Yom Kippur Sermon 5776-2015 TRADITION: The Values Necessary to Navigate Modernity Rabbi Stewart L. Vogel On Rosh Hashanah, when I spoke about confronting our discomfort with change, I concluded with a midrash about Moses ascending to heaven [to receive the Torah] and he found God sitting finishing the Torah by fashioning the crowns that adorn many of the letters. Moses said to God: "Master of the world, who requires you [to do this]?" [God] replied: "There is a person who will come to be after many generations, called Akiva ben Yosef; he will one day expound heaps upon heaps of laws from each and every crown." Moses said to God: "Master of the world, show him to me." God replied: "Turn around." He turned around, and in a Twilight Zone-like moment, found himself in the Talmudic Academy with Rabbi Akiva expounding on some legal issue. Moses did not understand the discussion and was confused. When Rabbi Akiva came to a certain point, his students asked him "How do you know this?" Akiva replied, "[This is] a law [given] to Moses from Sinai." On Rosh Hashanah I used this midrash as an example to support change. The midrash goes on to tell us that Moses was comforted when Rabbi Akiva quoted the law in his name, even though Moses had no idea what he was talking about. I suggested that Moses felt comfortable because he knew that change was inevitable and that Jewish law would evolve to accommodate those changes. On Rosh Hashana I challenged all of us to confront our discomfort when faced with social changes. I didn't tell you when you had to accept change, only that you had to confront it and the need to decide for yourself whether your discomfort was simply that, or whether it reflected a reasonable opposition. I want to suggest that another take-away from the midrash is the importance of tradition. Rabbi Akiva drew on tradition to make his changes in Jewish law. Remember the midrash? God told Moses that it would be Rabbi Akiva who would interpret the artistic crowns on each of the letters of the Torah into new laws. For the midrash, all of the changes that Rabbi Akiva would make were drawn from tradition. Today, rather than focus on navigating change, I want to talk about how tradition serves as our balance for change and how change cannot be considered in a vacuum. How many of you have relatives who came to this country from the shtetls of Eastern Europe? The Conservative movement was founded in the United States in the late 1800's as an alternative to Reform Judaism because it held on to the idea of Jewish law. At a time 1
when Reform Judaism was responding to modernity by discarding all the elements of traditional Judaism, like brit milah, kashrut, and the ritual objects of kippah and tallit, which smacked of a primitive religion, the early leaders of Conservative Judaism wanted to conserve these traditions. The Reform movement is very different today, but then it responded to the challenge of modernity by embracing it fully at the expense of tradition. The Conservative movement, in response to this approach, embraced the tradition and tried to confront modernity by making the tradition relevant. This approach is probably best understood by the unofficial motto of the movement "Tradition and Change." I want to suggest that the way in which all of us must approach the changing world that I discussed on Rosh Hashana, lies in the tension between tradition and change. But the dynamic of the tradition-change tension has reversed over time. A century ago, the concern was how to make modernity relevant to an ancient tradition, today the concern is how to make tradition relevant to modernity. In the last century the scales have tipped for many, to a preference for modernity that sees no value in tradition. What many people do not understand is the importance of reflecting on modernity through the prism of traditional values. What are traditional values? I want to look at some values that will help us evaluate how we confront the changing social values around us. Notice how the word values and evaluate share the same etymological root. Values are supposed to help us evaluate our lives. In some cases you may not feel that these are values, but I will hopefully be able to prove otherwise. Pay for things with cash - while this term has come to mean, for some, paying for things with undeclared income, at one time it meant, only purchase things you could afford. For many of our families this is one of the hardest values to teach...and to live by. We live in a world that has made it so easy to spend money. First it was credit cards so you could spend money you didn't have. How many offers do you get a week for a credit card? Most egregious, are the credit card companies who prey on the college students. What college student wouldn't want a credit card that promises low initial interest charges to help finance their college entertainment budget? I remember a time when cash was the only option for immediate money, because so many businesses wouldn't take checks or even credit cards, and people would say, "sorry I can't buy that until tomorrow when I can go to the bank." Then came ATM machines so we could have access to our money any time. Then it was debit cards so we didn't even have to go to the ATM machine. Now we didn't even have to take the cards out of our wallet. We simply have to touch our wallet to something. We even have an app to send money to anyone we want. 2
We have gotten to the stage where spending money is like using monopoly money or gambling chips in Las Vegas...it is not real money. So, how do we teach ourselves to live within our means? This is not simply sound economic advice, it reflects important values of living modestly and how we address our future. Such a value requires us to take responsibility for how we live our lives now and not how we idealistically feel about our future. This value is reflected in the Jewish teaching from The Ethics of the Fathers, "ayzo hu ashir, ha'smaeach b'khelko- Who is rich? The one who is content with his lot in life." This doesn't mean that we can't have aspirations and ambitions for a better life, it simply means we must embrace our life as it stands today. The essence of "pay for things with cash" is the idea that we are satisfied with what we currently have in life, while striving for a better future. Family comes first - this value not only impacts the time in which we dedicate to family, but the way in which we treat them. For a generation now, many families have believed that their children are better off by maximizing the number of experiences they provide their children. Adults have been evaluating their worth by how busy they are; now their children are evaluated according to the same standards. It is the age of individual achievement over the value of the collective. How have we suffered? Family dinners are almost extinct. Minivans have become the dining room and fast-food the family cuisine. Dinner time used to be a family's daily check-in time. In many Jewish homes, chaos prevailed because everyone wanted to talk at the same time. And for homes in which awkward silence motivated attempts to find meaningful topics, cell phones are now easy alternatives. This is nothing new for us, so what else does the value "family comes first" teach us?" When dealing with parents and grandparents, it means finding time for them. Just because a senior adult is in an independent living or assisted living facility doesn't mean they don't need family. Time is our most precious commodity; when we give it to others, it is the most precious gift of all. Family comes first also teaches us the value of mutual respect. We sit with each other, but we are not with each other. We are distracted by texting and social media. We must learn not to take the relationships for granted. When family comes first we learn values like the importance of compromising. You may not get your favorite food at home or go to your favorite restaurant, because there are other people involved in this equation. Compromise is an important value because it allows us to share with other people. Watching television requires compromise on what to watch. Instead, most family members simply head to different televisions in the house. Compromise teaches us that perhaps not all of our needs can be met when sharing life with others, perhaps we can even learn about putting other's first. 3
Modernity focuses on the individual. When our lives become more about personal achievements than caring for the collective, we have lost our traditional values. These are the values that help us confront the challenges of modernity. Another traditional value that we have held dear is respect for elders. This includes, parents, seniors and teachers. Many parents teach their children that respect must be earned...that it is not automatic. It is true that a number of people in authority have misused that authority and hurt people for whom they should have been protecting. I prefer to abide by the rule that rather than being earned, respect can be lost. Instead, modernity teaches us to look at people with suspicion and to question authority...all authority. I remember a number of years ago hearing about a parent in our nursery school, who told her child in front of the teacher, "if you want a snack or a drink from your lunch bag and the teacher says 'it is not time' you don't have to listen to her." What have we taught a generation, when we question decisions by teachers or other people in authority simply because we didn't like it? We respect our elders and those in authority because it helps with social order. It holds together social order by saying that some people will enforce rules that you don't like, but that, in general, are reasonable guidelines for communal living. In addition, when we lose the value to respect elders, we have no antidote for the modern value of worshipping youth. Three years ago, in a sermon entitled "So Simple My Grandmother Could Do It. I spoke about the impact that technology has had on our society; adults forced to go to children for knowledge, rather than the other way around. Why should children respect their elders if they can't even gain knowledge from them? It is hard to believe that it is already 15 years since I gave the High Holy Days sermon on entitlement. How many of you were here for that sermon? Modernity advocates for a sense of personal entitlement; our needs need to be met. It would also would have us negate the respect of elders, because it is all about me. My needs take precedence over everyone else's. Respect for elders teaches us that the "we" is more important than the "me." Thus far I have drawn upon traditional values without calling them Jewish values. I could touch on many other such important traditional values, including, compassion for those in need, philanthropy, volunteering, respect for earth, kindness to animals, education, making a difference and appreciation for life. But the truth of the matter is, that all these values are part of our Jewish values system. Many Jews, have embraced these so-called traditional values unaware or unwilling to acknowledge, that they are in fact traditional Jewish values. It is fairly easy to recognize these families with traditional values because they have a high success rate in creating ethical, moral and successful children. Successful here does not refer to financial worth, but rather character and contributing to the world. You sometimes know these parents because rather than their children saying, "I have the coolest parents around", they more often say, "my parents aren't like most other parents." 4
Why? Because they are trying to convey values that seem at odds with how many people are living their lives. It shouldn't matter, whether we call them "traditional" or "Jewish", but it does. Because once separated from their Jewish origins these traditional values will have difficulty being sustained. Every religion conveys it's values through unique traditions. Secular humanism strives to live out those values outside of a theistic system. Other's will claim that their personal values can navigate them through the difficult issues of life. But I want to talk about the Jewish tradition, not just because I am a rabbi, but also because it has been field-tested for four thousand years and still works. One of the great social challenges we have is responding to the isolation caused by technology. Statistics seem to indicate that while people have plenty of Facebook friends, they have far fewer friends that they get together with. While there are many ways in which technology can keep us connected, it doesn't seem to help in the human component. A recent study of post-college twenty-something year olds, indicated that they attended far fewer parties than the same-age cohort did ten years ago. Friendship and sex can be had on line much more conveniently than ever before. While the internet can bring connection to people who feel disconnected, and is not an evil unto itself, we must be careful to understand the price we pay. Another ailment caused by technology is the difficulty in disconnecting ourselves from texting, social media and the internet. We know that is not healthy for us to be connected 24/7 and yet...we cannot disconnect. Remember several years ago, when I gave a sermon on this and a cell phone went off at the perfect moment of emphasis? I had just asked the rhetorical question, "can't we just disconnect for one day?"...and just as I paused...a cell phone started to ring from a purse left by someone who had exited to go to the restroom. Since then, our ability to disconnect has only gotten worse. When we evaluate this tension between meaningful lives and technology, Jewish values help us to confront the issue. There is a lot of good in technology and Jewish tradition values it for all of its benefits including, the ability to make our lives better, live longer and keep in touch with more people. In the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel: "The solution of mankind s most vexing problem will not be found in renouncing technical civilization, but in attaining some degree of independence of it." More than ever before we need to be reminded of the importance of time and to fight modern values like materialism. To quote Heschel again: "The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world." This is the power of Shabbat. 5
You want to know how to treat the stranger and those in-need just look to Jewish tradition. You want to know that we are stewards of the earth just look to Jewish tradition. You want to know that all people deserve dignity because we are all made in the image of God, just look to Jewish tradition. Unfortunately, many Jews don't fully understand or appreciate the importance of Jewish values in living life on a daily basis. What is the answer? Just find a Jew-by-Choice and ask them. I work with 8 to 12 people a year who convert. As I get to know them I see the way they absorb Jewish values and rituals. They find new meaning in life and embrace it. That is why if a non-jew is in a serious relationship with someone who is Jewish, we require the Jewish person to go through the classes and process as well. If not, the non-jew comes home and says, "I just learned about this new way to appreciate time and how to unplug from the hecticness of life." "Did you read something by the Dali Lama?" "No", the conversion candidate responds "I learned about Shabbat." "Shabbat!?! Isn't that the day you can't do anything?" Rabbi Harold Schulweis, of blessed memory, used to say that in the modern period every Jew should become a Jew-by-Choice in order to understand the beauty of Judaism. On Rosh Hashanah I focused on the need to confront our discomfort about change to evaluate whether to fight it or not. Today, my goal was to provide some strength to navigate the sea of change. The two examples of sea vessels in the Torah are Noah's ark and the basket that Moses was placed in to save his life. The Hebrew word for both these vessels is the same- tayva. A tayva is a rudderless vessel whose fate is solely in the hands of God. Once we are given Jewish traditions to guide us, tradition becomes our rudder and keel. The rudder to give us direction and the keel to keep us from capsizing. As you think about the traditions that guide you, I would love you consider whether they emanate from Jewish sources or not. The movie Fiddler on the Roof opens up with the song "Tradition." In the words of Tevye, "Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as... as... as a fiddler on the roof! May this be a year of navigating the changes of life with the strength of your traditions. 6