I want to take this morning’s sermon in two very
different directions. Both speak to our High Holiday theme, and both fit under
the rubric of our fourth, and final quote about love, but I think you will
agree that these are two disparate interpretations. They intersect, however, at
you and me. This is, by the way, true of all four of my sermons these High
Holidays. The link between everything I have said, and among all of our
experiences across these services and Holy Days, is the effect it can and
should have on our behavior. This morning I want to ask what it means “to love
the stranger.” But I don’t only ask it generally, as a theoretical question
about the world. I invite you to think about what “love the stranger” means to
you, in your life, and what it can mean for you in the year ahead.
As you probably know by now, if you’ve heard any of
my Divrei Torah, my speeches, this holiday season, I chose my theme for this
year back in June. I was visiting a Jewish community in London, where I had
lived over a decade earlier, and I was praying in their new sanctuary for the
very first time. Above the ark in the New North London Synagogue I saw three
quotes inscribed on the walls, each dealing with love in the Torah, and each
now forming the basis of a sermon at our High Holidays here in Wallingford. For
this, my final talk, I want to look at one of those verses; a powerful
statement from Deuteronomy, 10:19,
“v’Ahavtem Et Ha-Ger,” “and you shall love the
stranger.” The Torah knows that this goes against our natural inclination. We
are more comfortable with people who look, sound, and act like us, because that
is what we, human beings, are programmed to do. I feel I need to emphasize that
the Torah does not command behaviors that are obvious. You won’t find in our
Bible: “thou shalt breathe in and out every day” or “take heed, and eat when
thou art hungry.” Our mitzvot focus on challenging us to be better people, to
improve our own lives and the lives of others around us. Hence the commandment
to “love the stranger.”
Again, I chose this theme back in June, yet here we
are, in September, and a major public debate swirls around Syrian refugees, and
whether we can allow them to come to the US or not. We see countries like
Denmark, France, England, and yes, Sweden, turning people away, and even going
so far as to put up billboards in Lebanon discouraging emigration to Europe. It
is tempting to agree with these countries, and fear waves of immigration. But
as Jews, we cannot. A colleague of mine, Rabbi Rachel Barenblat - who blogs
under the wonderful name “The Velveteen Rabbi” - writes: “Jewish history is
filled with exile and wanderings. Our community retains the memory of being
marginalized and mistreated. When economic times were tough, time and again, we
have been the victims of attacks, of prejudice, of pogroms.” Rabbi Barenblat
reminds us that the mitzvah in Deuteronomy SPECIFICALLY says that we must “love
the stranger…” BECAUSE we were strangers in Egypt. And our history reminds us
we were strangers EVERYWHERE, and we know what that was like. We need to use
our voices to stand up for refugees and exiles today, in 2015, because their
story was ours, and not even so very long ago. We know how to be vigilant on
behalf of our own community, to stand up against hateful speech like Ann
Coulter’s, but can we also feel the pain of Syrian refugees, and speak out for
them as well?
The famous Chasidic master, Reb Nachman of Bratslav,
challenged us in this regard as well, stating: “You have to judge every person
generously. Even if you have reason to think that person is completely wicked,
it is your job to look hard and seek out some bit of goodness, someplace in
that person where he is not evil. When you find that bit of goodness, and judge
that person that way, you really may raise her up to goodness. Treating people
this way allows them to be restored, to come to teshuvah, repentance.” I am
certain that we could come up with a LONG list of reasons why NOT to accept
refugees. I know that EVERY country could make such a list, and many probably
do. But that is not our job. Our job is to “love the stranger”; to push
ourselves to see the good in another, even when we have many reasons NOT to do
so. Reb Nachman specifically reminds us that when we think the best of people,
they may even surprise us and rise to the challenge; exceeding our
expectations, and leading us all to greater teshuvah, repentance, on these High
Holidays.
I began my sermon this morning by telling you that
this topic, and really all my topics, are about YOU. “Loving the stranger”
could appear to be the exception. You might think it’s about the stranger,
about that other person, or group of people, but it is actually very much about
you, about all of us. Loving the stranger makes us better people; it makes us
feel greater pride in ourselves, our community, and our religion. Rabbi
Francine Klagsbrun, in a monumental work entitled “Voices of Wisdom,” writes
about our rabbinic ancestors. She informs us that they held a firm “conviction
that the Torah was God’s instrument for spreading ethical teachings to ALL
people. Through exemplary behavior toward non-Jews, they felt they enhanced the
Torah and God’s name in the eyes of the world.”
When we read articles about the latest crises across
the globe, when we consider which campaigns to support online, such as moveon.org
or the American Jewish World Service, or think about contacting our
legislators, I encourage all of us to not just think about Jewish causes or
issues that affect the Jewish community. Remember that “love the stranger” is
ALSO a central commandment for Jews, and one that has inspired our ancestors
and our leaders for generations. We cannot limit our expressions of love; we
must instead realize that our obligation, our duty, extends to all people
everywhere, and showing our concern for them, as well as our own brethren, is
central to what it means to be a Jew.
Let me pivot now to my second interpretation of our
essential verse. Part of this mitzvah, this commandment, is about making space
for another. We cannot love the stranger at a great distance, he or she needs
to be close to our hearts and close to our physical space. Rabbi Isaac Luria,
one of the founders of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism in the 16th Century, talks
about how God created the world with Ahavah, with love. And when God created
the world, God had to remove God’s Self from covering all of existence. The
Divine Spirit, you see, was everywhere and everything, but God pulled back
slightly to create a small pocket, like a bubble of air in a bottle of water,
wherein humanity and the world could exist. This is called tzimtzum, God’s
contraction. And an Israeli psychologist, Mordechai Rotenberg, took Luria’s
Kabbalistic concept of Divine tzimtzum, and applied it to human behavior. We
each need to learn to contract OUR selves to create the potential for another
to expand. “Tzimtzum makes room for others,” writes Rotenberg,” thereby giving
a person and others space to co-exist.” This is a difficult thing for all of us
to do; remove ourselves, pull back, and allow for another to step into that space.
It may sound simple, but it is not. Just as we discussed on Rosh Hashanah,
these concepts are actually much harder to live by.
The truth is, we do not like to share space. Right
now, here in our little community of Ohev Shalom, we are engaged in a dialogue
about contracting AND expanding; a form of congregational tzimtzum. Led by our
interfaith community chairperson, Josh Cohen, our synagogue president, Bonnie
Breit, and myself, we have been discussing the role of interfaith families in
our community, and whether non-Jewish family members can be fully accepted and
integrated into our congregation. It has truly been a wonderful communal
conversation, and one which I have personally valued greatly. I want to
publicly thank everyone who has voiced an opinion in this discussion.
There is disagreement. Some people have expressed
concerns. For instance, how are we still a JEWISH community, if we make this
change? Will we still be a Conservative synagogue? Won’t we just become a
community center, and no longer a religious organization? To me, this issue is
a question of love and making space. It might have surprised you that I brought
up the question of interfaith under the subject of “love the stranger” rather
than, say, “love your neighbor as yourself,” but I did this very deliberately.
We sometimes treat interfaith families as if they are, indeed, strangers. Over
the course of our community conversation, several individuals shared very
powerful stories of feeling excluded. For instance, I heard, for the first time,
that some non-Jews move away from the aisles when the Torah is processed
around; concerned that it would be inappropriate to touch or kiss it, or that
the Jews in the room might be offended, or at the very least uncomfortable, if
a non-Jew approached their holy scroll. This made me very sad.
As the rabbis of the Talmud clearly stated, the
Torah is God’s instrument for spreading ethical teachings to ALL people. Anyone
can touch it, and everyone should feel welcome to connect to it and to its
wisdom, metaphorically AND physically.
This is still, and always will be, a Jewish
synagogue, and a Conservative Movement congregation. That is a core value for
me, for leadership, and for all who have engaged in this dialogue. At Ohev
Shalom, Jews bless the Torah, Jews carry the Torah and dance with it when we
celebrate receiving this Instruction on the holiday of Simchat Torah, in just a
couple of weeks. But non-Jews ARE a part of our community; they are not “the
stranger.” As one person in our congregation wrote to me in a beautiful letter
earlier this year, “Interfaith is not good or bad, it simply IS.” We must open
our eyes to the make-up of our community, to live with honesty and integrity
about who we are, who we already are. And we should celebrate it. This is a
strong place. We should take great pride in what we have built here, together,
and feel great joy that, in this day and age, we are able to include all those
who join us in making Ohev the wonderful place it is. For now, this DOES still
fall under the rubric of “Love the stranger,” but I hope that a constitutional
change in the months ahead will enjoin us all to change the way we think, the
way we act, and the way we include people in this, our shared community.
As I conclude this talk, and hence also conclude my
series on “Ahavah,” on love in our Jewish tradition, I want to return, one
final time, to my original intent. Love is about relationships - with God, with
our neighbors, with our values of Truth and Peace, and with the strangers
around us. At the core of it all is the hope that you will look inside and
think about ways to challenge, change, and improve yourself. Bringing more love
into our outlook can influence all these powerful relationships, and create for
each of us greater harmony and peace. Rabbi Barenblat - the Velveteen Rabbi -
writes on her blog about the power of this kind of shift in outlook: “Imagine
if everyone who looked at me saw in me the very best things I have done.
Imagine if, looking at me, what you saw was me at my most compassionate, my
most kind, my most caring. You wouldn’t be able to impute ill will to me,
because you would see my best self… and as a result, my best self would
continue to manifest.”
Not only would we become better people if we could
see the best in one another. We might draw out EVEN greater behaviors in one
another, and together we would all rise to the greatest versions of ourselves.
Having others believe in us and see us as we are at our best can be incredibly
empowering, and even life-altering. “Ahavah.” It is not simple. It is not easy.
But it is - as its Aramaic root, “y’hav,” reminds us - a “gift,” an invaluable
present that we can give one another and ourselves.
I believe that Ahavah, love, can and should be at
the core of everything we do. That it should essentially be the kind of thing
we would want to emblazon on our walls, and do so with all our hearts, souls,
and might. In this new year, let us resolve to bring more “Ahavah” into our
lives, individually and collectively, filled with Peace AND Truth, along with
all members of our community, fused together with one purpose.
One of our greatest Jewish sages, Maimonides, the
Rambam, wrote in a letter a thousand years ago that the Torah “bids us to love
with the whole force of our heart’s affection.” This is our task in the year
ahead. May we take it on wholeheartedly, and may we thereby each write
ourselves into the Book of Life for a Happy, Healthy, and Sweet New Year.
Shanah Tovah!
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