SERMON   PARASHAT LECH-LECHA   November 8, 2024

Rabbi David Edleson   Temple Sinai  South Burlington, VT

ON ONE FOOT

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.

It so happens Jewish tradition has a great deal to say about divisions within communities and how best to navigate them.   Famously, after Rome destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD,  the rabbis asked why did this happen.  Their answer is surprising and instructive:  they say that the cause of the destruction was the baseless hatred and infighting among different political groups within the Jewish community.    Imagine that!  

I would have blamed Rome;  I do blame Rome!   But instead of screaming at their enemies, the rabbis looked within and pointed out their own inner divisions that made Israel so weak at that time.  The rabbis understood that they didn’t control Rome, so they chose instead to focus on what they might be able to change – their way of viewing one another.

And then there is the most famous story in the Talmud.  It is about the great political divide between the House of Rabbi Shammai and the House of Rabbi Hillel.   We think of these two famous rabbis as individuals having an argument, but scholars teach us that Shammai and Hillel were more like political party leaders, who had whole schools of supporters behind them.  These two factions argued about everything.  If one said “yes” the other said “absolutely not.”  If one said “kosher” the other said “treif.”  Here’s what the Talmud tells us:  

Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 31a

There was another incident involving a person who came before Shammai and said to Shammai: Convert me on condition that you teach me the entire Torah while I am standing on one foot. Shammai pushed him away with a measuring rod for Shammai was a builder by trade. The same person went to Hillel. Hillel converted the person on the spot and said: That which is hateful to you do not do to another; that is the entire Torah, and the rest is commentary. Go and study.

What a simple statement, but one that is so so difficult to live by!  Often at Bar and Bat Mitzvah’s, I teach a story about Rabbi Hillel because I think we still have much to learn from this gentle person who was welcoming, tolerant, and himself didn’t come to study Judaism until he was 40.   Lucy reminds me of Hillel.  She is much closer than I’ll ever be. She is very focused, works very hard at her goals as Hillel did, but she is also very kind and caring.   She listens. 

But for the rest of us, not doing to others what we would hate being done to us is actually very difficult. Think about how hard that actually is.  We hear it so much we take it for granted, but it warrants more engagement. 

It means, if we don’t like being called names, then we don’t call other people names.

It means, if we don’t like being called ignorant and deluded, if we don’t like being stereotyped, then we shouldn’t stereotype others, but instead to try and see others as individuals. 

When we are angry and scared, we almost never are able to do this.  I certainly am a bad role model here.  I can be very team Shammai sometimes as we all can.  As humans, we tend to look for groups, groups that are with us and groups that are against us.  That’s evolutionary.  We survive in groups, and are attacked by other groups.    

What Hillel does is to push back against our impulse to dismiss the other group, and instead to take each person as an individual with different hopes and goals.  In other stories, we learn that Hillel knew that some of these people were just plain ridiculous in their assumptions, but he doesn’t dismiss them. He doesn’t scold them. He doesn’t push them away or cancel them.  Nor does he agree with them.  He engages them. 

Hillel’s version of the Golden Rule is so simple and so so difficult for human beings.   Lucy, as you continue to grow, I hope you nurture your inner Hillel.

Another story about Hillel and Shammai is that even God got fed up with all the arguing, and announced,  “you’re both right.” Eilu v’eilu d’varim Elohim Chayim – Both of your opinions are words of the Living God.   Both of their arguments, even though they were opposite, had value and truth in them. 

It is what follows in this story and seems the most radical and the most difficult for me to internalize.  The Talmud tells us that Jewish law always follows the party of Hillel, not because they were the smartest and most brilliant, or even because they were right.   Instead, Jewish tradition follows Hillel’s party because they were the most respectful.   Here’s what they said:

Hillel’s followers were agreeable and forbearing, and they would teach both their own statements and the statements of Beit Shammai. Moreover, they prioritized the statements of Beit Shammai to their own statements. He would teach Shammai’s point of view before he taught his own.

That is hard to imagine right now. 

They were living in deeply divided times, but Hillel’s followers saw that division itself was a mortal danger.  We know, sadly, that negative advertising, scaring people, whipping them up emotional works well to get votes and to get power, but what our rabbis knew and lived through was the painful costs of even righteous division.  And we have lived through it ourselves this year:   most experts agree that one of the reasons Hamas launched the attacks on October 7 was because the divisions inside of Israeli society had made them seem much weaker.

In contrast , the House of Hillel had a radically different approach. They believed that behaving respectfully led to better results for the entire community.  The held onto the idea that people are good at heart and that relationships matter.  Hillel seemed to understand that relationships are what help us moderate our groupish tendencies to become angry apes.

I certainly can’t live up to Hillel’s example, but I do think that here, in his house of God that aspires to carry on the best of Jewish tradition, and on this night of Lucy’s bat mitzvah, it is fitting to remind us of how our own tradition responded to times of profound division. 

If we could all do just a little bit better at living up to his “on one foot” Golden rule, if we could all not do to others what we hate being done to us, imagine how much different just living in our society would feel.  Imagine how many profound problems that Lucy’s generation is facing we might be able to solve together. 

Shabbat Shalom