Download Yom Kippur 2014 - Jew, American and World Citizen

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries forward-thinking European
Jewish intellectuals welcomed the winds of change that had begun to blow in France and
in Germany. They hailed the talk of liberty, equality and fraternity and of the rights of
man that were in the air; they looked forward to the prospects of Jewish emancipation
and full participation in the wider society, and they recognized that changes would have
to be made within the Jewish community to accommodate the new status and the new
rights that Jews would enjoy. They called themselves maskilim, “enlightened ones” and
advocated, among other things, religious reforms, acquisition of secular knowledge, and
adoption by Jews of the vernacular language of their countries (in place of the Yiddish,
which set them apart from their Gentile neighbors). Their motto was heyeh yehudi
b’veitecha u’ven Adam b’tzeitecha, “that one should be a Jew at home but simply a
person, a member of humankind in public.” Their approach raises a number of questions.
Is there an inherent conflict between being a Jew and being part of humanity? Should
one seek to hide any overt signs of one’s Jewishness when interacting with non-Jews?
The larger issue is how one balances the concepts of particularism and universalism, the
affirmation of one’s particular ethnic and cultural identity with the recognition of the
oneness of humankind that transcends the boundaries of race and nationality. The
expectations of non-Jewish society, which was decidedly ambivalent about granting
rights to the Jews and attached various implicit conditions to emancipation, certainly
played a role in shaping the attitudes of the maskilim, but we will defer the history lesson
for another time.
Universalism and particularism are just one set of seeming opposites that Jewish
tradition seeks to keep in balance. Rabbi Heschel spoke of the keva and the kavana of
prayer, the externals of Jewish prayer (the fixed and established liturgy and rules) and the
inwardness and spirituality that should characterize worship. On the Days of Awe we
speak of God’s justice but we also make reference to Divine mercy which, we pray, will
temper judgment. We encourage human initiative in turning to God (teshuva, repentance,
actually means turning), but we also stress God’s grace in accepting our penitence, taking
account of our resolve to do better, and forgiving our transgressions. The fancy word for
this is polarity, as in the opposite poles of a magnet. Polarities enable us to recognize the
complicated nature of reality and of the requirements of the spiritual life. Not the one
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path or concept to the exclusion of the other, not this and not that , but rather both this
and that.
The classic texts of our tradition are replete with examples of a concern for both
the particular and the universal. Both emphases are present as well in the prayers and
Scriptures of the Days of Awe. For the most part, our focus is on the particular. We pray
to God for blessing in the New Year for ourselves and for kol amcha beit Yisra’el, all of
your people, the house of Israel. In the Avodah service, the High Priest’s confessional
was recited in behalf of and forgiveness sought for himself, for his fellow priests and for
the whole people of Israel. At the other pole, we recognize God as the God not only of
Israel but of the entire creation. Rosh Hashanah is judgment day for all creatures. Our
earnest prayer is m’loch al kol ha-olam, for God to rule in glory over all of the world.
And the most memorable statement of the universality of God’s concern and grace is
found in a story, the book of Jonah, the Haftorah for Yom Kippur afternoon. God
summons an Israelite prophet to journey to a far-off city, the capital of an empire that was
notorious in antiquity for its brutality and that had subjugated all of its neighbors in the
region including the northern kingdom of Israel. Jonah is to preach to the citizens of
Nineveh in the hope that they will be stirred to repentance and thus avert the destruction
that will otherwise befall them as punishment for their sins. The prophet is unwilling to
carry out his mission and tries to flee; perhaps he is reluctant to involve himself with
these non-Israelites. When finally he arrives in Nineveh and delivers his message, the
people heed his words and repent, and they merit God’s forgiveness. Jonah is angry, but
God imparts an object lesson, so that Jonah will know that God’s compassion extends
beyond the boundaries of Israel and embraces even these sinful foreigners.
God is the God of Israel, the people that conceived of its relationship with the
Deity as a covenant, recorded its encounter with the Holy One in its Scriptures, and
pioneered many of the religious concepts taken for granted in the Abrahamic faith
traditions. But God is also the God of all humanity. We are both Jews and citizens of the
human community, and we can and should act to affirm these dual identities both in the
home and also outside it.
At many times in our history and in our own time as well, there were and there are
those who tilt the balance excessively toward one of the two poles. The particularistic
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viewpoint is illustrated by the old story of the Jewish boy in New York in the 1920’s,
who came home and told his immigrant grandfather that Babe Ruth had hit three home
runs for the Yankees that day. “What this Babe Ruth did, ” the old man asked, “was it
good for the Jews or bad for the Jews?” We laugh, but we can perhaps understand. We
Jews as a community do have legitimate interests about which we need to be concerned.
However, there are more things in heaven and earth than lend themselves to being
measured by the yardstick of good or bad for the Jews. Moreover, Jews themselves may
have differing ideas about what is good or bad for our people, and there are other
yardsticks that may need to be employed. The attitude of particularism flourishes in
sectarian Jewish communities that isolate themselves from secular culture and knowledge
except insofar as they are instrumental in earning a livelihood and from contact with the
non-Jewish world except in the domain of business or for the purpose of influencing the
political system. I’m not judging, only taking note and conceding that such a stance
probably does enhance the chances for long-term Jewish survival, but at a price that you
and I would not want to pay.
Much more of a concern to me, because I think it impacts the continuity and
survival of a diverse, pluralistic, modern and open Judaism are those who gravitate to the
opposite pole. I’m thinking primarily of non-Orthodox Jews, age 50 or younger, not all
of them, to be sure, but a sizable segment. They are Americans and citizens of the world
and do not differentiate themselves any further. They may respond to a survey question
that they are Jewish and that they are proud of it, but there is little content to their
Jewishness in terms of ritual observance, religious belief, affiliation with the synagogue
or other Jewish organizations, generosity toward Jewish causes, or the pursuit of Jewish
knowledge. A Jewish identity that demands active involvement rather than just verbal
affirmation may be more of a commitment than they are willing to make and may strike
them as too particularistic and narrow.
We have a religious tradition which I cherish and which I believe is indispensable
to our survival. But we are much more than a religion; we are a people with a shared
history and destiny; we are a family, a mishpucheh. And the question that preoccupies
rabbis and communal leaders is how you impart to someone who does not already share a
sense of family the desire to belong and participate. No family is perfect. I dare say most
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have some skeletons in the closet, or some family members who are an embarrassment or
just a royal pain. As a pastor, I have seen far too many instances over the years of family
estrangement and alienation. And I am leaving aside the extreme cases of abuse or
neglect. We often speak of dysfunctional families, but I have on occasion heard the
question raised, whether there is such a thing as a “functional” family. All of that
notwithstanding, I still believe that families are in the best case a source of warmth, love
and mutual support that add immeasurable joy and a sense of emotional and spiritual
well-being to our lives.
Our Jewish “family” is not perfect either. I am sure each of us could come up with
a laundry list of what is wrong with our synagogues and Jewish communal institutions
and what it is in our inherited tradition that is offensive to us. But let us remember the
lesson of the Days of Awe. Adonai melech. God alone is sovereign and perfect, and no
human institution is without flaw. We need to revise our expectations and see such
imperfections not as reason to disengage but as a challenge to us to adapt, re-interpret and
re-shape our traditions and to make our institutions more closely attuned to the mission
they espouse and the ideals they profess.
But why should someone want to add another family – the Jewish mishpucheh –
to the family of origin, the extended family acquired through marriage, the American
family, and the human family, to all of which he or she already belongs? There is
nothing incompatible in maintaining such multiple family affiliations, and thankfully, this
is 21st century America, not 19th century Germany, and we no longer have to downplay
the element of peoplehood, the sense that we are an am, a people, a category that is
inclusive of religious community but which transcends it. But why take on the additional
commitment and the family responsibilities and obligations that come with it? And how
can Jewish leaders frame their appeal in order to elicit such commitment and heighten
meaningful participation in our communal family?
Two caveats are in order at this point. We need to refrain from manipulation
through guilt, from invoking the persecution of Jews in recent times or bygone ages.
Either Jewishness is meaningful and fulfilling to someone or it isn’t, and the fact that
people have suffered to affirm and maintain their Jewish identity should have no bearing
on the issue. Let me qualify the business of guilt somewhat. Where someone sees some
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value in what is offered by a synagogue or a Jewish Federation and takes advantage of it,
even to a limited extent, that creates an obligation to contribute either financially or
through volunteer effort to the viability of the institution, so that it will be there for them
and others in time of need. Secondly, and here I am channeling a friend and counselor
from my distant past, before one rejects Judaism, one should at least have a solid
knowledge of what one is rejecting. Not, I would add, because of the history of Jewish
suffering but because of the richness and depth of the tradition. One should reject based
on knowledge and not out of ignorance. My second caveat is that we must refrain from
invidious comparisons with other faiths, something I myself have been guilty of in the
past and which I now try to avoid. My Judaism works for me as a spiritual community
and a source of meaning and it can for others as well, but I feel no need to proclaim
Judaism’s superiority, to engage in apologetics, or to stereotype other religious traditions.
This caveat too requires some qualification. If we stand for something, there will be times
when we have to assume a stance of opposition. Rabbi Sid Schwarz has noted that in an
age when technology, profit and consumption reign supreme and human connection and
community are devalued, Judaism, to be true to itself, must be counter-cultural.
Our Jewish family will have an appeal when it is truly a family in the best sense
of the word, when it offers the warmth, the love and the mutual support of which I spoke,
when it engages simultaneously the emotions, the intellect and the senses. The beauty of
Judaism is that we are a family that offers many outlets for engagement from worship to
study to artistic expression to environmentalism rooted in the Biblical concept of humans
as stewards of God’s Creation to the struggle for social justice. Judaism is life-affirming,
devoted to respect for the sanctity of life and the dignity of the individual, cognizant that
injustice and oppression are a proper concern for religious men and women, sufficiently
idealistic to reject cynicism and despair, yet realistic enough to recognize human
imperfection and reject the temptation of premature utopianism. These values are of
course no longer exclusively within the Jewish domain. They are present within other
religious traditions, and one can live them out simply as an American who leads an
ethical life, contributes to the well-being of his or her community and cares about justice
and compassion. What I find appealing, however, about affirming my Jewishness is that
these values are part of a context, a package that includes other elements I value such as
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ritual and a sense of history and community, a community that sociologists would refer to
as a mediating structure – large enough to avoid what might be stifling or claustrophobic
in the setting of the immediate family, small enough to serve as an antidote to the
anonymity of mass society.
Jonah replied to the sailors who asked about his origins, Ivri anochi. “I am a
Hebrew.” I am a Hebrew and an American and a citizen of humanity, both a universalist
and a particularist, a worshiper of the God of Israel Who is also the God of humanity and
of the entire cosmos, one who cares about the well-being of the Jewish people and its
survival and the welfare of humankind. None of the labels or commitments by which I
identify myself diminishes nor dishonors any of the others. May we endeavor to be both
better Jews and better citizens of humankind in the coming year.
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