Ask any Jew in the pew what the holiest
day of the Jewish year is and the answer you’ll get is Yom
Kippur. You might hear some objections by those who say
Shabbat is holier than even Yom Kippur. In Shabbat’s
favor, it is the only day mentioned in the Ten
Commandments. On the other hand the second set of Tablets
were brought down by Moses on this very day of Yom Kippur
and the Torah calls this day Shabbat Shabbaton, the
Sabbath of Sabbaths. Here’s where I enter the
conversation. So Rabbi, which is the holiest day of the
year. Is he right or is he right, is it Yom Kippur or any
given Shabbat?
You know the story of the Rabbi
presented with a stinging disagreement involving two
formidable members of the community. They each present
their position to the Rabbi and ask which one is right.
The Rabbi thinks and ponders, scratches his beard and says
“Well, you’re right and you’re right.” The Rebbetzin, a no
nonsense woman overhears this and chimes in “they can’t
both be right” and the Rabbi without skipping a beat says
“you, know you’re right too.”
And so which is the holiest day,
Shabbat or Yom Kippur. So they’re both right but in a
way, I hope they’re both wrong. I hope today is not the
holiest day of the year for you or for me. I know what I’m
saying is bad for business. Look at the draw this day has.
This is like the Super bowl of Judaism ( I really
shouldn’t use football analogies right now) its like the
World Series of Judaism. But I don’t want today to be
the holiest day of the year for you or for me. We’re only
ten days into the year and we would peak too early. I
hope the holiest days are yet to come. As holy as this
Sanctuary is and as sacred as prayer is, our holiest
behavior happens when we’re out there living and doing,
when we have choices to make and we make the right choice,
the good choice, the kind choice, the just choice, the
giving choice, the forgiving choice. When Rabbi Abraham
Joshua Heschel marched arm in arm with Dr. King in a Civil
Rights Demonstration, he was criticized by some for not
being in the synagogue praying and he responded “I’m
praying with my feet.” Today is the holiest day for
prayer. Tomorrow we start praying with our feet and we can
reach even holier heights.
I would like to charge you and
challenge you to take this Sabbath of Sabbaths filled
with unlimited holiness and make the days to come even
holier. Today we talk the talk. Tomorrow start to walk the
walk. There are many ways you can take up my charge and
meet my challenge. You can choose to study Torah each
day or engage in daily prayer. You can put your heart and
soul into renewing your relationship with your spouse and
recognize your gift of One More Day. You can celebrate
Shabbat each week with love and joy. You can spend more
and better time with your child who wants to spend more
and better time with you. You can spend time in Israel and
soak up the holiness of the land. You can take what you do
every day in your work and invest it with holiness in the
words of the psalmist in being one who lives with
integrity, does what is right and speaks the truth in his
heart.
I have one thing in mind in particular
in walking the walk this year. Today I want to ask you to
consider joining me in helping to Repair the World.
Craig Haberman can tell you that I can’t repair anything
in my house and so I call Craig Haberman and yet I want
you to join me in repairing the world. I bought a new book
this past Saturday evening. Janie and I had a big date at
Barnes and Noble. A few books and a Venti Frapachino lite
with sugar free hazelnut syrup. We know how to live. The
book I went to buy is called Giving subtitled How Each of
Us Can Change the World. Its not written by a Jew but it
sounds so very Jewish to me.
I have been thinking about repairing
the world for some time. You may have detected this in
various D’var Torahs during the year and I have become
deeply inspired to engage even more in this work this
summer.
That Shabbat morning in Jerusalem, I
called Magen David Adom to take us to Hadassah hospital.
The ambulance arrived just minutes after I placed the call
and much to my surprise the paramedic was a young man in
his twenties wearing a Kippah in the middle of his head
like Yeshivah students do. I was so grateful he was there
but I couldn’t help but ask him how it was that he was
working and driving in an ambulance on Shabbat. He simply
said to me “We all take our turn.” Those words have been
playing and replaying in my mind since. We all take our
turn to save a life because saving one life is like saving
a whole world. We all take our turn to help repair the
world.
The following day, I drove to Hadassah
on my own with a book that I had brought to Israel to
read. It was a source of inspiration during those long
days. The book is entitled Judaism and Justice: The
Jewish Passion to Repair the World. The author is my
brother in law Rabbi Sidney Schwarz who was our first
scholar in Residence here a number of years ago and is now
an important voice on the American Jewish scene. Sid gave
me a copy of his new book when I was in the hospital with
the inscription “In admiration of your deep commitment to
your congregation and to Jewish life.” This is an area of
Jewish life that is calling out to us more and more and so
I want to present it to the congregation, to you on this
holy day. I told my brother in law more than once that
week what a comforting companion that book was for me,
written beautifully and I found it to be deeply inspiring.
I saw others in the hospital sitting and reading from the
book of psalms. This book The Jewish Passion to Repair the
World became my book of Psalms.
Chapter 3 is entitled Genesis: Abraham
and the Call. G-d calls Abraham to leave his birthplace
and travel with his wife Sarah to a far off land. Some ten
generations earlier G-d had called Noah to build an Ark.
Why do we call Abraham the first Jew and not Noah? G-d
told Noah to build an Ark and Noah did just that. He
minded his own business and built the Ark and together
with his family he survived. That was good but not good
enough to be the first Jew. Noah made the Ark but missed
the boat by minding his own business. Abraham lived near a
lousy neighborhood called Sodom and Gomorra. G-d told
Abraham that He was going to destroy these cities because
of the corruption running rampant through them. Abraham
does everything but mind his own business. He argues with
G-d “Will the Judge of the whole earth not deal justly?”
He asks G-d if there are 50 righteous people would He
spare the cities for the sake of the righteous. When
Abraham can’t find 50 decent human beings he begins
negotiating and says how about 40, 30, 20, 10. Abraham
can’t save the cities but he tries and becomes the
exemplar of doing what is just and right. That is what
Judaism wants of us - to do what is just and right. It was
once said that the only thing evil needs to flourish is
for good people to do nothing.
Abraham leaves home when G-d calls out
Go forth from your land, from your birthplace, and from
your father’s home in order to to be separate and then
when you are safely separate engage the world to make it
more just and right. In this Sid summarizes the very
essence of Judaism. We are to be a people set apart - a
holy people, גוי קדוש for the purpose of engaging
ourselves in the world in doing all we can to help repair
the world. We are to be in Isaiah’s words לאור גוים a
light unto the nations.
You may know that Madonna and her
husband Guy Richie were in Israel for Rosh Hashanah.
That’s a natural segway from Abraham to Madonna. Demie
More and others were with them. Israel is really becoming
the place to be. Saturday evening, when we were at Barnes
and Noble, Madona spent two hours with Israel’s new
president Shimon Peres. President Peres gave Madonna a
gift of the Bible and she gave Mr. Peres a copy of the
Zohar, the core text of Jewish mysticism or Kaballah. She
may have truly gone from material girl to mystical
woman. She’s been studying Kabbalah for some three years
and so I’m sure she has studied the Kaballah’s concept of
creation. At creation G-d poured the brightest light into
a great vessel but the light was so powerful and the
vessel too fragile it broke into countless pieces. We live
in a world of broken pieces. Our purpose and obligation is
to help put the pieces together and to Repair the World.
And so the subtitle of Sid’s book The Jewish Passion to
Repair the World. If repairing the world seems mundane, to
the mystics it has a cosmic effect. Every seemingly small
act of repair we do, has a larger cosmic effect on the
entire universe.
G-d knows our entire universe, at least
our entire planet is in need of repair. Just this past
week, we learned that the Northwest passage between the
Atlantic and Pacific is open to shipping for the first
time. Before only an ice breaker could make its way
through but the melt has been so great or so terrible,
shipping lanes are now open. We can mind our own business
and survive in our own individual arks or find our way to
make a contribution to stem the tide of global warming.
Will we be Noah or Abraham? Last year at Hanukkah I urged
you to become part of a program and change your regular
incandescent bulbs with energy saving bulbs and that’s
only a beginning. Recycling is religious. We want to
begin a synagogue task force on environmental issues so we
can walk the walk and practice what we preach here. We
have a group that signed up at our Selihot program to be
part of this new group. If you are interested, I will
invite you to be in touch with me.
If saving the whole planet seems too
grandiose for you, you can take your turn and help repair
the world in other ways, by helping an adult or a child
learn to read. Becoming a Big Brother or Sister. We each
have some skill or talent to offer. Yesterday I went to
the Bucks County Correctional Facility to conduct a
service for some Jewish inmates. I didn’t go because I was
looking for something to do in my spare time but because
one inmate asked for a Rabbi to come. I had a congregation
of three men. We prayed and we talked and I sounded the
Shofar and maybe it helped to repair some of those broken
cosmic pieces. You also have your contribution to make.
I always have a sense of satisfaction
out of this fast. Its an accomplishment to make it through
these twenty five hours without food or water and I always
try to calculate how many calories I saved and how many
ounces I may have lost. Then I go home and eat too much
and go back to feeling guilty and the fast fades quickly
into the past. The good news is this fast only hurts for
a day but there are millions in America, adults and
children who know hunger every day. If our fast today is
meaningless ritual then this day is not holy at all. Only
if we act on our fast tomorrow and the next day can the
fast today have any meaning. We’ve already heard the
prophet Isaiah exhort the people in the Haftarah that Marv
Feld chanted today. “Is this the fast that I desire. A day
for people to starve their bodies? Do you call that a
fast. No this is the fast I desire. 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
ignore your own kin.”
Today is so holy because it is
ultimately propitious for G-d’s forgiveness. A major
ingredient of repentance, according to Maimonides is our
vowed determination to not not repeat our wrongs and to
do better in the year to come, to go out and to create
holier days than the one we live today. Twenty six hundred
years after Isaiah’s call for justice there are millions
in America who live below the poverty line, children who
go to bed hungry and millions who have no health care. We
live in a country of haves and have nots. I hope for many
things in our great country. I hope and pray we can start
funding stem cell research which holds hope for so many. I
hope we can find a way to bring our brave young men and
women home from Iraq alive and in one piece and help to
stabilize the region and invest those billions in
repairing our world here at home. I hope we can find a way
for all Americans to have access to some kind of health
insurance and health care and for kids in America to not
go to bed hungry.
In a number of ways we not only talk
the talk, we walk the walk here at Ohev Shalom. We pray
with our feet. A very holy day happens here one Sunday
December afternoon each year called Family Fun Day for the
Homeless. From what we’re told we put on the best party
of its kind in Bucks County thanks to Anita Dorfman who
has put her heart and soul into this for a number of years
and has drawn many others into this holy work. We are
Repairing the World. Twice a year when our lobby is filled
with your clothes it becomes a holy space. That must mean
when you go shopping for new clothes it is also a holy
act. It never fails, when I go to Bloomingdales, I can
find a Minyan there. That is thanks to Dana Podob and so
many of you. Once a month we cook some 250 Kosher meals
for elderly sickly shut ins. That’s the holiest food that
comes out of the kitchen thanks to Cheryl Goldberg and the
dedicated group that has worked with her for many years
and those who join in each year. We walk the walk but we
can walk even farther if more of us decide to pray with
our feet.
I am always concerned for those who
come to the synagogue at this season hurting and in
emotional pain for whatever reason and are looking for
some message of personal healing and hope and I am talking
about how each of us can change the world when your heart
is aching.. I want to tell you the story of the woman who
went to the world renown psychiatrist Dr. Karl Menninger
and told him that she was falling apart and about to have
a nervous breakdown. In this emergency situation, Dr.
Menninger advised this troubled and fragile woman to go
out and help someone else. While she didn’t understand
the advice, she did what he said and she found herself
immediately improved. Dr. Menninger understood that when
you help to repair the world, you also repair a part of
yourself.
This is the holiest day of the year for
prayer and forgiveness. Our holiest days of the year are
yet to come in how we live, in what we do, in what we
give. We love the story of Noah but we are the Children of
Abraham. I will never forget what that young man with the
Kippah said to me in the ambulance that Shabbat morning
and I was so grateful he was there. We all take our turn.
When we leave here tonight, lets plan to take our turn.
Each of us Can Change the World.
