Rabbi Schwartz's Sermon for Yom Kippur 5776

THE WORK OF OUR HANDS

YOM KIPPUR 5776

RABBI BARRY L. SCHWARTZ

In early July an 8-year-old boy from Baltimore named Zion Harvey became the world’s first recipient of a pediatric bilateral hand transplant. Zion was only 2 years old when he nearly died of a massive sepsis infection that forced the amputation of his hands and legs and compromised his kidneys. He received a kidney from his mother Pattie. In 2012 he visited Dr. Scott Kozin at Shriners Hospital of Philadelphia, who made the daring suggestion that rather than be fitted with a prosthesis Zion be considered for the double hand transplant. He underwent the daunting operation at nearby Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia under the direction of Dr. L. Scott Levin. Ten attending surgeons worked ten and a half hours, with a support staff of thirty. Today a team of physical and occupational therapists is teaching Zion to once again use his hands. Zion is one remarkable kid, with an irrepressible spirit and incandescent smile. If you haven’t seen his story on YouTube, watch it. You will cry.

Long before fingerprint ID, our ancestors realized that our hands are uniquely our own. They help define each and every person. The words of our millennia-old liturgy, words that we recited Rosh Hashanah morning and this morning, contain a striking phrase that you miss if you don’t know the Hebrew. In the U’netaneh Tokef—“Who Shall Live, Who Shall Die” section we read, “You open the book of our days, and what is written there proclaims itself, for it bears the signature of every human being.” The term for “signature” is hotem yad, literally the imprint of our hand: our palm print. In metaphorical language that recognized every person’s unique set of hands, the liturgy is suggesting that God remembers our every deed by examining the Book of Life that is the work of our hands, our own actions.

Three years ago an international team of scientists announced that some of the famous cave art from Spain and France was far older than previous thought. And it turned out that the oldest of the old, earlier than the stunning murals of bison and horses, was a simple red stencil hand print at El Castillo. Almost 40,000 years ago a Stone Age man or woman held up his or her hand and drew its outline, saying “this is me, I am here”.

Is it any different than your child saying, “Look Mommy, look Daddy. Look what I made,” and proudly holding up their hand print. What do you do? You hang it on the refrigerator, for everyone to see. Once caves were sacred space; now it’s the kitchen. How little has changed in forty thousand years.

Even before we speak we signal with our hands. The Talmud says that we enter the world with ours fists clenched and leave it with our hands open. Think about the implications of that one for a moment—there’s a whole sermon there… which I will give at another time.

As humankind advanced, our hand print evolved into our signature. The remarkable dexterity of the human hand, so crucial to primitive tool making, now enabled writing. Why is it that we still seek an autographed book or baseball? The signature on an object immediately personalizes and connects to people. That was the copy of the Emancipation Proclamation that Lincoln himself signed. That was the ball that Babe Ruth autographed. The signature differentiates that document or ball from every other one.

Leonard Nimoy died this past year. His Vulcan hand salute on Star Trek, “live long and prosper,” was known the world over. Most of you probably know (but just in case you don’t) that the salute was taken from the priestly benediction that Nimoy saw when attending synagogue as a boy. To this day in traditional synagogues the cohanim still raise their hands during this prayer and form a “Shin”, which stands for Shaddai, one of God’s names. It’s the same reason that a “Shin” is drawn on the outside of every mezuzah parchment. I wonder how many Trekkies realize they are signing a Hebrew letter and copying a synagogue ritual when they make the Vulcan salute?

True Trekkies will remember a poignant image from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The Starship Enterprise had been gravely damaged. Scotty can’t do anything. There’s only one hope: someone must enter the radioactive nuclear chamber and manually repair the power source. It’s a suicide mission. To do so means certain death. Spock, that curious mixture of logic and compassion, goes in and locks the door. He saves the Enterprise. As he stands at the protective glass partition, already dying, mouthing his last words to his best friend Jim, he puts his hand against the glass in salute. Then Jim does the same, mirroring Spock’s hand. No further words are needed. It’s hand to hand; heart to heart.

By the way, if you visit some very traditional Jewish cemeteries you will occasionally see an engraved set of hands on the tombstone, held up much like Spock did. It’s highly unusual to see anything but Hebrew letters on Jewish tombs. But the sign of the hands was an exception reserved for cohanim.

The Bible is replete with images of hands: the right hand of might, the wicked hand, the bloodstained hand, the upraised hand of prayer.

Perhaps the most dramatic is the story of when Jacob conspires to steal the blessing of the firstborn of his brother Esau from his father Isaac. Jacob needs to impersonate his hairy brother before his blind father, so he wraps his hand in goatskin. When he meets his father, you can sense the shadow of doubt that passes over the aged patriarch at the moment of deception. “The voice is the voice of Jacob,” he says, “but the hands are the hands of Esau.” The hands win, and Jacob receives the blessing intended for Esau, and nothing is ever the same.

But there is another phrase from the Tanakh that I want to share, because it gets to the heart of what I want to say on this Yom Kippur. The Psalmist (115:7) speaks of the person “who has hands but does not touch.” Our hands have so many uses, but ultimately it is the simple power of the human touch that is most significant. I mean this physically and metaphorically.

When the liturgy says that God is looking for our imprint, consider that first and foremost we are being asked: have you reached out to another? Have you touched another’s life? Have you made a difference?

Family, friends, colleagues, clients, customers, casual acquaintances, even adversaries… the possibilities are all around, if we pursue them.

Have you taken their hand? Shaken their hand? Held their hand? Patted their back? Stroked their hair? Given them a hug?

“Who has hands but does not touch.” How awful to be invisible and untouched… and how much more so when you have the opportunity to touch and do not.

Audrey Hepburn, who I have never quoted before, said, “As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.

A story is told of two God fearing people at the gates of heaven. God says to them: you both claim to be faithful servants. Now show me your hands. The two look at each other in surprise. The first puts out his hands; they are totally smooth. The second puts out his hands; they are full of scars. The Almighty ushers in the second, saying “well done”. The Almighty signals for the first to wait. “Why am I being detained?” he queries. God looks at his hands again, and then says, “Was there nothing worth fighting for? Was there nothing worth serving? You have lived a long life, and there are no scars?”

The folksinger Jewel has a beautiful song called “Hands”. In the last line she daringly suggests that “we are God’s hands”.

Would that we remember that as we go about our lives.

That remarkable little boy, Zion Harvey—he’s one of most articulate kids I’ve ever heard. He talked about how he managed to do so much without hands. He talked about what he wanted to do with hands. His goal is to one day swing on monkey bars. Toward the end of one interview he sensed a question that the interviewer did not explicitly ask: what would happen if the surgery does not go as planned, if the new hands do not take? He said, “And I’ll be fine if they mess up. Because I will still have my family.”

Zion Harvey touched thousands even before his new hands. I am sure he will touch thousands more.

Before I close… a personal note. I have wanted to give a sermon on hands for a long time. The reason is one some of you may suspect. My wife Debby is a hand rehabilitation therapist. These days she travels around the country and around the world teaching occupational and physical therapists the splinting of the hand. Before that she spent twenty years in the clinical setting. And part of that time she worked at Shriners Hospital in Philadelphia with Dr. Scott Kozin, the surgeon who first suggested Zion Harvery’s surgery and assisted with it.

So I knew this was time to give that sermon. And although I don’t usually dedicate sermons to individuals, this one is dedicated to Debby, my partner for the last 35 years.

The ancient Psalmist, the same one who spoke of hands that do not touch, concludes the 90th Psalm with a beautiful prayer, as I do now:

Vayehi noam Adonai Eloheinu aleinu; u’maseh yadeinu konena aleinu; u’maseh yadeinu konenainu.

May the favor of the Lord, our God, be upon us; let the work of our hands prosper; O prosper the work of our hands!

Rabbi Schwartz's Sermon for Rosh Hashanah Evening 5776

THE BIRTHDAY OF THE WORLD

ROSH HASHANAH 5776

RABBI BARRY L. SCHWARTZ

Just over three years ago this month an epic event in the history of mankind quietly passed with little fanfare. In this non-stop news era, I find it remarkable that such scant attention was given to something that personally made me pause in wonder and reflect in awe.

On or about August 25, 2012 the Voyager 1 spacecraft became the first manmade object to leave our Solar system. The little ship successfully withstood what scientists call “termination shock”—the area where particles from the Sun begin to slow and clash with matter from deep space. It passed through the vast “heliosheath”—the expanse where the solar wind piles up as it presses outward against interstellar matter, and then crossed the “heliopause”—the boundary between the solar wind and the interstellar wind, where the pressure of both are in balance.

Now Voyager 1 is sailing free through the Milky Way. It is more than 12 billion miles from home. The distance is 121 AUs (Astronomical Units) away; that is 121 times the separation between the Earth and the Sun. It takes 17 hours for a radio signal from Voyager to reach receivers here on the home planet. “It’s utterly astonishing that this fragile artifact based on 1970s technology can signal its presence from this immense distance,” remarked Astronomer Sir Martin Rees.

Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 to study the outer planets, but then just kept going. Talk about deep space: Even though it is traveling at 45 km/s (100,000 mph), it will not approach another star for nearly 40,000 years. In a billion years it will still be in our galaxy.

Professor Edward Stone, the chief scientist of the mission compared the achievement of Voyager to circumnavigating the globe for the first time, and to Armstrong’s step on the moon. Renowned planetary scientist Fred Taylor was just a young post-doc on the team back in ’77. “The idea that the spacecraft would exit the Solar System altogether was so way out, figuratively as well as literally, that we didn’t even discuss it then,” he remarked. “Although I suppose we knew it would happen someday,” he admits, adding, “Forty-three years later, that day has arrived, and Voyager is still finding new frontiers.”

I was reminded of Voyager’s breakthrough achievement twice this summer. The first time was when we saw those first photos of Pluto from NASA’s New Horizon’s spacecraft on July 14. Yeah, it didn’t look like much… drab like the moon… and Pluto was downgraded from a real planet to a dwarf planet a few years ago… but I got all excited. Think about it—it took New Horizon 9.5 years traveling 3 billion miles just to get up close with Pluto. And we got to see the actual surface of the last major piece of real estate in our Solar System.

Then I was reminded of Voyager again a week later, when on July 20 (the 46th anniversary of the moon landing) Russian billionaire Yuri Milner pledged $100 million dollars to launch a new search for extra-terrestrial life. With the famous physicist Stephen Hawking by his side, Milner described a plan to harness the world’s most powerful telescopes and computers to scan the Milky Way and a hundred neighboring galaxies in unprecedented ways. “There is no bigger question,” said Hawking in his computer-generated voice. “We are intelligent, we are alive, we must know.”

If you are a space geek like me, you can’t get enough of this stuff. And if you’ve read up on the subject you will know that Milner’s initiative, dubbed “Breakthrough Listen”, stands on the shoulders of Carl Sagan’s SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) project of the 1980s. You will also know that SETI was not the first foray into this area. The aforementioned Voyager, out there in interstellar space, is carrying something called “The Golden Record”. Indulge me for a few moments as I describe it.

The Golden Record is a 12-inch gold-plated copper phonograph disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. Sagan and a NASA Committee assembled 115 such sounds and images, like the surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, greetings in 55 languages, musical selections, and messages from President Jimmy Carter and UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim. At the time Sagan said, “The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.”

That last line is really what I want to talk about. What does Voyager and SETI and now Breakthrough Listen really mean? Why spend all the time and money? Don’t we have enough problems here on Earth? What’s the point?

President Carter, in his Voyager message, also spoke of hope. This is what he said: “We cast this message into the cosmos… Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some—perhaps many—may have inhabited planets and space faring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message: We are trying to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and determination and our goodwill in a vast and awesome universe.”

Reaching for the stars is first about gratitude and humility. The ancient Psalmist declared more than two thousand years ago, and none has said it better: “When I behold your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you set in place—What are we humans that You are mindful of us? We mortals, that you take note of us? Yet you made us little less than divine; adorned with glory and majesty. You gave us dominion over your handiwork, laying the world at our feet....” (Psalm 8)

Exploring the cosmos is second, a constant reminder of how fragile and precious and interdependent the home planet really is. Soviet cosmonaut Vitali Sevastyanov wrote, “Once during the mission I was asked by ground control what I could see. What do I see? I replied. Half a word to the left; half a world to the right; I can see it all. The Earth is so small.” His colleague Aleksi Leanov added, “The Earth was small, light blue, and touchingly alone; our home that must be defended like a holy relic.” Sigmund Jan, a German astronaut, recounts that “only when I saw the Earth from space did I realize that humankind’s most urgent task is to cherish and preserve it for future generation.”

Remember that the space age began as a space race between the United States and the Soviet Union. Now look at the cooperation between countries. We can’t even get to the International Space Station anymore without hitching a ride with the Russians. Perhaps in one sense that is fitting. The last frontier is truly an international one. Saudi astronaut Bin Salman said it best: “The first day or so we all pointed to our countries. The third or fourth day we were pointing to our continents. By the fifth day we were aware of only one earth.”

The aforementioned Yuri Milner, the Russian billionaire (and yes he is Jewish), is a theoretical physicist turned global investor with a Wharton MBA. He was named for Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space, who orbited the Earth seven months before Milner was born. His telescopes and his team are assembled from every corner of the world.

I cannot argue that the fortune Milner is spending on his grand, quixotic venture might not be more urgently needed elsewhere. But in elevating us physically and spiritually to a new perspective on our planet, by reminding us of our common humanity and our highest humanity… to me, something sacred is going on.

When we blow the shofar three times, we will then recite three times, “hayom harat olam”; “this day the world is born.” Rosh Hashanah celebrates the birthday of the world. It is 5776 years old, give or take a few billion years. How better to celebrate the birth of the world, and the miracle of its life sustaining endurance, than by embracing the perspective bequeathed to us by the astronauts and the scientists. How better to celebrate the birth of the world by safeguarding the home planet even as we reach beyond it. How better to affirm our humanity by joining hands in the peaceful exploration of the greater universe of which we part, and are destined to discover.

And finally, allow me to conclude with the thought that the vast expanse of the universe and its exploration inspires the vast expanse of our imagination. Lovers of science fiction already know this to be true. Space invites us to dream again… to dream big.

I know that the chances of intelligent life being discovered anywhere else are totally remote. In fact, many have quipped that we are still looking for it here. But could you imagine if one day we did make contact?

And even if we don’t, think about this: Maybe our time on this planet is limited. Maybe the earth’s ability to sustain us will fail, even long before our sun, like all stars, will flare and die. Could it be that our survival lies beyond this planet?

And think about this: it could be that humanity will long be gone, extinct as the dinosaurs. But the tiny messengers, Pioneer 1 and 2, Voyager 1 and 2, New Horizons will continue to tote little pieces of our history throughout the universe. And maybe after drifting for millions or billions of years, one of our messages-in-a-bottle will be discovered, and mark the most exciting event in another civilization’s history.

Happy Birthday, world. And Shanah Tovah.

Rabbi Schwartz's Sermon for Yom Kippur 5775

OUR MOST COMMON MISTAKE

YOM KIPPUR 5775

RABBI BARRY L. SCHWARTZ

Maybe you've heard the story about the Yeshivah University rowing team? One year they were asked to compete in the Ivy League Division. Unfortunately, they lost race after race. They practiced every day, for hours, but finished last at every meet. Finally, the team decided to send their captain, Morris, to spy on Harvard, the perennial champ. Morris went up to Cambridge and hid out along the banks of the Charles River. He carefully observed the Harvard team. A week later he returned to New York. "Well, I figured out their secret," he announced. "What? What is it? Tell us!" his teammates shouted.

"Well," he said, "We should have only one guy yelling. The other eight should row!"

Isn't it true that we yell too much?

Isn't it true that we criticize too much?

Isn't it true that we gossip too much?

I teach a unit in Confirmation class about Lashon Harah—Inappropriate Speech. It's about time to talk about it from the pulpit—when a lot of people are listening.

Judaism has a great deal to teach on this subject.

And, when you stop and think about it... foot-in-mouth disease is probably our most common malady.

I'm going to ask you a question that I ask my Confirmation students when I introduce this unit.

How many of us can go a week without saying something we later regret?

How many of us can go a day?

Whether in content or tone, lashon harah, the Hebrew expression for hurtful speech, deceptive speech, unnecessary speech, inappropriate speech, is our number one mistake.

On this Day of Atonement, it's therefore worth a look at the subject.

One needs to look no further than our own High Holiday prayer book to appreciate the dimension of the problem. Minutes ago we recited the al cheyt enumeration of our sins. No less than half of the dozen of the listed mistakes are connected to our misuse of language:

For the sin we have sinned against you by idle talk.

For the sin we have sinned against you by offensive speech.

...by speaking ill of other people.

...by scoffing and mocking.

...by gossiping.

...by swearing falsely.

I went back to the traditional High Holiday machzor, with the really big list of sins. [Our prayer book carries an abbreviated list]. I counted a dozen sins connected to speech. Here they are, Hebrew and English:

1. tipshut peh—thoughtless speech
2. latzon—scoffing
3. motzi shem rah—slander
4. bitui s'fatayim—offensive speech
5. dibur peh—insincere confession
6. sh'vuat shav—swearing falsely
7. bitui peh—foolish expressibns
8. hilul hashem—blashphemy
9. tumat s'fatayim—impure speech
10. n'tiyat garon—arrogant speech
11. r'ichilut—gossip
12. k'lala—cursing.

The ancient Psalmist wrote, "Mavet v 'haim b 'yad lashon—Life and death are in the power of the tongue" (Proverbs 18:21).

The truth is that sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will also hurt us. They may not break the body, but they break the soul. They injure by slighting, by embarrassing, by branding, by marginalizing, by prejudicing. And as we all know, a slip of the tongue in the heat of the moment can occur as quickly as a slip of the foot on a sliver of ice.

The Psalmist declares, "Mi ha ish—Who is the man that loves life, and desires good fortune? The one who guards [his] tongue from evil, and his lips from deceitful speech" (Psalm 34:13).

Just how quickly and deeply words can wound is evidenced by a dramatic story told by the late, great Isaac Asimov. Asimov recounts that when he was a 15 year old high school student, his writing class teacher, Max N. asked for volunteers to read their essays. Asimov's hand shot up.

"I had read only about a quarter of it," he recalls in his memoir, "when N. stopped me and used an opprobrious barnyard term to describe my writing. I had never heard a teacher use a "dirty word" before and I was shocked. The class wasn't however. They laughed at me uproariously and I took my seat in bitter shame."

Asimov goes on to say that, despite his acute embarrassment, he took the criticism to heart, and greatly improved his next piece. When N. printed it in the school literary journal, Asimov went to thank him, only to be wounded again when his teacher told him that the only reason he had printed it was because he needed a lightweight submission to round out the serious articles.

Isaac Asimov went on to author and edit over 400 books and articles, and is considered one of America's greatest writers and intellects. Yet anyone who reads his memoir feels how fresh the pain of his embarrassment is, even though the account was penned 55 years after the event. Asimov writes at the end, "I wish I has a time machine and could go back to 1934 with some of my books and some of the articles that have been written about me and say to him, "How do you like that, you rotten louse? If you had treated me right, I could have recorded you as my discoverer, instead of branding you a rotten louse."

Asimov's experience illustrates the potent teaching of our tradition that one who shames another in public, it is as if they have shed blood. While we say that words are only words, the humiliation and hurt they may bring when misused have powerful lasting effects, whether we like it or not.

Later this afternoon, I will tell a classic Eastern European Hasidic story at our Yom Kippur Children's Service. My props are a small pillow case, and a bag of colored feathers. A boy, sometimes I call him Mert the Blurt, is sent to the rabbi for calling out bad things about other people. Unable to impress on the youth the error of his ways, the rabbi tells the stubborn kid to take a feather pillow from his home, go to the center of town, cut it open, and watch the feathers scatter to the wind. 

The boy does as he is told, returns, and asks the rabbi, "Am I forgiven now?" 

"Not quite," replies the rabbi. 'Now I want you to gather up all the feathers." 

"But that's impossible," protests the boy. "The wind has scattered them everywhere. "

"Precisely," the rabbi answers. "Your words are like feathers. Once they leave your mouth, they are everywhere. How can you repair the damage you have done?"

To make matters worse, the sad and harsh truth is that we tend to most often hurt the people closest to us.

Maybe it's because they are around the most. We interact with them more than anyone else. Improper language, exploitative language, abusive language... we use it all... and it hurts the people we love the most. Which is why all of us come to Yom Kippur with something to confess....

And so, in the final analysis, what can we do about our motor-mouths and loose tongues? How do we repent of the sins of our speech? After all, don't we want to address our most common mistakes in order to repair our most precious relationships?

They say "prevention is the best medicine" and here therefore are the three most important lessons I've learned wrestling with the subject over the years:

First: Think twice before speaking. I know it seems obvious. But if we only paused for a nanosecond before blurting out much of what we say; if we just paused and asked ourselves, "Do I really need to say that?" or "Do I really need to say it in that tone of voice?" think of how many screw-ups, never mind unintentional sins we could avoid.

Second: Be careful with the truth. Judaism teaches that a statement that is true, but derogatory, is still lashon harah, inappropriate speech. Conveying a negative or embarrassing image of someone, even if that description is factually correct (and maybe even deserved) is still wrong. It harms another person. The harm may end up being physical, financial, or emotional. Short of slander it may be legal, but that does not make lashon harah right.

Be careful about the truth for another reason. The truth can be slippery. A seemingly innocuous statement can be easily exaggerated or taken out of context. When in doubt, do without. If you have any apprehension that something you say may be misconstrued, misinterpreted, quoted out of context, or blown out of context... don't say it!

And third: Avoid gossip. I know you're saying, "how original!" But it's so true... and so hard. The Jewish teaching here is that we should not only avoid gossiping ourselves, but we should also avoid repeating it, or supporting it. We relate less than flattering images of other people to our spouses, family and friends. We repeat questionable things we've heard with the excuse that its common knowledge. We talk behind one another's back. We embarrass in jest. Gossip has its ways.

• Think twice before speaking. 
• Be careful with the truth. 
• Avoid gossip. 

And now let me conclude on a completely different note. Well, actually, on the flip side of what I have been talking about. Lashon harah is all about inappropriate speech. But consider, and maybe this is my fourth lesson, not just decreasing lashon harah, but increasing lashon hatov—kind and generous speech.

• We need less criticism, and more compliments.
• We need less reproach and more praise.
• We need less gossip and more tribute.

A classic story from the late, great Art Buchwald:

I was in New York the other day and rode with a friend in a taxi. When we got out, my friend said to the driver, "Thank you for the ride. You did a superb job of driving."

The taxi driver was stunned for a second. Then he said, "Are you a wise guy or something?"

"No, my dear man, and I'm not putting you on. I admire the way you keep cool in heavy traffic."

"Yeah," the driver said and drove off.

"What was that all about?" I asked.

I am trying to bring love back to New York," he said. "I believe it's the only thing that can save the city."

"How can one man save New York?"

"It's not one man. I believe I have made that taxi driver's day. Suppose he has 20 fares. He's going to be nice to those 20 fares because someone was nice to him. Those fares in turn will be kinder to their employees or shopkeepers or waiters or even their own families. Eventually the goodwill could spread to at least 1,000 people. Now that isn't bad, is it?"

"But you're depending on that taxi driver to pass your goodwill to others."

"I'm not depending on it," my friend said. "I'm aware that the system isn't foolproof so I might deal with ten different people today. If out of ten I can make three happy, then eventually I can indirectly influence the attitudes of 3,000 more."

"It sounds good on paper," I admitted, "but I'm not sure it words in practice."

"Nothing is lost if it doesn't. It didn't take any of my time to tell that man he was doing a good job. He neither received a larger tip nor a smaller tip. If it fell on deaf ears, so what? Tomorrow there will be another taxi driver I can try to make happy."

"You're some kind of a nut," I said.

"That shows how cynical you have become. I have made a study of this. The thing that seems to be lacking, besides money of course, for our postal employees, is that no one tells people who work for the post office what a good job they're doing."

"But they're not doing a good job."

"They're not doing a good job because they feel no one cares if they do or not. Why shouldn't someone say a kind word to them?"

We were walking past a structure in the process of being built and passed five workmen eating their lunch. My friend stopped. "That's a magnificent job you men have done. It must be difficult and dangerous work."

The workmen eyed my friend suspiciously.

"When will it be finished?"

"June, a man grunted.

"Ah. That really is impressive. You must all be very proud."

We walked away. I said to him, "I haven't seen anyone like you since The Man From LaMancha."

"When those men digest my words, they will feel better for it. Somehow the city will benefit from their happiness."

"But you can't do this all alone!" I protested. "You're just one man."

"The most important thing is not to get discouraged. Making people in the city become kind again is not an easy job, but if I can enlist other people in my campaign..."

You just winked at a very plain-looking woman," I said.

"Yes, I know," he replied. "And if she's a schoolteacher, her class will be in for a fantastic day."

Well...

You're a wonderful congregation.

You've done a superb job listening to me.

Have a fantastic new year!

Rabbi Schwartz's Sermon for Yom Kippur 5773

SEASONS OF LOVE

YOM KIPPUR, 5773

RABBI BARRY L. SCHWARTZ

Surely you remember the Broadway musical Rent, and that marvelous song, “Seasons of Love”?

Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes,
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Moments so dear.
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?

So asked Jonathan Larson, the young, Jewish playwright and composer of Rent, who tragically passed away of a heart ailment on the eve of the show’s Broadway debut.

How do we measure a year? A perfectly appropriate question on these, the High Holy Days.

When we gather in this place, at this time, at the ancient turning of the Jewish year, at the holy hour which culminates the ten days of soul searching and introspection, we are inescapably confronted with the passage of time, and the consequences of our acts.

We have started counting a new Jewish year. Five thousand seven hundred and seventy three years, since the Creation of the world… give or take a few billion.

But more importantly, how do we judge the year gone by?

The New Year is a time of counting, but even more it is a time of accounting.

No sooner do we mark the New Year on Rosh Hashanah then we are told to spend the next ten days dwelling on the previous one.

How, then, do we measure a year?

Larson continues,

In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights
In cups of coffee
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.

In five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure
A year in the life?

And then he concludes,

How about love?
Measure in love.
Seasons of love.

What a challenge!

To measure in love. To judge the year gone by our triumphs and failures… of love.

There are a myriad of ways to “number our days,” in the phrase of the Psalmist, but what of the measure of love?

By the standard of professional accomplishment, I may have had an exceptional year, a mediocre year, a sub-par year… But what about love?

By the standard of economic gain, I may have had an exceptional year, a mediocre year, a sub-par year… But what about love?

By so many standards of stature and affluence, I may have scaled the heights, or experienced the depths… But what about love?

The Hebrew word for love, ahavah, like the English, conveys multiple meanings depending on the context.

What do we really mean by love?

Consider the help of the Classical Greek, which employs three terms:

Eros—romantic love.
Philos—fraternal love.
Agape—spiritual love.

The Torah implies this range of relationships:

Genesis teaches us about eros, the romantic love between husband and wife, or the lack thereof. From Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, to Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob, Leah and Rachel.

So too, these sacred stories portray the depths of philos, the fraternal love, or the lack thereof, between siblings. Cain and Abel. Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers.

The great commandments of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy speak of agape, spiritual love:

Love your neighbor as yourself. 

Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. 

Love the Lord your God, with all you heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.

The Torah ideal, like the Broadway song, is that love is the measure of our relationships.

And while that may start with our spouse or children, and goes on to our parents, siblings, and extended family, its radiates out to our friends, neighbors, colleagues, employees… And even to the one we do not know or do not like.

I am always struck by the response Martin Luther King, Jr, gave when asked how he felt about an arch segregationist senator who opposed his every move:

I do not like Senator Eastland from Mississippi, but I must learn to love him.

And so on this Yom Kippur, when we turn and take a reckoning of our triumphs and failures of love over the past year, what is the accounting?

Do we emerge a loving spouse?

A loving parent? Brother? Sister? Son? Daughter?

Do we emerge as a loving friend, colleague, boss?

Part of our nature pulls in that direction. But part does not:

Was our incessant egotism checked by abundant altruism? 

Was our recurrent selfishness balanced by regular selflessness? 

Was our angry demand for justice eased by a desire for compassion? 

Was our impulse to dominate tempered by a willingness to cooperate? 

Was our stiff necked stubbornness relaxed by a readiness to compromise? 

Was our proclivity toward indifference mitigated by a yearning for reconciliation?

When we extend the embrace of love beyond our home, to our community, and even our workplace, what is the accounting?

Did I treat my colleague as I would treat myself? 

Did I accord the basic level of respect and dignity to my nemesis even in my hour of frustration or vexation? 

Did I rise to the challenge of loving the needy? The vulnerable? The marginalized? The distressed? The stranger I do not know?

The Torah commands this love of the stranger thirty-six times, because “you know the heart of the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

Empathy born of history.

What has happened to our collective memory? Did I (do we) measure up?

I don’t know about you, but I'm concerned. If I weigh the triumphs of love, with the failures of love, I'm not so happy with the balance.

The shortcomings hurt. The disappointments hurt. The lost opportunities hurt.

They hurt us, and they hurt our loved ones.

And the closer these loved ones are to us, the more it hurts.

Why is it that we make the greatest mistakes with the people we care about the most?

But the Jewish New Year comes to say: We can begin again.

Keep a vision of the good before you, and begin again.

Profess what you did right, confess what you did wrong, and begin again.

Own up to your mistakes and begin again.

Embrace repentance and reconciliation and begin again.

Start tipping those scales in the right direction, right now.

Because your life depends on it, and because the world, which is the sum of all those individual scales, depends on it.

Every week we talk about love when we recite the second prayer after the Barechu, the prayer that comes just before the Shema.

The striking expression that begins the prayer is Ahavat Olam, unending love, or perhaps, unconditional love.

Ahavat olam… ahavtah: “You have loved us eternally.”

Such love, our tradition teaches, characterizes God’s relationship to us.

And we are taught, imitatio Dei, to imitate God.

Such love, our tradition urges, should characterize our relationship with others.

Love that is unceasingly. Unrequited. Unconditional.

The Torah puts forth the radical notion that as God loves us flaws and all, that is the way we should guide our lives.

Rabbi Rami Shapiro has written a beautiful prayer based on the traditional Ahavat Olam of the Siddur. As I read it now, think about how you might be more open to both receiving, and giving, of unconditional love.

We are loved by an unending love.
We are embraced by arms that find us
Even when we are hidden from ourselves. 

We are touched by fingers that soothe us
Even when we are too proud for soothing.
We are counseled by voices that guide us
Even when we are too embittered to hear.
We are loved by an unending love. 

We are supported by hands that uplift us
Even in the midst of a fall.
We are urged on by eyes that meet us
Even when we are too week for meeting.
We are loved by an unending love. 

Embraced, touched, soothed, and counseled
Ours are the arms, the fingers, the voices;
Ours are the hands, the eyes, the smiles,
We are loved by an unending love.

Now I would love to conclude on this pure and poetic note, but I need to add one other point: Love, even unconditional love, is complicated.

As I was completing this sermon, [now here comes my confession], I was watching the speeches at the Republican National Convention. Lo and behold, wouldn’t you know, that Ann Romney starts off talking about love.

This is what she said:

I want to talk to you tonight about that one great thing that unites us, that one great thing that brings us our greatest joy when times are good and the greatest solace in our dark hours. Tonight I want to talk about love.

She goes on to talk about the importance of unconditional love, and who could disagree with that?

Well our governor, Chris Christie, for one, who followed her speech with his. Christie stands up and says,

And the greatest lesson that my mom ever taught me was this one: She told me there would be a time in your life when you have to choose between being loved and being respected.

Christie goes on to say that love without respect is fleeting and that people in general, and leaders in particular, should stop wanting to always be loved and start making the hard choices they constantly avoid.

So who is right?

Well, I think Anne is right that unconditional love is the greatest thing.

But I think that the governor is making the case for what we often call tough love.

Are the two in conflict? I think not. Unconditional love is not necessarily uncritical love.

As parents, for example, don’t we often criticize and even punish our children for their own good, to help them grow up in the right way? It’s not that we don’t love them.

You children out there, let me repeat that: It’s not that we don’t love you.

This is precisely what the prophets of the Bible said repeatedly about God’s relationship to Israel.

Listen to the famous words of Isaiah (54:7-8):

For a little while I forsook you,
But with vast love I will bring you back.
In slight anger, for a moment,
I hid My face from you,
But with kindness everlasting
I will take you back in love.

So now, at this holy time, I conclude by asking:

Can we create a new season of love?

Can we turn to our loved ones and say:

Even though I see your flaws… I love you. 

Even though I know your secrets… I love you. 

Even though you may have ignored me… I love you. 

Even though you may have disappointed me, slighted me, rejected me, hurt me… I love you. 

Even though you are not the easiest partner… I love you. 

Even though you are not the most understanding parent… I love you. 

Even though you are not the most respectful child… I love you. 

And I… I am a flawed partner, I am a faulty parent, I am an imperfect child, sibling, friend, or fellow… But I ask you to love me the same.

Paul wrote famously:

Love is patient; love is kind. It is not jealous nor boastful nor proud; never selfish nor quick to take offense. Love keeps no score of wrongs, does not gloat over another’s sins, but delights in the truth. Love never gives up; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, its endurance.

Which brings me back to a song:

Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year? 

How about love?

[see our next post for more on Jonathan Larson and Rent, and to listen to "Seasons of Love"]

We Create the Conditions that Condition Us

As an occasional guest blogger for the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College, I'm asked to choose a quote from her writings, and provide a bit of discussion about it.  I previously shared with you my post on Hannah Arendt and Charlie Chaplin, and I thought I would also share my latest entry.

Hannah Arendt from a 

1988 German stamp 

of the Women in 

German history series.

Hannah Arendt was a Jewish German-American philosopher and political scientist, perhaps best known for her reporting on the Adolph Eichmann trial for The New Yorker, Eichmann having been the Nazi in charge of the concentration camps; that work was later published in revised form as Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.  

In philosophical circles, her most influential work is The Human Condition, and my post begins with a quote from that work.  I should warn you that, while the underlying sensibility is certainly Jewish, there is very little overtly Jewish content in this post, at least not until the end.  But I hope that you find it of interest nevertheless.

The post is entitled We Create the Conditions that Condition Us, and the link, or stick around and I'll share it with you right here and now:

We Create the Conditions that Condition Us

"The human condition comprehends more than the condition under which life has been given to man. Men are conditioned beings because everything they come in contact with turns immediately into a condition of their existence.  The world in which the vita activa spends itself consists of things produced by human activities; but the things that owe their existence exclusively to men nevertheless constantly condition their human makers."

-Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 1958, p. 9

The human condition is the context or situation we, as human beings, find ourselves in, the implication being that human life cannot be fully understood by considering humanity in isolation from its environment.  We are, to a large degree, shaped by our environment, which is why Arendt refers to us as conditioned beings.

We are conditioned by phenomena external to us, and this may be considered learning in its broadest sense, that is, in the sense that the Skinnerian conditioned response is a learned reaction to external stimuli.  It follows that any form of life that is capable of modifying its behavior in response to external stimuli is, to some extent, a conditioned being.

On a grander scale, natural selection, as it is popularly understood, can be seen as a conditioning force.  Survival of the fittest is survival of those best able to adapt to existing external conditions, survival of those best able to meet the conditions of their environment.  The fittest are, quite naturally, those in the best condition, that is, the best condition to survive.  Whether we are considering the effects of natural selection upon an entire species, or individual members of a species, or what Richard Dawkins refers to as the selfish gene, the environment sets the conditions that various forms of life must meet to survive and reproduce.

Such views are inherently incorrect insofar as they posit an artificial separation between the conditions of life and the form of life that is conditioned.  An ecological or systems view would instead emphasize the interdependent and interactive relationships that exist, as all forms of life alter their conditions simply by their very presence, by their metabolism, for example, and through their reproduction.  Darwin understood this, I hasten to add, and the seeds of ecology can be found in his work, although they did not fully germinate until the turn of the 20th century.  And Skinner certainly was aware of the individual's capacity for self-stimulation, and self-modification, but a truly relational approach in psychology did not coalesce until Gregory Bateson introduced a cybernetic perspective during the 1950s.

In the passage quoted above, it is readily apparent that Arendt is an ecological thinker.  In saying that, "the things that owe their existence exclusively to men nevertheless constantly condition their human makers," she is saying that we create the conditions that in turn condition us.  We exist within a reciprocal relationship, a dialogue if you like, between the conditioned and the conditions, the internal and the external, the organism and its environment.  The changes that we introduce into our environment, that alter the environment, feedback into ourselves as we are influenced, affected, and shaped by our environment.

The contrast between using tools and techniques in the most basic way to adapt to the conditions of the environment, and the creation of an entirely new technological environment of great complexity that requires us to perform highly convoluted acts of adaptation was portrayed with brilliant sensitivity and humor in the 1980 South African film, directed by Jamie Uys, entitled The Gods Must Be Crazy.  A good part of the documentary style opening can be seen on this YouTube clip:

The story of the Coke bottle, although fictional, follows the pattern of many documented cases in which the introduction of new technologies to traditional societies has had disruptive, and often enough, disastrous effects (the film itself, I hasten to add, is marvelously comedic, and quite often slapstick following the introductory quarter hour).

The understanding that we are conditioned by the conditions we ourselves introduce was not unknown in the ancient world.  The 115th Psalm of David, in its polemic against idolatry and the idols that are "the work of men's hands," cautions that "they who make them shall be like unto them; yea every one that trusts in them."  Along the same lines, the Gospel of Matthew includes the famous quote, "all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword," while the Epistle to the Galatians advises, "whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap." A more contemporary variation of that maxim is, "as you make your bed, so you shall lie on it," although in the United States it is often rendered in the imperative and punitive form of, "you made your bed, go lie in it!"  During the 19th century, Henry David Thoreau notified us that "we do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us," while Mark Twain humorously observed that, "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."  More recently, we have been told, "ask a silly question, get a silly answer," to which computer scientists have responded with the acronym GIGO, which stands for, "garbage in, garbage out."  Winston Churchill said, "we shape our buildings, and thereafter they shape us," and former Fordham professor John Culkin, in turn, offered, "we shape our tools, and thereafter they shape us," as a corollary to Marhsall McLuhan's media ecology aphorism, "the medium is the message."

All of these voices, in their varying ways, are pointing to the same essential truth about the human condition that Arendt is relating in the quote that begins this post.  And to pick up where that quote leaves off, Arendt goes on to argue,

In addition to the conditions under which life is given to man on earth, and partly out of them, men constantly create their own, self-made conditions, which, their human origin and their variability not withstanding, possess the same conditioning power as natural things.

The "conditions" that we make are used to create a buffer or shield against the conditions that we inherit, so that our self-made conditions are meant to stand between us and what we would consider to be the natural environment.  In this sense, our self-made conditions mediate between ourselves and the pre-existing conditions that we operate under, which is to say that our conditions are media of human life.  And in mediating, in going between our prior conditions and ourselves, the new conditions that we create become our new environment.  And as we become conditioned to our new conditions, they fade from view, being routinized they melt into the background and become essentially invisible to us.

Let us return now for the conclusion of the passage from The Human Condition:

Whatever touches or enters into a sustained relationship with human life immediately assumes the character of a condition of human existence.  This is why men, no matter what they do, are always conditioned beings.  Whatever enters the world of its own accord or is drawn into it by human effort becomes part of the human condition.  The impact of the world's reality upon human existence is felt and received as a conditioning force.  The objectivity of the world—its object- or thing-character—and the human condition supplement each other; because human existence is conditioned existence, it would be impossible without things, and things would be a heap of unrelated articles, a non-world, if they were not the conditioners of human existence.

This last point is quite striking.  It is we, as human beings, who create worlds, which brings to mind the moving commentary from the Talmud:  "whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."  We create worlds, in the sense that we give meaning to existence, we attribute meaning to phenomena, we construct symbolic as well as material environments.  Each one of us, in our singular subjectivity, creates a world of our own, and therefore each one of us represents a world unto ourselves.

But these individual worlds are links, nodes in a social network, interdependent and interactive parts of an ecological whole.  The term condition, in its root meaning is derived from the Latin prefix com, which means together, and dicere, which means to speak.  And our ability to speak together, to engage in discussion and deliberation, to enter into symbolic interaction, constitutes the means by which we collectively construct our intersubjective, social realities, our worlds.

As human beings, we are conditioned not only by our labor, the ways in which we obtain the necessities of life, i.e., air, water, food, shelter, to which Marx sought to reduce all aspects of society, a position that Arendt severely criticized.  We are conditioned not only by our work, which Arendt associated with artifacts, with instrumentality and technology, with arts and crafts.  We are conditioned most importantly by action, which in Arendt's view is intimately tied to speech and the symbolic, and to processes rather than things, to relations rather than objects.

In the end, Arendt reminds us that the human condition is itself conditional, and to be fully human requires not only that we take care of biological necessity, nor that we make life easier through technological innovation, but that we cooperate through speech and action in collectively constructing a world that is truly blessed with freedom and with justice.