Sermon for Yom Kippur Morning, Beth Israel Synagogue, 10 Tishrei, 5775

Long before I came to this shul – before even I thought about becoming a rabbi – I decided that if I were ever given the opportunity to give a High Holiday sermon, I would talk about the importance of building a sukkah. Some time thereafter, my friend and mentor, Rabbi Hesch Sommer, did in fact give me a chance to deliver a sermonette on Yom Kippur. I did not talk about the sukkah. In the eight years I have been here, I have delivered perhaps 35 High Holidays sermons. None of them has been about the importance of the sukkah. Indeed, as of last week, I had no intention of talking about the sukkah this year. But then came the first day Rosh Hashanah discussion group and what turned out to be a very animated conversation about Celebrate Wallingford. Shortly thereafter, I decided that the time for the sukkah sermon had finally arrived. So today's planned sermon was retooled for last night, last night's sermon was placed in my “sermons I never gave” file, and the one sermon topic I have been harboring for a dozen years or more is finally getting a hearing.

I built my first sukkah maybe 15 or 16 years ago. Sarah would have been 5 or 6, Rachel 1 or 2. It was built out of 4-inch PVC pipe, held together with duct tape. I set out our festival dinner inside it and the thing promptly collapsed in the breeze.

The next year I got serious. The sukkah I built was of 2 by 3 furring strips, fashioned into four foot by eight foot frames with cross bars for added strength. I drilled holes equidistant from the top and bottom of each frame, through which I bolted the frames together. The roof was supported by 2 by 3 beams resting in aluminum stud hangers. The finished sukkah was 16 feet long by eight feet wide. The next year I doubled its size. At 16 feet square, I have one very large sukkah. I also have lights for the sukkah and propane and kerosene space heaters. Since the sukkah leans against the exterior wall of our family room – where our modem is located – the sukkah has a very strong Wi-Fi signal. All-in-all, it is quite far from a hardship to dwell in my sukkah, except on the coldest or rainiest of nights. And we don't actually sleep out there, but we do pretty much everything else.

Sometimes, on a sunny afternoon during Sukkoth, I will sit in my sukkah and look up at the blue sky and the changing leaves through the bamboo mats that are its ceiling. I will look at the tarp covered walls of this structure that sits, for 51 weeks every year, stacked up in the back of my shed. And I will know in those moments what it means to dwell in a makom kodesh – a holy space. My extended family gathers and we laugh and talk and eat together, tenuously but lovingly sheltered in this sukkat shalom - this peaceful refuge.

But the real magic of building a sukkah is what it has done for my kids. When they were younger, they would spend their free time in the days after Yom Kippur cutting up strips of construction paper and stapling them together into what we would call “the paper chain that ate Connecticut.” It would be probably 50 feet long by the time they were done and we would thumb-tack it to the ceiling and the center posts to give the place a more festive air. My kids would come home from school and do their homework in the sukkah. We would have dinner there – often with friends joining us. After which we would sit outside and read or talk or play computer games until the cold started to creep into our bones. Then we would turn off the lights and go back inside, happy, but also a bit saddened, knowing that another day in that sacred space had come to an end.

The week of Sukkoth is magical around my house. It is like a week out of time. Everything is centered around that sacred space and the joy of sharing it with our loved ones. Its always a sad day when the sukkah comes down and gets stored away for another year. The air is invariably cold – a reminder that fall is about to set in for real. And this fragile structure whose walls are sheets of plastic and whose roof lets in the starlight reminds us of how tenuous is our own hold on this world. I always say a prayer when the last pieces of the sukkah get stored away. “Please, God, let me merit the chance to dwell in this holy place again next year.”

Sukkoth is, in our tradition, HaHag – the festival. It is the perfect holiday. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are centered around the synagogue and not readily accessible to young children. Hanukah and Purim are minor holidays whose very adult themes have been glossed over with child-centered activities. Pesach is perhaps the most powerful of our holidays, but it is also burdensome. But Sukkoth is z'man simkhateinu – the time of our rejoicing. Building a sukkah and celebrating this week-long festival combines serious and distinctive religious practice in the most conducive atmosphere possible – concentrated time with one's family. Build a sukkah and celebrate these days and you will stamp your children's lives with a strong and affirming Jewish identity. They will love being Jewish. They will never ask for a Christmas tree because they will never envy anyone else's practices when there's are so beautiful.

To build a sukkah is to build a Jewish soul. That is what we as individuals, and we as a community need to be – builders. In a passage from Isaiah it says “And all your children will be students of the Lord, וְרַב שְׁלוֹם בָּנָיִךְ - and great will be the shalom of your בָּנָיִךְ - your children. But the Talmud teaches us - אל תקרי בניך אלא בוניך – Don't read the passage to say בניך – your children. Change the vowels around so that it reads instead בוניך – your builders. Because those of us who are builders can overcome any stumbling block.

Which brings me back to Rosh Hashanah and our impromptu catharsis over Celebrate Wallingford. I knew before that day that members of this shul were outraged that this “feel good about the place you live” festival was scheduled for our holiest day. I share that outrage. I share that outrage because I know it is part of a larger pattern of disrespect that this town has shown for its Jewish residents. When the date of Yom Kippur is printed on practically every civil calendar, it is outrageous that a town like Wallingford, a town that has had a visible Jewish community within it for more than 100 years, should schedule such a celebration at such a time. I cannot think of how this can occur except through willful antipathy or unacceptable ignorance. I expressed the source and the depths of my outrage in a letter to Mayor Dickinson. At the time that I sent it, I believed much of the outrage we all felt could be soothed by an empathetic word from him. But while Mayor Dickinson's response to me was thoughtful, there was something that I heard in our Rosh Hashanah discussion that told me that the people of this congregation don't need to hear from their mayor. They need to hear from their rabbi.

What I heard that day – expressed repeatedly and by a number of you – was your belief in the importance of having a Jewish community in Wallingford. That belief was never expressed in response to a particular point. No one was standing up there saying there should not be a Jewish community in Wallingford. Rather, I think the comment reflected a deep seated anxiety that that Jewish community is under threat. The callousness with which this town scheduled Celebrate Wallingford triggered in each of us the profound sense that we are – at best – on the town's margins. And maybe not even there.

Well, the truth is, we are marginalized in this town, and that is the town's loss. And we are indeed a community under threat. But the threat isn't out there. Its in here. Because if there is a reason why it is important that Wallingford have a Jewish community, it has to be for something other than expressing our outrage and victimization. No one will sign on to join a community whose sole purpose is to cry foul at the rest of the world. Doing so is neither fun nor particularly enlightening. More than that, its a waste. Its a waste of Judaism which I am telling you is the most intellectually diverse and spiritually enriching religion in the world. Indeed, as someone who very slowly and carefully and thoughtfully made the journey from atheism to the rabbinate, I believe that Judaism is the world's greatest achievement because it places humanity on the plain of holiness.

Just think about this day: this day of atonement. Think about it in the context of the days that came before it; the preceding month where we were called upon to take an accounting of our soul, and Rosh Hashanah where we were asked to see ourselves as standing before the Judge of all the world. It doesn't matter whether you buy into the imagery. It doesn't matter if you believe in God. Because what Judaism demands of us is that we judge ourselves and make amends for our failings before we stand before God. What it demands, very simply, is that we see our lives as sacred trusts and take them seriously. The purpose of this day is to solemnize – through serious reflection and symbolic affliction – the work we have done to make ourselves better. There is nothing that is going on outside that can compare in importance with what is going on in here. Let that thought temper your outrage.

But there is more.

When we began our prayers here last night, we responded as a congregation to the cantor's entreaty for forgiveness with the words וַיֹּאמֶר יְיְ סָלַחְתִּי כִּדְבָרֶךָ - And God said, I have forgiven according to your word. The line is actually a verse from Torah. God had commanded the Israelites to cross the Jordan and take possession of their promised land. But the Israelites refused. They thought themselves too weak compared to those who inhabited the land already. They saw themselves as victims and preferred to complain over how they had been abused rather than build their homes and their lives. God was incensed and wanted to wipe them out. But Moses entreated on their behalf: סְלַח־נָא לַעֲוֹן הָעָם הַזֶּה כְּגֹדֶל חַסְדֶּךָ - Please forgive this people according to the greatness of Your kindness. And God responds סָלַחְתִּי כִּדְבָרֶךָ - I have forgiven according to your word. Think about that for a moment. Moses did not sin, but he is the one who asked for forgiveness. It was the Israelites who sinned, but they made no such entreaty. God forgave them anyway.

Take a lesson from this. The town of Wallingford is not going to apologize for what happened, and even if it does, it will not do so adequately. Forgive them anyway. Forgive them for your own sake because we as a community have better and more important things to do than be angry and count ourselves victims. We cannot be victims because we have to be builders. We have sukkahs to build and souls to nourish. We have identities to be formed and ideas to be spread. We have as our inheritence the most beautiful and precious possession: the Torah, an עץ חיים – a tree of life from which has been built the most life affirming tradition the world has ever known. What are we going to build to affirm that tradition? Look around us. This shul is the makom, the sukkah that our parents built for us. What are we going to do that turns us from banim, children, into bonim, builders? Look around again. Everything we need to build a vibrant, modern Jewish community is here in this room, right now. All we need is the will to be builders. Who among you is willing to swing a hammer and build the Jewish community we so desperately need?

Sermon for Yom Kippur Evening, Beth Israel Synagogue, 10 Tishrei 5775

Every Jew has his star … why, the whole sky is Jewish … I hope it’s not mine that just fell, I prayed, suddenly thinking of Hodl. Lately she’d seemed cheerier, livelier, more her old self again. Someone had brought her a letter, no doubt from her jailbird. I would have given the world to know what was in it, but I was blamed if I was going to ask. If she wasn’t talking, neither was I; I’d show her how to button up a lip. No, Tevye was no woman; Tevye could wait … Well, no sooner had I thought of my Hodl than she appeared by my side. She sat down next to me on the stoop, looked around, and said in a low voice, “Papa, are you listening? I have to tell you something. I’m saying goodbye to you tonight … forever.” She spoke in such a whisper that I could barely hear her, and she gave me the strangest look— such a look, I tell you, as I’ll never forget for as long as I live. . .

“What do you mean, you’re saying goodbye forever?” I asked, staring down at the ground to hide my face, which must have looked like a dead man’s. “I mean ,” she said, “that I’m going away early in the morning. We’ll never see each other again … ever.” That cheered me up a bit. Thank God for small comforts, I thought. Things could have been worse— though to tell you the truth, they conceivably could have been better … “And just where,” I inquired , “are you going, if it’s not too much of me to ask?” “I’m going to join him,” she said. “You are?” I said. “And where is he?” “Right now he’s still in prison ,” she said. “But soon he’s being sent to Siberia.” “And so you’re going to say goodbye to him?” I asked, playing innocent.

“No,” she says. “I’m going with him.” “Where?” I say. “What’s the name of the nearest town?” “We don’t know the exact place yet,” she says. “But it’s awfully far away. Just getting there alive isn’t easy.” She said that, did my Hodl, with great pride, as if she and her Peppercorn had done something so grand that they deserved a medal with half a pound of gold in it. I ask you, what’s a father to do with such a child?

Last week was the fiftieth anniversary of the Broadway opening of Fiddler on the Roof. In a childhood devoid of religion, my Jewish identity crept into me in roundabout ways. I talked, last week, about the impact Israel had on that identity. But there were other things as well: my the aunt's Yiddish aphorisms, my grandmother's tsimmes, my father's sense of humor. And it came to me, at least in part, through Fiddler. Growing up, I listened to that album so often I had to pile pennies on the stylus to keep it in the worn and scratched grooves. I can't remember a time before the time when I knew every line of every song.

I have always thought of Fiddler as a thoroughly Jewish musical. But I discovered this past spring when I, for the first time, read the stories on which it is based, that Fiddler on the Roof is not really a Jewish show at all. Rather, its an American show projected through a Jewish lens. Fiddler is the story of a man learning to cope with modernity. Each of his three eldest daughters pushes Tevye ever further from the the old ways. Tsaytl, his oldest, asserts her right to choose for herself whom she will marry. Hodl goes even further and declares her determination to marry whomever she will regardless of whether her father consents. And Chava pushes him even further, claiming the right to marry even outside the faith.

The lessons his daughters teach him will stand Tevye in good stead because by the show's end, he and his family – in fact, the entire town – are expelled from their homes and forced to flee to America. The deep irony here is that the ending is probably the most Jewish thing about the show, for even as we shed a tear for the dear little village of Anitevka, we know that this expulsion is, in reality, Tevye's and his family's salvation from the Shoah that would have engulfed them otherwise.

Fiddler on the Roof, then, is a typical immigrant story of leaving the old world of oppression for the new world of freedom. We sympathize with Tevye for his feelings of loss, but not for the things he is actually losing which are largely folkways and tribal customs that have no place in America. That Tevye can indeed survive their loss – that he even comes to some reconciliation with Chava – assures us that he will survive; and that indeed constitutes a kind of happy ending.

Sholem Aleichem's Tevye the Dairyman bears only a passing resemblance to the musical Fiddler. This is not the story of a man learning to bend in the winds of modernity. Rather it is a modern retelling of one of Judaism's oldest and most powerful stories: the story of Job.

Tevye the Dairyman is composed of eight short stories written by Sholem Aleichem between 1894 and 1916. In each story, the same amount of time has passed in Tevye's life as has passed since the previous story's publication. Indeed, each story is told as if Tevye were catching up his honored acquaintance – the writer Sholem Aleichem – on the doings in his life since last they met.

And what a life that turns out to be. Tevye, we quickly learn, interprets everything that happens to him through verses of the Bible, the Talmud or the siddur. He lives his life in constant dialogue with God and takes as axiomatic that anything to befall him is God's doing. He tells us in his first story

As we say on Yom Kippur, mi yorum umi yishofeyl— who will be exalted and who humbled - leave it to Him to decide who goes on foot and who gets to ride. The main thing is confidence. A Jew must never, never give up hope. How does he go on hoping, you ask, when he’s already died a thousand deaths? But that’s the whole point of being a Jew in this world! What does it say in the prayer book? Atoh bekhartonu! We’re God’s chosen people; it’s no wonder the whole world envies us …

The touch of irony you sense in those words will deepen almost to bitterness in the end for Tevye will suffer greatly. Hodl, we know, will follow her Pertchik to Siberia. Chava will marry outside the faith and become dead to him. Tevye's fourth daughter, Shprintze, will fall in love with a rich boy from a nearby town. The boy's family is convinced that Tevye is a gold digger and moves away. And Shprintze throws herself into the river and drowns. His fifth child, Beilke, fulfills Tevye's life-long dream of having a daughter marry a rich man. But that nouveau-riche husband is so disgusted by his poor, dairy-man father-in-law that he plots to ship Tevye off to the land of Israel. The husband goes bust before Tevye can board the boat and he and Beilke flee to America to escape his creditors. And along the way Tsaytl's husband Motl dies, and Golde dies, and Tevye is evicted from his home. The one bright spot in Tevye's life is a repentant Chava's return on the eve of the family's eviction. The last view Sholem Aleichem gives us of Tevye is as a homeless old man, trying to take care of his two remaining daughters and his grandchildren. Through it all, the dialogue with God goes on.

To say that Tevye is a modern-day Job is not to compare suffering. It is to compare their response to suffering. Job is described as blameless, upright, God-fearing, shunning evil. When his children go off partying at night, he sacrifices burnt offerings on their behalf, lest they should blaspheme in their revery. And when it is all taken from him and he is reduced to sitting on an ash heap, scraping at his diseased skin with a shard of pottery, he fearlessly and forthrightly insists that the reason for his suffering lies not in his own actions, but in the secretive ways of the Almighty. “Know that God has wronged me,” he says. “He has thrown up siege works around me. I cry 'Violence' but am not answered; I shout, but can get no justice.” When Job cries out “I know that my Redeemer lives!” it is practically a challenge to God to defend Himself.

Compare this with the very end of Tevye the Dairyman and our protagonists astonishing valedictory:

I ask you, Pan Sholem Aleichem, you’re a person who writes books —is Tevye right or not when he says that there’s a great God above and that a man must never lose heart while he lives? And that’s especially true of a Jew, and most especially of a Jew who knows a Hebrew letter when he sees one … No, you can rack your brains and be as clever as you like— there’s no getting around the fact that we Jews are the best and smartest people. Mi ke’amkho yisro’eyl goy ekhod, as the Prophet says— how can you even compare a goy and a Jew? Anyone can be a goy, but a Jew must be born one. Ashrekho yisro’eyl—it’s a lucky thing I was, then, because otherwise how would I ever know what it’s like to be homeless and wander all over the world without resting my head on the same pillow two nights running?

In his introduction to his translation of Tevye the Dairyman, Hillel Halkin remarks that there are three common ways through which people understand the suffering of the innocent. Either they believe that God is good and all powerful and what we perceive of as injustice is just an illusion or a test. Or they believe that God is good but not all powerful and that He sometimes loses out to these other, evil forces. Or they believe that that God does not exist and suffering is like all other things – the result of blind chance. But Halkin goes on to say that there is yet a fourth way of understanding why the innocent suffer. It is to say “God exists; He is good; He is all-powerful; therefore He must be just; but He is not just; therefore He owes man an explanation and man must demand it from Him. This is Job’s response. And it is also Tevye’s.”

The story of Fiddler on the Roof reflects the times in which it was created. Jews like Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock and Joseph Stein and Jerome Robbins could look back fondly at the Tevyes in their own lives and see in their sufferings and pains the seeds of their own success. What those immigrant Jews were forced to give up was quaint and comforting and not without its rewards. But what they gained in return was something far greater: freedom; freedom to be Jews, freedom to be like every one else. Its a wonderful story and wonderfully told. But its an American story. It isn't the story of Sholem Aleichem's Tevye. For that Tevye is more than a simple dairy man. He is, indeed, a man in the mold of Abraham and Moses and Jeremiah and Job – a man who can stand upright in his wretchedness and call the Almighty to account. On this day, when we are charged with standing before the Creator of All and beseeching His forgiveness, it is good to remember the Tevyes who demand that God be worthy of answering our prayers.

Sermon for Second Day Rosh Hashanah, Beth Israel Synagogue, 2 Tishrei, 5775

A couple of years ago, I came to a startling revelation. I had never, to my knowledge, had a Budweiser. I was not much of a beer drinker when I was young, and by the time I did start drinking it, I could afford Sam Adams. What was I to do about this situation? After very little thought, I concluded that I would be in more exclusive company by staying away from the stuff. And the assurance by any number of friends that I wasn't missing anything confirmed me on my course. For all I do, this Bud's for . . . well. . .

I share with you this barely interesting piece of personal trivia because up until today, I have never given a sermon on the Akeidat Yitzhak – the binding of Isaac. I say this knowing full well that, unlike the Bud, most of you have not given a sermon on this topic either. But the binding of Isaac is no doubt the perennial most popular second day Rosh Hashanah sermon topic, so for me, not having given such a sermon is a bit more unusual. Part of the reason is that, for the past four years, my mentor, Rabbi Hesch Sommer has given the second day sermon. Rabbi Sommer himself is the author of a wonderful sermon on the Akeidah which was published in a journal whose editor swore he would never publish another such sermon. But a bigger part of the reason is that I have doubted I could have anything original or insightful to say. Those doubts continue with me. But they have been crowded out by the sense that any rabbi worth his tzit-tzit should venture to say something about this subject. So with no small measure of trepidation, here goes.

I want to open this discussion by examining one of the more perplexing questions raised by this story: why doesn't Abraham – who argues with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah – not offer a single word in defense of his son? These two events set up a devastating contrast. In the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham is at his most loquacious and argumentative as he tries to talk God out of destroying these two cities: “Will You sweep away righteous with evil? Perhaps there are fifty righteous ones in the midst of the city. Will You sweep away the place rather than forgive it for the sake of fifty righteous ones in its midst? It would be a sacrilege for You to do this thing – to cause the death of the righteous along with the wicked – as though the righteous were like the wicked. It is a sacrilege to You. Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?” Having established his point through God's consent, Abraham continues to argue – reducing the number of righteous on account of whom the cities will be spared all the way down to ten.

And yet, when God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham says nothing. Not a word. In fact, he rises up early the next morning to get started on his journey – the split wood and his ignorant son in tow. And yet where is the justice in this command? Why will not Abraham place the mirror before the Judge of all the earth on behalf of his son as he did for the strangers in Sodom and Gomorrah?

Indeed Sodom and Gomorrah is not the only time Abraham argues with God. And while this argument is less dramatic – really just a single sentence of parental longing – it is perhaps more relevant to our understanding of the Akeidah. When God tells Abraham that his 90-year-old wife Sarah will bear him a son who will inherit his covenant and his blessing, Abraham appears dismayed. He already has a son – Ishmael – by Sarah's handmaid, Hagar. לוּ יִשְׁמָעֵאל יִחְיֶה לְפָנֶיךָ - Oh that Ishmael might live before You! pleads Abraham on behalf of the son he so dearly loves. אֲבָל

replies God. "Nevertheless . . ."

But if there are other instances besides Sodom and Gomorrah where Abraham argues with God, there are also many instances when he does not. For those of us who have reflexively covered our groins with our hands when attending a bris, we should note that the 99-year-old Abraham offers no objection when ordered to perform that operation on himself. Most powerfully, though, at the very beginning of his story, God commands Abraham – then known as Abram – to leave his land, his birthplace, his family and set out for some unspecified place that will be shown to him. Abram, 75 years old at the time, who as far as we know has had no previous communication from God, leaves behind everything he knows without saying a word. Interestingly, the language of God's command in both stories is eerily similar. In the opening story God says to him לֶךְ־לְךָ מֵאַרְצְךָ - Go for yourself from your land. In the Akeidah, the command is לֶךְ־לְךָ אֶל־אֶרֶץ הַמֹּרִיָּה – Go for yourself to the land of Moriah. And in both cases the response is silence.

I dwell on these examples to make a point. In both the cases of Sodom and Gomorrah and of the revelation of Isaac's birth and inheritance, Abraham objects. In neither case, however, is Abraham being asked to do anything. God is merely providing Abraham information. In fact, in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, the text makes this point explicitly when God says הַמֲכַסֶּה אֲנִי מֵאַבְרָהָם אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי עֹשֶׂה – shall I hide from Abraham that which I will do?

But when God issues a command to Abraham, he does it. And he usually does it in silence. So to my mind, the question isn't why does Abraham object to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah but is silent with regard to the sacrifice of Isaac. The cases are not analagous. The real question is why does Abraham comply with virtually every commandment – regardless of how those commandments will pain him physically, emotionally, or both – in silence?

The answer to that question is, I believe, that Abraham loves God. He loves Him with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his being.

Well if this is love, you may be thinking, it is love at its most perverse. For certainly true love – healthy love – cannot be revolting and immoral. Is not love the desire to possess and be united with that which is good and beautiful? That desire is indeed how the Greeks defined love. But, as Professor Simon May argues in his book Love: A History, that is not how the Hebrew bible understands it. As he persuasively argues, our scripture's understanding of love is as the emotion most intimately connected to the strongest human need: the need to find a place for oneself that anchors us in this wide world. Those people or things that we truly love are who or what define who we are, and thus give our lives a sense of purpose and meaning. That which we love gives us our place in the world.

Think about how this idea plays out in Abraham's story. Though God promises him that his descendents will inherit the land of Canaan, from the time he is commanded to leave his land, his birthplace, his fathers house, until the day he dies, Abraham quite literally has no place on earth that he can call his own. גֵּר־וְתוֹשָׁב אָנֹכִי עִמָּכֶם – I am a stranger and soujourner among you, he tells the Hittites as he is forced to bargain for a cave in which to bury his wife. The only thing that gives Abraham a place in the world is his relationship to God. To lose that is to lose everything. The irony here is that for many of us, our relationship to our children is to us what Abraham's relationship to God is to him: that thing for which we will sacrifice anything, including our morality; for to lose it is to lose who we are.

Much of what makes the Akeidah so emotionally shattering is its language. It is so spare that every detail speaks volumes. It isn't merely Abraham who is silent. A three days journey toward Mount Moriah passes without a word of description or emotion. Then, as Abraham and Isaac make their way up the mountain, the story's only dialogue:

And Isaac said to Abraham, his father,

And he said, “My father,”

And he said, “Here I am, my son,”

And he said, “Here is the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

And Abraham said, “God will see to the lamb, my son.”

And the two of them walked on together.

That repetition of the words “his father,” “my father,” “my son,” “my son” is, to my ears at least, heartbreakingly tender. But amazingly enough, for a story about a man off to slaughter his son, the Akeidah is just that: tender. Its tone is set in the very command that sets this tragedy in motion. קַח־נָא אֶת־בִּנְךָ, it begins. That נָא in he middle is a word of entreaty – often translated as "please." "Please take your son." With what pathos that one little word colors this entire story! How did Abraham hear this command? As a thunderbolt from the blue? Or perhaps as a gentle whisper: "Please take, your son, your only one, the one you love, Isaac."

Which raises what is perhaps the most startling and maybe even redeeming point of this story. If Abraham is willing to sacrifice his son at God's commandment because he loves God and finds his place in the world through Him, then God loves Abraham too and for precisely the same reason. For it is indeed through Abraham and his descendents that God has found a home among the peoples of the world.

It may seem strange – perhaps even to some, distateful – to think of the Akeidah as a love story. That is because we think of love as something beautiful and good. But love doesn't have to be either. What it has to be is grounding. It has to tell us who we are. Think of the famous closing words of the bible's greatest love story, the Song of Songs: שִׂימֵנִי כַחוֹתָם עַל־לִבֶּךָ כַּחוֹתָם עַל־זְרוֹעֶךָ כִּי־עַזָּה כַמָּוֶת אַהֲבָה – Place me as the seal upon your heart, as the seal upon your arm, because love is as fierce as death. Our loved ones mark us. They leave their seal upon us and, through it, they affirm in us who we are. The Akeidah is a story of love that is as fierce as death. What is so unusual and so powerful about this story is that both parties – both Abraham and God – are the objects of each other's love. Both are looking to ground their existence in the other. So when God says to Abraham קַח־נָא אֶת־בִּנְךָ - Please take your son, what he is really saying to him is שִׂימֵנִי כַחוֹתָם עַל־לִבֶּךָ - place Me as a seal upon your heart. Perhaps that is why we read the Akeidah on this day of remembrance – to remind the One who judges all the earth that we are as a seal on His heart as well.

Sermon for First Day Rosh Hashanah, Beth Israel Synagogue, 1 Tishrei, 5775

These are my eighth High Holidays at Beth Israel. In my first five years here, I have followed the practice of many of my colleagues of reserving one sermon for Israel. After that fifth sermon, a member of the congregation came up to me and said, “Rabbi, it’s obvious that you care very deeply about Israel, but I am not sure why I should. Could you perhaps have a class to teach me why?” I was touched by this request. Indeed, I count it as one of the kindest things anyone has asked of me as a rabbi.

And of course I held the class; and, astonishingly enough, it was the best attended adult education course I have offered here. For five weeks we studied the Jewish people’s history and its connection to the land, the history of the land itself, the forces that impelled the Jewish people off of it 2000 years ago, and the forces that compelled them to return in the last century and a half. But on the sixth week, I could no longer hide behind history. I had to answer the question posed to me; the question that had become the course's title: Why Care About Israel.

There is part of me that wants to respond to that question in the same way that Victor Laszlo responds to Rick Blaine when asked whether his fight against the Nazis is worth it: “You might as well question why we breathe,” he says. At first, it seemed astonishing that the question should be asked at all. But when I tried to answer it, I discovered that the truly astonishing thing is how difficult it is to do so. In order to show you the difficulty, let me expand the question. Here it is in its long form:

I am a parent and a professional in my work. I live in Wallingford Connecticut, a small, middle-class city with a very small Jewish population. I am a member of the synagogue there because, in a largely Christian town, I want my children to have a sense of their Jewish identity. But I am also a member because I feel this ancient faith of mine has something to teach me about how I should live my own life - and I am trying my best to live a good and meaningful life.

Israel is very far away. What I know about it is what I see on the news, and what I see on the news is mostly bad. Arabs killing Jews, Jews killing Arabs, and I can’t really tell one side from the other. The problems that lead to incessant war seem intractable; who am I to sort them through? I have no desire to visit the place and, counting pennies as we all are these days, no easy means of doing so if I did. Why should I care about Israel?

This is one very hard question. Israel is indeed far away and we are connected to it not by some tangible dependence but rather by vague ideas of a common interest and common history. Painful as it might be to contemplate, if Israel were to cease to exist, it is hard to see how our own lives would change.

So in the class, I tried answering the question by narrowing the distance. Israelis, I told them, are just like us. They live in a free, democratic society. They are hard working, innovative, and want to get ahead. They want peace just like all free people want peace – so they can get on with the business of living. To that end, they have all the institutions of freedom – courts that administer justice, a press that is vibrant with controversy and dissent, and a government that reflects the ever-evolving will of its people. Beyond that, we share a history that goes back nearly 4000 years. And we share values, particularly our belief in the sanctity and dignity of human life.

My goal with this answer was to make Israelis seem less like foreigners with a strange language and intrusive customs, and more like the members of our family that they, in fact, are. I failed. The class greeted my argument largely with silence. It was not the silence of profound insight. Rather, it was the silence that says “is that all you got?”

And in fact, I myself was underwhelmed with this answer. Something I knew, was missing: something that could not be found in economic statistics or political theories; something not of the head, but of the heart. So perhaps the best way to answer the question “why should you care about Israel?” is by telling you why I do.

As many of you know, I did not go to religious school as a child. We belonged to no synagogue; I had no bar mitzvah. Unlike most Jews who hem and haw about the matter by saying that they are not very observant, my father was an avowed atheist. I idolized my father, which of course made me an atheist too. But despite my evolving hostility toward religion, somehow the State of Israel entered my consciousness. It entered there when I was nine-years old and Palestinian terrorists murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the Olympic games in Munich. It moved still further into my consciousness a year later when Egypt and Syria nearly destroyed it on Yom Kippur, 1973. I took a giddy kind of adolescent male pride in Israel’s daring raid that rescued 102 hostages held by Palestinian terrorists in Entebbe, Uganda in 1976. I felt deflated the following year when Menachem Begin became Prime Minister and everyone said he would never make peace. And then I felt chastened the next year when he did just that – giving back the Sinai peninsula to earn a peace with Egypt. Through all these events, my Jewish identity - bereft of any religious component - blossomed and grew. These acts of heroism in the face of evil, these risks for peace with a former enemy, were being done by Jews. And I was a Jew.

To that point my consciousness of Israel was associated mostly with a feeling of pride: pride in its courage, pride in its daring, pride in its audacity, both in war and in peace. But in 1981, a new and even stronger emotion crept in. That year, in a secret and audacious raid, Israel destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor the French were building for Saddam Hussein in Iraq. I was thrilled. To me it was, like the Entebbe raid, another example of Israel’s genius and daring. But the world didn’t see it that way. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher called Israel’s raid “a grave breach of international law.” And The New York Times, true to its form of getting all-things-Israel precisely wrong, called it “an act of inexcusable and short-sighted aggression.”

But the meaning of all this criticism did not hit home until the following year with the outbreak of the Lebanon War. Throughout the 1970's, the Palestinian Liberation Organization or PLO, turned Lebanon – particularly Southern Lebanon – into an armed base for attacking Israel with shells and rockets and tanks. Israel had little choice but to strike at this burgeoning threat. As Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said at the time, “no sovereign state can tolerate indefinitely the buildup along its borders of a military force dedicated to its destruction . . .” Israel invaded Southern Lebanon in June of 1982. Initial success led to an effort to drive the PLO from Lebanon all together. That is when the war bogged down and opinion turned against the Jewish state. From all corners Israel was being attacked as an aggressor. Even Jews, even Israelis were joining in on the condemnation.

I was incredulous. How could you condemn a country for defending its citizens against an enemy bent on destroying it? What other country would be condemned for acting the way Israel had? Indeed, what country would not be condemned if it failed to act as Israel had? As you can tell, it did not take long for my incredulity to turn to indignation. I had no problem holding Israel to a higher standard. But to say that Israel's standard should be self-sacrifice rather than self-defense struck me as the height of naivety. At least I thought it was naivety at the time.

Sadly, the history I watched unfold in Lebanon in 1982 became the pattern of behavior in the decades that have followed. The terrorists who surround Israel commit some outrage – a suicide bombing, a cross-border kidnapping, indiscriminate rocket fire – and the world mouths its sympathy for the Jewish State. The world loves to be seen as sympathetic when Jews are being killed. But let Israel defend itself and the world's moral calculus changes. We saw this in the Palestinian terror war of 2000-2004 where Israel was internationally condemned for building a fence to keep suicide bombers out. We saw it in the second Lebanon war of 2006 where international pressure forced Israel to shut down its operations before achieving its objectives. We saw it in the first Gaza war of 2012 where the United Nations accused Israel of war crimes – a charge its commission's Jewish chairman subsequently renounced. And we saw it this summer where the world placed at Israel's feet the body of every dead Palestinian in Gaza – despite the fact that Hamas rejected or broke every cease-fire that Israel accepted. Through it all, my indignation at the world's heedless naivety grew. Then, at some point – I don't know when for sure – I realized that what Israel was facing was not heedless naivety at all. For who could be so naïve as to take the side of an organization whose avowed purpose was to destroy the Jewish state and every Jew living in it; that conducts summary executions on busy, city streets; that uses its own citizens as shields for its weaponry. This wasn't heedless naivety. This wasn't even hatred of the State of Israel. This was antisemitism. This was hatred of Jews, pure and simple.

Just look at what they are saying out there on the street of almost any supposedly civilized nation. With all the oppressive regimes that rule their people through terror – including in Gaza; with all the wars and genocides that mark their dead in the tens and hundreds of thousands, what is the one country that evokes angry, sometimes violent protest in France, in Germany, in Poland, in India, in Great Britain, in Sweden, in Norway, in Chile, in Italy, in Argentina, in Australia, in Columbia, in Canada, in Denmark, in Austria, in Tunisia and here in the United States? And in not a few of those protests they are shouting "Death to the Jews," and "Jews to the Gas." These are not protests against Israel. They are protests against Jews. They are protests against you.

As you can tell, I am passionate on this subject. But then again, we Jews are a passionate people. And nothing evokes that passion like our sense of justice. Think of Abraham arguing with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah: הֲשֹׁפֵט כָּל־הָאָרֶץ לֹא יַעֲשֶׂה מִשְׁפָּט – will not the Judge of all the world do justice? Think of Moses, desperately defending the Israelites after the sin of the golden calf - שׁוּב מֵחֲרוֹן אַפֶּךָ וְהִנָּחֵם עַל־הָרָעָה לְעַמֶּךָ - return from Your anger and relent from the evil toward Your people. Think of Jeremiah at the end of the book of Lamentations, accepting God's punishment but accusing Him as well - קָצַפְתָּ עָלֵינוּ עַד־מְאֹד – You have raged against us enough! Even the story of Jonah is one of a man whose passion for justice is so great he seeks to block God's mercy.

So what is it that evokes your passion? What is it that causes you – in your own way – to rage against the world? What would cause you to rage even against God? Surely there must be something inside you that evokes what can only be called righteous indignation. And surely the scapegoating and villianizing of Jews must be worthy of that passionate response, because if it isn't, then something is missing from your Jewish soul – something you have to find in order to become whole.

I care about Israel because I am a Jew. And you must do the same.

Sermon for Rosh Hashanah Evening, Beth Israel Synagogue, 1 Tishrei, 5775

Thoughts about High Holiday sermon topics probably start to creep into my mind right around the time the Pesach dishes are being stowed away for another year. By the beginning of summer I know what my subject will be for at least one or two sermons, and I have a strong sense about the rest. In part, this is due to a pattern I try and follow every year. The sermon, I believe, has to reflect the tone of the day. So on Rosh Hashanah – when the year and the holidays are new – I try and give a sermon with a purpose to it – an exhortation either to some form of action or conviction. This is the sermon to which the verb “preach” - a word that I find a bit creepy – best applies. Yom Kippur, on the other hand, is a time of deep introspection and so, on that day, I try to give what I now call the “thinky” sermon – the one more conducive to rumination and reflection.

This year, the sermons came together later than in previous years. Part of that is no doubt due to the relative lateness of the holidays. In time, though, I figured out what I wanted to say on both days of Rosh Hashanah, as well as the two sermonizing services of Yom Kippur. What has stumped me has been this service.

I think of this evening's sermon as the one that sets the tone for the spiritual work that we each must individually do over these ten days. It is also, with the exception of the mincha/ne'ilah service on Yom Kippur, the most intimate. Many of you here tonight will be here for every service, and so I feel a kind of kinship with you. It makes me want to put something of myself into this sermon – to open up to you the emotions I am feeling on this day of remembrance and at this season of repentance. For me, these emotions tend to be pretty similar from year to year, and so I was somewhat disappointed, though not at all surprised, when I realized - after the fact - that the sermon I gave on this night last year was remarkably similar to one I had given just a few years earlier. In both I spoke about the emotions of size and significance that are stirred up in me on our annual family trips to North Carolina's Outer Banks. I have spent a fair amount of time in New York City this summer – including a trip to the top of the Empire State Building – and for a while I thought about offering my reflections on visiting that remarkable place. But as I thought about what those reflections were, I realized I would just wind up giving the Outer Banks sermon yet again, this time with an urban twist to it.

I have started and stopped on this sermon numerous times – including one version that I decided was more appropriate for Purim then the High Holidays. I kept thinking to myself, when the other sermons are written and your mind is clear, it will come to you. It didn't. As late as yesterday I decided to scrap the whole plan and lead a discussion group tonight – an idea I have been toying with for some time now. Yet what would not leave me was the feeling that I had something to say to you – something that I needed to say to you, tonight. I just could not figure out what that thing was.

It hit me this morning. I was looking at the front page of The Jewish Week, which is New York City's equivalent of our Jewish Ledger. The lead headline read “Gaza War Pushes Israel, Reluctantly, Onto Holiday Bima.” In the article, more than a dozen rabbis were confessing that this summer's Gaza war was forcing them to to talk about Israel and they were nervous about doing so. Whatever they said, they well knew, was likely to anger – even outrage – a large portion of their congregation. So they were trying to frame their words to both express what they felt they needed to say, but also to keep the dialogue open with those who will disagree.

How astonishing! I finished my Israel sermon – the sermon I will give tomorrow morning – nearly three weeks ago. And ever since, I have been tinkering with it not to tone it down, but to try to make it stronger. I have no fear of angering you with what I will say tomorrow. For the most part, I have no such fear because the majority of you agree with me – which is a good thing because my opinions about Israel are right. But there is also something very upsetting about being a rabbi who can't make his congregation mad at him. Even last year when I told you that you all stink at praying and you had better learn how to do it right, no one came up to me and said “Mind your own damn business, rabbi, I can pray better than you!” What kind of Jews are that polite?

There is an irony to this shul – an irony that plays out on both a superficial and a more profound level. In the Jewish Week article, one rabbi said of his holiday sermons “I plan to speak about the inability to speak to each other about things we disagree on.” The superficial irony is that I don't have to speak about our inability to speak when we disagree because we don't disagree – at least not to my face. The deeper irony is that if we did disagree, I would not have to sermonize to you about that either. We could just talk. That's why we have lunch together after services on Rosh Hashanah – so we can talk. That's why I encourage you all to visit me here in the hours after morning services on Yom Kippur – so we can talk. I like to talk to you about important things. To me, its the best part of being your rabbi.

The realization that I am not the kind of rabbi who ever has to worry that his congregation will hate him is what finally shook from my brain as to what I want to say to you. The last couple of months here have been hard: resignations, people moving away, people moving on. These changes are leaving real voids. We are filling those voids, but so far, incompletely and at a terrible strain to our president. Part of me sees opportunity in all this. Perhaps we are going through that darkest hour that leads to the brightest dawn. And in truth, I have been inspired by many of you these past few weeks. I have been inspired by those of you who have who have taken on the work of filling those voids. And I have been inspired by those of you who have, through your actions, shown a determination never to give in.

But I keep hearing in my head the words of the poet Anthony Hecht, whose poem Words for the Day of Atonement are quoted in the Reform movement's mahzor: “Merely to have survived is not an index of excellence.” Assuming the voids do get filled, what do we hope to accomplish beyond survival?

Tomorrow in my sermon, I will tell you the history of how I became so passionate about Israel. Left unsaid will be the story of how that passion awakened another: a passion for this ancient faith of ours. For I have come to believe that, lurking under a surface of rote observance and mechanical action, hiding behind the ignorance in which we have been raised and the prejudices we have inherited, lurks the most astonishing, powerful, life affirming and meaning creating system of living and thinking and acting. It will take but a little work to get us there. But it will take such work from a lot of us, working together with the sense of purpose that breeds passion. If we could, in this throw-back of a building, in the middle of a city that is indifferent to our survival, create a model of Jewish thought, and purpose and vibrancy, we will have done something of enduring worth. We will have done something worthy of more than just survival. Indeed, we will have done something worthy of blessing. Somehow on this night, the accomplishment seems at the same time farther away and closer than ever.

This is the message that I wanted to deliver especially to you who are here tonight because you are the ones who can hear it understand. My prayer for all of us is that the trials through which this shul is now passing will awaken a sense of purpose to our work that goes beyond the need to survive. May that purpose be a fuel to our passion and may our passion lead us to the days when we yell and scream and argue with each other because we care so much. The Mishnah teaches us not to fear such arguments because they are for the sake of heaven. And everything we do for the sake of heaven is in fact for the strength of our souls.