Kol Nidre 5778
It’s the fast of justice.
Temple Beth Jacob of
Newburgh
September 18, 2018
Rabbi Larry Freedman
Let us begin
with the words of Isaiah from our haftarah. Isaiah the prophet who famously comforts the
troubled and troubles the comfortable has his words selected for this holiest
of days as a reminder, a call, a scold and a challenge. He begins, “Yes, they seek Me daily/As though
eager to learn My ways. As if they were
a nation that does what is right/and has not abandoned God’s laws. They ask of Me the right way, eager for God’s
nearness.”
And do we
not? For the faithful, for the
questioning, for the unbeliever, are we not all aligned, all as one in our
desire, our yearning to know that we are doing what is right? There is goodness in this world and we want
to be part of that, do we not? Is there
anyone here who wishes to do, who prays to do what is wrong? Is there anyone here who says, “Goodness
exists; I want no part of it.” Who says
that? Who says they wish to traffic in
evil? Who here looks to embrace the
wrong way? Alright then. I will hold you to that.
Isaiah’s words
resonate. We seek to be near God, to be
near what is right. But Isaiah knew his
audience back then and he was having none of it. He quotes those Jews of yore who complained
to God, “Why, when we fasted, did You not see?
When we starved our bodies, did You pay no heed?” Isaiah brings the condemnation: “Because on your fast day, you see to your
business and oppress all your laborers. Because you fast in strife and
contention, and you strike with a wicked fist!
Your fasting today is not such as to make your voice heard on high.”
God via Isaiah
says, You say you are fasting so as to reach all that is good but you do all
that is not good even as you fast! What
is this, then? Do you think I don’t
know?
Isaiah’s words
condemned back then. They challenge us
today. Are we just as guilty? Would Isaiah have some choice words to say to
us? We pray “no.” We fear “yes.”
Isaiah offers help. Without suggesting you actually not fast, he
is reminding you then, he is
reminding you now how this works. Completing the fast is what we do for
us. Fulfilling the intent of the fast is what we do for God, for our community, for
our world. Isaiah offers God’s words: “No, this is the fast I desire: To unlock the
fetters of wickedness and untie the cords of the yoke. To let the oppressed go free; to break off
every yoke. It is to share your bread
with the hungry and to take the wretched poor into your home. When you see the naked, to clothe him and not
to ignore your own kin.”
What is our
challenge? What is the call Isaiah cries
out even to this day? Look out from your
own self, from your narrow viewpoint, look out and around and find those who
suffer from injustice. I have been
saying a variation of this for all my rabbinical days. Your obligation cannot be simpler. It is to make the world a better place and
make yourself a better person. This is
my quip of Isaiah’s poetry which encapsulates the very reason we are Jews. That is it.
And how are you
doing with this?
This past year
the Air National Guard sent me to New York for disaster chaplaincy
training. We began as usual going around
the room with introductions. It was just
the broadest group of people.
Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims.
Immigrants, gay, straight, men, women and on and on. Perhaps you’ve been
at a similar conference. It was quite
the collection of earnest folks who wanted to alleviate suffering for those hit
by natural disaster. I remember being
struck by the vast array of Americans in that room thinking to myself something
surprising: being open to the wide variety of humanity is really hard.
It’s hard to be
with different sorts of people. A person
has to admit to a lack of knowledge of what makes other people, other cultures
tick. A room like that requires that you
speak honestly to people whose background you don’t understand. You’re in a place with new people with whom
you don’t share cultural shorthand, or inside jokes or food or history or
anything.
Now, plenty of
people get to know their co-workers or neighbors or even simply the other
conference attendees and become friends, truly friends, with an understanding
of what makes the other tick. It’s nice,
you know?
But some people
have trouble with this. They don’t see a
wide range of people as the glory of America but as the dilution of
America. Some people can’t do the work
to get to know others and simply fear the influx of different kinds of people. It’s a fear of being replaced.
Last year in
Charlottesville, at the ugly white supremacist rally, we heard the chant, “You
will not replace us,” and “Jews will not replace us.” It comes from a 71 year old Frenchman, Renaud
Camus. He wrote in 2012 of “the great replacement”
of native white Europeans by immigration of people not white. From this grew many anonymous websites
fearing for the extinction of the white European race. This, slightly different from white
supremacy, is white nationalism. This is
jacket and tie tiki-torch racism, not your backwoods cross burnings. This is earnest racism. This is the racism from people who cannot see
past their own skin color and fear that anyone who comes from outside of Europe
is a threat to Europe and by extension, a threat to America because, to hear
them explain it, we are culturally European and must ever be so.
That is where
the cry comes from. You will not replace
us, they cry, as though white people and white culture are under attack in this
country. And they add, let us be very
clear, that Jews regardless of pigmentation, are never, ever white and never,
ever European. We are guests or
interlopers, depending on how bigoted they wish to be. Most cleverly, white nationalists explain
that they don’t hate anyone at all. They
simply wish to defend white culture from dilution and white people from
extinction. These people, once under a
rock, are growing. They look back to
some era when men (it’s mostly men) had decent jobs with decent wages and life
was simple and everyone knew his place. These
men complain that white men just can’t get a break anymore. Not that they can’t get a break because of
their own skills or merit but that their race is the cause of so very much
discrimination against them. Well, they
are done with this and those people will not replace them.
And what is our
response? Isaiah continues saying,
“Then, when you call, the LORD will answer; When you cry, He will say: Here I
am. If you banish the yoke from your
midst, the menacing hand, and evil speech, and you offer your compassion to the
hungry and satisfy the famished creature- then shall your light shine in
darkness, and your gloom shall be like noonday.”
Do what is
right and God will return to you and care for you and reward you because that
is what we fast for, that is what this is all about. We must not give up.
It’s hard work
to listen to someone else. It’s hard
work to learn something difficult, to have your assumptions challenged. It’s hard work to truly hear and discern and
consider. That is why conspiracy
theories hold great allure. Great
complex ideas are dispatched preferring a game of connect the dots resulting in
pablum. Conspiracy theories offer the
promise of giving you the truth no one else will tell you but, ironically,
prevent you from thinking for yourself.
Conspiracy theories require you to reject anything intellectual,
thoughtful, fact based, challenging. They
begin with a dismissal of any data that would counter the conclusion. Conspiracy theories give you chants of, “Jews
will not replace us.”
I was talking
to a nice guy at the base. I arranged
for an imam to come visit and talk to different groups of people so the topic
of Islam was in the air. This nice guy
stops in while a bunch of us are chatting and says, “you know, Muslims are
allowed to lie to further their agenda; it’s in the Koran.” I did not know this so I looked it up. It took me .44 seconds to find a thoughtful
well written article about taqiyya, this idea.
To make it short, to avoid being persecuted or killed, Muslims can lie
about their faith. It would be as if I
said Jewish law permits a Jew to deny being Jewish if an uncertain Nazi in 1942
is looking to shoot him or her in the head.
That is a very different situation than saying, Jews are allowed to lie
all day long.
Somehow, my
friend can read one hateful website and become an expert on Islam while actual
experts on Islam are suspect because, you know, they always lie. My friend,
he’s not a bigot but he is willing to give up thinking for himself and join in
among actual bigots.
Isaiah understands
that life puts you to the test. He
offers encouragement:
“The LORD will
guide you always; He will slake your thirst in parched places and give strength
to your bones. You shall be like a
watered garden, like a spring whose waters do not fail.”
We must stand
against this. It will be hard but God
will give strength to your bones. We
must rise up against this hate, this foolishness. Tolerance does not extend to nonsense, there
is no right to spread ignorance and each and every one of us must have the
strength to stand against white supremacy and conspiracy theorists and bigots
wherever they are whether on the left or right because we fear for the soul of
our country.
Knowing you for
11 years, I tell you this: y’all are
fine. A few mistakes here, some great
things there, you’re fine. I send you
with a charge for this next year to worry slightly less about your own soul
–you’re fine- and much more for the soul of America. I call on you to speak out against hatred as an
overt act of patriotism, as a Jewishly mandated sacred obligation, -a mitzvah-
to make the world a better place. You
must call out these people, shut them down, tell them they are wrong. There is no reason to be so open minded as to
let the enemies of the glory of America run free.
I offer you a
quote from a man I didn’t always agree with but whose heart was always in the
right place. Can you guess who?
“I've spoken of the shining city
all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw
when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks
stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all
kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with
commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors
and the doors were open to anyone with the will and heart to get there. That's
how I saw it, and see it still.” President Reagan’s farewell address of 1989.
You can say what you want about President Reagan and I’m sure I did back
then but I never questioned his belief in this place and his belief that he was
doing the very best he could to uplift his country, his people.
Isaiah spurs you on to toss aside feel good piety and do what is needed
to better your world. President Reagan,
to name just one, used his oratory to dig deep and work hard for the betterment
of our nation. We are all called to do
that every day and we must never give up on that call.
That is our fast, that is what we are charged to do not in a theoretical
manner but in real world conversations and confrontations. We will keep this country as a shining city
on a hill and not give in to bigotry. We
will fast the fast of justice and righteousness. We must never give up on that. We will never give up on that. And when we do that, when we defend and
extend liberty and justice for all, then and only then can we honestly ask God
to bless America.
