Legacy and Responsibility: The Jewish Covenant
5782 Rosh Ha-Shana Sermon
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman
September 7, 2021
Somehow, with everything that was going on this summer, a small piece of news escaped my notice until only a few days ago: On July 20, Ruth Pearl died. Who was Ruth Pearl, you ask?
Ruth Pearl was a survivor of the Farhud, a pogrom carried out against the Jewish population of Baghdad. Over two days in June 1941, 180 Jews were murdered, hundreds were injured, and an undetermined number of women were raped. Thousands of Jewish homes and businesses were looted or destroyed. Ruth was 6 then, and she was witness to the terror, although she and her family were protected by their Muslim neighbors, who knew them well and respected the family well enough to fend off the looters and murderers.
That in itself, however, is not the reason why the story of Ruth Pearl’s death made the news. Rather, it was because she was the mother of Daniel Pearl, the journalist who was kidnapped and murdered by Islamist terrorists in Pakistan 20 years ago.
Slain in the gruesome method favored by his executioners, Daniel’s last words were, “My name is Daniel Pearl. My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am a Jew.”
To his killers, that probably wasn’t relevant. Their excuse was that he was an American spy.
And in fact, he was in Pakistan to gather information for an article he was writing for the Wall Street Journal on the connection between Al Qaeda and the terrorist known as the “Shoe Bomber.” But at that extreme moment, Daniel Pearl brushed aside any other aspect of his existence. He was born a Jew; he lived as a Jew; he died a Jew.
I was always intrigued by this.
There is no doubt that Daniel Pearl’s Jewishness was a large part of his identity. His parents had roots in Israel—his great-grandfather was one of the founders of the modern city of B’nai Brak and has a street named after him there. Daniel lived in Israel for a year and celebrated his bar mitzvah in Jerusalem. But Daniel Pearl was also an American journalist. He graduated from Stanford University and married a Dutch woman he met in Paris, France. He played the violin, and besides music, his interests included technology and communications. He wrote about a wide range of topics, including about a lost-and-later-found Stradivarius violin, and about Iranian pop music. He also wrote investigative reports focusing on international affairs, including the ethnic wars in Kosovo and the US bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. A collection of his writings, At Home In The World, was published after his death.
Daniel Pearl was a man of the world. And yet the words he chose to sum up his life were, “I am a Jew.”
What was it about being Jewish that was so important to him?
For that matter, why did so many other Jews, throughout our long history, choose humiliation and torture rather than simply convert? Why did the defenders of Masada choose to take their own lives rather than be taken alive by the Romans? In the Middle Ages, in Spain and Portugal, why did so many Jews resort to living a double life, as crypto Jews, rather than abandon their faith? And over the centuries, when given the opportunity to leave, why did millions of Jews choose to cross continents and oceans, with only the clothes on their backs, in the hope of living freely as Jews?
Something about our faith compels us to live and die as Jews. One opinion is that the root of our devotion is found in the story of the Akeida, the deeply disturbing incident in the Torah where Abraham offers his beloved son, Isaac, as a sacrifice to God. In many synagogues, this is the Torah reading for this very day, Rosh Ha-Shanah, when the most number of Jews gather to hear it retold. We modern Jews rebel against this kind of blind faith, and yet we keep coming back to it year after year, to weigh our beliefs against an act that we see as barbaric and yet also the ultimate test of man’s faith in his God.
Certainly yet another reason for our resolve to remain Jewish is the hope—the belief—in the Messiah and Olam ha-Ba, “The World To Come,” a vision of a glorious time when untold riches and rewards will come to those who remain faithful.
But belief, no matter how fervent, still needs to be at least somewhat rational. Hope needs purpose if it is to make suffering bearable. And Faith alone, in and of itself, isn’t enough for us anymore. Today we need more tangible reasons. And if we Jews have kept our faith alive for so long—and still do! —despite everything that we have endured, there must be something there that keeps it alive, burning passionately within us.
And if we look at who we are as a people and what we have accomplished during the 3600 years of our existence, perhaps we can find even more than one reason.
By numbers alone, we are a tiny people, less than one-quarter of one percent of the world’s population. Yet our history is the third longest—and one of the most successful—in human civilization, after China and India (which, by the way, together account for about half the world’s population).
Ours is a history that still lives and endures. Egypt’s Sphinx and the pyramids, the Parthenon in Greece and the Coliseum in Rome, for all their mystery and grandeur, are all evidence of a past that is long gone. But the Hebrew language, our texts and our traditions are all still living, growing and evolving, proof of our ongoing survival.
We are the people who gave the world the Bible. We bequeathed to the world Abraham, Moses and King David, the pillars upon which three of the world’s greatest religions are founded.
Current stereotypes notwithstanding, we are a people of legendary physical strength. Samson, King Saul and his son Jonathan, King David, Judah the Maccabee—these are only some of the warriors who defeated enemies in ancient days. In modern times we’ve witnessed the heroic Ghetto fighters, the partisans, and all the Jewish soldiers who, during World War II, fought alongside the Allies. And of course there is Zahal—the IDF, Israel’s Defense Force—one of the most powerful and ethical armies in the world, which, against all odds and numbers, has held off numerous Arab armies and legions of terrorists for almost a hundred years now.
Throughout history, Jews helped establish and maintain kingdoms and empires. Our trading skills kept us busy on all coasts of the Mediterranean and Arabian Seas, along the Silk Road to China and the Spice Route to India.
Charlemagne brought us to the Rhine lands, and King Casimir, to Poland and Russia.
On his voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus made sure that among his crew were several Jews, including a Jewish cartographer and two surgeons. Columbus also took with him a man named Luis de Torres, who was also known as Yosef ben Levi ha-Ivri (Joseph the Hebrew, a Levite), who could speak Hebrew as well as several other languages, to act as translator and interpreter.
And—oh yes—the entire trip was financed with money raised by Jewish contributors.
Among the explorers who helped settle the New World and the East Indies were Jews who were looking not only for opportunity, but also for safe haven, a place where they could escape the clutches of the Spanish Inquisition and practice their faith openly.
In more recent years, Jewish contributions have been invaluable in every field. Jews excel in sports, and well before Julia Child and Guy Fieri there were Katz’s Delicatessen and Guss’s Pickles. Just as legendary are Jewish contributions to law and medicine; business and finance; literature, philosophy, music and art; entertainment; and of course science and hi tech. The list goes on and on and is nothing short of phenomenal.
But above all, the greatest of all Jewish contributions has been—from day one to our own time—a sense of morality, of right and wrong, of holiness and evil. Jews have always looked at the world and envisioned ways to better it. Where others saw life and existence as random, subject to arbitrary forces they couldn’t understand and which they therefore called gods, Jews understood history itself as function of a moral universe, part of a grand plan put in motion by one Creator, one just and moral God. It’s not by accident that America’s Founding Fathers chose words from the Bible to express their highest goal: “Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof,” words that comes from the section of the Torah that we Jews call “The Holiness Code,” verses that we read on the holiest day in our calendar, Yom Kippur. The idea that all human beings are equal before God, all equally deserving of freedom, justice and compassion, has inspired visionaries from Moses to Martin Luther King, and breathed life into civil rights movements for People of Color, for women, for the LGBTQ communities and many other subjugated minorities.
From the Golden Rule—Love your neighbor as yourself—to the pursuit of justice; from compassion to charity; from ecology to ethics; from knowledge to wisdom, the Jewish contribution to civilization has been fundamental, and continues to be a major force in humanity’s exploration of its purpose and meaning in the universe.
To be a Jew today means to be linked to the legacy of a rich past. It means connecting to a magnificent heritage and drawing strength from it. It means the restoration of a persecuted people to its land, and a forsaken land to its former glory.
But being a Jew also carries with it a tremendous responsibility: To pay it forward; to support one’s family and community; to teach and pass Judaism’s principles on to future generations. From the most ancient days of our existence down to our very own time, this responsibility has been at the core of our mission as a people, as a Holy Nation.
Heritage and responsibility—these are the terms of the Covenant that unites us as a people, and we Jews feel bound by them.
Maybe that’s why Daniel Pearl chose the words he did to sum up his life. “I am a Jew,” he said, and by that he must have meant that just as his life had particular meaning, so would his death. For Daniel Pearl, being Jewish was a framework, a work of art that he filled with every breath he took, with every word he wrote. With his last words he bequeathed to us a charge: to carry on, to never lose hope, to hold on to our belief and ideals despite all the obstacles that rise in our way.
Ashrei!—happy are the parents who raise such a person. May the memory of Daniel Pearl, and the memory of his mother, Ruth Pearl, zichronam liv’racha, be an abiding blessing.
May we see our dreams fulfilled this year, and our visions come true. May this New Year bring us happiness and health. May it be a year of prosperity, love and peace for us and our families; for our community and nation; for the State of Israel and the Middle East, and for the whole world.
L’shana tova tikatveivu—may we all be inscribed for a good New Year.
Amen.
© 2021 by Boaz D. Heilman
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