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Shabbat Shemot - January 12, 2007
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I wish I knew their names. But their faces, I can't get out of my mind. I am thinking of the service men and women with whom my family and I shared the airport on our way out of town on December 17th. December 17th was the day hundreds of lucky soldiers were released for the holidays to celebrate and savor some precious moments with their families and friends. There was the young woman in camouflage fatigues, a large backpack of gear heavy on her back forcing her to walk slight bent over. Her arms were cradling a teddy bear she had dressed in camouflage matching her own. There were mostly young men, all clean shaven, some brawny and confident, others less physically imposing, with the remnants of youthful acne dotting their faces. As each one passed I wondered, are you frightened? In the hubbub of the airport, the sergeants still barked orders to their charges, commanding them to travel in their uniforms and behave themselves. It didn't take a corporal to figure out that the "or else" was implied.
At that moment, it didn't feel right to me to be going on vacation, to "get away from it all" when all of these kids were bearing a much weightier load. It could very well be the last time they shared Christmas with their families. It could very well be the last time they hugged their newborn. Talk of troop escalation already thickened the air. After a brief respite, they'd be returning to active duty, in one way or another. As tempting as it was, I didn't avert my eyes from these young men and young women at the airport. Instead, I made a silent promise to the soldiers. I didn't know their names, and probably never would. But now I knew them and I would remember them.
I also can't shake from my mind Rabbi Kushner's message from his visit with us last Shabbat. What stuck with me most about what he said is that we can live understanding the world operates randomly, and that blessed coincidences as well as cursed circumstances are meaningless. God doesn't cause the cancer, but also doesn't help to lead us to our beshert, our soul mates. Or we can choose to notice the invisible lines of connection between events, relationships and experiences, the good and the terrible ones side by side.
And sometimes when we are able to connect the dots between things we once thought to be completely unrelated, it is possible to encounter the sacred, the holy and awesome God.
So follow these threads with me for a moment, as I try to put together a few lines of connection, and tease out a possible message. We began with my silent promise to the troops on December 17th. Fast forward to Monday night of this past week. Dr. Arnold Eisen, Chancellor-elect of the Jewish Theological Seminary, the educating institution of the Conservative movement, spoke in town about the future of American Judaism. I make a quick change of plan for the evening and invited my Post-Confirmation class to join me at his lecture. I felt I needed to hear what he had to say, after all, I would like to be part of the future of American Judaism. Twelve of our Temple's young people and I listened as Dr. Eisen, not a rabbi himself but a professor of Jewish thought and sociology, enumerated eventualities of our age and the next 20 years- the explosion of terrorism in our own country, the impending disasters climate change will cause, the potential for a severe economic downturn and how that would devastate Jewish institutions, the fact that today only about 30% of American Jews say they value Israel and what that bodes for the future, and finally the prospect of Israel's and America's interests diverging, weakening what has always been a strong supportive relationship, and where that puts diaspora and Israeli Jewry.
Dr. Eisen's response: for the next twenty years while the Jewish community has the resources and ability, we need to redouble our efforts to make more learned Jews. I left the talk fortified in my identity as a Reform Jew, glad Dr Eisen gave me a great opening to inspire my High School students about the distinctive voice of their own movement of Judaism. You see, Reform Judaism doesn't understand "eventualities." Instead, Reform Judaism is messianic in that it sees every person as potential agents for transforming in the world in ways God intended. Great social change and advances, most notable the civil rights movement in this country, was inspired by the work of leaders of Reform Judaism in our past. And from the looks of it after Dr. Eisen's talk, I was now sure would have to come from Reform leaders in the future. And that is precisely because Reform Judaism has never been a movement about making more Jews so that the world has Jews.
Instead our movement has been the champion of finding in the ancient wisdom of Jewish tradition a message the world needs to address its challenges. That is why on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, the message from this pulpit wasn't about being a better Jew, coming to services more next year, observing Shabbat more regularly, learning Hebrew. The message from this pulpit was that our tradition teaches us to treat God's world in ways that are sustainable. And if each one of us contributes to the problem of climate change, each one of us is responsible for "being the change we want to see in the world" and advocating for our society to do so as well. The mandate of Reform Jewish life is to assist, sometimes arms linked with those of other like minded faith communities, to help our country and our world face its challenges, with strength, dignity and faith, but also with moral fortitude and ethical leadership.
Tuesday morning, my bubble burst slightly as I opened an email announcing that the 140 member Jewish Renewal movement became the first of the Jewish group to make a public resolution against escalating the troops, and urging a firm military timetable for leaving Iraq.
Suddenly, I was brought back to my promise to the troops and felt that it should have been us, the Reform movement. Why isn't it us?
Wednesday night, President Bush unveils his new plan. Even as he says it is so, there is nothing new about sending in more troops. We tried a surge of 20,000 more soldiers in early 2004, another similar escalation in the fall of 2005, and a smaller infusion of troops in the summer of 2006. Listening to the President, I grieved about how the vision of success once was for helping to create a democratic Iraq which would be the blueprint for transforming totalitarian regimes all over the Middle East. Now it is circumscribed to the smallest of goals, subduing Baghdad. And I remembered the soldiers faces again, and the three thousand others who have already died and my promise. In the interim, I learned a little more about the soldiers and what they might have been thinking when they had the chance to really think for themselves that chilly December 17th morning. A recent Military Times poll found that more troops disapprove of the President's handling of the war than approve of it. And only roughly half of the troops believe that success in Iraq is likely.
Naturally they'd think so, seeing more casualties and fatalities and little progress on the mission they set out to accomplish.
So now, Shabbat has come, and I am acting on my promise and I am choosing to see the invisible lines of connection speaking a profoundly important message. First, just as I brushed up ever so slightly against the lives of those soldiers at the airport, tonight, in this sharing, I hope you will consider that you have, too. Make them a silent promise that you will remember them, somehow, in your own way. Second, understand that as a Reform Jew, you need more than ever to do what we do best: not to be silent. Whatever you think about the war, about those troops, make it heard by those who represent you. Call your representative in Congress like I did this week and speak with passion on behalf of them and our country. We cannot simply allow ourselves to be led any further by those who keep saying that we are in a no-win situation, there are no alternatives. It is not and never will be noble to sacrifice lives because we believe there are no alternatives.
The time is now, especially with new leadership in Congress, to figure out something together which is noble, for our country and for the future of the Middle East, and redesign our actions from that place of nobility.
And finally, one last, irresistible thread I cannot leave hanging here are these words: "This business of ...filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." These are the forty year old words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who spoke at Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination. Can it be part of the divine design that forty year old words of a Baptist preacher, echoes of another place and time, should be heard and heeded tonight from this Reform Jewish bima, this weekend, even as our country commemorates Dr. King's life and memory? My answer, as uncharacteristically mystical and irrational, but as Jewish as it is, is a resounding yes.
Rabbi Batsheva Meiri
