Accusations of anti-semitism in the Occupy Wall Street movement are flying fast and furious now. Newt Kingrich leveled the charge today on the CBS’s Early Show. David Brooks insinuated it in the NY Times not long ago. And Bill Kristol’s Emergency Committee on Israel has actually bought air time in New York and DC to run a laughably misleading ad that implores viewers to “Tell Obama and Leader Pelosi to stand up to the (anti-semitic, anti-Israel) mob.”

Watch the above clip for the real story.  Then read this thorough piece by commentator MJ Rosenberg. It would all be pretty hilarious if it wasn’t such a horribly cynical exploitation exploit the real pain and fear of anti-semitism to slow down a movement committed to justice and dignity for all – which is, in the end, what Judaism is all about.

Cedric Cal was born to a single mother, in a family that lived below the poverty line on Chicago’s West Side. His father had left the family, married another woman and had very little to do with him. His mother Olivia worked constantly, doing her best to keep her family together. As the oldest of four, Cedric became the de facto father of the family and was entrusted with protecting his younger brother, who was legally blind.

Cedric’s family moved around a lot and he learned very early on how to make friends quickly. He liked sports, particularly baseball – and when his family lived on the West Side, he played sports in the local Park District. When they moved to the South Side, however, there were no Park District services available, so sports were not an option for him. Still, no matter where they moved, Olivia became very adept at finding ways of getting Cedric and and brothers into decent public schools. From 5th to 8th grade, he attended Alcott Elementary. Minding his younger brother, he took the public bus every day on a long trek from the West Side to Lincoln Park.

Cedric’s mother taught him how to fill out applications and interview for jobs, but there really weren’t any to be found. And those that were hiring certainly weren’t hiring African-American teenage boys. He was never really successful at finding a real job, but when he was 14 he learned that he could make money dealing drugs. He knew that his mother would be beyond furious if she ever found out, so he made sure to keep his drug dealing and his growing gang activity secret from her. Cedric never, ever, brought his earnings into their home – his mother had made it clear that drug money was not welcome anywhere near her house. Even when he bought a car, he parked it far away from their home.

I met and spoke with Cedric two weeks ago at the Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet. He explained to me that as he continued to sell drugs, as he continued the gang life, little by little, he became “desensitized to the things my mother had taught me.” It was quite poignant and sweet to listen to Cedric speak about his mother. “My mother,” he said, “has a lovely spirit,” adding: “I was scared to death of my mother.” He told me of one instance in which Olivia confronted drug dealers on a street corner with a two by four in her hand. Cedric laughed and said that even the toughest gang members in the neighborhood were scared of his mother.

The incident that changed Cedric’s life forever occurred in 1992, when he was 17 years old. According to court testimony, two individuals confronted what would become the three in front of a house on the West Side. In the ensuing gunfight, they shot and killed two of the men and wounded a third. Following the incident, the surviving victim, who was gravely wounded, identified Cedric and another man to the police as the shooters. They were both arrested – and although Cedric was legally still a minor at the time of the shooting, he was sentenced to prison for life without possibility of parole. There has never been any physical evidence – or any other evidence for that matter – that linked Cedric to the shooting and Cedric has always maintained his innocence.

There’s something of a twist to this story. Nearly twenty years later, the wounded witness, Willie Johnson, recanted his testimony. He came forward and testified at a post-conviction hearing that he had wrongly identified Cedric and his co-defendent. He explained that he did this only because the actual murderer had threatened to kill him and his family at the time. The judge however, rejected Johnson’s revised testimony and refused to reverse the convictions. (In an even more perverse twist to this story, although his recanted testimony was rejected, the witness was subsequently charged with perjury.)

When he first entered prison, Cedric joined a gang for protection, as many inmates do. He told me his first few years inside were enormously difficult until he met a man who would have an powerful impact on his life – an ex-gang leader who had become a devout Muslim. Cedric’s new mentor gave him book after book to read, and he read them voraciously. Cedric was particularly affected by “The Autobiography of Malcom X.” He identified deeply with Malcolm’s journey and struggle and was especially moved when he read about his religious awakening in prison. Like Malcolm, Cedric was inspired to convert to Islam and turn his life in a different direction.

As it turned out, his new found Muslim faith took him down a fairly dangerous road in prison. After making the decision to live as an observant Muslim, his fellow gang members approached him and told him he would have to choose between his gang and his newly acquired faith. Cedric chose his faith, knowing full well that this would obviously mean the loss of his protected status. In a very real sense, he was now putting his life in God’s hands.

The next major spiritual transformation for Cedric occurred when the Million Man March took place in 1995 in Washington DC. He was deeply moved by the sight of hundreds of thousands black men, gathered together nonviolently in one place, publicly atoning and taking responsibility for their own lives and for their families. After he witnessed this moment, Cedric decided to embark upon his own journey of repentance.

Specifically speaking, this meant following an eight stage atonement process as developed by Minister Louis Farrakhan. As part of his atonement, Cedric wrote letters. First he wrote a long letter to his mother, in which he apologized for betraying the values she taught him and for the shame he had brought to her through his actions. He vowed that he would devote the rest his life to bringing honor back to her and the family. He wrote similar letters to each of his brothers, apologizing for being absent to them as a big brother and as a role model. He also wrote a letter to his entire community – published in the community paper – and apologized, among other things, for bringing drugs, crime and gang activity into their neighborhood.

I asked Cedric to define forgiveness for me. He said that for him it was all about relationship. Seeking forgiveness meant repairing his relationships with others – and first and foremost, his relationship to God. He added that prayer plays a very central role in this process and that over time, his prayers have helped him achieve a spiritual cleansing – an unburdening his soul. He said that atonement is a never-ending process. He told me, with simple determination in his voice, that he will never stop working at making things right with others and with God.

Cedric is a warm, genuine and open-spirited man. He was happy to tell me his story and clearly took great pleasure in relating his spiritual journey. When we first met, I explained to him that I was interested in hearing his story because I wanted to give a sermon about his experiences during a Yom Kippur service. His lawyer began to explain what Yom Kippur is and he smiled and said, “Oh, I know all about Yom Kippur. It’s coming up in two weeks, right?” My conversation with Cedric was a true pleasure and I was genuinely sorry when our time was up. He gave me an affectionate hug before leaving the visitor’s room.

I’d like to tell you about another prisoner I met that day in Stateville – a 36 year old man named Addolfo Davis.

Addolfo grew up in an even more at-risk environment than Cedric. He was born to a single, drug-addicted mother who severely neglected him. Before he turned 10, Addolfo was running away from home and turning to local gangs for protection. He was just 9 the first time he robbed someone for money to buy food, which resulted in the first of many run-ins with the juvenile justice system.

Addolfo was eventually taken from his mother and placed under his grandmother’s care, where he lived in a one-room, dirt-floor cellar apartment, which already housed three other family members. Around this time, a DCFS social worker reported that he was becoming a danger to himself and strongly urged that he be placed in a contained foster home. Despite these recommendations, Addolfo was eventually removed from his grandmother and placed in a group home.

Addolfo’s incident occurred when he was barely 14. He and two older boys went to the apartment of a rival, reportedly to discuss a turf dispute. When they entered the apartment, the two older boys took out guns and shot four people, killing two. According to witness testimony, Addolfo was present but did not shoot a gun.

Later that day, the police apprehended Addolfo and interrogated him without an attorney present. The only person there to represent him was his mother, who was no longer his legal guardian and who later testified that she was intoxicated at the time. The interrogation ended with his signing a confession, though both his and his mother’s poor literacy skills likely prevented either of them from fully understanding what he had signed.

Although he was only a minor, a juvenile judge ruled that Addolfo’s case be transferred to adult court. This ruling was apparently influenced by the testimony of a therapist who cited his past criminal history and cast doubt on his ability to be rehabilitated by the time he reached the age of 21. In the end, 14 year old Addolfo was tried as an adult for felony murder and sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

I was told that Addolfo Davis was small, traumatized eighty pound teenager at the time of his conviction. The Addolfo I met two weeks ago was a grounded and articulate man. I had the opportunity to be present when he spoke with his pro bono lawyer as they prepared his application for clemency from Governor Quinn, which is his only legal recourse now that his appeals have been exhausted. As they spoke, it became obvious that Addolfo had been spending a great of time in the prison’s law library. He clearly had a far reaching knowledge of the legal aspects of his case and of the complicated clemency process. At times, it actually seemed that he was advising his lawyer rather than the other way around.

My first question was to ask Addolfo how he found this obvious inner peace. His answer was utterly unexpected. He said that his first few years in prison were horrid. He was frightened and aggressive and spent much of his time fighting with other inmates and just trying to survive day by day. As a result he was sent to the Tamms Correctional Center – a so-called “super max” prison in Southern Illinois – where he would spend four and a half years.

As at most super max prisons, prisoners at Tamms are forced to live alone, 24 hours a day, close to seven days a week in 8 x 10 concrete cement cells that contain concrete beds, stainless steel sinks and toilets. Although each cell has a window, the windows cannot be opened, and the only way to look out of them is to stand on the bed. The doors to each cell are designed to completely isolate the prisoner inside his cell. When I did a little research, I discovered that when Tamms was first opened in 1998, the warden, George Welborn was quoted as saying “Tamms is not about rehabilitation, it’s about punishment.”

So you can imagine my amazement when Addolfo told me “For some people it’s the worst – but Tamms was the best thing that ever happened to me.” He explained that as a result of his stay there, he actually experienced real solitude and inner peace for the first time in his life. Whenever he felt himself growing claustrophobic, he taught himself how clear his mind and calm himself down. He also started writing and reading. The book “Conversations with God” by Neale Donald Walsch had a particularly strong spiritual impact upon him.

I asked Addolfo if he identified with any particular religious faith and he told me no. He said, “I believe in God with all my heart, but I don’t belong to any religion.” He said it all comes down to “love your neighbor,” adding that “God is a caring, forgiving God. God will straighten everything out in the end.”

Addolfo told me he read the Bible and the Koran every day, and that in prison he was learning the true meaning of spiritual struggle. Every day, he said, is a challenge for him to hold on to his humanity in an inhumane world. He quoted his grandmother: “When you turn yourself over to God, the devil works overtime to pull you back.”

Although he is very, very happy to be out of Tamms, Addolfo did say that it is much harder to find the same kind of solitude in Stateville. He said sometimes he’ll just put on his ear buds and listen to music, sometimes even just static, and he can get back to a focused, clear minded place.

As I did with Cedric, I asked Addolfo for his definition of forgiveness. He said that the first step in forgiveness was forgiving yourself so that you can take personal responsibility for your own actions. When he was in the solitude of Tamms, he said, he learned that once he forgave himself, he was able to forgive others more easily and not simply point the finger of blame. Once he quieted down his mind, he found forgiveness for his mother, realizing that her drug use was not her. He was then able to see past her actions to her inner humanity.

Addolfo also said to me that since he never had a childhood, he was learning how to be a kid. And more than anything, that meant learning how to love unconditionally. As he put it, his challenge is learning how to truly love someone who isn’t ready to take accountability yet. It is not a simple process, to be sure. His approach, he said, is: “I love you, I forgive you, but I’m gonna keep my distance. When you’re ready, I’m always here for you.” He makes a point of talking to everyone, even members of rival gangs, which is not considered a particularly advisable thing to do in prison.

Needless to say, most of the prisoners aren’t used to this sort of attitude from an fellow inmate – but Addolfo said he has found that when they get used to it, they eventually respond. That is essentially his struggle: learning how to live the faith of “love your neighbor” each and every day.

I’m telling you the stories of Cedric and Addolfo tonight for two reasons. The first is because I believe they are truly my spiritual teachers. Indeed, I believe they are spiritual teachers for us all. I say this with some hesitation – only because I do not in any way want to patronize them or over-romanticize their situation. Still, as we find ourselves in the midst of this season of forgiveness and reconciliation, I can’t help but wonder if there are countless spiritual teachers out there just like Cedric and Addolfo, locked far away from us, forgotten by everyone but their families.

This Yom Kippur, I’m thinking of Cedric’s letters to his mother, his brothers and his community – and his burning desire to bring honor back to his life and to those he loves. I’m thinking about Addolfo sitting alone in a cell in a super max prison, finding inner peace for the first time, and struggling to live up to the teaching “love your neighbor as yourself” in a place almost wholly devoid of anything resembling love.

Of course these spiritual lessons come at a huge price – to them and to us all. And that brings me to the second reason I’m telling you their stories. It’s because I sincerely wish to God they weren’t my spiritual teachers. They shouldn’t be. And if they are, then shame on us.

I don’t know any other way to say it: we live in a country that loves to lock people away. The US has less than 5 percent of the world’s population but nearly a quarter of the world’s prisoners. We’ve locked up 2,000,000 people in our country. And to our further shame, 70% of these inmates, like Cedric and Addolfo, are people of color.

But our shame grows even deeper than this. Our country – the United States – is the only country in the world – in the world – that sentences children to life in prison without possibility of parole. Right now there are approximately 2,570 child offenders serving life without parole throughout the US. 99 of them are right here in Illinois. The total number in the rest of the world is zero.

The shame yet deepens: outside of the United States the practice of handing down juvenile life sentences has become so unthinkable, it is now illegal as a basic principle of international law. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child – which the US has still not ratified – prohibits life imprisonment of children. The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice requires that imprisonment of children can only be imposed as a last resort and that it be limited to the shortest length of time necessary to protect society. And the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the United States is a party, requires that in sentencing children, states must “take account of their age and the desirability of promoting their rehabilitation.”

Now when it comes to innocence cases, I think we can all agree on the clear injustice that is being committed. No one condones imprisoning the innocent – least of all children. However, when it comes to locking children up, the injustice should be no less obvious to us. There is compelling evidence, for instance, to indicate that Cedric Cal is totally innocent of the crime of which he was convicted. But in a deeper sense, this is not and should not be the issue. The issue is that when we sentence children to life sentences for their crimes – even of murder – we as a society are essentially giving up on them..

It should come as no surprise that there is clear racial component to this shame. Here in Illinois, for instance, 82% of our imprisoned child offenders are people of color. And as my stories to you obviously indicate, there is an obvious socioeconomic component to consider as well. But again, on a deeper level, if we look deep into the heart of it, even this should not the basic issue. We simply should not be locking away our children and throwing away the key. When we lock children away without even the possibility of parole, we affirm that they are no longer our problem, that they simply do not matter to us any more. When we lock them away, we deem them irredeemable.

We say this even though we know there is considerable evidence to the contrary. Science has shown that teenagers are not yet completely formed, either physically or emotionally. Although children are able to grasp the concepts of “right” and “wrong” at a very young age, the nuances of weighing long term risks and benefits are lost on even late adolescents, making them more prone to take risks, more vulnerable to peer pressure, and less likely to understand the perspective of others or the consequences of their decisions.

We also know, through neurological research, that the brain does not fully develop until late adolescence, around or after the age of 18. Doctors have now provided a medical reason for the various behaviors identified as typical in adolescents: they are not capable of behaving like adults because they lack the developed brain structure to do so.

Psychological research also tells us that, it is precisely because their characters are not yet fully formed that children are uniquely susceptible to rehabilitation. It is reasonable to assume that given the chance, many child psychology experts say, even those young adults who commit the most serious crimes will be able to grow into mature and responsible adults.

The Torah has something quite interesting to say about society’s response to its “problem children.” It may not be what you’d expect. In Deuteronomy 21, we read the following:

If a man has a wayward and defiant son, who does not heed his father or mother and does not obey them even after they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the public place of his community. They shall say to the elders of his town: “This son of ours is disloyal and defiant; he does not heed us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” Thereupon, the men of his town shall stone him to death. Thus you will sweep out evil from your midst. (Deuteronomy 21:18-21)

It is, of course, a horrific passage. No other way to describe it or rationalize it. Interestingly enough, though, these notorious verses do manage to shine a harsh light into our deepest and darkest insecurities – on adult society’s latent fear that we might somehow, God forbid, “lose control” of our children. And on our temptation, as a result, to simply give up on them.

Taken to its furthest extreme, when we deem our children irredeemable, we ultimately treat them as somehow disposable. Now anyone who has ever parented an adolescent knows that there are those moments when we are tempted to go to these dark places. But of course we resist these impulses because we know it would simply be unthinkable – unthinkable – to give up on our children.

And yet that is just what we are doing to our children in this country. In 26 states – including the state of Illinois – we are locking our children away and telling them they will have to live the rest of their natural lives in prison. We are the only country in the world that locks away its children forever.

I know these aren’t easy issues to talk about. Violent crime and criminal justice are perhaps the most gut-wrenchingly painful issues there are. The violation that results from violence goes deep and lasts life long. But having compassion for victims does not an should not exclude our compassion for perpetrators. We can and we must hold them together, especially when it involves children. This is, after all, the very essence of reconciliation – a spiritual ideal we have been wrestling for the past eight days. How can we, how will we, dig deep and discover reservoirs of compassion for all?

I’m sharing Cedric and Addolfo’s stories with you tonight because I believe we have much to learn from them this Yom Kippur. They have a great deal to teach us about how we might live our lives – and the ways we should live as a society. On this night of our vows, we must vow to do better by them, and by all the “child offenders” that are locked away in prisons throughout our state and our country.

I’m asking you now to join me in being a voice of conscience on their behalf. On the table as you exit tonight, you will find flyers with more information on this issue and a checklist of very concrete actions you can take. On this night of our atonement, I can think of few deeds more worthy or sacred.

Before I end, I’d like to personally thank JRC member Sarah Silins, who works at Northwestern’s Children and Family Justice Center for inspiring my remarks to you tonight. She arranged my trip to Stateville, truly one of the most spiritually and politically challenging experiences of my recent memory. Like so many other JRC members, she has educated me deeply with her passion and her work for social justice. I know Sarah and JRC member Julie Biehl, who is the Director of the Children and Family Justice Center, are ready to speak to anyone in our congregation about these issues and would be delighted to share ideas with you on how you might be an advocate for this profoundly important – and largely unrecognized cause.

I’d like to end by reading a letter. I received it from Cedric just this week:

Salaam Alaikum (Peace be unto you)

Dear Rabbi Brant,

May this missive find you in good spirits and health. Thank you for coming to spend a moment in time with me, to hear some of my life story to share with your community. Thank you for acknowledging our humanity. For we who are incarcerated are human beings that lost our way who are trying to find our way back. As you celebrate Yom Kippur as an individual, community and a nation, I hope that the spirit that comes forth from such activity gives you a determination to serve the voiceless and disenfranchised who desire to reconcile with the community and become productive citizens.

For once one atones, he/she has entered into God’s mercy and is absolved from past sins and transgressions and is free from it never to be judged again. I was a rebellious youth who lacked knowledge and suffered great chastisement from Allah/God. I believe I have atoned to God but yet I’m still despised and rejected by society because of being convicted of a crime. What will be the atonement process of prisoners and society at large? What will wipe the slate clean like God does for the Jews after Yom Kippur?

How long shall a child be held responsible for these transgressions? I was a 17 year old boy but I am 36 years old now. As a child, I thought as a child – now that I am a man I put away childish things, so says the Scriptures. I never experienced manhood outside the confines of prison. I truly desire the opportunity to be a father, the opportunity of marriage and to have a wife and children. To vote in an election. To own property, have a bank account. All these little thiings we take for granted, some of us have never even experienced.

I humbly ask that you lift your voice to deliver youth from inhumane sentences. We are your children. A mistake or error should not, must not, define our lives. We are redeemable. We are the product of society’s neglect and degenerative culture. I have been ashamed, abased for being such a child. I’ve repeated and made the determination to never return to such past transgressions again. I need society to give me a chance to prove myself worthy to be accepted back into the community.

I hope your speech to the larger community takes on the spirit of forgiveness and mercy. Then the action of bringing your collective voices to change a law that is against the principles of atonement. It would be a great demonstration of your forgiveness of us who transgressed the community. And a great proof that God is Most Merciful of those who show mercy.

May Allah (God) bless us all with the light of understanding.

Sholom Aleykum,
Cedric Cal

Source: Economic Policy Institute, The State of Working America 2011

Three years ago, I traveled with several JRC members and nearly 1,500 others to Postville, Iowa. We went to show our solidarity with 400 immigrant workers of the Agriprocessor kosher meat packing plant who had recently been arrested and imprisoned. It was, at the time, the largest single-site workplace raid in US history.

After participating in an interfaith service, we marched through the streets of Postville. As we reached the downtown area, we met up with angry counter-protestors, many of whom were holding signs condemning the invasion of “illegal immigrants” into their communities. One woman held a large sign that still sticks in my mind – it read: “What Would Jesus Do? Obey the Law.” I distinctly remember pointing out the irony of this sign to a fellow marcher, considering Jesus is actually considered to be one of the earliest practitioners of civil disobedience.

Now, I certainly don’t believe there’s anything inherently wrong when people of faith invoke religion to support their political positions.  From the prophets to Martin Luther King, faith has played a powerful and important role inspiring movements of political transformation.

But on that day in Postville, I was reminded that religion generally works best as a force for social good when it is leveraged on behalf of the the vulnerable and the oppressed.  But when those in power use faith as a justification for their oppression of the weak – frankly, that’s when we tend to witness religion at its worst.

To put it in the most basic terms, I’d say religion and politics mix well when they are used for the purposes of liberation. When they are used on behalf of empire – when they are wielded in what my Christian colleagues might call a “Constantinian” fashion – religion and politics generally tend to make for a pretty fatal mixture.

That’s why I reacted so instinctively when I saw that sign in Postville. “What Would Jesus Do? Obey the Law.” Really?  Even if those laws are oppressive?  Even if those laws are enacted by an all-powerful empire and wielded as a weapon against the weak?  Now I’m not a Christian theologian, but I was always led to believe this was exactly the kind of thing that used to drive Jesus nuts.

However you might choose to read your Bible, this much is fairly clear to me: if our religious tradition teaches us anything useful at all about laws, it’s that we need them to safeguard the well-being of the poor, the stranger, the widow the orphan. For their sake and ours, we are obliged to use the rule of law on behalf of the weakest – to protect those who are most at risk in our community.

I mention this because I strongly believe there has been a growing backlash against these kinds of laws in our country over the past few decades.  Government’s role in creating a stable foundation for the most vulnerable is currently under vicious political attack. And I’m very sad to see this political backlash supported by growing religious rhetoric.

Indeed, politicians, clergy and pundits, are increasingly invoking God when they attack the role of government. They preach that the real evil in our midst is “Big Government,” that higher taxes are immoral. The mere suggestion that society has a responsibility to ensure a more equitable distribution of wealth  – well, this simply represents secular, godless (or God forbid) “socialist” values.

Now that the 2012 campaign is gearing up, this religious rhetoric is entering our political discourse in some pretty surreal ways. Recently, for example, Michelle Bachmann responded to Hurricane Irene by saying it was God’s warning to Washington to rein in taxes and runaway spending.  And not long ago. Texas governor Rick Perry gave an ersatz Dvar Torah in which he compared the government to Pharaoh, claiming that we’ve all “become slaves to the government.”

One of the most popular financial gurus in the country, a Christian fundamentalist named Dave Ramsey, preaches the same sort of gospel.  His signature advice to his followers is to handle money “God’s way.” What would it mean for our country to run its economy “God’s way?” According to Ramsey, God’s ways would not include Social Security, since God would not want to invest for the long-term at such a modest rate of return. God’s ways also don’t include progressive taxation, since God desires us to emulate the habits of the wealthy. And God’s ways certainly do not mean creating government programs to protect the vulnerable, since God commands people to help themselves.

Now I know we’re tempted to chuckle when we hear this kind of stuff. But lest you think these views only reflect the feelings of a radical few, you should know that these kinds of religious ideas are finding traction – and they are growing increasingly popular.  According to a just-released study by Baylor University,  approximately one in five Americans believe that God opposes government regulation and champions the free market.  As one researcher put it, there is a significant demographic that actually believes “the invisible hand of the free market is really God at work.”

There are so many things that trouble me about these kinds of religious ideas – but I think what troubles me the most is their inherent moral insensitivity. For me, saying “God helps those who help themselves” is just a theological version of “the poor and the hungry will just have to fend for themselves.”

So I’ll go out on a limb here and say that big government is not our enemy. On the contrary, I’d say it is our central religious imperative.  In fact, I think that those who bash big government have got it backward.  The real religious issue here is not that our government is oppressing American citizens or that we need to minimize its role in our lives.

No, if there is one critical religious and moral concern facing our national community – the concern that frankly we should be shouting from the rooftops – it’s that the US, the wealthiest nation in the world, has the greatest wealth inequity of any Western industrialized nation.  It’s that the top 1 percent of the households in our country hold 40 percent of our country’s wealth.  It’s that government as enacted laws that enable the rich to get richer while the laws that protect the poor are slowly but surely being dismantled.

Along these lines, I’d add that our religious concern should be aroused by the fact that the number of people currently living below the poverty line is almost 47 million – the highest level ever recorded by the Census Bureau. Or the fact that in the world’s wealthiest nation, one in four children under the age of six live in poverty. That 33 million adults and 17.2 million children live in food insecure households.  And of course,  it’s the fact that these numbers all across the board are significantly higher for people of color.

Now, I know there are many in the religious community who do share these concerns and who work tirelessly to alleviate them.  People of faith make up a large percentage of those in the trenches – and they know better than anyone the real spiritual concerns facing poor and middle class Americans today.

But for too many reasons, these concerns have not been politically mobilized. They are being drowned out by a louder religious voice in our political culture – one that attacks the role of government and insists that the best way we can help the poor and the unemployed is to insist, in essence, that “God will provide.”

And that’s a real shame, because one of the ethical  glories of Biblical tradition – a tradition that is shared by Christians, Jews and Muslims alike – are the myriad of commandments that demand society distribute its wealth equitably – so that the most vulnerable among us may never slip through the cracks.

So, my friends, it’s time for a little Torah study. I’d like to try something that in today’s cultural climate might be considered sacrilegious. I’d like to make the religious case for big government.

Let’s start with Deuteronomy 15:11 – one of the Torah’s most famous teachings on economic justice:

The poor will never cease from the land, which is why I command you: open your hand to the poor and needy kinsman in your land.

At the heart of this commandment is a profound challenge. For whatever reason, the world is a broken place. Economic inequity will forever be a constant for society – and so we are told we must never accommodate it at face value.  We are bidden to take responsibility for the poor in our midst and consistently do what we must to alleviate their burdens because they will always be among us.

It’s also interesting that the commandment “open your hand to the poor” is written in the singular – like most of the laws in Deuteronomy.  As such, it commands each and every one of us, as individuals, to honor the value of tzedakah.

But at the same time, God commands these laws to the nation as a whole. Economic justice is at once an individual and a collective responsibility. In other words, individual charity is desired and important, but it is not enough. At the end of the day, the Bible views the creation of economic equity as a communal obligation as well.

Another famous example of this comes in the book of Leviticus, where the Israelites are subjected to what might be called significant “government regulation.” Indeed, those who use religion to bash big government might be surprised to discover that the Bible contains a commandment that all Israelite farmers must leave the corners of their fields unharvested so the poor and the stranger may glean from them. And they’d probably be appalled to learn that every fiftieth year, on the Jubilee Year, all land reverts back to its original owners and all debts are automatically forgiven.

And when it comes to taxes, the Bible makes no bones about it: “thou shalt pay.” Far from being a necessary evil, paying tax is viewed as a sacred obligation. Examples of taxes abound in the Torah: the Israelites are commanded to pay a 10% tithe for the poor, a tithe for the Levites, offerings for the priests and a flat shekel tax for communal sacrifices.

Neither does this kind of anti-government, anti-tax mentality exist in any meaningful way in Jewish tradition itself.  On the contrary, in a classic line from Pirke Avot (3:2), Rabbi Hanina teaches,

Pray for the well-being of the government; for were it not for fear of it, each person would swallow the other alive.

Jewish law has little specific to say about the government redistribution of wealth, since when halachah developed Jews were living exclusively under the rule of foreign governments.  However, the Rabbis made a point of ruling that Jews are obligated to pay taxes imposed by the governments under which they lived unless they were patently unjust. The ruling stems from the famous Talmudic principle, “Dina d’malkhuta dina.” (Bava Kamma 113a)  Literally, “the law of the land is the law.”

In general, the rabbis created a system in which the rule of law ensured a society of equity and economic justice.  This is not to say they advocate “class warfare” (to use a term being bandied about a lot these days). Equity means ensuring the protection at of the weak, without compromising the welfare of the strong. In her book “There Shall Be No Needy,” my colleague and friend Rabbi Jill Jacobs, sums this idea up well:

(Jewish Law) aims to mitigate inequity so as to prevent one person from exploiting or degrading another. It tends to favor and protect the more vulnerable party, while still looking out for the well-being of the more powerful one. Thus the law prevents selling needed medicines for more than the going rate, while also allowing doctors to accept money for their work; permits workers to leave in the middle of the day, while also limiting this permission when the labor market is tight and the crops are in danger of spoiling; and prevents a landlord from evicting a tenant suddenly, while also allowing the lease to be broken if the landlord loses his or her own home. When the balance tilts too far to one side, the principle of tikkun olam (in its earliest rabbinic manifestation) allows for adjustments to the legal system such that society functions more equitably.

These religious values express a certain essential world view about society and human nature.  At the end of the day, we’re being taught that issues of human poverty and wealth imbalance are too massive – and the stakes simply too high – to be left to individual noblesse oblige.  We are taught to never assume that left to their own devices, those who have will naturally take care of those who don’t.  And it’s downright dangerous to claim that God, working through the divine machinations of the free market, will somehow provide.

This does not mean that markets are bad or that they are immoral. Markets are by nature amoral – sometimes the results of market processes are good and sometime they are bad. That’s why it’s morally dangerous to rely on markets to protect the public good. While markets are incredibly useful and productive institutions, they are only moral insofar as they are structured to act morally. And that’s why we need government as a way to pursue our moral goals – so that we can do the right thing when the market fails to do so.

Past experience has shown us that corporations will not always provide safe working conditions or livable wages, that mortgage brokers will not voluntarily regulate themselves from predatory lending, that private schools cannot ensure that all our children get a decent education, that companies will not clean up their pollution on their own, and that “let the buyer beware” is not going to protect us from dangerous products. No, if we want to real social and economic equity in our country, we must acknowledge – in fact we must champion – the role of government in our national community.

Some might be surprised to know that one of the most eloquent American religious advocates of this point was none other than Dr. Martin Luther King. Most Americans view King primarily as a civil rights leader – but in fact at the end of his life, he was very outspoken against economic injustices in our nation. King wrote and spoke widely against the United States’ economic system for creating a widening gap between the rich and the poor.

To his credit, King understood that racial injustice could not be divorced from the deeper issue of socio-economic justice. To this end he publicly advocated a variety of government programs, including the creation of jobs by government and the institution of a guaranteed annual minimal income.

Of course, today our nation venerates King virtually on the level of a founding father. But as we prepare to unveil the new Martin Luther King memorial in Washington DC, I wonder what King would say about the state of economic justice in our country today. What he would say if he knew that this $120 million monument that was paid for largely through corporate donations – the largest being $10 million from General Motors, which now uses the King memorial in its car commercials?

As our nation celebrates Dr. King’s memory next month, do you think we’ll be prepared to honor his full legacy? To remind ourselves that he spoke passionately about the poor and working men and women, that he urged our government to create new programs and to guarantee a livable income for all American citizens?  And that these values came directly from his Biblically-inspired religious faith?

Now I am not saying that saying we should look to the government to be the answer to all of our problems. Of course a bureaucracy as large as the federal government is bound to be inefficient and wasteful in too many ways. But at the same time, I’d say it’s prejudiced in the extreme to cite inefficiency in order to question an essential function of government itself.

I’m also struck that those who rail against “big government” tend to use this term very, very selectively.  We rarely hear them use this claim, for instance, in reference to hundreds of billions of dollars our government allocates for defense spending – which include the maintenance of hundreds of military garrisons all over the world and the funding of two never-ending wars that a majority Americans believe we should not even be fighting at all.  We rarely hear “big government” directed toward federal laws passed in order to give significant tax breaks to the richest citizens in our country. And we certainly don’t hear conservative politicians and pundits refer to laws that outlaw abortion rights or same sex marriage as “big government.”

No, like everything else in politics, this term is a convenient euphemism. Underneath the slogan, I believe there lies an ideology of radical individualism – a value system that views social safety nets with disdain and believes that wealth will naturally trickle down from the wealthy to the rest of society.

But it’s just not working that way.  The “trickle-downers” tell us that the best way to create jobs and jump start the economy is to get government off the backs of business. For me, the most compelling argument against this theory is to simply take a look around. We’ve had more than three decades of government deregulation and what do we have to show for it? A steadily rising gap between the rich and poor, an increasingly squeezed middle class and ominously rising unemployment.  It’s simply not working.

We’re currently witnessing some encouraging signs that our administration is ready to take on this fight. Last week, Obama unveiled a deficit reduction plan that proposed $1.5 trillion in new taxes on corporations and Americans earning over $250,000 a year. And thanks to the support of Warren Buffet, it also includes a tax on the super-rich.  And sure enough, already the mere suggestion that the rich should pay their fair share is getting slammed by many politicians and pundits as “class warfare.”

Class warfare. It takes some chutzpah to claim that in a nation where the top 1% hold 40% of the wealth, a modest little deficit reduction plan can be called “class warfare.” And anyhow, what’s wrong with a little class warfare?  When the Torah demands that society actively redistribute its wealth, isn’t that class warfare? Don’t we gather around the seder table every year to celebrate what is, after all, class warfare?  When it comes right down to it, isn’t economic justice worth fighting for?

For me, one of the ironies of all this is that while I do believe government has a role to play in ensuring equity, I’m not all that confident that our elected leaders will be the ones to lead the way to this kind of reform. I think one of the hardest lessons of these past two years was that so many of us were inspired by the Obama campaign to believe in the power of the government to effect real social change – only to have these hopes dashed as mere illusions.

To put it bluntly – when it comes to the work of social change, I think we’re placing far too much faith in our political leaders and far too little on ourselves.  I’ll return to what I said at the outset: religion works best as a force for social good when it is invoked on behalf of the the vulnerable and the oppressed – when it speaks truth to power in order to shift power.  Politicians to the left and to the right – no matter how inspiring they may be – are part of the power elite in this country. Who will hold them to account if we do not?

That is what religion at its best has always done – and that is what the faith community desperately needs to do today.  We in the interfaith community share a venerable religious vision that speaks directly to the crises of this country. It’s a religious vision that understands the world is a broken place and that it doesn’t get fixed by itself. A vision that disavows the simplistic faith that “God will provide” and is rooted in the conviction that society can never take the welfare of its weakest citizens for granted.

And we shouldn’t take times such as these for granted.  Alas, we know all too well that these are not merely theoretical issues for any of us.  We all know people who are suffering heartbreaking losses as a result of this horrid economy. There are members of our own congregation – people who are in this sanctuary as I speak to you who have lost their jobs, who have lost their savings, lost their homes.

Many of us are just not used to thinking of ourselves as vulnerable – but as the middle class slowly shrinks in our country, we’re coming to grips with a truly painful reality. That our lives may never really have been on such firm ground after all.  That our children are growing up in a world that is more fragile than we might ever have dreamed.

I know we are all doing what we can to reach out to those in our community who need our support now more than ever. It is times such as these that challenge us to access our highest selves.  But at the same time, I do believe that modern democratic government and its programs are also a reflection of our best selves – our most decent selves.

And if this is truly so, then attempts to drastically cut taxes and shrink the public sector can only serve to diminish our ability to act as responsible moral beings. The more we Americans buy into a vision of government as bad, the more we stand by as this institution is weakened, the more we weaken our ability to redeem our world.

I know you all join me in my prayer that this be a better year – a year of dignity and prosperity for all. For us, for our loved ones, for those we don’t know personally but whose humanity is ours and for whose welfare we are ultimately responsible.

May we do what we can, what we must to create a fair and equitable world in our day – and may we bequeath future of genuine hope to our children.

Amen.

“How do we reach Jewish young people?” has long been one of the central mantras of the organized Jewish community, as those of us who work as Jewish professionals can surely attest. But while we wring our hands over at the state of the Jewish future, a remarkable new generation of Jews has been knocking insistently at our door.

Case in point: Almost one year ago, five young Jews disrupted the keynote speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Jewish Federation General Assembly in New Orleans. One by one, at five different points during the speech, the activists stood on their chairs, unfurled banners and shouted out in turn:

Young Jews say the settlements delegitimize Israel!
Young Jews say the Occupation delegitimizes Israel!
Young Jews say the siege of Gaza delegitimizes Israel!
Young Jews say the loyalty oath delegitimizes Israel!
Young Jews say silencing dissent delegitimizes Israel!

With each successive interruption the shouts from the crowd grew louder and angrier. As security attempted to safely walk them out, one protester was put in a choke hold by a convention attendee and wrestled to the floor. Another conventioneer grabbed a banner and tore it in half with his teeth.

At the very same moment, “Young, Jewish, Proud” launched its website, featuring the “Young Jewish Declaration” — an astonishing statement of purpose that seemed to come directly from the collective heart, mind and gut of this newly formed youth movement:

We exist. We are everywhere. We speak and love and dream in every language…

We remember how to build our homes, and our holiness, out of time and thin air, and so do not need other people’s land to do so…

We refuse to have our histories distorted or erased, or appropriated by a corporate war machine. We will not call this liberation…

We commit ourselves to peace. We will stand up with honest bodies, to offer honest bread…

We are young Jews, and we get to decide what that means.

Predictably, the Jewish establishment wasted no time in excoriating the protesters. Some chided them condescendingly for their “misguided” behavior. Others angrily criticized them for “aiding the enemy.”

As for me, I watched these events unfold with genuine hope for our Jewish future.

After all, weren’t these young people claiming and proclaiming their Jewishness in classic Jewish fashion? Like young Abraham destroying his father’s icons, they stood up to the hypocrisy and corruption of their elders. In the heart of the the largest gathering of American Jewish leaders, these proud young Jews called out their community on its most sacred of sacred cows: namely, the unquestioning, unconditional support of the state of Israel.

In all honesty, I can’t say I’ve ever witnessed as authentic an act of young Jewish self-expression as I did that afternoon at the New Orleans General Assembly.

Yes, as a professional Jew, I’ve participated in the “how can we inspire young people?” conversation more times than I care to admit. I’ve watched a myriad of Jewish community-sponsored initiatives come and go. And invariably, all of them focused on what we believed was best for Jewish young people.

But while the Jewish establishment has been excellent at creating and funding expensive projects, we seem to be chronically incapable of actually listening. We love to tell young people how we think they should express their Jewishness, but rarely do we stop long enough to really, truly learn what drives and inspires them.

Taglit-Birthright Israel, the Jewish establishment’s signature youth initiative, is the most obvious case in point. For well over a decade, we have invested literally hundreds of millions of dollars in providing free, all-expense-paid trips to Israel. The essential goal of these trips, as Birthright’s Marketing Director puts it plainly, is to make Israel “an integral part of every Jew’s identity.”

It’s well known that Birthright was born in response to growing reports that American Jewish young people were becoming increasingly disconnected to the state of Israel. But by rushing to address this issue through a massive multimillion dollar community initiative, we successfully avoided asking the deeper questions.

Could it be that we were afraid to know the answers?

Could it be that young people are becoming disenchanted with Israel because they are becoming increasingly troubled by its treatment of Palestinians? Could it be that growing numbers of young Jews regard Israel more as an oppressive colonial project than a source of Jewish pride? Could it be that in the 21st century world, the identities of young Jews are tied less to Jewish ethno-nationalism than to a more universal vision of liberation?

“Young, Jewish, Proud” is decidedly not the product of a Jewish communal initiative. On the contrary it is a grass-roots, self-organized effort of young Jews who seek to express their Jewish identity in a time-honored Jewish manner: by speaking truth to power, by advocating unabashedly for peace, justice and liberation, by standing up to oppression, racism and persecution in Israel/Palestine and throughout the world. They simply aren’t buying what the Jewish establishment has been selling them. They are finding their own voices.

We are young Jews, and we get to decide what that means…

I am well aware that it is not easy for a Jewish community so thoroughly focused on Zionism to hear it challenged in such a fundamental way. But aren’t these young Jews doing precisely what they were raised to do?  They are taking a good, educated look around them, thinking critically about what they see and are taking a stand for what they believe in as Jews.  Are we really prepared to disown them because their conclusions make us uncomfortable?

In the Torah portion for the first day of Rosh Hashanah, we read that when God saves the life of young Ishmael in the wilderness, “God heeded the cries of the boy where he is” (Genesis 21:17). In other words, God was able to find Ishmael by truly listening to him. Not where God wanted him to be or where God thought he should be, but where he was.

This New Year, I fervently hope our community can do the same with our newest adult generation. These young people certainly have every reason to be disenchanted with the organized Jewish community, but for some reason they refuse to go away. They’re here, and they’re knocking loudly at our door.

Do we, the gatekeepers of the Jewish community, have the vision, the faith and the courage to open it up and let them in?

Today marked the end of a week-long strike at the Hyatt Regency Chicago and Hyatt Regency McCormick Place  held simultaneously with Hyatt workers in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Honolulu.  This morning I walked the picket line at the Hyatt Regency and had the honor of participating in an interfaith solidarity service with local Chicago clergy.  That’s me in the pic below, together with Rabbi Victor Mirelman (left) of West Suburban Temple Har Zion and Rabbi Larry Edwards (center) of Congregation Or Chadash. Above you can see Victor sounding the shofar in a dramatic start to our service.

As I’ve written before, the situation facing Hyatt workers in many cities throughout the country is deplorable. Hyatt has eliminated jobs, replaced career housekeepers with minimum wage temporary workers, and imposed dangerous workloads on those who remain.  Although the strike will be over today, the boycott of eighteen Hyatt hotels nationwide continues.

Again, I encourage you to read “Open the Gates of Justice: A Clergy Report on Working Conditions at Hyatt Hotels” for more information.  The report contains the direct testimony of hotel workers themselves, who speak eloquently to the injustices they endure – as well as their desire only to be valued as workers for the important work they do for Hyatt hotels.

At the interfaith service today, I read an “Avinu Malkeinu” High Holiday prayer that I reworked in honor of the striking Hyatt workers. Click below to read:

Avinu Malkeinu, help us to stand with our brothers and sisters who seek a fair wage, safe working conditions and a secure future;
Avinu Malkeinu, help us to remain firm as we hold the Hyatt corporations such to account.

Avinu Malkeinu, remind us that all workers are worthy of respect and dignity;
Avinu Malkeinu, remind us that those who do the work of hospitality are doing sacred work.

Avinu Malkeinu, let us never waver in our support for those who seek to organize unions in their workplaces;
Avinu Malkeinu, let us never falter in our support of power equity and collective bargaining.

Avinu Malkeinu, bring healing and comfort to those workers who have been needlessly injured on the job;
Avinu Malkeinu, bring the truth of their suffering out of the darkness and into the light of day.

Avinu Malkeinu, we say shame on the kind of employer who would turn heat lamps on striking workers;
Avinu Malkeinu, we say it’s time to turn up the heat on the Hyatt corporation until it treats its workers with decency and respect.

Avinu Malkeinu, help us to remind Hyatt that workers are not commodities to be acquired and discarded;
Avinu Malkeinu, help us insist that Hyatt cease outsourcing its jobs to subcontractors.

Avinu Malkeinu, let us remind Hyatt that its ownership does not extend to public sidewalks and passways;
Avinu Malkeinu, let us remind the world that the right to freely assemble is a basic and inalienable right.

Avinu Malkeinu, we stand with all who have become vulnerable during these years of economic hardship;
Avinu Malkeinu, we stand with the poor, the unhoused, the uninsured, the undocumented.

Avinu Malkeinu, we stand with all workers, the ones who make our beds, serve our food, police our streets or teach our children;
Avinu Malkeinu, we will stand up against all those who would demean the sacred cause of worker justice.

Avinu Malkeinu, may this be the year we bring justice and equity for the workers of Hyatt;
Avinu Malkeinu, may this be the year we bring justice and equity for all who labor throughout the land.

For matter how painful the prospect, I don’t think we can afford to dodge this question. If we agree that the inequitable distribution of power and privilege is a critical problem for us and for our world, then there will inevitably be times in which we are faced with an intensely difficult question: does tribal loyalty trump solidarity with the oppressed?

Actually, I’m coming to believe that this is not the best way to frame the question. I don’t really think it’s all that helpful to view this issue as some kind of zero-sum game; to see it as a question of tribal allegiance; to insist that I either stand with my own people or I don’t. I prefer to say it this way: that it is in my self interest as a Jew to stand in solidarity with the oppressed because I believe that Jews cannot be fully human while they benefit from a system that denies others their own humanity. For those with power and privilege, the struggle against racism and oppression is fought knowing that our own liberation is also at stake.

Click below to read the entire sermon:

What’s the difference between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur? There are many different ways to answer that question. Some see the Jewish New Year as a celebration of rebirth – and Yom Kippur as the day we do the work that helps us enter the new year reborn anew. Others hear the shofar of Rosh Hashanah as a spiritual wake up call and Yom Kippur as a time to arise from our slumber and return to the path from which we’ve strayed.

I’ve been increasingly coming to understand these two festivals in a different way: Rosh Hashanah is that day we focus on Malchuyot – God’s sovereignty. On Rosh Hashanah we acknowledge a Power greater than own and honestly face the limits of our own power. On Yom Kippur, we look seriously at how we use our power. We ask ourselves: in what ways has our power corrupted us? In what ways have we wielded our power destructively? And most important: what can we do – what must we do – to transform our power from a corrupting force into power that might transform our world?

In thinking about this particular theme this Yom Kippur, I’ve find myself getting drawn back to a deeper and more inexorable issue – that is, namely the ways in which we are all part of a system of power and privilege. And I’m increasingly coming to realize that we can’t really analyze our own power without recognizing the underlying structures of power imbalance that are so indelibly imprinted in our world.

We all naturally want power to be used for the good and the benefit for all. We all believe racism and sexism and homophobia to be oppressive. These aren’t particularly controversial claims. But beyond our good intentions and our well-intentioned actions, I can’t help but ponder how so many of us take our own power and privilege for granted. How we use and abuse power in ways we can’t even begin to grasp.

So if Yom Kippur is indeed the time for us to think honestly about the ways we wield our power, I’d like to take a little bit of time today to explore this issue more deeply. I’d like to examine how structures of power affects each and every one of us; how they influence our thoughts and how they determine our actions. I’d like to unpack how privilege affects our lives in so many fundamental ways. And in particular, I’d like to look carefully at how these complex inform and define us as Jews.

When defining the meaning of privilege, the first thing we need to consider is that it is always found in relationship with another. When I use the word “privilege” in this way, I refer to the benefits one party gains at the expense of another. Moreover, many of these benefits are by definition unearned.

Let’s us me as an example, I am white, male, heterosexual and born into an upper middle-class family. Every one of these factors afford me a myriad of unearned benefits that are simply unavailable to others in my community with whom I am in relationship either directly or indirectly.

The other important thing about privilege is that it is almost always invisible and unseen to the privileged party. I would daresay even those of us among the privileged who consider ourselves to be generally sensitive, enlightened and progressive people have no clue about the ways we take our privilege for granted.

To use but one example, here are some of the benefits that automatically accrue to me for the simple fact of my being a heterosexual:

The state automatically gives me the right to get married, along with the tangible benefits and protections that come with it. As a straight person, I will never experience prejudice directed toward me due to my sexual orientation; I don’t have to fear being estranged from my family because of my heterosexuality; I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help my sexual orientation won’t work against me; I can be open about my heterosexuality without worrying about my job; I can walk in public with my significant other and not have people stare or possibly harass me.

Even though I intellectually understand these privileges, I must confess they are largely invisible to me on a day to day basis. That’s why in the end, the idea of privilege is bigger than just a list of unearned benefits. It’s critically important for us to grasp how these privileges affect our daily lives, our careers, our education. In what ways do we benefit from a myriad of unearned privileges without ever even realizing it?

All made more complicated because we are all essentially made up of multiple identities. Since our identities intersect, there is not necessarily always a one to one correspondence between advantage and disadvantage. For example, if someone is poor but is also white they may not have class privilege, but as a white person, it is likely that this person will have an easier time of it than a person of color with the same income level. To one extent or another, we are all advantaged and disadvantaged at the same time. Having said this, however, it cannot be denied that there are those, in sum total, who enjoy significant unearned advantage over others.

For Jews as a group it is even more complicated. I would suggest that overall, our identity is predicated on disadvantage and the experience of oppression. After all, our most central sacred narratives occur in the context of powerlessness. “Avadim hayinu – we were slaves.” We were exiled from our land following quintessential tragedy of our people: the churban – the destruction of the Temple. These are more than just stories: they go to the heart of our collective self image. These narratives form the very DNA of our sacred traditions and rituals.

Moreover, the resonance of our historical experience – the tragic legacy of anti-semitism that culminated in the Holocaust– affects us no less deeply. I once said in a sermon several years ago that to be Jewish post-Holocaust means to live with collective PTSD – and indeed, it’s a condition that affects our identity and our relation to the world in so many profound ways.

At the same time, however, I believe this legacy of powerlessness is largely at odds with our contemporary reality. Quite frankly, the truth is that right now it’s actually a pretty good time to be Jewish. Although we’re often loathe to admit it, collectively speaking we currently enjoy a level of security, power and privilege at levels almost unprecedented in Jewish history.

Here in America, we’ve succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. We constitute one of the most educated, economically secure and politically organized minorities in the country. Given the relatively small percentage of Jews in the US, we’re inordinately well represented in the corporate, academic, political and professional worlds. Anti-semitism has long ceased to be a meaningful impediment to Jewish advancement. It is difficult, if not impossible, to claim that being Jewish is in any significant way a liability in the United States of America today.

Now I’m sure many might argue that our empowerment in this country is not completely unearned, and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree. Like many other ethnic minorities that immigrated to the US, much of what the Jewish community has accomplished has been the result of hard work and very real sacrifice. But at the same time, we cannot deny that by and large, those who have since been born into the Jewish community are firmly a part of this country’s power structure – and as such we enjoy many of the benefits and privileges that come with that power. And at the very least we should serious thought to what this privilege is doing to our communal priorities and our relationship to other communities around us.

I’ve sometimes joke semi-facetiously that one of the cardinal sins of being Jewish is to admit that we actually have power. After all, for so long our very identity has been rooted in our powerlessness. Take that away from us and what are we left with? And further: if we’re now part of the majority power structure, could that possibly mean that we have now become our own worst nightmare – namely, God forbid, that we are now on the side of the oppressor?

Here’s a telling historical anecdote: back in the late 1960s there was growing tension in Black-Jewish relations. As Jews joined the white flight from urban centers to the suburbs and the Black Power movement began to grow, the coalition that had been built and nurtured in the Civil Rights movement was rapidly breaking down. Many Jews felt betrayed by what they experienced as anti-semitism from former allies. And many blacks felt that Jews had now become a part of the a racist white power structure that was at the root of their oppression.

It was around this time that James Baldwin wrote a famous essay entitled “Negroes are Anti-Semitic Because They Are Anti-White.” When I first read this essay many years ago it had a powerful effect upon me – and over the years I’ve found myself returning to his challenging words again and again.

This is what he wrote:

In the American context, the most ironical thing about Negro anti-semitism is that the Negro is really condemning the Jew for having become an American white man – for having become, in effect, a Christian. The Jew profits from his status in America, and he must expect Negroes to distrust him for it. The Jew does not realize that the credential he offers, the fact that he has been despised and slaughtered, does not increase the Negro’s understanding. It increases the Negro’s rage.

For it is not here, and not now, that the Jew is being slaughtered, and he is never despised here, as the Negro is, because he is an American. The Jewish travail occurred across the sea and America rescued him from the house of bondage. But America is the house of bondage for the Negro, and no country can rescue him. What happens to the Negro here happens to him because he is an American.

This is what I take from these words: in many ways, to be a Jew today means to live with a kind of bifurcated identity. We continue to be shaped by our memories of past powerlessness, but as Baldwin correctly pointed out, in America we benefit in so many ways from the privileges that come with power. For my part, I’ve come to believe that it is politically and morally disingenuous of us to keep playing both sides of that card. As Jews, we would do well to ask: can we, should we honestly have it both ways?

In my opinion, this cognitive dissonance represents a critical challenge for the Jewish community in the 21^st century America. We currently enjoy unprecedented Jewish power and privilege. How will we choose to wield it?

Speaking for myself I’m increasingly coming to believe that it’s my obligation to recognize our power and privilege for what it truly is. To identify the ways that Jewish power privileges us in this country. I also believe that if we do this with frankness and honesty, then it becomes our responsibility to use our privilege to shift power in a more just and equitable direction.

How do we do this? For me, the answer is relatively straightforward: to stand in solidarity, as Jews, with all who are oppressed.

Now I realize this answer is not necessarily as straightforward as it sounds. In the first place, when the privileged and powerful decide to stand in solidarity with those with less power we make choices that are counter intuitive – choices that might not be of direct benefit to our own self-interest.

Here is one example. Many of you know, I’m sure, that I’ve become increasingly involved in the issue of immigrant justice. One day, about two years ago in which I was asked to offer a blessing at an interfaith vigil in solidarity with undocumented immigrants slated for deportation. As I stood waiting to speak, I was chatting with a priest who served a predominantly Latino parish. At one point he said something to the effect of, “What are you doing here?”

Or at least that was how I remember hearing his comment. I know he meant it as a compliment – but I also experienced his remark as a way of pointing out that unlike the Latino community, the Jewish community is not directly affected by this issue. I admit that when he said that comment, there was part of me that asked myself, “well, why am I here?” Is it out of middle class liberal guilt? Is it out of nostalgia? Is it because as a Jew, I’m seeking props from other ethnic communities?

But in the end, I reminded myself that no, I’m here because as a Jewish American, I’m the grandson of immigrants myself. I’m here because as a Jew, the struggle for immigrant justice benefited my own family and my own people at not long ago and that “there but for the grace of God.” And that while I might be tempted to say, “well this is not really my issue any more,” now that I have power and privilege in this country, I have an obligation to use it justly. And the primary way I can do this is to stand unabashedly in solidarity with those who do not share my privilege.

There can be no doubt that for Jews, I there will be times in which the prospect of solidarity work challenges us to our very core. Times which may force us to wrestle with own sense of tribal loyalty and allegiance. These are the times, indeed, in which we might have to consider whether or not we have actually, God forbid, become oppressors ourselves.

Still, I’m finding that solidarity work is becoming more and more important to my own spiritual vision as a Jew and as as a rabbi. It has come to inform much of the work I do in the greater community, from immigrant justice to worker justice to standing in solidarity with Palestinians. I know this latter issue in particular is enormously challenging for many – and in truth, it is for me as well. I’m well aware that the prospect of Palestinian solidarity work presents a profound challenge to the Jewish community. Nevertheless I will continue to try, in some small way, to put the difficult issues of Israeli power and privilege onto the Jewish radar screen. I also hope at least it might challenge us to have honest conversations about these issues as painful as they are.

For matter how painful the prospect, I don’t think we can afford to dodge this question. If we agree that the inequitable distribution of power and privilege is a critical problem for us and for our world, then there will inevitably be times in which we are faced with an intensely difficult question: does tribal loyalty trump solidarity with the oppressed?

Actually, I’m coming to believe that this is not the best way to frame the question. I don’t really think it’s all that helpful to view this issue as some kind of zero-sum game; to see it as a question of tribal allegiance; to insist that I either stand with my own people or I don’t. I prefer to say it this way: that it is in my self interest as a Jew to stand in solidarity with the oppressed because I believe that Jews cannot be fully human while they benefit from a system that denies others their own humanity. For those with power and privilege, the struggle against racism and oppression is fought knowing that our own liberation is also at stake.

Although these are indeed complex issues, I’ll return to what I said earlier: in another sense it is ultimately quite straightforward. After all, what is the lesson of our most central and oft-repeated Jewish narrative? God freed us from Egyptian bondage in order to show us, to show the Egyptians and to show the world that there is a power, yes, even greater than our own human power.

God then brought us into the wilderness and invited us to construct a new form of community – a society that would be, in a sense, the polar opposite of Egypt. A community where power was wielded with justice and compassion, where the well-being of its most powerless members – the stranger, the widow and the orphan – were ensured.

If we do indeed believe these to be among the most sacred teachings of our tradition, then our community is facing a challenge of truly daunting proportions. If this is our mission, then we owe it to ourselves to face up to the choices no matter how difficult or painful. It is certainly natural to seek the path of least resistance, the way of lesser tension. But as we know from our own lives and from our history, this is not the way to true transformation. In the end, power does not give an inch without a struggle.

This Yom Kippur, let us face up to the struggle together.

Amen.

And as I think about it, perhaps this is why we read a Martyrology on Yom Kippur. As we remember our martyrs, we search our own souls and ask ourselves honestly: what have we done in the past year to prove ourselves worthy of these profound sacrifices? What have we done to affirm that these people did not die in vain? Did we indeed honor their memories by transforming loss into justice and hope for our world?

Click below to read the entire sermon:

A JRC member recently asked why we never do the Martyrology service on Yom Kippur. I wrote back to the congregant – and I’ll confess to you now: I’ve never been a huge fan of this particular liturgy.

The Martyrology, known as “Eleh Ezkarah” in Hebrew, is traditionally recited during the Yom Kippur afternoon service. The traditional version is a liturgical poem that graphically describes the execution of ten rabbis, among whom were the famous Rabbis Akiba, Ishmael and Shimon ben Gamliel. All of them were sentenced to death for their support of Bar Kochba’s failed revolt against Rome in the year 132.

The Martyrology highlights the profoundly spiritual heroism of the rabbis with the often unbearably graphic details of their executions. We read how Rabbi Akiba managed to proclaim the Shema even as his flesh was being gouged out with iron combs; Rabbi Henania ben Teradion was wrapped in a Torah scroll together with damp wool to ensure he would die a slow and painful death by burning. As the flames consumed him, he cried out to his students that he could see the letters of Torah ascending up to heaven.

Perhaps the most disturbing description comes with the execution of Rabbi Ishmael. As Ishmael wept over the dismembered head of Rabbi ben Gamliel, the emperor Hadrian’s daughter admired his beauty and asked that his life be spared. The emperor then ordered that the Ishmael’s skin be flayed from his face and preserved for posterity.

I think by now you can understand my aversion to the traditional Martyrology. But beyond the graphic imagery, I think I’m even more troubled by the theological reason for it’s inclusion in the Yom Kippur service: namely, the concept of “blood atonement.” According to this theology, we offer the lives of our martyrs in the hopes that their deaths may atone for our misdeeds. Since the destruction of the Temple, we can no longer offer animal sacrifice. But even if we aren’t worthy of God’s mercy, we pray that we may be forgiven on account of their sacrifice. According to this view, you might say, the Ten Rabbis “died for our sins.”

If this sounds familiar to you, it should. Many scholars agree that the original source for this liturgy, Midrash Eleh Ezkerah, comes from the same period and literary tradition as early Christian martyrological literature. But it’s not the Christian associations per se that trouble me – it’s the implications of the theology itself. It’s the suggestion that bloodshed atones. And in particular, it’s the idea that I can somehow be let off the hook because of the tragic death of another person.

Of course it cannot be denied that the literal act of animal sacrifice was the way Israelites originally atoned for their sins. In tomorrow’s Torah portion, we will read how Aaron the High Priest sprinkles the blood of a goat and the blood of an ox over the altar, thus making atonement for all the sins of Israel. It is indeed a powerful image and metaphor indeed, but surely we’ve long given up on the idea that God literally requires blood as a path to forgiveness. And I’m sure that the notion that God might require the bloodshed of human martyrs as an atonement offering would strike many of us as borderline sacreligious.

In more recent years, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist High Holiday liturgies have added other Jewish litanies of persecution to the Martyrology, including the horrors of the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the pogroms of Eastern Europe and the Holocaust itself. But to my mind, contemporary updating only deepens the essential problem. Do we really want to mythologize these tragic events and understand them as sacred offerings? Do we actually mean to view the death of the six million as a kind of sacrifice to God for our sins? Again, I believe most of us would find such a theology to be profoundly offensive.

So while I do believe we most certainly need to remember and honor our collective Jewish losses, I’ll admit that I’ve long struggled with the concept of martyrdom. And in particular, I’ve struggled to understand how a Martyrology might fit into our Day of Atonement – a day we devote to teshuvah, to repentance, to spiritual repair for the New Year ahead.

Since I received that member’s e-mail, however, I’ve been thinking more about this issue. In many ways, I think, martyrdom it’s is a fairly loaded term. After all, every religious tradition and every community has its martyrs – the figures who are exalted for having made the ultimate sacrifice. But I’m fascinated that the term is often used today colloquially in something of a pejorative context. We’ll use the term “martyr” for someone who relishes playing the role of sufferer, usually as a form of emotional manipulation.

Even so, and even if many of us today have difficulty with the traditional religious conception of martyrdom, I wonder now if American Jews might be able to reconstruct this idea for a post-modern age. And further: I’m wondering if we might possibly find a way to create a Martyrology service that truly be appropriate and meaningful to us on this Day of Atonement.

You might be surprised to learn that martyrdom is actually promoted in certain cases by traditional Jewish law. According to halacha, it is considered preferable to sacrifice one’s life rather than publicly transgress the prohibitions against idolatry, sexual immorality or murder. For centuries, this form of martyrdom has been considered the ultimate way to honor the traditional Jewish concept of Kiddush Hashem (or “the sanctification of God’s name.”)

And clearly there are no shortage of Jewish martyrs throughout Jewish history. There are the men and women of Masada who took their own lives rather than be captured and enslaved by the Romans. In the Second Book of Maccabees we read of Hannah and her sons, who were tortured and killed by Antiochus Epiphanes when they refused to publicly eat pork. During the Inquisition, the Jews of Spain and Portugal were executed or exiled if they refused to renounce their Jewish faith.

Of course when Jews contemplate martyrdom today we cannot avoid those who perished during the Holocaust. But indeed, viewing the victims of the Shoah as martyrs presents a myriad of new complications for us. In the first place, the six million are not mythic martyrs from the distant past – they are very real individuals. They are, quite literally, our fathers and mothers, aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers. Unlike the Maccabees or the Jews of the Inquisition, many of us are still personally grieving for these individuals. It isn’t such a simple matter for us to understand their deaths in the context of martyrdom and many of us wouldn’t even begin to try.

Moreover, the Holocaust marks the first time in history that Jews weren’t only killed for religious reasons – for their beliefs or their practices. They were killed because of who they were. Their martyrdom (if that is what we choose to call it) was completely and utterly involuntary. Unlike the deaths of Rabbi Akiba or Hannah, these deaths were not a result of personal action or conscience – or even of their own volition. Those who perished in the Shoah had no intention and certainly no desire to become martyrs.

The Holocaust was certainly one of the most notorious mass murders in modern history. But was it a mass martyrdom? Should we even refer to it in such a way? In thinking through these questions, I recently found turned to a teaching that some might consider to be an unlikely source – namely, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

I’m sure all of you are familiar with an infamous event that transpired in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963. It was the occasion of an involuntary martyrdom – one that has since become very important in American history . This was the day that a bomb planted by members of the KKK went off in 16^th St. Baptist Church, killing four little girls – Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley – and injuring 22 others.

And at the funeral for three of the girls, King gave a famous address that has since been known as “Eulogy for the Martyred Children.” He said as follows:

So they did not die in vain. God still has a way of wringing good out of evil. History has proven over and over again that unmerited suffering is redemptive. The innocent blood of these little girls may well serve as the redemptive force that will bring new light to this dark city. The holy scripture says, “A little child shall lead them.” The death of these little children may lead our whole Southland from the low road of man’s inhumanity to man to the high road of peace and brotherhood. These tragic deaths may lead our nation to substitute an aristocracy of character for an aristocracy of color. The spilt blood of these innocent girls may cause the while citizenry of Birmingham to transform the negative extremes of a dark past in to the positive extremes of a bright future. Indeed, this tragic event many cause the white South to come to terms with its conscience.

Then King turned to the families of the little girls and said this:

At times, life is hard, as hard as crucible steel. It has its bleak and painful moments. Like the ever-flowing waters of a river, life has its moments of drought and its moments of flood. Like the ever-changing cycle of the seasons, life has the soothing warmth of the summers and the piercing chill of its winters. But through it all, God walks with us. Never forget that God is able to lift you from fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope, and transform dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace.

Amongst the many religious texts I’ve read on the meaning of martyrdom, I personally find King’s words to be among the most meaningful and profound. I am particularly moved by his hope, by his realism, but most of all, by his refusal to surrender to the despair that these little girls died for nothing. As daunting as it was, he was determined to find a spark of spiritual meaning in this tragic loss.

Yes, he used the imagery of blood as redemptive – but he did so in a way that affirmed goodness and justice in the face of an evil, unjust act. As horribly tragic as their deaths were, King could not but affirm that their deaths would, as he put it, “serve as a redemptive force” that would eventually bring new light during those very dark times.

However: while King did believe that the loss of these innocents would ultimately bring freedom that much closer, he did not for a second suggest that God somehow required their blood to bring justice to the world. Ever the consummate pastor, King turned to the families of the little girls. Even after affirming their deaths would contribute to the cause of justice, he acknowledged the injustice of their families’ pain. After all, while these four girls had become martyrs to the world, to their loved ones they were daughter, sisters, granddaughters and friends. They were, very simply, Denise, Addie Mae, Carole, and Cynthia.

So yes, King said, “life can be hard, as hard as crucible steel.” Life can be tragic; life can be filled sorrow that feels sometimes feels utterly unbearable. But where is God in the midst of this families’ sorrow? God certainly didn’t receive their deaths as a kind of “sacrificial offering.” Rather, King said, “God walks with us.” God is the Spirit of compassion and strength that lifts us from “fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope,” that transforms “dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace.”

As I read these words, I can think of no better way to remember all whom we consider to be martyrs. We begin affirming meaning in the face of tragedy and loss. We affirm justice even amidst the pain of the injustice. We mourn our loss, and finally, we do what we must to bring some kind of meaning to our loss – to ensure that these deaths were not in vain.

And as I think about it, perhaps this is why we read a Martyrology on Yom Kippur. As we remember our martyrs, we search our own souls and ask ourselves honestly: what have we done in the past year to prove ourselves worthy of these profound sacrifices? What have we done to affirm that these people did not die in vain? Did we indeed honor their memories by transforming loss into justice and hope for our world?

To put it more specifically: as we recall our Jewish ancestors who died for practicing their faith, we must ask: have we done what we can to ensure that Judaism – this exquisite spiritual tradition of ours – will be passed on to future generations? When we tell of those who died in pursuit of political freedom, we must admit openly: how we have failed to ensure that these freedoms are extended to all in our nation and our world? And as we mourn the lives of six million lost, we must ask ourselves honestly: how can it be that more than sixty years after the Shoah, sixty years after this most radical form of inhumanity, sixty years of saying “Never Again,” we still continue to remain silent in the face of genocide?

As I’ve thought about this, I’ve begun to envision a new kind of Martyrology service: one that honors our dead but also one that challenges and awakens us to action. And since we are not only Jews, but also Americans and citizens of the world, I believe it would be critical to include non-Jewish martyrs as well: American figures such as, yes, the four young girls from Birmingham or, sadly, Dr. Martin Luther King himself. Or courageous figures from around the world, people such as Stephen Biko, whose death became a rallying cry against South African apartheid. Such a service might also provide us with the opportunity to learn more about international human rights heroes in our own day and consider how we might honor their memories.

Clearly, the individuals we choose to include would reflect our own values – and I’d welcome the opportunity to explore together what a JRC Martyrology service might eventually look like. In the meantime, we have added a section to tomorrow afternoon’s Yizkor service that will give us the opportunity to honor the memory of the six million. Among other things, it includes these powerful words of the great Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever, who survived World World II in Vilna and died only this past January at the age of 96:

Survivors! Inherit, with your happiness,

The tears of each of us, flickering in that vise

Remember: Inhale our dying.

Never forget: Be martyrs to life.

I invite you now to think for yourselves: Who are the courageous individuals whose sacrifices inspire you be “martyrs to life?” How will you honor their memory? What will you do in the coming year to bring meaning to their sacrifice?

When we honor our martyrs on Yom Kippur we stand up against hopelessness and fear. Yes, it is natural to be fearful in a world that sometimes feels as hard as crucible steel. But as long as there are survivors who will bear witness to the sacrifices of those who have gone before us, it seems to me, we do our part to keep their dreams of peace and justice alive.

I’d like to close now with a quote from a another contemporary martyr: El Salvador’s Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was murdered in 1980 for courageously promoting freedom and justice in his country. In the coming year and the years beyond, may we all prove ourselves worthy of his words:

Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity. It is right and it is duty.

And to that let us all say,

Amen.

photo by Rubin Starset for Laughing Squid

As I mentioned in my last post, JRC had the dubious honor of being demonstrated against on Rosh Hashanah eve by the hate-filled wackos from Westboro Baptist Church. In an e-mail to my congregation the day before, I urged members not to engage the protesters as I desperately wanted to avoid a circus on the eve of the holiest season of the Jewish year. I’m very happy to report that the pathetic demo proceeded without incident.

While I hesitate to give these publicity hounds more attention than they deserve, I couldn’t resist sharing this link sent to me by my friend (and new JRC member) Susan Klonsky. Apparently the Westboro folks recently traveled to San Francisco to demonstrate in front of Twitter headquarters and a local production of “Fiddler on the Roof.” (!!) Get a load of the hilariously absurdist counter-protest that greeted them there.

So what is the real issue here?  I don’t think it’s about sensitivity to individuals who may or may not be offended by this particular construction project. The real issue is really quite straightforward. The real issue, I believe, is the same as it ever was – and as Jews, it’s an issue we know all too well. Will America be a land of religious liberty for all or merely the few?

Click below to read the entire sermon:

I think many of us experienced something of a first last night.  I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that even the most seasoned High Holiday worshipers among us never had to to run a gauntlet of anti-semitic protesters outside Rosh Hashanah services before.

For those of you who didn’t have the pleasure of this experience, I’m very sorry to report that a small group from the Westboro Baptist Church spent their evening picketing in front of a variety of High Holiday venues in the area. Westboro is a notorious hate group led by a gentleman named Fred Phelps and is known for their incredibly noxious protests of everything to soldiers funerals, to Gay Pride rallies. Apparently they hate Jews as well – as their signs and their chants indicated. What can I say other than this is not how any of us expected to be greeted on the eve of our holiest season of the year?

As I mentioned last night, the one major ray of light in this whole sorry episode was the incredible amount of support, well-wishes and blessings that I received from faith leaders and colleagues literally from the moment the demonstration was announced. Last night, as we lit the holiday candles I was honored to invite my very dear friends and colleagues Father Cotton Fite and Imam Mailk Mujahid to share words with us from the bimah. We where also honored by the presence of Reverend Dean Francis, who serves here at First United Methodist, who was on hand to greet JRC members as they left services. It was a truly comforting reminder that JRC is part of a very, very special and supportive interfaith community.

I suppose some might say that the smaller consolation is that this group, Westboro, seems to be an equal opportunity offender. They seem to hate just about every group and religion under the sun. Their views are so off the charts extreme – and in many cases so patently bizarre –  that it’s actually not always clear what exactly they stand for except maybe the reverence of intolerance itself.

So yes, Westboro’s hate rhetoric is so grotesquely extreme, that we  might be tempted to dismiss them as a radical group of wackos. But of course it’s not that easy. They may been extreme in their views, but at the end of the day, prejudice is prejudice. And the sad truth is that this one group is really represent an exaggerated version of attitudes that have been ingrained in American life for centuries.

It’s an irony of American history that while the earliest colonists of our nation were fleeing from religious persecution, religious intolerance has been an indelible part of our national culture from the beginning. We Jews know this only too well, of course. While this country has provided an unprecedented haven for Jewish immigrants, we all know with the darker side of our national narrative: an abiding intolerance and hatred of minority groups – a familiar kind of ugliness that rears its head particularly during times of economic stress and hardship.

So yes, we shouldn’t dismiss the brand of hate spewed by clowns like Fred Phelps and the Westboro gang. But I would also suggest that it’s only an exaggerated version of something much more troubling: an intolerance that’s packaged in a more acceptable wrapper and peddled by so-called “mainstream” politicians and talk show hosts – popular demagogues who have a much, much larger constituency.

And so here we are today. We all know the signs. We’re living in a fearful post-9/11 national culture currently experiencing it’s worst economic downturn in generations.  We’re rolling headlong into the kind of era that’s historically been quite fertile for bigotry, scapegoating and hate-mongering. Only this time around, Islamophobia is now the racism of choice.

I know we’re all familiar with the uproar that’s been stirred up in our country over the building of an Islamic Community Center (known as Park51) two blocks away from Ground Zero. It’s a debate has given rise to deeply hateful and ignorant characterizations of Muslims and Islamic tradition – and much of it is coming from prominent political officials and public figures.

Newt Gingrich says that building this center two blocks from Ground Zero would be “like putting a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust Museum.”  A New York gubernatorial candidate says the center would constitute a threat to New Yorkers’ “personal security and safety.”  Leaders are sponsoring regular rallies at Ground Zero that sport signs such as: “”All I Need to Know About Islam, I Learned on 9/11.” And in Florida, as we all know, a pastor of a insignificant congregation is seeking publicity in the sickest way – and frankly the less said about him, the better…

These kinds of statements should ring warning bells for us as Jews – especially when they come from our elected officials. I’ve been proud to see that by and large, many prominent leaders and organizations in the Jewish community have supported Park51 against this basest form of prejudice.  But I have to say I was profoundly disappointed when the Anti-Defamation League, one of the most prominent Jewish organizations in the country, publicly came out in opposition to the project.

This is what the ADL said in its released statement:

Ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right.  In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain – unnecessarily – and that is not right.

Shortly after releasing this statement, the ADL’s director Abraham Foxman said this in an interview with the New York Times: “Survivors of the Holocaust are entitled to feelings that are irrational.” And referring to the loved ones of 9/11 victims, he said, “Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted.”

Foxman’s statement is actually incredibly revealing. In a way, I think we owe him a great debt, because though he didn’t intend to, I believe he illuminates the essential choice that lays before us all. What is our vision for this country? Do we live in a country that entitles certain citizens to positions that are irrational and bigoted?  Will we countenance bigotry and irrationality as long as it is not being directed toward us?

It’s also telling that Foxman and others like him essentially frame this as a thorny complicated issue between the rights of American Muslims and sensitivity to 9/11 survivors. I’d suggest it’s really not all that “complicated.” After all, 9/11 is a traumatic memory for all Americans. Americans of many faiths were murdered on that horrible day, including, yes, Muslims. The Americans of many faiths were among the first responders and volunteers who rescued victims, including, yes, Muslims. And the dead of 9/11 are mourned by Americans of many faiths, including, yes, Muslims.

And if the issue is about sensitivity to the people of Lower Manhattan, it’s important to point out that Muslims have been part of the social fabric of that area for decades. Muslims have long been been living, working and praying in these neighborhoods and there are already mosques quite close to Ground Zero. Indeed, most of the residents, shopkeepers and merchants of this area have no problem with the prospect of an Islamic community center in their backyard. The project was endorsed by its community board twenty-nine to one, and according to a recent poll a majority of Manhattan residents already support it.

So what is the real issue here?  I don’t think it’s about sensitivity to individuals who may or may not be offended by this particular construction project. The real issue is really quite straightforward. The real issue, I believe, is the same as it ever was – and as Jews, it’s an issue we know all too well. Will America be a land of religious liberty for all or merely the few?

In truth, America is by far the most religiously diverse country in the world – and this is something of which we should be enormously proud. With each wave of immigration has come a new piece of the national mosaic. And on the other side of the equation, as each group has made their home in America, their religions have also in a sense become “Americanized” in crucial ways.

Today, Islam is the fastest growing religious group in the country. According to a Pew Research Study released in 2007, there are currently 2.35 million Muslims living in the US. The study also found that Muslim Americans themselves are a highly diverse population but that they are decidedly American in their outlook, values and attitudes. This belief is reflected in their income and education levels, which generally mirror those of the American public. And perhaps most notably, the report found moreover that Muslim Americans reject Islamic extremism by significantly larger margins than do Muslim minorities in Western European countries

It should also be stated that Islamophobia is significantly worse in other countries where Muslims are a minority. There’s nothing like what we’re seeing in Europe, where France has banned the burqa and Switzerland has a new law against building minarets.

Indeed, most Muslims feel safer and freer in the US than anywhere else in the Western world.  And we’re beginning to see important signs of this: two American Muslims have been elected to Congress, and this year for the first time a Muslim was named Miss USA. Our country’s first Muslim college, Zaytuna College just formally opened its doors in Berkeley last month. The college’s motto is, tellingly, “Where Islam Meets America.”

But with all of this success, there are ominous signs that push-back and intolerance are growing – and many observers say was this even the case before 9/11. Since that day, there is an abiding sense among many – even among those who consider themselves liberal – that Muslims represent a kind of “fifth column” in our country. According to a more recent Pew study, less than a third of Americans hold a favorable view of Islam and about a third think Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence.

And so, I’d like to recommend a book to you. I read it shortly after the Lower Manhattan controversy began to erupt and I found it to be one of the most important and insightful books on religion in America that I’ve ever read. It’s called “What’s Right With Islam is What’s Right With America” and it was written by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf – the man behind the Park51 Islamic Cultural Center.

Imam Abdul Rauf is an adherent of Sufi Islam who was born in Kuwait and came to the US as a teenager in the 1960s.  Since that time has become a major figure in the American Muslim community as well as leader in interfaith dialogue in this country.  He is well known in the interfaith community for espousing the notion that the core values of Islam have much in common with the core values of American democracy.

This is, essentially, the thesis of his book. At the outset, he makes a claim that he admits might seem strange to some: that he considers America to be an “Islamic” country inasmuch as our government embodies the principles that Islamic law – or Shariah – requires of a government.

In his book, Imam Abdul Rauf painstakingly examines both Islamic law as well as American political tradition, and he makes the compelling argument that both traditions consider values such as civil rights, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, and the equality of women to be sacrosanct.  He goes on to say he believes these are core values shared by all faith traditions, including secular humanism.

He writes in his book:

We strive for a “New Cordoba,” a time when Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other faith traditions will live together in peace, enjoying a renewed vision of what the good society can look like. In this good society all religious voices are welcome and given maximum freedom, and no one religion (or even atheism) is allowed to inhibit another. Toward this dream we aspire.

This is the Imam who is currently being put through the ringer in our national discourse. This man – who publicly claims Islamic piety compels him to be a better American, an American Muslim leader who actively reaches out and dialogues with leaders other faith traditions, who goes on trips around the world sponsored by the State Department where he preaches the importance of moderate Islam – this is the man whose affiliations and loyalties are now being questioned, who ideas are being publicly distorted, whose Islamic community center is now called a “shrine to Al-Queda” by our public officials.

Although I am not a Muslim myself, I related a great deal to much of what the Imam had to say in his book. In particular, I deeply appreciated how he looks to America to make him a better Muslim and how he believes his Islamic faith makes him a better American. If this sounds vaguely familiar to some of you, this is, in fact, precisely what Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan sought to do a century ago when he founded Reconstructionist Judaism. Like Imam Abdul-Rauf, Rabbi Kaplan came to this country as a teenager. Living as a traditional Jew in modern America, Kaplan sought to create a Judaism that truly lived in consonance with values of democracy, pluralism, freedom of thought, and equal rights. Like him, Imam Abdul-Rauf has much to teach us all about what it means to be a religious American.

And so we would do well to ask: what exactly is our vision of this country? Will Americans continue to let fear to rule our attitudes toward Islam and other faiths, or will try to actively learn about and from one another – precisely because we are Americans?

I’d like to close with an excerpt from another book you should read. It’s called “A New Religious America.” It was written by Diana Eck, a scholar of Comparative Religion at Harvard University. I’d suggest that her vision of our national culture is profound and exceedingly important for us all:

She writes:

“We the people of the United States” now form the most profusely religious nation on earth. But many, if not most, Christian, Jewish, or secular Americans have never visited a mosque or a Hindu or Buddhist temple. Many Americans are not so sure what Sikhs or Muslims believe, let alone Jains and Zoroastrians. Similarly, Muslim or Hindu Americans may have a sketchy and stereotypical view of Christians and Jews. So where do we go from here? It’s one thing to be unconcerned about or ignorant of Muslim or Buddhist neighbors on the other side of the world, but when Buddhists are our next-door neighbors, when our children are best friends with Muslim classmates, when a Hindu is running for a seat on the school committee, all of us have a new vested interest in our neighbors, both as citizens and as people of faith.

As the new century dawns, we Americans are challenged to make good on the promise of religious freedom so basic to the very idea and image of America. Religious freedom has always given rise to religious diversity, and never has our diversity been more dramatic than it is today. This will require us to reclaim the deepest meaning of the very principles we cherish and to create a truly pluralist American society in which this great diversity is not simply tolerated but becomes the very source of our strength. But to do this, we will all need to know more than we do about one another and to listen for the new ways in which new Americans articulate the “we” and contribute to the sound and spirit of America.

Those of us who share this vision cannot dither on this question. There are too many in this country who are threatened by our increasing diversity. They are finding their voice and, yes, they are amassing political clout. If we agree our diversity is truly the source of our strength and not simply a fact to be tolerated, then we will need to find the courage of our convictions and we will need to act upon them. And the first step, as Diana Eck suggests, is to learn about and from one another.

I’ve always been proud that interfaith programming and learning has been a priority at JRC. It’s never felt so crucial to me than it does right now. I pledge to make this a priority. If we are truly committed to a pluralistic vision of this country, we will have to reach out to one another now more than ever.  And the coalitions we build will become increasingly more critical in the years ahead.

I’ll conclude with a verse from the Koran: “O people, We have created you from a male and a female and made you into races and tribes so that you may know each other.” This has always been our test. On Rosh Hashanah, we celebrate the birth of our world and the rebirth of our humanity. We affirm the divine image in all people and pledge to be worthy of it.  God has made us into peoples and tribes not so that we might build higher walls between us but so that we may truly know each other.

This is our test – let it be our blessing for this New Year.

Amen.

So here’s my question for this Rosh Hashanah: how will you leave the familiarity of your home in the coming year? In ways will you challenge your sense of comfort and complacency and find the strength to venture into unknown territory? To a place that holds out a promise, but no guarantees? For some of you, this coming year might be a time of a significant life transition: how might you mark this experience so that it offers you real potential for transformation and growth? For others, this year might be not all that different from the last. How will you challenge that comfortable sameness? What might you do to, in a sense to create a doorway that leads outward?

Click below to read the entire sermon:

Two years ago, I gave a sermon in which I discussed the spiritual theme of “coming home.” I’m sure you’ve all long since committed that sermon to memory, but just in case you need a little reminding: I began by commenting how strange it was that we never actually get to read about the Israelites’ entrance into the Promised Land in the Torah.

This is what I said:

When you think about it, the Torah really is the ultimate cliffhanger. It starts with the promise of coming home, it brings the nation to the threshold, then it rewinds right back to the beginning and starts all over again.

If you do want to read about the homecoming, of course, you can. That occurs in the sequel to the Torah – otherwise known as Nevi’im or Prophets. But you know what they say about sequels. It’s never, or almost never, as good as the original. The homecoming is actually quite a messy business. Nothing really goes according to plan, and things go downhill fairly quickly. Those who have read on in Nevi’im invariably understand why the Torah ends where it does – and why only these first five books are invariably considered to be our most sacred of writings.

The reason, I believe, is because Judaism has always found redemption not in the homecoming itself, but in the process of coming home.  And if you think about it, this makes perfect sense: if you understand the world in terms of sacred history, homecoming represents the end of history.  Once you arrive home, the story is over.  (Anyone who has seen “The Wizard of Oz” knows this to be true).

Well, it’s two years later and I’m here to tell you I’ve reconsidered things.  I’ve changed my mind.  Since giving that sermon, I’ve come to believe that there is another spiritual theme that is even more compelling, more essential than the experience of “coming home.”  And strangely enough, it’s actually the polar opposite: that’s right: it’s the experience of “leaving home.”

Now, I realize that this might sound odd or at least counter-intuitive. “Leaving home?” What’s so spiritually comforting about that? Isn’t home where we want to be?  Isn’t home the epitome of safety and security?  At the end of the day, don’t we all yearn to find our way back home?

Maybe so – but I would also argue that it’s the moment we leave home that the true spiritual transformation occurs. When we leave behind the comfortable and the familiar, when we choose to go beyond the safe and secure. The moment we decide we’re ready to risk everything we’ve ever known for that which only might be.

Actually, when you come to think of it, just about every classic story in the Torah involves individuals leaving home. And as a result of these moments, they are transformed in pretty fundamental ways.

The first leave-taking, of course, occurs when Adam and Eve are forced to depart from the Garden of Eden. And what does their departure represent?  I tend to believe that their exit from the Garden represents the moment in which they truly grow up. In Eden, they live a naive and childlike existence where they want for nothing. But when the eat of the fruit, when their eyes are opened to the truth of the world outside the Garden, they are transformed into adults, as it were.

Of course this transformation can only fully take place once they leave Eden and make their way in the world. And, yes one of the first lessons they learn is that the world is not a paradise. The world can be a difficult and challenging and harsh place. But on the other hand, unlike Eden, where each day is like the last, the real world is a dynamic place. A place of potential: where transformation, growth and change are always around the corner.

Another paradigmatic “leaving-home story” occurs when God comes to Abraham and Sarah and tells them to leave their father’s house in their native land of Ur-Kasdin and head out to a land that God will show them. It’s notable that God doesn’t immediately tell them where they will be going. And in truth, their final destination isn’t really all that important. It’s the act of leave-taking itself, the event in which they leave behind the known and the comfortable for nothing more than a promise – this is the moment that defines their spiritual transformation.

There are many, many more such moments. In tomorrow morning’s Torah portion, we’ll read a story in which Abraham casts his wife Hagar and his son Ishmael out of their home and into the wilderness, where they eventually experience a divine encounter and promise of their own. On the second day of Rosh Hashanah, God comes to Abraham in the middle of the night and commands him to leave his home the next morning with his son Isaac and sacrifice him on a mountaintop that God will show him.

Still later in the Torah, Jacob has flees from his home to escape the wrath of his twin brother Esau. As he encamps in the wilderness, God appears to him in a dream amidst a ladder of ascending and descending angels. In the book of Exodus, Moses has to leave his home in Egypt after killing an Egyptian slave master. Shortly after, he experiences a divine revelation – again in the wilderness – from the midst of a burning bush.

The most dramatic and epic leave-taking moment in the Torah of course, occurs when the Israelites leave Egypt. They escape, yes, into the wilderness – where God is revealed to them at Mt. Sinai. While it might seem strange to say Egypt was the Israelites’ “home,” one of the many lessons of this story is that we don’t always make our homes in the healthiest places.  As oppressive as it was, Egypt was indeed their home to during their enslavement.  In fact, the story indicates that they felt a little too much at home there. Just think about how reluctant they were were to leave – and how much they pined away for the comforts of Egypt during their wanderings.

One of the most powerful common denominators in these stories, as you have probably deduced by now, is that most of them involve leaving home and heading off into the wilderness. The wilderness, of course, represents the unknown, the uncharted, the place of potential danger – but, notably, that the wilderness is invariably the place where God is encountered. Interestingly, the word for “wilderness,” “midbar” and the Hebrew verb “to speak,” “l’daber” share a common root. The Torah may be suggesting here an important connection between the wilderness and speech – more precisely divine speech.

In other words, it’s only when we leave the comfort and familiarity of home and head into the elemental terrain of the wilderness, that we’re able to truly hear the voice of God.  In this regard, the wilderness represents an existential place far from the noise of culture, artifice and ego. The journey into the wilderness is not only geographic but experiential: it leads both to the outermost reaches of terrain and the innermost reaches of the human soul. This is the place, in short, where the Divine Presence dwells.

Another obvious common denominator between these stories is this: almost all of them involve a significant element of danger.  In many cases, leave-taking is a matter of life and death. Jacob runs away from home because his brother Esau seeks to kill him.  Moses escapes to Midian because Pharaoh wants him dead. Later, the Israelites will leave Egypt, and is immediately pursued by Pharaoh’s army.

So why are they all running for their lives?  My favorite explanation comes from the commentator Sylvia Boornstein, who writes:

They are running for their lives because without this kind of direct and mindful experience of our lives, it is as if we are dead. The bell continues to ring, but it is as if we are not there, as if we are not experiencing our lives, as if our lives are going on without us. So we see these biblical figures taking leave of a kind of living death. Entombed in habit and convention, they are dead to their lives. Taking leave, they are literally running for their lives – toward their lives – rushing toward on embrace of their actual present-tense experience. (From “Be Still And Get Going” by Alan Lew, p. 19)

In other words, while home and hearth might well represent comfort and tranquility to the traveler, once we reach home it invariably becomes a place we use to escape reality – a of place complacency, rather than comfort. And so, one way or another, we all have to leave home. We have no choice. If we don’t, our existence may well become a kind of living death. But when we find the strength and the courage to take a step beyond our front door, when we embrace the unknown terrain outside our front door, when we truly encounter the world – that’s when we truly live.

So what does this mean for us in realistically?  Obviously, most of us aren’t necessarily able to pack up, leave our homes and head out and go on a vision quest in the Kalahari.  Our existences feel so utterly wrapped up, so enmeshed in managing our complicated home lives. And now here’s your rabbi telling you that you have to leave your home in order to truly live?

The first thing I’d suggest is to think about this metaphor in existential terms. Whether we prefer to call it spiritual experience, inner growth, or personal transformation, we leave home whenever we depart from our comfort zones, when we leave the familiar and the known behind, and head out with no with no guarantees. Nothing but the promise – sometimes merely the hope of a promise – of a better future.

So no, we don’t need to pull a Kerouac to actually leave home. We just have to leave find a way to regularly challenge our sense of complacency, to resist what is safe and familiar –to welcome the unknown territory outside our door with openness and love.

In truth, we’re already doing this in a myriad of ways without even realizing it. For most of us in middle class America, the paradigmatic moment of leave-taking occurs when we graduate from high school.  This has, become in fact, one of the most central and profound rites of passage in our lives. We are all too familiar with the crazy mixed-up emotions that accompany this passage: joy, sadness, excitement, fear, elation, trepidation, mystery…

But when you think about it, when a child leaves home, it’s not only the child who is leaving home. In an experiential sense, the parents are leaving home as well. Just like their son or daughter, they are going through the very same process, traveling through the very same emotional terrain, only from the other side of the equation.

There are so many other examples of experiential leave taking in our lives. When we start a meaningful new relationship. When we start a new career. When we have a child. There are actually so many ways large and small in which we leave behind the familiar home we know and set out into uncharted waters. And in each case, these forms of “leave-taking offer us the opportunity for transformation: to face the truth of our lives and the reality of the world around us.

So here’s my question for this Rosh Hashanah: how will you leave the familiarity of your home in the coming year? In ways will you challenge your sense of comfort and complacency and find the strength to venture into unknown territory? To a place that holds out a promise, but no guarantees? For some of you, this coming year might be a time of a significant life transition: how might you mark this experience so that it offers you real potential for transformation and growth? For others, this year might be not all that different from the last. How will you challenge that comfortable sameness? What might you do to, in a sense to create a doorway that leads outward?

There are indeed ways we can consciously incorporate leave-taking into our lives. That is the essential function of worship and all forms of spiritual discipline, after all. Indeed, those who pray, practice yoga or meditate regularly – or even those who work out – will attest that these disciplines allow them to leave everyday consciousness behind and experience a deeper form of awareness – to dwell in the reality of the moment. We also know conclusively that these forms of spiritual discipline are not only important for our spiritual health, but for our physical well-being as well. So it turns out that we leave home in this way, we may quite literally be “running for our lives” after all.

Now I don’t mean to romanticize any of this for a second. Going forth is no easy matter. It’s not what you’d call “fun.” Going forth can often be brutal, especially when you are, so to speak “kicked out of the house.” It’s one thing to be an Abraham and a Sarah, bidden by God to set out on a spiritual odyssey with the promise that their family will become a great nation. It’s quite another to be thrown out and abandoned in the wilderness like Hagar and and Ishmael.

Pastorally speaking, I’d never dare for a second to suggest to someone who was going through this kind of pain that that’s actually an opportunity for a deeper spiritual life.  I’m also aware that it’s all well and good for me to rhapsodize about the spiritual importance of leaving home when the homelessness is such a very real issue for us around the world and in our own country. Believe me, I know it’s all well and good for those of us who actually have actual homes to wax romantic about the experience of leaving home.

But I will say this: those of us who are blessed with warm comfortable homes would well to realize that they are actually much more illusory than we are willing to admit – and that we dwell in them,  if you pardon the expression, “but for the grace of God…” I’d also suggest that the more we manage to leave the complacency of our comfortable homes, the more empathic we will become toward those who lack these kinds of blessings. I daresay the ones most likely to devote themselves to ending the injustice of homelessness, poverty and hunger are the ones who are willing to go beyond their comfort zones. The ones who with the courage to head deep into the wilderness and face up to the hard truths about our world.

It’s not a simple matter at all to leave that which we know for that which we don’t.  Living as we do in a middle class culture that venerates comfort and security, it might seem like a radical suggestion that we should leave it all behind.  But what is our our alternative?  Think about it. At the end of the day, we all have to leave home. Sooner or later, we all will have to leave what it is that we’ve come to know, cross over that threshold and greet the unknown.

It recently occurred to me that the most two basic aspects of life itself – namely, birth and death – are both essentially forms of leave taking.  In both cases – when we’re born and when we die – we leave the familiar comfort of the present for the uncomfortable unknown of the future.  In both cases, we resist leaving the comfort of our current “home” with everything in our being. But in both cases, staying home is simply not an option.

In so many ways, the High Holidays give us the opportunity to face up to these truths.  After all, Rosh Hashanah is the annual celebration of our rebirth. We leave the familiar home of a year that’s past, a year still resonant with memories, and prepare ourselves to enter a year that remains yet to unfold.

How do we do this? How do we reckon with the unknown territory of the year ahead? We proclaim as part of our liturgy:“Hayom harat olam!” “On this day the world is born!”  We call Rosh Hashanah the birthday of the world – which means that this the day in which we affirm that our own worlds can truly be created anew. Like newborns, we leave the home of the past and find the wherewithal to enter the wilderness of a new year.

Our liturgy and rituals over the next ten days will give us the opportunity to wrestle with the deepest, most element truths of our lives and our world. In the coming year some of us will live and some of us will die. How can we enter a new year with such radical uncertainty? We will come together. We will offer up prayers that express our most honest confessions and deepest longings. We will pray for a year of blessing. We will mourn those whom we’ve lost. And only then we will we be ready to take that step over the threshold of a year yet to come.

So here we are. Another new year has arrived. Another door has opened before us. The gates have opened wide. Let’s join hands, step forward, and walk through them together.