The Eternal Relevance of Purim

Wake Up, Mr. West

In the fall of my sophomore year of college, a really big concert by one of my favorite musicians was scheduled to come to campus. For weeks, there were posters all over the restaurants and bars, advertisements in the student newspaper, and a giant banner hanging in the quad building excitement about the concert. Everybody was talking about it. When tickets went on sale, they sold out in less than an hour. And luckily, among the people who were able to get a ticket was my sister’s best friend – and she asked me if I wanted to go.

The only little problem was that the concert was scheduled at the end of Yom Kippur, immediately after break-fast. Nevertheless, I really wanted to go: so when Yom Kippur services on campus came to an end, I quickly grabbed only the smallest bite to eat at the break-fast (a slice of challah and a sip of water), and made my way over to the basketball arena to go to the concert.

And in case you haven’t guessed it, the artist who was performing that night – the artist who, for the entire fall semester, had been all anyone could talk about, who I loved so much that I was ready to go to the concert while essentially still fasting, who had banners hung in his name all over the campus – was none other than Kanye West.

Over the past several weeks, Kanye – who now goes by the stage-name Ye – has once again been all that anyone can talk about, and has even had banners hung in his name. But this time, the banners are not because he’s playing a sold-out concert at the University of Florida. Rather, this time it is because Kanye has landed in the news for repeated public antisemitic statements and other hateful rhetoric.

For those who may not have followed these headlines, allow me to recount some of the contours of this news story.

Unfortunately, Kanye West has a proven track record of using hateful rhetoric – and not only against Jewish people. At a Paris fashion show a few weeks ago, he wore a jacket that he had designed bearing the phrase “White Lives Matter” – a phrase that, at the very least, is highly provocative, and at the very most, as the Anti Defamation League labels it, is an expression of white nationalism. Also this month, Kanye went on prominent podcast and made the false claim that George Floyd – whose death a jury found to have been a murder – had died not at the hands of the police, but rather, had died because of a drug overdose.

Over the past few weeks, Kanye has fanned the flames not just of racial hatred, but also of antisemitism. It began during a recent interview with Tucker Carlson of Fox News. Their conversation touched on the Abraham Accords, the historic agreement that normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. When Carlson asked Kanye what he thought of the Accords (an odd question to ask someone who is not an expert in geo-politics), Kanye said: “I think [Jared Kushner] was just out to make money.” (A leaked version of the full, unedited interview shows that Kanye made other, even more incendiary antisemitic comments, which were ultimately edited out of the final broadcast.)

A few days later, Kanye posted screenshots from his cell phone, evidently of a text message exchange he had had with another hip-hop star, Sean Combs. In the thread, Kanye writes to Combs: I’m going to “use you as an example to show the Jewish people that told you to call me that no one can threaten or influence me” – harkening to the antisemitic trope that Jews work through secret-back channels or in some unseen global network to wield hidden influence over the world.

When Kanye posted this text message exchange on social media, it was deleted for having violated Instagram’s content policies. Kanye then took to Twitter, where he criticized Mark Zuckerberg. Kanye wrote: “Who do you think invented cancel culture?” – presumably implying that Mark Zuckerberg and other Jews like him control the media, and are able to censor anyone who doesn’t fit with our supposed agenda.

Soon thereafter, the whole incident culminated when Kanye again took to Twitter, where he declared to his 31 million Twitter followers that he was going to “go death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.” He continued by implying that today’s Jews are interlopers who, thousands of years ago, stole the label of “Jewish” from people of color, who are the true Jews. The rant concluded with Kanye writing that the Jews “​have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes [their] agenda.”

Troubling stuff.

This flurry of antisemitic activity quickly created waves. Kanye was soon dropped by several of the big-name brands that are his sponsors; the private K-12 school that he founded closed its doors “effective immediately;” and many celebrities who had formerly been Kanye’s associates quickly condemned his words and actions.

Unfortunately, Kanye’s actions created not only waves of condemnation, but also, waves of support. Two such instances stand out to me, although it is not entirely clear which of these is more troubling: the group that hung a giant banner over a Los Angeles freeway (like the banners that hung on my college campus advertising Kanye’s concert), but on this banner it said, “Kanye is right about the Jews,” and supporters stood by the sign making Nazi salutes at the cars that drove underneath.

Or, perhaps this is worse offense: a tweet published by the official account of the Republicans who sit on the House Judiciary Committee (a tweet that, admittedly, was published before Kanye’s antisemitic rants, but after he wore the White Lives Matter jacket – and, in any case, still hasn’t been taken down). The tweet reads: “Kanye. Elon. Trump” – linking the three controversial figures, and seemingly praising them as iconoclasts and heroes of free speech who will speak the truth, no matter the consequences.

Troubling stuff.

On two different occasions this past week, Cantor Robin, our religious school director (Laurence Holzman), and I discussed these news stories with the teenagers in our congregation. The conversations were broad and wide-ranging, approaching the story from a number of different angles. Many of these angles I have heard echoed in the wider public discourse.

There’s the question of free-speech: whether a social media platform like Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter has the responsibility to delete potentially hateful rhetoric from its site, or whether doing so violates the digital user’s right to freedom of expression. It is worth noting that earlier this month, Kanye announced that he would be buying the social media platform Parler – a site whose motto is: “Parler is where free speech thrives,” and is known for having minimal content moderation. Perhaps most famously, it was on Parler that much of the January 6 insurrection was planned.

Another popular angle from which to approach the Kanye story is the question of mental health. Kanye has been public about the fact that he suffers from bipolar disorder – which, as he describes it, causes him to sometimes feel paranoid. Given the wide range of bombastic and sometimes confusing statements that Kanye has recently made, should we perhaps take a broader view of his mental stability, and have compassion on a person who seems to be struggling? And yet, in the same breath, we might ask: does our compassion for his mental state give Kanye a pass to say anything that crosses into his mind, without concern for consequence, without considering his enormous popular influence? Kanye himself says that it would be “dismissive” to assume that all of his provocative statements are merely a sign of mental unhealth – that, to some extent, he does mean the things that he says: that, even if he shouldn’t be taken literally, then at the very least, he should be taken seriously.

There is also the question of how we should engage with artists when we like their art but do not like their behavior. I loved Kanye when I was in college. I went to his concert on Yom Kippur after only barely breaking the fast. I can easily name seven of his albums. Is it kosher, so to speak, in the light of his most recent comments, for someone like me to still stream his music on Spotify – where, even if I’m not directly paying for his music, I am nevertheless increasing his listenership and further contributing to his popularity? What if I have a CD of his? (Which, by the way, I don’t; I don’t even own a CD player any more.) Is it kosher to listen to a Kanye CD in the privacy of my own home, where I am increasing neither his financial success nor his public popularity – or do I need to boycott his music completely?

These questions – on free-speech, on mental health, and on artists and their behavior – swirl around this story. In the news media, these seem to be the common themes that have been repeatedly lifted up.

But of course, there’s another important angle as well – one that hasn’t gotten quite as much attention: one that we discussed with our teens this week, and one that I’d urge all of us to grow more attuned to. We asked our teens: what exactly is it that makes Kanye’s comments about the Jewish people not just mean-spirited or ill-informed, but rather, specifically antisemitic? Put differently: what exactly is antisemitism? Are we able to describe what anti-Semitism looks like – so that when it happens, we can easily recognize it and call it out? In some cases (although clearly not in this one) a person might unknowingly traffic in dangerous antisemitic tropes. Can we help others to understand what antisemitism looks like – so that hopefully we can defuse the harm before it happens the next time?

Kanye’s three comments – that the Abraham Accords were just about Jared Kushner making money, that the Jewish people were pressuring Sean Combs through some secret back-channels, and that Mark Zuckerberg and the Jews created control the media and created cancel culture – illustrate precisely how antisemitism works. Antisemitism is unlike many forms of bigotry and hatred. Other forms of bigotry seek to suppress the hated group: to make us think that the hated group is subhuman, that they are less than us, that they are morally repugnant, hopeless bottom-feeders. Antisemitism does the exact opposite. It causes people to imagine not that Jews are a lower class, but rather, are somehow a superclass – that we’re the the one-percent, the evil forces at the top of banking, government, and the media, the puppet-masters fiendishly controlling the unwitting masses down below.

This is part of what makes anti-Semitism so hard to spot – why certain comments that are so obviously offensive to us Jews are sometimes overlooked by others who don’t recognize the hurt that has been done. It is because anti-Semitism functions in a different way from many other forms of bigotry. It is, we might say, a mirror image of other forms of bigotry: two sides of the same coin, that often work in tandem. One form of hatred reinforces the other.

While it is certainly important to discuss the many different angles of the Kanye story – free-speech, mental health, artists and their behavior – it is imperative that our focus on these issues not overshadow the antisemitic content at the core of this story. Antisemitism can be hard to spot. It is easy enough to recognize it when it escalates into a celebrity threatening to go "death con 3" on Jewish people, or escalates into group of people giving the Nazi salute over a highway in Los Angeles. But in order to prevent those kinds of actions – and, God forbid, much worse – we need to be able to describe, recognize, and prevent the subtler forms of antisemitism that are a mere slippery slope away from those more egregious demonstrations.

When the public discourse about Kanye focuses only on free-speech, or mental health, or artists and their behavior, we Jews have the responsibility point out what antisemitism looks like, and why it is a pattern that is sometimes all too easily overlooked. 

The Kanye concert that I went to during my sophomore year of college was part of a tour that he was doing, after he had released his second studio album. I have listened to that album more times than I can count. The very first song on the album opens by imagining a young Kanye West in school. He has fallen asleep in class, and is snoring as the teacher drones on. The teacher, recognizing Kanye’s drooping head at the back of the classroom, comes over to his desk and jolts him from his sleep – shouting, in the album’s memorable first lyrics: “Wake up, Mr. West!”

Today, we might say those very same words to him – and indeed, to ourselves, and to our entire society. If we are to root out hatred from our society, then we had better be able to describe what hatred looks like, even in its most subtle forms. The stakes are too high to be sleeping in class. It is time – as Kanye himself said on that memorable album – for all of us to wake up.

A Tale of Two Prophets

A teacher of mine used to say: Poetry is the art of leaning two words against each other, and then listening in on their conversation. I love this description. And I think it accurately describes the power of poetry. A classic example comes from Homer, who frequently uses the phrase “the wine-dark sea.” Listen to the conversation between those words: we may not have thought of it before, but the sea is indeed as dark as wine – and also is as tempting and as dangerous.

On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we have the opportunity to lean not two words against each other, but rather, two characters from the Hebrew Bible – two characters whose stories are, in many ways, remarkably similar, and in other ways, wildly different. The two characters that we might compare are: on the one hand, Abraham, in the story where he argue with God over the fate of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah – and, on the other hand, Jonah, the protagonist of this afternoon’s haftarah reading, whom we might reasonably call the anti-hero of Yom Kippur.

In both stories, God approaches a Hebrew prophet in order to inform him of God’s plans to destroy a wicked city in which the prophet does not live. For Abraham, although he knows only one person in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah – his estranged nephew, Lot – he nevertheless argues with God over the fate of his neighbors. Jonah, by contrast, seemingly could not care less about the strangers in distant Nineveh. His philosophy seems to be: not my town, not my problem.

But the contrasts do not end here. The two prophets also each have their own theory of justice. When Abraham hears of God’s plan, he asks God to reconsider – arguing that even if there are as few as ten innocent people in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, God should not follow through with the punishment. Notice that Abraham does not ask God to save the ten innocent people, and meanwhile let all of the rest of the cities’ inhabitants die – but rather to save the entire population on account of the ten innocent people. Abraham seems to believe that righteousness is contagious – that even as few as ten good people can help to restore all of their fellow citizens to goodness.

While Abraham believes that human beings can always improve, Jonah, by contrast, believes that all human errors should be swiftly and thoroughly punished. When the people of Nineveh do at last change their evil ways, and God decides not to destroy the city, it aggrieves Jonah greatly. He complains to God, saying that he knew that God would relent – that this was why Jonah had initially been so reluctant to take up his task. He seems to believe that if punishments are not consistently and predictably enforced, that human beings will have no compelling reason to do the right thing in the first place. We might say that Abraham believes in restorative justice and rehabilitation, while Jonah believes in punitive justice, a platform of law and order.

There are many other striking differences between these two Hebrew prophets – but I will conclude by sharing just one. In the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, it is Abraham who rebukes God, saying: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth act justly?” – while in the story of Nineveh, it is God who rebukes Jonah, saying: “You cared about the plant, which you did not work for. … Should I not care about Nineveh?”

This Yom Kippur, let us hope to be more like Abraham, and less like Jonah – concerned for our neighbors, even when we do not share their fate; believing that righteousness is contagious, that human beings can grow and change; among those who choose to rebuke the world, rather than those whom the world must rebuke.

Let us not be like Jonah, fleeing from his task, asleep in the belly of a cargo ship – as, meanwhile, the seas rage all around us. And as this holiday of Yom Kippur comes to an end, and we hear the final blast of the shofar, may we hear in that sound of the ram’s horn the words of the ship’s captain as he awakens Jonah from his slumber: “How can you be sleeping so soundly? Arise!”

The sea is raging. And only we can make it stop.

A Family Portrait

This Yom Kippur morning, I want to tell you about a recent family photograph that we took – or rather, I should say, a recent family photograph that we wanted to take, but it never wound up happening.

It was this past summer, while my family and I were on vacation at the beach. We had spent the past three days building sandcastles, riding boogie boards in the waves, drinking frozen lemonade in the sun, and making s’mores at night. Every day had been a delight. Now, it was the last morning of vacation – and while we were enjoying our final hours on the beach, we wanted to take a family picture, to help capture all of the happy memories.

And this was the moment that things began to unravel. Our kids – exhausted after four long and hot days in the sun, and three nights of staying up way past their usual bedtime – were simply too tired, too sandy, and too salty to cooperate. They told us that they did not want to take a picture. But the more that they refused, the more that I insisted – until, at last, what had begun as an enjoyable final morning on the beach quickly escalated into an all out argument, and the photo never happened.

We likely all have had an experience like this, in which we felt completely exasperated by someone that we love – whether that person was your child or your parent.

Our Jewish tradition has always been finely attuned to the friction that can arise in the parent-child relationship. The Book of Genesis is filled with agonizing stories in which parents and children butt heads with one another. We should consider these stories to be one of our tradition’s many merits – reflecting back to us, in an exaggerated way, the types of parent-child conflicts that we know to be possible in our own lives.

But among all of these stories, perhaps none of them better captures the friction of the parent-child relationship than the life of our founding patriarch: Avraham Avinu – Father Abraham. Abraham is not just the father of the family tree. It seems, rather, that fatherhood is one of his defining characteristics. His Hebrew name, Av-raham, can be translated to mean “excellent parent.”[1] As is the case with our own parents, we never have the chance to see him as a kid; Abraham first appears in the Jewish people’s story already as a fully formed adult. 

If there ever was a parent who had conflicts with his children, Abraham is it. His older son, Ishamel, he banished; and as we read last week on Rosh Hashanah, his younger son, Isaac, he nearly killed.

Now, it is Yom Kippur – ten days after the unhappy events that we read about on Rosh Hashanah. His wife, Sarah, has now died – and Ishmael is long since gone. Now it is only Abraham and Isaac: father and son, who have always butted heads, who have always driven each other a little bit crazy – for the rest of their lives, together and alone.

On Yom Kippur, we might wonder: how are things going for Abraham and Isaac? How are father and son getting along, in this complex relationship that – like so many of our relationships – is founded on love, and yet, so often full of discord and strife? And most importantly, we might wonder: can this holiday of Yom Kippur help to repair what has been broken between them?

***

Ever since Isaac was small, Abraham never quite knew how to relate to him. Could this kid really be the child of the great Abraham? Abraham, who heeded the call to adventure, and left behind the country of his birth in order to Lech Lecha – to go – to the land that God would show him; Abraham, who battled with kings and received gifts from pharaohs; Abraham, who took God to task over the fate of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah; Abraham, who established ethical monotheism, whose insistence upon impeccable moral standards was matched only by his insistence that there is just one true God of the universe.

And then, there’s his son Isaac – shy, timid Isaac. He is seemingly always forlorn. He spends his days indoors, sulking in the darkened tent of his late mother, Sarah. On the rare occasion that he does go outside, it is not to go off on great adventures, as his father once did, but rather, to wander aimlessly in the field, quietly muttering to himself. His horizons are limited; of all the matriarchs and patriarchs, he is the only one who will never journey outside the Land of Canaan. He lacks all initiative, unable even to find a wife for himself; his father will need to do that for him. Abraham looks at Isaac and feels a pang of disappointment. How can this possibly be the child that he and Sarah had wanted for so long?

Perhaps some of us may have had parents who were like this – parents who put their painfully high expectations on us: parents who, nearly from the moment we were born, were grooming us for greatness, who expected that our homework would always be done and our grades would always be perfect; parents who expected that we would always be on our best behavior, who expected that our beds would always be made and that we would never track dirt into the house; parents who did not understand us, who looked at us and did not see who we were, but rather, only who they wanted us to be.

For those of us who are parents: even if we do not carry these kinds of exceedingly high expectations for our kids, we nevertheless all have certain hopes and wishes which, wittingly or not, we place upon our children. We want them to be happy, to have friends, to do well in school, to find hobbies that they enjoy, to find work that they love, to be able to provide for themselves, to find a partner who brings out the best in them, to become well-adjusted, thriving adults.

It pains us when these things do not happen for them. We do not want to see our kids having trouble making friends, struggling with perfectionism, forming relationships that are unhealthy, or worse, wrestling with substance abuse or addiction – even though we know that we cannot protect them entirely, even though we know that, regardless of our efforts, some of these things will indeed happen to them.

But here is the even more painful part. Deep down, we might recognize that not only can we not protect our kids – in fact, in many ways, the exact opposite is true. Some of the character traits and bad habits that we do not want for our children will befall them not despite us, but rather, because of us.

If I am being entirely honest about that day at the beach, the reason why the family photo never wound up happening is not only because my kids were being stubborn – but rather, because I know someone else who is also deeply stubborn; someone who, on far more significant occasions than a day at the beach, has refused to participate in a family photo; someone who, many more times than once, ruined the last day of a family vacation with his irritability, so that the parting memory of any particular trip became not the joy that had been shared, but rather, the trip’s tumultuous ending. And of course, that person is me.

Deep down, Abraham has a similar realization. He knows that when he looks at Isaac, he feels disappointed not only in his son, but also, in himself. Why is Isaac so timid? Because you, Abraham, scarred him for life when you nearly sacrificed him. Why does he never leave the Land of Canaan? Because you, Abraham, were always gone – always off on some grand adventure, crisscrossing the ancient near east: seemingly everywhere except for at home. Why does he lack all initiative? Because you, Abraham, were so certain of your God and your ethics that you left no room for him to make any decisions for himself. If Abraham is being honest, he knows, deep down, that – although his name, Av-raham, means “excellent parent” – he has been everything except for that.

This is a painful recognition. Our kids will get bruised by life, and we will have been part of the problem. For some of us, our children will inherit our shortcomings: we were anxious, so they became anxious. For others, our children’s shortcomings will develop in reaction to our own: we were hyper-responsible, so they rebelled and became irresponsible.

When we see these traits and habits in our kids, we are subconsciously reminded of the worst in ourselves. They got that behavior from us, just as we got it from our parent, who, in turn, got it from their parent – creating a hall of mirrors in which our disapproval and self-criticism are reflected back and forth endlessly between the generations. 

This is precisely what happens for Abraham. He sees Isaac’s shortcomings and is reminded of his own. A feeling of dread courses through him – more intense than anything he has ever felt while standing in the presence of kings or of God. A prophetic vision opens up before him, and in his mind’s eye he is able to gaze into the future, to look upon the generations, where he sees that, like him, his son Isaac will someday scar his children; that, like him, his grandson Jacob will someday scar his children; that, like him, even King David, more than a dozen generations hence, will someday scar his children; that Abraham’s legacy will be not only the establishment of ethical monotheism, but equally, the establishment of a sprawling and quarrelous extended family in which there will forever be conflicts between parents and children – and seated at the top of that enormous family tree will be him: Avraham Avinu, our Father. Abraham.

***

On Yom Kippur, we are called to take an honest look at ourselves. When Abraham does so, he knows that he has not lived up to his name. He has not been an Av-raham, an “excellent parent.” 

But thankfully for us, Abraham is not the only model of a parent that we find in our Jewish tradition. Especially on these High Holy Days, we draw our inspiration not from Father Abraham, but rather, from a different kind of parent – not from the flawed human parent with whom we might be able to identify, but rather, from a lofty example of a parent, towards which we might aspire. On these High Holy Days, we seek to emulate not Avraham Avinu, but rather, Avinu SheBaShamayim, our heavenly parent – or, as the name might be more familiar to us, the Avinu of Avinu Malkeinu: the ideal of a loving parent that we associate with God.

To help us understand what Yom Kippur is all about, we might imagine an encounter between these two parental figures – a meeting between Abraham, the flawed, human parent, and God, the idealized, loving parent.

***

Many years have passed since the last time that God and Abraham met. Abraham’s son Isaac is now fully grown, and has become a father himself. But seeing Isaac as a father has not brought Abraham joy. Rather, seeing Isaac now pass on to his children the very same shortcomings that Abraham once passed on to Isaac has only reignited his feelings of disapproval and self-criticism.

God sees Abraham’s anguish – and decides, one Yom Kippur morning, to go and pay Abraham a visit. God arrives at the encounter carrying a very large book. Embossed on the cover in gold letters is the book’s title, “The Book of Memories,” a book that Abraham has heard of, but has never actually seen before – the book that is described in our U-n’taneh Tokef prayer, where it says: v’tizkor kol hanishkachot, v’tiftach et seifer hazichronot, u-mei-eilav yikarei – “You, O God, remember all that we have forgotten. When you open the Book of Memories, it speaks for itself.”

God opens the cover and shows the book to Abraham. The pages are filled with family photographs.

Immediately, as if by reflex, Abraham breaks into a sweat. He knows where this is going. First, God flips to the photos of Isaac: a photo of him sulking in his mother’s darkened tent; a photo of him wandering aimlessly in the field, quietly muttering to himself; photo after photo where the backdrop is always the same, the Land of Canaan that Isaac was never brave enough to leave. Then, God flips to the photos of Abraham: a photo of him almost sacrificing his son on Mount Moriah; a photo of him lecturing his son about the certainty of ethics and of God; side-by-side photos where Abraham is off in far-away places, and meanwhile, his tent at home is empty.

Abraham begins to feel that terrible sensation of dread – the endless hall of mirrors filled with disapproval and self-criticism.

But then, God flips to another page, with different photos on it, photos that Abraham has never seen before: a photo of Isaac in his mother’s tent – not sulking in the dark, but rather, happily reading by the glow of candlelight, traveling in his imagination to worlds far beyond the places that Abraham has ever visited; a photo of Isaac wandering in the field – not aimless and quietly muttering, but rather, deep in meditation, entranced by nature, filled with wonder and delight by every glorious blade of grass; a photo of Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac on the day that Isaac was born, enormous smiles on both parents’ faces, at last holding the child that they had hoped for all those years, a day of immense joy – a reminder of why they gave him the Hebrew name Yitzchak, a name that means “laughter.”

Opening the Book of Memories, Abraham begins to see Isaac in the way that God sees Isaac: not his disappointment of a son, a reminder of all his own shortcomings – but rather, a beautiful human being, a quiet and gentle soul, his own person.

On Yom Kippur, we are called to see the people in our lives the way that God sees them – not just our kids, but equally, our parents, our siblings, our partner, and all of the other people that we are hardest on. This does not mean ignoring all of the ways in which we find them to be difficult. Rather it means trying to see them more fully: seeing not only their challenging behaviors, but also, all of the good that is in them; seeing not only their flaws, but also, having compassion for all of the ways in which they are bruised and vulnerable; seeing not only the moments in which they drove us crazy, but also, all of the moments in which they were thriving and at their best. The Book of Memories contains them all.

This is what we mean when we call God Avinu: that we human beings are flawed, and make mistakes, and disappoint one another, and regularly fail to live up to our potential – but nevertheless, regardless of whether our human parents recognized it or not, we Jews affirm that there is good in every single person.

If Abraham can begin to see the good in Isaac, not only will he help his son to thrive, but also, he will free himself from the endless cycle of disapproval and self-criticism – and at last become the Av-raham, the “excellent parent,” that he always wanted to be. And if we can begin to see the people in our lives in the way that God sees them, then we will also begin to see ourselves in the way that God sees us: good, and flawed, and beautiful.

***

On Yom Kippur, we are called to take an honest look at ourselves, to open the Book of Memories – a photo album in which every moment of our lives is recorded and forever sealed behind the plastic laminate sleeves of time. And of course, we will see there all of the moments that we are least proud of, all of the photos that we wish we had not taken: our arguments, our stubbornness – and recognize in these shortcomings a family resemblance that runs across the generations.

But this is not all that we will see there. Yom Kippur is not a day for relentlessly beating ourselves up over all the things that we have done wrong. It is, rather, a day for transforming ourselves, a day for opening the Book of Memories and recalling all that we have forgotten – a day to be reminded of all of the good that is in us, and is in every single person.

When we open the Book of Memories, we will find there photos beyond number: photos of us, photos of our parents and of our children, photos of our ancestors both mythic and real, photos of the entire human family – a scrapbook overflowing with portraits of each and every human life. And if we are looking carefully, we will begin to recognize among the pages and pages of photos a certain family resemblance that is shared among us all: that each of us is good, and flawed, and human. And that will be a family portrait that is worth keeping.

__________

[1] Traditionally, Avraham is taken to mean “father of a multitude.” However, his original name is Avram – which can be broken into two parts: av (“father/parent”), and ram (which can be translated as “esteemed”).

Kafka’s Binding of Isaac

Of all the Jewish people’s many stories, perhaps none has more captured the world’s imagination than this morning’s Torah reading: the story of the Binding of Isaac.

We likely are familiar with the narrative. God instructs Abraham to take his son Isaac to Mount Moriah, where he is to offer the boy up as a sacrifice. Abraham dutifully follows God’s command – and it is only at the very last moment that an angel of God intervenes, and instructs Abraham not to lay his hand upon the child.

For the past 2500 years or more during which this story has been told and retold, it has captured the imagination of countless philosophers, poets, artists, and scholars. For the ancient Rabbis, it became a story about the courage of Isaac – who, like themselves under the shadow of the Roman Empire, was willing to give his life as a martyr for the sake of his faith. For the early Church Fathers, it became a story that foretold the life of Jesus – where, according to their belief system, once again a father would be willing to part with his beloved son. For the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, it became a story about the terror that Israeli parents face as they send their children off to the army – aware that they may sending them to their deaths. For the contemporary Bible scholar Phyllis Trible, the story is a warning about the dangers of biblical patriarchy – where the victim is not only Isaac, but also his mother, Sarah, who watches from the margins as the horrifying scene unfolds, silenced and powerless.

But among all these and many other stirring interpretations, a particularly striking take on the Binding of Isaac comes to us from Franz Kafka – who was, of course, himself Jewish.

Kafka’s version of the narrative comes to us in the form of a short story called “The Judgment.” According to his diary, Kafka wrote the story in a single night – in one fitful sitting at his desk. The date of composition: September 23, 1912 – which, that year, was the night of Kol Nidre. We can almost imagine Kafka hearing the Binding of Isaac chanted aloud in synagogue on Rosh Hashanah morning the previous week, the terrible themes brewing inside of him over the course of the next ten days – until, on the night of Kol Nidre, his version of the story came boiling forth, unable any longer to be contained.

Like many things Kafka, the story is highly surreal. But also like many things Kafka, the story probes something deep about the human condition.

Kafka’s version of the story is told from the perspective of Isaac – who, in Kafka’s retelling, is cast as a young man named Georg. All his life, we are told, Georg had been a shy and meek person, lacking in all confidence. It is only recently, now that he has reached young adulthood, that Georg has started to come into his own – at last finding success in the family business, and becoming engaged to a young woman in town. One morning, feeling pleased about his new-found good fortune, Georg goes to visit his father. But immediately upon entering the old man’s darkened room, Georg’s confidence disappears. His father berates him – accusing him in a thundering voice of stealing money from the family business, of having not properly mourned his late mother, of slowly poisoning the father to death. And in the story’s climactic ending, Georg’s father proclaims that the punishment for these crimes shall be death by drowning. In Kafka’s surreal style, a violent wind stirs the room – which sweeps Georg out the door, across the street, to the town bridge, and over the railing, where he plummets to a watery death.

Through Kafka’s pen, the Binding of Isaac becomes a story about the existential conflict that arises between one generation and the next. At first, a child is dependent on its parents – as Georg had been for most of his life. Eventually, the child’s confidence grows – until, at last, like Georg, the child finds success both in business and in love. But at the very same moment that the child is becoming independent, the parent, by contrast, is aging and growing frail. The child, it seems, no longer needs the parent. The next generation replaces the previous one. And in Kafka’s retelling, the parent’s twisted defense is to kill off the child – as Abraham nearly does to Isaac.

In Kafka’s fever dream, we recognize the mortal angst of living and dying. We know that time only moves in one direction. We fear that those who come after us will soon forget us after we are gone – that the entirety of our existence will be silenced by oblivion.

This fear, our Torah reading reminds us, is a very real part of the human condition. But it is not the only part. Because although in Kafka’s story, the father does kill his child, our Torah story ends differently. “Do not lay your hand upon the child,” an angel of God cries out to Abraham.

As we read the Binding of Isaac, we acknowledge the angst of being mortal – but we also affirm the goodness of lives yet to come. Isaac has not come to replace his father. Rather, he has come, in part, so that through him, Abraham and Sarah might continue to live.

Our Crisis of Community

Like all the most important innovations in Jewish life, Rosh Hashanah was born of a crisis.

Here is how things unfolded. Our ancestors did not always celebrate our New Year in the fall. If we look in the Torah, we will find that the Israelites originally observed the New Year in the spring – seemingly a more obvious time to mark the beginning of the year, as the days grow longer and warmer, and the world seems full of potential. For the first 500 years of Jewish history, that was the structure of our calendar.

But then, a crisis occured. The Babylonian Empire conquered the Kingdom of Judea, and the leaders of our people were taken captive to far away Babylon. And by the time they were allowed to return home again three generations later, they had adopted many elements of the Babylonian culture in which they had been living – bringing back with them to the Land of Israel the Babylonian language, Babylonian names for their children, and also, the Babylonian custom of celebrating the New Year in the fall. Rosh Hashanah as we know it was born.

Like our ancestors, we too have just experienced a crisis – the global crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic. And while it is not yet fully over, many commentators have noted that, at least here in the United States, we seem to have reached a new stage of the pandemic. Last month, the CDC published a statement saying that the virus is “here to stay.” Accordingly, they also issued a new set of guidelines intended to widen our public health objectives – so that we are no longer focused only on minimizing the spread of the disease, but rather, are now focused also on how we as a society can learn to live with the disease.

Like our ancestors who returned home from captivity in Babylon, we, it seems, have now hopefully made it through the worst parts of this crisis. And just as they returned home with some of their cultural customs changed – most notably, moving the New Year to the fall – we too must now take stock of all the ways in which the pandemic has changed our world, so that we can begin the critical work of recovery.

One important piece of that project will be working together to recover from our crisis of community. Since the pandemic began, many of us have spent less time meeting up with friends at the local coffee shop, less time catching up with a neighbor at the oneg, less time getting to know the parents of the other kids with whom our children are in school. As a result, our communities have suffered widespread isolation and loneliness, a hidden pandemic of anxiety and depression, increased incidents of substance abuse and self-harm, and extreme political polarization. Before the pandemic, we depended on our communal spaces for our collective wellbeing: to help bring us joy, to help kids and adults alike make friends who feel like family, to help support us through tough times, to help us recognize that ours is not the only family where sometimes there is tension.

For the past two-and-a-half years, these critical social interactions have largely disappeared. If we are to help our society build back some of what we have lost, then now more than ever, we need to be in community.

Towards that end, synagogues, in particular, will have an important role to play. Among all the many types of communities that we might be a part of – say, for example, the PTA, or a hiking club, or a book group – the synagogue community has one thing that makes us unique. In a synagogue, we understand that community is not just good for us. Rather, here we believe that community is sacred.

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For us Jews, community has always been at the center of who we are and what we do. Consider, for example, how we American Jews sometimes have trouble describing our Jewish identity. We say things like: “I feel really Jewish, but I am not at all religious,” or, “For me, it’s not about the religion, it’s just about the traditions and the values” – though we often struggle to articulate precisely what we mean by the distinction. Or, consider the statistics from the Pew Research Center, showing that one in four American Jews identify as “Jews of no religion” – a description that, when applied to any other religious group, would seem to be a contradiction in terms.

To help us make sense of this confusion, we might look to the 20th century Jewish thinker Mordecai Kaplan. Kaplan was himself a student of the French thinker Émile Durkeim, the founder of the modern field of sociology. Durkheim demonstrated that religions don’t come from the top down, but rather, they form from the bottom up. In contrast to the traditional view of religion – where a divine being reveals a set of beliefs and practices to a prophet, who, in turn, articulates them to the people – Durkheim showed that, in fact, the exact opposite is true: that religions begin with the people. A group of individuals unites around a set of shared experiences, which develops into a set of shared hopes, fears, and aspirations, which, in turn, are expressed through the structures of organized religion.

Building on Durkheim, Kaplan made the case that Judaism is, first and foremost, a communal identity. Kaplan’s most famous book is called Judaism as a Civilization. In it, he argued that Judaism is much more than just a religion – but rather, as the title suggests, is a multifaceted civilization: the sum total of our languages, our literature, our history, our connection to specific places, our recipes, our humor, our social mores, our ethical principles, our taboos, our art, our calendar. Within this composite, certain elements express our most cherished ideals. We call these our “religion.” It is an extension of who we are, an outgrowth of the Jewish people.

We can find this idea expressed in our Torah narrative. The Exodus story, our foundational myth, begins not with a set of religious principles, but rather, with a group of people. At the beginning of the story, the Israelites are nothing more than a sprawling extended family – with a shared ancestor, a shared language, and the shared experience of enslavement. It is not until much later in the story, when they reach Mount Sinai, that they develop any sort of spiritual insight. Before they become a religion, they are first a community.

But why, we might ask ourselves, do we believe that community is sacred? When we can find community in the PTA or in a hiking club, what is it that makes the synagogue unique?

To help us answer this question, we might look to the contemporary German philosopher Byung-Chul Han. Han asks us to consider the process by which a flower blooms. It begins with a seed, which sprouts into roots, grows a stem, forms into a bud, until, at long last, the bud bursts forth into petals – at which point, we tend to say that the flower has fully blossomed. But even then, Han argues, the flower is not yet complete. There are aspects of the flower that are not fully realized until the flower is brought into relationship with something else. Can a flower see its own color? Can a flower smell its own fragrance? A flower is not fully complete, Han argues, until it is beheld by an Other.

So often, we go through our lives like a flower that has not been seen. If we are lucky, we have, on occasion, experienced moments in which we felt deeply seen: by a friend who listened, by a mentor who brought out the best in us, by a partner who loved us even with our faults, by a sibling who understood us deeply on account of knowing the long arc of our life’s story.

The 20th century Jewish thinker Martin Buber wrote about encounters such as these. Buber argued that when a person is fully seen, three things are momentarily transformed: the person who has been seen is transformed, on account of their beauty having been realized; the person who is seeing is transformed, for having experienced so rich an encounter; and as a result, for both people, the world is transformed, because they recognize that all things contain the potential for beauty. Or, as Buber would put it: when a person is fully seen, God is made present.

This idea, too, is expressed in our Torah narrative. When the Israelites finally do reach Mount Sinai – the moment in which they at last become a sacred community – their transformation occurs not because God reveals to them some set of dogmatic principles, not because God legislates for them some set of arcane rituals, but rather, because they and God enter into a relationship. God appears to the Israelites, and addresses them by name. God decides to enter their camp, to dwell among them, to travel with them wherever they will go – a relational partner, who sees and understands them deeply.

It is only when we are seen and understood that we can become fully human. This is why we Jews believe that community is sacred.

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In order to help our society recover from the pandemic, we will need synagogues to remind us of this important principle. What should a synagogue do in order to fulfill this unique role? What would a congregation look like if we were to channel all our resources towards building sacred community?

It would mean, as is already the case here at Temple Beth Shalom, supporting a culture in which each person feels comfortable to come as you are – where we can bring our fullest, most authentic selves, where we can show up not only with our joys, but also with our doubts, our worries, our life challenges, and know that still we will be embraced, that our whole self is welcome here.

It would mean congregants showing up for other congregants at every stage of the life-cycle – delivering a home-cooked meal to a family that has just welcomed a new baby, cleaning up the dishes at the end of the shiva visiting hours, bringing those little battery-operated Shabbat candles to a fellow congregant who is in the hospital, making a tzedakah donation in honor of the recent Bat Mitzvah celebrant.

It would mean investing in reusable name tags for every congregant, to be worn at every synagogue gathering – because no one knows everybody; because everybody, on occasion, forgets a person’s name; and because every single person deserves to be known.

It would mean fewer lectures by guest speakers, and instead, more small group conversations – fewer gatherings with rows of chairs, and instead, more gatherings in one another’s living rooms.

It would mean, like we do here, that in our religious school, the first thing that our students learn is one another’s names – that our educators recognize that just as important as the curriculum is the person who is learning it.

It would mean building a culture where those of us who are parents don’t just drop our kids off at the synagogue, but rather, have our own compelling reason to want to come inside: to catch up with friends over bagels and coffee, for a conversation about parenting or about current events, and maybe even for our own Jewish learning.

It would mean that we can talk about hard things, that we are committed to staying in relationship with one another even when we disagree about a political or a social issue, that we can learn to listen to each other.

It would mean that we are not siloed by age cohort – but rather, like we do here, that our teenagers help to teach our children, that our seniors read stories to the kids in our pre-school, that, outside of our family, the synagogue can be the one place in our life where we have relationships with people who are not in our own life-stage.

It would mean that each person’s gifts and passions are a critical part of our recipe for success: that, as has long been the case in this community, artists in the congregation have their work displayed in the synagogue; that writers deliver remarks on Shabbat and holidays; that congregants with interesting ideas to share and interesting stories to tell lead the conversation at Torah Study; that whether your professional background is in finance or in interior design, we need your expertise; that if you have ever lived in Israel or if your family survived the Holocaust, we need to hear your story; that if you know how chant Torah or know how to blow the shofar, or even if you don’t but would like to learn how to do so, we need you on our bimah – because each of us is needed to make our community strong, because there is no Temple Beth Shalom apart from what each and every single one of us contributes to the life of our congregation. 

Building upon our strong history, we can do all of these things and more. Not all at once, not without hard work – and most importantly, not without each other. It is for this reason that we are launching two new committees this year: a Caring Committee, in which congregants will provide care for other congregants at all stages of the life-cycle, and a Family Engagement Committee, who will work towards strengthening a culture of belonging among families with school-aged children Please watch your email or reach out to our office for more information about how to get involved in either of these two efforts – and stay tuned, in the years to come, as we continue to build other initiatives aimed at strengthening our sacred community.

The American Revolutionary Patrick Henry famously said: “Give me liberty, or give me death.” And although his zeal for liberty helped pave the way for our democracy, it also had an unintended negative consequence. Ours is a country that hallows a person’s independence above all else – believing that we can go it alone, that we do not need anybody else.

But Judaism has long been a force for counterculture. Long before Patrick Henry spoke those familiar words, the Rabbis of the Talmud had their own memorable phrase about the topic. They wrote: o chavruta, o mituta – “Give me community, or give me death.”

Now, perhaps more than ever, we need to be the collective embodiment of that countercultural message. We need to remind the world that community is not just good for us; it is sacred. And it is how we will recover.

A Blessing for the Westchester Reform Temple Community

We've just offered our Mi SheBeirach prayer for healing. But in fact, there are many different kinds of Mi SheBeirach prayers. Mi SheBeirach is a type of prayer, which requests a blessing for the person on whose behalf it is said. Most famously, there is the Mi SheBeirach prayer for a person who is sick -- but there also is a Mi SheBeirach for someone who's just had an aliyah to the Torah, a Mi SheBeirach for a wedding couple before they enter the chuppah, and also, there is a Mi SheBeirach prayer for a synagogue community, asking for blessing for congregation. And it is this final kind of Mi SheBeirach which we'd like to offer now.

Would the congregation please rise.

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Mi she-beirach avoteinu v’imoteinu -- Avraham, Yitzchak, v’Yaakov, Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel, v’Leah -- Hu yivareich et ha-kahal ha-kodesh ha-zeh. 

 

May the One who blessed our ancestors -- Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah -- bless this sacred congregation of Westchester Reform Temple. 

God -- our ancestors had an insight, a glimmer of spiritual wisdom, which they passed down to their children, and their children’s children -- an insight which has, in turn, been passed down to us. Our ancestors taught: “Place these words which God has commanded you this day upon your heart. Teach them faithfully to your children. Inscribe them on the doorposts of our house, and on your gates.” 

God -- our ancestors recognized the sacred power of the doorpost: a place that is neither inside nor outside, a place that is in between, a place on the cusp -- the place of transition. Our Eternal God -- this holy congregation of Westchester Reform Temple stands now at the doorpost, in a moment of transition. Some of us are going out. Others among us are coming in. Still others, the majority, are not going any place in particular. But nevertheless, all of us -- whether we are in motion or standing still -- this entire community is in a moment of transition. 

A moment of transition can bring with it conflicting emotions. It is at once both a beginning and an ending. It is at once both exciting and unsettling. It is at once both full of new possibilities, and also, is full of loss.

Our ancestors recognized that in a moment such as this, when our hearts are pulled in so many different directions, we need something to ground us. And so, our ancestors instructed us to mount a mezuzah on every doorpost -- a powerful reminder of their belief that You, our loving God, go with us through all our moments of transition.

And so, we pray: mi shebeirach avoteinu v’imoteinu -- may the One who blessed our ancestors with wisdom go with us through this hour of change. Help us, our Eternal God, to navigate the complexities of transition. Help us make our goodbyes sincere and heartfelt. Help us open our arms and our hearts widely, to embrace all the unknowns that await us, full of potential. Help us to carry with us always the experiences we have shared -- the times we have celebrated together, mourned together, prayed together, learned together, witnessed together our children’s growth and change, recognized together the changes we’ve discovered in ourselves. Our God, in this moment of transition, help us feel Your loving presence, a presence that accompanies us everywhere -- and in so doing, help us hold fast to our belief that life, that greatest of all transitions, is worthwhile and beautiful.

Standing in this doorway, may we gently lift our hand up to our lips, softly place a kiss upon our finger, and with the wisdom of our ancestors, lovingly reach out and touch the doorframe -- that we may approach this hour of change full of sweetness, affection, and love.

Our God, help us make it so. And together, let us all say: Amen.