Sermon: Rosh Hashanah 2^nd Day

“The Spiritual Meaning of Israel – For American Jews”

Metuchen 2009/5770

Rabbi Gerald L. Zelizer

It happened in 1983, 1998 and a few weeks ago. On those three occasions it was my privilege to escort a bus load of congregants from Neve Shalom to explain and introduce them to the State of Israel. The first time I did that in 1983, people like Susy Schwartz – whose name is memorialized in our yearly concert and endowment fund for youth – accompanied me with her husband for her first visit. After the grueling flight over, I recall telling the group to get some rest in our hotel in Jerusalem. I myself had to leave the hotel to do some errands in preparation for the next day. Lo and behold in the street I met Susy and her husband, too excited to rest, eyes wide open in their first visit. The same happened to me with others from this congregation in 1998 and again two weeks ago, with those who were all first time visitors. In 1983, 1998, and again in August, some choked up as they stepped for the first time onto the sacred ground of the State of Israel. Or as one of our teen-age travelers remarked to me in the intense summer heat of Eretz Yisrael, “It’s so hot, but it’s so cool.” And what of your rabbi after a lifetime of visits, maybe twenty-five to thirty? Was I hardened to the first step onto Israeli soil at Ben Gurion Airport, or my first glimpse at the ascent into Jerusalem, the Golden City? You bet I was not. I too choked up yet again

I am painfully aware that the lump in my throat and theirs may be generational. A recent report by researcher Professor Stephen Cohen confirmed what we suspected. Young American Jews, with the exception of the Orthodox, do not care much about Israel. More than half the Jews under thirty would not view its destruction as a personal tragedy. Among the rest of the young, only fifty-four percent professed to be comfortable with the idea of the Jewish State at all. After all, who wants to be thought of as a sympathizer with apartheid?

Classic words written and sung by Bob Dylan in 1983 still ring true today. The song is called “Neighborhood Bully.” Some excerpts go like this:

Well, the neighborhood bully, he’s just one man,

His enemies say he’s on their land.

They got him outnumbered about a million to one,

He got no place to escape to, no place to run.

He’s the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully just lives to survive.

He’s criticized and condemned for being alive.

He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin.

He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.

He’s the neighborhood bully.

He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth,

Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health.

He’s the neighborhood bully.

What’s anybody indebted to him for?

Nothin’, they say.

He just likes to cause war.

What has he done to wear so many scars?

Does he change the course of rivers?

Does he pollute the moon and stars?

Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill,

Running out the clock, time standing still,

Neighborhood bully.

I would like to talk to you today about Israel in non-conventional way. I do not want to defend its presence in the Mid-East, or its politics vis-à-vis Arabs and Palestinians. Bob Dylan has done that lyrically better than I could. I would rather avoid the political and military arguments. I want to avoid preaching to the choir (they’re in the other room anyway!) because I know that you have already read and heard much about the political, military, and technological aspects of Israel. I referred to the Gladstone report prior to the prayer for Israel yesterday. I would rather speak to you about something that you don’t often hear about – the spiritual aspect of Israel. That was the over all theme I illustrated with the 40 plus congregants who I escorted to Israel this summer. What does Israel mean religiously and spiritually to us? I mean “What should it mean to us?” Those of us who are not black hatters and fundamentalists? If I can illustrate that spiritual dimension this morning, I will fulfill my mission. If in doing that, I can convince you to visit, or revisit Israel, or think about Israel in a new way. I shall be satisfied.

Our prayers after all speak of the spiritual meaning of Israel to us. Each day we recite Psalm 20 “YANCHA ADONAI B’YOM TZARA, V’SHALACH EZR’CHA MEKODESH, U’METZION YISADECHA” – “May the Almighty send help from the sanctuary and grant you support from Zion.”

The State of Israel represents the spiritual affirmation of life over death. That, by the way is the affirmation at the heart of all religions. Affirming life over death is obviously the core of Christianity in their belief in Jesus, the Messiah, and the Resurrection. But it is also at the heart of Judaism. That is why we recite in the HH Amidah “ZACHRENU L’CHAYIM” – “remember us for life.” That is the central theme of the Hallel prayer that we pray on the festivals of Sukkot, Pesach and Shavuot. “LO AMUT,KI ECHYEH A’ASAPER MAASEI YAH” – “I shall not die, but live to tell the deeds of the Lord.” – “YASOR YISRANI YAH, V’LAMAVET LO NETATANEE” – “The Lord chasened me but did abandon me to death.” That, after all, is the central theme of the Akedah which we read on this Second Day of Rosh Hashanah. Isaac is rescued to life from death.

That Israel represents the affirmation of life over death is conveyed by a story from the Shoah. We all know that in 1944 in the final stages of the war the Nazis were obsessed with finishing off the Jews even though Germany by then was losing the war. In that summer ten thousand Jews were sent daily to Auschwitz. The Nazis passion to kill Jews was so powerful that they were willing to take from their own ammunition transports needed for the war to kill Jews. Eventually, they found gas, as we all know. What we may not know is that as gas supplies in turn became scarce, the Nazis cut the gas in half. This lengthened the time for each Jew to choke to death from three to seven minutes, to fifteen to twenty minutes. Eventually, according to testimony at the Nurenbourg trials, in order to save more gas they ordered that children be thrown alive into a pit near the crematorium without being gassed. Testimony from the Russian prosecutor at Nuremberg: “Now am I to understand this, that they threw them into the fire or did they kill them first?” Witness: “They threw them in alive. Their screams could be heard in the camp.” Russian prosecutor: “Why did they do this?” Witness: “It is very difficult to say. We don’t know whether they wanted to economize on gas, or it was because there was not enough room in the gas chambers.”

So what is meant by “economize on gas”? The three companies that produced Z or B gas in 1944 paid 100-200 percent dividends between 1942 and 1944. The cost, allowing for inflation, the equivalent of killing one Jew came out to 2/5 of one cent per person. In the summer of 1944 this means, Jewish children were not worth 2/5 of one cent to put them out of their misery.

I do not share this ugly fact to shock or upset you. I share it to raise a theological question. What can one say theologically about God in the face of such reality? The answer - There is no adequate theological response. The only response is mitzvah, the creation of life after the death of the gas chambers. Consider. Is it accidental that the DP camps after the war had the second highest birth rate in the world?

A further illustration of this affirmation of life over death is a story shared with me by someone in Israel this summer. When surviving children arrived in Israel at the end of World War II, many couldn’t believe they would have food, even though assured they would. But because of their experience they smuggled food from the dining room and hid it. They buried the food in places in Israel no one would know. They were well fed, and eventually forgot about the buried food. This created a serious mice problem in Israel for years after 1948. That is the modern religious significance in Israel – the triumph of life over death.

But - Holocaust illustrations – as powerful as they are – are several lifetimes away now. The young here may consider the mice illustration to be quaint but ancient. So let me tell you how that same process of life asserting itself over death continues in 2009 Israel in concrete ways. Let me relate to you one example we saw this summer which could be multiplied many times. In this country we are currently in an intense and fractious debate over the issue of universal medical coverage. President Obama, Congress and American citizens balance the humanitarian need versus the practical cost of universal coverage. We have all read horror stories, especially in this economy, of people who must cut corners by eliminating necessary medical attention and equipment in their lives. Some break up pills prescribed by their doctor to make them last longer. Others must hobble through the day because they cannot afford a wheel chair or prosthesis. Insurance will not cover it or they do not have insurance.

Prior to the High Holy Days I was on a conference call with one thousand rabbis together with President Obama. The president urged us to speak on Rosh Hashanah about the morality of the healthcare dilemma in this country. I listened to him, but decided not to because I would rather contrast that challenge and dilemma in this country with the fact that such a dilemma and challenge does not exist in the State of Israel. The unacceptability of people here being unable to afford a wheel chair or a prosthesis is not an issue in the State of Israel largely because of an organization called Yad Sarah.

I escorted our group to visit Yad Sarah. Yad Sarah is a unique, community based non-profit organization now 30 years old. Its goal is to provide physical and emotional resources to the ill, especially those recuperating, to prevent the need to return to the hospital. How does Yad Sarah help? By lending a cost free host of medical equipment – canes, wheel chairs, day care for the elderly, dental choices, personal alarm equipment for the elderly; fitness centers for people with special needs; geriatric dental clinics; quality home care, themselves to patients on their discharge from hospitals, one on one, to see them through the stages of recovery. It accomplishes all this with good trained volunteers and a small paid staff. Yad Sarah provides oxygen services and special equipment, transportation for people in wheel chairs, and other medical equipment. Their outposts are throughout the country. Trucks and ambulances carry the Yad Sarah logo. Where does their budget originate? Seventy percent is donated. (Over one and a half million dollars of that budget was lost in the Madoff theft.) Yad Sarah is not just a medical outlet which fills in many of medical holes that we suffer in this richer country. It is a religious enterprise, because in concrete terms (from the Hallel) -- it is the affirmation of life over death in concrete terms.

The second religious meaning of the State of Israel is the following. Rabbi YitZ Greenberg has pointed out that Israel is living testimony that whatever we do as Jews in this world will not be done as members of a universal humankind, but as members of a very particular state and particular people. I know that many of us have trouble accepting that statement. Down deep we want to believe that universalism is the higher value. We want to believe that participating in the world will feed our particular Jewishness, rather than our unique Jewishness triggering our participation in the world.

The hard fact is that the Shoah was the end of Jewish universalism; The State of Israel is the return concretely to Jewish particularism. We all know now the grim record of the allies bombing factories near Auschwitz, the same Auschwitz where twelve thousand Jews per day were being stuffed into gas chambers, but refusing to fly an extra twenty miles to bomb the concentration camps. We know now that the belief of Roosevelt was that a war which was won for democracy and all humankind, would also save the Jews, rather than the reverse. We all know now that the Germans took this refusal as a quiet signal that particular Jews were not so important to universal mankind.

Indeed today is “HAYOM HARAT OLAM” – “Today is the birthday of the whole world.” And there is a universal aspect to Rosh Hashanah. But let me remind you that the shofar which we blow today which triggers that universal sound, is narrow at the bottom and wide at the top. That is, the universal clarion call of the world’s birthday begins with the narrow particular blast of our people. I recall in one of my earlier visits being at the Jerusalem Museum and seeing a display by an artist of vary humorous household object; for example a telephone with two speakers at either end for the person who likes to talk but not listen; a water spigot with three faucets so that families did not have to argue over who could use the sink in the bathroom. I was entertained and laughed with others at the visual display. But then I wondered: “What was so Jewish about it?” The same display could well have been seen in New York or London. But the truth occurred to me – that even such universal humor is refracted through a Jewish lens. If we Jews try to do these things as members of one universal race we are lost. If we try to do it as members of our own State and our own people then we contribute to the universal club through our Jewish department. For those especially the young among us, who resist this narrow particularism, I ask you to compare it to the analogy of your family on your street. Indeed you participate in your neighborhood. But you do not do that by choking off your particular home and family. It is your singular family which contributes to the larger mosaic of your neighborhood.

I want to close with a life story shared with me by a reporter from a local Jewish newspaper. While a teen-ager, her mother was reluctant to allow her to travel to Israel, fearing her safety. Additionally, her father died at a young age so the mother was reluctant to separate from her daughter. So she did not visit, and reasoned that she would make up for it as an adult. As an adult, she suffered serious back injury which prevents her traveling long distances on airplanes. She has not and cannot visit Israel.

Now, her own daughters, 11 and 12, are very much agitating to visit Israel. The reporter told me: “I will arrange for them to visit while still teen-agers, because I learned in my life how an open door can shut unexpectedly.”

If you have not, visit Israel. Even if you have visited, revisit Israel with your children or grandchildren. It’s not just the political. It’s the spiritual too.