High Holy Day Sermons
Ohavi Zedek Synagogue
Rabbi Joshua Chasan
5768 / 2007

Erev Rosh Hashanah

Good yontov. Shanah tovah u'm'tukah, a good and sweet year for you and your loved ones. How wonderful to be in this revitalized space! Tomorrow morning we will say a berakhah upon reaching this occasion. Tonight, let's just delight in our ability to meet the challenge to give new life to this sanctuary, the social hall and other parts of our physical space.

This year, for the first time in many years, this building passes its annual physical exam on these special days. Let's celebrate our commitment of funds and energy, reflecting a renewed self respect as Jews. It feels good to be here. The lighting is good. We have air conditioning if we need it.

Now, beginning with these two days of Rosh Hashanah, and and going through to Yom Kippur, we are called once again to reinvest ourselves spiritually. Now we are here for the spiritual examination.

The depth of the spiritual examination is up to each one of us. How seriously we respect the spiritual dimension of our existence is up to us. Sometimes we forget. Just as the stars in the sky are always there, whether we see them at night or don't see them during the day, the spiritual dimension of our existence is always present, available to be felt by us, if we allow ourselves to feel it.

The Hasidic teacher, Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Kotzk-the Kotzker rebbe-was known to say: "Where is God? Wherever we allow God in." So too with our capacity to experience the spiritual, to experience the vulnerability that is a gift to us in being human. Spiritually speaking, vulnerability is good.

Oh, for sure, and I will touch on this again in a little while, while we are vulnerable spirituality, we must be vigilant emotionally and capable of protecting ourselves physically. This is worthwhile saying. Yet we cannot be physically strong without being spiritually sound. Some say this was a factor in the Lebanon War a year ago. Israeli society was not spiritually sound. We must be spiritually vigilant as well as physically.

We need to shine within and without; not with the immodesty of pride, but with the delight of being members of the people of Israel, Jews wherever we live. I hope these ten days of repentance, these aseret yamai t'shuvah, provide you with many hours of fruitful soul searching. I look forward to our emerging into the joy of Sukkot with strong conviction and good ideas about how to live in a harsh world by making it kinder through the struggle for justice and peace.

Shanah tovah, good yontov.

Torah reading on the first day of Rosh Hashanah

The Torah reading for the first day of Rosh Hashanah describes Isaac's birth, circumcision, and weaning; and then the banishment of Isaac's older brother Ishmael and his mother, Sarah's maid-servant Hagar. Then goes on to tell the story of the covenant between Avraham, Avimelekh and his army chief.

We have an interesting classical midrash about the verse that says God heeded the cry of Ishmail ba'asher hu sham, where he is. Rabbi Shimon explains it his way: "Up in Heaven, the ministering angels were arguing with God. They wanted to indict Yishmail. "Ribono shel Olam, Master of the Universe," they said to God, "are you going to allow a well of water to spring up to quench the thirst of this Ishmael whose people [the Arabs] one day will slay your people, the Jewish people?"

And God responded: "What is Ishmael now?"

The angels said: "He is righteous now."

God said: "I judge people only as they are at the moment."

Explained Rabbi Shimon: "That is why Scripture says that God heeded the cry of the boy where he is.

Where are we? When it comes to our enemies in the Middle East and elsewhere, those who would undermine the security of the independent Jewish sovereignty of the State of Israel? How do we respond to them?

Without vengeance, God is saying. With a clear mind and a good heart. By not becoming our own enemies by the way we preach, the way we dump our anger rather than processing it. Before we judge anyone, we are to reckon with who we are ourselves.

Introduction to the story of Hannah's anguish and then her prayer of gratitude,
First day of Rosh Hashanah

We can say about Chanah, when she was in anguish and when her prayer was fulfilled and she was filled with gratitude-we can say about Chanah that she was very comfortable in the skin of being an Israelite. Indeed, from her grief to her gratitude, each year she walks the walk of Israel-as the Haggadah of Pesah teaches, from humiliation of slavery to the joy of freedom.

Chanah was comfortable in her Jewish skin. In English her name would be Grace. She was spectacularly gracious.

I want to suggest a way to think about what happened at the South End Art Hop this past Shabbat morning. The Art Hop showcased a painting by Paul Schumann, whom many of us have known as a decent, gifted man with prophetic courage.

Somehow-let us say somehow (without judging intent, which always is perilous)-somehow Peter Schumann visited Palestine for nine days or so, carrying with him John Hersey's novel about the Warsaw Ghetto, called The Wall. The artist read The Wall in Palestine and identified the viciousness and terror of the Nazis with Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.

The result of this identification is a dramatic mural which incorporates the words of John Hersey about the Warsaw Ghetto-for example, "we were surrounded by blood and the smell of burning flesh." In addition, there is a narrative by the artist at the bottom of the mural.

When I was in the presence of this piece of work, I felt unsafe. Indeed, I'm told that the tenor of the presentation was very intense. Michael Schaal of our congregation spoke wisely, acknowledging the gifts of Peter Schumann, and trying to help him understand why his mural is so hurtful to us.

It is hurtful to us because it accuses the State of Israel, the lifeboat into which we fled in the late forties, of being illegitimate. If you act like Nazis, you need to be resisted. There is already great resistance to the existence of the State of Israel in the Arab world and in a variety of European circles.

The historian Deborah Lipstadt calls the identification of Israel with Nazism "soft core Holocaust denial." Rather than deny the Holocaust outright, soft core denial equates Israel's politics with those of the Third Reich. The effect is not to promote peace but to question the continued existence of the Jewish State of Israel in the historic homeland of the Jewish people. Such hatred perpetuates the tragedy of Israel and Palestine.

Hatred of Jews is not unknown in our neck of the woods. It's not too many years ago-let's face it-there are people sitting in this room who depended upon the courage of Jewish schoolmates to defend them against abuse, physical and psychological. It was no accident that folks in this Jewish community helped to provide support during Israel's War of Independence. Again in 1967.

But something has happened to us Jews. We have grown less comfortable in our Jewish skins. Imagine the anguish of Chanah and, still, her turning to God to ask for help. Imagine her joy when her precious God of Israel delivered her of her despair.

I studied Peter Schumann's mural and tried hard to understand creatively what he was saying. As a Jew, I related to the universality of his rage about injustice. The Warsaw Ghetto has a sacred place in Jewish imagination.

But studying this mural, I was unable to feel the pain of the Palestinians which Peter Schumann witnessed in Palestine (I have witnessed it in Palestine). Why couldn't I feel the pain? Because I experienced an animus in the mural-it is not for me to judge whether this animus is conscious or unconscious. It doesn't matter. The animus in this painting is real, and it is an animus towards Jews. It is based on the lie that the State of Israel is intent on genocide.

I read the story of Chanah's grief turned to gratitude to heal from experiencing such animus with the blessings of a local art and business association. I hear the story of Chanah's grief turned to gratitude to keep me from responding to such animus with my own. There is no way that animosity is gracious. I hear this story to remind me that we Jews have a responsibility to continue to seek ways for a just peace. The search for a just peace begins with our being comfortable enough in our own Jewish skin to respect ourselves enough to stand up and be counted when hatred of Jews comes to town.

First Rosh Hashanah Morning

Good yontov. Shanah tovah u'm'tukah, a good and sweet year for each of us.

Hinei mah tov u'mah nai'im, how good and pleasant it is, shevat achim gam yachad, for us sisters and brothers, to be together in this renewed space.

So much commitment, we acknowledge. So much follow-through. I know that our president, Basha Brody, will reflect on these historic changes-the first time since this building was constructed in 1952 that the members of this congregation have invested in a big way in the physical renewal of Ohavi Zedek Synagogue.

Please join me at this time in the b'rakhah through which we thank God for keeping us alive, sustaining us, and allowing us to reach this occasion. I would ask you please to rise if you are able.

Barukh atah adonai, elohaynu melekh ha'olam, shehekhiyanu, v'keeyamnu, v'higiyanu lazman hazeh. Amen.

[Please be seated.]

I call your attention to a description of all the work we already have done on this building and grounds. Please take a look at our priorities for the near term. Phase II is beginning now. We want everybody at Ohavi Zedek to participate in this project, at whatever level of support is appropriate. Torah teaches us that it is important for each of us to give. Please read the communication from the Capital Campaign Committee that can be found on tables at our main entrance and our newly restored north entrance. We still have a ways to go. My parents taught me early on that it is important to follow through; to honor what we have done by doing all that we can do to build on.

As Rabbi Tarfon teaches us, thousands of years after he actually lived, "The day is short and there is much work to be done. The laborers are sluggish, the reward is great, and the Master is insistent. You are not obliged to complete the task, but neither are you free to desist from it."

Each generation has its challenge. This morning, let us celebrate what we already have done. Let us celebrate by asking ourselves: How did we do it? Remember how it was just a few years ago. How did we grow out of being a congregation so divided that being here felt like being out in the oh-so-unpleasant larger world?

First of all, we did it by the gift of God--the gift God gave us by keeping us alive, sustaining us, and allowing us to reach this occasion.

Secondly, we reached this occasion by learning to listen to each other in ways that allow us to realize how much we have in common-how much we have in common as Jews, as Americans, as human beings. We reached this occasion by lowering our voices enough to hear what others say.

In a book she calls Strength To Your Sword Arm, Brenda Ueland makes a point about how we listen. She distinguishes between critical listening and creative listening. Critical listeners are so tight in their intent to react to what they hear that they put the other person "in a strait jacket of hesitancy. . . Critical listeners," Brenda Ueland writes-"critical listeners dry you up."

Creative listeners, on the other hand-creative listeners seek to hear all of you. They "want you to be recklessly yourself, even at your very worst, even vituperative, bad-tempered. . . For true listeners know that if you are bad-tempered it does not mean that you are always so. They don't love you just when you are nice; they love all of you."

Creative listening-these are Brenda Ueland's words-is the kind of listening that liberates the "little creative fountain inside us that begins to spring and cast up new thoughts and [even] unexpected laughter and wisdom." When someone listens to us creatively, we feel "affirmed and willing to commit." And when we are willing and able to commit, we become capable of acting creatively, as we did in revitalizing this building.

Creative listening is the opposite of preaching. I can't talk and listen to you at the same time. The fact is that most of us much prefer those who walk the walk to those who only talk the talk. My father, at the age of ninety-nine, suffering both dementia and the loss of mobility and the ability to sit without pain-my father now teaches me to listen creatively.

I stand here this year in the shadow of my father's very slow dying. My father always distrusted preachers. A student of America, early on, in the twenties and thirties, my father was wary of hucksters of any kind. When I began talking about God in the years before rabbinical school, my father didn't want to hear it. "At best you're asking me to believe something that I want to believe but can't. At worst you're insisting that I embrace your way of talking about love, a way I have no interest in. Show me the love instead."

Almost forty years later, my father sits in a chair in his living room of the past fifty-eight years. He no longer sits in "his chair," which was replaced a few years ago to accommodate the effort required by him and whoever is helping him to rise or be seated. His body is stiff; the pain of any movement is unrelenting.

He seems at ease only in an on-going conversation with Sam, who I believe was a close friend of his from dental school days in the early thirties. Day or night, you can hear only my father's side of the dialogue, yet my father listens carefully and patiently to his friend. It would appear that his friend listens creatively too. If you know my father, you can catch a glimpse of the poetry of his soul.

He no longer asks the same few questions over and over: How many members in the synagogue? Is everybody getting along? Do your kids play ball? He rarely speaks, except when complaining about pain and when talking with his friend in an undertone.

I wonder: what does his mind hold any longer? Does he know who he is? He seems to be so much himself and so far gone at the same time. How do we creatively listen to Willie Chasan?

The question was raised for me by Rabbi Jan Goldstein, Michael and Ethel Goldstein's brother. In his recently published novel, The Prince of Nantucket, Jan writes about a parent suffering with dementia as she is dying.

"She wanted to die. . . . But the woman couldn't be thinking right. Hell, she could barely think at all, could she? . . . And yet, as he gazed down at her, it struck him that even in her unsettled state, his mother was somehow clinging to an anchor of certainty-her indestructible sense of identity. . . . [O]ne thing seemed absolutely clear-Alzheimer's and all, [she] knew who she was."

About five years ago, the last time my father left New York City for a family gathering on Thanksgiving Day, in the car on the way home, he said something to me with an edge of nastiness not characteristic of my father. Hearing his own nastiness, he told me that he felt something was changing for him. A lot has changed since then, but, to paraphrase Jan Goldstein, one thing is clear: the dementia and all, my father knows who he is.

The Mishnah is the first Jewish legal code after the Torah itself. It was published around 200 ce. Like modern psychologists, the Mishnah describes stages of life. For reaching 100 years old, the Mishnah says, "At one hundred, it is as if one had already died and passed from the world." In the 19th century, Rabbi Israel Lipshutz interpreted this teaching that "at one hundred it is as if one had already died and passed from the world." At one hundred, "He has merited that his soul be attached to the upper spheres, this world and its appetites having been erased, as if he had already passed on from it."

A member of our synagogue, Dr. George Saiger, writes that "moderns also understand the harsh idea of being "as if" already dead." George, who is a psychiatrist, goes on: "My own clinical notes contain this vignette:

Lena was not 100 years old, indeed she was only in her early 80's, when Alzheimer's Disease robbed her of her ability to care for herself. She was furious with her children for moving her from her apartment to an assisted care facility, but truth be told, she adjusted well, participating in a variety of activities there and always signing up for outings when they are offered. One Thanksgiving, her daughter, the very person who had seemed to be such a villain when she forced her mother's move, took her to a restaurant which had been a long-time favorite. After the holiday meal, Lena said to her, 'That was a lovely dinner, dear. You know, I used to come here often when I was alive."

We often wonder what physical gift or present we can give our elders for a birthday or Chanukah. We can listen creatively to them. Listening creatively, we can give the openness of our hearts; our willingness to feel the contingency and vulnerability about life.

For whatever our ages, each of us shares with the very old, as with those brought close to death by illness--we share the experience of not knowing when we will die.

In Pirkei Avot, one of the most beloved books by our sages for countless generations, we learn that Rabbi Eliezer (1st and 2nd centuries) said: "Let your fellow person's honor be as dear to you as your own, and do not be quick-tempered, and repent one day before you die." Rabbenu Yonah (13th century Spain), no doubt relying on Rashi and Maimonides, comments on "repent one day before you die": "Does one really know the day of his death so that he may repent one day before? Therefore, let him consider each day as his last one and every day he will repent." Shabbat 153a

Our commitment to the physical restoration of this building speaks of our commitment to each other-our commitment to each other as Jews and as human beings. We are an aging congregation. Imagine how our synagogue will shine if we can match our continued effort to restore the physical Ohavi Zedek with a growing commitment to listen creatively to each other, especially to our brothers and sisters who feel the nearness of death.

Increasing numbers of us are over sixty. More and more of us are living into the eighties and nineties, God willing, in health. Unfortunately, a staggering percentage of us are suffering from life threatening diseases such as cancer before turning fifty or sixty.

As we celebrate the renewed attractiveness of our sanctuary and social hall, let us dedicate ourselves to listening creatively to the ones who lead and teach us in their contemplation of dying and death. They tend not to shout for attention, yet all of us who drive can imagine how isolating it would be not to have car in Vermont, or not to be able to drive. How wearying is a week dominated by appointments with physicians; or not getting out at all.

Outside this sanctuary, in the lounge, are maps created by members of the Archives Committee and the Interfaith Social Action Committee. On the world map, we can see the diversity of our ancestry. On the Vermont map, we can see where we live now.

Looking back, we can celebrate the diversity of our personal histories. Looking forward, we can take note of where we all live. We are, at once, an urban, suburban and rural congregation. We are concentrated in areas and we are scattered about. Wherever we are, many of us would love for the opportunity for creative listening. I commend to your attention the hand-out beside the map of Vermont in the Lounge. And don't forget the report on our ongoing efforts to revitalize this building. There's a lot going on at Ohavi Zedek these days.

We are called by our being Jews to continue to raise the standard of our communal identity. The more we interact, the stronger we are as a community. More and more, we have to find our way to each other's front doors. Call first, to be sure.

Indeed, call first. Take the initiative. Don't stand on ceremony. Help build this synagogue as the center of our lives as Jews; a place to share the wisdom of the ages as we continue to grow in our understanding of Judaism as our way to be decent human beings in a very troubled world.

We can do better. A good year for us all.

Second Day of Rosh Hashanah 5768

Good yontov. I trust this new year has begun well for you. I am delighted that you have chosen to accept the counsel of our sages to experience the prayers of Rosh Hashanah on both the first and second days of the year. As I suggested yesterday, our sages teach us to condition ourselves to experience each day of our lives as potentially our last hours. No time better than these days. There are reasons why our sages call Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur yamim nora'im, days of awe. These hours are a gift from God.

This is the time for us Jews to be asking the big questions. Are my relationships with other people in good order? Is my conscience bothering me? Am I generous of spirit or a bit miserly? Am I all right with God?

Am I turning towards God, doing t'shuvah? Am I listening creatively to others? Am I listening creatively to my heart's deepest strivings? When we are listening creatively, we are able to raise questions out of our own depths, questions which don't often enough come to mind.

For example, what does the world mean to me? What does the world expect of me? Am I in touch with the conditions of the world in which I live? If the world seems harsh, am I prepared to try to soften the harshness? Can I see myself as a healing presence? Am I prepared to share?

For harsh the world is, and even harsher may be the world that we bequeath to our children and grandchildren. Can we turn things around? Don't we have to turn things around, for we are living on borrowed time. Our damage to the environment is relatively close to placing life itself on the endangered species list.

Not only that. Our country is spending money as if we already are convinced that there will be no tomorrow. We are mindlessly trading in the rightful inheritance of our children and grandchildren. In exchange, we were given a war, not against our real enemies, but a war that creates new enemies.

As we have heard the names and seen the photographs of our young people, killed and maimed in this war, we have stood by; just as we passively have accepted a transfer of wealth upward that very well may exceed the greed of the late 19th century. The faux glory of empire does not give us access to healthcare or lift the poor out of poverty. On the contrary, in ways that have benefited many of us in this room today and hurt a number of others, the rich are richer and the poor are poorer.

For us Jews, we are bequeathing a world to our children and grandchildren in which, for the first time since before 1948, within living memory of the Holocaust, the threat of the murder of millions of Jews living in Israel is as close as you believe the government of Iran is to producing a nuclear weapon. We know that they have delivery systems. They have told us their intentions. And this comes at a time when people in Europe and Muslim countries are indulging in hatred of Israel-not only the State of Israel but the essential Israel, the people of Israel wherever we live. Both as Americans and as Jews, we are living in a time of great insecurity.

The message to us of many of our leaders is for us to think about "pay back," revenge. How do we hear such a message at this time of our being called to do t'shuvah? On these Days of Awe, God willing, can we recognize that vengeance is the opposite of t'shuvah? T'shuvah literally means a turning, a turning away from any hint of a desire for revenge. The very opposite, t'shuvah is a processing of our hurt, a getting beneath our hurt to find the ways that we can be kinder and more just to ourselves and to each other. Rather than "payback," with t'shuvah there is pay forward--"paying it forward," as the saying goes, taking personal risks to create change.

It's hard to take risks when feeling insecure. Lately we are feeling ground down, even besieged. When we manage to take the risks, we are careful, sharply aware of a governmental and corporate world that knows more and more about our private lives and seeks greater and greater control.

There is a chill in the air. If, instead of a terror index of colors, we had an index of the colors of the security of our freedom, I'd say that there would be a red light blinking furiously right before us. Beware, around us stalks the ghost of tyranny.

It appears that the hope that is essential both to Judaism and American democracy is running down. Many American Jews no longer recognize the identity of American and Israeli democracy, the extent to which the partnership between Israel and the United State is essentially, more than a mutual defense agreement, a covenant, a coming together of Israelis and Americans around a defense of freedom. Talk of Israelis as Nazis leaks into American life, and the courage of American Jews to be lovers of freedom is challenged. Like other Americans, in the present, we are afraid of the future. The hope that is essential both to Judaism and American democracy is running down.

Rather than paying it forward, rather than creating effective ways to make our world more just and peaceful, we pay our taxes and, like that proverbial frog placed in cold water then brought to a boil, we gradually lose the consciousness of citizens living freely in a democracy.

What does it say of us that our own children and grandchildren will inherit an economy willing to sacrifice their right to social and economic security? What does it say of us that we are only slowly waking up to a world in which the old hatred of Jews is no longer constrained by memories of Auschwitz? On the contrary, pictures of Auschwitz are used to defame us.

My God, how do we do t'shuvah over all of this? It seems so big and beyond our control,
so far away, even as some of it is directed at us. Really, what does anyone expect us to do about it?

In the film Pay It Forward, a boy named Trevor accepts the challenge of his middle school social studies teacher to come up with an idea that will change the world, and then to implement it. The boy takes his teacher seriously and, without consulting his single parent mother, invites into his suburban home a homeless drug addict named Jerry.

Trevor's plan to play it forward is for each of us to help three people in a big way. Give them something that they cannot get themselves. He gives Jerry food, shelter in the garage. Then he helps to get him up on his feet. Jerry gets a job.

Paying it forward is hard. Sometimes it doesn't work. At the end of the film, Trevor is killed by another student when he tries to pay it forward for a student being bullied. Paying it forward requires of us risks that are physical, financial, and spiritual.

Here and now, on this second day of our year, the risks for us are spiritual. To be sure, spiritual is connected with physical and financial. If we are to leave our children and grandchildren a more just and peaceful world than the one we live in, we have to take the time to go within and risk an honest reckoning of the way we are living our lives. We need to remember that now we live on borrowed time in a world which accepts greed as the arbiter of its relationships.

We are given these aseret yamai t'shuvah, these ten days of repentance-we are given these special days to reclaim an inner peace which the contemporary world constantly challenges. We can grow quiet enough to listen creatively to the promptings of our soul. We can reflect on cruelty and suffering which need not continue. We can admit our complicity by recognizing our passivity as by-standers to evil. Bystanding, witnessing hatred and violence in silence is what Elie Wiesel calls the opposite of love.

These hours of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are moments with revolutionary potential. Getting in touch with ourselves on these Days of Awe is a precious gift we are given in being Jews. This gift, through the ages, has enabled us often to stand up and pay it forward. Through these Days of Awe, we receive the strength to bear witness to the truth of the condition of every human being as we see it on the television news.

How do we fulfill the revolutionary promise of these days? The same way Jews have responded through millennia. We question whether the end justifies the means. We challenge the idolatries of our age: the materialism, the greed, the sexual compulsion, and violence that beget hatred and which hatred begets.

How can we respond, as Jews, as Americans, as human beings, to the contemporary situation? We have differing political views here at Ohavi Zedek Synagogue, but I think it's fair to say that our response transcends partisan politics. We all want humanity to step back from the ecological brink. We all want humanity to find peaceful solutions to global conflict. We all know that we are spending our children's and grandchildren's inheritance as citizens of the United States.

We all want humanity to do better. We all want humanity to settle down. We all want humanity to provide homes for every human being. We all want humanity to agree on geographical boundaries. We all want to stop religious and political bigots from murdering those of us who do not share their beliefs or practice their rituals. We Jews want an end to the hatred of Israel. We know this hatred transcends any distinction between the State of Israel and the people of Israel, Jews wherever we live. Viewing Peter Schumann's mural of the Warsaw Ghetto and Palestine, we can feel the animus in our bones.

We are Jews. We have learned to protect ourselves. We must also cling to our being called to change the world by asking the big questions, and having the courage to act upon brave answers.

From the days of our founders who called this congregation Lovers of Justice, through the age of the post-war generation which embraced the vision of Max Wall, of a congregation of men and women sitting together, of Jews unafraid to meet the larger world, Jews who gave Ohavi Zedek the keter, the crown of a good name in Vermont, through today, when the words Ohavi Zedek resonate amongst us and outside in the larger community-when the words Ohavi Zedek resonate with self respect and mutual understanding-we as a congregation continue to rise to the ancient call to ask the big questions and to have the courage to act upon brave answers.

Good yontov. A good year for us all.

Kol Nidrei

Good yontov. This late afternoon, early evening, time and place come together so powerfully. Yom Kippur begins as the light glows outside, and, God willing, light glows within. Or zarua la'tzadik oo'l'yishray layv simchah. Light is sown for the righteous, joy for the upright in heart.

We often think of t'shuvah, repentance, as hard work. Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav understood t'shuvah, repentance, as breaking up the stone of our heart. There were reasons for Rabbi Nahman being called the "tormented master."

T'shuvah does not require such heavy lifting. Our fasting today, sitting in shul for so many hours, may weaken us physically. But doing t'shuvah, the soul-searching and healing required for atonement, is a restorative experience. Twenty-four hours or so from now, as this long day comes to an end tomorrow night, there awaits for us, with God's help, such sense of fulfillment.

We do not have to wait twenty-four hours to begin to appreciate this joy. There is a straight forward teaching in the Mishnah, Israel's first legal code after Torah itself, that suggests there is joy to be experienced on Yom Kippur, the whole day through. The Mishnah is:

"For transgressions between a human being and God, repentance on Yom Kippur brings atonement. For transgressions between one human being and another, Yom Kippur brings no atonement until the injured party is reconciled."

We often understand this mishnah as a warning not to depend upon the merit of the Day of Atonement to help us gain atonement in our relationships. Here I suggest we concentrate on the first part: "For transgressions between a human being and God, repentance on Yom Kippur brings atonement."

What a gift we receive from our tradition: a way of understanding the potential of this day itself. If we meet Yom Kippur half way-if we use these hours to reflect on ways in which we wander from our own better purpose; if we consider how to change and commit to change-then this day itself, being Yom Kippur, carries us along, directs us to the right path.

This power doesn't depend upon whether we quote "believe in God" or not. God knows all of our hearts are essentially the same, "broken." The human heart is broken naturally by the power of the human mind to break things down, leading us to questioning, facing moral choices, doubting.

Setting aside our work today, our computers and televisions, can we grow quiet enough to recognize how natural is our doubt? On this special day, can we recognize how much of a given to humanity is our doubt? As a relatively easy way to atonement (remember the alternative is Rabbi Nahman's breaking of stone), can we today accept our doubt? Can we embrace our doubt by giving ourselves the benefit of it? It's a lot easier to do t'shuvah when we give ourselves the benefit of the doubt.

And I'm here to suggest-talk about chutzpah--that there is nothing more that God wants today than for us to accept and embrace our doubt. How do I know? The Bible tells me so.

Just kidding. I'm no literalist. There is no room for doubt either in a literal interpretation of Scriptures or in an obsessive devotion to rabbinical law.

I am an advocate of doubt. I am learning to be a lover of ambivalence. Our sages say that wounding another with words is akin to an arrow shot that cannot be taken back. No room for doubt.

Think about the bullies you have encountered. They swaggered with certainty, or at least wanted us to believe they were certain. On the contrary, their swaggering barely disguised their doubt. They just did not have the courage to accept and embrace their doubt.

Consider the number of ways, consciously and unconsciously, that we do not give ourselves the benefit of the doubt. Consider how hard on ourselves we are. It transcends politics, class, religion. It is our nature to hear the voice of doubt, run away from it; deny it; try to crush it.

So much abuse in our world, self abuse, abuse of others, physical and emotional abuse is the consequence of our fear of our doubt. Think of all those in the world today, many in positions of political and religious leadership, who run from their doubt, hide behind their professions of certainty.

Many are scared stiff by their doubt. They freeze up into thinking themselves absolutely right. They cannot give themselves the benefit of the doubt because they are afraid of the feelings of vulnerability. God help the rest of us who suffer the consequences of their inability to understand how natural is our ambivalence.

Arrogance is the posture of doubt frozen into certainty. Years ago I read, and for decades I've tried unsuccessfully to recover the source-I once read that, in a moment of vulnerability, Genghis Khan said to his mother, "Mamma, I am sorry and ashamed." A midrash no doubt, but oh, how much better off, more secure we all would be, if our leaders had enough courage to see more than black and white, us and them.

And so little is required of us: only that we develop our capacity to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt. Freedom of thought requires doubt. The wonderful give and take of our Talmud, the epic poem of our people, is a record of questioning and answering and then more questioning. Just as the heavens go on and on forever, so too does our doubt. The genius of humanity is to learn to live with this doubt, this recognition of the contingency of life.

This lesson first struck me about forty years ago when there were six or seven of us in a large kitchen, talking while preparing dinner. One of my friends-let's call him George-one of my friends whose balance was affected by a club foot, fell back slightly and stepped on a paper bag in which was resting a kitten. The kitten was killed.

A pall settled over the house as we tried to comfort George, encouraged him to give himself the benefit of the doubt which he certainly deserved. And we tried to comfort ourselves in the face of a terrible, accidental death.

My friend Suzie Kitagawa-whose parents were incarcerated out west during World War II for being Japanese-Suzie had a deep sense of justice and injustice. Sitting side by side on the upper step of the stairway, she explained to me how much life is a delicate exception to the darkness all about, and that we are to cling always to life in the face of death. Suzie had the courage of the vulnerability of her doubt.

Today we are drowning in a lack of such courage. The consequences are terrible. Within the privacy of our homes (and we Jews are not exempt), the arrogance of doubt frozen into certainty results in domestic violence, mostly men hurting women. On a regular basis, young women with babies come to the synagogue, looking for help to get settled on their own, after being given sanctuary by Women Helping Battered Women.

The arrogance, of doubt frozen into certainty, also sparks the violence of war. Today we abide such unnecessary infliction of pain, so much tearing and burning of human flesh. Unnecessary, because the help of forgiveness is available.

Sometimes we get it right. Sometimes we get it wrong. That's how it is for us humans. That's why forgiveness is so available. We make mistakes and we can be forgiven. Others make mistakes and we can forgive them.

So why is the world still in such tough shape? Help is available, yet, we do not always find it easily. At the beginning of a book called Help, written by a Vermonter, Garret Keizer, there are some lines from Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It.

"Help," he said, "is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly.

"So it is," he said, using an old homiletic transition, "that we can seldom help anybody."

Help is not always easily available, Maclean suggests, because it is so hard both to give part of ourselves to somebody and for that person, who needs it badly, to accept it. The root of this difficulty in helping others and in helping ourselves is what just about every therapist talks about: the need for intimacy, a capacity to remain vulnerable, ways to continue to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt.

The traditional way that we Jews have come to grips with this ambivalence is affirmed in the berakhah that we say after a Torah reading. We say v'chai'yay olam natah bitochaynu, God planted within us eternal life. What does this mean? How does it relate to our recognizing that the beginning of help comes with our giving ourselves the benefit of the doubt.

Eternal life is not physical. We've sent cameras to the outer rungs of the universe and seen no pictures of heaven. Life is essentially spiritual. Yes, our bodies are real. We need to give our bodies the benefit of the doubt. Yet our capacity to do so depends upon our ability to give the spirit which animates our bodies the benefit of the doubt.

This spirit, which we Jews call holy, is imperishable, eternal. This spirit survives our death. This spirit would survive, God forbid, the end of all life. Judaism asks us to accept our doubt, embrace our doubt, so that we can move on to the realization that the spirit animating us is eternal. We are to have the courage to celebrate the contingency of life and all of the doubt and ambivalence which the vulnerability and fragility of life causes us to experience.

We can die at any time. The question is, can we truly live? Perhaps we need a berakhah, thanking God for our doubt.
Good yontov.

Yom Kippur Morning

Good yontov. I hope this day is going well for you so far. It can be a difficult day, and, as I suggested last night, a day on which we can help ourselves by accepting and embracing the ambivalence that is hard wired into us in being human.

This morning I want to respond to a call from Dr. Arnie Eisen, the chancellor of The Jewish Theological Seminary, to speak on yontov about the idea of mitzvah, commandment. Since graduating from the Seminary twenty years ago, I frequently have spoken and written about Judaism's understanding of personal and social responsibility as reflected in the development of the idea of mitzvah.

In Torah, mitzvah is clearly understood as the response of personal conscience. Moses spoke of mitzvah when he bid farewell to the people as they were about to enter the promised land. (Deuternomy 29-30) His words from Torah are read in synagogue on the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah, preparing us for these days of awe.

After suggesting that God would open the hearts of all those assembled, as well as the hearts of their children, Moses sought to reassure the people that being faithful to the covenant between Israel and God would not be a difficult task. Moses said: "For this mitzvah that I have commanded you today, it is not hidden from you, nor is it far off. It is not in the heavens, that you would say, 'Who will go up for us to the heavens and get it for us, that we may hear it and observe it? For the word is very near to you, in your mouth, and in your heart, that you may do it. See, I set before you today, life and good, and death and evil; in that I command you today to love the Eternal One, your God, to walk in God's ways, and to keep God's mitzvoth, God's commandments . . ."

It is true that, through Yiddish, the word mitzvah came to have a folk meaning of "good deed." But in Hebrew Scriptures, as we have seen here in Deuteronomy, mitzvah means divine commandment. This biblical understanding of mitzvah is very different from the ancient rabbis' notion of a set of 613 particular mitzvot which comprised their teaching of halakhah, the Jewish legal system, and continue to be the basis of halakhic thought today,

In Torah times, there was a sense of a personal relationship with God evoked by the word mitzvah. To be sure, the individual Israelite in biblical times was not free, in a twenty-first century sense, of the norms, customs and laws of family and society. The point is that Israel's understanding of mitzvah evolved through the creation of rabbinical Judaism out of the religion of ancient Israel.

We do not call the ancient rabbis "sages" for no reason. They created the new religion of Judaism out of the shell of the ancient religion of Israel. In doing so, the understanding of mitzvah evolved. What began as a personal command, as in God commanding Abram, Moses, Isaiah, or Jeremiah, became in the rabbis' vision of a collection of commandments which they needed to develop out of the old religion. They understood the needs of a people once held together by a centralized rite of the Holy Temple, and now without Jerusalem itself, let alone the Temple; all in ashes.

What remained constant, however, was the understanding that the commanding power of a mitzvah came from God. The difference-a big one-was that the rabbis inserted themselves between God and the Jewish people by constructing a Jewish legal framework that reflected as much their understanding of contemporary need as the original intent of Hebrew Scriptures. An example familiar to many of you is that God never says in Torah that we are to separate meat from dairy. It simply says in Leviticus we are not to boil a kid in its mother's milk. From this short statement, the rabbis created all kinds of mitzvot about kashrut.

Indeed, the rabbinical program of mitzvot defined every aspect of life, sacred and profane. A basic structure of law described how Jews were to live day by day, Shabbat to Shabbat, from the beginning of the year to its end. Included were the rites of synagogue and home, as well as what came to be known as the laws of taharat mishpakhah, the laws of family purity which were designed to regulate sexual relations and relations between men and women in general.

According to the historian Shaye Cohen, it is not clear today the extent to which this whole structure was observed by Jews through the ages. Certainly it was normative up until the beginning of the Enlightenment. From about 1800 onwards, more and more Jews came to ignore it, to the point that today, even long-time professors at The Jewish Theological Seminary, rabbis themselves, have questioned the plausibility of this rabbinic structure.

The ancient rabbis themselves had a saying, "When in doubt, follow the people." And so it is that the Seminary's new chancellor, a sociologist, not a rabbi, dares now to ask us to look honestly at our own understanding of the rabbinical formulation of mitzvot, the commandments.

I've thought a lot about these issues over the past thirty years. When I first entered the world of religious Judaism, I came in through the doors of Orthodoxy. I bought into the appropriateness of the ancient rabbis' redefining a mitzvah from being a direct command from God to being a behavior defined by majority vote of the leading sages. Their midrashim supporting this evolution are beautiful.

Gradually, I began to realize that most of the Jews in the world today no longer consider authentic the authority of the rabbis, ancient or contemporary. The values of the Enlightenment and political democracy run counter to surrendering so much control to a religious elite such as the rabbinate, even one that is a meritocracy rather than hereditary. Most Jews today insist on relating to God or their own conscience in a more direct way.

The challenge now is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just as our sages mined the essence of the old religion of biblical times to create rabbinical Judaism, so today we must be vigilant that we do not lose touch with the source of who we are as Jews, members of the spiritual people of Israel.

For Israel is Israel when its people cherish the responsibility inherent in responding to God's command, however one defines the source of our being Jews. Israel means to struggle with God. To be Israel, Israel must be willing to bear the personal and social responsibility of fulfilling God's command. Abraham and Sarah bore the yoke of mitzvah. Moses and the children of Israel accepted this responsibility. Though often reluctant, the prophets of Israel embraced mitzvah.

The anti-Semitic notion of the controlling Jew is a misrepresentation of the opposite: the call to Israel to abandon itself to service of the spiritual source of its being. The greater our recognition that we are commanded by the source of our being, the more that we care for who we are in being human.

As ever, the vast majority of humanity shares a longing for a healthy sense of responsibility, whether it is understood in religious language of being commanded by God or in secular terms of acting in the world in accord with one's own conscience. Either way, for those who are focused on living righteously without insisting that everyone else live in the same way, the central commandment is to accept and experience ourselves as the persons who each of us is called most deeply to be. One can gauge the measure of one's own integrity by the extent to which one has the courage to recognize being commanded to act in ways that are just, peaceful, pleasing to God.

Millions of Jews now seek an authentic experience of Israel. As hard as we may try to escape the uniqueness of our calling, we cannot uproot our personal sense of experiencing our humanity through the historic traditions of Israel. Knowing ourselves as Jews, we wonder for what we were chosen. Just as the religion of ancient Israel became Judaism when the Second Temple was destroyed, Judaism now needs to open to a transformation that will provide the people of Israel with the spiritual sustenance we now seek.

With all due respect to the wisdom of the rabbinate, past and present, the spiritual tradition of Israel now must become more democratic, honoring the rabbis for their wisdom, but sharing political power equally amongst all Jews. It is past time for the insights of Jewish feminism to shape the mainstream. Feminism's critique of patriarchy extends beyond issues of gender equity to the understanding of power in relationships.

All of Israel must engage in debate about the interface between the democratic spirit and monotheism. Here is an opportunity for Israel to model for humanity an honest encounter with the limits of homo sapiens to control our own destiny. What does it mean to proclaim God's sovereignty, as we do in our liturgy? What are we saying when we say Kaddish?

It is time to think of generating a new "way" for Israel, one as firmly grounded in the ancient rabbis' Judaism as their Judaism was grounded in the ancient religious tradition of biblical Israel. The condition of humanity begs for Israel to come into a new way of living that bears witness to the truth of mitzvah; the idea that a human being's humanness is founded in an abiding and overpowering sense of responsibility, of the sense of being commanded by the ultimate source of justice and peace.

Which brings us back to the end of my words on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. I wouldn't remember them either but I had them on my computer at the tip of my fingers. Some of you have told me that you felt that I raised unpleasant issues and did not provide enough uplift at the end. As I responded to one of you, it was Rosh Hashanah. The uplift comes with Yom Kippur.

Here at Ohavi Zedek Synagogue we are learning to live as Jews who delight in our Judaism. May each of us this year take another look at the ancient concept of responsibility inherent in mitzvah, commandment. I fell in love with mitzvot when I started going to schul morning and night at an old shtible in New Haven. A mitzvah popped out at me, the mitzvah of being a good neighbor by coming to schul to help make a minyan in Connecticut.

My favorite was Yankle. Yankle was his name and true love was his game. Yankle and I sat in back of the large table at the back of a small sanctuary. Occasionally we invited a friend, a woman who grew up in that synagogue, to join us.

I cannot tell you how pious Yankle was in the traditional sense. I'm not in the habit of checking other people's tzitzit or what they have in their shopping carts. I do know that being in schul with Yankle was being together with another soul responding to a commandment, a mitzvah. When our friend Sybil joined us, we were a loving community of three, faithful to the daily rhythm of synagogue life: Shaharit, Minchah and Ma'ariv.

Yankle was all about trust, the trust that was the best stuff of the old East European world of the shtetl. Not to glamorize it. There was nothing glamorous about Yankle, may his memory be for a blessing, and I said this with a lot of love. There was so much trust in the love of that world.

My prayer for the coming year is that, together as a community, we can engage the idea of responsibility-personal and communal responsibility-the traditional idea of mitzvah, commandment. Let's talk about it, share our views, our feelings, our experiences. Let's go into the New Year together as yehudim, Jews who delight in being held to the highest human standards.

Good yontov. A good year for us all.