I apologize for not writing a new blog post last week or this week. However, now that the High Holidays have concluded, I am posting my sermons from Kol Nidrei (the evening of Yom Kippur) and Yom Kippur morning, in case anyone is interested. As a quick reminder: If you aren't already familiar with my High Holiday writing, I always choose a theme, and then present four sermons on/related to/surrounding that theme. Included below is sermon #3 out of 4. Feedback and responses are always welcome! Happy and Healthy New Year!!
Kol Nidrei 5780 - Main Sermon
Shanah Tovah.
Well, really, the full greeting should be “Shanah Tovah U-Metukah,” “May you have a Good AND Sweet New Year.” Or, I guess if we’re being REALLY fastidious about it, now that it’s Yom Kippur, we should really say “Shanah Tovah U-Metukah... Ve-G’mar Chatimah Tovah,” “May you have a Good AND Sweet New Year, AND May You be Inscribed [in the Book of Life] for Good.” In addition, for good measure, we could also throw in, “Ve-Tzom Kal,” “AND May You have an Easy Fast.” But all that is a pretty serious mouthful, so “Shanah Tovah” works just as well. Or even better: the Yiddish catch-all, “Gut Yontif.”
But if we DID want to extend all these protracted greetings to one another, the way we would keep adding phrases in Hebrew, is to add a single letter between each new salutation - the letter Vav. Most often, we translate this single letter, when it functions as a prefix and a conjunction, as “And.” Depending on context, however, it can sometimes mean “but,” which arguably is the exact OPPOSITE of “And”! This one letter can also mean “However,” “Nevertheless,” “Indeed,” “Yet,” and even “if”! It can almost be used to express any conjunction imaginable… all depending on context. Therefore, you can probably see how this creates some challenges if you’re trying to interpret a text and don’t know which conjunction Vav is meant to signify!
BUT, they are all related, right? Every conjunction connotes A relationship, whether connecting or separating, and in some ways, the Torah - in using Vavs for so many things - is perhaps reminding us that the POTENTIAL for relationship is always there. The building blocks for “And” are present, we have the means to create meaning and purpose and holiness all the time… however, if we don’t value it, or cultivate it, it can also become destructive and toxic. Vav is indeed an important letter.
This past June, I marked the occasion of being Ohev Shalom’s rabbi for ten years. An entire decade. Amy and the leadership team did a wonderful job of acknowledging this at our congregation’s annual meeting, and I want to publicly thank them for that. Many of you are also aware, though, that there was a lot going on over the summer, and it was challenging to be fully present to that milestone a few months ago. Many of you know this from personal experience, that when people go through difficult times they come to appreciate what they have. Today, I want to genuinely express how much more grateful I am for you, the Ohev Shalom community, and for all the relationships that we have built here, together, over these ten years.
I mention all of this because I want to raise up something that went a bit unnoticed then, but which I feel deserves more attention and gratitude. YOU gave me a present. (Maybe you didn’t know you did. But it was very thoughtful of you. Thank you.) I am, in fact, wearing it right now - my new tallit. I want to formally thank Alan Schapire for helping me pick it out on behalf of the congregation, back in October, when we were in Israel on our synagogue trip. And I love that Alan himself, as well as Allan Baron and Arnold Steinman, each got tallitot from that same store, because it kind of feels like we have a secret (though now NOT so secret…) little talles club! I bring up this tallit in order to say “Thank You” to you all, AND to highlight two things about it that speak to my overarching theme for these High Holidays AND my specific theme for tonight’s sermon.
A brief origin story: This is a hand-made tallit from a small shop in the Old City in Jerusalem, called Weaving Creation, and Yosef, the shop owner, told me I could have the “Atarah,” the neckband along the top, embroidered with essentially any prayer or phrase I would like. It came to me instantly, a quote from Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of Our Ancestors, chapter 1, teaching/mishnah 12, spoken by the great sage, Hillel: “Hevei Mi-Talmidav Shel Aharon; Ohev Shalom VE-Rodeph Shalom.” We actually read this quote every single morning in services, right before the Kaddish d’Rabbanan. It means: “[Strive to] be one of the disciples of Aaron [the High Priest], loving peace and pursuing peace.” Besides the fact that it’s a nice quote, and it speaks to an important mission which I’ll get to shortly, it also contains the phrase “loving peace,” or “Ohev Shalom.” I wasn’t sure if it would be too blunt a statement… but then I thought: “This IS my Ohev Shalom tallit!” For the rest of my life, this tallit will always, always keep me intertwined with Ohev Shalom. And I will cherish that connection - that Vav - forever.
BUT this sermon isn’t about me. I haven’t even told you the topic yet, for goodness sake! Well, many of you know that my High Holiday theme this year is “Jewish and…” focusing on all the ways we are multi-faceted, nuanced, interconnected people, and more than just any, one, single thing. Tonight, I want to take all that I’ve already said about the letter Vav, and about my tallit, and about loving, as well as pursuing, peace, and I want to weave these ideas together into my topic for tonight, which I’m calling: “Jewish AND American… AND Zionist… AND occasionally conflicted.” You see, the very existence of a Vav - of an “and” after the word “Jewish” - has been a source of huge pain, suffering, and persecution for us over the course of millenia. AND (or BUT…) it has ALSO held us together, and enabled us to survive DESPITE that oppression; and we need to stop and acknowledge both.
Four thousand years ago, when our ancestors were happily living in Egypt, the very beginning of the Book of Exodus tells us that a new Pharaoh arose and turned against the Israelites. His specific accusation, 1:10, is chilling. We have heard this same anti-Semitic slur from essentially every enemy, using some version of these same words: “[speaking to his fellow Egyptians:] We must make a plan to keep them from growing even more. If we don’t, and if war breaks out, they will join our enemies and fight against us. Then they will escape from the country.” In the Hebrew, the text tells us “v’Nosaf...”, “v’Nilcham...”, “v’Alah...” Three vav’s for three central accusations: They will join [the enemy], wage war [against us], and then get up [and abandon us]. After the Egyptians it was Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Church leaders, Crusaders, Mamluks, Cossacks, Nazis, and alt-right Neonazis. The verses change, but the refrain remains the same: we are backstabbers, we are disloyal, and we’re not REALLY part of the people. After all, we’re always “Jewish and…” Can we ever TRULY be trusted??
Fascinatingly, this argument wasn’t even just raised by external voices, but internal ones as well. The battle between assimilation and exclusionism is at the center of the Chanukah story, over 2,000 years ago when we were dealing with Assyrian Greeks. Jews trying desperately to run from that “And.” During the Spanish Inquisition, Jews would convert out and try and shed their previous religion, only to be violently persecuted to make SURE we weren’t “Spanish AND still Jewish.”
Centuries later, at the time of the European Enlightenment, it was the philosophy du jour to renounce all differences and just be 100% French, or German, or Italian. In rabbinical school, I wrote an extended paper, specifically looking at the Swedish Jewish community, where I grew up, in the early 1900s. Before the State of Israel was established in 1948, many Jewish communities were very, VERY nervous about Zionism. It was brandished by the anti-Semites as a clear example of “Jewish and…” Or rather “blank-and-Jewish.” They might say: “You told us you were French! Or German! Or Swedish! Or American. But now you ALSO want to talk about Zionism, which at its core longs for a homeland in Israel?!?! Homeland for whom??? If an enemy rises against us, are you going to join them, wage war against us, and then abandon us for the Zionist State???”
We were deathly afraid of that accusation. I found my old essay, from 2005, and a quote that stood out for me came from the late 1800s, when the Jewish community of Sweden was attempting to petition the Swedish government for full citizenship, and made the declarative statement: “To us, there now exists no other native country besides Sweden.” Even at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where I received my ordination (AND my previous tallit), it is well-documented that faculty and leadership opposed political Zionism before 1948. Jacob Schiff, a prominent JTS board member, wrote in 1907: “Speaking as an American, I cannot for a moment concede that one can be at the same time a true American and an honest adherent of the Zionist movement.” We could not (and some still hold this fear today!) declare too loudly that we were/are “American AND Jewish,” or “Swedish AND Jewish,” because others may use it against us, and could say - once again - that Jews are disloyal spies… who will eventually stab their neighbors in the back.
As I mentioned earlier this evening, even this very service at which we sit now, the Kol Nidrei, was used in many generations as a covert way for Jews to return to the faith. Conversos in Spain, and later many forced converts throughout Europe, would come back to synagogue on the evening of Yom Kippur to declare: “Kol Nidrei!!” “ALL the vows which I have declared (for someone else…) are hereby renounced!” No matter what we went through, or how we were persecuted, we held onto that Vav. We insisted always that we were “Jewish and.”
So what does any of this have to do with my tallit? Well, there’s a Vav in there. “Ohev Shalom VE-Rodeph Shalom,” which I think is quite critical. “Ohev” can be a more passive stance; to accept, to reconcile, to love. “Rodeph” is a more active and action-based word, to pursue, to go after, to chase down. But in order to create peace - among our people, between us and our neighbors, and around the world - we need to do both. We need to insist that we are absolutely “Jewish and…” We are ALSO Americans, or Swedes, or Mexicans, or whatever. This is our synagogue’s Centennial year! Ohev Shalom has been “Peace-loving” for AT LEAST a hundred years, and our community members have been present for some truly monumental moments in American history, by being stitched into the fabric of the city of Chester for decades. The city’s motto for several decades was “What Chester makes, makes Chester,” and certainly our ancestors helped produce FOR and WITHIN Chester, and thus helped make Chester what it was for a long, long time.
Just walk down our hallway, to the parking lot entrance, and on the right AND left you will see names and photos of congregants who fought - and some died - to protect the values which this country stands for. Many people here remember Larry Edelstein, of blessed memory, who survived the Holocaust together with his good friend, Yaakov Farkas, who is here today. Larry just barely survived, like so many, then made his way to America, only to put on a uniform, turn around, and head right back out to fight for his new country. If that isn’t “Jewish and,” I don’t know what is!!
What Larry understood is that we do indeed need to be Ohev Shalom, peace-loving, AND we also need to be Rodeph Shalom, going out and pursuing just and rightful causes, to actively help bring about that peace. At the same time, as loyal as we have been everywhere we’ve lived, our ancestors have often needed a place of refuge, a homeland… and we needed to fight for that as well. We are both-and; we absolutely consider ourselves Americans and defend this country, but we must also be careful students of history, and remember ALWAYS that the anti-Semitic trope is never gone for good. We must also always remember our misguided Jewish ancestors who were embarrassed about our differences, and who thought, if we could just convince our neighbors that we had renounced that Jewish-stuff, that Promised-Land-silliness, maybe they would accept us fully. They often found out the hard way, that simply doesn’t work. We ARE different, we ARE multi-faceted, we ARE “Jewish and,” and that is never going to change.
When the Alan’s and Arnold and I purchased our tallitot in that tiny little shop in the Old City of Jerusalem, I messed up. You see, the shop owner asked me what phrase to put on the tallit, but didn’t tell me how much space I had. I was so pleased with my little Pirkei Avot quote, that it never occurred to me how short it was. When the tallit arrived, months later, it looked kinda empty. And I was, in truth, somewhat disappointed. Then this crazy little notion flitted through my head. Could I ADD to the tallit? Put my own little “Vav” on it??? Long-story-short (but I AM a rabbi, so if you want the full version, just let me know after services…), Elsa Wachs, who is a congregant, an Ohev fixture for many decades, and a world-renowned artist, agreed to enhance my Atarah. And boy did she sew meaning, spirituality, and relationship into the fabric of this cloth!! She even wrote me a note to explain the depth of meaning in her symbols. A pomegranate, sliced open, with half at either end; which I see as a symbol of the land of Israel, our Zionist homeland, where my tallit was crafted. The two halves also represent the Jewish Shabbat candle blessings of “Shamor” and “Zachor,” “Protect” and “Remember.” I would add that, like Ohev and Rodeph Shalom, one is active, to protect the sabbath, and one is more passive, to remember it. And both are needed there as well.
There are five seeds inside each open pomegranate, so ten in total. According to Elsa, this is both a celebration of our years together AND a symbol of a minyan. There are then 36 more pomegranate seeds adorning the Atarah, representing two-times-chai (18), with which Elsa sent me a message and wish that my (and I would say OUR) “journey through life be filled with bountiful energy and accomplishments.” Now, perhaps more than ever, I hope and pray that she is right.
As if the tallit wasn’t already special enough, linking me to all of you, Elsa has embellished and enhanced it that much more. It is overflowing with “And.” You know, in modern Hebrew, “Vav” is also a noun. It likely comes from the origin of the letter itself, beginning as a hieroglyph with our “friend” back in Egypt, Pharaoh. It was the Egyptian picture/symbol meaning “hook,” and THAT is what it means in Hebrew today, a pin, a peg, a hasp… a hook. The letter Vav links things together, it hooks them up, one to the other. “Ohev Shalom VE-Rodeph Shalom” - we love peace AND we pursue it vociferously. “Shamor v’Zachor,” we protect our Sabbath AND our Jewish identity as well as our strong, enduring connection to the Land of Israel AND we remember what we have been subjected to. We remember that we cannot shed our “Jewish and”; but rather, we must embrace it. We are proud citizens of this country AND we hold a special place in our hearts for our people’s homeland, where we can commission hand-woven tallitot and learn about Aaron the High Priest, and our ancient history. That same “hook” also links together our complex, nuanced identity, where we are Jewish AND American AND Zionists… AND conflicted. It’s not easy keeping one foot in each of these varied places… we only have two feet!!
We remember AND protect our history as well as our identity. We recall what Kol Nidrei meant to generations of our ancestors. But it holds new meaning and holiness for us today; we are part of the Jewish tapestry as well! Kol Nidrei, our service tonight, can send us off into the new year, full of hope and energy, ready to love AND pursue peace. Let us pour forth like the 36 seeds of this pomegranate, manifesting two-times-chai or maybe ten or even A HUNDRED times chai - creating life and peace and relationship in our shared community. That’s my “hook” for all of us here tonight.
Shanah Tovah!
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