Sermons

Chosen for What?
Rosh Hashanah 5769
by Rabbi Jared Saks

One of my favorite characters in Jewish literature is Oscar Freedman, or Ozzie, in Philip Roth’s The Conversion of the Jews. Ozzie is a thirteen-year-old Jewish boy who wants to understand his religion. He wrestles with and questions his Judaism – and his fellow Jews – in ways that others would not dare. Philip Roth writes:

“What Ozzie wanted to know was always different. The first time he had wanted to know how Rabbi Binder could call the Jews “The Chosen People” if the Declaration of Independence claimed all men to be created equal. Rabbi Binder tried to distinguish for him between political equality and spiritual legitimacy, but what Ozzie wanted to know, he insisted vehemently, was different. That was the first time his mother had to come.

"Then there was the plane crash. Fifty-eight people had been killed in a plane crash at La Guardia. In studying a casualty list in the newspaper his mother had discovered among the list of those dead eight Jewish names (his grandmother had nine but she counted Miller as a Jewish name); because of the eight she said the plane crash was ‘a tragedy.’ During free-discussion time on Wednesday Ozzie had brought to Rabbi Binder’s attention this matter of ‘some of his relations’ always picking out the Jewish names. Rabbi Binder had begun to explain cultural unity and some other things when Ozzie stood up at his seat and said that what he wanted to know was different. Rabbi Binder insisted that he sit down and it was then that Ozzie shouted that he wished all fifty-eight were Jews.“

We have all stood in the shoes of Ozzie’s mother. We read a headline in the newspaper, catch a segment on the evening news, or engage in a conversation about current events with a friend and think to ourselves, “Is this good or bad news?” But what we really mean is this:  “Is this good for the Jews or bad for the Jews?” As Jews, especially as Jews in America, we wrestle with two identities.

I remember being at a NFTY Kallah – or Conclave, as they were called when I was a teenager – and being heatedly engaged in a conversation about my identity as an American and as a Jew. Was I a Jewish American or an American Jew? Was I first and foremost an American who was influenced by my Jewish identity? Or was my Jewish identity most important, but affected by my patriotism? If I picked one over the other, did that make me a bad Jew or a bad American?

We struggle like Ozzie about what it means to be God’s chosen people. Chosen for what? As Tevye, in Sholom Aleichem’s Fiddler on the Roof, says, “I know. I know. We are Your chosen people. But once in a while, can’t You choose someone else?” I think few of us would understand our chosenness as some sort of elitism. Being the chosen people doesn’t mean that we have easier access to the best restaurants or A-List events. Being Jewish doesn’t give us priority status for coveted tickets at concerts or on airlines. If anything, our history has proven the opposite to be true. So, what does it mean to be chosen? How should we reconcile our Jewish identity with our place in the world as global citizens? Does putting one ahead of the other make us bad Jews or bad human beings?

We certainly have a sense of cultural unity, as Rabbi Binder wanted Ozzie to understand. Judaism is not just a matter of individual identity. The reality is that we cannot exist alone as Jews. We need community. Jewish ritual, custom and culture require a communal presence. A prayer service cannot happen without a minyan. Jewish learning happens in chevruta, with a study partner, at a minimum. “Being a Jew is first and foremost being part of the collective history of the Jewish people” (David Hartman). Collective memory allows us to be part of the Jewish “we” which must come before the Jewish “I.”

Here at Temple Israel, each of our Bnai Mitzvah reads from the same Torah scroll. And each of the rabbis here tells the story of that Torah before it is passed through the generations of the child’s family and eventually to the child to carry it not only literally, but symbolically, as well. I would imagine that most of us are familiar with the story. That Torah is our Holocaust Torah. It was once at the center of a thriving, yet small Jewish community called Tabor in what is now the Czech Republic. When all the Jewish people of Tabor were murdered by the Nazis, the Torah was taken with the intention of its playing a role in the museum of the exterminated race that the Nazis intended to create. Instead, it was rescued – even when the community couldn’t be saved – and it now serves as a living reminder of its people nearly every Shabbat morning.

Our Bnai Mitzvah read from that Torah in particular to impress upon them, indeed upon us all, that each of us is a link in the chain of Jewish tradition. That even as links of that chain were broken during the Holocaust, in fact all of the links of one small Czech community, we bear the responsibility to bridge the past with the future, to ensure that Judaism will continue to exist long after we are gone.

Passover teaches us that before we can even take on our personal relationships with God, we must first identify with our collective struggle for freedom. Avadim hayinu, We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt. Not avadim hayu avoteinu, our ancestors were slaves. We, we were slaves. “Empathy and solidarity with the political, social and economic conditions of the Jewish people are necessary conditions for any ‘leap of faith’ or spiritual journey within Judaism” (David Hartman). We believe in communal redemption, not individual salvation.

To be a Jew is to be part of the Jewish community. Consider the wicked son whose question is recounted in the Passover Seder. What is it that makes him wicked? He asks, “What is this observance to you?” The Haggadah tells us that because he says “to you” and not “to us,” he rejects the essentials of our faith:  the unity of God and the community of Israel. The rabbis in the Talmud teach kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh, that all Jews are responsible for one another (BT Shevuot 39a). We must ask ourselves:  Are we solely responsible for other Jews? Should we put Jewish needs before the needs of non-Jews? Or are we free to put humanity’s needs first?

We know that being Jewish is not just about biology. It’s about being aware of our place in a family that contains descendants of our forefathers and foremothers alongside those who have chosen to cast their lot in with the Jewish people. One of the basic principles of Judaism is contained in the words v’ahavta l’re’echa kamocha, Love your neighbor as yourself (Lev. 19:18). There is a long standing debate in Judaism about this verse. Who, according to Torah and tradition, is our neighbor? Some say that it is re’echa ba-mitzvot, literally, your neighbor in the commandments. That is to say, only our fellow Jews.

Rabbi Art Green, writing for Rabbis for Human Rights, teaches us about the debate regarding this principle. “Rabbi Akiva and his friend Ben Azzai, sometime in the early second century, raised the question ‘What is the most basic principle of Torah?’ What is the teaching for the sake of which all the rest of Judaism exists?

“Akiva had a ready answer: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself (Levitiucs 19:18).’ Akiva was Judaism’s greatest advocate for the path of love. Akiva was the one who insisted that the Song of Songs was the ‘Holy of Holies’ within Scripture, spoken by God and Israel at Sinai. The tale of Rabbi Akiva and his wife’s love is one of the few truly romantic tales within the rabbinic corpus. So too the account of Akiva’s death: when he was being tortured to death by the Romans, he supposedly said: ‘Now I understand the commandment to love God with all your soul—even if He takes your soul.’ Thus it is no surprise that Akiva is depicted as seeing love to be the most basic rule of Torah.

“But Ben Azzai disagreed. He said: I have a greater principle than yours. ‘On the day when God made human beings, they were made in the likeness of God; male and female God created them (Genesis 5:1-2).’ [This] is Torah's most basic principle. Every human being is God’s image, Ben Azzai says to Akiva. Some are easier to love, some are harder. Some days you can love them, some days you can’t. But you still have to recognize and treat them all as the image of God. Love is too shaky a pedestal on which to stand the entire Torah. Perhaps Ben Azzai also saw that Akiva’s principle might be narrowed, conceived only in terms of your own community. ‘Your neighbor,’ after all, might refer just to your fellow-Jew. Or your fellow in piety, in good behavior. How about the stranger? The sinner? How about your enemy?

“Ben Azzai’s principle leaves no room for exceptions, since it goes back to Creation itself. It’s not just your kind of people who were created in God’s image, but everyone. Once we have a basic principle, or even a set of basic principles, we have a standard by which to evaluate all other rules and practices, teachings and theological ideas, laws and political systems.” Ben Azzai reminds us of our human identity. He reminds us that even when we don’t recognize commonalities in the other, they are still present, even if only for the fact that all humanity was created b’tzelem Elohim, in the Divine image.

A number of months ago, my brother broke his leg. Following surgery, Adam was required to walk with a cane for a short period of time as his leg healed. He and I had a conversation on the phone during that time and he shared that since he had begun to walk with a cane, he had noticed so many others who walked with canes, as well. There weren’t, he didn’t believe, more people with canes all of a sudden. Instead, Adam noticed others with canes because now canes were relevant to him. It is so easy for us to notice the things that are relevant to us, but what Ben Azzai teaches us is that, as Jews, part of our responsibility is to take note of others, even when their situation doesn’t appear to be relevant to us.

It’s easy to care about things that are relevant to us, but God demands more of us than that. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks reminds us that we know that Judaism does not contain within it the whole human story. We didn’t write Shakespeare’s sonnets or compose Beethoven’s masterpieces. We didn’t design the Japanese garden or the architecture of ancient Greece. But these belong to us because we are part of the human story. We are not Jewish because of what others have done to us. We are a people of faith, not fate. We are Jewish not because of what we are or what we are not, but rather we are Jewish because of what we are called to be.

Our ancestors’ stories bear witness to the fact that the world is driven by a moral purpose. Judaism taught the world that human life is sacred. Each year I struggle with the meaning behind our Torah reading on Rosh Hashanah. We have the story of a father who is so devoted to his faith that he’s willing to kill his own son because God asks it of him. What a horrific notion. But in the end, Abraham’s eyes are opened and he sees an alternative. He sacrifices a ram in place of his son. This year, perhaps the Akeidah, the story of the binding of Isaac, illustrates that God holds all human life as sacred. “The individual may never be sacrificed for the mass and that rich and poor, great and small, are all equal before God” (Jonathan Sacks).

This morning, we have read a creative text of Unetaneh Tokef, the proclamation of the awesomeness of this day of Rosh Hashanah. In the more traditional version, we recount who shall live and who shall die. In this morning’s version, we ask ourselves hard questions as we simultaneously ask God to evaluate our behavior over the past year. Our Unetaneh Tokef, which is on page 12 of your prayer book, closes with these verses:  “Did we mind only our own business, or did we feel the heartbreak of others? Did we live right, and if not, then have we learned and will we change?”

As Jews, God charges us with the task of being or la-goyim, a light to the nations. It is not our lineage, but our possession of Torah that makes us the chosen people. The only privilege we claim as the chosen people is that of serving God. With that privilege comes great responsibility. God says to us, “You, of all the families of the earth, have known Me best; therefore I will hold you all the more accountable for your transgressions” (based on Amos 3:2). Today, as we evaluate our lives over the past year, God reminds us that we have greater responsibility as God’s chosen people and we will be held accountable for the way we treat others, Jews and non-Jews alike. Part of our covenantal relationship demands that we represent God in the world.

There is a story told of a young boy who liked to wander in the woods. His father was concerned about the forest being a dangerous place, so he asked his son why he spends so much time in the woods. The son answered, “I go there to find God.” The father then reminds the boy that God is everywhere. The boy knows this, but reminds his father, “I am not.” Like the boy, we must branch out of our community, reach beyond the things that are relevant to us, and seek God in the world, in the faces of those who, like us, are created in the image of God.

As we reflect on the past year and evaluate how we have sinned, how we have transgressed, where we have missed the mark, we must also count among those transgressions the times that we have turned a blind eye to people and things that we thought were not relevant to us. We have failed God if we have minded our own business, if we haven’t felt the heartbreak of others. We have sinned if we let ourselves believe that if something wasn’t of a Jewish concern, it wasn’t of our concern. We have transgressed if we have asked too often, “Is it good for the Jews or bad for the Jews?”

Ozzie understands what Rabbi Binder and his mother don’t. Being the chosen people means that we believe that all of humanity is created equal. A catastrophe is tragic regardless of whether or not there are Jews among those lost. This year, God, help us to look beyond ourselves. Teach us, O God, that what is good for humanity is good for the Jews. Open our eyes to Your Divine image, present in each and every person. Kein y’hi ratzon, May this be God’s will. Shanah tovah.