Alfred Nobel
was the inventor of dynamite. We know him for his prize, the
Nobel Prize, for chemistry, for peace, for literature, for physics,
for medicine, and economics. But, listen to the story of this
remarkable man. One morning he woke up and found his own obituary
in the newspaper. Can you imagine? It was his brother who had
died, but the journalist had made a mistake and run Alfred’s
obituary instead. That would be disturbing for any of us, but
Alfred Nobel was horrified by what his obituary said: “Dynamite
King Dies, the Merchant of Death is Dead.” He made a resolution,
and was resolved at that moment in his life to create the Nobel
Prize.
What an
incredible legacy he has left. A man who saw in his obit, written
by a journalist, what he did not want to leave his family, nor
the world. So he made a change. He did something about it. He
created a legacy that truly is bigger than life. We know many
Nobel Prize winners. We’ve had a few of them here in our
sanctuary on this bimah: Elie Wiesel, Rabin, many, many people
who we highly regard.
But in order
for Alfred Nobel to create this legacy, he needed to come face
to face with his own mortality. Now, it is true, if you open
the paper and there’s an obituary of your life, you come
face to face with your mortality. But he made a choice. He made
a choice to change what he saw and change what he would do for
the world.
That’s
really why we’re all gathered here on Yom Kippur, isn’t
it? To come face to face with our mortality. Judaism tells us
that on Yom Kippur, we have to examine our lives and understand
that we are all mortal and that we will all die. That’s
why we wear white, it is the color of the kittel, the traditional
burial shroud. We don’t eat and make sure that our physical
needs are ignored in order to look at our spiritual quest –
our spiritual needs are what we hunger for on Yom Kippur.
Yom Kippur
is truly about building a legacy. And so, what I want each one
of us to do, from this service of Kol Nidre to tomorrow evening
at Neilah, is for us to take these twenty-four hours to build
one hour of a legacy in the coming year. We have many people
in our congregation, in our community, who have built a legacy.
There are people whose stories we can take with us in our hearts
and truly model ourselves after.
One family
is the Joseph family. There is a Joseph Prize in memory of Roger
Joseph. Many of you sitting in this sanctuary knew this remarkable
man. And when he died, his family, is siblings, Burton Joseph,
and Betty Greenberg, created a national prize called the Joseph
Prize. It is given out at ordination at the Reform seminary,
at Hebrew Union College, the Jewish Institute of Religion on
the New York campus. I knew about the Joseph Prize years before
I came to this congregation, I knew about Temple Israel in Minneapolis
and I knew that the people here reached out to support those
people who worked tirelessly for humanity, and humanitarian
purposes. The Joseph Prize, while I was in school, was given
to Rosa Parks. The recipient speaks at ordination every year.
It was truly a highlight in my life to hear this woman speak.
The award was also given to Daniel Pearl; his father, Judah
Pearl, received it. To the Children’s Defense Fund, to
the New York Fire Department after 9/11, and in 1978, the first
prize was given to Victor Kugler, who saved Anne Frank and her
family in the Netherlands. Remarkable people.
Like the
Nobel Prizes, people within our community have created a prize
to support the national and international work of others. Families
have extended their names in order to make sure others have
the ability to do the work to make this place, this world, better.
Within our own little Temple Israel community, we reach out
to create a legacy.
The Jefferson
School Project: over the years there have been many volunteers,
who have gone over for an hour or two every week sitting with
at-risk children, children who are immigrants to this country,
or whose families are immigrants, and who need the extra help.
We provide that help. We sit with them week after week. When
Rabbi Glaser’s mother, Agathe Glaser, may her memory be
for a blessing (she died this past Hannukah), heard that Temple
Israel was going out and sitting with families and children
who are from immigrant families, she was so proud.
Agathe was
a Holocaust survivor. She received reparations from the French
government because her own parents were interred in France.
She lived through Kristallnacht, she came to this country on
a child transport, all alone, separated from her family. And
so when she heard the work we were doing, the first thing she
did was she went right over to Jefferson School. She told those
children her story of immigration, she told those children to
hold on to their hope and their dreams, she explained that education
would bring give them hope for their future. And then when she
received the reparations, she knew exactly what she was going
to do. She sent those monies to Jefferson School. She bought
them a piano and musical instruments. And all of us understand
the power of music in the Glaser family. This woman, a Holocaust
survivor, survived child transport. Her story is powerful enough
in and of itself, but she didn’t stop at survival. She
gave more, she gave her story, and she gave the hope for the
future to these children.
Margie and
Charlie Ostrov from this congregation, along with many others
who grew up on the Iron Range, believe in restoring B’nai
Abraham, the last synagogue standing on the Iron Range. They
believe that it is up to us to make sure that this place of
history and story of Jews on the Iron Range is told and that
we don’t forget. That beautiful sanctuary has been restored
because of their hard work and their belief that this is crucial
and important. A Jewish community once was there and vibrant,
and now it is the non-Jewish community on the Iron Range, and
the Jewish community from all over the state, who will come
to remember that history, to remember the importance of that
Jewish community. Marilyn Chiat wrote a letter recently about
that amazing sanctuary of B’nai Abraham. She said, “All
of us, we so often go everywhere in the world and we stand in
synagogues wherever we are, and we feel the power of the story
that is there.” We must go to the Iron Range, stand in
the center of that sanctuary. That is a legacy that continues,
that is broad and big. If that building was gone, it would have
been a news clip. Today there were volumes written about it
in the news, and we need to journey there to know the story
and to tell the history.
There are
people in our congregation who died over this year, and many
who died previously and left powerful legacies. There are two
people I would like to speak about today, personally, to remember
a legacy born and a legacy lived. Merle and Jill Rosenberg,
mother and daughter, stricken with the same disease of ovarian
cancer. But that didn‘t stop them. They might have been
petite, but tell me, anyone who met either one of them, knew
they were both powerhouses with a stature that was big and huge.
These two women took their diagnosis and gave to others. It
was difficult, and within the year of one another, just shy
of Merle’s yarzheit, Jill died.
Both of
these women gave so much to our community. I don’t know
if you know, but Merle created Kol Isha for our Sisterhood in
her kitchen she created Staying Connected, reaching out to our
college students. There was a lot created in that kitchen. And
then, when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, she moved
her belief, her volunteerism, and her idealism to MOCA, Minnesota
Ovarian Cancer Association, where she built that organization
from the inside, as Merle built every organization from the
inside. She gave hope to others who were stricken with ovarian
cancer, and to their families. And she sat at the bedsides of
many who died from this disease.
Jill followed
in her mother’s footsteps. The two of them created Toast
to Life, a fundraiser for ovarian cancer research. But Jill,
in her own right, did so much to create a legacy even at such
a young age. She created a young survivor’s group that
had never been known before. She helped women move through their
diagnosis, their treatment, and even the hope of creating their
own families, when she herself knew that that was impossible
in her life. She was selfless. These two women truly left a
legacy.
There are
so many who did the same. Debbie Eisenberg, in research for
pancreatic cancer, and just last week, under PanCAN, the PurpleRide
in her memory. Barry Schneider, who recently died of colon cancer,
leaving a young family. He, too, will be remembered, as there
is an endowment for research for colon cancer. And I look out
and I remember Jamie Marks, in whose name we have an incredible
healing fund that continues to help people heal in every aspect
of the word. Through tragedy these people created a legacy.
They took the difficult and somehow turned it around to give
us blessings. Those are legacies that truly are remarkable.
Tonight,
we consider our own mortality. Not to be afraid - don’t
be afraid of looking and knowing that our time has an end, but
rather, like Nobel, like all of the examples I have given, look
beyond your fear and create something more. Because, through
that energy, we ourselves find a blessing in the most remarkable
way. On this Yom Kippur, let us take these twenty-four hours
and create one more hour of a legacy. Spend an hour tutoring
a child, spend an hour telling the history of the Jewish community
– your history – to someone who can latch on and
make something for themselves. You take an hour and make sure
that even in the midst of tragedy, you create hope, that you
create healing. That is the legacy that we all can leave.
Eli Wiesel,
the 1986 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, ended his remarks
as he accepted that prize, and his words, as always, are stirring.
He said: “Human beings must remember that peace is not
God’s gift to us; it is our gift to each other.”
A legacy – it isn’t God’s gift to us. It is
our gift to one another. It is our gift to the hope for a better
future. It is our gift that our children, and our grandchildren,
and our great-grandchildren will bequeath. If not now, when?
Shana tovah.
