With All Your Abundance
A Drash for Yom Kippur Evening 2012
Some
of you know that I wear hearing aids, in both ears. Some of you did not know that of me. If not, it’s because the models I wear are
quite small and unobtrusive. Also, I
don’t particularly advertise the fact. On
the other hand, I don’t go out of my way to hide it. I’ve been asked if I wear my hair long, in
order to hide my hearing aids. The
answer is no. So here’s the news
flash: Rabbi Don does not wear long hair
to hide his hearing aids. He wears it to
hide his big ears! Seriously, I’m not
particularly sensitive about needing hearing aids. To me, wearing them is akin to wearing eyeglasses. I wish
I didn’t need them. But since I do, it doesn’t bother me overly to wear
them. Apparently, some of us who
experience hearing loss with age are sensitive
about it and avoid being fitted for hearing aids as long as they can. If anybody in this room fits this description
(and if you can hear me), I urge you to get a screening and consider being
fitted for hearing aids ASAP. You will
find the difference amazing.
So I wear hearing aids and I accept
the minor maintenance that goes along with them. I have to change the batteries every few days. I have to clean the ear wax out of the ear
tubes from time to time. To do that, one
forces a thin wire, a twist tie with the paper covering removed, through the
tube until it passes completely through.
You have to be careful, though to straighten out the tube before pushing
the wire through lest the wire puncture the tube.
But no matter how often you clean out
the tubes, once a year or so it is necessary to replace them. Over time, the ear wax builds up on and in
them no matter how carefully you clean them.
The other day I did this. With
new, perfectly clean ear tubes it’s like experiencing the first day with the
hearing aids, all over again! I can hear
much better than I have in a while.
Yom Kippur is, in a way, like fitting
new tubes to your hearing aids. That’s
by design. The things that we miss most
days, things about ourselves and truths about human nature to which we’re
normally deaf or oblivious, become much more noticeable. That’s because of the way that we observe
this important day. Everything about it
is calculated to help us ‘clear the decks’ and work on ourselves. It’s kind of like a session with a particularly
good therapist.
So while I particularly have your
attention this evening, I do not intend to squander it!
On Rosh Hashanah I spoke about some of
the phrases of the passage in the prayer book that we call, Ve’ahav’ta, after its first word. You know, Ve’ahav’ta
et Adonai Eloheicha, bechol levav’cha uv’chol nafshecha, uv’chol me’odecha.
You shall love Adonai your G-d, with all your heart, with all your soul,
and with all your abundance.
I know that there’s a certain risk in
offering High Holy Day drashot in series.
After all, not everybody attends every service. That’s unfortunate, because my sermons aside,
the liturgies and themes of the days build one upon the previous. The way to get the most benefit out of these
days is to attend each and every service:
Rosh Hashanah evening and morning, Shabbat Shuva evening and morning,
Yom Kippur evening, morning and afternoon.
Please don’t tell me why you could not attend all those times. My point is not to make you feel guilty. Well, maybe a little bit guilty! Jews
without guilt, after all, are like a Chinese junk without a sail! But seriously, my point is to offer a kind of
user’s manual for deriving the best benefit from these holy days. If you didn’t attend on Rosh Hashanah or
Shabbat Shuva, it’s too late! But thanks
to social media, you can read my drashot online, on my blog. Just Google ‘Rabbi Don in Oz’!
If you remember from last week, or if
you’ve read my drashot online, you know that I defined love as used in this verse as Love, the Commitment. Not Love, the Emotion. And I explained that the ‘heart’ in ‘with all
your heart’ means the intellect, the power of reason. And the ‘soul’ in ‘with all your soul’ means
the emotions, the human spirit. I
offered the view that it is no accident the Torah commands ‘with all your
intellect and reason’ before ‘with
all your motions and spirit.’ The
intellect provides the basis for apprehending G-d. The intellect opens a world of knowledge and
inquiry that enables us to transcend the child-like view of G-d we were given
in cheder. But if we only gain knowledge, if we don’t truly have an encounter with G-d,
then it will not be satisfying to grab us…and hold us. So both are necessary, and are not at all in
tension…just two sides of the same coin.
This brings us to the third way we’re
to love G-d. Bechol me’odecha. The phrase
is usually translated: with all your might. But if you know a little Hebrew, you know
that me’od means ‘very’ or
‘much.’ Tov me’od means very
good. Nachon me’od means very right.
If someone asks you how many lollies you have and you answer me’od, it means a whole bunch.
So me’odecha,
your muchness can mean ‘a whole lot’ as in really love G-d. But the
Rabbis have generally understood it to mean with
all your abundance, with all your substance. It’s talking about money, wealth.
As the Israelites prepared to enter
the Promised Land, subdue it, and set up their commonwealth there, each tribe
was apportioned a specific territory in which to settle. The land would be apportioned among the
members of the tribe, so that each family had a means of earning a living. Each tribe, that is but the tribe of Levi.
The Levites were given no land,
because they were set apart particularly for service to G-d on behalf of the
entire people Israel. They were to
administer the mishkan, the sanctuary
where sacrifices to G-d were offered daily.
This was their ‘full time job’; they were not to be farmers. Or blacksmiths. Or insurance salesmen. Each Israelite family would bring to the
Levites a tithe, a tenth of their
increase, and from that the sons of Levi would operate the mishkan and support their own families since they had no other
means.
Okay, relax! If you think that this son of Levi is winding up to demand that you surrender a tenth
of your income to support the temple and my family, you can take your hands off
your wallets now! Take a deep
breath. Smile. No, the temple and the rabbi don’t need that
much of your income and aren’t asking for it.
Nobody is suggesting that you bring a
tenth of your income to Temple Shalom as an offering to G-d. That commandment was for when the mishkan, and later the Temple was standing and in operation. For reasons that are beyond the scope of my
remarks tonight, absent the Temple and its priesthood, there is no more tithe. Our Christian friends sometimes have a hard
time understanding this. Recently, two
members of Temple Shalom and I had a conversation with three representatives of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, our next door neighbours. Okay, I’m not sure that the LDS church is
Christian or not, but that’s not my point here. The LDS church teaches that its members must
give a tenth of their income to the church.
Much of that goes to support and grow the church infrastructure. There are also good works that their church
does in the community, social services that they support. We Jews support all manner of social
services, but we don’t do so through our congregation. There are other agencies that are set up to
do that. They fund-raise separately.
We
also tend to support social services run by non-Jewish organisations. For example, I’m guessing that a few in this
room have donated money and goods to the Salvation Army. The bags from the
Mazon campaign will go to the Salvation Army. The Army is, itself, a church. But it is known as a social service agency
that helps people regardless of their religious affiliation or
non-affiliation. To Jews that resonates,
and we feel entirely comfortable giving to such an organisation. But the LDS Church teaches that one’s own
church is the address for good works for its members, and it expects each one
of its members to remit a tenth of what they earn to their local church. And our neighbours were surprised to hear
that we Jews, given that the instructions for the tithe are in the Torah, do
not do so.
So nobody’s asking for a tenth of your
income tonight. But let’s be honest, the
temple does need serious buy-in from
every one of its members and everyone who is not a member, but benefits from
what we do. In other words, everybody in
this room tonight.
Like many smaller congregations,
Temple Shalom offers annual subscriptions at extremely modest prices – prices
that have absolutely no relationship to what it actually costs to run a
synagogue. There’s probably no way
around this. If fees were set to truly
reflect the cost per member of keeping our doors open, they would be so high as
to scare many of you away.
As you may know, some of the big
flagship congregations charge subscriptions fees five and more times what we
ask for. You who have lived ‘in the big
city’ know this; assessments are sometimes more than one or even two thousand
dollars per family. This is true in
North America, and it is also true in Australia; ask your friends and family
who belong to Congregation Emanuel or Temple Beth Israel what they pay per
year. You’ll get an earful.
And the truth is, what they charge
isn’t enough either. They still have to
fund-raise vigorously to meet their annual budgets and provide for long-term
growth.
Here at Temple Shalom, our standard
fee for an annual subscription is $220 for an individual or a single-parent
family and $440 for a couple including their children up to 24 if they are full-time
students. Please hear me out! If you truly stretch to pay this, please do
not take offence to what I’m about to say.
I’m not talking to you at this moment.
The truth is, most of you in this room tonight do not stretch to pay it. Let’s
be honest, if you’re in this room tonight, chances are you spend that much on
dining out. In a month, not a year! And let’s be even more honest; if you’re not
a teetotaller, if you drink a beer a few times a week either out or at home,
and buy a bottle of wine once a week or every second week…I’m guessing you
spend more per year on alcohol than on your temple subscription.
My point is not to vilify those of you
who dine out or drink alcohol. I do
both. All I’m saying is that this is
spending that is 100% discretionary. And
there’s nothing wrong with
discretionary spending. You’ve heard me
speak about this before. Whether your
thing is dining out, owning a boat, a membership at a swim club, or all of the
above. My guess is that you’ve worked
hard to have some extra cash to enjoy in this way. You shouldn’t feel guilty about allowing
yourselves any of these little luxuries, or any
luxuries for that matter. You should however, feel guilty if you’re
allowing yourselves these sort of luxuries, you’re here tonight, and you’re not
a financial member of the temple – or some other congregation, and assuming
you’re eligible to be one. Or if, being
a financial member of this congregation, you pay your subscription and no more.
I’ve already gone out on a limb, so to
speak, and I can hear some of your thoughts.
It’s inappropriate to talk about
money on Yom Kippur. It’s unfair to
strong-arm us on the holiest night of the year.
Here we go again, someone asking for more money!
In responding to these thoughts, let
me remind you of the words of our great sage, Hillel: If I am
not for myself, who will be for me? But
if I am only for myself, who am
I? And if not now, when?
Indeed, if not now, when? If one
cannot talk in specifics about the needs of your community on this, the holiest
night of the year, then when? Let me be
direct: if I wait until next Friday
night to say these things, will you be here?
For most of you, the answer is no.
So,
and since I’ve gone out on a limb already in some of your minds, let me be
direct again. It is the responsibility
of everyone in this room to contribute to this congregation’s paying its way. You cannot sit and wait for the Lessers, or
whomever to pick up the tab. Yes, a
handful of our members are capable of going much farther than the rest of us,
and thank G-d we have them. But each one
of you must ante up, must buy into the need to keep your
congregation afloat, must make some significant
contribution. How much, is between you and
your bank statement. But if you want
this congregation to be here for you, to have an open door and a quality
service next Yom Kippur and the one after that and the one after that, it’s now
show time.
Do
you object to what I’m saying, and is your objection is that you’re already
paying your fees? My response to that,
is that our fees are far lower than they need to be. Over time, part of the long-term solution to
the problem I’m addressing is to gradually raise our fees. But in the meantime, we have a budget to
balance.
My
final point in this, is that this congregation really operates almost on a
shoestring, carefully guarding against spending your hard-earned money. If you scrutinise our financials, you’ll see
this truth. Your current Board of Management
has worked hard, searching wherever possible for new ways of doing the things
we do, to cut back on running expenses.
But control of expenses is only half the equation of balancing a budget. And balancing the budget is not our only
responsibility.
Have
you ever been aboard a speed boat on a choppy day on the Broadwater? A speedboat is an interesting device. It is made to move fast. But if it cannot – say, if the engine has a
problem – it wallows. It is unstable and
gets tossed around by the wind, the waves, and the tide. It’s a recipe for seasickness. It’s a recipe for panic. You do not want to be aboard a speedboat that
is dead in the water, or whose engine is only working at partial output.
In
a way, a congregation is like a speedboat.
If we as a congregation are not moving forward, then we are
wallowing. We are easy victim to any
chop, any wind, and tide that might beset us.
But if we are moving forward and going places, we plane right over the
rough stuff. It doesn’t beset us. We quickly leave it behind us and move from
strength to strength.
We’re
working hard to move this congregation forward.
A series of outreach events over the last year or so has resulted in new
members coming in. We need these new
members, and not only because we need the fees we collect from them. We need them because their joining us is an
affirmation of what we’re doing here. We
all know that there are lots of Jews out there who belong to no
congregation. When more of them join
with us, it tells us that what we’re doing matters. It tells us that others, having checked us
out, find what we’re doing attractive enough to them that they want to be part
of it. Reaching out, bringing new people
and their energy in the door…this is how we remain excited about our
congregation. If we stagnate, if we
focus only on maintaining what we’ve done in the past, then we’re wallowing as
on a speedboat that is dead in the water.
We
are calling this fund raising campaign, Temple Shalom 5773. I know that this is not the most creative
title you’ve ever heard. After all,
Temple Shalom is the name of our congregation.
And 5773 is the Jewish year that began last week. But creative or not, this title says
something very important.
I’m
guessing that you’ve heard of Gematria.
It is the practice of Jewish numerology, of consulting the numerical
values of words and phrases to find connections in meaning. An Alef equals one, Beit equals two, and so
forth.
The
numeric value of Shalom is 376. The year
is normally rendered without the thousands:
therefore 776. Add the two and
the sum is 1152. Now we look for a
phrase in Hebrew that equals 1152. We
don’t have to look very far. We have the
value in the phrase: Mah tovu ohaleicha Ya’akov, mish’kinotecha
Yisra’el; How good are your tents, O
Jacob, your dwelling places O Israel. The
phrase is, of course the opening line of the song that opens our Shabbat
morning services. It’s a direct quote
from the Torah, from Numbers chapter 24, verse 5.
What
is the significance of the phrase? I
think back to the B’nai Mitzvah a few weeks back of the Dingley twins. Zoe Dingley, in her bat mitzvah drash
challenged us to understand this phrase.
What does it mean to say that someone’s tents are ‘good’? It doesn’t mean pretty. It means, strong, enduring, worth having as
shelter against the elements.
What
about our ‘tent’ – Temple Shalom? Is it
‘good’? It certainly has good qualities. We can work to increase these qualities, and
to cast aside her not-so-good qualities over time. But the ‘good’ we need to make our temple
exude, is its ability to endure. We need
it to be secure. To know that it will be
here for all of us tomorrow. And the
next day. And the day after that.
Now,
I invite our President, Andrew Abrahamson to fill in the tachlis – to explain how this fund-raising campaign will work. I hope that my words have resonated for
you. I hope that you wish to be
instrumental in ensuring a bright future for this congregation. I hope that you’ll listen prayerfully to
Andrew and make a significant contribution.
A Drash for Yom Kippur Morning
A
few days ago, I attended an interfaith conference in Toowoomba. The conference was hosted by the Pure Land
Learning College Association. The host
organisation is a Mahayana Buddhist school located in that city. It’s a bastion of Chinese religion and
culture. I learned some important
lessons as a result of my day at the conference.
First of all, if you didn’t already
know it I have to tell you that its’ a schlep
and a half from here to Toowoomba!
We have had visitors from that city come to Temple Shalom to worship
with us. If I’m not mistaken, several of
them are here right now. They have new
respect from me, all of them, for schlepping
back and forth to attend and join with us here.
For those of us living here on the
Gold Coast, it is sometimes difficult to appreciate the lack of Jewish
infrastructure here in Queensland. Even
if you are aware of this, it is all too easy to lose sight of the fact that we
here at Temple Shalom have the only full-service Progressive Jewish
congregation in the entire state. It is
easy to forget that I am the only Progressive rabbi working in the state, and
that there are really only four rabbis, period, working in the entire state,
three of them here on the Gold Coast. We
have individuals who live quite far from the Coast, who are financial members
of our temple and who drive out here regularly to worship and gather with
us. But I think that the group who come
from Toowoomba, drive farther than anybody else. Kol
Hakavod to them!
So back to the conference. Registration was to begin at 8.00AM, with the
program actually starting at 8.30. I
definitely wanted to be on time. Partly
this was my military conditioning coming once again to the surface. No, I don’t look much like a military man anymore. But I still do, in many ways, think like one! My feeling is; if it’s worth going to, it’s
worth being on time. But in this case,
there was more to it. I was scheduled to
give one of the opening prayers.
Whenever I’ve organised an event, I didn’t like it if someone with a key
role – especially if that role was at the very beginning! – did not show up on
time. It always felt good when I
actually saw the participants arrive, and until they did I could not
relax. So on the morning I went to
Toowoomba, I backed out of my garage at 5,30AM in order to make sure I arrived
in Toowoomba by 8.00. Oh, I grumbled to
myself for the first few kilometres about not having had time to make and drink
coffee before leaving the house. But I
managed to arrive at the conference site just before 8.00.
Stepping inside the door, I looked
around. I saw a sea of various-coloured
robes, each of them draped over the shoulders of a shaven-headed follower of the
Buddha. All of them, men and women, were
sitting quietly, not conversation, just sitting with their hands folded on the
table in front of them or in their laps, patiently waiting for the start of the
conference which was half an hour away.
Okay! I thought. This
definitely isn’t a Jewish event! We’re not in Brooklyn anymore, Toto! I’m not sure we’re even in the Land of Oz!
Not
only did most of the people arrive on time.
The event actually started on time.
And each flow point in the conference happened more-or-less on
time. Lunch break happened when
scheduled. The afternoon session ended
and I was in the car headed home exactly when
advertised. Amazing, I thought!
Do you know the old joke about how the
airplane carrying the rabbi, the cantor, and the synagogue president gets
hijacked by terrorists? The hijackers
tell the three Jews: To show you that we are merciful, we are
granting each of you one last request before we kill you.
So the rabbi tells the hijackers: Before
I die, I want to give the Ultimate Kol Nidrei sermon. I want to pull out all the stops, challenging
the listener to live as a good Jew with no reservations of qualifiers. I want to speak uninterrupted and not have
anybody tell me to limit my remarks to ten minutes, or 15, or whatever.
Then the cantor tells the
hijackers: Before I die, I want to sing the Ultimate performance of Kol
Nidrei. I want to pull out all the
stops, singing it three times through, with every extra trill and flourish,
slowly, savouring every note.
Finally the synagogue president looks
at the other two and croaks: Kill me first!
(Relax! If you weren’t aware of the fact, the Kol
Nidrei service was last night!)
Buddhist
speakers, starting with the school’s president dominated the first day of the conference. Let me make this clear. They were the conference’s sponsors, and they
had every right to feature their own remarks – on the first day, and subsequent
days! Also, their hospitality was
absolutely overwhelming. They were
gracious to a fault. And the premise of
the conference was well-intentioned. But
if I ever have to sit through a series of Buddhist speakers… you can kill me
first.
The president of Pure Land Learning
College, Venerable Master Chin Kong, gave the first major speech. It was a looooooong speech. In Mandarin.
Over a video link. I have to tell
you, it was painful for me to try to stay awake and alert during that
speech. His voice was soft. With no emphasis. He spoke sloooooooowly. And he spoke in circles.
None of the other Buddhist speakers
spoke quite as slowly. Or as
softly. But they all seemed to speak in
circles. There’s simply a dialectic
that’s clearly the norm in Buddhist circles.
Thought is in entirely theoretical terms, with circular and
stream-of-consciousness structure. In
other words, very little structure at all.
I have to admit, I was bored nearly to tears.
The two Muslims who spoke that day,
used a similar dialectic. And droning
voice. That’s how Islam is going to conquer the world, I thought mischievously. They’re
going to bore us into submission. Okay, I’m kidding! Please don’t
accuse me of spewing hatred toward our Muslim cousins! I really do cherish the children of
Ishmael. One of my most heartfelt
prayers is for peace and harmony with the disciples of Muhammad. Just please…don’t put me in a room where one
is speaking!
After lunch I was ready to struggle to
stay awake during the afternoon session.
Thank G-d, the first speaker was an Australian, a Catholic woman who is
a professional educator at a girl’s high school where she teaches religious
education. She gave a talk about the
challenges of teaching RE in this day and age.
She didn’t drone. Her
presentation was of the sort one would expect from a good teacher: well-organised, compelling, with an animated
delivery.
Afterward, when I had time to reflect
I realised something important about this woman and her presentation. Despite the divide between our respective
religions, we shared a common language and methodology. It was something not shared with the
previous, Buddhist and Muslim speakers.
There
was another large difference. We were
both dressed conservatively, in clothes that we would expect to be seen in
while working. I was wearing a business
suit, and she was wearing a pants suit.
The Buddhists wore their flowing robes and shaved heads, and the Muslims
wore their kufis and long tunics. In other
words, both those groups dressed in a way calculated to set themselves apart
from others around them. Please don’t
hear this as a criticism; I only mention it to point out a difference in
mindset. The Catholic RE woman and I
clearly shared a mindset. With the
Buddhist monks and the Muslim Imams, the differences between our respective
mindset formed an automatic gulf between us.
A
few weeks earlier, two of our members and I had a meeting with three
representatives of the LDS congregation that is our neighbour across the car
park. Occasioning the meeting was an
encounter that I’d had with one of their members, who came in one day to chat
with me and expressed interest in mounting some kind of dialogue between our
groups. At the time, I thought it would
be best for a limited number of our members to meet with an equal number of
them, see if we could get comfortable with one another, and then figure out how
to proceed.
The
LDS – or Mormons as many call them, came to the meeting on a weeknight
impeccably attired to conduct business.
Their suits were tailored and pressed, with starched white shirts
sporting French cuffs and polished cuff links, with carefully polished
shoes. They sat ramrod straight, their
hands folded together on the table in front of them. They were serious; they didn’t crack a joke,
and they found it challenging to even crack a smile. And us?
I won’t say that we were dressed as slobs, but we were definitely
casual. Loose. Chatty.
Telling jokes, often at our own expense.
We sat sloughed over, leaning back, our legs elevated or crossed. You get the picture. These were our neighbours. We seemed to instinctively act at home –
since we were – in order to make our guests feel likewise. It didn’t work so well.
After
our guests left, we all agreed that they were such nice people…and as if from another planet.
We
all know this, even if we don’t think about it much or articulate it well. We gravitate to those who are the most like
us. We cultivate friendships with those
who share with us certain, powerful social cues. Who dress, and comport themselves as we do. Who are of similar age, and in similar life
circumstances. Sometimes that means
other Jews. But most of us also have
close friends who are not. Those of our
friends who are not Jews, are not likely to be Buddhists, Muslims, or LDS
Christians.
These
two recent experiences reminded me of the importance of sometimes coming out of
our comfort zone to meet with others. Of
working hard to dialogue. Even with
those, with whom we share relatively little.
Of trying to stay awake through a presentation we might find boring, in
order to understand the message behind the medium.
You’ve
heard me mention Stephen Covey’s book The
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People before. This book, although it dates from 1989, seems
as fresh today as the day Covey wrote it.
Habit Five is: Seek First to Understand, then to be
Understood. In business, in
interfaith dialogue, and any kind of encounter, there is a very human
tendency. We are self-centric. We internalise that, if only The Other would
understand us, there would be understanding.
Covey suggests that we start by trying to understand the other, before
worrying if he understands us.
Interfaith
Dialogue, if it is going to be something real and not just a box to tick, has
got to begin with this premise. We must
first seek to understand. All the
parties must.
Let
me return to the subject of our Muslim cousins.
A
week ago Saturday, as we prepared for Rosh Hashanah, there was a violent
protest by a large group of Muslims in the Sydney CBD. It was in response to that stupid 14-minute
video posted on YouTube that makes disparaging assertions about the Prophet
Muhammad. The film was clearly made in
America, since most of the actors spoke with American accents. There are some who have asserted that it was
actually made with the backing of Coptic Christians in Egypt. In all honesty, I don’t especially care how
the film came into being, who made it, or who financed it. Had there not been anti-American violence
across the Arab world, and the riot in Sydney, you and I probably would have
not cared at all about its existence. I
mean that literally; the video has apparently been there some six months, and
I’m guessing nobody in this room was aware of it. Well, we are now.
The
vociferous Muslim reaction to the film drove many of us to see it. To me, it was 14 minutes of my life that I’ll
never get back. I can certainly see why
a Muslim would be offended by it.
I’m
not going to address the killing of the US ambassador and three staffers in
Libya, in an attack ostensibly occasioned by that movie. Except to say that the White House has
finally admitted that some of those involved turn out to be affiliated with Al
Qaeda, and one in particular was a guest of my country’s government at the
‘island resort’ at Guantanamo. So I’m not
going to try to understand how this moronic movie could have inspired acts of
terrorism. The riot in Australia was
ugly, and frightening, and reflected poorly on Muslims in general. But it wasn’t deadly.
There
may have been some truth in the movie’s assertions. Perhaps they are all true. Maybe Muhammad was a paedophile. To me, as a Jew in the 21st
century of the Common Era, this is not at all important.
What
is important to me is that we must
somehow, someway, find a way to bring the Muslims who live in our midst, closer
to the prevailing culture. We who have
mastered that culture despite our immigrant roots, must find a way to help them
to express themselves within the culture.
To work past their deep sense of grievance over just about every aspect
of Western Culture. We have to let them
know somehow that they have someone to talk to.
Somebody to listen to them and understand them. Someone to help them learn to cherish freedom
of speech as we do and not to loathe it even if it is used to propagate some
idea with which they disagree. Who,
after all has more experience with this than we Jews?
And
that requires dialogue.
This
congregation is no stranger to dialogue.
I know that you have hosted a local imam before, and since my arrival we
have hosted a number of Christian groups who attended our services and learn
from us. All the above is good, but I
prefer real dialogue – people of
different backgrounds really getting to know one another. Getting to feel comfortable with one
another. Learning from one another.
I
think that our congregation, if she is going to really help make our little
corner of the world a better place, must be proactive about such dialogue. It’s hard work. It’s rife with risks. It can be uncomfortable. But it is important, and it is something we can do.
I
have some ideas about how to go about this, but I want to hear your ideas. I need your wisdom in organising these
dialogues. I need your input, frankly
because I need your involvement. If it
is just between clergy, it is not going to be especially meaningful. To really help, it must be between lay people,
on a person-to-person level.
We
need to engage in dialogue with our neighbours, because we are not in Brooklyn
anymore, Toto. We do not live in a
Jewish ghetto. We cannot simply shut out
the parts of the world around us that we do not understand. If we operate in this way, we’ll not contribute to the creation of Australia that
embodies the values that this country stands for. I happen to know what these are, because I’ve
just arrived and had to sign a statement to the effect that, if allowed to be
here, I would uphold them. They are: parliamentary
democracy; the rule of law; living peacefully; respect for all individuals
regardless of background; compassion for those in need; freedom of speech and
freedom of expression; freedom of association; freedom of religion and secular
government. I don’t know about you; but
I believe that each one of these values is worth fighting for. They are certainly worth talking for!
Help
me with this. If we can get the talk
going, we will begin to heal our community in so many ways. We will begin to repair our broken
world. And that is what we Jews are
called to do.
As
Yom Kippur comes toward its conclusion, we hold the Yizkor Service – the service of Remembrance. This powerful time of our most powerful of days,
when we take the time to honour those people, personally important to us, who
are no longer with us. To many Jews as
they reach the final years of their lives, the image of their offspring and
others taking time to remember them in a positive light is extremely
powerful. Yes, we go out of our way to
think of the departed in the most positive terms. It is hard to find someone, even the
quirkiest and most problematic, about whom one cannot say something positive.
Hard but not impossible. I have had people come to me and say of a
long-departed parent: “He was abusive.
He was a scoundrel. I’m sorry,
Rabbi; I can’t say I miss him, because I don’t.”
If you are saying Yizkor this afternoon for such a person, there’s little consolation
I can offer you. I can’t change the
nature of those who are gone, much less those who remain with us. The
latter, perhaps I can influence. But
when I try to, my efforts often seem pathetically feeble. About the departed I can change nothing.
So we try to think positive thoughts
about the departed. For most of those,
no matter how problematic they may have been, one can find something positive to think and say. For some, if it can’t be done then it can’t
be done. I’m not a miracle worker…only
G-d is. So we do try to think positively
about the departed, and in saying the Yizkor
prayers for those individuals we try mightily to conjure up positive memories.
I hope you don’t see me as
muck-raking! It’s not my point to
dethrone any of our dear departed. But I
have heard this refrain from those left behind often enough, that I feel
compelled to say this today. I’m saying
it because I’m sure there is someone with such thoughts in this room. I don’t know who you are and I don’t really
want to know. But I want you to know what I am saying.
So we say Yizkor even for those about whom the memories are not especially
fond. We say Yizkor even for wasted lives.
But we don’t say Yizkor for wasted time. Yet perhaps, wasted
time and energy is precisely that,
for which we should say Yizkor.
This morning I joked about sitting
through the recent Muhammad movie that has been causing a stir in the Islamic
world. I said that the time I spent
watching the movie was 14 minutes of my life that I’ll never get back. I’ll say that often, usually after a
fruitless exchange with another person. Well, that’s another five minutes of my life
I’ll never get back. A joke, but if
you think about it, an important truth about the passage of time.
Poems and songs have been written
about the irrevocable reality of the passage of time. We only have one go, and if we’re not careful
it slips away from us before we realise it.
Every minute wisely spent is cherished forever. But the converse is also true. Every moment wasted is simply lost forever.
I know many people who have taken this
principle to heart. As a result, they
over-program their lives to the point of ridiculousness. They are always
busy, and their busy-ness always has a purpose. Everybody knows someone like this. I recognise the type, because there was a
time in my life when I was that
someone. There were never enough hours
in the day for all the things I had to accomplish, and as a result I was always
busy accomplishing.
I can tell you; that’s no way to
be. Of
course it’s important to accomplish worthwhile things. It’s important not to fritter away our lives
doing things that don’t matter. But it’s
also important to take time to savour life.
To smell the roses, so to speak.
To take time for what we in the pastoral and counselling communities
refer to as ‘Self Care.’ We who are
professional carers tend to neglect it, until some extreme event makes us aware
of what we’re doing. Many carers leave
behind broken marriages, and damaged relationships, because we are so driven to
care for others.
So when I suggested that we say Yizkor for wasted time and energy, I
really wasn’t kidding. And if I had to
name the one activity on which we tend to waste the most time and energy, it
would not be difficult at all to pinpoint.
That activity is gossip.
Everybody
knows what I mean when I say gossip; it’s
the spreading of supposed insider knowledge about a person or a situation, for
no positive purpose. Sometimes we think
it means unimportant factoids about someone’s private life. Yes, that does
meet the definition of gossip. But
it’s not the only kind of information
that meets the definition. It’s almost
always negative information. Even if
it’s true information – and really,
it seldom is – the process of spreading gossip brings no merit to the
gossiper. Because if we’re honest, its
purpose is almost always to bring discredit to someone else. To undermine them. To torpedo their careers, their lives, to
cause them to fail. And in return for
what? For the most part, nothing. Gossip is the weapon of the powerless who
brandishes it to somehow, in his or her own mind, negate his or her impotence. But most of the powerless created their own
impotence by not recognising, and cultivating, and celebrating their very real
virtues and skills. If you feel
powerless, it is time to look inside yourself and find those strengths. Give yourself credit for them. Cultivate them. That’s how
you overcome feeling powerless. When you
gossip about others you do not overcome your powerlessness. No, you only make yourself look pathetic.
It’s no accident that ‘gossip’ in
Hebrew is called lashon hara. That is to say, evilspeak. Because its end
is always evil. It can and does defame
the person who is the subject of the gossip.
It can undermine any and all of the good that the subject is trying to
do. But the evil of evilspeak goes far deeper than that. Because it undermines whole organizations,
whole communities. It wipes out the
trust of large numbers of people and sours them on the community itself. That’s the true evil of evilspeak.
So gossip is far worse than a waste of
time and energy. It’s just simply
wrong. Morally, ethically wrong. That’s why Torah has so much to say about
it. As we just read in our Afternoon
Torah reading today: Lo teilech racil be’amecha; velo ta’amod al
dam re’echa. Don’t go about as a
talebearer among your people, and don’t stand upon the blood of your
kinsman. This juxtaposition –
spreading gossip and causing the shedding of innocent blood – tells us what G-d
thinks of gossip. It is wrong, it is
immoral, it is unethical…and it hurts the community terribly.
And
yes, it’s a waste of time and energy. If
the gossip were doing positive things, he or she would be able to accomplish so
much with the time and energy spent gossiping.
And that’s not to mention the waste of the time and energy of those to
whom he or she brings the gossip.
My
bringing this to your attention this afternoon is not just to teach you about
something theoretical. There has been a
storm of gossip-mongering in the congregation lately. It isn’t necessary to name names. If you’ve had the misfortune to be the victim
of this barrage – that is, if it’s been repeated to you – that you know who it
is. If you’ve been one of the lucky ones
and haven’t had to listen to it yet, then take this as a theoretical
lesson. But I know it has been
happening, because I’ve been told about it.
I’ve been told, because I am the subject of this gossip. Let me be clear: if I have been the subject, that’s one thing.
But you have been its victims. You, and your very community…this community.
The
other day, someone came to me to complain about it. This person is a long-time member and has
been a key member in ways I’d rather
not specify lest I inadvertently give away their identity. The complaint: This
temple was such a happy place. But now
there are divisions being sown.
Discord. Because of this, I don’t
feel the same about coming here as I used to.
Gossiping is extremely common. If we’re honest with ourselves, probably
everyone in this room has been guilty of it at one time or another. Because it is a common failure. And I think that that’s the key to why, when
someone engages in it, we have a hard time confronting them about how we feel
about it. Why this person who has been
made unhappy by the results of this recent gossip-mongering, came to me and not the perpetrator. It makes us feel hypocritical to confront
someone about something we ourselves have done.
So we think we’ll let it go in one ear and out the other. We’ll let it fizzle out and hope it goes
away. But that never happens. If it isn’t stopped in its tracks, it sows
discord and unhappiness.
So in all reasonability, what is each
person’s responsibility when they are burdened by the gossip-monger? Simple.
It is your responsibly to do anything you can to put a stop to it. To respond to the person spreading gossip
that what they’re doing is wrong and that you will have none of it. To tell the person that, if they cannot desist
from gossip, you’ll have nothing to do to them.
Isolate the gossip monger. Suggest
that, if they feel they have a valid complaint against the subject of their
gossip, then there are valid ways of addressing their grievance. In the open.
In a forum where it can be aired directly, and responded to directly. But the gossip monger will almost never
confront in such a way. Because the
gossip monger knows in their heart of
hearts that they are committing a grievous sin.
So let’s get the gossiping to
stop. Then we won’t feel we have to say Kaddish for wasted time and energy. To say Kaddish
for the community that we once had, but which we see slipping away. To say Kaddish
for the happiness we once felt when we came into this building but can no
longer feel.
Life is finite – that is the sad
truth. For each and every person in this
room, their life will ultimately end.
G-d willing, each one of us will have many good years to fill with
accomplishment and happiness. When we’re
gone and someone is saying Kaddish for
us, may it only evoke fond memories.
But let’s make sure we don’t have to
say Kaddish for the things that need
not pass away. Instead, let’s put a stop
to the gossip and make our community what it once was to us, and work to make
it even better.
And
let’s not put ourselves in the position of feeling that we aught to say Kaddish for wasted time. Instead, let’s take a deep look inside
ourselves in this powerful moment when our day or fasting and introspection is
coming to an end. Let’s ask ourselves to
what benefit we wast time in gossip. In lashon hara, evilspeak. Instead of feeling regret over the way
we’ve wasted time, let’s stop wasting time.
Let’s use our time and energy to accomplish great and positive things
together. And we’ll all benefit. Even the would-be gossip monger. Instead of sentencing them to look pathetic, let’s
challenge them to be a positive force for good.
Think about it.
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