I am Jewish
Yom
Kippur
September 25, 2004
Today, on Yom Kippur, we relive Rabbi Akiba's dying words.
In the year 135, Akiba was imprisoned by the Roman's for
the crime of teaching Torah to his students. He was
murdered, tortured together with his colleagues but his
torture was particularly cruel. According to the Talmud,
his flesh was torn from his body with iron combs. And what
did Akiba, this most beloved of the sages say at
that time? He recited the words Shema Yisrael Adoshem
Elokeynu Adosham Echad Here O Israel, the Lord our
G-d, the Lord is One. In spite of the pain of this
gruesome torture he said even more. Akiba said he was
grateful to be able to fulfill this Mitzvah at these final
moments of his life. He said out loud: "And You shall love
the Lord your G-d with all of your heart and all of your
soul... even if you must pay for it with your life." (Berahot
61B)
Akibah was executed for being a Jew who would not abandon
the study and teaching of Torah. Some one thousand, eight
hundred and sixty-seven years later, another Jew was
executed for being a Jew. He also taught Torah but in a
far different way. He was not a religious Jew in the way
we normally define religious but he was very Jewish and
his life's work was a form of Torah. He was on a
continuous quest for knowledge and truth. He sought that
truth by posing questions, a deeply Jewish enterprise.
There is a Yiddish query For vus enfert a yid ala mol
a fraga mit a fraga? Why does a Jew always answer a
question with a question? For vus nit? Why not?
He was a journalist. He hoped that his questions and
writing about this truth might help improve the world, he
was doing his part in the ongoing Jewish mission of
tikkun olam repairing the world. He was captured, he
was killed two years ago. His name was Daniel Pearl.
Daniel Pearl knew the end was immanent. His executioners
stood at his side. He was hated for being an American, and
despised even more for being a Jew. We can only imagine
that someone so caught in the grip of death would hope
against hope that somehow his captors might relent and
give him his life but at that moment, Daniel Pearl looked
death squarely in the face, had more courage than his
captors would ever know and he said... his final words "My
father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish. I am Jewish."
He had even more strength and courage. He went on to tell
these murderous fanatics of his great-grandfather, a pious
Jew who helped found the religious city of B'nai Brak in
Israel. Daniel Pearl wanted these men who despise the
Zionist State even more than they hate Jews to know that
he was the descendant of one of the builders of that
state. What strength, faith, courage, conviction stirred
inside this modern day Akiba to be able to utter these
final words? If his captors filled with so much hate might
bless him with an easy death, perhaps now they would
torture him even more. It didn't matter. The thousands of
years of Jewish history that ran through his veins and the
direct link between Daniel and Akiba that was part of his
heart's beat brought him to offer these final concluding
words. In defiance of his captors and even as a final
charge to us he said "My father is Jewish, my mother is
Jewish. I am Jewish."
Daniel Pearl's parents sought to honor their son's life
and memory by creating a memorial to their son and a
source of guidance to their infant grandson Adam who never
met his father by asking over a hundred noted Jewish
persons to reflect and write on these words "I am Jewish"
The dedication page of this book published just this year
reads "We dedicate this book to you Danny, for brightening
our world with your magic, for showing us the bold face of
goodness for your precious gift-your words. And to you
Adam, to discover the garden where your father grew and
where he bloomed in boundless love for you and to find
freedom in his roots and comfort in his words."
I invite us today to do the same to honor the memory of
Daniel Pearl, to honor the memory of Akiba and his
colleagues, to honor the memory of all those who lived and
died throughout the ages al kedushat hashem in
sanctification of G-d's name, who died at the hands of our
tormentors with the words Shema Yisrael on
their lips and bequeathed to us what I consider to be one
of the greatest of gifts; to be able to say "I am
Jewish." Jews by choice would say "My father is Abraham,
my mother is Sarah, I am Jewish." Those of us like Daniel
Pearl, Jewish by the mere chance of birth say "My father
is Jewish, my mother is Jewish. I am Jewish" but how has
our Jewishness become more than an accident of birth and a
statement of affirmation in our lives. The former Israeli
Prime Minister and the most decorated veteran of the
Israel Defense Forces, Ehud Barak writes in his
contribution to this book "I am a Jew because I was born
one. Years later, as a grown-up, I became proud of it.
Being a Jew means to belong to the people whose prophets
and sages set the moral foundations and values of our
modern liberal democratic humanity. We ask ourselves today
what will I make of this chance event of life? How will
I affirm this chance gift "I am Jewish?"
The contributors of this book contain the names of those
you will recognize and those you may not. Mike Wallace,
you may remember arrested this summer for lunging at the
age of 86 . Kitty Dukakis who many of us hoped would bring
a Mezuzah and Menorah to the White House. Larry King,
Shimon Peres, Vidal Sassoon, Richard, Dreyfuss, Alan
Dershowitz and Jackie Mason.
Jacki Mason, an ordained rabbi would tell the story at the
end of his one man Broadway show that when he was a rabbi
in a synagogue, he found himself having a hard time
believing in what the service was all about and so he
found himself telling more and more jokes. He got to the
point where the crowds were getting larger and larger and
even gentiles started showing up and he started charging a
cover and a minimum. There is little doubt though that
Jacki Mason is still very Jewish and it's not surprising
that he would say "to be a Jew is to watch with good humor
how this planet has treated its Jews and to remain
humorous. Amongst the most often thought of peoples are
the Jews, existing by a code of living given to the world
and accepted thousands of years ago. Our divine
birthright, the continuously embattled nation of Israel,
is also amongst the tiniest nations on the globe, yet she
manages to survive. Everyone knows by now that no one can
kill our spirit, yet some are still trying. I told you it
takes a Jew to read this script and stay humorous."
Today, I would like to ask each of us to quietly say these
words to ourselves; perhaps in a whisper loud enough for
us to hear our own voice speak these words... "I am
Jewish." We say these words with the freedom that our
great country affords us to express the meaning of these
words in any way we choose "I am Jewish." My expression of
these three powerful words may be different from yours,
yours different from the person in front of you but
neither necessarily more meaningful than the other.
Ruth Pearl, mother of Daniel Pearl is one of the
contributors to this book. She was born in Baghdad. Her
son was killed in nearby Pakistan. Ruth Pearl writes
"Growing up as a Jewish child in Baghdad left me with the
recurring nightmares of being chased by a knife wielding
Arab in the school's stairway. This was the result of the
trauma from the June 1941 looting and massacre of 180 Jews
in Baghdad. Her family moved to Israel in 1951 and in 1960
she and her husband came to the United States for their
postgraduate studies. She writes "I was raised in a
moderately religious home and community and I absorbed
many of the attitudes and values from my Jewish heritage,
such as empowerment to question, zeal for honesty,
reverence for learning, and a deep commitment to create a
better world for the next generation." She clearly passed
these life affirming values to her son Daniel.
Some people think the more Jewish you are, the less you
can be concerned with humanity like they are mutually
exclusive, its one or the other. Said the other way, some
people think that in order to care about humanity, I have
to abandon my Jewishness. A number of the contributors
address this issue and see their strong Jewish identity
and their caring for humanity as going hand in hand. I
do. The more Jewish you are, the more you can care about
all of G-d's creation. A fifteen year old from Atlanta
Georgia, Matt Putney expresses this. He writes "When I say
I am Jewish... it means I'm part of a smaller group and at
the same time part of a huge global community." Matt is in
good company. Elie Wiesel writes "For a Jew, Judaism and
humanity must go together. To be Jewish is to recognize
that every person is created in G-d's image and thus
worthy of respect. Wiesel opens his piece commenting that
Daniel Pearl's last words were an answer to his murderer's
questions: Why are you here? Why do you oppose terrorism?
Why do you denounce injustice? 'I am Jewish' answered
Daniel Pearl." In addressing this issue of our commitment
to Judaism and our caring for humanity, one of the great
rabbis of our time, Rabbi Harold Shulweiss from Encino
California, writes "To paraphrase George Santayana, the
effort to embrace humanity in general is as foolhardy as
the attempt to speak in general without using a language
in particular. Judaism is the particular language through
which Jews address humanity." The author Cynthia Ozick
writes "If we blow into the narrow end of the shofar, we
will be heard far. But if we chose to be Mankind rather
than Jewish and blow into the wider part, we will not be
heard at all."
Rabbi Harold Kushner who wrote the book When Bad Things
Happen to Good People after his 14 year old son died
and this past year participated in the President Reagan's
funeral service writes "To say I am a Jew says something
about how I will live this day: how will I treat other
people in my life, how honest will I be in my business
dealings, how much of my income will I set aside for
tzedakah. To Say I am a Jew is to side with the
oppressed rather than with the oppressor in the full
knowledge that I will be a target for people whose souls
are corroded with hatred. To say, I am a Jew is to avoid
wrongdoing and to seek holiness because of the spark of
Gad is within me."
Contributors to this memoriam to Daniel Pearl speak of
different feelings about G-d, from self proclaimed
agnostics to full, faithful believers. We are all part of
the community of Israel. Richard Dreyfuss writes "I am a
passionate Jewish agnostic who has always believed that we
are the chosen people. So, go figure... Say that it's G-d,
say that it's the complexities of history. Say that it's a
mystery. Say that it's a metaphor, whatever, but I believe
that the Jews are chosen to illuminate the human
condition." One of the Minyan of Jews in the U S Senate
who almost became our Vice President Joe Lieberman writes
"My faith, which has anchored my life, begins with a
joyful gratitude that there is a G-d who created the
universe and then, because He continued to care for what
He created, gave us laws and values to order and improve
our lives. G-d also gave us a purpose and a destiny - to
do justice and to protect, indeed to perfect the human
community and the natural environment." You may not know
the name Arno Penzias but in 1978 he won the Nobel Prize
in physics for a discovery related to the origin of the
universe. His contribution includes these words "For me,
the all-encompassing perfection of the world's physical
laws reflects the power of the creative force that brought
them into being. To me the miracle of creation obviates
any need for smaller-scale miracles to keep the world
going.... When dealing with the creation, those of us who
see an underlying meaning in the world part company with
those who see everything as meaningless." Parting company
a bit from this Nobel Laureate is 7 year old Jade
Ransohoff who writes To me, I'm Jewish "means having fun
being a Jew. It's a miracle to be Jewish. Just like the
Red Sea parting and the oil lasting for eight days." We
should all have at least a bit of that 7 year old in us.
Do you know the name Shia LaBeouf. He has appeared in some
of the most highbrow productions in recent years, "Dumb
and Dumber," "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" and
"Holes." Shia offers one of the best lines of the whole
book. "Judaism to me is the name of the telephone in my
heart that allows me to speak to G-d."
I love this piece by Tovah Feldshuh. Janie and I saw her
this past year in her one woman play on Broadway Golda,
the life of Golda Meir. Being Jewish is at least a
five-sense experience: the hearing of the Kol Nidre, the
sight of the Torah, the smell of the chicken soup (I
promised myself no food references but this is the quote)
the taste of the gefilte fish, the touch of a mezuza. Then
there is the most precious sixth sense to being Jewish:
the instinct to survive."
One contributor quotes his teacher Marie Syrkin who writes
about Jewish survival or at least about the Jew no longer
being the victim. "If you cannot be David, you will be
Samson. One thing is sure, You will not be Isaac. You will
not walk trustingly toward the altar. You know no ram will
appear." Ultimately, Daniel Pearl was not the victim. In
his dying words, he was the victor.
A number of the contributors dealt with the issue of
whether I am a Jew by chance, a Jew by an accident of
birth or have I actively and purposely chosen to be a Jew.
Leon Wieseltier, the editor of the "New Republic" writes
in a rather cerebral sense "The facticity of my identity,
the accidental truth that it is what I have inherited,
rather embarrasses me. I wish that I could have chosen it.
I pray that I would have chosen it. Accident is not an
adequate foundation for a life. I envy converts...When I
say that I am a Jew, I mean to say that a Jew is what I
desire to become. So I am a Jew who is becoming a Jew. If
I am a serious Jew at all, I make myself known as much by
my chosen destination as by my unchosen origin." I am
deeply moved by these words and moved again each time I
read them.
Listen to this by Vidal Sasoon "I was twenty years old in
1948 when thePalmach/Haganah accepted me as a soldier in
Israel's war of independence. The experience changed the
course of my life. I am a Jew who believes that, though
small in numbers, we have a powerful moral influence on
the world and in the words of Hillel 'If not now, when?"
What do you say when asked "where were you born?" My birth
certificate reads City, Borough or township of birth,
Philadelphia, County of Birth Philadelpia, but I love this
idea by the great violinist Ida Haendel, who was born in
Poland, escaped to England and as a child played for the
Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra (this was before 1948
when we were the Palestinians). While playing with many of
the world's great orchestras over the years, she returns
to Israel often and plays with the Israel Philharmonic.
She was recently asked in Israel why she returns so
frequently. She replied, "I was born here thousands of
years ago. This is where I belong." We each have really
two birth certificates. We were also born there, in
Israel, thousands of years ago. That is what it means to
say "I am Jewish"
I sat down one day while working on this and wrote my own
piece "I am Jewish" which I won't share today both
because it would delay the blowing of the Shofar tonight
and because what is most important is really your own
story entitled "I am Jewish." I hope your story is and
will this year reflect your passion and affirmation of
your Jewish life.
I wish for you a good, healthy and sweet year in every
way. I wish for you a year in which you can invest more
and more meaning into these words "I am Jewish" in memory
of those who came before us and in honor of generations
yet to come.
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