Well,  we’ve just been through an election….   I know just by my saying that, a bunch of people in this room got nervous about what I might say.  Don’t worry.  I know that we have people who voted both ways here tonight, and in our community, but we also share deep bonds and share fate with one another as a people.   I will say that the recent election shows that we are a very divided nation politically, as we have been now for decades.   Being deeply divided is often part of being a democracy.  I know in Israel, which is also a deeply divided democracy, polls show there is wide consensus on many key issues, a great center, but the political culture makes it seem like there is no common ground because that is how elections are won.

I had another sermon written about particularism and the dangers of universalism, but the more I sat with it, the more if felt to theoretical, to abstract for what we are living through.   So in the coming weeks, I’ll turn that into a blog and send it out. 

Instead, I want to talk about why it seems so hard for so many of us to stand up for ourselves as Jews. 

A Poem We May Dwell Within

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; A time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to seek, and a time to lose; A time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; A time for war, and a time for peace.

Tonight, we gather as Jews have done for millennia as a community to confess our wrongdoings and ask God’s forgiveness. 

But this year, I am finding it hard to ask God’s forgiveness, when part of me feels it is God that should be asking ours.  The covenant that God would protect us, that the sun would not harm us by day nor the moon by night, has been broken so many times, and October 7 is just the latest in a long line of God being Missing in Action.

How many times have Jews come together in the darkness of Kol Nidrei evening  with a sense of worry, of forboding, of wondering just how bad it will get?  Will we be here next year? 

“What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.   (“The End of History?”  The National Interest 16 (1989) Preface)  

That’s what famous American Political Scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote in 1989, without irony.  The idea that the post-war bubble of international order, cooperative science, cultural exchange and liberal democracy was not a bubble, but the new normal.  The world’s worst problems would be solved; progress was inevitable.  War as way to resolve conflict was a thing of the past.

It was a heady time.  The Soviet Union had collapsed under its own weight and Russia was inching toward liberal democracy.   China had liberalized and opened up to the world, and its desire for growth and prosperity would inevitably push it toward capitalism and some form of democracy and individual rights, so the thinking went.

Fukuyama himself admitted that there were two possible threats to this new order:  religion and nationalism, but he quickly asserted that these were minor and easily manageable in the face of the great march of progress. 

Rabbi Menachel Mendel of Kotzk said,

“There is nothing so whole as a broken heart.”

אין יותר שלם מלב שבור

“There is nothing so whole as a broken heart.”

My heart is broken, but I confess it does not feel very whole. 

Does yours?  

No, I feel emptied out and hollow by the year we’ve had since October Seventh.

We have all been holding so much.  

So much fear.

So much hurt.

So much loss.

So much anger.

So much disillusionment.

So much sadness.

We are bereft.

Each year, Jews around the world read the entire Torah section by section, and that means we finish the last book, Deuteronomy at the High Holy Days.   This week, we read the next to the last section, a double portion called Nitzavim-Vayelech.  

This week’s Torah portion has what is among the most important commandments in the entire Torah.   We know that the Torah is deeply concerned with communal stability, good relations, and health.  It deals with real world issues.   There are elaborate lengthy passages describing how to deal with public health outbreaks, and about how people should handle disputes, but this one might contribute more than any of them to the overall wellbeing of the Israelites as they wandered through the desert:

וְיָד֙ תִּהְיֶ֣ה לְךָ֔ מִח֖וּץ לַֽמַּחֲנֶ֑ה וְיָצָ֥אתָ שָּׁ֖מָּה חֽוּץ׃

וְיָתֵ֛ד תִּהְיֶ֥ה לְךָ֖ עַל־אֲזֵנֶ֑ךָ וְהָיָה֙ בְּשִׁבְתְּךָ֣ ח֔וּץ וְחָפַרְתָּ֣ה בָ֔הּ וְשַׁבְתָּ֖ וְכִסִּ֥יתָ אֶת־צֵאָתֶֽךָ׃

Further, there shall be an area for you outside the camp, where you may relieve yourself. With your gear you shall have a shovel, and when you have squatted you shall dig a hole with it and cover up your excrement.

Wise words.  Holy words.

Noah,  thank you so much for being willing to share your bar mitzvah evening with PRIDE Shabbat.  It is in one way very appropriate, because we are so proud of you and how much your learned and how much you engaged what it meant to become bar mitzvah.   So in some ways, this is your Jewish Pride Shabbat.

PRIDE is actually an interesting word.  It can be both very good or very bad. 

The Value of Jewish Peoplehood

Yesterday,  I had the great joy of being part of five conversions at Thayer Beach in Colchester.  It was also a bit of a weird scene, with lots of people on the beach, and with some random dudes paddling by on innertubes while some naked people were saying Hebrew blessings and going under.   It is one of the joys of my work that each year I get to see our tradition through the eyes of someone who has chosen to study for a year to become part of the Jewish people.  This was especially meaningful yesterday when two young people chose our tradition despite the rise of antisemitism all around us, particularly on campus.

As you know, I was in band all through high school, so I went to every football game for four years.  As drum major, I had to cue up the fight song anytime we got a touch down, or there was a big play.   I never cared, and often, other people had to poke me and tell me to do the fight song because I wasn’t paying attention at all.  I never understood football, and when my father and brother would watch and cheer and scream at the TV, I would go to another room.  I have pictures of me as a 5  year old forcibly dressed in football togs with the should pads and knee guards, the helmet – the whole thing.   I look miserable and confused.

But here I was crying at this football moment.  I think the best thing I’ve read of this was the New York Time’s Michelle Goldberg commenting:   “Waltz made me wish I understood football metaphors.”

“Are your brothers and sisters to go to war while you stay here?”

This is Moses’ sharp reply in this week’s Torah portion to the tribes of Reuben and Gad when they asked to not go with the rest of the people into the Promised Land to fight, but instead to stay on the other side of the Jordan river where they are already settled, comfortable, and have houses and pens for their livestock.

“Are your brothers and sisters to go to war while you stay here?”

This is Moses’ sharp reply in this week’s Torah portion to the tribes of Reuben and Gad when they asked to not go with the rest of the people into the Promised Land to fight, but instead to stay on the other side of the Jordan river where they are already settled, comfortable, and have houses and pens for their livestock.

This week’s Torah portion begins:

When you light your lamps, let the seven lamps give light at the front of the lampstand. (Numbers 8:2)

The word for “light” is an unusual one, and literally means to ‘raise up” or ‘cause to ascend.” Modern translations often say “when you mount your lamps,” but of course, Jewish tradition has had a field day interpreting the seven lamps of the ancient menorah that stood in the mishkan in the desert and then in the Temple in Jerusalem.

Arielle and Madeline, I know tomorrow morning you will give your d’vars on your Torah Portion, which is called Nasso. Because I know what you are going to be talking about, tonight I’m going to look at a section of your portion that I know you aren’t planning to explore: The threefold Priestly Blessing -

May Adonai Bless you and keep you.

May Adonai’s face shine upon you and look upon you with favor

May Adonai’s face rise to greet you and give you peace.

It is one of the best-known passages in the entire Torah, but it appears in your portion out of nowhere, out of context, and seems to be just stuck in there.

BAR MITZVAH May 3, 2024

But while this is a simcha, a joy, we are also living through some very difficult times as a Jewish community. The trauma of October 7, the mass protests against Israel weeks before there was any military response, the 400% rise in antisemitism that our community has experienced since then, and now the protests that are roiling colleges and country - this is a lot for adults to deal with and process, much less teens.