SERMON

MORNING OF YOM KIPPUR

2 OCTOBER 2006 - 10 TISHRI 5767

A ISRAEL ON MY MIND@

 

You may find this hard to believe, but before every sermon I write, I ask myself what, among anything I will say to the Jews in the pews, will make any difference in their lives. What will change for them? What will they take away from my sermon that they didn=t already know or realize or think of before? That=s for every week. Imagine the pressure for the High Holy Days, when there is an expectation that more people will be present than at any other time during the year! It=s not so much that there is a captive audience, although there is something to that as well. It is the possibility that I can have a positive impact on more people at one time than at almost any other occasion during the year. So I don=t want to squander that opportunity, any more than I want to waste your time.

 

The number of possible subject areas alone is mind-boggling: the Torah portions for the Holy Days, readings from the High Holy Day prayer book, overarching themes of the Holy Days themselves, something urgent in the news that affects us as Jews B all are full of potential, and they offer lots of good possibilities. I hope you will have noticed that I have tried to incorporate something from each of these general areas into the sermons I have already delivered this High Holy Day season. Even so, I harbor serious doubt that anything I have said will make much of a difference in your lives. Still, I don=t want to waste this opportunity.

 

So this morning I want to take a slightly different tack. This morning I want to get much more personal in the hope that by doing so, I will at least set an example for you to follow, even if you don=t learn anything new from what I have to say. This is consistent with my personal philosophy that I prefer that people do what I do, more than doing what I say they should do.

 

On the evening of Selichot, I tried to get a conversation going about ways in which we could transform our lives for the better. Because of the lateness of the hour and the lack of time, we really didn=t get very far, although we did get off to a good start. My reason for wanting to talk about transformation then B no surprise B was that the whole idea of the High Holy Days is that we can and should take any chance we can take to transform our lives from the comparatively complacent, comfortable lives that we live into lives that may well contain far less comfort, but will be far more fulfilling and productive in the long run. This goes along with my belief that it is not only part of my job to comfort the afflicted, but also to afflict the comfortable. It is really part of a rabbi=s job as a teacher-by-example to discomfort people enough that they will see the errors of their ways and change for the better.

 

I have often wondered whether or how effectively I was doing this, and as the Holy Days approached, the question kept impinging on my consciousness and it just wouldn=t go away. At the same time, I couldn=t figure out what to do about it, and that, too, kept gnawing at me.

Then in August I went back to Israel , the land of my greatest personal conflicts, confusions, questions, and conundrums, as well as the place of my greatest spiritual love affair. I have been waiting to tell you about this trip, and since this particular trip transformed my life in ways I never expected, I want to share some details of it with you today, and I want to be explicit about how transformative it was for me as a person, as a Jew, as a Zionist, as a rabbi, and as a human being as I can possibly be. I hope that by my so doing, you, too, will experience at least some of that transformation. At the same time, I hope that what I have to say this morning will tie up any loose ends from what I have said in the prior three sermons for these High Holy Days.

 

I want to tell you a story from this trip. The events of the story have changed my life, unexpectedly, deeply, profoundly and permanently.

 

Just before I left for Israel at the beginning of August to attend the World Pride conference in Jerusalem , I received an email from the Jerusalem office of Da=at Travel, the parent company of ARZA World Travel, the company with which I have often traveled to Israel , as well as to Central and Eastern Europe . The email from Da=at explained that, due to the war between Israel and Hizballah, the company had no customers at the moment. That meant that they had empty hotel rooms, empty tour buses, as well as idle drivers and guides. Things had come to a standstill for them. Their response, typical for them I might add, was to try to figure out what they could do to help out during this war, what niche they could fill. They realized that there were many people in the northern part of Israel who were unable to escape from the constant rocket and missile attacks on their communities simply because they were too poor, too ill, too old, too young, too new to the country, too whatever, to be able to get out of town to the south or to some other destination where they could sit out the conflict in safety.

 

The folks at Da=at determined that they could help by providing some Arega=im shel sheqet@, Amoments of tranquility@ by giving at least some of these people four-day, all-expense-paid Avacations@ in Jerusalem, including round trip bus transportation on their luxurious tour buses, at least two meals a day, housing in their hotels, and guided tours of Jerusalem provided by their own Hebrew-speaking tour guides. All of this was to be done at the expense of Da=at Travel, and their email had come to ask their previous clients if they would consider making a monetary contribution to help offset the company=s out-of-pocket expenses. Just as a side note: on just the first day of their effort alone, they filled seven tour buses with people from Kiryat Shemona B that=s almost 300 people B for their four-day junket to Jerusalem, out of harm=s way.

 

For me, the timing of the email was more than coincidental. It arrived the weekend before I was to leave for Israel . So I called the Da=at office in Jerusalem to speak with Ezra Korman, the company=s vice president and a tour leader whom I had gotten to know well through several tours we had been on together. I told Ezra that I was incredibly impressed with the astounding brilliance and generosity of their plan, and said that I would be arriving in Jerusalem the following Monday morning and wanted to know if there were anything else I could do, in addition to sending or bringing money, to help them in their efforts.

Ezra knew the original reason for my visit, the World Pride conference in Jerusalem , and he asked about potential conflicts with that. I told him that I thought that what Da=at was doing was far more important to me than a gay pride conference, so he began asking me some simple questions, like how good my spoken Hebrew was and whether I did any counseling in my job as a congregational rabbi. I told him that my spoken Hebrew was fair at best and that I did a modicum of counseling in my congregational work. He suggested that we talk when I got to Jerusalem .

 

I arrived in Israel at the airport in Tel Aviv at 5 a.m. on Monday, August 7^th. I checked in to my hotel in Jerusalem at 2 p.m. and was at the Da=at office by 2:30. I met there with Ezra and with Ya=akov Fried, President of Da=at and another wonderful friend, and with a third member of their staff whose name escapes me at the moment. We went into a private room to discuss my offer of help, and it was there that Ya=akov made a suggestion to me. He wanted to know if I would be interested in going up to the Lebanese border on one of their buses, along with their guide, to evacuate a bus load of people from the town of Nahariya, to ride with them and to try to get the evacuees to open up about their experience of living in bomb shelters non-stop for the last 34 days. In other words, I was being asked to serve as a counselor for people who had been through the worst imaginable stress, listening to them in a language I could hardly understood, dealing with the most traumatic events most of them had ever lived through. I wondered how I could possibly be of any real help under these circumstances, and I have to admit that there was also a moment of pause to ask myself why in the world I would want to put myself in harm=s way when it was not necessary to do so. At that moment I decided to go with my instinct, and I said yes, I would be very glad to go and to do whatever I could to help. (This was, by the way, after dropping off a check at their front desk for over $500 from my Discretionary Fund to help pay for the costs the company was incurring for this project.)

 

Ya=akov paused for what seemed like an eternity and then he took me by the shoulders and looked me directly in the eyes and said two things to me: AThis will be the bus ride from hell, you know,@ and then he said, AI think you are completely crazy B and I love you.@ And so it was that at 5 o=clock the next morning I was picked up at my hotel by a luxurious tour bus, heading off for an adventure whose outcome was anything but assured. I asked the driver, Shlomo B who spoke less than no English B why we had to leave at 5 a.m. He explained that he thought that the Hizballah had become unionized, since they seemed to stop their shelling at about 5 in the afternoon and resumed it most days at about 9 in the morning. If that were to hold true, he said, then by our leaving at 5 a.m. from Jerusalem , we could pick up our guide on the way, arrive in Nahariya by 8 a.m., load up the bus and be out of town before the shelling resumed at 9. I thought about it for a second and said that I thought this was a great plan. ABut what if they started shelling earlier?@ I asked, finally realizing what part of the bus ride from hell this time frame might include. Apparently Shlomo didn=t hear me, because he didn=t say anything.

 

We arrived in Nahariya right on schedule, especially since there was virtually no road traffic as we drove north, and especially at that early hour. We picked up our passengers and we listened as they pointed out houses that had been hit by Katyusha rockets as we drove out of town. They, themselves, were eerily quiet for the most part, seeming almost as if they were in shell shock. Once they were settled on the bus, the guide, Eli, introduced himself and Shlomo, and he also said that there was a visitor on the bus, a crazy American Reform rabbi who had wanted to come along for the ride to demonstrate his solidarity with the people of Israel, and who would be glad to meet anyone who wanted to say hello as we made our way back to Jerusalem. Some of the people looked at me and got that look on their faces that indicated their total disbelief that anyone, American or not, Rabbi or not, Reform or not, would want to get on a bus at 5 in the morning to drive into a war zone just to show solidarity. I have to admit that at that point I was thinking the same thing!

 

We got out of town quietly and quickly, turning on the bus= radio every hour on the hour to hear the news. And beginning at almost exactly nine o=clock, the news reports said that the shelling had resumed, not only hitting Nahariya, five kilometers south of the Lebanese border on the coast, but all across the northern third of Israel. Almost everyone remaining in the north of Israel was in bomb shelters by that time on that day. Life had come to a virtual standstill while everyone ran for cover and feared for their lives.

 

Meanwhile, on our bus, our guide causally mentioned to me that we needed to find a way to pass the time so that we would arrive back in Jerusalem no earlier than 2 p.m., since the people couldn=t get into their hotel rooms until then. He said he had an idea, then said that it wouldn=t work because it wasn=t in our budget. I asked him what the idea was, and he said that he thought the guests would love to see a new Israeli theme park called Mini Israel, a sort of Israel in miniature, modeled on the idea of Madurodam in Holland . But he said that the cost of admission would prevent us from going there.

 

I asked him how much it would cost, and he said he didn=t know, although he said it was more than they could afford as part of their trip. After I pressed him on it, he finally said he thought it would cost about $400 to get everyone on the bus into the park. I told him to head there, and that I would pay for it. At first he did a double take. Then he said that that was not why he had brought it up, and that there were other things we might do instead. When I insisted, he decided to call Ezra back at the Da=at office to tell him of our conversation, to see what Ezra would suggest. Ezra said definitely not, and that while my offer was very generous B way too generous, he said B it was absolutely unnecessary. He told Eli to thank me, but to tell me that it was out of the question, probably.

 

The next thing I know, Eli=s cell phone rings and it is Ezra. They talk in rapid fire Hebrew and have a few good laughs, Eli hands me the phone and Ezra explains what has taken place. Then, when Ezra and I are done talking, I hand the phone back to Eli, who takes the public address microphone for the tour bus and asks for everyone=s attention. Once he has their attention, he says: ALadies and gentlemen, I want to tell you a story. The title of the story is AAnashim tovim, Good Men.@ And he explains what has just happened. He tells them of his conversation with me and of my offer to pay for everyone=s admission to Mini Israel, and they applaud enthusiastically. Then he says that the folks at Da=at had nixed the idea because it was too expensive. That news was met with the predictable sigh of disappointment. And then Eli explained that his boss, Ezra, upon hearing of my offer, decided to call the owner of the theme park, a man apparently not known for his generosity, who had said that a family displaced by the war in the north could get free admission to the park, but he had never intended to admit whole busloads. But now Ezra had explained to him that there was this crazy American Reform rabbi riding up and back on the bus to Nahariya, who, seeing the plight of these people and risking his own life to be with them, wanted to do whatever he could to make their very difficult existence just a little more pleasant, had offered to pay for every one of them to get into the park. So the park owner said that because of this crazy man=s generous offer, he would gladly welcome the entire busload for free!

 

As you can imagine, the bus erupted into cheers. I was appropriately embarrassed, but thrilled nevertheless because we had achieved what we wanted in wonderful ways we had never expected. And so we drove on to Mini Israel with the bus all abuzz. In the midst of all of this, one of the older guests had begun circulating around the bus. I hadn=t paid much attention to her at the time, but when we got to Mini Israel, I realized what had happened. You see, none of these people spoke any English, so everything that had transpired so far had taken place in Hebrew. But as we got off the bus at Mini Israel, every one of the passengers stopped by my seat, shook my hand, looked me right in the eye, and said in perfect English, AThank you so very much.@ Apparently this older woman had gone from seat to seat, teaching everyone how to say in English, AThank you so very much.@

 

I was speechless, as moved to tears then as I am now, by what had just taken place. I realized how much it had meant to these Arefugees@ to have someone literally stand with them in their time of trial, to make a generous offer to complete strangers (even though I ended up never having to pay a shekel for any of it!). I began to realize what this meant to them, what it meant to me, and what it had meant to the people from Da=at Travel who saw what good their own efforts had started.

 

It was there and then that I realized that my life had just changed in ways I could only begin to imagine. And it is now that I want to tie the previous three sermons from these Holy Days to this one so you can see where I have been coming from, and why I think it is important for you to try to make the same journey.

 

On the evening of Rosh Hashanah I asked what persons or things in your life and world you were most loyal to, and what, if push came to shove, you would be willing to sacrifice your life for. The next morning I scolded you because I said I believed that we had, both as individuals and as a society, lost our sense of empathy and compassion, and I wanted to make sure you understood how important it is that we try to regain both of these things. And then last night I spoke about accountability, about holding not only other people and institutions accountable for their actions, but about holding ourselves accountable as well. And that brings me to this morning.

 

Among other things, I am a Jew. That makes me Aother@ in at least one sense. And while I am Aother@ in other senses as well, I realize that my connection to Israel in my capacity as a Jew, whether I even want it to be or not, defines me as other in ways I have never fully understood until now. But now, as I begin to understand how it all fits together, I want you to understand as well. I am a Jew who was connected to those Israelis in ways we may never understand, but we all understood that we were connected simply because we were Jews. And simply because we were Jews, we had obligations to one another that we might never have considered, had circumstances not forced us to do so. What I came to understand was that I am connected to Jews wherever they are, whatever their circumstances. That might help to explain why I made such a commitment to help Ukrainian Jews a few years ago, a commitment of dollars that I will be fulfilling for another five years at least, hopefully with your help. And it also explained why I have been so supportive of MAZON, of the New Israel Fund, and of American Jewish World Service, just to name a few because, whether I like it or not, and whether I ever intended it or not, I have completely integrated into my being the idea that Akol Yisrael areivim zeh ba-zeh@, all Jews are interdependent on one another.

 

Second, that bus ride to Nahariya and back seared into my memory what came back to me on the morning of Rosh Hashanah. While I could have sat in my hotel room in Jerusalem or gone to conference meetings there, instead I forced myself to experience the pain of others, at great personal risk, because I believe that I cannot afford, that we cannot afford, to be armchair philosophers and philanthropists. I have learned that I am, that we are, inextricably linked together as a community, whether we like it or not, whether we realize it or not, and that we absolutely, unequivocally must be aware of and sensitive to the pain of those in our community and beyond B and do something about it to the extent that we can.

 

And finally, we cannot excuse ourselves from this awareness and involvement for any reason whatsoever. However and whenever it happens, we will all be called to account. Since I believe with every fiber of my being that this will happen, I think we should busy ourselves with doing the kinds of things that will tip the scales in our favor whenever that time comes.

 

So I have one suggestion at the moment, with more to come, I=m sure. Some of you may know that, as a result of our very successful MIN@TI program earlier this year, we have scheduled an interfaith trip to Israel in November of 2007 with the four Catholic parishes of Alameda . But after my experience in August, I have determined that I need to get back to Israel much sooner than that, just because my heart and instinct tell me that that is where I need to be. So I am announcing this morning that I will be leading a short, nine-day trip to Israel this coming March, leaving on March 11^th. For those of you who have any interest in experiencing the kinds of inspiration that Israel provides for me every time I go, please come with me. I don=t have room for very many people, maybe twenty at most, and it is not as complete or as expensive a trip as the two-week trip planned for a year from November. But if you have looked for an inexpensive trip that will still knock your socks off and will not put you in harm=s way, please pick up a flyer from me about it at your earliest convenience.