The Endless Blessing of Light: Bereisheet.19

The Endless Blessing of Light

D’var Torah for Parshat Bereisheet

October 25, 2019

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

A couple of days ago I went to the Monet exhibit at the Denver Museum of Art. To say that it was beautiful, of course, is an understatement. The famous Water Lilies, the Japanese Bridge and many other famous paintings were there, as well as a series of snowscapes painted in Norway, and shimmering scenes from Venice.  What a treat to enjoy and see up-close the intricate brush strokes, the dabs of still-glistening paint—as well as to view these masterpieces from the farther-away perspective that Monet had intended his works to be seen!

When I go to art museum, I get inspired—art teaches us to see the world in a different light. 

But it isn’t only the works on exhibit that inspire me. It’s also the other visitors. 

I am not sure if it was due to the excellent lighting that focused on the paintings, or because of the light that seems to emanate from Monet’s paintings, but as I looked at people’s faces, they seemed to glow too. Light draws light.

Maybe that’s why light was God’s first act of Creation. Light enables us to see, to appreciate, to understand. Light gives us comfort and solace, as well as hope and joy. Light is God’s first gift to us.

On Simchat Torah—the holiday on which we rejoice with the Torah—it is customary to read the last few verses of the last book (Deuteronomy) and immediately proceed to the story of Creation, the first few verses of chapter one in Genesis. This almost-seamless reading reminds us of the continuity of life and of the eternal nature of Time itself.

Time is a construct. It cannot be measured as can, say, space, depth, or weight. We calculate time according to parameters we imagine, based on cosmic events: the position of the Earth relative to the sun, moon and stars. Day follows night and, as we read in Ecclesiastes, “The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it arose” (Eccl. 1:5, NKJV). Time can only be presumed. Intangible, it takes no space. In an ever-expanding universe, time is all relative.

And yet, Time is God’s gift to us. We get a portion—days, weeks, months or years—of this eternal cycle, and we get to fill it with our thoughts and deeds. Our time on this earth is enriched by the other gifts that surround us, and we leave our own contributions after us, as though in an exhibit, to be viewed and re-viewed.

We can make life a blessing for us as well as for everyone else, or not. That is our choice.

The Torah readings on Simchat Torah emphasize this truth. The last portion of the Torah is called V’zot Ha-bracha, “This is the blessing.” An exalted poem of praise and hope, its verses comprise Moses’s last message to the People of Israel. Tribe by tribe, Moses recalls to the People our past heritage and reminds us of our future duties and responsibilities. As we review our history, however, it isn’t only about our successes; there are failures as well.  However, Moses reminds us that past mistakes don’t necessarily doom us. Our redemption emanates from our ability to learn from our mistakes, to overcome challenges and failings, to rise up and move forward again. Moses’s final teaching to his People is that we must appreciate and be grateful for the many gifts we have within us and around us, and to activate our potential with each and every living breath we take. At the end of his journey that is Moses’s blessing, his final bequest to us.

No matter how difficult life is—and oh, it can be so hard for so many!—it is a blessing in itself. Not only for the potential for beauty and goodness embedded within each moment, within each of us, but also for what we can do, for what we can leave behind for future generations.

And then, following the moving scene of Moses’s death, with hardly a moment’s pause, we roll the Torah right back to its beginning and start again: In the beginning, God brought Light into existence.

We end with a blessing, and we start anew with a blessing. 

At the museum, watching people’s faces as they moved from one painting to another, I was struck by the light that seemed to emanate from within them (a reflection? Or perhaps something was kindled within them that made them glow from inside?). But more than that: On many faces there was a smile, an ambiguous beam that could bespeak joy, or surprise, or the light of discovery and understanding.  Monet’s gift to humanity can be summarized as much more than his radiant paintings. Monet teaches us to see the world around us in a different way. Through his eyes, we see the intensity of colors, the swirling motion all around us, the flow of a breeze and the ever-changing nature of light itself.

Similarly, the Torah teaches us to see Life and Time as a blessing. Not only as the gifts that our physical being embodies and contains, but also as a painting: a framed moment that contains within it the ongoing flow of God’s eternity, God’s energy, God’s own existence within us. 

In God’s eternal time, there is no beginning, there is no end. Like light, it is a blessing that changes, evolves and flows. It courses endlessly through our veins.

© 2019 by Boaz Heilman

A New Beginning: Simchat Torah.19

Simchat Torah: A New Beginning

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

In a sense, Simchat Torah is the culmination of the High Holy Day season.

Simchat Torah—the holiday of rejoicing with the Torah—marks the occasion on which we conclude the annual cycle of the reading of the Torah, followed immediately by beginning it all over again.  

The ancient Rabbis have described the Torah as “the blueprint of Creation,” hence the connection of the holiday to Rosh Hashana, which Judaism marks as the anniversary of the world’s creation. There are—aren’t there always?—two interpretations for this teaching. One is that God consulted with the Torah even before starting the work of Creation, implying that the Torah existed even prior to Creation itself.

But there is another explanation: the Torah didn’t serve as a blueprint for God, as God is the source and fount of all knowledge and wisdom and certainly does not need to consult any reference book, especially one that God authored and dictated. Rather, it is a blueprint for us, human beings, as we continue the work of Creation, which of course God ceased at the end of the sixth day.

The Torah is the central pillar of Jewish thinking—and of all Western Civilization. It accounts not only for much of the theological thinking of the western world but is also the basis of much of our modern legal justice system.  

The Torah adds the elements of hope, purpose and meaning to our understanding of our existence in the world.

But above all that, by its teaching that there is only one God, the Torah has given us the magnificent concept of equality. If there were many gods, there would be violent competition between them for supremacy (as we see in many of the world’s mythologies), and the conclusion would inevitably be that might is always right. If, on the other hand, there were no God at all, each of us would look at ourselves and think that we might be gods ourselves. Each of us would assume that he/she is smarter, more capable, more talented and powerful than anyone else, and therefore more deserving of honor and praise, even of worship.

But the principle that only God reigns supreme means that we are all actually equal in God’s eyes. Though each of us has different and unique talents and abilities, that doesn’t make any one of us “better.” In God’s heavenly court, we are all judged by what we did during our lifetime, by how we contributed to society and the world, not by what gifts we might have inherited or gained during our days on earth. 

In God’s eyes, our worth is calculated by the good deeds—the mitzvot—that we fulfill.

For God’s own, mysterious, reasons, the world was left incomplete. Human beings, created at the very end of the Sixth Day, were then charged with two tasks: the safekeeping of the world and its inhabitants, and completing the sacred task of Creation. It is this that gives our existence meaning, hope and purpose. Our lives are not pointless and irrelevant. Every one of our actions is a step forward into the yet-unfinished Seventh Day.

And that is why we rejoice on the holiday of Simchat Torah. We not only have a sacred trust and mission, but also a method—a blueprint for the work we must engage in. The Torah is there not to serve God, but rather to help us understand how to accomplish what God intended for us. We don’t ever need to feel lost or confused. The Torah is a map into the unknown, and as such it is a great gift to all humanity.

The work of Creation is never ending. That is why as soon as we finish reading the last few words of the Torah, we immediately start again at the very Beginning. There is a lesson for every moment of our life, a message that unfolds and deepens with every passing day and year.  The more we study, the more we discover about ourselves and the world around us.

As with all learning, as with all life, there is no beginning, and there is no end—it is one cycle, never ending. All paths intertwine, cross and weave, and all ultimately lead up to the source of all knowledge and wisdom, our one God.

© 2019 by Boaz Heilman

The Narrow Bridge: Sukkot.19

Sukkot—The Narrow Bridge

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

October 18, 2019

The Hassidic master Rabbi Nachman of Breslau taught: The entire world is but a narrow bridge, and the most important thing is not to be afraid.

But bridges have always been sources of anxiety. Will they hold? Or will we—God forbid!—plunge into the swirling waters and void beneath? We pay tolls to those who will ferry us across, or taxes to the state—which, hopefully, has inspected the bridge and found it sound and travel-worthy.

Bridges are awe inspiring, great architectural and engineering feats. Functional and beautiful at once, even from a distance they can take our breath away.

Some bridges are almost impossible to cross: Take those glass bottom bridges in China. Though many tourists brave them, some find themselves overtaken with terror and fall to their knees, unable to take another step forward or back.

Bridges can be fun tourist attractions. Some, like the Brooklyn Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, even become subject of myth and lore.

Bridges can be symbolic, representing journeys and even existence itself. That is what Rabbi Nachman refers to in his wise teaching: Bridges as a symbol for life, spanning over the null and void, a passage from one point in existence to another.

In yet another metaphor, one used so often that it has become cliché, we have come to think of life itself as a journey. A case in point is the Israelites’ forty years of wandering in the Wilderness of Sinai. Some might think of the Exodus as the birth of the Jewish Nation, but it really isn’t. The parting of the Red Sea, for all the imagery it represents, is not a birth, but rather a re-birth. The Sea closes behind us, but unlike newborn babies, the freed slaves carry their memories and traditions with them: As they depart Egypt, the Israelites remember to carry with them the remains of Joseph, Jacob’s son, in fulfillment of the oath Joseph made his brothers take at his deathbed, not to leave him behind when God redeems them from bondage. The stories of the past, along with the promise of future Redemption, are what sustained the Israelites during the 400 years of slavery in Egypt. That is the cultural heritage they took with them.

That promise, that oath, that heritage, accompanied us throughout our history.  It’s a promise we made to ourselves, to our ancestors as well as to our children.

Our journeys were never carefree. Though there were times when, protected by a local governor, duke or king, we lived comfortably and in relative security, yet at various times throughout our history—and no less so today than ever before—we woke up to see hateful messages or symbols, reminding us of our painful history.

Somehow, however, despite the many times when our lives and very existence as a people were threatened (and how close to extinction have we come these many times!), we are still here today. Obstinately, we refuse to disappear. Even when, at times, we stray, still we return to our roots, certain within our heart of hearts, that we are walking on a narrow bridge—yet not without oversight from above.

The holiday of Sukkot embodies this journey. Timed precisely for that time of year when fall makes its presence felt, the Sukkah—that flimsy hut that offers shade from the sun but no protection from rain or snow, that is open to the breezes but tumbles without warning at an expected gust—reminds us of the fragility and uncertainty of life. Our physical journey through the days or years allotted to us out of God’s eternal time is punctuated by the seasons and the holidays. Sukkot is the festival that, more than any other, symbolizes our spiritual journey, from darkness to light, from slavery to freedom, from fear to faith.   

Sukkot is like that narrow bridge that Rabbi Nachman spoke of. Offering us barely enough space for comfort, promising no certain security, it’s all about transitions, those phases in our life that are most tenuous and fragile. 

And this festival also reminds us of God’s presence in our lives. 

In the Torah, Sukkot represents the midpoint between two other major holy days: Passover, a reminder of the Exodus and the beginning of our journey, and Shavuot, which celebrates the giving of the Torah to the Israelites. Sukkot is there to recall the path leading from the one to the other.  It helps us remember not to be afraid, to rely on God’s protection. What the s’chach—the thatched, leafy roof that barely gives us shade from the beating sun—can’t do, God can and does for us.

Fear is a legitimate emotion. It’s an invisible but real line that we dare not cross. It protects us from harm and danger—a good thing to know and have as part of our human makeup. 

But then, so is Faith. How much safer we feel when a strong, guiding hand holds our frail one! Trust strengthens our resolve; it gives us courage. 

Our reliance on God as we traverse time and space, from Egypt to the heights of Sinai and beyond, has sustained us throughout our existence.

And what do we owe in return? How do we say thanks to God?

By celebrating the gift of life itself. By decorating the moment and surrounding ourselves with samples of life’s beauty and bounty. By eating festive meals surrounded by family and friends. By remembering our traditions and inviting even our most ancient ancestors—Ushpizin—to sit with us and accompany us along our journey.

Fear can be a debilitating emotion. But it can be overcome with joy and faith. And that’s what the festival of Sukkot has to teach us. The world may be a scary place; but as a community of faith, we don’t need to be afraid. God is holding our hand as we cross this bridge.

Mo’adim l’simcha! Happy Sukkot!

© 2019 by Boaz Heilman

Defending Israel: Yom Kippur.19

Defending Israel: Sermon for Yom Kippur 5780

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

One of my favorite political cartoons comes from Israel. Drawn by Yaakov Kirschen for the Jerusalem Post, it’s called Dry Bones, a reference to the prophet Ezekiel’s famous Vision of the Valley of Dry Bones. A couple of years ago, this strip featured a husband and wife talking about the current situation in Israel and relating it to Yom Kippur.  The wife opens the conversation:  “Yom Kippur is the day we use to list our sins and shortcomings. The whole world needs a day like that.”  Looking up from his newspaper, the husband replies:  “No they don’t!  They use the entire year… to list our sins and shortcomings.”

It’s an amusing observation, but it’s also true. In the last few years, it’s become fashionable to criticize Israel, to find fault with any number of its policies, both foreign and domestic. Israel bashing is now common not only among terrorist groups, but also in polite, sophisticated and enlightened societies.  In the United Nations alone, more resolutions condemning Israel were passed than against all other nations of the world combined. This includes countries well-known for their “humanitarian” policies, countries such as Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, China and Venezuela.  

And so, since for much of the world, every day is Yom Kippur, since critiquing Israel and delegitimizing its very existence has led even many of us to question our loyalty to the Jewish State, I decided that today I am going to give myself and my home country a break. Today, instead of pointing out Israel’s faults and sins, I am going to point out some of the things she actually does right.  Tomorrow it’s back to business as usual. Today, we count our blessings instead, as we take a look at the values that Israel prizes and strives to achieve.

Let’s start with Israel’s wars, among the most maligned and misunderstood of all of Israel’s endeavors. No other country in the world has faced ongoing and continuous threats against its existence as Israel has. Acts of violence and terror began long before 1948, when Israel declared its independence—only to be invaded one day later by seven armies from neighboring Arab countries. Resistance to Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel began when Turkey still controlled the Middle East as part of its Ottoman Empire. The violence increased steadily through the 1920’s and 30’s and hasn’t stopped yet.

Israel has lost a huge number of its young men and women to these murderous acts. During the Intifadas of 2000-2004, hardly a day passed without deadly attacks on busses, restaurants and marketplaces. In the weeks and months prior to the 2014 Gaza War, Israel was the target of over 7000 rocket and mortar rounds launched by Hamas, the terrorist organization that governs its Arab population with an iron fist and which has never renounced its oath to destroy Israel. 

Throughout this conflict, Israel has defended itself in the most ethical way possible. Despite almost daily confrontations with Hamas, despite ongoing rocket, mortar and IED attacks, Israel continues to supply Gaza with electricity, water and literally tons of humanitarian aid every day.

Despite the way Israel is portrayed by the news media, no other country in the world takes the kind of extraordinary measures to avoid civilian casualties as does the Jewish nation. Leaflets dropped from the air, cell phone calls and “roof knocking” tactics are used to warn civilians of impending attacks. Israel trains all its soldiers in ethical fighting and often places them in deadly danger rather than attack civilian targets—despite the fact that Hamas headquarters are located on purpose in the most populated areas of the Gaza Strip, and despite the fact that most often the rockets are launched from crowded apartment buildings, mosques, schools and even kindergartens. 

In war and peace, Israel struggles to define and maintain its Jewish identity.  To be Jewish doesn’t just mean to recite prayers several times a day.  You must also strive to live by the highest Jewish ideals, even if on occasion you fall short.

One example of this is how Israel deals with the plight of refugees and illegal immigrants, which in recent years has become a huge challenge for the entire world.

In its 71 years of existence, Israel has had to take in more refugees, from more places around the world, than any other country since World War II.  While there are many problems—such as what to do with the thousands of Sudanese who fled persecution in their own country, made the dangerous journey across the Sinai Desert and finally arrived in Israel—only to find that they were unwanted there.  Yet many others, such as the 100,000 Ethiopian Jews who arrived in Israel in the 1980’s and 90’s, and despite many social, political and religious challenges, have managed to integrate and create new, productive lives for themselves in their new homeland.

I admit that when I first saw people of color—I was probably 8 or 9 years old—I must have gawked and stared shamelessly.  I hope I can be forgiven for that, though I still cringe at the memory.  What I knew then was that they came to Israel from Ghana to learn about farming and agriculture.  What I didn’t know is that the program that sponsored them was called Mashav.  Initiated in 1957 by David Ben Gurion and Golda Meir, Mashav is Israel’s agency for international development and cooperation.  Since its launching, Mashav has trained more than 300,000 men and women from 150 countries. In addition to teaching modern farming technology, Mashav sets up water and soil conservation projects in developing countries.  (By the way, it isn’t only third-world countries that benefit from Israel’s experience.  Even as we speak, Israeli water experts are helping the states of Arizona, California, Nevada and Colorado deal with one of the worst droughts in recorded history).

Fifteen years ago, Mashav sent a dairy farmer named Lior Yaron to China.  His job? To bring modern technology to China’s failing dairy farms. Israeli dairy cows, as it turns out, are the most productive in the world, yielding almost twice as much milk as their American counterparts.  China, on the other hand, has had  to ration the milk that its cows produced.  That is, until Farmer Lior arrived.  Within four years, cows in China doubled their production of milk; they have become the wonder of China and actually attract a huge number of visitors from all over Asia.

Poverty and hunger are among the greatest challenges that the developing world is facing today.  All over the world, global warming has caused famines and disease.  Guess who is leading the world in the field of food production in drought conditions?  You guessed it:  Israel, fulfilling the mitzvah of feeding the hungry.

In Africa, for decades now Israel has been teaching and enabling farmers to turn from subsistence to commercial farming. In Kenya, Israel is helping to protect the water of Lake Victoria and is currently expanding its work to water treatment and management.  In Ethiopia, the focus is on drought resilience and dryland agriculture.  And in Ghana, Israel’s help is in the field of citrus production.

Another huge problem that Israel tackles is domestic violence, particularly violence against women.  How big is this problem?  It’s estimated that in the US alone, domestic violence is the third leading cause of family homelessness.  

In some cultures, the murder of women who are perceived as bringing shame to their families is considered acceptable and even honorable. Their crimes? Refusing to enter an arranged marriage, seeking divorce from an abusive partner, or venturing out on the street unchaperoned by a male relative.

Here is where Mashav, Israel’s agency for international development and cooperation, does some of its most important work.  A couple of bus stops from where my parents’ old apartment was, in Haifa, Mashav runs an international education center named after Golda Meir.  This center assists in the training of women engaged in community work, a beautiful phrase that basically means women’s rights and empowerment.  Since its founding in 1961, the Golda Meir Mount Carmel International Training Center has helped train nearly 20,000 women from 150 countries and regions, including—are you ready for this? —the Palestinian Authority and Gaza.

Healing the sick is yet another commandment Israel observes diligently.  You may know already about Teva Pharmaceuticals, about CT scanners, MRI’s, surgical lasers and the pillcam, all developed in Israel.  But did you know that Israel is one of the world’s leaders in stem-cell research?  Or that Israeli scientists are currently working on treatments for MS, Alzheimer’s, and pancreatic cancer? Did you know that there are about one thousand companies in Israel that are involved in healthcare or life-science products?   

In the field of cannabis research, whereas the use of recreational marijuana has not yet been legalized, Israel has definitely become the go-to place for research and advanced information on medical marijuana. Not long ago, US News And World Report referred to Israel as “The Holy Land of medical marijuana.” 

It’s well known that in the last few decades, hi-tech has become one of Israel’s chief exports.  What isn’t so well known is that a large part of this work is actually dispensed for free—in the form of aid that Israel sends to victims of earthquakes, wars, floods, fires, and other natural disasters around the world.  Some of the countries that have benefited from Israel’s aid include Nepal, Japan, the Philippines, Haiti, Turkey, and even the United States.

Helping the weak, the poor and the disenfranchised; feeding the hungry, and healing the sick are some of the values that help define Israel’s existence and purpose today. And the most amazing thing is that Israel does all that while facing constant challenges to her security and even to her very right to exist. Yet this important humanitarian work rarely makes the evening news. It’s so much more interesting, after all, to show full-color pictures of atrocities supposedly committed by the Jewish State.  

Still, Israel’s sacred service to the world does not go completely unrecognized.  The work of Lior Yarn, the dairy farmer, won him the “Great Wall Friendship Award,” a prestigious prize conferred by the mayor of Beijing.  Perhaps more significantly, in 2014 Israel was appointed to serve as vice-chair on an important UN panel dealing with refugees and human rights.  More than 140 countries overrode a coordinated effort by Arab states to prevent this appointment.  The selection of Israel to serve on this committee demonstrates both gratitude and acknowledgment of the Jewish state’s many contributions to humanity and the world.

In the past, it was customary on Yom Kippur to ask for contributions for impoverished Jews living in Israel and elsewhere around the world.  

In my parents’ generation, it was the Israel Bonds campaign.  The 1948 War of Independence had taken a terrible toll on Israel’s population and economy.  On top of this came the complexities of absorbing hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors and 750,000 refugees from Arab countries. Israel needed these generous contributions in order to survive.

Today, however, I’m not going to ask you to buy Israel Bonds or that you invest in Israeli stocks.

But I am going to ask that you invest something else in our Jewish homeland. More than ever, Israel needs your support:  At home or at work; on college and high school campuses; in the daily papers and on all the social media; and not least, in Congress, the Senate and the State Department, we need to support Israel. Particularly today, with a nuclearized Iran threatening daily to destroy Israel, pouring greater sums of money and more powerful arms to its proxy militias in Lebanon, Gaza and Syria, Israel needs our support. Not because Israel is pure and blameless; it does have its faults, and it does makes mistakes, and we don’t even have to agree with all of its policies. 

But Israel deserves our support for three basic reasons:  First, because Israel is probably America’s best and most trusted ally, if not in the whole world, then certainly in its region of the world.  Second, because we, as Americans and as Jews, share Israel’s values and, like most Israelis, try to live by the highest standards of ethics and principles. And third, we must support Israel because criticism of Israel does not stop with Israel. Anti-Israel protests in Europe and elsewhere—including the United States—are clearly financed and supported by  anti-Semitic organizations, with demonstrators of various parties, from right to left, screaming out, “Death to the Jews,” “Gas the Jews,” “Jews Back to Birkenau” and “Hitler was right.”

By defending Israel’s right to defend herself, we stand up not only for Israel’s right to exist, but also for our own right to live free of violence and persecution.  By supporting Israel’s vital work around the world, we become partners with its cause and mission. And by being there for Israel, we ensure that Israel continues to be there for us too, as Jews and as Americans.

Thousands of years ago, when we stood at the foot of Mt. Sinai, we affirmed our unity.  From rich to poor; men, women and children, we declared ourselves one people under one God, ready to accept our mission and role in history.  Today, I call on each one of us to reaffirm our solidarity with our people, to be there for one another, to find within ourselves new strength and new hope for the future, as we stand firm together, arms linked, shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart.

Am Yisrael chai!  United, the People of Israel lives!

G’mar chatimah tova, may we all be inscribed and sealed for a good year of strength and peace.    

Kein y’hi ratzon, may this be God’s will.

© 2019 by Boaz D. Heilman

Better, Not Best: Kol Nidrei.19

Better, Not Best: A Sermon for Kol Nidrei 5780

Oct. 8, 2019

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

I’ve always loved books and reading.  Even as a child growing up in Israel, I loved walking over to a nearby bookstore and browsing up and down the aisles. Luckily, the town’s library also had a large selection that made me a repeat customer, sometimes several times a week. But some of the best books of all I found much closer—in the bookcase at my own childhood home.  There I found a beautiful edition of the Bible that I treasured for many years, Shakespeare’s King Lear, Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, Jewish folk tales told by I.L. Peretz, the complete writings of Sholom Aleichem, and many other classics.  Among my favorites, however, a book that I kept returning to time after time, was a collection of Bible illustrations by the French artist and illustrator Gustave Doré.  

Doré’s woodcut prints, vivid and powerful, caught my imagination, and I would delve for long periods of time into both the mood and detail of each picture.  

One of my favorite illustrations was of the Tower of Babel.  

In the Bible, the story of the Tower of Babel, though cleverly told, is short and deceptively simple.  In it, as you might remember, the people of ancient Babylon intend to build a tower so tall and enormous that its top would reach the heavens. Yet, for some unexplained reason, God is not pleased with this endeavor. God therefore confounds the builders’ speech so that they can’t understand one another. Consequently they abandon their tasks, and the work of building the tower is left unfinished. 

This outwardly simple story, however, raises a question that has troubled readers ever since.  What exactly did these ancient builders do that was so wrong? As the Torah tells it, they planned to build a tower so high that its rosh, its head or top, would be in the heavens. With this tall structure they wanted to create “a name” for themselves. And what’s wrong with that? Doesn’t the Bible itself say that “a good name is better than good oil?”  

But was “a good name” the true intention of these ancient builders? Or, as most commentators see it, was their intent actually to stage a rebellion against God? According to these early commentaries, the Babylonians’ proposed not only to make a name for themselves, but actually to remove God’s name, a name written all over Creation, and replace it with their own. 

Two morals were drawn from this story. One was that human beings must submit themselves completely to God’s will and never doubt or question it.

Such complete obedience, however, is beyond me, and I’m not sure that even Abraham, our earliest Patriarch, would approve of such an unquestioning and unforgiving faith.

In the Midrash, however, a story is told that leads us to a somewhat different understanding of the sin of the builders of the Tower of Babel.

In those days there were no huge cranes such as the ones used today to build skyscrapers. All the work then was done by hand, by slaves who were often hurt and maimed by the exhausting and hard labor they were forced to perform. As the Tower of Babel grew taller and taller, hauling stones up to the top became an ever-greater challenge.  Once, the Midrash tells, a stone fell and killed a worker on the ground, causing an outburst of grief and mourning. The crying, however, wasn’t over the tragic loss of life. Rather, it was because now the stone would have to be hoisted all the way up again.  The taskmasters were brutal, continues the midrash, sparing no one, not the sick and weak, not even women in labor. It was this, their hard-heartedness and cruelty, that angered God.

I like this Midrash, because, as seen through the Rabbis’ eyes, the story of the Tower of Babel becomes more than just a cautionary tale in which God demands complete submission. At the very heart of this Midrash one can find Judaism’s vision of a just and moral universe, one in which each of us has a role to play, where every one of us matters, where each of our actions bears fruit and consequences.

It is this midrash, and the lesson that it teaches us, which makes Yom Kippur—a day of forgiveness, atonement and redemption—possible.

The sin of the ancient Babylonians was the sin of supreme arrogance.  They wished to be so powerful that they could live free from fear from punishment and consequence.  They dreamed of—and began to build for themselves— a life unencumbered by moral judgment, a life whose guiding principle was unbound desire and indulgence, a life where pride and arrogance, not justice and compassion, reign supreme.

Yom Kippur, on the other hand, is all about consequences.  Yom Kippur is a day of reckoning, a day when our actions and behavior are judged in the heavenly court and consequences are meted out.  As the powerful prayer Unetane Tokef reminds us—“who shall live and who shall die”—each according to his or her own deeds.

But Yom Kippur isn’t only about punishment.  It’s also about forgiveness and Redemption, the opportunity to cleanse our record and begin again, only now with more humility, with more experience, with greater wisdom. 

Redemption doesn’t happen automatically.  It’s a process, a gradual series of steps that must be followed.  The prayerbook speaks of Tefillah (prayer), Teshuva (repentance) and Tzedakkah (acts of righteousness) as the three steps leading to forgiveness. Another way of looking at the process would have us suppose that there are three “R’s” in Redemption, each “R” representing a rung in the ladder of Redemption that we must climb.  

The first “R” is for Recognition. 

While often enough we know when we’ve hurt someone, it isn’t always obvious or clear. We may be too hurried, or too proud, to notice. Sometimes the other person might harbor his or her hurt deep inside, so that we don’t know what we might have said or done to offend.  And yet it’s important to own the moment, to recognize that, knowingly or not, we indeed offended, caused hurt or injury. Sometimes we realize this ourselves; at other times, we need to be alerted or reminded by someone else.  In fact, the Torah makes this a commandment: “Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in their guilt” (Lev. 19:17). We need to let one another know when we have wronged someone. We need to know when we’ve caused pain.

Once we have Recognized and become aware of the wrong we had done, the next step is to do something about it, to respond. The next “R” then is for Response.  Say something of comfort to the person you’ve hurt.

I love it when politicians, caught in a lie or a smear, claim that their words were taken “out of context.”  I love it when, instead of apologizing, they claim to have been misunderstood. Or, better yet, when they shift the blame to someone else.  If Recognition, the first “R” in Redemption, is difficult, apparently the second “R,” Response, the act of simply saying “I’m sorry,” is twice as hard.  Apologizing is humbling and embarrassing. It’s admitting that we can be wrong. For the arrogant among us, it’s like taking the air out of our tires.  For a bully, it’s even more difficult, because saying I’m sorry means undoing his or her whole psychological makeup. You aren’t born a bully; you grow into one; and undoing that often takes years of therapy and hard work.  

Yet if we are looking for Redemption, for a chance to rehabilitate ourselves, to re-create ourselves as honest and valuable members of society, Response, simply saying these three words, “I am sorry,” is essential.  Apologize for the pain you may have caused, intentionally or not.  Never underestimate the power of a word spoken, or a word not spoken, to cause hurt.  Never dismiss a wrong or put it out of mind. Pain can linger, sometimes even for years. Respond to it. Say “I’m sorry.” The words go a long way towards healing the hurt.

One of the most naïve lines that ever circulated in pop culture comes from the book and later the movie, Love Story: “Love means never having to say you are sorry.”  Actually, no; love means exactly the opposite.  Love doesn’t mean you never hurt one another.  In fact, sometimes we hurt the very people we love the most—not always because we mean to, but because they are there; not because they deserve it, but because they are available and vulnerable. Because we’re afraid or unable to express our anger to our boss or whoever else we are really mad at.  And so we hurt the one we love.  At such moments, love very much means having to say, “I am sorry.”  This is how you reach the next rung, the 2^nd “R” in Redemption, Response. Make it count: Take responsibility and Respond with kindness, respond with love, respond with humility.

The third “R” is for Repair.  And this may yet be the hardest step of all.  Sometimes there’s a penalty to pay, but that’s not all there is to it. Repair is hard work, the kind that’s done not for any selfish reason but rather to benefit someone else. It may take a short time, or an entire lifetime to complete. Sometimes the work is never finished, yet we are not excused from trying and doing our best.

Some wrongs can never be mended—and oh! how sad it is when a person we’ve hurt is gone, and with them, also the opportunity to make things better and whole again. You want to say “I’m sorry” a hundred times, but there’s no one there to hear it. There are moments in my life that I still cannot recall without cringing in shame. Times when I slighted someone, called them by a name or a slur that I regret uttering. There were times when I ignored someone because acknowledging them would mean owning up to my own fear and insecurity. Fortunately, the principle of tikkun olam, repair of the universe, teaches us that we can fix some things by paying forward, by making life better for others; and not least, by mending what’s broken inside ourselves so that we never revert, and never repeat our past behavior. 

Sometimes that’s the best we can do.  

And that’s where Yom Kippur comes into our lives.  As the Day of Atonement directs us to ask pardon from others, so it teaches us to forgive ourselves. In the end, Redemption means to recognize our role in the larger world, to accept the fact that no one is above reproach; that all our actions have consequences. Yom Kippur teaches us that repair is possible.  We can pick up the broken pieces and make the world whole again, starting with ourselves. 

Yom Kippur is the opposite of the Tower of Babel.  It’s all about morality and responsibility, not arrogance and superiority.  It’s about the quest to be better, not best. Through the process of Prayer, Repentance and Acts of Lovingkindness, and along with our own 3 “R’s”—Recognition, Response, and Repair—Yom Kippur offers us a second chance, a golden opportunity to start off with a clean slate, to fix things, to right our wrongs and do things better this time around. 

May our prayers and pleas on this Yom Kippur reach the Heavens—not by way of pride and arrogance, but rather carried aloft on the wings of our humble prayers and our remorseful spirit.  May our acts of repentance and redemption be acceptable in God’s eyes; and may we all be inscribed in the Book of Life for a year of health, happiness and love. L’shana tova tikateivu v’teichatemu.

Kein y’hi ratzon, may this be God’s will.

© 2016 by Boaz D. Heilman

From Nobody To Somebody: Rosh Hashanah sermon.19

From Nobody To Somebody

Sermon For Rosh Hashanah 5780

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

Congregation B’nai Torah  Westminster, Colorado

Sept. 30, 2019

It is the evening of Kol Nidrei, the most awesome night of the year.  The entire congregation is silent as everyone awaits the beginning of the service.  The cantor clears his throat once and again, but his beautiful voice, for which he is deservedly famous, does not emerge. He seems agitated and anxious.  The rabbi looks at him expectantly.  “Nu? Shall we start?”  Suddenly, overcome by emotion, the cantor runs to the Holy Ark, prostrates himself and cries out, “O Master of the Universe! I cannot do this!  I am a total sinner, a nothing!  I am unworthy of leading your congregation in prayer!” 

Visibly shaken and overwhelmed, the rabbi likewise runs to the Holy Ark and prostrates himself next to the cantor.  “O God!  Forgive me, I too am a sinner, dust and ashes, unworthy to stand before you!”

Just then, the shammes, the caretaker of the synagogue, jumps up from his seat in the last row of the shul, runs up to the Ark and prostrates himself next to the rabbi and cantor.  “O God,” the shames wails, “I am a nobody, unworthy, nothing before you!”

“Ach,” groans the rabbi as he nudges the cantor and quietly remarks to him, “Look who thinks he’s a nobody!”

This wonderful example of Jewish humor is actually filled with truth.  We laugh because we recognize ourselves in it.  In each one of us lies a similar paradox. Despite the typically brave and even over-confident front we present to the outside world, most of us view ourselves with nearly equal measures of both pride and humility. We are all sure enough of ourselves to stay the path we’ve chosen; but alongside our self-assurance, hidden from public view, we also find nagging doubts, and the troubling awareness of our utter insignificance in the larger scheme of things.

Usually, we manage to balance the two views, but every once in a while, we find ourselves overcome by one more than the other. For me, it’s usually at night that my bravado disappears, and is replaced instead by doubt and uncertainty.

I admit that, especially during the High Holy Days season, I sense my doubts much more than my certainty. The start of a new year always brings about worries and concerns. How much more so for me this year than at past seasons, as I begin a new decade in my life, start a new chapter in a new part of the country, and face a new congregation! 

But it’s even more than that. Standing on the bimah, I am deeply aware of my own limitations. As rabbi, I am entrusted with a heavy responsibility: I need to pray not only for myself, nor even just for my family. An entire community is looking up to me, expecting assurance that everything will be OK this year; that our prayers will be heard; that strength and health will be there for us and our loved ones again this year. A rabbi is supposed to do more than just hear the pleas of the congregation. A rabbi is expected to be a conduit between the people and our God—not only to deliver God’s message (or at least my take on it), but also to lift our prayers and lay them, as it were, at the feet of the Creator of the Universe. 

Deep in my heart, I feel woefully inadequate to fulfill this charge. 

And how often does it happen that, in conversation with someone, a person will heave a deep sigh and sadly admit to me that he or she isn’t a good Jew.  “I rarely go to synagogue,” they acknowledge.  Or, “I can’t read Hebrew anymore, it’s been so long since my bar mitzvah.”  Still another person might say, in a voice hushed by shame and guilt, “I’ve been through so much in my life, there’s so much evil in the world, rabbi, I can’t believe in God’s grace and goodness anymore.”

My first task then is to assure them that I don’t judge them. It isn’t up to me to decide who’s a good Jew and who isn’t. My next reaction is, “But you are here now; you came here to speak with me, to express your feelings; to see if you can be given another chance to rise to the potential you once felt you had. Isn’t that what prayer is?”

I know I speak for some of you here today:  Those of you who rarely go to temple, yet are here today; those of you who can’t read Hebrew anymore—or never learned—yet, awkward as it may feel, hold your prayer books in your hands and try to sense the holiness that they contain.   

Yes, you are here today.  That’s the amazing thing.  That despite the doubts and uncertainties, despite the endless arguments back and forth, year after year you return. 

Whether you know it or not, your presence here today speaks volumes.

There is a word in Hebrew, Hineini, the formal response to hearing your name called.  Hineini:  “Behold, I am here!”  In the Garden of Eden, after eating of the apple, Adam hears God’s voice calling out to him, but he is silent. He hides in fear and shame. He cannot respond. Abraham, on the other hand, is not afraid to reply Hineini, not when God is about to try him with the most painful test of all, commanding him to sacrifice his beloved son, Isaac. Nor does Abraham falter later, as he climbs Mt. Moriah, a sharp knife in one hand and the hand of his sweet son Isaac in the other.  “Avi! My Father,” Abraham hears the boy’s call. Fortifying himself against the pain he feels within his heart, the father responds, Hineini v’ni, “Here am I, my beloved son.” I am here with you, I am here for you. Do not be afraid, my son.

Centuries later, the prophet Isaiah, when he hears God’s call, despite being painfully aware of his all-too-human flaws and failings, agrees to be God’s messenger.  “Hineini,” he declares, “Here am I!  Send me!” 

It is no casual response, “hineini.”  It takes courage to step up. It takes heroism to overlooks the dangers that lie ahead and yet, despite it all, choose to do the right thing. For Abraham, it’s the sorrow and dread of losing his beloved son, Isaac. For Isaac, it’s the fear of facing the unknowable will of God.  For the prophet Isaiah, 

what he so profoundly understood, yet chose to disregard, was that being God’s messenger is inescapably linked with danger, suffering and persecution.

Maybe that’s why so many of us remain silent and hidden, keeping our Jewish identity under wraps.  We are all-too-aware of the dangers. Our long history has taught us that there’s security in hiding. It’s easier, it’s safer, to blend in, to disappear into the crowd.  

For some of us, even if as children we did go to religious school, our innocent faith, based on tales of miracles and wonders, has been shaken by too many actual, real-life events, by too many unanswered questions. The images we see almost daily, of undeserved suffering; of pain inflicted on the innocent; the misery of refugees—men, women and children fleeing violence and deprivation; the very injustice of life itself!  These appear to be in direct contradiction to the image of a loving, all-powerful and gracious God that we grew up with. 

As a young child growing up in Israel in the 1950’s, almost every grownup I knew was a Holocaust survivor. Not surprisingly, few of them ever went to synagogue, not even on the High Holy Days. I never asked them why. It’s as though I instinctively  knew that the answer was far too complicated, too painful to explain. It was only much later that I began to understand why. To survive the horrors of Auschwitz and Treblinka and yet to praise the glory and mercy of God seemed hypocritical to them. 

To step up and say “Hineini!” to a God whose existence they bitterly questioned was to be untrue to themselves. To sanctify a God whose compassion and might seemed more fairy tale than actual fact, was to deny the blunt reality of the personal hell that each of them lived through.

And yet, there were those who did persist in their faith.  I remember one Rosh Hashanah—I must have been seven or eight years old.  I wanted to hear the shofar blown, and I actually did find my way into a synagogue. The shul was crowded.  Not a seat was to be found.  Men were standing and swaying, their tallit fringes swaying from side to side, intoning prayers with eyes shut to the world around them, through lips that barely parted, so that rather than any distinct speech, what I heard was a hum that rose and fell like a wave in the ocean.  Huddled against each other, there was little enough air or space for me to walk through.  Though I left soon—I don’t think I stayed long enough to actually hear the shofar—I still remember that experience. I have recalled and thought about it often. I could almost understand what led me there—it was curiosity, and perhaps something more. But what was it that drove them there in such numbers, I wondered. What was the force that seemed to take hold of their bodies and souls and make them sway like that, cry like that, with such intensity and power? 

Only much later did I begin to understand.  Their presence, their prayers, their yearning to feel the holiness of the day, called out: Hineini.  Here I am. Despite it all, I AM HERE! 

Unexplainable, there’s a thread that runs through all of us.  Aware of it or not, when it tugs, we respond.  

Not all of us respond through prayer or formal services.  In the 1960’s, at the height of the civil rights movement in America, fully half of those who came from all over the United States to Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi to help African Americans find their voice and register to vote, were Jews. No matter that there was great danger in what they did, they did so anyway as a matter of civic duty.  Or so they thought.  Years later, in retrospect, many of them came to understand that they were actually responding to the call for social justice inherent in Judaism; that they were following in the footsteps of the prophet Isaiah, whose dream was to bring justice to all humanity and to give the downtrodden faith and hope. 

Like Isaiah, these modern-day prophets heard the call, and they responded. They went because they were Jewish and because freeing the captives is a great mitzvah that our people have always prized and practiced.

In recent years, I have also seen a huge surge in the number of people going to Israel.  They go as immigrants—making Aliyah; or as tourists; on a mission with some Jewish organization; on Birthright trips; or as volunteers stepping up to serve in the Israel Defense Forces. Like our Biblical patriarch Jacob, who had fled in fear of his brother Esau’s murderous and jealous rage, yet hearing and obeying God’s call to return home, they too are heeding God’s call to come home, to return to their roots, to take their place in the history of our people in the most direct and personal way possible. Stuffing scraps of paper inscribed with prayers into gaps between the ancient stones of the Western Wall, planting trees on barren mountains, climbing Masada, or learning to use an M-16, with their presence they proclaim, “Hineini, I am here. I have returned.”

Years ago, a great shofar was sounded, a call that reverberated around the world. We are here today because so many thousands of years later, we still hear the echo of that first shofar. Like the child who found his way into the synagogue so many years ago, we are here today, hoping to reconnect with that mysterious tug within our hearts; to ask questions and seek answers; perhaps to hear a familiar melody, or perhaps just to say a few Hebrew words that have not yet faded from our memory. 

Today, each of us, in our own unique way, says hineini, “here I am!” Our response empowers us to overcome our doubts, to fill us with confidence. Hineini may only be a word, but it has the power to turn us from a nobody, into a somebody. Even as hineini humbles the most proud among us, so it empowers us, turning us from a speck of meaningless dust into a fully covenanted partner with God, engaged in the sacred and ongoing work of Creation.

May our presence here today strengthen us in our resolve to make a difference—if not in the universe, then at least in our own little corner of it. This year, we pray to be counted among our people: to be there for one another; to help maintain our synagogue and our community; and to be ready to respond with all our heart, mind and soul whenever we hear our name called out:  Hineini! Here I am!

May this New Year bring us blessings of health, love and joy. May we find satisfaction and fulfillment at our workplace and in our homes.  Adonai oz l’amo yitein, Adonai y’varech et amo ba-shalom; May God bless us all with strength and peace. 

L’shana tova tikateivu—May we all be inscribed for a good New Year.  Amen.

© 2019 by Boaz D. Heilman