Rosh
Hashanah 2004 First Day
Have Hope
"One day, a
farmer's donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously
for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what
to do. Finally, he decided the animal was old, and the well needed
to be covered up anyway; it just wasn't worth it to retrieve the
donkey. He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him.
They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well.
At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly.
Then, to everyone's amazement he quieted down. A few shovel loads
later, the farmer finally looked down the well. He was astonished
at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the
donkey was doing something amazing. He would shake it off and take
a step up. As the farmer's neighbors continued to shovel dirt on
top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up. Pretty
soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge
of the well and happily trotted off!"
As individual human beings, as members of this Jewish community,
as Jews and as Americans, life and other human beings are going
to shovel all kinds of dirt on us. The trick to getting out of
the well is to have hope; to shake off the dirt and take a step
up, and realize that if we do not give up, we can get out of even
the deepest well. ( Moments of Transcendence , 5765)
Cancer, 9-11and
the constant terror alerts, the ignorance and indifference of
the majority of American Jews; anti-Semitism around
the world; Iraq, Iran, North Korea; poverty in the Lehigh Valley,
throughout the United States and around the world; unemployment;
heart disease; Alzheimer's; strokes, homelessness; mental illness;
financial insecurity; sleeper terror cells; slavery; genocide and
attempts at genocide in the Western Sudan; starvation; human weakness;
natural disasters; plane crashes; car accidents; the cost of health
care and not being able to afford health care; physical and mental
abuse; attacks on our way of life; personal insecurities; failures
large and small each of these, and many more, are shovelfulls
of dirt. The only question is whether each shovelfull helps to
bury us or allows us to take another step up!
As we begin
this new year, and for the foreseeable future, I believe we all
need hope. What exactly do we mean by hope? According to
Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary , hope may be defined as: "expectation
that a desire will be fulfilled; wishful trust; something which
one longs to see realized." When one prays for good health or peace
in the world, I doubt that we are able to think of those as expectations
to be fulfilled. I don't know how many of us are able to have a
wishful trust that we will be safe from terrorism or anti-Semitism.
But I think we all have a list that we long to see realized and
so, in one form or another, we should each be able to, and need
to, have hope.
I think the
Torah, from the very beginning of the creative process, is a
story of hope. It seems to me to emphasize the difference
between faith and science. Science seems to include a lot of chaos.
When the weather forecasters fail to accurately predict the weather,
despite their use of millions of dollars of computer equipment
and satellites, they say it is because the weather is "chaotic;" it
has no predictable order. I tried to understand the second law
of thermodynamics because it has something to do with chaos theory.
In doing so, I was reminded why I took one year of geology to fulfill
my college science requirement. But fortunately, Dr. Arnold Kritz,
physicist and past chair of the Physics Department at Lehigh University
, was able to summarize this law in a way you and I might understand.
According to Arnie, "The universe is moving from a state of order
to disorder." No doubt, our lives and our world too often seem
to be doing the same; moving from order to disorder with seemingly
no ability to reverse the trend.
Well,
have hope, because the Torah teaches us just the opposite from
virtually its opening words. In the first verse of Genesis,
God creates the heaven and the earth. And in the very next verse,
verse two of Genesis, the earth is described as being tohu
v'vohu , "unformed and void," there was utter chaos and darkness.
And from the chaos and darkness, God gave us light and life, plant
and animal and human, and He gave us hope for the future.
The story of
the destruction of the generation of Noah and the ark concludes
with the rainbow, the symbol of hope, which will
remind God of His covenant with humanity, "so that the waters shall
never again become a flood to destroy all flesh" (9:15) Joseph's
life could serve as a model for those who feel they are bereft
of luck. A bright, insightful young man, he is thrown literally
into a pit by his brothers; he is lifted out only to be sold into
slavery; he is promoted to being chief steward in his master's
household only to wind up in jail. But somehow, Joseph did not
abandon all hope and from his prison cell, he was elevated to being
second in command of all Egypt . Joseph's family, his employers,
even his friends threw dirt on him, but he was able to shake it
off and emerge from the well.
Could anyone
have shown more hope than Moses? A stutterer and tongue-tied
spokesperson for a generation of slaves, he stood before
Pharaoh and demanded their release. Is there any more hopeful statement
than: "Let my people go!"?
I began thinking
about the topic of hope for this morning after Dr. Harriet Parmet
gave me the June edition of Sh'ma magazine.
It is a series of articles devoted to the topic of hope. Roderick
Young, currently rabbi to the Leicester Progressive Jewish Community
in the United Kingdom , wrote an article entitled "From Mara to
Naomi." Rabbi Young reveals that "in the early 1990s I worked as
a chaplain in a large New York hospital. Many of our clients were
living with AIDS. It was in that environment that I discovered
the two texts that spoke most strongly to me of hope: The Book
of Ruth and Psalm 13.
In
the Book of Ruth ,
when Naomi returns to Bethlehem from Moab [I should point out
that it is the OTHER Bethlehem ]
with her daughter-in-law Ruth, she is a woman bereft of hope, her
husband and her sons cruelly dead. [Naomi tells the women of the
town] 'Don't call me Naomi, call me Mara.' Naomi means 'pleasantness'
and Mara 'bitterness,' so Naomi is, quite literally,
giving a name to her hopelessness. However, at the end of the Book
of Ruth , when Ruth's child is placed in her arms, Naomi does
not demure when once again the women of the town call her 'Naomi.'
The very act
of describing our fear and despair becomes a powerful weapon
in the fight to retain our individuality and personality
in the face of overwhelming hopelessness. Thereafter, the challenge
is to move on from the place of bitterness that we have named,
toward the place of comfort that Naomi found with a foster child
in her arms
."
Did anyone
have more dirt heaped on him than Abraham? God tells him to leave
the security and prosperity of his family home for
an unknown future in an unknown land. And having survived that
and eight other trials, in tomorrow's Torah reading, God demands
that Abraham sacrifice his future, as he has already given up his
past. What makes tomorrow's reading so poignant, so disturbing,
is embedded in this morning's reading, the birth of Isaac. After
all, has anyone better articulated his fears for the future than
Abraham? God promises Abraham in Genesis, chapter 15 (15:1) "Your
reward shall be very great." But Abraham responds: (15:2) "O Lord
God, what can You give me, seeing that I shall die childless, and
the one in charge of my household is Dammesek Eliezer!" But despite
his advanced age, Abraham maintains hope, in God's word and in
his own potential. And so first Ishmael is born, displacing Eliezer,
and in this morning's Torah reading, Isaac is born, displacing
Ishmael.
Do we have
fears to articulate? You bet we do. I have a son, a sister-in-law
and a niece who all live in Manhattan . I listened
to enough of the 9/11 hearings to hear former Gov. Ridge, and several
others, affirm with grim assurance that New York remains one of
Al Qiada's main targets, if not the number one target. Many of
us have children, friends or loved ones living in New York or
in Washington , or near a nuclear power plant or a fuel depot or
even near a gas station. Obviously, any of these places, like bridges,
tunnels, financial institutions and national monuments are potential
targets for those who want to create chaos and disorder. These
nameless, faceless, cowardly terrorists want to disrupt our lives
and way of life. And most of all, they hope that by shoveling dirt
on our backs, we will suffocate at the bottom of a well of despair,
rather than step on each of their twisted efforts and emerge free
and hopeful.
The Torah and
Tanakh, our Bible, are ancient sources of hope, but we need look
no further than modern Israel for a laboratory
of hope. Now I do not want to come across as being foolishly naive.
At the end of March (2004), "Israeli journalist Doron Rosenblum
wrote that Israel has plunged 'into the depths of despair, bereavement
and failure.
' According to the Ha-aretz writer, Israel is now 'one
of the most hated, most isolated and most miserable places to be
on the planet.'" The shovelfulls of dirt have landed on Mr. Rosenblum
and he, as others, is sinking beneath their weight. Please do not
misunderstand me. I, and you, have not lived with terrorism all
of our lives. It is not for me or you to judge Mr. Rosenblum. I
also know that thousands of Israelis have left the "promised land" because
they could no longer feel its promise. But, as always, human beings
respond to the same events in different ways, and the challenge
is to search our souls and determine if we will make more progress
with despair than with hope. Mr. Rosenblum's colleague from The
Jerusalem Post , Caroline Glick, "an American immigrant
who served
in the Israeli Army during her early years in the country, told
a packed and attentive Jerusalem audience
[this past March] there
is cause for optimism about the future." "Barbara Scher, another
veteran American immigrant and CEO of the Docustar Company, organized
an upbeat event in Ra-anana, just north of Tel Aviv [this spring]
Celebrating Life in Israel . Along with the music and food, several
immigrants rose to explain why they came and why they are still
here," [that is to say, in Israel ].
In writing
about the situation in Israel in the June Sh'ma magazine, Akiva
Tor, "a career diplomat currently on leave from the Israel
Foreign Ministry, entitled his article: ' Israel 's Hope is Taking
its Fate in Hand.'" "For me," [he writes,] hope means to possess
one's faculties and natural powers, as an individual and as a collective.
It means being part of a healthy society that is vital and forward-moving,
not one consumed by self-doubt and paralyzed by lack of direction.
Hope is the ability to emerge from chaos, to shape an outcome.
A people
who initiates change, who refuses to be a victim of circumstances,
is a nation of hope. " Mr. Tor goes on to make these observations. "Unwarranted
optimism is the great enemy of hope.
And yet, I feel full of
hope. I sense that we [in Israel ] are finally returning to ourselves,
taking fate back into our own hands.
My greatest hope comes from
our having each other. Israel is one of the very few nation-states
that functions as a family. The solidarity that binds Israelis
is fundamental, and this makes life difficult because every citizen
of this country can break your heart but in times of crisis,
it makes us incredibly strong. The Jewish people around the world
love us, and this too gives us strength and hope." And so, despite
the fact that Israel is hated by some, that the Intifada has raged
since 2000, that the promise of the Oslo accords has been among
the victims of the suicide murderers of the past four years, Jews
from Argentina and France, from Canada and the United States, continue
to move to Israel filled with hope. And as Rabbi Daniel Gordis
wrote, "upon returning from a vacation in France this summer, he
was made to laugh by another Israeli on the same flight. As they
passed through security in Ben Gurion Airport , the man proclaimed: 'Thank
God, I have returned to a normal country!'" Some are buried by
dirt, some are elevated.
In Angels and
Monsters , a book about children with cancer, there is the story
of Jessica S. "Jessica S. was 11 when she experienced
four blows within a few months that most people don't have in a
full lifetime. First, in November 1993, she was diagnosed with
bone cancer. Three months later, her father died suddenly of a
brain aneurysm. Three weeks after that she had one of her legs
amputated due to her disease. The end of that same month a tornado
destroyed her family's house while they were away in Atlanta for
her treatment. [By the age of]
19, Jessica was
in college studying
psychology and pursuing a career in helping others through counseling. 'What
she discovered through all her tragedies was not bitterness or
anger, but a value and richness in friendship.
Instead of taking
the road to despair, she came through with a beautiful attitude
about life." Not everyone could do what Jessica S. did. There are
those who are buried in despair, beneath the shovelfulls of dirt.
And there are those, like Jessica S. who emerge from the well to
the amazement of others.
Thank God, not all of us will suffer directly from terrorism,
from cancer or other life threatening events or diseases, or even
from anti-Semitism. But each of us will face at least challenges
and crises in our life and we will have to decide how to respond.
At those moments, hopefully we will recognize the preciousness
of life and with hope for a better future, fight to get out of
the well, even as others may continue to throw shovelfulls of dirt
onto us.
Also writing
in the June issue of Sh'ma was Rabbi Harold Schulweis, a well
known, senior colleague of mine from Encino , California
. Doubtless, when the Terminator is your governor, you understand
the need for hope. Rabbi Schulweis begins his article on "Hope
and Faith," with this Jewish folk story. "A poor man, gathering
sticks of wood in the forest, packs them in a torn sack, throws
the sack over his frail shoulders, then stumbles, the sticks scattering
to the earth. Frustrated, the man cries out to God, 'This is the
last straw! I am poor, my wife is sick, my children are neglected.
Send the angel of death and let him take me from this earth!' His
prayer is promptly answered, and the angel of death suddenly appears,
asking, 'Did you call for me?' Startled, the poor man stammers, 'Yes,
yes, could you help me gather up these sticks?'
We do have a tendency to cling to life. That is why we are here
today, to pray for life and health. Pain and sorrow will find some
of us this year; that is a certainty. Pain and sorrow will find
many in the world this year; that, too, is a certainty. When the
crises come, let us function like our Israeli brothers and sisters,
like one large family who understands we are in this adventure
of life together. Whatever adversity we face, may God give us,
as he gave Noah and Abraham, Joseph and Moses and most especially
Naomi, hope.
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