Post by Rabbi Neil on Sept 19, 2023 17:18:32 GMT
Why are we here this evening? Why gather to hear prayers in another language which most of us cannot understand? Is it for the wonderful music and for the awe-inspiring feelings it creates? Is it for the company of community members and friends and a chance to reconnect? Is it for the challenging and transformative liturgy and for the opportunity to engage in teshuvah? Or is it for the dazzlingly insightful and life-changing sermon?!? Maybe some or all of those are part of the reason. But I believe that those are all bonuses that attach themselves to something more profound, more essential. I believe that the core reason that we gather together on Rosh Hashanah is because Rosh Hashanah is a moment of hope in a seemingly hopeless world.
In 1948, Rabbi Leo Baeck wrote that “[humanity] and the world are linked in one certainty of life, a conviction that all life was bestowed, is upheld and will be maintained in safety forever.” Seventy-five years later, with the climate crisis unfolding faster than even the most pessimistic predictions expected, most of us no longer share his optimistic confidence that all life will be maintained in safety forever. Where once it was imagined that with the advent of the internet we were creating a techno-utopian society, “a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth…a world where anyone, anywhere may express [their] beliefs…,” now instead we realize that we have created a global information cesspool which has elevated the voices of the ignorant and the morally perverse and has dramatically reduced the quality of civil discourse by creating echo chambers of information deliberately tailored to support our pre-existing worldviews. Where once we believed that with enough social pressure, we could totally transform our society towards freedom for all, now many of us have come to the painful realization that most of the ways in which we nowadays express hope and change are merely consumeristic choices guided by the invisible hand of the market and that social progress is only embraced when it becomes profitable for multi-national corporations who actually care nothing for justice. The words of Revd Dr Martin Luther King still echo in one generation’s ears that “the arc of the moral universe is long but it tends towards justice,” but in the generations that followed that are fighting for equality, democracy and basic rights that so many of the previous generation enjoyed, to some it now seems that the arc of the moral universe is a nonsensical dream, a messianic ideal, nothing more than a “necessary and useful fiction.” The generation of hope, the generation that dreamed of a positive future has been replaced by a generation either of ill-informed hashtag clicktivists whose greatest act of civil disobedience is to change a Facebook profile picture, or a generation of despairing children and young adults who not only lament the present, as most generations always have, but who also clearly fear the future. It is a generation of people who are either not paying attention, or who are despairing for the future specifically because they are.
In the book of Exodus, less than two months after the Israelites leave Egypt, they yearn to go back. Facing the uncertainty of the wilderness in front of them, they complain of the lack of food and wish that they had died in Egypt. Despite seeing the miracles in Egypt, they have no trust that God will provide for them in the future, and that lack of trust never goes away. The following chapter, they complain that there is no water. Later on in the same book, they lose faith that Moses will return from Sinai and so build a golden calf. Two entire books later, in the Book of Numbers, the people’s constant lack of trust in God supporting them in the future even leads Moses to doubt God’s ability. In the end, both Moses and the people are punished for their lack of faith by not being able to enter the Land.
It is easy to assume that the message of these texts is that we should have more faith in God, particularly that in the future “God will provide.” That is a traditional Jewish view. In the Book of Psalms, for example, we read “Though I walk through a valley of deepest darkness, I fear no harm, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff—they comfort me.” As Moses passes on leadership of the people to Joshua, he says chizku v’imtzu and then in the following verse says chazak ve’ematz, both meaning “be strong and courageous.” Through the prophet Isaiah, God says to the people, “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Biblical theology clearly implies that part of faith in God and faith in the future is the conviction that there is a plan for the world and that it is a good plan. As such, through the prophet Jeremiah, God says to the people “I know the plans I have for you… plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” That leads people like us, in the post-Holocaust, ecocrisis, end-of-democracy generation to ask “This was planned? And we’re meant to believe that this is a good plan?!?”
Throughout the Bible… indeed, throughout the whole of human history… there have been periods of optimism followed by periods of pessimism. But the Israelites’ pessimism and fear of the future is different to our own and not just because they had a pillar of fire to reassure them of God’s presence whereas the only pillars of fire we have in our generation are from all the forests burning to the ground. No, the difference between their pessimism and fear of the future compared with ours is that theirs was about their own survival, whereas ours is about the survival of humanity itself. That is at the root of so many people’s fear of the future – not that the world won’t survive but that we, humanity, may not. “One generation goes and another generation comes, but the earth remains forever” says Ecclesiastes. The Israelites feared for themselves, we fear for humanity. Why is that? Why don’t we have faith that all will be okay in the end? Unlike some branches of Judaism, Reform Judaism is not a world-denying faith. Its head and heart are not in the world-to-come but in this world right now. Previous Jewish generations took solace in the messiah, in the redemption at the end of days, in the biblical promise that there would always be a surviving remnant of us after the worst of times. With that eschatological armor around our fragile souls, the Jewish community was able to endure the most horrific moments of history and yet still believe in a positive future. Most twenty-first century Reform Jews no longer have confidence in that promise, though, which is why I believe that we tend to fear for the future. That in turn, though, propels Reform Jews to act in this world, to engage in social action, more than any other Jewish movement. In the absence of any Divine promise of salvation, we have to become that salvation.
I disagree with Martin Luther King. His moral arc tended towards justice, but the arc of the moral universe bends in whichever direction humanity points it. Sometimes it tends towards justice, sometimes not. Maimonides wrote that “Throughout the entire year, a person should always look at themself as equally balanced between merit and sin and the world as equally balanced between merit and sin.” He says that “If that person performs one sin, they tip their balance and that of the entire world to the side of guilt and bring destruction upon themself. [But on the other hand,] if they perform one mitzvah, they tip their balance and that of the entire world to the side of merit and bring deliverance and salvation to themself and to others.” With that in mind, we gather together on Rosh Hashanah because, in the face of all the challenging, terrifying things happening in the world, we choose a different path to the ancient Israelites. We don’t yearn for bygone days, and we don’t believe that regardless of our actions all will be okay in the end. We acknowledge that right now the future is frightening, but we don’t let our fear of the future stop us from moving forward. Instead, we use it to inspire us to act, to redirect the arc of the moral universe, to tip the scale of humanity toward salvation.
That is teshuvah – that is repentance. Not being paralyzed by fear of the future and not being lulled into a sense of false security by a promise of humanity’s salvation that requires no effort on our part. Our fear of the future is what drives our atonement. Our belief that the arc of the moral universe is set not by God but by us is what brings us here this evening. We gather together on Rosh Hashanah because it is a moment of hope in a seemingly hopeless world, because through our positive acts of repentance we create that hope… because what else are we to do with our hopelessness? Are we to wallow for an entire generation in the wilderness like the ancient Israelites, moaning and crying about how tough life has been to us? What good would that serve? No, it is, ironically, our loss of faith in the future that compels us to act and that, ultimately, generates faith in the future. We are afraid of what the future may hold, and so we do everything that we can to ensure a positive future. We acknowledge how heavily tipped the scales currently are against us, so we commit to acting individually and communally to tip the scales for ourselves and for the world.
Leo Baeck added that “only from the messianic idea can history acquire that driving moral force, that great hunger for justice from which follows the certainty that justice will yet be done.” I disagree…. I actually think that most of us disagree with him. I believe that only from the absence of the messianic idea can history acquire that driving moral force, that great hunger for justice, which is fed by the fear that justice might never be done. That is why we are here tonight, because we dare not let the arc of the moral universe bend away from justice, because we dare not create a world in which justice will never be done. Our fear of the future drives our action, and our action drives our hope for the future.
But what is the medium through which fear turns to action? I believe it is through the other reason that we are gathered here today – to celebrate. “This is the day that the Eternal God acted,” says the Book of Psalms, “we will rejoice and celebrate on it.” Hayom harat olam, today is the birthday of the world, says one tradition. Another says that today is the birthday of humanity. That second opinion makes more sense since our morning liturgy specifically says uv’tuvo m’chadesh b’chol yom tamid ma’aseh v’reishit – in Your goodness You daily renew creation. Every day, every moment is the birthday of the world. But on Rosh Hashanah, God created humanity and therefore completed the world, not because we are the pinnacle of creation but because we bring a unique gift to the world that no other creature has ever been able to bring before – the ability to be aware of and to shift the arc of the moral universe. And if the world is indeed renewed in every moment, that means that every moment is imbued with the possibility of us shifting the arc once more. The more we celebrate every moment, the more we recognize how imbued every moment is with the potential for positive change, the more we become inspired to change the world for good. From fear, then, we move through the extraordinary appreciation of each moment, to action. Fear of the future paralyses, but fear of the future combined with a sense of the enormous potentiality of every moment liberates and motivates.
We are here tonight because this is a moment of hope. It’s a moment where we can acknowledge our fears of the future and simultaneously acknowledge the infinitude of the now. That, in turn, reminds us of our awesome, humbling task and also of our extraordinary, limitless ability. It compels us to act. It forces us to become the hope that we need to see in this world.
So may this night remind us of the urgency of our task, individually, communally, and universally. May our fear of the future be tempered with our appreciation of the fullness of the present so that we feel compelled to act, to improve ourselves individually, communally, and universally. May our concern and our actions not be for our own good, but for the good of all humanity and all life, so that our personal and communal transformation over these Ten Days of Awe ultimately transforms the world. In this way, may we become the promise for future generations, and may our transformation in words and deeds during this season of repentance be the hope that the most vulnerable in our world need so desperately to hold onto at this time. May our fear of the future and our full appreciation of the wonder of this moment be what gives us strength tonight and throughout this season of atonement, and let us say, Amen.
In 1948, Rabbi Leo Baeck wrote that “[humanity] and the world are linked in one certainty of life, a conviction that all life was bestowed, is upheld and will be maintained in safety forever.” Seventy-five years later, with the climate crisis unfolding faster than even the most pessimistic predictions expected, most of us no longer share his optimistic confidence that all life will be maintained in safety forever. Where once it was imagined that with the advent of the internet we were creating a techno-utopian society, “a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth…a world where anyone, anywhere may express [their] beliefs…,” now instead we realize that we have created a global information cesspool which has elevated the voices of the ignorant and the morally perverse and has dramatically reduced the quality of civil discourse by creating echo chambers of information deliberately tailored to support our pre-existing worldviews. Where once we believed that with enough social pressure, we could totally transform our society towards freedom for all, now many of us have come to the painful realization that most of the ways in which we nowadays express hope and change are merely consumeristic choices guided by the invisible hand of the market and that social progress is only embraced when it becomes profitable for multi-national corporations who actually care nothing for justice. The words of Revd Dr Martin Luther King still echo in one generation’s ears that “the arc of the moral universe is long but it tends towards justice,” but in the generations that followed that are fighting for equality, democracy and basic rights that so many of the previous generation enjoyed, to some it now seems that the arc of the moral universe is a nonsensical dream, a messianic ideal, nothing more than a “necessary and useful fiction.” The generation of hope, the generation that dreamed of a positive future has been replaced by a generation either of ill-informed hashtag clicktivists whose greatest act of civil disobedience is to change a Facebook profile picture, or a generation of despairing children and young adults who not only lament the present, as most generations always have, but who also clearly fear the future. It is a generation of people who are either not paying attention, or who are despairing for the future specifically because they are.
In the book of Exodus, less than two months after the Israelites leave Egypt, they yearn to go back. Facing the uncertainty of the wilderness in front of them, they complain of the lack of food and wish that they had died in Egypt. Despite seeing the miracles in Egypt, they have no trust that God will provide for them in the future, and that lack of trust never goes away. The following chapter, they complain that there is no water. Later on in the same book, they lose faith that Moses will return from Sinai and so build a golden calf. Two entire books later, in the Book of Numbers, the people’s constant lack of trust in God supporting them in the future even leads Moses to doubt God’s ability. In the end, both Moses and the people are punished for their lack of faith by not being able to enter the Land.
It is easy to assume that the message of these texts is that we should have more faith in God, particularly that in the future “God will provide.” That is a traditional Jewish view. In the Book of Psalms, for example, we read “Though I walk through a valley of deepest darkness, I fear no harm, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff—they comfort me.” As Moses passes on leadership of the people to Joshua, he says chizku v’imtzu and then in the following verse says chazak ve’ematz, both meaning “be strong and courageous.” Through the prophet Isaiah, God says to the people, “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Biblical theology clearly implies that part of faith in God and faith in the future is the conviction that there is a plan for the world and that it is a good plan. As such, through the prophet Jeremiah, God says to the people “I know the plans I have for you… plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” That leads people like us, in the post-Holocaust, ecocrisis, end-of-democracy generation to ask “This was planned? And we’re meant to believe that this is a good plan?!?”
Throughout the Bible… indeed, throughout the whole of human history… there have been periods of optimism followed by periods of pessimism. But the Israelites’ pessimism and fear of the future is different to our own and not just because they had a pillar of fire to reassure them of God’s presence whereas the only pillars of fire we have in our generation are from all the forests burning to the ground. No, the difference between their pessimism and fear of the future compared with ours is that theirs was about their own survival, whereas ours is about the survival of humanity itself. That is at the root of so many people’s fear of the future – not that the world won’t survive but that we, humanity, may not. “One generation goes and another generation comes, but the earth remains forever” says Ecclesiastes. The Israelites feared for themselves, we fear for humanity. Why is that? Why don’t we have faith that all will be okay in the end? Unlike some branches of Judaism, Reform Judaism is not a world-denying faith. Its head and heart are not in the world-to-come but in this world right now. Previous Jewish generations took solace in the messiah, in the redemption at the end of days, in the biblical promise that there would always be a surviving remnant of us after the worst of times. With that eschatological armor around our fragile souls, the Jewish community was able to endure the most horrific moments of history and yet still believe in a positive future. Most twenty-first century Reform Jews no longer have confidence in that promise, though, which is why I believe that we tend to fear for the future. That in turn, though, propels Reform Jews to act in this world, to engage in social action, more than any other Jewish movement. In the absence of any Divine promise of salvation, we have to become that salvation.
I disagree with Martin Luther King. His moral arc tended towards justice, but the arc of the moral universe bends in whichever direction humanity points it. Sometimes it tends towards justice, sometimes not. Maimonides wrote that “Throughout the entire year, a person should always look at themself as equally balanced between merit and sin and the world as equally balanced between merit and sin.” He says that “If that person performs one sin, they tip their balance and that of the entire world to the side of guilt and bring destruction upon themself. [But on the other hand,] if they perform one mitzvah, they tip their balance and that of the entire world to the side of merit and bring deliverance and salvation to themself and to others.” With that in mind, we gather together on Rosh Hashanah because, in the face of all the challenging, terrifying things happening in the world, we choose a different path to the ancient Israelites. We don’t yearn for bygone days, and we don’t believe that regardless of our actions all will be okay in the end. We acknowledge that right now the future is frightening, but we don’t let our fear of the future stop us from moving forward. Instead, we use it to inspire us to act, to redirect the arc of the moral universe, to tip the scale of humanity toward salvation.
That is teshuvah – that is repentance. Not being paralyzed by fear of the future and not being lulled into a sense of false security by a promise of humanity’s salvation that requires no effort on our part. Our fear of the future is what drives our atonement. Our belief that the arc of the moral universe is set not by God but by us is what brings us here this evening. We gather together on Rosh Hashanah because it is a moment of hope in a seemingly hopeless world, because through our positive acts of repentance we create that hope… because what else are we to do with our hopelessness? Are we to wallow for an entire generation in the wilderness like the ancient Israelites, moaning and crying about how tough life has been to us? What good would that serve? No, it is, ironically, our loss of faith in the future that compels us to act and that, ultimately, generates faith in the future. We are afraid of what the future may hold, and so we do everything that we can to ensure a positive future. We acknowledge how heavily tipped the scales currently are against us, so we commit to acting individually and communally to tip the scales for ourselves and for the world.
Leo Baeck added that “only from the messianic idea can history acquire that driving moral force, that great hunger for justice from which follows the certainty that justice will yet be done.” I disagree…. I actually think that most of us disagree with him. I believe that only from the absence of the messianic idea can history acquire that driving moral force, that great hunger for justice, which is fed by the fear that justice might never be done. That is why we are here tonight, because we dare not let the arc of the moral universe bend away from justice, because we dare not create a world in which justice will never be done. Our fear of the future drives our action, and our action drives our hope for the future.
But what is the medium through which fear turns to action? I believe it is through the other reason that we are gathered here today – to celebrate. “This is the day that the Eternal God acted,” says the Book of Psalms, “we will rejoice and celebrate on it.” Hayom harat olam, today is the birthday of the world, says one tradition. Another says that today is the birthday of humanity. That second opinion makes more sense since our morning liturgy specifically says uv’tuvo m’chadesh b’chol yom tamid ma’aseh v’reishit – in Your goodness You daily renew creation. Every day, every moment is the birthday of the world. But on Rosh Hashanah, God created humanity and therefore completed the world, not because we are the pinnacle of creation but because we bring a unique gift to the world that no other creature has ever been able to bring before – the ability to be aware of and to shift the arc of the moral universe. And if the world is indeed renewed in every moment, that means that every moment is imbued with the possibility of us shifting the arc once more. The more we celebrate every moment, the more we recognize how imbued every moment is with the potential for positive change, the more we become inspired to change the world for good. From fear, then, we move through the extraordinary appreciation of each moment, to action. Fear of the future paralyses, but fear of the future combined with a sense of the enormous potentiality of every moment liberates and motivates.
We are here tonight because this is a moment of hope. It’s a moment where we can acknowledge our fears of the future and simultaneously acknowledge the infinitude of the now. That, in turn, reminds us of our awesome, humbling task and also of our extraordinary, limitless ability. It compels us to act. It forces us to become the hope that we need to see in this world.
So may this night remind us of the urgency of our task, individually, communally, and universally. May our fear of the future be tempered with our appreciation of the fullness of the present so that we feel compelled to act, to improve ourselves individually, communally, and universally. May our concern and our actions not be for our own good, but for the good of all humanity and all life, so that our personal and communal transformation over these Ten Days of Awe ultimately transforms the world. In this way, may we become the promise for future generations, and may our transformation in words and deeds during this season of repentance be the hope that the most vulnerable in our world need so desperately to hold onto at this time. May our fear of the future and our full appreciation of the wonder of this moment be what gives us strength tonight and throughout this season of atonement, and let us say, Amen.