Not Only for Myself: Rosh Hashanah Sermon 5777

Editor’s Note: Rabbi Greenstein originally gave this sermon on the first day of Rosh Hashanah 5777.

7208427782_d6305f8430

Shanah Tovah U-m’tuqah! A Sweet, Good Year to all!

Thousands of years ago, the great sage, Hillel, taught: “Im ayn ani li, mi li; u-kh’sh’ani l`atzmi, mah ani; v’Im lo `akhshav, eimatai? – If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? and if not now, when?” (Avot 1:14)

It seems that this ancient wisdom is still challenging for us, even today. The last part of the teaching tells us that the matter is urgent; it’s now or never. But what is that urgent matter?

Some tend to focus on the first part of his lesson – If I am not for myself, who will be for me? They emphasize the need to take care of one’s self – whether this means their own personal lives, or, as a community, the needs of the community, itself, or more broadly, the needs of one’s country or of one’s people.

Others focus more on the second part of his lesson: If I am only for myself, what am I? This is a warning against becoming too preoccupied with one’s own individual issues, whether as a person or a collective. What kind of people are we if we do not reach out to others?

If we compare the first two questions that Hillel asks we might notice that the first question sounds like a practical one; it is often understood to be about the challenge of survival – if we do not look out for ourselves, who will?
The second question, however, is not about practicalities, but about values and identity. In our concern for self-preservation, what kind of self do we want to be? Hillel rejects the notion that our identity should be: We are the ones who look out for ourselves. That can’t be it, says Hillel.

This is a dialectic that is difficult to balance. And, I think Hillel recognized that it would be tempting for us – whether we incline to focus on the individual care/survival part of his call, or the more outgoing identity part of his call – it would be tempting for us to tend to that part closer to our hearts and put off the challenge of finding the right balance between them. But Hillel says – if not now, when? Finding the balance is an urgent matter. It cannot be put off until later.

As some of you know, for the last few years I have spent my summer vacation time in Israel, where I teach Torah at a small, special and wonderful place called The Conservative Yeshiva. The Yeshiva is located in central Jerusalem, on Agron Street, part of a campus of institutions created as a concerted attempt by the Conservative Movement to establish its presence in the heart of the capital of our Jewish Homeland, despite the best efforts of the State of Israel to deny non-Orthodox Judaism any legitimacy, let alone support.

While all the institutions and programs on Agron Street are very worthy, to my mind it is the Yeshiva that is most precious and essential.

The beauty and significance of the Conservative Yeshiva is that it takes the supreme value of Talmud Torah completely seriously. It is not an academic institution in the standard sense, where one studies for a degree that will provide entrée into a good profession. The students come from all parts of the world – from France and Brazil, the Ukraine and England, from the US and from China – and they are of all ages and colors and sexual orientations. They are rabbis and rabbinical students, and beginners who study Hebrew and Torah for the first time in their lives. What they have in common is that they have stopped whatever else they are doing to come to Israel to devote extended time to studying Torah – in a traditional environment that respects each person, makes room for every question, and teaches a Judaism of justice and compassion.

It is a great privilege for me to take part in that community for a few weeks every summer.

Let me tell you about a student that I have been honored to study with over the last few years – let’s call her “Liba” for today; it is not her real name. Liba is a distinguished scientist living in France, the daughter of Holocaust survivors who rebuilt their lives in Poland after the war. With the rise in anti-Semitism in Poland in the late sixties, she left Poland with her sister and mother.

She had never learned anything about her heritage, for her parents, in their dreams of a new world order, had deemed Judaism unnecessary and outdated. It was only after she came to the States on a post-doctoral fellowship that Liba discovered Judaism. A branch of the family had survived in the States and she looked up her cousin, a relative she had never met before. This cousin was a rabbi and a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
Liba was invited to partake in the first seder of her life at this cousin’s home. She was totally unprepared. Where she had warily expected stiff and meaningless obscurantism, she encountered warmth, beauty, and challenging substance. Where she had dreaded an evening of meaningless mumbo-jumbo, she was immersed in a night of song and vivid discussion.

Something wonderful had opened for her. But the reorientation of a worldview, the redefinition of a life, the redirecting of a heart – these do not happen in an instant. It took her many more years until she became a practicing Jew herself, and then a devoted worker on behalf of Masorti Judaism in Europe. And every summer she stops her professional work and comes to the Conservative Yeshiva to study Torah. These days she also leads the French track at the Yeshiva, for a wonderful group of French-speaking Jews who come to study in French.

This past summer we met again, and were delighted to greet one another. But then my student hesitated, struggling to speak her mind. She appreciates reading my weekly Torah Sparks, she told me, but she is unhappy that my teachings do not seem to give her the answers she is seeking.

What questions was I leaving unanswered? – I wanted to know.

She said: Not only you, but all the Rabbis I respect and learn from – you all “apply old solutions to the new situation. Old solutions are teaching us (= the Jews) how we should behave with lovingkindness and compassion, and understanding, etc; and the new situation is the growing violence and the freer and freer expression of hate toward the Jews.”

Since that first part of conversation, her question has only taken on greater urgency. Whether in France, England, the rest of Europe, the Middle East, or on campuses in the United States, we cannot ignore that anti-Semitism is more manifest than any time since the Second World War.

After the liberation of France in 1944 – when there were still another million Jews who would yet be tortured and murdered – Jean-Paul Sartre declared: “The question therefore comes back to this: what shall we do about anti-Semitism?”

Now, more than seventy years later, Liba was frustrated and disappointed in me and my colleagues because we have not answered this old-new/new-old question: “what shall we do about anti-Semitism?” The oasis of Torah that we both were privileged to inhabit could not shield us from a sense of ominous threat.

Our conversation has continued past the summer. Back and forth we try to enunciate how we see things, how we feel and what we wish for ourselves and for others. Through this correspondence with Liba, I have been pushed to think more deeply and clearly about this ugly phenomenon. I thank her for that.

She challenged me to reconsider: To continuously dwell, as I try to do, on the need to focus our lives on justice and compassion, to continually strive to teach our tradition through that lens – is that an old-fashioned evasion of the problem, a refusal to come to grips with reality, a flight into some abstract fantasy world? Or is it actually the deepest and truest way to stand up to – to confront –anti-Semitism?

I said to Liba – “I believe deeply that in very difficult times it is a great challenge to not fall into the trap of losing our true sense of mission – ‘to do justice, to love loving, itself, and walk humbly with our God’.” (Micah 6:8)

And Liba responded –“I believe that teaching about lovingkindness is relevant, but is not enough. This does NOT sound like a “solution” to violence and hatred in others.”

I replied: “The first, and perhaps most important thing to say in response to your concerns is that I think there is no “solution” to anti-Semitism.
There are “responses”, to be thoughtfully chosen in each particular circumstance – but there is no solution.
Every solution that people have come up with has proven futile –
– The assimilationists believed that if we only blended in and showed what good citizens we could be (of France, Russia, Germany, the US, etc.) then it would go away. It did not.
– Militant self-defense groups believed that if we beat up every anti-Semite then they would learn their lesson. They did not.
– We thought that WWII would put an end to it. Anti-Semitism went quiet for a while, but it has returned.
– The Zionist argument was that if we had a state of our own then anti-Semitism would disappear and Jews would be safe. They were wrong.”

But such observations do not dispel the question: “what shall we do about anti-Semitism?” And how can I keep insisting that seeking a greater commitment to justice and compassion can serve as any kind of response, let alone solution, to anti-Semitism?

I will offer some concrete illustrations of how I believe that a commitment to compassion and justice can lead to better responses to the threats we feel so painfully.

This summer French communities sought to ban the swimwear of observant Muslim women who wanted to go to the beach. They had found an outfit – infelicitously called a “burkini” – that would cover their bodies from head to toe, and yet allow them to go swimming and have fun. This phenomenon was like a red flag waving before the bull of a terrorized French public. In the name of fighting the terror of radical Islam, French authorities targeted women who were trying to fulfill their commitment to modesty, as they understood it. Many Jewish leaders in France supported this ban. Finally it was ruled illegal by the French courts. But the resentments, fears and divisions between Muslims, most of whom are French citizens, and others who have a very exclusive definition of true Frenchness, and between Muslims and Jews, persist.

I submit that a more effective response would have emerged had they not reacted out of fear. Fear dehumanizes. Everyone.

It dehumanizes the person we are afraid of and then extends to all people who we decide look just like that frightening person. It turns a modest woman who wants to go to the beach into a monster. And it dehumanizes the person who is afraid.

But compassion counters fear because it entails recognizing the humanity of the other, and because it allows one’s own soul to breathe and grow, while it helps us cut our fears down to their true size.

Had those French Jewish leaders handled their understandable fears by exercising their faculty for compassion, they would have been able to stand by their Muslim brothers and sisters and defend their attempts to live modestly within a free society. After all, this is a Jewish value, too!

But not only would this have been a laudable act of compassion, it would have made it possible to find common ground with another community with which we have such strained relations. Compassion could have served as a bridge-builder between communities. Instead of being in conflict with our concern for safety and survival, a more generous sense of Jewish identity could have helped us find some allies in our struggle for survival.

Another example, closer to home: Our country is being shattered by tragic losses of life sustained through horrific acts of violence. I do not refer to terrorist crimes, for which we, at least, have some understanding, in that we have a sense of an enemy ideology and its adherents. I refer to the continuous cascade of violence against African-Americans, often supported or committed by the very people we all want to view as the heroes of our society. This is an ugliness that we cannot blame on outsiders. This is us.

We cannot allow the process of de-humanization of Blacks, exacerbated by fear and confusion, as well as pure prejudice, to continue. We must reaffirm that Black Lives Matter. This should be a trivial truism. But, instead it has become a polarizing issue. Of course we acknowledge that “all lives matter.” But that is exactly why the Black Lives Matter movement is so crucial today. If our own turning inward blinds us to what is happening to others – all around us and every day – if we allow our values to become our own exclusive property – “all lives matter only as long as they are ours” – then what are we?

Ah, but what if we are offended by what some of the supporters of Black Lives Matter say? And we are. What if some of them are anti-Semites? And some are. The response of some Jewish organizations has been that they will have nothing to do with the movement as long as there are anti-Semitic voices within it. In this way we stand up for ourselves, for – if we do not stand up for ourselves, who will?

I am a loyal follower of our teacher Hillel. Of course we have to stand up for ourselves! And we can do that so much more effectively if we are also out there, working for others.

Then our disagreements and misunderstandings, our fears or hatreds, will not simply fester within our divided groups.

Compassion bridges those abysmal chasms that separate us. If we work for the welfare of others we become a force to be reckoned with. If we show respect, we gain respect.

Compassion is not feeling sorry for someone else. Compassion means exercising one’s faculties of mind and heart, of feeling, thinking and doing, in engagement with others. The Conservative Yeshiva is an oasis that teaches a Torah of Compassion. Liba knows this and returns every year, despite and because of her fears and concerns.

And I pray that this place, Congregation Shomrei Emunah, will continue to grow as such an oasis, explicitly affirming this message:

For Hillel’s first dictum – “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” is not just about survival.

Rabbenu Yonah, a medieval rabbi and moralist, reads Hillel’s question this way – if I do not challenge myself to live up to my highest values, who will?

And if not now, when?

 

Image(s): Handshake © AK Rockefeller used with permission via Creative Commons License

Latest posts by Rabbi David Greenstein (see all)

One thought on “Not Only for Myself: Rosh Hashanah Sermon 5777

What do you think?