Erev Rosh Hashanah:
Our Days of Awe this year are complicated. We gather here as some of you have
for many years, even decades, knowing that we are experiencing the New Year in this
beautiful sanctuary for the very last time. Memories of services with Rabbi Eiduson, with
Rabbi Boaz, memories of Congregation B’nai Torah and the members of that community
who are not with us here today, whether because they have left this world or because they
have joined another congregation – these shadows throng around us. I return to be your
cantor again, but without Rabbi Eiduson at my side. Like all new beginnings, all births,
the birth of this new congregation, B’nai Torah Metrowest, comes with losses as well as
gains, grief as well as joy.
“You can’t go home again”, said Thomas Wolfe. Heraclitus wrote, “Nothing
abides. Everything flows. You can never step in the same river twice.” Or as Joni
Mitchell has it, “We can’t return, we can only look behind from where we came, and go
round and round and round in the circle game.” The Greeks, the Persians, peoples from
across the Far and the Middle East have created whole belief systems based on the idea
that there is no return.
Judaism is different. Our liturgy and our theology are built on the idea that many
kinds of return are both possible and necessary. At this time of year, we pray to be
ba’alei t’shuvah, masters of return. What are we returning to? We pray, writes Rabbi
Nissan Dovid Dubov, for “a return to [our] original state”. It probably feels odd for me to
talk about return, when this congregation is in the process of massive change.
But no matter where we are, Judaism tells us that we can return to what we need, and where we need to be.
At the Days of Awe we sing a song by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, “Return again”,
and we sing a prayer that is also part of every Torah service, Hashiveinu. These two texts
express two different, equally important ideas about return. Carlebach’s song is a
command or an invitation that we issue to ourselves. “Return again, return again, return
to the land of your soul. Return to what you are, return to who you are, return to where
you are born and reborn again…” We urge ourselves to come back to our true identity,
our essential human nature, our place of being renewed and refreshed.
Hashiveinu, on the other hand, is addressed to the God. “Hashiveinu, Adonai,
eilecha, v’nashuva. Return us to You, Lord, and we will return.” We can tell ourselves to
return, but only the Great Unknowable has the power to return us. It is that Ineffable
Power that can scrape us up from the mud we are stuck in, sift us from among the dust,
strain us out of the flood, and bring us home to our own essential goodness.
In Judaism, we have different kinds of sacred time. There’s historical time: the
memory of events experienced by our ancestors, both tragic and glorious, which we have
vowed to keep alive. Historical time stretches back and becomes mythic time, as we no
longer know for sure which events recounted in our sacred books actually happened and
which were crafted to inspire us. Still we tell those stories again and again – Adam and
Eve, Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, Ishmael, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob, Rachel and Leah,
Joseph and his brothers, Moses, Miryam, and Aaron and the exodus from Egypt.
Mythic time is connected to another form of sacred time: the yearly cycle of our
holy days. Passover cannot happen without the story of the Exodus, and Yom Kippur
loses some of its power without the story of the High Priest going into the
Holy of Holies to utter the Sacred, Secret Name of God. This calendar cycle returns us again and again to
the same – and yet different – points in time. When we recite Shehechiyanu – thanking
the Divine for delivering us to this very moment — we are remembering every other
Shehechianu we have recited. We exist in a lamination of Rosh HaShanahs, and of other
holidays and new beginnings, layer on layer since our first memories.
And then there’s the time we measure out with life cycle events. Baby namings
and brises, B’nai Mitzvah ceremonies, weddings, funerals – they connect us to each
other, to the personal history of our families and friends, and to our long history as
regular folk, not prophets or rulers but normal people living out our unremarkable sacred
days.
Ultimately all these Jewish ways of experiencing time are a means of return.
Recounting the stories that have occurred throughout historical and mythic time returns
us to our identity as Jews. We tell the stories – of life in the diaspora, of the pogroms and
the Holocaust, of the beginnings of the State of Israel, of the beginning of a particular
synagogue or congregation –and we return to a knowledge of who we are.
Life cycle events return us, too – to our identity within our families and
communities. At a life cycle event we know exactly who we are – the mother of this one,
the daughter of this one, the grandmother of these. We feel the web of these connections
– our teachers and our students, our fellow congregants, the ones we love, the ones who
drive us crazy, our friends and our teachers.
Every Rosh HaShanah, every Yom Kippur, is also a means of return. Each
holiday is a time machine, carrying us back to the selves we were last year, five years
ago, twenty years, fifty years – however old or young we were when we first experienced
that very time. Lighting the candles again, greeting friends we may have last seen a year
ago, reencountering the familiar tunes and words, we thank God shehechianu v’kiyemanu
v’higiyanu lazeman hazeh – who has kept us alive and strong and brought back to this
very moment, the moment when we return to all the selves who have prayed these
prayers before.
Rabbi Elyse Frishman writes, in a poem inspired by verses in Jeremiah,
“If people fall, can they not also rise?
If they break away, can they not return?
The stork in the sky knows when to migrate,
the dove and the swallow know the season of return.
What human instinct knows the time to turn back?
What cue sparks the conscience of the soul?
We pray to sense this day anew,
attuned to the call of sacred living.”
This poem suggests another, deeper kind of return that underlies all the others.
The stork and the swallow have return encoded in their DNA. The hummingbird
and the Monarch butterfly were made to know how to go – south in the fall, north
in the spring. Jeremiah tells us that we too are made for returning – it’s in our
genes. But the migration we make is not from continent to continent. Rather, the
cues we have crafted to spark our soul’s return – the stories, the life cycle events,
the holy days – remind us to return to the One who formed us, the One from which we came.
The Divine One that we try to understand – that we may not know how to think about or
even to believe in – is not the solid, unquestionable
God that Jeremiah knew. No matter. We yearn to return to Something greater than
ourselves. When we return, “Attuned,” as Rabbi Frishman says, “To the call of
sacred living”, we can rediscover our true selves. We can rediscover the
compassion we need to connect with others. We can return to the knowledge that
even when we feel most separated, most cut off or set apart, we are united, part of
one Universe.
We come here tonight – and tomorrow, and to all the holidays and life cycle
events coming up, in this sanctuary and in our new shared home at Congregation Or Atid
in Wayland – to remind ourselves of this oneness. Whether we return because God has
returned us, or returned to us, or because we have returned to God, or because, without
any thought of God, we have returned to a sense of community, family, and sacredness –
it doesn’t really matter. Like the swallows, we have followed the urge to come back.
So – one more year, we board the High Holy Day time machine. Even when we
are no longer in this sanctuary, we will return here in our hearts and memories. And
wherever we go, we will bring with us the experiences we’ve had here, the lessons we’ve
learned, the joys and sorrows shared. I look forward to continuing this journey of return
with you in these next days, and during the coming year. L’Shanah tovah u’metukah – to
a good and sweet year for all of us!
Rosh Hashanah:
The Ram of Pride
Outside of the walled city of old Jerusalem, on the western side, the land drops into a narrow valley. There’s a public park, and a small amphitheater. Several major roads converge, filled with busy traffic. Sometimes, down at the end nearest East Jerusalem, you can see a boy herding goats and sheep. This valley is called Geh Hinnom – the Valley of Hinnom.
It’s hard to imagine, but at one time this valley was the site of human sacrifices. Historians and archeologists tell us that our own early Jewish ancestors used to offer up their firstborn children to propitiate the god Baal. One theory about our reading today, the binding – but NOT the sacrifice – of Isaac, is that it is here to teach us that God does NOT want us to sacrifice our children. The Book of Jeremiah says: And they have built the high places […] in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart. 32
God, apparently, is happy to receive a ram or a goat. Later we are told by the Prophet Hosea that even animal sacrifices are quite unnecessary. God wants “the cows of our lips” – our prayers.
But few of us, reading the hair-raising story of Abraham and Isaac, can feel satisfied to accept it as only a polemic against human sacrifice. Why do we read this horrifying tale again and again? What can it possibly have to teach us?
The rabbis of old were committed to the idea that our forefathers must have been, if not blameless, at least defensible. To them, this story was a demonstration of faith. Medieval Spanish Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra reviews the following possibilities: 1. “God tested Abraham in order to demonstrate his piety to mankind.” 2. “Others say that and offer him there for a burnt offering is to be interpreted as: bring him up to the mountain; this will be considered as if you brought him up as a burnt offering. However, Abraham did not understand his prophetic vision and hurried to sacrifice Isaac. God then told him, “I did not ask you to slay Isaac.”” Ibn Ezra rejects both of these, declaring, “The reason God tested Abraham was in order to reward him.” Ramban (Rabbi Moses ben Nachman) agrees, adding, “All trials in the Torah are for the good of the one who is being tried.”
Modern popular interpretations have been a good deal less forgiving toward Abraham – and toward God. From Emily Dickinson to Leonard Cohen, poets of the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries have seen Abraham as a zealot, or at best weak. According to Dickinson, Abraham is “distinctly told” to kill Isaac. He is only following orders. As for God, she sees Him as “Tyranny”, a sort of pitbull who can be “flattered by Obeisance”. To Leonard Cohen, Abraham is in the grip of a “vision” that fulfills his sense of himself as “strong and holy.” But, Cohen suggests, Abraham has “been tempted by a demon or a God” – leaving open the possibility that the voice Abraham has heard is not the Divine One.
There are many ambiguities of Genesis 22. In verse 2, God asks Abraham to take “your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac”. This chapter comes immediately following the one in which Abraham banishes Hagar and Ishmael. Beloved medieval commentator Rashi writes, “Abraham said to God, “I have two sons”. “He answered him, “Thine only son”. Abraham said, “This one is the only son of his mother and the other is the only son of his mother”. God then said, “the one whom thou lovest”. Abraham replied, “I love both of them”. Whereupon God said “[…] Isaac”.” This begs the question: why does God choose to refer to Isaac as Abraham’s only beloved son? Does God, perhaps, intend to remind Abraham that there was another beloved son, whom Abraham has already “sacrificed” by sending him off to die in the desert?
Another problem: in verse 5, Abraham says that he and Isaac will return after making an offering on the mountain. Ibn Ezra writes, “How could Abraham say [this]? [Perhaps he] intended to return with Isaac’s bones, and he disguised his intentions so that his young men would wait for him till he returned and Isaac would not know what was about to happen and flee.” But Ibn Ezra, the Mr. Spock of rabbinic commentators, sees a difficulty. “Our sages, of blessed memory, say that Isaac was thirty-seven years old at the time of his binding,” he says. “If this be a tradition, we will accept it. However, from a strictly logical point of view it is unacceptable. If Isaac was an adult at this time, then his piety should have been revealed in Scripture and his reward should be double that of his father for willingly having submitted himself to be sacrificed. Yet Scripture says nothing concerning Isaac’s great self-sacrifice. Others say that Isaac was five years old at the time of his binding. This, too, is unacceptable, since Isaac carried the wood for the sacrificial pyre. It thus appears logical to assume that Isaac was close to thirteen years old and that Abraham overpowered him and bound him against his will. Proof of this can be seen from the fact that Abraham hid his intention from Isaac and told him, God will provide Himself the lamb for a burnt-offering, my son (v. 8). Abraham knew that if he said, “You are to be the burnt-offering,” Isaac would quite possibly have fled.” In other words, Ibn Ezra is of the opinion that in service of his God, Abraham lied. Others go further, noting that when Abraham commands his servants “You stay here!” “[He] was afraid that if he did not leave them behind, they might attempt to stop him from slaughtering his son.”
Ibn Ezra has already raised the problem of verse 8. Rabbi David Kimchi (Radak) of 12th-13th century France, puts this most clearly. “Avraham’s reply to his son is capable of two interpretations. One interpretation would be that the word בני (my son) is a response to Yitzchak’s cry or question, meaning “I am here my son; G’d will select the lamb for the burnt offering.” In other words: “don’t worry, G’d already knows who is going to be the lamb for the offering. He will put it at our disposal.” The second interpretation of Avraham’s answer would arrange the words as follows: “G’d will select the lamb for the offering; who is the lamb? It is my son.”
The rabbis take comfort from the following phrase, “They walked on, the two of them, together.” Radak says, “Yitzchak understood from this that he had been chosen to be the offering. This is why the Torah continues, significantly:
וילכו שניהם יחדב, “they continued walking together,” i.e. of one mind and of one spirit.” I can never decide if I find this idea tender and touching or chilling. In our day, we would be likely to view this a something akin to Stockholm syndrome: a child who has adopted the view of his parent out of a desperate sense of needing to preserve the “love” between them.
Now Abraham is poised, knife in hand. Even the sages, who saw Abraham as pious and God as infallible, nonetheless struggled with this text.
Rabbeinu Bahya (14th Century Spain), writes “[…] Yitzchak told his father: “when you tell my mother about what happened, do not tell her while she is standing on the roof or near a well so that she will not fall into the well or to the ground from shock.” When Avraham was about to slaughter Yitzchak, an angel called to him from the heaven calling out his name twice. The reason the angel had to repeat Avraham’s name was to stop him in time as Avraham was in such a hurry to complete his task and to slaughter Yitzchak. He said: “do not stretch out your hand, etc.” Avraham replied: “who are you?” The angel responded: “I am an angel of G’d.” Avraham retorted: “When I was instructed to offer Yitzchak as a sacrifice G’d told me personally. Now that He apparently wants me to desist, He would have to tell me personally.” Thereupon the Torah (verse 16) writes: “An angel called out to Avraham a second time from the heaven saying to Avraham: “I have sworn an oath by Myself says the Lord, etc.” When Avraham heard this he said “You have sworn;” “I have also sworn an oath that I will not descend from this altar until I have said to You what is on my mind. Did You not first say to me כה יהיה זרעך, ‘this is how numerous your descendants will be?’ Who did You have in mind would be the one from whom these descendants would come forth?” G’d answered “from Yitzchak.” Thereupon Avraham said This is the sort of thing I meant to answer you: ‘Yesterday You told me that my descendants will be known though Yitzchak and now You told me to offer him as a burnt-offering! I suppressed my impulse to ask You all these questions. Now, if and when my descendants will sin and they will experience difficulties, I want You to suppress Your feelings when You punish them remembering that I suppressed my inclination to ask You some embarrassing questions. I want You to consider as if Yitzchak’s ashes had already been piled up on this altar, as if his blood had been sprinkled on it and as a result You will forgive the transgressions of my offspring.”
The story goes inexorably on. We come to the final line: Abraham returns with his servants to Beer Sheva. Midrash Genesis Rabbah asks, “And where was Itzchak? Rabbi Berechiah said […]: he sent him to Shem to study Torah. […] Rabbi Chanina said: He sent him [home] at night, for fear of the [evil] eye[…]” Many others have suggested that wherever Isaac went, it was far away from Abraham. They also note that Abraham, according to the Torah, was not present when Sarah died. Could it be that Sarah no longer wanted to live with a man who was willing to slaughter his own son as a sacrifice?
Let’s stroll again across the Valley of Hinnom, with its well-worn grass and battered benches, its honking traffic, its occasional flock of sheep. Are we so far from the era of child sacrifices that we no longer need a polemic story, after all? The young goat herd who comes up from East Jerusalem may come from a family which could be only too glad to offer him as a sacrifice in the fight against Israel. Israel, equally, recruits its soldiers, young and idealistic, who may find themselves defending behaviors of a government they can no longer blindly support. And so with all nations – the United States among them.
British poet Wilfred Owen, who died at the front in World War I, wrote,
…Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
and builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.”
We are here today to offer that ram of pride, as well as the “cows of our lips”. Reading the Akedah, the Binding of Isaac, we’ve been reminded once again that in faithful service to an idea or an ideal, we may lose track of our compassion. It’s easy to slip from worshiping God to making obeisance before an idol. In the drash of Bob Dylan, when “God said, ‘Abraham, kill me a son,’ Abe said, ‘Man, you must be putting me on!’ ” But as the original text shows us, it is only too easy to forget to speak up when we are asked to give up what we love most deeply and profoundly, in service to something we perceive as large and noble and necessary. In the grip of a “vision,” seeing ourselves as “strong and holy”, we can easily end up killing the very thing upon which our very lives depend. As we embark on this journey of personal and collective repentance and reconciliation, let us ask ourselves: what are our rams of pride? What is dearest to us, and what will sustain us for the coming generations? What, though it may seem like an important ideal or a noble cause, requires us to sacrifice too much? May the days between now and Yom Kippur allow us to reflect on these thorny questions. It can be very hard to know the answers, as Abraham found out. And yet, like Abraham, we may find that if we listen, we can hear what the Universe truly wants of us, and make the right choices, after all.
L’Shanah tovah tikateivu v’teichateimu – may you be written and sealed for a good new year.