Narrative Crash: Renewing our Spirits in a Dizzying World
SERMON ROSH HASHANAH 5785 MORNING October 3, 2024
Rabbi David Edleson Temple Sinai South Burlington, VT
“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.
Many of us, most of us grew up in and were shaped by some version of that progressive secular messianism. It’s the world I watched obsessively on Star Trek.
This optimism blended easily with America liberal Judaism. We were for repairing the world, not breaking it. War was just so old school.
Fukuyama’s narrative has crashed, and if we fast forward to October 7, for many of us, most of us, some fundamental stories we told ourselves about the world and what it means to be Jewish in the world have crashed.
· Having Israel means pogroms can’t happen again. Crash.
· If things get too bad here, Jews will always have Israel as a safe haven to go to. Crash.
· America is a safe place for Jews where antisemitism is a vestige of the past, especially among progressives. Crash.
· Israel is not in real danger. It is too tech-savvy and armed to the teeth to be seriously threatened. Crash.
· My family and friends share my Jewish values. Crash.
· My non-Jewish friends wouldn’t abandon me over a conflict half the world away. Crash.
· This conflict is about the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. End that and the conflict ends. Crash. It is not “Israel the occupier” they are attacking. It is “Israel the liberal democracy.” Hezbollah it turns out is not progressive.
Like many people, I suffer from occasional bouts of severe vertigo. One minute I’m fine; the next I can’t stand up. October Seventh and its wake have been like that for me. Dizzying. It is dizzying and disorienting when our narratives crash.
We are all spinning, for different reasons and in different orbits, but as Jews we are reeling. And it just keeps coming.
As human beings, we make sense of the world through the stories we tell ourselves and each other. Homo sapiens can also be called homo narrans, the hominids that narrate, that understand the world through story. The great narrative each culture tells about itself is sometimes called a “meta-narrative” or a “guiding” or “master story.” These overarching narratives help us not only make sense of our lives and our place in the world, but they also end up shaping the world itself because as humans we are both shaped by and shaping of culture and the world. In Judaism, words have the power to create worlds.
So what do we do when the stories with which we create our world implode? We spin.
In both of the Torah stories we read on Rosh Hashanah: the Expulsion of Ishmael and the Binding of Isaac, everyone is spinning. That centrifugal force almost destroys our people before we began.
· Sarah’s story that she and Hagar and Abraham and the kids could all live happily together in a blended family crashes.
· Hagar’s story of belonging and safety crashes
· Abraham’s story of becoming a great nation, of living up to his name – Avraham - father of multitudes – has his story crash when God demands he kick our one son and sacrifice the other.
Sarah dies of heartbreak. She never sees Abraham again.
Abraham is soon weak and bedridden.
Isaac never speaks to Abraham again. Ishmael never speaks to Abraham again. They both show up to help bury their father, but even then, the brothers do not speak.
When I look at this story, I don’t see a story of sacrifice and obedience, but a story of narrative crash. Of spinning. This is how a people falls apart.
How easily we turn on each other!
How easily we let go of relationships when there is hurt and fear and despair!
How hard it is to admit pain and loss!
In their 2014 talk entitled, “An Unrecognizable Jewish Future: A Queer Talmudic Take,” Rabbi Benay Lappe points to the Roman Destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD as a moment of “narrative crash.” There was no Temple; the Covenant was broken. Rabbi Lappe asserts that:
There are three, and only three possible responses to a crash, ever…..
Option One, which is denying that a crash has occurred and reverting to your master story and hanging on for dear life – and people tend to build walls around that old master story to make sure that nothing interferes or threatens it again.
Option Two would be accept that your master story has crashed, completely rejecting that master story, and jumping off into a completely new story.
Options Three is to accept that the story has crashed, but instead of abandoning the story, you stay in it, reinterpreting it through the lens of the crash and building a new story from the amalgamation of the original story, the crash material and the reinterpretation.
Those who chose Option One become insular, extremist, and ossified. They must control their followers to protect the narrative at all costs. They also fear and distrust individual rights, freedom of thought and, yes, democracy.
Those who chose Option Two, those who jumped ship, write themselves out of the future of that narrative. They become something else. It is estimated that about 80% of Jews chose Option Two after the Roman destruction.
Those who chose Option Three in time created a radical new narrative of Judaism, a portable one focused that kept key aspects of the earlier promises but transformed those into rituals of home and synagogue, of Torah study and scholarship, of Halakhah, Jewish law.
We here are the inheritors of those who chose Option Three.
Reform Judaism is Option Three.
Feminist Judaism is Option Three.
Modern Orthodoxy is Option Three.
Liberal Zionism is Option Three.
We don’t know what the new narrative that grows out of October 7th will be. A new narrative can’t be forced. It will emerge in time. So what do we do to renew our spirits in the meantime?
First, we try to sit with not-knowing. I mentioned it last night and I’ll say more about this on Yom Kippur, but it is tempting to latch onto a narrative that feels familiar to us, that helps us resolve our cognitive dissonance about war and Judaism, that reaffirms our values. Try to resist that and instead find beauty and expansive spirit in the questions and the conflicting answers within you.
Second, we should do things regularly that help remind us of the beauty of the world. Put down our phones. Turn off our TV’s. Go outside. Meditate. Listen to music. Wrap yourselve in a tallit and pray. Play with the dog. Sing. This is crucial for finding our balance in a spinning world.
Finally, I believe that it is key that while we are spinning, we hold onto one another as a people, as Jews. Many of us have been lucky enough to live much of our lives in a bubble of acceptance and optimism that defines post-war America. It didn’t really matter all the much sometimes if we hung out in the Jewish community. Now that bubble has burst, and we don’t know where we are heading, but we do know that we are in this together, and that the world will push us together whether that’s our vibe or not.
If the new narrative that emerges is to hold our people together, to allow us to survive and flourish, then it needs to emerge from us holding onto one another, holding ourselves together in the meantime. It needs to emerge from our peoplehood.
Those in Jewish Voice for Peace and talk a lot about Jewish values. They seem to forget that peoplehood is a core Jewish value. Ahavat Yisrael, Love of the People Israel is central, just as central as “Justice, Justice Pursue.” Jewish Survival is a moral imperatives in Jewish ethics. “All Israel are responsible one for the other.” “Kol Yisrael Arevin zeh b’ad zeh.”
Turning on other Jews and calling them the enemy might be a Jewish habit, but it is not a Jewish value. History has not been kind to Jews who side with our attackers. I don’t believe it will be this time.
Part of the Jewish genius is that we have an uncanny ability to find what we have in common even in the midst of huge ongoing arguments. Our people have always found a way to remain a people across the immense differences of culture, language, geography, and rituals in the Jewish world. Whatever new narrative emerges from all this, it will be one that pulls our people together, not tears us apart. Otherwise, it is not a Jewish narrative.
There is so much press about how young Jews are turning on Israel and on the established Jewish community. There is truth in it. We have many families in our community that are torn up by this. It’s heartbreaking.
But there is another story, the story of the “Great Return.” The numbers of Jews who for whom October 7 was a call to reconnect with the Jewish people is very large. I met so many people on missions to Israel who had never been before, but who felt called to show up for us as a people. Many Jews are returning to a much stronger sense of Jewish identity and peoplehood. It is not the end of Jewish history.
In general, attendance at Jewish events is up. Synagogue numbers are up. Jewish organization numbers and donations are up. The number of people making Aliyah from Europe, and North America is up.
The surge in antisemitism on campus has also creating a new generation of Jewish leaders who are courageous, creative, tech-savvy, nimble and unapologetic. I am very inspired and excited by how I see many young Jews stepping up, speaking up, defending their identity, and refusing to just be silenced. They do not give in to fear. They do not need to be liked by antisemites. We have much to learn from them.
There are so many stories of Jewish resilience and connection. We have a young member who lost a lot of friends after October 7 because of her support for Israel. In fact, she is getting married soon, and she lost as friends most of the people she had expected to be in her bridal party. Rather than get stuck in that loss, she ended up having a bachelorette party with one old friend and a whole group of new friends she had made as a result of October 7.
This sort of story is repeated all through our community, and through the Jewish world. We are learning once again just how important Jewish community is.
Israelis are, too. October 7 has also caused Israeli Jews to lean into peoplehood. I have never seen as many Israelis expressing love and worry for those in the Diaspora.
Whatever new narrative emerges, it will need to be rooted in that sense of shared fate, of interdependence, of peoplehood. Half the Jews live in Israel and half here. Both communities have to be part of any new story we create. We are one people and our future and fate is intertwined.
The Torah begins with God creating the world using words, using narrative. But at the end of the Torah, Moses uses words to create a people as they face a scary and unknown future. As Moses stepped away from leadership, Moses chooses these words:
חִזְק֣וּ וְאִמְצ֔וּ אַל־תִּֽירְא֥וּ וְאַל־תַּעַרְצ֖וּ מִפְּנֵיהֶ֑ם כִּ֣י ׀ יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֗יךָ ה֚וּא הַהֹלֵ֣ךְ עִמָּ֔ךְ לֹ֥א יַרְפְּךָ֖ וְלֹ֥א יַעַזְבֶֽךָּ׃ {ס}
Be strong and have courage, be not in fear or in dread of them; for it is indeed your God יהוה who marches with you: [God] will not fail you or forsake you.
This year, more than anything we need those words: Be strong and have courage.
We must be strong and brave enough to stand against the impulse to blame one another, to divide ourselves into good Jews and “those Jews.”
We need the courage to love our people even when others attack us. The strength to hold onto one another, lift one another up, speak up for one another even when we don’t agree. We are one people. That is our legacy. That is our beauty and our genius. That is our future. Chazak v’Ametz. Be Strong and Courageous. Am Yisrael Chai.
Shana Tova.
