D'rash for Kol Nidre 5762

<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" LINK="#000000" VLINK="#000000" ALINK="#000000"> <CENTER><TABLE><TR><TD WIDTH=20% VALIGN="TOP"> <A NAME="top"> <P> <B><a href="http://betmish.org/text/kn5762drash.html">Text-Only Version</a></B> <P> <BIG><B><a href="http://betmish.org/index.html">Home</A></B></BIG> <P> <BIG><B><a href="http://betmish.org/whatsnew.html">What's New</A></B></BIG> <P> <BIG><B><a href="http://betmish.org/calendar.html#July8">Coming Events</A></B></BIG> <P> <BIG><B><a href="http://betmish.org/drashot.html">D'rashot</A></B></BIG> <P> <BIG><B><a href="http://betmish.org/do.html">What We Do</A></B></BIG> <P> <BIG><B><a href="http://betmish.org/who.html">Who We Are</A></B></BIG> <P> <BIG><B><a href="http://betmish.org/contact.html">Contact Us</A></B></BIG> <P> <BIG><B><a href="http://betmish.org/faq.html">Frequently Asked Questions</A></B></BIG> <P> <BIG><B><a href="http://betmish.org/archives.html">Archives</A></B></BIG> <P> <BIG><B><a href="http://betmish.org/links.html">Links</A></B></BIG> <P> <BIG><B><a href="http://betmish.org/member.html">Membership</A></B></BIG> <P> <BIG><B><a href="http://betmish.org/credits.html">Credits</A></B></BIG> <P> <BIG><B><a href="http://betmish.org/addbook.html">Guest book</A></B></BIG> </FONT></TD> <TD ALIGN=CENTER VALIGN=TOP WIDTH="80%> <CENTER>    <table border="0" align="center"> <tr> <td align="center"> <a href="http://betmish.org/index.html" target="_top"><IMG border=0 src="http://betmish.org/images/banner2.gif" align=center height="104" width="512" hspace=5 alt="Bet Mishpachah banner"></a> </td> <td align="left"> <font size="-5"><a href="http://betmish.org/child/descriptions/banner.html">Banner<br>Description</a></font> </td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center"> <p><font size="-1"><i>Washington, DC's Egalitarian Synagogue</i><br> <i>Embracing a Diversity of Sexual and Gender Identities</i></font> </p> <p> <b><font face="Arial"><font size="+1">Rabbi Bob Saks<br> </font></font></b><br> <font face="Arial"><font size="-1"><i>Founded in 1975 by Members of the GLBT Community<font color="white" size="-4"> </font></i></font></font></p> </td> <td align="left"> <font size="-4" color="white"> </font> </td> </tr> </table> </center> <h1 align=center>D'rash for Kol Nidre 5762</h1> <center><b>by Rabbi Leila Gal Berner</b></CENTER> <P>"<i>Eicha yashva badad ha-ir rabati am haita <nobr>k'almana</i>. . .</nobr>" Alas! How lonely sits the city once great with people! She that was great among the nations has become like a widow. . . Bitterly she weeps in the night. . . All her inhabitants sigh. . . From above, God sent a fire down into my bones. . . I am left forlorn, in constant misery. . . " <P> These are words from the first chapter of the biblical book, <i>Eicha</i>, Lamentations, written about the destruction of Jerusalem some twenty-six hundred years ago. How powerful they are for us today. Bitterly, New York weeps in the night; a fire has rained down into the very marrow of the city's bones. She is left forlorn. The devastation of September 11, 2001 that left a gaping wound in the heart of that great city has also devastated all of us. We have so much to weep about. We feel helpless in the face of the enormity of the evil, and sometimes we feel hopeless too. We ache, we weep and rage burns within us. <P>On Tuesday, September 11, amidst the whirlwind of my own emotions, I found myself <nobr>shaking --</nobr> crying the tears of one who is lost, my body trembling in an almost volcanic convulsion of rage. So many of us have experienced this terrible mixture of emotions in recent <nobr>days --</nobr> intense grief and an almost-all-consuming anger. So many of us, God help us, have felt the fires of vengeance come alive within us. <P>What do we do with all the pain and the anger? Many hundreds of years ago, our rabbis inserted a paragraph into the Passover <i>haggadah</i> which begins with the words, "<i>sh'foch chamatcha al ha-goyim asher lo <nobr>yaducha</i>" --</nobr> O God, pour out your wrath on the nations who do not know you!" This was our peoples' cry of rage and our thirst for vengeance, shouted out as we opened the door at our seders to welcome <nobr>in --</nobr> who? <i>Eliyahu Ha-Navi</i>, Elijah the Prophet, the harbinger of the Messiah, the one who will announce the coming of a time of redemption, of peace, of cosmic justice. <P>What an intriguing combination of words and context. On the one hand, these were the words of a powerless people in the lands of Diaspora, victims of so much oppression and so much violence. This was the cry of our people powerless to pour out our own wrath upon our oppressors. And so we cried out to God, "punish these monsters, wreak vengeance on our behalf!" And yet at that very same moment of our shouts of revenge, we hopefully welcomed <nobr><i>Eliyahu</i> --</nobr> we still looked to a time of justice, and peace where violence and hatred and evil would be no more. <P>There is a message here for us now as we stare into the face of <nobr>evil --</nobr> vengeance may be what our hearts ache for at this moment, but justice and repair and healing must be our ultimate long-term goal. We must ask ourselves <nobr>then --</nobr> will vengeance bring us closer to "Messiah-time, that great and awesome era of universal healing?" <P>Let me clear. As our tradition teaches, I do believe in punishment for those who perpetrate evil. But there is a profound difference between vengeance and punishment. Vengeance is indiscriminate violence, which may serve to appease our sense of powerlessness, but ultimately does not eradicate evil. Vengeance escalates evil. creating new generations of martyrs and survivors who come to hate even more deeply. Punishment, on the other hand, is a controlled and targeted exercise of just power, directed only against the sources of evil. <P>My friend and colleague, Rabbi Richard Hirsh, wrote recently that "the Torah suggests that on the night of the tenth plague in Egypt, God let loose an avenging angel, the "<i>mashchit</i>," the "Destroyer." Having let loose this overwhelming power, God now has to position Godself in Israelite doorways to deflect the Destroyer. The ancient rabbis were puzzled by this. Why, they ask, couldn't God simply "program" the Destroyer to hit the Egyptian homes and avoid those of the Israelites? Their answer: once the Destroyer is loose, it cannot differentiate between the guilty and the innocent." To Rabbi Hirsch's words, I would respond: let that be a lesson to <nobr>us --</nobr> careful, deliberate punishment of the perpetrators of evil is necessary, I believe, but vengeance against innocents is not. Let our government and our leaders remember that once let loose, the Destroyer cannot differentiate between the guilty and the innocent. <P>In these days since the "tremendum," as I have come to call September 11th, in this time since that tremendous, horrible day, I have had moments of deep despair. Like many of us here tonight, I have wondered if despite all I have been taught, human beings are so prone to evil that there is no hope; I have asked myself, "where was God?" and why did the 'tremendum' crash down upon us? <P>As I have wrestled with my conflicting emotions and questions, I have come to some insights, at least for myself. Perhaps they may help some of you as we all continue to struggle through this dark time. <P>As for my fellow human beings, I remember that Jewish tradition teaches that every human being is created <i>b'tzelem Elohim</i>, in God's image and that we are fundamentally good. Each morning, we recite the words <i>Elohai neshama sheh-natata bi tehorah <nobr>hi</i> --</nobr> my God, the soul that you have implanted within me is pure! Unlike Christianity, we Jews do not believe that we are tainted from birth with "original sin." Rather, we believe that we come into this world with essential goodness and purity, and we affirm each day that we decide whether we will taint that goodness, whether we will sully our lives. <P>Jewish tradition also teaches that each of us has within us a <i>yetzer tov</i> and a <i>yetzer rah</i>, an inclination toward good and an inclination toward evil. And that the primary task of our lives is to always ensure that our goodness overwhelms our evil, that our capacity for righteousness always defeats our inclination toward sin. In this context, we understand that sin is not only what we do; sin is also what we can <nobr>become --</nobr> it can define who we are unless we fight mightily against it. So, after my struggles of this week, I no longer despair in humankind. I believe with all my heart that human beings have a greater capacity for good than for <nobr>evil --</nobr> and that it is all up to us. <P> We may become discouraged and feel helpless and hopeless in the face of the evil that some humans become, but we must not despair, and we must take up the challenge posed to us by our ancient rabbis in the <i>Mishna</i>: "In a place where people descend into depravity, be determined to be decent." <P>As for God? Yes, I asked the <nobr>question --</nobr> "where were you? where are you?" But it may surprise you to know that my question quickly turned into a deeply-held conviction. Ultimately, I have never believed that God is a power who predetermines all, who wills premature death on one and a long and healthy life for another. I have never believed that God is the perpetrator of unjust tragedy. <P>During his eulogy for his twenty-four-year old son, Alex, who died in a car crash, the famous Protestant minister, Reverend William Sloan Coffin, said, "Nothing infuriates me more than the incapacity of seemingly intelligent people to get it through their heads that God doesn't go around this world with his finger on triggers, his fist around knives, his hands on steering wheels. God is dead set against all unnatural deaths. . . My own consolation lies in knowing that it was NOT the will of God that my son die; that God's heart was the first of all hearts to break." <P>I say "amen" to that. As I said on the <i>Erev Shabbat</i> after the tremendum, God was not in the hijackers who smashed those four airplanes into New York's twin towers or into the Pentagon or into a field in rural Pennsylvania. God was in the passengers who resisted the terrorists, most probably diverting one plane from crashing into the Capitol or the White House. God was in the hundreds of firefighters and other rescue workers who ran into burning buildings and gave their lives so that others might live, God was in the doctor who peddled his bicycle from Connecticut to arrive at "ground zero" to try to save lives and heal wounds, God was in the anonymous woman who brought food and blankets to stranded passengers at Dulles airport, God was in the thousands who gave blood. . . You have heard the <nobr>stories --</nobr> and we will hear many more in coming days. <P><i>Ani ma'aminah b'emunah <nobr>shleyma</i> --</nobr> I do believe, with absolute faith, that God is that Power in the universe that energizes us toward the good, toward the best that is in us. I do believe, with absolute faith that God gives us the courage to stand against evil, to live our lives ethically, to be strong in times of deepest adversity. I do believe, with absolute faith, that God is <nobr>omnipresent --</nobr> with us everywhere in our world and <nobr>omni-beneficent --</nobr> the greatest power for good in our world. But with all that, though it may seem like heresy to say so, but I am not sure that God is omnipotent, all powerful. Like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, I believe that God needs us to manifest godliness and goodness in the world. I believe that God calls out to us, cries out to us, beseeches us to respond to the Divine challenge. For without us, God is divinity in <nobr>potentio --</nobr> The Holy becomes manifest through us and our actions. That is what God's gift of free will is all about. In Rabbi Heschel's words, "we are not asked to abandon life and to say farewell to this world, but to keep the spark within aflame, and to allow God's light to be reflected in our own <nobr>faces. . .</nobr> God is waiting on every road that leads from intention to action." <P>If this is indeed so, then how can we relate to the awesome words we spoke on <i>Rosh Ha-Shana</i>, the words of the <i>U-netaneh tokef</i>, "On <i>Rosh Ha-Shana</i> it is written, and on <i>Yom Kippur</i> it is sealed. . . who shall live and who shall die?" Is this really a prayer about predestination? About God's final (and seemingly arbitrary) decision to spare some of us and afflict others among us? If it were, how could we sing it each year with sincerity, without shaking our first at Heaven and saying, "this is unfair! this is unjust!" How could we not protest that such a God is unworthy of our faith, our trust, our love? <P>I believe that the <i>U-netaneh tokef</i> offers us a very different message. To me, it speaks about uncertainty, about the fragility of life, about the arbitrary whims of Nature that God created but cannot entirely control. Sometimes people die young, ravaged by disease. Sometimes Nature is savage and destructive, and even God cannot stop the savagery. <P>But what of the catastrophes caused by us, by human beings who become savages? What power do we have over life and death? Does God write us into the Book of Life or Death? Or are we the authors of our own destinies? A thousand years ago, Rabbi Bahya ibn Paquda wrote: "Days are like scrolls. Write on them what you want remembered." God has given us the precious gift of free will, and God has given us our outrage at injustice, our feelings of compassion for those who are suffering. To paraphrase Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of <i>When Bad Things Happen to Good People</i>, our responding to life's unfairness is a reflection of God's compassion and anger working through us. This may be the surest proof of God's reality and power. Indeed, this power is ultimately God's but it flows through us, moving us to become the authors of so much that happens to us and around us. <P>Despite its language of royalty and judgment, <i>U-netaneh tokef</i> teaches us a powerful lesson about Life's uncertainty. Its message is summed up beautifully by what the comedian, Gilda Radner, wrote before her own untimely death: "[Life] is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next." <P>And yet there is more to the message of <i>U-netaneh tokef</i> than even that. Its concluding words are crucial: "<i>teshuva, tefilah, <nobr>tzedakah</i> --</nobr> inward turning, prayer or yearning and acts of righteous and just <nobr>caring --</nobr> avert the severity of the decree. In the end, action is what matters, how we live, not who shall live and who shall die is what really matters. Rabbi Heschel's words again echo with profound truth: God asks us to keep the [divine] spark within us aflame, to fill our lives with acts of righteousness and goodness. "God is waiting on every road that leads from intention to action." <P>A few days ago, I wept again, this time in gratitude and awe. A young man who I have never met gave this gift to me. His story exemplifies what life is all about, what our task as human beings is all about, what reflecting God in our actions really means. <P>"My name is Usman Farman," the young man wrote. "I graduated from Bentley with a Finance degree last May. I am 21 years old, turning 22 in October. I am Pakistani and I am Muslim. Until September 11, 2001, I worked at the World Trade <nobr>Center. . .</nobr> I have friends and acquaintances [who also work there]. Some remain buried under the rubble." <P>Usman described in great detail what he saw and heard that day, but there is one piece of his story that I most want to share with you, "We were evacuated to the north side of building #7, still only a block from the towers. [We were told] to go north and not to look back. Five city blocks later, I stopped and turned around to watch. With a thousand people staring, we saw in shock as the first tower <nobr>collapsed. . .</nobr> The next thing I remember is that a dark cloud of glass and debris about 50 stories high came tumbling toward <nobr>us. . .</nobr> I turned around and ran as fast as possible and I fell down trying to get <nobr>away. . .</nobr> I was on my back, facing this massive cloud. . . It must have been six hundred feet off. Everything was already <nobr>dark. . .</nobr> I normally wear a pendant around my neck inscribed with an Arabic prayer for safety. [While I was on the ground, with people stampeding past me], a Hassidic Jewish man came up to me and held the pendant in his hand and looked at it. He read the Arabic out loud for a second. What he said next, I will never forget. With a deep Brooklyn accent, he said, "Brother, if you don't mind, there is a cloud of glass coming at us, grab my hand, and let's get the hell out of here." He helped me stand up and we ran for what seemed like forever without looking back. He was the last person I would ever have thought who would help me. If it weren't for him, I probably would have been engulfed in shattered glass and debris." <P>Usman continues with the details of his own survival after that moment. But I must share with you his concluding words: <blockquote>The next time you feel angry about [all of] this, and perhaps want to retaliate in your own way, [I beg you to] please remember these words: "Brother, if you don't mind, there is a cloud of glass coming at us, grab my hand, and let's get the hell out of here."</blockquote> <P>In one instant of profound humanity, in one flash of profound goodness, the cloud of glass that pursued Usman and so many others became transformed from a rain of evil into a shower of <nobr>righteousness --</nobr> the shards of glass, deadly splinters caused by indescribable evil were redeemed and they became shards of light, sparks of the Divine, manifest in one human being. Don't let anybody ever tell you that you do not matter. Don't let anybody ever tell you that you cannot manifest God and good. Don't let anybody ever tell you that what you do will not bring tikkun olam, the healing and redemption of our shattered world. For in each and every moment of our lives, we can bring healing. In each and every moment of our lives we can save a world entire. This is our hope, this is our challenge, this is how we can enter the New Year choosing life over death, affirming good even in the face of the darkest of all evils. <P>"On <i>Rosh Ha-Shana</i> it is <nobr>written --</nobr> and on <i>Yom Kippur</i> it is <nobr>sealed --</nobr> how shall we live as this New Year unfolds." <i>Chizku v'imtzu</i>: be strong and of good <nobr>courage --</nobr> and may each of us be inscribed in the Book of a Good Life in the coming days." </TD></TR></TABLE></CENTER> <P><HR> <p align="center"><FONT face=Arial><small><small><b>For a description of any of the graphics on this page, click on the D next to the graphic. <BR>For more information, contact our office at <a href="mailto:office@betmishpachah.org?SUBJECT=Request for Information from Web Site">office@betmishpachah.org</a><br> Send comments about this site to <a href="mailto:webweaver@betmishpachah.org?SUBJECT=Comments About Web Site">webweaver@betmishpachah.org</a>.<br> Copyright 1996 - 2008 Bet Mishpachah.</b></small></small></FONT> <CENTER><font face=Arial size="-1" color="#999999"><small><small><P><b>This page last modified on Sunday, May 18, 2003 at 08:02 PM EDT.</b></small></small></font> </CENTER> </body>