It was a normal morning in Jerusalem. The bustle of the street wafted through my window as I climbed on my elevator to depart for school. When I emerged from the elevator, the street was silent. In the time that I rode down in the elevator, a bus had been ripped apart by a homicide bomber just one quarter of a mile away from my house. The silence was deafening and I experienced the most intense loneliness that I have ever felt. I ran to school, needing to find all of my classmates and friends. When I arrived, I quickly discovered that everyone in our immediate community was safe. In this moment of fear, I felt the strongest sense of connection to any community of which I had been apart, and thus discovered Kehila, a true meaning of congregation. Somehow I knew everything was going to be ok.
As a community, when we read from the Torah on Shabbat and special holidays, there is an additional reading that is linked to the portion. This additional section comes from the book of Prophets and is known as the Haftarah. The prophets provide us with a moral compass. On Rosh Hashanah, our Reform Rabbis, in their wisdom, motivated by the creative spark of insight and innovation, carefully selected a section from the prophet Nehemia. In chapter eight it states: “Vayeasfu kol-Ha’am k’ish echad eil harechov asher lifney sha’ar-ha’mayim.” All the people came together as one in the square that was before the Water Gate. They asked Ezra the Scribe to bring the book of the teaching of Moshe that Adonai had commanded upon Israel. Ezra then read the book of Moshe to the people from morning until midday.
This event in our scripture stresses the power and strength in community. Both the potential for a healing force as well as the ability to harm. At this most holy season, we are charged with joining as a Kehilah Kedosha, a holy community, and yet there is discord and loneliness, despair and longing among us. How then on this Rosh Hashanah can we renew our commitment to Klal Yisrael, the Jewish people?
Our tradition, our Torah guides us in two crucial aspects or our relationship with the world and each other. Tikkun Olam, repairing the world, and Shalom Ben Adam L’Chavero, the imperative for us to bring about peace amongst our fellow man.
In Midrash B’reishit Rabbah, the rabbis tell us that “God carries out divine purpose through every living being, even through a snake, a scorpion, a gnat or a frog.” The Midrash reminds us of how in touch the rabbis were with the natural order of the world. No matter how mundne or great, all of our actions have consequence.
We need to keep in mind that in our technologically advanced world, filled with the luxuries not afforded to our ancestors, we sometimes lose sight of the impact our actions.
Rosh Hashanah is a time-out if you will, a period in which we have the opportunity to focus on the divine. What does God and what does our holy covenant require of us to do in repairing the world?
In February of 2002, I chaperoned a Confirmation trip to the Religious Action Center, the largest Jewish Lobby in Washington D.C. Over this three day weekend, the students learned about various issues that our Jewish tradition weigh in on, and then they had the opportunity to lobby representatives of congress on these issues. When they returned home, the students brought these issues into their school and temple communities.
These twenty young people stood up and fought for what was important in the struggle to repair our world. They learned and then they acted. As a Confirmation class, they confirmed, or perhaps reaffirmed their affiliation with the chosen people. They once again renewed their part in the covenant. They empowered themselves and inspired me.
Tikkun Olam is about more than healing the world physically however. Across our globe and here at home, we are all deeply troubled by recent events; continued conflict in the Middle East, terrorism in Russia, and most recently the reports of genocide in The Sudan. Hurricanes pounding islands in the Caribbean and southern Florida, people living on the street, homeless, children going hungry. Politicians viciously ripping each other part in their attempt to tell us about their “positive” goals for our country.
It is very easy to lose hope and very difficult to ferret out fear when we are being told how everything is so bad and who is to blame. When we see only the dark painting that is perhaps inadvertently painted by ourselves and others, we fail to appreciate the beauty of the world around us, the strength of our community, and the loving relationships we have with family and friends. If we are aware, every day we see people saving the world, act by act, person by person, community by community. One example:
I traveled to the Republic of Belarus last Passover with 5 of my classmates. We were split into teams of two and each team visited 2 communities. My travel partner was a Cantorial student named Rebecca. We visited the town of Lida. From the early 1500’s up until WWII and the Soviet era Lida had been a thriving Jewish center. At one point, 80% of the town had been Jewish. Now, the community is quite small, but they are struggling to regain their Jewish identity and forge ahead.
At one of the seders, Rebecca sang an old Yiddish niggun. As she sang I looked across the table and saw a woman with tears streaming down her face. Rebecca finished and through our translator the woman told us that for more than fifty years she had only been able to sing that song in her head because she did not want any chance of her children knowing and therefore exposing that they were Jewish. She never taught it to her children. Finally, she felt that she could sing it again. And so for the first time in more than fifty years, she slowly began to sing, quietly at first, but soon her voice was strong and her smile filled the entire room. Tikkun Olam, repairing the world.
Even with all the challenges we must face, the good in the world still far outweighs the bad. We must look for ways to bring goodness into our lives and into the lives of others. We must look for ways to repair the world and to bring more peace into it. We must fight for peace.
An excerpt from Rabbi Sidney Greenberg’s book Lessons for Living:
“There could be no winners in nuclear war.
The nations of the world spend 1.3 million dollars on arms every minute. In that same minute, 30 children die for want of food and inexpensive vaccines. The cost of a single nuclear submarine equals the annual education budget of 23 developing countries with 160 million school children.
As we think on these things, we must renew our determination to pursue peace with all the strength, all the imagination and all the zeal at our command.
Perhaps the time has come for our government, which has a defense department, to add a peace department, a body of men and women whose sole task it would be to explore every idea, every avenue, every instrument to further peace in the world.”
There is so much fighting and so much war. We often use violence to pursue peace. We cannot bring peace all at once, nor force a fundamental change in political philosophy, but we can get the ball rolling by pursuing peace in our own lives. This is how we reaffirm the covenant.
The High Holidays are a time to renew goals we wish we had fulfilled, a time to create new goals, and a time to re-energize our efforts to make peace where there is strife and to heal our world. It is a reminder to renew our dedication to the holy in the world and to sanctify the mundane.
We lose sight during the year of reality, or perhaps we are actually so immersed in reality that it becomes difficult to dream of a better, more peaceful world. As we move into a year full of great promise, let us work towards turning that promise into reality. A poem by 18th century Chasidic scholar, Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav,
May we see the day when war and bloodshed cease,
when a great and wondrous peace embraces the world,
When one nation shall not threaten another
And we shall not again experience war.
Bless us, O Lord, with peace.
We are greedy for gain, pursuing profit
While soldiers pursue each other far away.
Nations squander their young men’s lives on a spree.
Even Abraham was stopped; he did not sacrifice his son.
Help us to seek peace, O Lord, and to pursue it.
Hungry children starve our souls,
Naked children expose us,
Slaughtered children kill our hopes;
We are wretched in their parents’ sorrow.
Heal us, O Lord; help us turn to each other
Let us make no peace with hunger or oppression.
Let us make no peace with hatred or fear.
Let love and justice flow like a mighty stream,
Let peace fill the earth as the waters fill the sea.
More than at any time in our history, we have control of who shall live and who shall die.
In our more vigorous pursuit of peace, perhaps we might find some inspiration in a poem written by thirteen year old Tali Sorek, from Beersheva, Israel:
I had a box of colors –
Shining bright and bold.
I had a box of colors,
Some warm, some very cold.
I had no red for the blood of wounds.
I had no black for the orphans’ grief.
I had no white for dead faces and hands.
I had no yellow for burning sands.
But I had orange for the joy of life,
And I had green for buds and nests.
I had blue for bright, clear skies.
I had pink for dreams and rest.
I sad down and painted peace.
In the famed words of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav
May the curses of the old year end,
May the blessings of the new year begin.
May we rededicate ourselves to the responsibility of community. Ken Yehi Ratzon!