Erev Rosh HaShanah 5780

Sunday, September 29, 2019

Temple Beth Zion, Buffalo, New York

An end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth is filled with wrongdoing…here, I am about to destroy them, along with the earth. (Genesis 6:13)

This is what God said to Noah.

Noah did what he was told, built an ark, gathered the animals, lined everyone up just like God told him to do, and let everyone else and every other animal die.

Noah didn’t say a thing.

Noah never spoke back to God at all.

We are not the People of Noah for good reasons.

We are the people of Abraham.

When God said, “I am going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah,” Abraham asked, “But God, are you going to kill them all? The good ones too? Is that what the God of Justice does? Kill the righteous along with the evil?” (Genesis 18:23-25)

Fifty, forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, ten - at what we now define as the number of people defined as a community, as a minyan - bit by bit Abraham haggled with God over the lives of strangers.

We are also the People of Moses.

Moses fought to save Hebrew slaves from oppression, not as the liberator appointed by God, but as the Egyptian Prince who still hated injustice. Before he even knew his heritage Moses killed an Egyptian taskmaster who was beating a Hebrew slave.

Moses confronted his own adopted family, the people who raised him, and brought down the plagues upon them, fighting against the greatest Empire of the ancient world on behalf of an enslaved people and a God that almost no one remembered. Because it was right and it was just.

And then, after leading us out of Egypt, after confronting Pharaoh and the Egyptian chariots at the Sea of Reeds, at Mount Sinai, when we the Israelites turned away from Moses and our God who saved us and worshipped a false idol, then Moses stood up to our God for us too. Because it was right and it was just.

We are not an obedient people.

When confronted with a world that seems unfair, we challenge the world and we challenge God.

We defy our fate, we defy our destiny, we stand up for ourselves.

We are more than a stiff-necked people.

We are a people who constantly overturn expectations.

We are the forgotten ones who keep on turning up and surviving and thriving when no one expects it. And then we help others too.

On this Rosh Hashanah, I am not talking to you about the dangers of climate change, or the perils of our current politics, or the crisis that may or may not be facing our Constitution, and how we are going to solve it all. These urgent questions, much on all of our minds, are not what we are here for right now.

Instead, I have another question for us:

What kind of God would put up with us?

Why does God allow Moses to save us time and time again?

We are so difficult, rebellious, grumpy, and let’s say it, kvetchy.

The give and take, the back and forth, the arguing seems to be what God wants.

The rabbis of the Talmud argue with God and God loves it, laughs at them, and congratulates them.

God is asking us to do for ourselves, to argue with God, and to know that when we argue, when we take a stand, especially when we cry out for justice from the universe and from God, then God will be with us.

God wants independent partners.

If God wanted people who took orders and stood in line, God would have called us the People of Noah.

And we are the People of Abraham. The People of Israel the God-wrestler. The followers of Moses who stood up for us to God.

Knowing that we can stand up to God, we can stand up to anyone.

Being this people, the ones who stand up to God, the ones who stand up against the oppressor has been hard.

The ancient stories of our rebellion and stubbornness are small comfort in the face of thousands of years of tragic struggle and loss.

And how have we responded when the world turned against us?

In the face of the Romans we rebelled and suffered and fled and survived and created a Judaism that sprang forth in books and minds and hearts. Our Judaism lasted longer than our Temple in Jerusalem and then we the Jewish people took it with us to all corners of the world and outlasted the Roman Empire too.

Centuries of European persecution of our people resulted in the worst of tragedies. We cannot count the losses that our people suffered. We cannot ever count ourselves made whole for those lives that are beyond replacing. While Europe sought to erase us, we were also laying the groundwork for a national and cultural revival that has never been seen before or since.

A people scattered and destroyed struggled and emerged and flourished again.

Against all odds we created a new nation in the Land of our ancestors. We have always known that God wanted us to be there. We know, and if we don’t, our Israeli family and friends will tell us, that there was no way we were going to build a homeland by asking nicely and following everyone else’s rules. As lovers and builders of Zion we defied history. We defied every prediction and every expectation. We are the people who will not quit even when it seems like God may be against us.

With our backs against the wall and the world against us we often have the greatest sense that God is with us. In our darkest hours the still small voice in the quiet of the cave in our hearts can be heard encouraging us to seek what is just and what is right.

Meanwhile, for those of us here, in the American version of the Promised Land, we fought for and achieved prosperity. We repeat at every Passover Seder that our freedom is incomplete as long as anyone is still oppressed. And we see that our lives here were bound up with the lives of all Americans and knew that just as God had always called us to argue with God against oppression, so we must advocate on behalf of all our neighbors as well.

We see injustice and we try to correct it. We have not yet done enough and we know that there is still more to be done, but we heed the call of God to not allow the status quo to persevere.

Susannah Heschel wrote about her father, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and his time marching for freedom:

He said it reminded him of the message of the prophets, whose primary concern was social injustice, and of his Hasidic forebears, for whom compassion for the suffering of other people defined a religious person…

When he came home from Selma in 1965, my father wrote:

“For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.”

Rabbi Heschel’s voice rings out as a clarion call for our struggles - our God demands that we march. The prayers of our lips are not enough. We must pray with our legs too.

Last week Alex Borstein won an Emmy for her work in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and after cracking some jokes she got serious and honored her mother and grandmother - Jewish immigrants and survivors. She retold this story about her grandmother during the Holocaust:

My grandmother turned to a guard.

She was in line to be shot in a pit.

And she said: ‘What happens if I step out of line?’

And he said: ‘I don’t have the heart to shoot you, but somebody will.’

And she stepped out of line.

For that, I am here, and my children are here.

So step out of line, [ladies].

Step out of line!

God has been asking us to “step out of line” from the very beginning.

We live in unprecedented times. So much so, that the word “unprecedented” seems broken.

The world has always confronted us with skepticism. Who is this small people who argue with God? How dare they presume to stand toe-to-toe with the Creator of the Universe? Don’t they know? Can’t they understand? God’s directions are simple?

We are quite certain that what God asks of us is not simple. To figure out what is just, and what is right, to figure out how to fight for it and still preserve what is just, and what is right, for everyone - this is not simple. We know this. And we know that there are many in the world who understand this too and that God is asking us to reach out to them and work together as well.

We have faith that our God is asking us to do more and to do better.

We are a responsible people. We know that at any time we must be the ones who stand up. There is no one who will do it for us. There is no higher authority that’s going to step in on our behalf. God demands that we reach up and stand up and demand justice because if we must step out of line with God then we must definitely step out of line with the people who offer oppression instead of freedom.

Abraham and Moses and the rabbis argued with God. Jacob wrestled with God and got a new name - one who struggles with God - Israel. And so we are the People of Israel - the God-wrestling nation.

As Jews who know where we come from and what we have suffered, as Zionists who pioneered in and then fought for a new nation on our ancient homeland, as Rabbi Heschel and all those before and now who march for and fight for equal rights and justice for all - as a people who argue with God throughout time, we all know that no one fixes problems for us. There is no trusting in someone coming to our rescue. We are the ones who will be doing the rescuing.

Alex Borstein’s grandmother knew that there would be no higher up coming to save her. There would be no higher authority at that moment, while she was in line to be shot, who would politely demand, “Please, this is unjust, there has been a mistake. Stop shooting the Jews.”

She had to step out of line then. And we have to step out of line now. This is what God asks of us.

“See something, say something,” is real for us. Only for Jews it is more. It is “See something, say something, do something, God demands it.”

And then we will argue with God about how to go about it, and how to include everyone it making it right, and making it just.

We are the ones, the light unto the nations, the bearers of traditions of holy chutzpah, the heirs to God-wrestling and standing up and stepping out of line.

This has always been what God asks of us.

This is our eternal charge.

Now is our time.