See No Stranger - Revolutionary Love
Erev Rosh HaShanah 5781
Friday, September 18, 2020
Temple Beth Zion, Buffalo, New York
by Rabbi Jonathan Freirich

We are breathless.
Moving through this world, in our bodies, tonight, today, this week, this year, is enough to make us feel a constriction in our chests.
Maybe we are struggling or suffering.
Maybe we’re holding someone close to us who is struggling or suffering.
Maybe we are reeling from fear - for our safety from any number of concerns - from the shapes of our communities under the threat of pandemic, or hatred, or climate change, or fires, or smoke, or, or, or.
Maybe, like me, we are breathless from all of the above and more.
I often feel that my breathlessness is a sign of weakness.

The woman who inspired these words, Valarie Kaur, wrote:
Our breathlessness is a sign of our bravery.
It means that we are awake to what’s happening right now:
Our world is in transition.

In these last months and years, like many of us, I have sought out wisdom about overcoming divisions in our society. Recently I met, via a podcast, Valarie Kaur. She has written an astounding book, called See No Stranger: A Memoir and a Manifesto of Revolutionary Love, written after years of advocacy on behalf of her own minority community in the face of intolerance and hatred following September 11, 2001. She hails from a large Sikh family and her uncle was one of the first casualties of post-9/11 hate crimes.

Nearly four years ago, Ms. Kaur spoke these words on New Year’s Eve:
“The future is dark.
But what if - what if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb but the darkness of the womb? What if our America is not dead but a country that is waiting to be born?
What if the story of America is one long labor?
What if all of our grandfathers and grandmothers are standing behind us now, those who survived occupation and genocide, slavery and Jim Crow, detentions and political assault?
What if they are whispering in our ears ‘You are brave’?
What if this is our nation’s greatest transition?”

Our world is in transition.

Right now, far-right ethnic supremacist movements are rising here at home, and everywhere else.

Right now, we Americans are in the middle of a transition of the American people - within twenty-five years, there will be more minority people than white people for the first time since Europeans colonized this continent. The minorities will become the majority.

Right now, Jews of color are demanding that we change our sense of who is normal in our communities because we are not nearly as inclusive and welcoming as we think we are.

We will be part of creating a nation that has never been. A multi-racial, multi-faith, multi-cultural, multi-gendered country. Will it be one in which power is shared and we strive to protect the dignity of every person? Will we strive to build a society based on our central teachings as expressed so clearly in Deuteronomy?

“Do not to cast aside the rights of the stranger or the orphan, you are not to seize-for-payment the clothing of a widow. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and Adonai your God redeemed you from there, therefore I command you to observe this word!” (Deut. 24:17-18)

Or will it be something else. Will we descend deeper into national despair and indifference? Will we surrender to an America of dominion by the few at the expense of the many?

Is this the darkness of the tomb or the darkness of the womb?

I don’t know.

I do know that the only way forward for me, is to show up and fulfill our obligation to Jewish teachings, to our country, and to humanity.

We must all show up and do the work together.

וְאָ֣הַבְתָ֔ אֵ֖ת יְהוָֹ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ בְּכָל־לְבָבְךָ֥ וּבְכָל־נַפְשְׁךָ֖ וּבְכָל־מְאֹדֶךָ:

“Now you are to love Adonai your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength!”
(Deut. 6.5)

What do we mean by love in this declaration?
We say it pretty often. Most of us know it pretty well.
This is a commandment to love.
This is not a fuzzy feeling, this is something we must do.
We are not waiting to fall in love with God. We are commanded to love God.
So what does it mean?
In the simplest of terms, the whole paragraph in Deuteronomy describes the nature of loving God with all our hearts, all our beings, and all our strength.

וְהָי֞וּ הַדְּבָרִ֣ים הָאֵ֗לֶּה אֲשֶׁ֨ר אָנֹכִ֧י מְצַוְּךָ֛ הַיּ֖וֹם עַל־לְבָבֶךָ:

“These words, which I myself command you today, are to be upon your heart.”(Deut. 6:6)

Love means placing these words at the center of our beings - placing them on our hearts.

וְשִׁנַּנְתָ֣ם לְבָנֶ֔יךָ וְדִבַּרְתָ֖ בָּ֑ם בְּשִׁבְתְךָ֤ בְּבֵיתֶ֨ךָ֙ וּבְלֶכְתְךָ֣ בַדֶּ֔רֶךְ וּבְשָׁכְבְּךָ֖ וּבְקוּמֶךָ:

“You will teach them to your children and speak them when sitting in your house and when walking on the way, when you go to bed and when you rise up.” (Deut. 6:7)

Loving God means making these into living words for our families, in our homes, and wherever we go. Love means teaching, talking, walking, in the ways of Judaism. This is concrete. Our sages have always taught that loving God means living Torah and living Torah means the active and engaged conversation about making our families, our communities, and our society better every day. Wherever we go, whenever we speak, these words are meant to be “signs upon our hands” - guiding what we do - and “symbols before our eyes” - helping us better understand what we see and how we see - and “inscriptions upon the doorposts of our houses” - reminders whenever we enter our homes or leave them that we are learners and listeners, teachers and interpreters, and constant agents of the living words of Jewish traditions.

When Valarie Kaur then offers us this about love, we know that she means much more than the “feeling of love” - she means the commandment of love.
She writes:

“Love” is more than a feeling. Love is a form of sweet labor: fierce, bloody, imperfect, and life-giving - a choice we make over and over again. If love is sweet labor, love can be taught, modeled, and practiced. This labor engages all of our emotions. Joy is the gift of love. Grief is the price of love. Anger protects those who are loved. And when we think we have reached our limit, wonder is the act that returns us to love.

“Revolutionary love” is the choice to enter into wonder and labor for others, for our opponents, and for ourselves, in order to transform the world around us. It is not a formal code or prescription but an orientation to life that is personal and political and rooted in joy. Loving only ourselves is escapism; loving only our opponents is self-loathing; loving only others is ineffective. All three practices together make love revolutionary, and revolutionary love can only be practiced in community.

This beautiful articulation of love - especially the connections to joy, grief, anger, and wonder, the love for others, ourselves, and our opponents, can be viewed as a counterpart to Judaism.

We have already looked at loving God through V’ahavta - which places love in the realm of hearts and minds, teaching and learning, and at home and in public, in family and in community.

Here is another prominent text to expand our Jewish sense of Ms. Kaur’s revolutionary love.

“You are not to take-vengeance, you are not to retain-anger against the descendants of your people, rather love your neighbor like yourself, I am Adonai!” (Lev. 19:18)

Historically, our sages read this to apply to “our people” - to fellow Jews.

Let us go back to our central ethic, “Do not oppress the stranger, because we were strangers in Egypt.”

We can use Ms. Kaur’s words from her Sikh traditions for this as well - we must see no strangers.

To love our neighbor as ourselves, to take no vengeance, to recognize that God is demanding this of us is to revolutionarily love both ourselves and everyone else and understand all of our interconnections.

Love God - see the practices of our hearts and beings as ones that we do in every moment of every day with everyone we are with and everywhere we go.

Love ourselves - find the divine within ourselves. Know that we are partners in our own constant education and improvement. See the miraculous within our very essences.

Love those around us - whomever they are. There are no strangers. There are no enemies. There are only teachers and friends that we have yet to develop.

This is revolutionary love.

This is demanding of our time and attention.

This is a lifelong and moment-to-moment practice.

This is honoring our history of overcoming oppression as a people.

This is devoting ourselves to a future that is more just and safer for ourselves and for everyone.

When we walk out into the sunlight tomorrow afternoon, perhaps a little cramped from watching Rosh Hashanah Services on screens, let us start with a little self-forgiveness, a little self-love. Then extend it to those nearest us. Extend that love and forgiveness outward. This is a difficult time and we need all the help that we can get. And then, take this challenge with me, extend that love and forgiveness to people we haven’t yet met, to the stranger on the street, and to the people with whom we disagree.

Love means joy - the celebration with the people we love. Find someone the celebrate the new year with and bring more joy into the world.

Love means grief - the journeying with one another when we suffer and suffer loss. Grieve with each other. Build the bonds of camaraderie and companionship that show the effort and devotion of love. Go out of our way to help comfort those who grieve.

Love means anger - when those we love are hurt, when we see injustice to anyone, we must feel our anger and turn it into action. We must not suppress it nor must we surrender to it. Let our anger rise up in a love of justice for all. We must reach out to those who suffer from injustice and listen to their lament and then travel with them on the long road to repair.

And most of all, love means wonder - awe in the face of all creation, awe in the miracle of every person, and wonder in the face of all that we do not know. When we encounter the vastness of one another and the world with wonder, we open up ourselves to possibilities of love.

May this year, this 5781, be one of learning to love better

May this year be one of shared grief and shared joy that brings us ever closer.

May this year be one in which we see no strangers.

May we emerge this year into more light for us all.

L’shanah tovah.