Today begins the Jewish holy day of Rosh Hashanah, and I am using my perpetually accurate sermon title -- "Israel: At the Crossroads." Just about every year, a different crisis, challenge or dilemma faces the Jewish people.
Three years ago, it was the Women of the Wall and the horrific violence shown to them by the Ultra-Orthodox. A year ago it was the War in Gaza. A few years before that, it was the Arab spring and accompanying convulsions in the Middle East. Sometimes I think a quip attributed to Milton Himmelfarb is extraordinarily true -- "The entire population of the world's Jews would be considered a small error in the Chinese census. Yet, great things constantly happen around us."
The latest is the deal concluded between Iran and the United States and other major powers. After vociferous debate, it has become law. What now? Now is the time to come together. As we begin the year, we need to remind ourselves that we are one people. (To hear an audio version of this sermon as delivered, click here
.)
This is not to say we should not have strong convictions. We are a people who argue. We are a people who disagree. But the challenge now is not to let these disagreements tear us apart. They have done too many times in history. Indeed, some of our worst wounds have been self-inflicted.
Self-Inflicted Wounds
The Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 C.E., for example, not because the Romans destroyed all their subjugated people's temples. In general the Romans didn't mind other religious groups so long as they paid their taxes. Rather, it was destroyed because Jews were fighting amongst one another and one group allied with the Romans against the other. The Talmud records that the Temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam, senseless hatred, amongst the Jewish people.
Regardless of where we stand now, we need to look closely at ourselves. And we need to resolve to argue in the highest spirit of our tradition. What does that mean?
First, we should not impugn one another's motive. We should not say "he simply doesn't care about Israel" or even worse she's a self-hating Jew, if someone takes a different position. We can, as Rabbi David Wolpe put it, speak passionately without speaking insultingly. We can have a deeply held opinion without believing that those who oppose us must be idiots."
In other words, we can be firm in our conviction, yet wide in our embrace. Passionate in our pleas, yet respectful in our words. We need to remember the point is not to win. That was the point when I was in high school policy debate. We countered and sought to destroy the other side's arguments whether we thought they were true or not. But in the real world, the point is not to win. It is to come up with the best solution.
Keep Talking
Second, we have to keep talking. Talking keeps us together even when we disagree. Apathy and detachment are far worse. Few stories captured this truth more sharply than Cain and Abel. If we look carefully at the text we notice something strange. The text reads "Cain said to his brother Abel... " Then it stops. The next words in the text are "They happened to be in the field, Cain rose up agains this brother Abel and killed him." Notice what is missing: the text never reveals what Cain said to Abel. It seems they stopped speaking. And when that happened, Cain killed Abel. The end of conversation was a prelude to violence.
The desire to stop talking is a symptom of short-term and apocalyptic thinking. We think, "This issue, this concern, is the make or break one. Getting this decision wrong will doom future generations forever!" Attaching apocalyptic urgency to the present issue does not, by the way, happen only in politics. It happens in marriages, in our jobs, in deciding where to go to college,We think "I lost this case -- I didn't get into this college -- my life, my career is over." Sometimes this intensity can be helpful. It can push us to do our best.
But it also has a dark underside. Rarely is this one issue, this one case, this one decision, the make or break of all others. When we think this way, we think anything goes. When we think this way, we call one another names and destroy friendships. We may violate ethical boundaries. And there is no study that proves the certainty of our convictions correlates with the accuracy of our convictions!
Sometimes we can be totally certain of something and be wrong. Other times we can fell less certain and end up right. It's easy to say and stick to what we believe. Much harder, however, is to make a strong thoughtful case for what we believe and leave the door open to those who disagree with us, and to the possibility we might be wrong.
A Heart of Many Rooms
The late Orthodox Rabbi David Hartman described Judaism as a heart with many rooms. I love this very mixed metaphor. It means we are different. We come from different backgrounds, points of view, life experiences. But it is our differences, our arguments that give us life. But when the rooms of the heart stop communicating with one another -- when the neurons stop firing and the blood stops flowing -- the heart diminishes, weakens, falls apart.
The same is true with us. When we stop talking -- when we cut ourselves off from one another-our collective heart stops beating. And when we need it next time -- when we need to come together as a people to face another major challenge -- our heart may not be strong enough to keep us together.
To hear the full of audio of this sermon as delivered, click here
.