As I look out tonight, I am reminded of the blessing that our ancient Rabbis suggested we ought recite whenever a large assembly of people gathers.
The blessing is simple and, at the same time, it is profound.
Barukh Chacham HaRazim, our Rabbis offered for the first time nearly 2000 years ago. Barukh Chacham HaRazim… Blessed is the One who Understands Secrets.
Why should an affirmation of God’s ability to discern secrets be the blessing for a multitude? Perhaps because as Rabbi David Wolpe, a Los Angeles-based Conservative rabbi, with whom I shared time on my recent sabbatical, has written…
“A tragedy of … our time is [our] certainty that what we see is what alone exists, and what we [have] create[d with our own hands] is alone worthy. We suffer,” Wolpe continues… “We suffer the peculiar blindness of those who see only the visible.” i
Our prayerbook suggests that “the peculiar blindness” of which Rabbi Wolpe speaks causes us daily to “walk sightless among miracles.” And therefore, we are suffering our present circumstance, not because we cannot solve our own problems; but rather, we are suffering our experience because we cannot see our own problems, because we cannot recognize the extent to which we are often the source of our own tzirrus.
But what if we could see beyond our own certainty? What if we could see beyond the work of our own hands? What if we were, in fact, able to recognize our own role in our present circumstance?
And what if we could do the same for our congregation and for the larger Jewish community? What if we were able to move beyond the ways we conceive of and experience our world? What do you imagine we’d see, then?
And perhaps most meaningfully, what secrets might we be able to understand and solve for then?
Admittedly, this thought experiment is challenging, as anyone knows, who has ever tried to imagine how he or she would be different – how our lives would be different – if only we could see beyond ourselves – if only we could get out of our own way and see our present reality through new eyes.
And what is it that makes this exercise so challenging and so difficult?
Simply this: the images we hold of ourselves – of our families, this congregation, of the Jewish community more generally and of the wider world… these are powerful, powerful images.
And what gives these images such power? What accounts for their hold over us?
Nothing so much as the fact that we have invested so much in maintaining them.
We like things the way they are, we tell ourselves.
And it is precisely this – our ego and pride, and the sense of loyalty we have to the way things are – to the personal stake we have in current reality – to the way, we tell ourselves, that “things have always been, the way things need to be…”
It is precisely this sense of self-justified security this fiction provides – for, of course, things have not always been and need not forever be the way they are…
It is precisely this self-soothing sense of nostalgia that keeps us from imagining – let alone being or doing – things differently going forward.
Marshall McLuhan, famed educator and philosopher perhaps best known for coining the phrase “the medium is the message,” has defined our challenge in the following way: it’s as if we are driving a car forward, but all the while insist on keeping our eyes fixed firmly on the rear view mirror.
But let me back up.
I want to remind you of the theme for my High Holy Day sermons this year. In a word, it is “Hope.” Where we shall find hope…and how it is that we shall create hope among ourselves and how we shall do so today…and for tomorrow as well.
The truth is, I have been writing about this idea of working to create a hopeful future for our community for at least the last few years.
And since returning from sabbatical this past spring, I have been encouraging all of us to take up a courageous conversation about the future of Jewish Pittsburgh.
And why have I done this? Because I am convinced that real change is coming – indeed, in a great many respects, significant change has already arrived – and we, who care most about the Jewish community, must now engage long-secreted truths that will necessitate our reforming ourselves as well as our community in order to discover and create a sense of hope as we move boldly into the future.
We know well what is inspiring and laudable about our Jewish community…
And while it is good to occasionally reflect on what we have been doing well; and though it can be a useful exercise to take note of that which might be coming up behind us; and while it may even be reassuring to remind ourselves who else is traveling with us... The rearview mirror is not where we will find the vision nor the hope our community requires today.
Rather will we discover hope and our vision forward in partnership with those traveling alongside us – and so must we determine to see in our neighboring sister congregations, our potential partners as opposed to erstwhile rivals.
After all, those here tonight share not only bonds of history and friendship with the members of every other Jewish congregation in our city, but the members of Rodef Shalom and Beth Shalom and Tree of Life and Temple Sinai, in particular, all share – and certainly all of our children share – a common future with one another, as well.
Hoping that things will be different – or that wishing that all will stay the same – is not a strategy. But identifying the sources of our hope – and working together to encourage and to foster hope among all of us – that, surely, is our goal.
And it will be in our working – our entire community, every single congregation and rabbi and member of our congregations working – together to create a more hopeful reality today for Jewish Pittsburgh ….
It will be in this way and only in this way, that we shall truly come to understand and more creatively begin to address our community’s most pressing concerns.
After all, when we find ourselves suffering the peculiar blindness, of which Rabbi Wolpe speaks, such that we are focused only on what we know for certain and only upon the work of our own hands, rather than on what we all share in common and what might be possible for us to achieve were we to join together…
When we find ourselves able to see only what appears in our rearview mirror, rather that what lies ahead of us…
It is precisely at these times that it is most essential that we appreciate – though it be frightening – that the best thing – the most courageous and hopeful thing – we can do is to join hands across our community and therein to help one another and
all of us together to envision a new way forward.
We are all in this together. It’s no more complicated than that.
Or in the words of Theodore Herzl, in his speech to the First Zionist Conference in Basel, “This idea is so big… we must speak of it only in the simplest of terms.”
The conversations I am inviting every member of the Jewish community to take part in have taken place in generations past and in the generations before that.
And, if we are open to learning from our people’s 2000-year experience, and if we are successful in our own courageous conversation, then so one day shall our children and grandchildren and their grandchildren be privileged to participate in courageous conversations of their own in 50 and a 100 years time. And that is our prayer.
But to better appreciate what informs and animates the courageous conversation we must now engage going forward, let’s take a brief glance back.
If you’ll allow me… Jewish History 101 in three-hundred words or less…
The origin of Judaism as we know it in all its guises today can be dated to a very specific event in history: the community’s response to the radical change that took place after the Temple was destroyed and the Jewish people, dispersed from Jerusalem nearly 2000 yrs ago.
Travel back with me to the year 66 CE. For it was in 66CE that a revolt known as the Jewish War began. The precipitant? The High Priests in Jerusalem, angered by the Greeks’ and Romans’ disrespect for Jewish rites, refused to offer sacrifices in honor of the Roman emperor in the Jerusalem Temple. Things quickly turned bloody; and though the Jews put up a defense, they were easily outmatched by the full might of the Roman legions; and in the year 70CE, under the command of Titus, the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem and the Temple was felled.
And with the Temple in ruins, Jewish religious life as it had been known since King Solomon’s day was ended. And when, in 135CE Jerusalem was razed and a pagan city established in its place, the end of Jewish life as it had been known and practiced for 1000 years was complete.
But Judaism itself was not dead. In fact, to the contrary. It is in the wake of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the Jews’ subsequent exile from the city – it was in response to that seismic shift in Jewish life – that Judaism, as we know
it, began.
Indeed, under the visionary direction of new leadership, the post-Biblical bases for Judaism (read: Rabbinic Judaism) now came into being. In this new and novel iteration of the Jewish faith system, given that the Temple was no more, individual houses of worship substituted for centralized cult in Jerusalem; prayer and study came to replace sacrifice; rabbis & sages took the place of a hereditary priesthood; and Judaism came to be defined by a new pragmatism as opposed to a presumption that what had been relied upon in ages past would necessarily carry the Jewish community forward into the next phase of communal life.
In short, the adaptive, courageous, hopeful, forward-looking quality Judaism and the Jewish people embraced following the destruction of the Temple remains that which informs all Jewish practice as we know and experience it to this day.
And so it is that nearly 2000 years later, as the Jewish community is once again undergoing quantum leaps of change, a new, adaptive, courageous, hopeful, forward-looking vision – an altogether unprecedented, visionary understanding of how our community organizes – is required.
As Rabbi Sharon Brous, founder of IKAR one of the country’s most innovative independent minyanim, and another rabbi with whom I shared some time on my sabbatical this past year, has written, “[Our] community is going through a paradigm shift. A generation of Jews feels at best alienated by, at worst deeply suspicious of, the communal agenda many young and unaffiliated Jews see as narrow-minded, exclusivist and morally inconsistent… We need to challenge assumptions and defy expectations, but to do so with humility, a profound sense of responsibility, and the kind of passion that is born of deep love.” ii
But you needn’t take Rabbi Brous’ word for it.
Rabbi David Ellenson, President of the Hebrew Union College, our Reform Movement’s rabbinincal seminary has recently offered, “More and more American Jews are indifferent to denominational labels …[and] will not hesitate to move among movements and individual rabbis as they engage their own personal religious and communal quests.”
Add to this, what Rabbi Rick Jacobs, Incoming-President of the Union for Reform Judaism, stated in his remarks upon being unanimously elected the leader of our Movement.
“For the past forty years, our religious ingenuity has made us the fastest growing theologically liberal denomination in America. And yet, we’ve become bogged down. Too many Jewish leaders seem paralyzed by fear of the future. This moment in Jewish history demands bold thinking with big ideas; this is not a time for staying the course. It‘s time to reinvent the architecture of Jewish life. It’s a time to cast a broad net, to explore options rather than to rule things out, and to recreate a Movement which will be as meaningful in the future and it has been in the past.” iii
Clearly, as Rabbi Daniel Jeremy Silver, revered and late spiritual leader of The Temple in Cleveland, wrote more than half a century ago, “We have [once again] come to that point in our history where we need a reform of Reform.”
How we respond to this need for reform within our community will determine, in large measure, the type of Judaism our children and grandchildren will inherit.
Will we choose to redouble our investment in what we’ve already accomplished in spite all indications that the future is moving in a different direction?
Will we focus exclusively on what we stand to lose by changing course rather than what we stand to gain by approaching our task from a new vantage point?
And, perhaps most vexing, will we continue to insist on a go-it-alone, winnertake-all mentality, wherein every congregation works independently of every other in a drive to declare victory based on who is the last one standing?
Or might we, just perhaps, be willing to imagine new constellations of priorities?
… to recognize a new way of looking at the challenges before us…?
… to re-cognize a new way of organizing our thinking…?
Perhaps conceiving of an altogether novel means of defining Jewish community and providing for Jewish communal needs… and for that which our families and our children and our children’s children so richly deserve.
I’d like to share with you a famous story from the Talmud, wherein Moses, who lived in pre-history, is afforded the privilege of visiting a “contemporary” second century classroom in which Rabbi Akiva is teaching.
In the Rabbis’ telling of this tale, Moses sits in the back of the room and listens quietly to a discussion between teacher and student on an otherwise arcane legal matter, with which Moses is unfamiliar; the Rabbis depict Moses as perplexed by what he is hearing. Whereupon the student boldly insists that his teacher account for where he learned such and such a teaching. To this query, Akiva replies simply, “I know it from a tradition that was given to Moses at Mount Sinai.” At which point, the student is reassured and Moses’ concerns are placated.
The thrust of this story is that there is an interpretive tradition that, according to the Rabbis, is as much a part of the Mosaic revelation on Sinai as was the Torah itself. But the story also comes to teach us that in each generation will there be innovations that are unfamiliar to earlier generations; yet insofar as we strive to honor what has come before, even as we may go in a new direction forward, we are securely in the tradition of Moses and in the company of Rabbi Akiva.
Where, then, to begin reforming ourselves and the Jewish community?
We begin by appreciating & honoring what has come before; by acknowledging what has worked and what we want to be certain to maintain and continue.
But in much the same way as we must step outside of ourselves if we are to see ourselves in new ways, so can we not respond most effectively to new challenges we face collectively if we are aware only of ourselves and if are working only with images of one another best relied upon in years gone by.
And so let us speak of what works best at Temple Sinai and at Tree of Life. And let us celebrate what is special at Beth Shalom and what it is that works well in the South Hills and in our northern and eastern suburbs. And, too, let us ante up about what we do best here at Fifth and Morewood. But let us not be satisfied with patting one another on the back; and let us not be self-serving in our praise.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, perhaps the twentieth century’s greatest Jewish philosopher and theologian, put it thusly, “Should we refuse to be on speaking terms with one another and hope for each other’s failure? Or should we pray for each other’s health and help one another in preserving our respective legacies, in preserving our common legacy?” Then in answer to his own question, Heschel responds, “[Our] world is too small for anything but mutual care & deep respect; [and our] world is too great for anything but [our assuming] responsibility for one another.”
Every Jewish congregation was founded for the same reason: to provide for and to encourage Jewish life experiences and a transcendent connection with the eternal; to create meaningful Jewish experiences and provide education to our children; to facilitate joining together on Shabbat, in celebration of simchas, and in support of one another in times of sorrow; and as we age, to ensure that we have a means of lending one another bonds of affirmation, connection and love.
But none of our congregations were established to sustain themselves; therefore, surely we ought not mistake the labels on the facades of our buildings – nor the loyalty we feel in each of our various houses of worship or for particular rabbis or programs – with what every one of us – what every Jew in every sanctuary in this city hopes to rediscover on this sacred night.
After all, tonight is a night for revealing secrets and it is a night for confronting truths, such that for our efforts to reform ourselves and our community, we might yet bring an enlightened vision and true hope into our lives this day… and in this new year… and beyond.
Rabbi David Stern of Temple Emanuel in Dallas honors the memory of his father, Rabbi Jack Stern, of blessed memory, who passed away just this past April, with the following recollection:
“The year before he retired, my father gave one sermon each month on a topic about which he had changed his mind since his earlier years as a rabbi.
“He began each sermon with a quote from an earlier sermon given years or even decades before, and then he discussed why he had changed his position…
“It was a beautiful, whimsical, public modeling of the idea that we only grow when we recognize that we don’t get it right all the time.”
“I think of it as the joy of rereading a favorite book or play or poem,” Rabbi Stern continues, “As sure as you were that you ‘got it’ [at an earlier age], now you see new possibilities and meanings in the same texts, the same situations. If you are stuck in your own certitude, [however,] those new discoveries are impossible.” iv
The Talmud teaches, “we do not see the world as it is, we see the world as we are.” And that’s a challenge, for seeing ourselves in a new way is never easy.
After all, we are invested in the way things are in our lives – as well as within our community – because at an earlier time these commitments made sense.
But today…? In some cases yes, but in other cases, decidedly, no.
Surely, for each of us, as was the case with Rabbi Stern, of blessed memory, were we given the opportunity to hit rewind, surely there are experiences in our own lives, which we would do differently now than we did then.
And as go individuals, so too with communities.
Clearly, were we to start anew and rebuild this community from the ground-up, we would never organize in the patterns we find today.
At this perilous time in our history – when so much is changing so quickly…
And on this sacred day – when so much hangs in the balance…
Let us acknowledge that we simply cannot afford to continue blindly doing what we have always done. Neither in our personal lives can we move forward with our eyes fixed on the rearview, nor either when it comes to our communal life.
Yom Kippur is about the possibility of change. Specifically, this day is about putting aside our ego and pride, looking past what we wish were true but is not, and focusing instead on what we can accomplish for ourselves and in concert with one another so that we might actually see our world in a new way; so that we might actually move in the world in a new way; so that we might actually be the change we want to see in the world we imagine.
This is the sacred power of this day: the chance to be different … the opportunity to change or to reform ourselves – as individuals, members of families and larger circles of community, and as true citizens of the world – so that we all may know the privilege of being more of who-we-were-created-to-be, more of who-we-areintended- to-be, more of who-we-may-yet-become.
As individuals and as family members and as friends, to be sure.
But, so too, as members of a Jewish community committed to reforming ourselves -- and the way we organize and define ourselves – for the sake of bringing hope into our world this day.
Because, Lord knows, the secret is that we are members of this community …and we have come together on this Kol Nidre Eve precisely because we believe that reforming ourselves, remaking how we understood ourselves yesterday into the ideal we hold out for ourselves tomorrow…
This is our most pressing task … and so is this our very best hope for this day!
Barukhim Chachamim HaRazim.
Blessed, Blessed, Blessed are those who Understand this Secret.
i The Healer of Shattered Hearts: A Jewish View of God, 1991, Rabbi David Wolpe, Page 18.
ii “Authority in Contemporary Times” by Rabbi Sharon Brous (with David Ellenson), Sh’ma: A Journal of Jewish Responsibility, September 2010.
iii Rabbi Richard Jacobs’ Remarks to URJ Board of Trustess Upon his Election as President, June 17, 2011.
iv “We should all be ‘beginners’ this year,” by Rabbi David Stern, The Window, bulletin of Temple Emanuel Dallas, September 2011.
Note: This sermon (in abridged form) was also delivered on Yom Kippur morning.
