Post by Rabbi Neil on Nov 18, 2018 17:46:32 GMT
Delivered Erev Rosh Hashanah 5779
According to the narrative of our tradition, at its very inception Judaism asked the question, “What if we didn’t behave like everybody else?” Abraham goes out from among his people and establishes a new religion. He starts on a process of creative maladjustment, to use Martin Luther King’s phase, by being of society but not living the same way as the rest of society. Generations later, the Hebrews leave Egypt and establish a totally different religion. Once again, essentially asking, “What if we didn’t behave like everybody else?” Judaism was established on a question – “What If…?” The question allows for the possibility of something different, it opens up avenues for exploration.
Generations later, the Jewish religion became established in the land and the “What if…?” question had to take on a different perspective. Prophets spoke out against religious and political corruption, and asked, “What if spiritual practices without accompanying ethical behavior is the antithesis of Judaism?” Their question was at root profoundly theological, essentially asking “What if God actually wants something other than this?” Despite being immensely unpopular at the time, the question laid the essential blueprint for the future, when the Second Temple was destroyed. At that time, the Priests had no answer to the “What If…?” question, but the Rabbis did, and answered the question by saying, “God does want something else! God wants not the sacrifice of animals but the sacrifice of the heart, which is prayer.” That profound change in direction was only made possible by a “What If…?” question, and it is only because of that question and a creative answer that Judaism still survives today.
But then the Rabbis themselves became the establishment so the “What If…?” question had to change again. They opened up two new ways of asking “What If…?” – one interpretive and one practical. The interpretive “What If…?” asked “What if this text could be read differently?” It was permissive, open, and exciting. It allowed for diverse voices. It took a set text and opened it up, forever framing Judaism as a religion of questioning our inherited texts, and not of blind acceptance. The second “What If…?” was asked to establish communal identity and praxis, and went to extraordinary levels. For example, in Mishnah Eruvin we find the answer to what is essentially this question, a question you’ve probably never considered in your life - “What if a man is standing within an eruv (the Shabbat boundary line) but urinates outside of the eruv – is such behavior permissible?” The answer is no, as you probably guessed. The question seems nonsensical or comical, but it was that kind of question in every single aspect of Jewish life that helped not only determine identity and communal praxis, but literally keep Judaism alive for nearly two thousand years. “What if a non-Jew serves you wine – can you drink it?” These questions of praxis were asked specifically because of a theological perspective, as made evident in the High Holy Day liturgy, that God is not just concerned with every single aspect of behavior at every moment of our lives, but that God also judges every single aspect of our lives. In theory, these practical questions of every aspect of public and private life were theological questions. In practice, though, they were exclusive, divisive and often spoke as much about power and control as they did about encountering God. So, the Rabbinic “What Ifs…?” were simultaneously interpretive and practical, inclusive and divisive, comforting and invasive. They were liberating and at the same time also oppressive.
Over a thousand years later, the Enlightenment brought “What If…?” questions to the Jewish community that it had never been asked before, and what was so profoundly shocking was that for the first time, they were being asked from within about the validity of the entire system itself. Now, the “What If…?” questions became meta questions. What if the Genesis story is just one of many global cosmogonic myths? What if the Torah wasn’t given verbatim on Sinai as our tradition has usually maintained - what if it was a compilation of thoughts of ancient men? What if we didn’t believe in resurrection or the Messiah? These were the types of fundamental questions posed by the nascent Reform movement. They weren’t questions within the system, they were questions about the entire system itself. This new type of question was, for some people, utterly terrifying and the predictable response from them was that there must be no questioning the system. They would essentially respond that ‘you’re either in or you’re out. Judaism is Judaism, don’t try to remake it into whatever fits your life. Your “What If…?” is not a valid question.’ This is the train of thought that became Orthodoxy, which is at its core a modern attempt to invalidate certain questions by ascribing an inappropriately disproportionate role to tradition. That is clearly not the way of thinking of Reform Judaism, which was borne from “What If…?” questions. These questions open up possibilities that have never been considered before. For some, that’s extremely exciting, but for others I understand that there is potential danger there. When you ask “What If…?” as a meta question about a religion that has been handed down for countless generations and about which everyone present has some kind of emotional attachment, that can be profoundly discomforting, even terrifying. That is why so many Reform Jews today have stopped asking “What If…?” questions.
As terrifying as the Enlightenment was for some Jews, post-Enlightenment Jews were about to encounter something even more terrifying. The question “What if religion were set aside and science were instead allowed to dominate how society thinks?” was met with World Wars, concentration camps, nuclear weapons and ecological disaster. The question “What if we set aside the Jewish rituals and were just good people” was met by mass assimilation. In other words, when we look through the history of Jewish “What If…?” questions, it becomes clear to me, at least, what we now need to ask new questions. In theory, of course, we could act like the priests in the Second Temple by hiding from the questions and remaining comfortable in our contemporary privilege. We could do that, but the global paradigm of religion has changed and continues to change so dramatically that if we don’t ask those questions, we or our children will eventually suffer the same fate as the Second Temple priests and be relegated to history. We have to restart asking “What If…?” questions within the Jewish community. The challenge is that when the community gathers together in greatest number – on the High Holy Days - the “What If…?” questions that get asked tend to be, “What if I were a better person?” or “What if we didn’t sin so much?” These are interesting and important questions… essential questions… but they’re also very limiting. They’re not the meta questions that contemporary Judaism also needs to ask, they’re personal questions that often have a similar effect to a once-a-year check-up with a therapist.
Reform Jews think differently to Jews of the past. Jews of the past felt exiled, in some sense, today’s Reform Jews do not, although I shall refine that statement tomorrow morning. If anything, Reform Jews seem to celebrate learning from differing cultures around the world. They don’t feel exiled, they feel like children who have, at their parents’ urging, moved out of home and, after a difficult initial period, have found their feet and started to finally grow up. They’ll happily visit the parental home from time to time, but they don’t need to ever return there permanently. Jews of the past connected to God in a historical timeline with three key points - Creation, Revelation and the End of Days. For such Jews, God created in order to reveal, and God revealed in order to lead to the perfection of the creation. Today’s Reform Jews tend not to believe in such things. Creation is replaced by the Big Bang and Evolution. Revelation is relegated behind Enlightenment. The expectation of the Messiah is replaced by the expectation of extinction! But, the difficulty for today’s Reform Jews is that while they believe one thing, when they gather together in community, they are guided to say something else. So, my first “What If…?” question for this season is “What if Judaism – an ancient, tribal, patriarchal, religion – truly adapted for a globalized society?” Or, to put it another way, “What if our Judaism truly reflected our modern beliefs?” What would your answer be to that question? What would Judaism look like if it reflected your beliefs? What if you didn’t feel awkward at some of the liturgy? There is a counter-question, as well, which is also important – what if traditional Judaism knows something about the you that you don’t? What if the occasional awkwardness is because of something within you that needs change? Both those perspectives need to be balanced.
Judaism of the past asked “What would be the appropriate response if we, the people of Israel, had a special relationship with God?” The answer was Judaism as we know it. But what if that original question is no longer appropriate? What if that’s too exclusive? Maybe a more appropriate question for today would be “What if our religion is a necessary component in saving humanity from itself?” Now, that may seem like a lot of pressure, but if Judaism is to be relevant in today’s society, which is disturbingly self-destructive, then I believe that it might be an extremely pertinent question. There’s no doubt in my mind that the question of the High Holy Days – “What if I were a better person?” – forms part of the answer to that largerquestion… but it is only part of the answer. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are only a small part of an answer to a much bigger question about our place in the chaos of humanity and this world.
Humanity, including the Jewish community, has got very lost. It got lost on turning science into the tool for the redemptive future of humanity, the means by which society might shed the shackles of religion, but in so doing it followed a false, destructive Messiah and created alienated beings – beings described by Erich Fromm as being “alienated from their work, from themselves, from other human beings and from nature.” This wasn’t just science’s fault – according to Abraham Joshua Heschel it was religion’s fault, as he says - “Little does contemporary religion ask of man. It is ready to offer comfort; [but] it has no courage to challenge. It is ready to offer edification’ [but] it has no courage to break the idols. The trouble is that religion… is no longer an event.” So, then, what should religion be doing in an age of alienated beings? Heschel says that “religion’s major effort must be to counteract the deflation of man, the trivialization of human existence.” What if he’s right? What if Judaism doesn’t ask enough of us anymore? What if Judaism isn’t courageous enough any more? What if we’re just providing a salve on the egos of estranged individuals, instead of transforming society and helping us all be better global citizens?
Sociologist Peter Berger explains religion as “the human enterprise by which a sacred cosmos is established,” or as “the audacious attempt to conceive of the entire universe as being humanly significant.” This adds even more to our question of saving humanity from itself - What if we’ve all but forgotten what it feels like for the cosmos to be sacred? What if we’ve become so assimilated into a scientific mindset that even talk of sacredness seems embarrassing?
The social construction of our society is deeply flawed… I think we all know that. Depression, addiction, violence, racism, xenophobia, environmental degradation, inequality… all these things and more are on the rise. What if society is lost and needs a relevant, forward-thinking Jewish vision to help it find its way? That’s a question for a time such as this when so many members of the community are gathered together. What if society is lost and needs a relevant, forward-thinking Jewish vision to help it find its way? Ashamnu, Bagadnu, Gazalnu, Dibarnu Dofi. We have trespassed, we have been treacherous, we have robbed, we have slandered. That’s a start, but that’s not enough. We have stopped asking difficult questions. We have become complacent. We have become comforted by the present. We have compromised our beliefs in order to feel connected to the past.
Acknowledging past failings is one thing, but Judaism isn’t magic – we don’t say the magic words and then suddenly we’re all absolved of our mistakes. It doesn’t work like that. We need to change. We need to change ourselves and change our community. We need to be able to stand in the face of secularization and scientism and say, “You have failed as we did before you. Now we come with a new vision of humanity. Like our ancestors before us, we reject the worst aspects of our society. We envision Judaism connected with the old but celebrating and exploring the new. We use midrash to explore and find new meaning in our tradition instead of being beholden to halakhah, to a narrow and authoritarian law. We celebrate autonomy but deplore radical individualism, we celebrate learning and abhor amorality as much as immorality. We are not afraid to ask new questions, to find new answers, and to bring Judaism into a new era.”
What if society is lost and needs a relevant, forward-thinking Jewish vision to help it find its way? If it is, then teshuvah, tefillah and tzedakah – repentance, prayer and just giving – may just be an important part of an answer to that very big question. So, this Rosh Hashanah and this Yom Kippur, I urge you to ask “What If…? questions of the liturgy, of the community, and of Judaism. Let us reclaim that which we lost – the “What If…?” question – and let us be open to the many surprising answers that may arise. And let us say, Amen.
According to the narrative of our tradition, at its very inception Judaism asked the question, “What if we didn’t behave like everybody else?” Abraham goes out from among his people and establishes a new religion. He starts on a process of creative maladjustment, to use Martin Luther King’s phase, by being of society but not living the same way as the rest of society. Generations later, the Hebrews leave Egypt and establish a totally different religion. Once again, essentially asking, “What if we didn’t behave like everybody else?” Judaism was established on a question – “What If…?” The question allows for the possibility of something different, it opens up avenues for exploration.
Generations later, the Jewish religion became established in the land and the “What if…?” question had to take on a different perspective. Prophets spoke out against religious and political corruption, and asked, “What if spiritual practices without accompanying ethical behavior is the antithesis of Judaism?” Their question was at root profoundly theological, essentially asking “What if God actually wants something other than this?” Despite being immensely unpopular at the time, the question laid the essential blueprint for the future, when the Second Temple was destroyed. At that time, the Priests had no answer to the “What If…?” question, but the Rabbis did, and answered the question by saying, “God does want something else! God wants not the sacrifice of animals but the sacrifice of the heart, which is prayer.” That profound change in direction was only made possible by a “What If…?” question, and it is only because of that question and a creative answer that Judaism still survives today.
But then the Rabbis themselves became the establishment so the “What If…?” question had to change again. They opened up two new ways of asking “What If…?” – one interpretive and one practical. The interpretive “What If…?” asked “What if this text could be read differently?” It was permissive, open, and exciting. It allowed for diverse voices. It took a set text and opened it up, forever framing Judaism as a religion of questioning our inherited texts, and not of blind acceptance. The second “What If…?” was asked to establish communal identity and praxis, and went to extraordinary levels. For example, in Mishnah Eruvin we find the answer to what is essentially this question, a question you’ve probably never considered in your life - “What if a man is standing within an eruv (the Shabbat boundary line) but urinates outside of the eruv – is such behavior permissible?” The answer is no, as you probably guessed. The question seems nonsensical or comical, but it was that kind of question in every single aspect of Jewish life that helped not only determine identity and communal praxis, but literally keep Judaism alive for nearly two thousand years. “What if a non-Jew serves you wine – can you drink it?” These questions of praxis were asked specifically because of a theological perspective, as made evident in the High Holy Day liturgy, that God is not just concerned with every single aspect of behavior at every moment of our lives, but that God also judges every single aspect of our lives. In theory, these practical questions of every aspect of public and private life were theological questions. In practice, though, they were exclusive, divisive and often spoke as much about power and control as they did about encountering God. So, the Rabbinic “What Ifs…?” were simultaneously interpretive and practical, inclusive and divisive, comforting and invasive. They were liberating and at the same time also oppressive.
Over a thousand years later, the Enlightenment brought “What If…?” questions to the Jewish community that it had never been asked before, and what was so profoundly shocking was that for the first time, they were being asked from within about the validity of the entire system itself. Now, the “What If…?” questions became meta questions. What if the Genesis story is just one of many global cosmogonic myths? What if the Torah wasn’t given verbatim on Sinai as our tradition has usually maintained - what if it was a compilation of thoughts of ancient men? What if we didn’t believe in resurrection or the Messiah? These were the types of fundamental questions posed by the nascent Reform movement. They weren’t questions within the system, they were questions about the entire system itself. This new type of question was, for some people, utterly terrifying and the predictable response from them was that there must be no questioning the system. They would essentially respond that ‘you’re either in or you’re out. Judaism is Judaism, don’t try to remake it into whatever fits your life. Your “What If…?” is not a valid question.’ This is the train of thought that became Orthodoxy, which is at its core a modern attempt to invalidate certain questions by ascribing an inappropriately disproportionate role to tradition. That is clearly not the way of thinking of Reform Judaism, which was borne from “What If…?” questions. These questions open up possibilities that have never been considered before. For some, that’s extremely exciting, but for others I understand that there is potential danger there. When you ask “What If…?” as a meta question about a religion that has been handed down for countless generations and about which everyone present has some kind of emotional attachment, that can be profoundly discomforting, even terrifying. That is why so many Reform Jews today have stopped asking “What If…?” questions.
As terrifying as the Enlightenment was for some Jews, post-Enlightenment Jews were about to encounter something even more terrifying. The question “What if religion were set aside and science were instead allowed to dominate how society thinks?” was met with World Wars, concentration camps, nuclear weapons and ecological disaster. The question “What if we set aside the Jewish rituals and were just good people” was met by mass assimilation. In other words, when we look through the history of Jewish “What If…?” questions, it becomes clear to me, at least, what we now need to ask new questions. In theory, of course, we could act like the priests in the Second Temple by hiding from the questions and remaining comfortable in our contemporary privilege. We could do that, but the global paradigm of religion has changed and continues to change so dramatically that if we don’t ask those questions, we or our children will eventually suffer the same fate as the Second Temple priests and be relegated to history. We have to restart asking “What If…?” questions within the Jewish community. The challenge is that when the community gathers together in greatest number – on the High Holy Days - the “What If…?” questions that get asked tend to be, “What if I were a better person?” or “What if we didn’t sin so much?” These are interesting and important questions… essential questions… but they’re also very limiting. They’re not the meta questions that contemporary Judaism also needs to ask, they’re personal questions that often have a similar effect to a once-a-year check-up with a therapist.
Reform Jews think differently to Jews of the past. Jews of the past felt exiled, in some sense, today’s Reform Jews do not, although I shall refine that statement tomorrow morning. If anything, Reform Jews seem to celebrate learning from differing cultures around the world. They don’t feel exiled, they feel like children who have, at their parents’ urging, moved out of home and, after a difficult initial period, have found their feet and started to finally grow up. They’ll happily visit the parental home from time to time, but they don’t need to ever return there permanently. Jews of the past connected to God in a historical timeline with three key points - Creation, Revelation and the End of Days. For such Jews, God created in order to reveal, and God revealed in order to lead to the perfection of the creation. Today’s Reform Jews tend not to believe in such things. Creation is replaced by the Big Bang and Evolution. Revelation is relegated behind Enlightenment. The expectation of the Messiah is replaced by the expectation of extinction! But, the difficulty for today’s Reform Jews is that while they believe one thing, when they gather together in community, they are guided to say something else. So, my first “What If…?” question for this season is “What if Judaism – an ancient, tribal, patriarchal, religion – truly adapted for a globalized society?” Or, to put it another way, “What if our Judaism truly reflected our modern beliefs?” What would your answer be to that question? What would Judaism look like if it reflected your beliefs? What if you didn’t feel awkward at some of the liturgy? There is a counter-question, as well, which is also important – what if traditional Judaism knows something about the you that you don’t? What if the occasional awkwardness is because of something within you that needs change? Both those perspectives need to be balanced.
Judaism of the past asked “What would be the appropriate response if we, the people of Israel, had a special relationship with God?” The answer was Judaism as we know it. But what if that original question is no longer appropriate? What if that’s too exclusive? Maybe a more appropriate question for today would be “What if our religion is a necessary component in saving humanity from itself?” Now, that may seem like a lot of pressure, but if Judaism is to be relevant in today’s society, which is disturbingly self-destructive, then I believe that it might be an extremely pertinent question. There’s no doubt in my mind that the question of the High Holy Days – “What if I were a better person?” – forms part of the answer to that largerquestion… but it is only part of the answer. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are only a small part of an answer to a much bigger question about our place in the chaos of humanity and this world.
Humanity, including the Jewish community, has got very lost. It got lost on turning science into the tool for the redemptive future of humanity, the means by which society might shed the shackles of religion, but in so doing it followed a false, destructive Messiah and created alienated beings – beings described by Erich Fromm as being “alienated from their work, from themselves, from other human beings and from nature.” This wasn’t just science’s fault – according to Abraham Joshua Heschel it was religion’s fault, as he says - “Little does contemporary religion ask of man. It is ready to offer comfort; [but] it has no courage to challenge. It is ready to offer edification’ [but] it has no courage to break the idols. The trouble is that religion… is no longer an event.” So, then, what should religion be doing in an age of alienated beings? Heschel says that “religion’s major effort must be to counteract the deflation of man, the trivialization of human existence.” What if he’s right? What if Judaism doesn’t ask enough of us anymore? What if Judaism isn’t courageous enough any more? What if we’re just providing a salve on the egos of estranged individuals, instead of transforming society and helping us all be better global citizens?
Sociologist Peter Berger explains religion as “the human enterprise by which a sacred cosmos is established,” or as “the audacious attempt to conceive of the entire universe as being humanly significant.” This adds even more to our question of saving humanity from itself - What if we’ve all but forgotten what it feels like for the cosmos to be sacred? What if we’ve become so assimilated into a scientific mindset that even talk of sacredness seems embarrassing?
The social construction of our society is deeply flawed… I think we all know that. Depression, addiction, violence, racism, xenophobia, environmental degradation, inequality… all these things and more are on the rise. What if society is lost and needs a relevant, forward-thinking Jewish vision to help it find its way? That’s a question for a time such as this when so many members of the community are gathered together. What if society is lost and needs a relevant, forward-thinking Jewish vision to help it find its way? Ashamnu, Bagadnu, Gazalnu, Dibarnu Dofi. We have trespassed, we have been treacherous, we have robbed, we have slandered. That’s a start, but that’s not enough. We have stopped asking difficult questions. We have become complacent. We have become comforted by the present. We have compromised our beliefs in order to feel connected to the past.
Acknowledging past failings is one thing, but Judaism isn’t magic – we don’t say the magic words and then suddenly we’re all absolved of our mistakes. It doesn’t work like that. We need to change. We need to change ourselves and change our community. We need to be able to stand in the face of secularization and scientism and say, “You have failed as we did before you. Now we come with a new vision of humanity. Like our ancestors before us, we reject the worst aspects of our society. We envision Judaism connected with the old but celebrating and exploring the new. We use midrash to explore and find new meaning in our tradition instead of being beholden to halakhah, to a narrow and authoritarian law. We celebrate autonomy but deplore radical individualism, we celebrate learning and abhor amorality as much as immorality. We are not afraid to ask new questions, to find new answers, and to bring Judaism into a new era.”
What if society is lost and needs a relevant, forward-thinking Jewish vision to help it find its way? If it is, then teshuvah, tefillah and tzedakah – repentance, prayer and just giving – may just be an important part of an answer to that very big question. So, this Rosh Hashanah and this Yom Kippur, I urge you to ask “What If…? questions of the liturgy, of the community, and of Judaism. Let us reclaim that which we lost – the “What If…?” question – and let us be open to the many surprising answers that may arise. And let us say, Amen.