1 The Antidote to What Ails Us I want to acknowledge that many of us are feeling disoriented as we begin this New Year. Yesterday, I spoke about the politics of grievance that has dominated the political life of this country in the past year and how we might find ways to focus on what unites us rather than what divides us. Today I would like to dig a little deeper at what ails us as a country and offer some insights from Jewish tradition that might allow us to heal. Of all the ugliness that we experienced as a nation in the past year, for many of us, the nadir came with the demonstrations organized by the White Nationalists and the KKK in Charlottesville. Ostensibly called for the purpose of protesting the removal of a Confederate statue, those marches contained truly terrifying images of white nationalists carrying torches in the night with signs proclaiming Blood and Soil and chanting Jews will not replace us! Many of us could not remember a time in which we had witnessed such pure hatred directed toward Jews, people of color and immigrants. And in the aftermath of those marches when were in desperate need of healing, our recently elected President was morally equivocal and offered words that were of greater comfort to the white nationalists and members of the KKK who had organized the march than they were to the people who were the targets of their hatred. In the wake of Charlottesville, there were two events that brought hope: one that got a whole lot of attention, and one that went under the radar. Both helped remind me of the greatness of this country. The less publicized event involved a visit made by our Defense Secretary General Jim Mattis to a group of American troops stationed in Jordan at the end of August. He was there to remind these young soldiers about the meaning of what they were doing thousands of miles away from home knowing that they could be deployed at a moment s notice to put their lives on the line in the fight against ISIS. Here s what he said, initially to laughter: For those of you I haven t met, my name s Mattis I work at the Department of Defense. This probably doesn t get said enough, but thanks for being out here, OK? I know at times you wonder if any of us know... but believe me, I know you re far from home every one of you, I know you could all be going to college, or you could be back with your families. [We re] just grateful....
2 The only way this great big experiment you and I call America is gonna survive is if we ve got some tough hombres like you.... You re a great example for our country right now. It s got some problems you know it and I know it. It s got problems that we don t have here in the military. And you just hold the line, my fine young soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines. You just hold the line until our country gets back to understanding and respecting each other and showing it, of being friendly to one another. That s what Americans owe to one another we re so doggone lucky to be Americans. There was the General, who made the decision to come out of retirement because he believes in sacrifice, telling our troops thousands of miles from home that their sacrifice was going to allow the rest of us to respect each other again and how fortunate we are to be Americans. That was my first dose of inspiration listening to General Mattis talk to the men and women of this country who know something about sacrifice. The second came around the same time during Hurricane Harvey the storm that would stall over large swaths of the State of Texas dumping more than 50 inches of rain leaving communities destroyed and tens of thousands of people homeless. That was the disaster. But the inspiring part was the response to the disaster. In the aftermath of the hurricane, the best of this country was on display: the generosity and courage, the sense of community, the way in which people took care of each other. You saw the pontoons and air mattresses and rowboats in which people were rescued. There were the first responders who worked around the clock and there were the army of volunteers who came from across the country with their boats to join in the rescue. And there were the ordinary citizens who just came together to help their neighbors. Like the neighbors who came together to get a pregnant woman to the hospital by forming a human chain to help her out of her flooded home. She got to the hospital and gave birth to a healthy baby girl. There were a lot of human chains during the Harvey disaster people of all colors and ethnicities pulling each other to safety that allowed us to realize something that we too often forget as citizens of this country: that we belong to something larger than ourselves. We re-
3 connected to the understanding that we are part of a human chain far greater than our own egos and our own needs and that the needs of the community are as indispensable to our well-being as the needs of the self. The acknowledgement that we are part of something larger is the theme of the Malkhuyot verses one of the three major sections, along with Zikhronot and Shofarot that form the heart of this Rosh Hashanah day. It strikes me that each of these three themes is an antidote to what plagues us a nation at this difficult time. I want to acknowledge that many of us don t really understand these three sections of the Musaf service probably for two reasons: 1) They come at the end of the service when a lot of us are thinking about lunch; and 2) They are mostly liturgical poems written in the Middle Ages whose metaphors and images may not easily resonate. But let me take each of these three themes and try to point out why we as Americans are in such desperate need of heeding their call. First the Malkhuyot verses the part of the service when we acknowledge that God is Sovereign. We say it a lot: You, God are King. Our Sages asked us to say this not because they thought that God has a fragile ego. Instead, they wanted us to remember that WE are not sovereign. Life is not just about us not about how we are going to fulfill our every wish and our every desire. Which is an increasingly counter-cultural way to live in this time of unprecedented narcissism this time in which so many of us are preoccupied with ourselves. Let me give you an example of what I mean: You are at some beautiful place in nature. Maybe one of our national parks. The mountains. The trees. The green. The blue sky. Or perhaps you find yourself at a historic site. In front of the Washington Monument. Or you go to an art museum. There is an original Matisse or Degas or Picasso. And just then you respond to the moment by taking a Selfie. It s not about the mountain or the monument or the Matisse. It s about me as I visit this site. Rabbi Micah Goodman, a teacher at the Hartmann Institute in Jerusalem, recently observed that the big philosophical question used to be: if a tree falls in the forest and no one
4 hears it, does it make a sound? Now the question is: if you have an experience, but it does not generate lots of likes on Facebook, did you really have the experience? Small wonder that in his recent book, The Road to Character, David Brooks has a section on today s ethos that he calls The Big Me. He argues that since the mid twentieth century, there has been a seismic explosion in narcissism. He cites a few telling proofs. In 1950, a Gallup poll asked high school seniors if they considered themselves to be a very important person. 12 percent said yes. Gallup asked the same question again in 2005 are you a very important person and this time 80 percent said yes. Brooks goes on to cite studies that show that our median narcissism score has risen over 30 percent in the last two decades. And that s a huge problem! No, it is not about you! That is the central message of Malkhuyot. Instead of Me, me, me, how about us, us, us? When we acknowledge that God is Sovereign, we are meant to understand that we have obligations beyond the self. From there we move to the second part of the Musaf service the Zikhronot verses the verses that tell us that our identities are constructed from the fabric of our collective memories a second lesson Jewish tradition can offer this battered nation of ours. Our memories are in fact the essence of who we are, and through memory, identity, values and character can be transmitted. To be a Jew is to affirm that memory is alive; that it is not confined to the past. In fact, the Hebrew language has no word for history. Because for a Jew, history is someone else s story; it is an amalgam of facts, dates, and happenings. In contrast, memory lives in the present to guide and shape our values, choices and actions, and ultimately, to define our very essence. Nowhere is this truth more evident than in our sedarim at Passover. Each year when we retell the story of the Exodus, we do so to remember that we were the stranger; we were the ones who were persecuted, shunned, and feared. We remember the blood libels. The scapegoating. We remember the massacres. We remember these things viscerally, through
5 ritual. We don t just speak about matzah. We hold it, break it, and search for it. We don t just talk about the bitterness of our lived experience. We force ourselves actually to ingest the bitterness. We bring forth all of these ritualized memories, our experiences of the past, to sear within our consciousness a singular imperative to care for the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the poor, the disenfranchised, and those on the margins of society; to never be silent in the face of fear mongering, discrimination, and human degradation, because we have been there and we know. That s the power of Zikhronot the power of remembering. The lived experience of memory is our call to shared responsibility. And that s part of our American story as well. Our ancestors who came to this country to escape religious persecution; this nation that fought a war to rectify our original sin of slavery; that Statue of Liberty that welcomed our ancestors fleeing the pogroms in Eastern Europe and that has rewarded those who worked hard to make a better life for their families. Like the Zikhronot that define us as Jews, we have our American memories that are seared into our consciousness to remind us of our highest aspirations. So that as Americans and as Jews, our memories impel us to fight racism, to stand up for those who are discriminated against because of their sexual orientation; and to seek to welcome refugees who fear for their lives. That s two out of three: the Zikhronot verses remind us of who we are; the Malkhuyot verses remind us that we are part of a human chain and that it s not really all about us. And from these two imperatives come the third and final section of the Musaf service the Shofarot the verses that point us toward Redemption and remind us that there is only one path to attain it: through service. The Shofarot verses remind us that each one of us is called to be of service. Not just when a crisis comes but day after day small acts of kindness and caring that help to mend the social fabric that is becoming increasingly frayed in this country. Let me tell you the story of a man I learned about this past year who embodied each and every one of these qualities. His name was Harlan Holm and he was Tom Brokaw s Junior High School History teacher in the small South Dakota town where Brokaw grew up. Brokaw wrote about what made his junior high history teacher so memorable with these words:
6 From the beginning, he was a different kind of junior-high teacher than the others. Mr. Holm introduced us to the idea that history is vibrant and exciting when experienced through the voices and emotions of those who experienced it first-hand. Mr. Holm asked us to imagine what Lincoln felt as he wrote and delivered the Gettysburg Address. Think about the actors who make history happen! What are they thinking? What are they feeling? What are their interior lives like? That will connect you, a 12 year-old junior high student, to the meaning of that historical moment. That was Tom Brokaw s recollection of his junior high history teacher. Like many students, Brokaw lost touch with his former teacher. And then one day, at the beginning of 2017, Tom Brokaw saw an obituary notice from the Des Moines Register noting the passing of Harlan Holm. Mr. Holm had died at the age of 91. The obituary recounted his many years as a teacher and administrator in both the Iowa and the South Dakota school systems. As he read on, Brokaw was stunned. Mr. Holm, the quiet modest teacher who brought such seriousness and purpose to a classroom of rowdy 12 year-olds that same Mr. Holm had earned six medals of honor from World War II. He had trained in heavy weapons and fought in North Africa, Salerno and Anzio, Italy, before participating in the invasion of southern France as a combat engineer in August 1944. As the Seventh Army moved across France and into Germany Mr. Holm was there, participating in the building of a crucial pontoon bridge across the Rhine at Worms, Germany. And Brokaw wrote: He uttered not one word of those experiences in the nine months he commanded our attention in that seventh grade classroom. The teacher who emphasized the importance of the interior lives of the actors in history was himself a major actor in history he would be nominated to receive the French Legion of Honor for his combat service in France but paradoxically, he did not say a word about his own service, nor his interior life, as he served. Brokaw concludes with his belief that the ability both to serve and to do so with humility were the two prime characteristics of so many of the people that he had described earlier at the Greatest Generation. As Jews and as Americans, we come to this New Year thirsty for the lessons of our Jewish tradition. We know that it is not the narcissist who is going to mend the social fabric. It is the
7 people like Harlan Holm who quietly carry out their duty to bring history alive to the next generation. It is the people who came to the rescue of their brothers and sisters in Houston when the flood waters rise. And it is the people like you and me who come to this New Year disoriented and afraid; sensing that this country that we love is on the verge of losing its soul, but knowing that we can contribute something to its repair. And knowing that what we are called upon to commit to finding ways each and every day to be of service to each other to our fellow Jews and to our fellow Americans. In the wake of the pain and the dislocation of this past year, let us use the start of this New Year to better live out the words of our ancient prophet: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. Kein yi he ratzon Shana tova Tikateivu