-little-fun only at Jewish summer camp, as a bunch of dusty old rules with no relevance whatsoever to their 12 year old lives?
What happened? Outdated and uninspired textbooks. Parents who told them to "ask the rabbi" when they finally asked a really good, juicy philosophical question instead of discussing it and digesting it as a family. Grandparents who didn't tell them rich and nuanced Jewish stories. A Jewish community at odds with each other, more interested in indoctrinating them with a denominational label, with no time or inclination left for questioning minds or opening hearts. Details of Bat Mitzvah parties with themes and colours but they don't even know their parsha speaks directly to their 12 year old angst. And overwhelmed, underpaid teachers; uncommitted themselves, unsure themselves, with no answers—and no good questions.
I know this because I'm unteaching their parents, I haven't even started unteaching the kids yet. Unteaching them that the hows are more important than the whys; unteaching them the banalities and the platitudes. As Ursula Le Guinn said, "I am a slow unlearner. But I love my unteachers." I think we are going to have to be unteachers to uncover the truth about Judaism, its rich moral bearings, its ability to help us connect to each other, to the earth, to the Divine, to the root of all being. I think we are going to have to unteach ourselves about Judaism as a "faith" among other "faiths", as a big set of rules from on high, as a thou-shalt and a thou-shalt not. I think we're going to have to reteach ourselves Judaism as a Tao- as a Way, capital W; as a philosophy, as an outlook rooted in ritual.
Because Jews have simply short-shrifted Judaism. We have let it become a panoply of interesting, exotic holidays and ethnic foods, cultural symbols and quaint remembrances. We should demand more of our Judaism! We should ask more of it than just that. We should search it for the answer to "what is the meaning of my life?" We should search it because so many of us don't know its there that we look elsewhere: to Buddhism or fundamentalism or Madonna's version of pop kabbalah. Serious seekers often begin looking farthest from home, like Harold. They can't imagine the answers to their questions might be in that old familiar Bible they left behind so many years ago.
Those girls were not just laughing at the question- they were laughing at themselves for asking it. It's embarrassing to choose a life of meaning. People freak out, like we've lost our minds and gone "religious!" Lee Meyerhoff Hendler wrote a book called The Year Mom Got Religion. She was a typical suburban Jew who one day woke up and decided to explore her Judaism seriously. She didn't do anything radical—she didn't join a cult or become Hasidic— she just elevated Judaism from a hobby to a focal point. Her friends and family thought she had gone stark raving mad when she started to go to synagogue on Saturdays. You see how awakening to religion can transform—and disrupt—a life.
But on the other side, Stephen Carter wrote a book called The Culture of Disbelief showing how religion and people trying to be serious about their religion are disparaged and dismissed. That's our cultural milieu and those girls knew it; they don't want to be thought of as mad and they think they will be respected more for not believing in something.
So here is what I said to that little girl in the corner, when everyone stopped sniggering. I said, "you have a job, my friend. When G-d created the world, G-d didn't finish. You are here to be G-d's partner, to guard this world and to perfect it. The midrash completes this thought by teaching that G-d created not bread, but wheat; not bricks but earth so that we could be a partner. It is a tradition to leave a small corner of your house unpainted or unfinished (now don't use that as an excuse, see honey I knew there was a reason I never finished the basement...) traditionally understood to denote the destruction of the Temple but on a symbolic level reminding you every time you see that unfinished piece that you have a little piece of this chaotic, unfinished world that has been assigned to you to finish. On your very last day you'll be able to point to your little piece and say, 'Out of chaos I brought order to this little piece. I helped finish that which was still unfinished. I helped create from the as-yet uncreated.'" "But how will I do that?" she asked. "How will I know how to fix my piece?" "Aha" I said- "the Torah will be your guidebook. It will sharpen your mind and open your eyes to the ways you have to repair this world." "But how will I find my piece?" she asked. "Don't worry" I answered. "It will find you."
I told her that it would be easier to find her small piece when there were less distractions. I told her in the "good old days" we could just talk to God about it. And, back then we knew what we wanted to talk about. Back then we knew what was expected of us, as the prophet Micah said, "It has been told thee, o mortal, what is good, and what the Lord requires of thee: to love justice, to seek compassion, and to walk humbly with your God." I told her to look at what we had back then to help us, and maybe it could help her now.
Back then, I told her, we were or lagoyim- a light to the nations. Richard Joel, president of Yeshiva University, calls us "noble preachers." I told her to be a noble preacher. Ever hear Jews talk among themselves- they want everyone to know how "unreligious" they are, how proud they are to be Jews but how hard they work not to let their Judaism define them or get in their way. I told her to help spread the Jewish truth that our lives are not fated to be this way, that our world is not slated to be this way, that we as humans have divine power to transform and change ourselves and everything around us-that is what Yom Kippur is all about. Thomas Cahill in his book Gift of the Jews reminds us that one of Judaism's greatest gifts to the world was the startling idea that the gods are not fickle and that we do not live to placate them; the grand notion that our lives have meaning and purpose and mission.
We used to be a people with a purpose, I told her. We used to be noble preachers and teachers. You want the "good old days" I asked her? Not Anatevka but Abraham Joshua Heschel linking hands with Martin Luther King on a freedom march across Alabama. Two "religious" people changed the world, two "noble preachers" unashamed to use their faiths to carry out a "mission" and a purpose.
We worry that our kids and the younger generation—call it Generation X or J or whatever you want— won't want to be Jewish or marry Jewish or practice Jewish. We ought to worry, because we have to give them a Jewish life filled with purpose, or the only reason we can give them to be Jewish is some ancient dusty relics of rituals and some vague sense of ethnicity, which barely cuts it now and won't work for very much longer. They live in a senseless world- Judaism has to make sense and be sensible and give them an anchor and a foothold. We live in a world striving for meaning, lost without it, and our Judaism has to be filled with it or it will just be another thing their parents demand of them like getting good marks, being kind to your dog, kissing your Aunt Bertha, and...oh, yeah, be Jewish.
Because our culture can give us anything else we want. We have 4.3 billion Internet sites and 550 cable channels to entertain us. We have theme parks and wonderlands to give us thrills. Judaism has to give us more than that. Why is my niece's friend from U of T spending a year in Tonga as a missionary? Because the only question our culture cannot answer is WHY. What are the goals worth struggling for? What is my mission in life?
Mission: I've said it before and I'll keep saying it: I want Jewish missionaries. No, I don't want us to go knocking door to door to sell Judaism (though one day I'll tell you about that possibility, too.) I want us to feel a sense of mission and to share that sense with our fellow Jews and with non-Jews looking for a spiritual direction. I want Jews to have a "calling" as Christian as that sounds.
My friend's dog has a clear mission: to keep the back yard clear of squirrels. We have missions in our job, communicated to us very specifically by our bosses. And we work for companies that have specific mission statements, probably written on the company letterhead. But do we have a clear personal mission?
Victor Frankel wrote, "What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him."
To those 12 year old girls and boys who grew up to be us, here is the mission of Judaism: to see the Divine in each person, to sanctify time, to create sacred space, to care for our environment, to let ancient wisdom speak to contemporary issues, to work and to rest, to live with mindfulness, to express gratitude, to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, to visit the sick, to honour the dead, to make peace when there is strife. And, as the Mishna says, the study of Torah leads to them all. For those things, I am proud to be a Jewish "missionary", and one day I hope that 12 year old girl and her friends—and Harold— will join me. Shanah 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...
