Parshat Vayikra

SERMON    Parashat Vayikra    Otis Fenderson’s Bar Mitzvah

Rabbi David Edleson   Temple Sinai,   South Burlington, VT   April 4, 2025

“BEFRIENDING THE GOVERNMENT”

Otis,  it’s your bar mitzvah weekend, and I usually try not to talk about anything too heavy at a bar mitzvah service.   But right now, we are living in some challenging and difficult times, so tonight I need to talk a bit more seriously about Jewish tradition as you become bar mitzvah.

 I grew up in a family like many Jewish families that celebrated some holidays, but not others;  sometimes belonged to a temple but often not; had a seder most years but had no idea anything came after the meal; and we didn’t really know very much about Judaism and the rich tradition we are a part of. 

 The Judaism I learned when I went to Hebrew School was focused on Hebrew, a few stories, and learning about the holidays.   That’s what an hour a week up to age 13 can do, but it doesn’t scratch the surface of our tradition.

 I was listening to Sarah Hurwitz the other day.   She was Michelle Obama’s speechwriter in the White House,  and then wrote the phenomenal book on Judaism, Here All Along.   She was speaking on a panel, and she said that when she was growing up, going to Hebrew School at a Reform Temple, coming to High Holy Days, and doing Passover and Hanukkah with her family, she really didn’t know much about how rich and wise Jewish tradition could be.   She didn’t know what Mishnah or Talmud were.  She knew the Torah was an ancient scroll she read from for her bat mitzvah, but she didn’t know that much about the different people and details of the Torah.   Her Jewish knowledge was thin.  She said people would be surprised at how little most adult Jews know about Judaism, Torah and Jewish history.  I am not be surprised.  

 Jewish tradition is ancient and deep.  Our people have had 3000 years of seeing the world, living through massive changes, and we were almost always not the people who had power, so we have a unique perspective on human history and how to navigate it.  In Hebrew school, we only dip into the surface.

 Otis, the last few years, we have all been living through a frightening and upsetting rise in antisemitism.  It comes from both sides of the political divide, and many of us have lost friends, or had tensions with family over this.  We all want to fight antisemitism, and know we need to do what we can, to stand up and represent.   You and the people your age have been very brave and impressed me on this.  In some ways, you’ve shown more courage than people my age.

 I’ve spent most of my life dealing with and trying to fight antisemitism.  I dealt with a lot of it, including being punched in the school hall every day by someone, being removed as drum major of the band because the parents didn’t like a Jew leading the band down Main Street.   My first semester at college, I had to fight my way up to the President o the college because a professor gave me a zero when I missed an exam for Yom Kippur.  So I am all for standing up and fighting against antisemitism.  The things our ancestors lived through require that of us.

 But as in most things these days, it is more complicated than that.  There is a difference between fighting antisemitism, and having the government use antisemitism as a cudgel to attack institutions like colleges that have been very important to and good for Jews in America.  Academic freedom and free speech has been central to the Jewish idea of America and to how we have flourished here.   It is key to a free society, and while, as you all know,  I am enraged by what some of these colleges have done, or more accurately, not done to combat the pure hate that they have seen,  I don’t think having the government use antisemitism as a club to beat up colleges and schools will really help us, and I fear it could make things much worse and be used against us.   Using Jews as a political tool is a very old tactic.  Usually it has been hatred of Jews or fear of Jews, but using Jews as the excuse for other political agendas will not redound to our benefit, I fear.  

 I have next to no empathy for the leaders of these protests, and some of them have likely crossed the line of what is allowed on a visa or green card,  Still, I have profound concerns about the precedent of kicking out people for having opinions we don’t like. I have even greater concerns if the rules are not clearly spelled out and shared when someone gets a visa or green card, and if they are consistently enforced.  After all, we Jews have opinions many people don’t like, and Jews have been leaders in the fight for labor rights, reproductive rights, women’s rights, gay rights, and civil rights.  Especially as Reform Jews, we have benefited as a people from tolerance of opinions that aren’t popular, and from institutions that are far from perfect, but still better than many alternatives.  

 Judaism and the rabbis understood this sort of complex wrestling with how we balance competing goods.   So here is one relevant truth bomb from our tradition, from the Talmud in a little section called Pirkei Avot.  It quotes Rabbi Gamliel who was one of the most important rabbis that helped transform Judaism after Rome destroyed the Temple in 70 AD

He said:  Be careful befriending the government, as they approach a person only when they have need . They seem like good friends in good times, but they don't stay friends in time of his trouble.

 We know this.  We will talk of it next week at our Passover Seder’s, because we learned in Egypt that the same government that is supportive and embracing can quickly turn to a new Pharoah that flips our world upside down.   Our rabbis knew that when politics turns into a team sport, we need to be very thoughtful and not only think with our emotions.

 Because of our unique history through time and across the globe, we have unique insights and wisdom to offer, but we, Jews, have to keep learning and deepening our Jewish knowledge.   Otis, I hope you see your bar mitzvah not as an end, but as the beginning of Jewish learning, of course, after a well-earned break.  You don’t want to look back and realize that your understanding of Judaism and Jewish history is what you learned by age 13.  

Judaism has so much practical useful wisdom, but it is not simple wisdom.   It doesn’t really fit on a bumper sticker.  It requires wrestling with competing values and possibilities, and considering the possible unintended consequences of our actions and beliefs.  Right now that seems profoundly valuable for all of us of every age.  

Ken Y’hi Ratzon.

David