Aiming & Blaming
Responsibility & Response

Rosh Hashanah 5766

by Rabbi Sim Glaser

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We recently held a visioning day for parents and children in our Religious School in hopes of improving our program. In appreciation of their participation, a drawing for prizes was held. The first prize went to a 10 year old – two tickets in section 116 for that day’s Vikings football game at the Metrodome. Kid went meshuggah. Then, a few moments later, an 8 year old kid won a second drawing. The prize was - I kid you not - 4 reserved seats dead center 4th row for… Kol Nidre services. Kid went meshuggah.

But far from getting angry, blaming or finger pointing, the child surprised us all – “I’ll be so close I’ll be able to touch the cantor!” he announced. “Imagine the extent to which my supplications shall reach the vault of heaven from such a prominent position in the pews!”

Then he turned to the other prize winner and announced: "We really do not know, do we, whether Daunte Culpepper will complete a single pass, but in the world of atonement this year, I intend to score!" (Ah, it was beautiful).

Okay, maybe he didn’t get that excited, but the kids are great! I don’t know how they deal with all the world throws at them. One child sitting at my discussion table was wearing 9 different plastic wrist bands of various colors. I asked him did if he knew what all of them meant and he said: “Well I sure do!” One for breast cancer, the green is for MS, yellow for freedom, another supporting our troops in Iraq. The pink one is for Harry Potter, which until that moment I hadn’t known was a “cause” - a multicolored one for Katrina relief, a blue one for a different type of disease he had trouble recalling. Nevertheless, I marveled at the sheer number of worthy issues and problems this boy was juggling on his pitching arm.

And I feel his pain. I have to tell you, this has been the most difficult Rosh Hashanah in memory to isolate an issue, to raise consciousness or to illustrate a High Holy Day theme for preaching purposes. Rarely have I felt so strongly pulled in so many directions to give appropriate attention to the issues. I am simply overwhelmed by the devastation from the hurricanes in the south of our nation, the heart wrenching evacuation of Gaza, Jew pitted against Jew. By the practically forgotten Rwandan massacres that still haunt. A genocide in the Darfur region of the Sudan that continues on as the world shudders but does little. Even the subject of whether or not it is appropriate to define certain mass killings by use of the word genocide is itself an issue. Then there are rising oil prices, the incessant continuing march of global aids. Homelessness and hunger right here in our city.

Each week hundreds of emails and snail mails beseech my help – and yes I take it all personally – each stab at the delete button and every envelope tossed into the blue recycle bin means “I don’t care”, or “go ask somebody else.” And then I have this 20 minutes to tell you which of these things I think merits your attention, and oh by the way, what does it have to do with personal inventory, the book of life, atonement, Rosh Hashana, and God?!!

But earlier this year I got on the bandwagon, discovering a quick and efficient way to deal with all these issues. I got angry and blamed other people.

It is so convenient! With Katrina, I got angry at the president for dragging his heals, furious with the governor of Louisiana for not having a plan in place, irate with FEMA for not getting to the disaster site as fast as Walmart did. Peeved at the residents of New Orleans who wouldn’t pick up and leave when they had the chance.

With Gaza I was ticked off at the Palestinians who waded right in after the evacuation and burned down synagogues, incensed at Hamas for picking right up with the rocket attacks into nearby Israeli towns and upset with the Israelis who used Holocaust imagery to protest.

Recalling Rwanda I became disturbed at myself and vexed by all those who ignored the killing we all knew was happening 10 years ago.

Reading the daily paper helped fuel my venom at all the fools who hadn’t done what they were supposed to do to prevent the disasters. I said: “right on!” when I read all those letters to the editor attacking those who hadn’t done their jobs or who ignored the victims of disaster. I wish I had written books with titles like: The 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America or Surrounded By Idiots, or Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.

Yes, while this may have been a tough year to pull together a Rosh Hashanah sermon, it was a really easy year to point fingers, and that’s what I have been doing for the past several weeks, and you know what? For a while it felt great!

Then, as I was reading through some Talmud selections about the holidays I saw that tractate Rosh Hashana states we blow the shofar in order to confuse Satan, who is known as, of all things, the accuser! The blamer! (I know, you’re thinking that the Jews don’t talk about the devil very much, but lo and behold, there it was!) And a Kabbalah student here at Temple read in the Zohar that we feed Satan with that sin-laden goat we so as to shut him up and keep him from casting blame!

That is when I started rethinking the blame game and the extent to which mud has been slung this last year and I realized, you know, it doesn’t accomplish a whole heck of a lot. When the dust settles after a good haranguing it really leaves no one better off.
Blame is pretty much a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame someone else it will not change you, and it rarely improves the circumstances. What blame does is to keep the focus off us as we seek external reasons to explain our unhappiness or frustration. We may succeed in making another feel guilty of something by blaming them, but we won't succeed in changing whatever it is about us that is making you unhappy.
To blame, you gotta take aim, and let the arrow fly. (Bow) You fire that powerful rhetoric at your target, and while you may feel as though you’ve done something, you never have to actually meet the person you’re addressing, nor do you have to confront the victims or the true source of the disaster, and good luck retrieving the arrow.

Katrina provided an interesting evolution of our national ideology this year. See, in the old days we were more likely to understand these enormous natural disasters and much of their consequences as acts of God or fate. Then, as we grew more scientific and perhaps secular, disasters were more likely to be perceived as acts of nature. But now see where we have arrived. We live in a world where many find it hard to accept the idea of a hurricane Katrina as a natural disaster or even as an accident. What then is left? Someone has to be responsible. Blame becomes the primary visceral reaction. And as a result of that kind of thinking, we face a double disaster, not only one of physical destruction and loss of life, but a legacy of bitterness, confusion and suspicion that will stay with us even after the floodwaters have subsided.

The culture of blame is on the rise in this country. And with the rise in blame, I guarantee you, will come a diminishing of personal responsibility.

To blame, we have to take aim, but to be responsible, we must respond. (Shofar)

Blame is as old as the Torah – Adam says: the woman made me eat the apple, Eve points an opposable thumb elsewhere: “The snake tempted me!” and then they all get booted out of the garden by a disappointed Adonai. It is probably coincidental that blame sounds like a contraction of be – lame, but if you think about it, from day one, or day six to be precise, blaming others has always been a “self-hobbling” experience.

I am reminded of the college fraternity hazing story where several frat boys spread limburger cheese on the upper lip of a sleeping fraternity brother. So he wakes up, sniffs, looks around, and says, "This room stinks!" Then he walks into the hall and says, "This hall stinks!" Leaves the dorm, walks outside and exclaims: "The whole world stinks!"

But the blame comes from within, from self directed anger and frustration that we are unable to do anything concrete and constructive to alleviate the source of our pain. Responsibility, on the other hand, requires engagement, listening, responding. As it is said: “People who are out to find fault seldom find anything else.”

I think it is instructive to note during these most holy days of reflection that once we get good enough at aiming and blaming, we will apply it to our loved ones and friends, and then to the man or woman in the mirror. Even self directed blame is useless. A lot of people think these aseret y’mai teshuva, the coming ten days of repentance are about blaming oneself for the hurt we have caused or for committing iniquities in our lives. Lest you confuse blaming yourself with the work of true repentance, consider the words of Maimonides who said: the sign of real teshuva is when the penitent resolves never to repeat the behavior. Blaming oneself does nothing to accomplish that. Taking responsibility for your behavior does everything.

To blame we must take aim. To be responsible we must respond.

There is, you know, no commandment to blow the shofar. The mitzvah is lishmoah kol shofar, to listen to it, and ostensibly, to respond. When we hear the shofar we don’t turn to the person next to us and say – “hear that? That’s for you!” We open our eyes and say: That shofar is calling for my response.

Before I met the Rwandan Hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina here last month I was almost certain he would take advantage of his hour on our bima to fittingly excoriate the world for turning a deaf ear to the plight of Rwanda in the 90’s. In a room filled with Jews no less, we’d be an easy target. “You, the Jewish people understand Never Again!” I expected him to say, and yet he did nothing of the sort. Instead he recited with anguish and, yes, often confusing references, the complex and tortured events that led up to the deaths of over a million of his countrymen. He spoke as one who understands that when the going gets tough aiming and blaming is the most useless of personal paradigms.

Becoming responsible by responding as an individual and saving lives makes a lot more sense. Hey, I saw the movie! Why should I have expected him to scold his audience for our apathy? If you know the story of Rwanda, aiming and blaming was itself the very cause of the slaughter!

At the end of the evening we presented our speaker with our symbol of Justice – the shofar. I felt very sad as he took it into his hands, thinking what good does it do in this world to call for help if no one is responding? Did this man not attempt to sound the horn? He might have put down the shofar at that moment and said: Thanks, but nobody listens. But the one who understands personal responsibility is not going to be the one running around casting aspersions on every other person who should have acted. And indeed, as Rabbi Zimmerman presented him the ram’s horn he brought it to his lips, tried in vain to get a sound out of it, and smiled. Such a man is not wired for the ineffective politics of blame, but to act responsibly in overwhelming times. If there lies a lesson in his tragic story, I believe this is it.

Someone asked me recently – Rabbi shouldn’t Yom Kippur come before Rosh Hashana? Wouldn’t it be better to end on an up note? Good idea! I thought. So I was all set to petition the Temple ritual committee to reverse the order of the holidays (which I felt fairly sure they would agree to do) when a rabbinic teacher of mine reminded me the holy days are positioned precisely as they should be. Those ten days of repentance between the New Year and Yom Kippur are entirely necessary to grapple fully and concisely with our issues because acting responsibly takes time and consideration. Blaming is quick and dirty. Imagine if Yom Kippur came first – We’d would come into Temple, cold, unprepared, proclaiming: “for the sins we have committed – you, the shmendrick standing next to me, you oughtta be ashamed “– because that’s what we do when we haven’t taken the time to think things out. Being the architects of lives that will make a difference next year takes a good amount of time and planning. This is why Rosh Hashana comes first. 10 days to overcome the seduction of aiming and blaming.

Rabbi tarfon of the Talmudic period had some pretty wise words for those of us living in troubled overwhelming times. He used to say: The day is short, there is much work to be done, yet the laborers are lazy, the wages are great and the Householder is insistent. He went on further to remind us that not one of us can do it all – lo alecha ham’lacha ligmor, v’lo ata ben horin l’hibatel mimena – it is not up to you to complete the work, yet neither are you free to avoid it.

I believe Rabbi Tarfon had a pretty good sense that things were going to get a lot more complicated for the human race before they got simpler. He also probably understood how tough we can be on ourselves and on others when we become overwhelmed, so he was advising us to bite off no more than we can adequately chew and replace anger and venom with action and resolve.

And you know what else I think Rabbi Tarfon was telling us? Just because we live in an age where every bit of information is available to us doesn’t mean we have to have an opinion on everything. You simply cannot engage every issue, but the issues you choose to engage must be with considered response, not reckless blame.

May 5766 be a simpler year. In the event that it is not, may we reject that age old response to overwhelming circumstances, of aiming and blaming and discover the superior, more profoundly human way of assuming responsibility for achievable goals, to issues important to us, attentive and responsive to those dear to us, and equally important, not to be so tough on ourselves.

This year may we hearken to the call of the shofar, understanding that it speaks to us, not someone else, and upon hearing the resonant blast that stirs our souls, may we respond.

Keyn y’hi ratson, may this be God’s will, and ours.