“It’s All About Me”: A Reflection for Rosh Hashanah 2015

President Obama holds an annual conference call with Reform Rabbis, shortly before Rosh Hashanah.  He expects that Reform Rabbis will preach about some grand public policy issue on this important day.  And he expects that Reform Rabbis will be particularly sympathetic to his agenda.  And will support it if he can communicate it clearly to them.  And he is, in large part, correct.

          In the first year of Obama’s presidency, he asked Reform Rabbis to talk up the Affordable Care Act, which is popularly called, ‘Obamacare.’  As you are probably aware, Obamacare ultimately became the Law of the Land.  Six years on, he considers it to be his signature domestic policy success.

          I opened my sermon that Rosh Hashanah by telling my congregation about that conference call and the President’s request that I talk to them about health care.  As I did, I saw some rolling of eyes.  I told them that, as much as I respect the President of the United States and Leader of the Free World, I was going to talk about something more important to me.  In truth, had I spoken about the ACA I would have spoken against it.  But in truth, I simply had another agenda.

          This year, the President asked Reform Rabbis to talk about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran's Nuclear Program, or “JCPOA’ but more commonly called ‘The Iran Deal.’  Of course, he wants us to talk it up.  If it passes Congress as is expected, Obama will consider it his signature foreign policy achievement.  Again, I think the topic is certainly important.  If I were going to speak on it, I would not be at all supportive of it.  But again my agenda is not exactly in line with that of Chief Rabbi Obama…

Everybody likes consistency in relationships.  Even if you’re adventurous, you like knowing where you stand with others.  Particularly in business dealings, or in transactions where the other person represents some structure or institution.  In such encounters, it is only natural to wish to know the parameters and to expect them not to shift over time.

          This preference extends to personal relationships as well, but we tend to accept that these are going to be more fraught with unexpected twists and turns.  It goes with the territory when emotional baggage comes into play.

          As you know, I spent 28 years of my adult life in military service.  When I first enlisted, nobody could understand why I would volunteer for such a gig.  It was, after all, not long after Vietnam.  And people didn’t see me as being a particularly disciplined individual.  It was a challenge for me to build a mindset of discipline.  Along the way, I learned something important about myself.  I learned that I prefer to know where I stand.  With other people.  With ‘The System.’  In any situation, it was comforting to know that I only had to read the relevant regulation.  I would know exactly what was expected of me, and what I could expect from others.  If people’s expectations or performance were not within the parameters laid down in the regulation, I could easily invoke the reg.

          Like many career military men, I’ve found my adjustment back to civilian life challenging in several ways.  I joke that I’ve had trouble learning to sleep in in the morning.  Who needs a rabbi at oh-dark-thirty?  But sometimes, people have wanted me to attend meetings that last late into the evening.  So logically, I would have learned early on to sleep in and stay up later.  That has been a challenge.  I am just now, seven years on, learning to sleep after the sun rises.  Sometimes.

It’s hard to argue that consistency, is an important element of military life.  Not so civilian life.  Unlike in the military, a lot of the ‘rules’ governing expectations are unwritten.  There’s no published regulation, carefully written to make it clear to all concerned, what is expected of them.  Instead there’s a fuzziness, with expectations that are often difficult to pin down.  They can – and do – shift over time and with events.  The expectations, rather than being based on a fixed standard, are more often based on how people feel at any given moment.  And of course the tyranny in that is that people feel differently at different times.  Not to mention that different people feel differently, period.

I’ve tried to conduct my rabbinate more in a ‘military’ style.  Not so much that I expect military-style consistency from people.  Clara disabused me of that idea years ago.  When I would get frustrated with our children, she would often remind me:  They’re not your soldiers.  

Rather, that I’ve tried to be ‘military’ in conveying consistency myself.  This, so that people will know where they stand with me.  They shouldn’t have to guess.  My success in this area has not been 100 percent.  Even if we strive for perfection, we never achieve it absolutely.  So someone could accuse me of not being consistent all the time.  And they would probably not be wrong. 

About a year ago, someone gently suggested to me that I was not entirely clear in telling potential converts how long the process would take.  I would tell people that it takes ‘about a year.’  What I meant is that it takes a year, if the individual candidate meets the milestones in a timely fashion.  And completion of the process – the convening of a Beit Din – will take place not necessarily exactly a year after the start date of the process.  To convene a Beit Din is a not easy.  So I would tell the candidate; if they fulfilled the requirements within a year, they could expect that the Beit Din would happen a reasonable amount of time afterward, ‘rewarding’ their work with a sense of closure and arrival.

So within the past year someone close to me challenged me that that was a bit fuzzy.  This, given a widespread problem in the Jewish community today, of candidates for conversion being ‘strung along’ for years, with the goal of having their ‘membership’ always in the distant future.  I knew that wasn’t how I operate.  But I reflected on how I communicate the expectations, and how long they candidates should expect it to take.  I’ve adjusted the way I communicate it.  And I told the person who had brought it to my attention, thanking him for doing so.

Since I’ve brought up conversion, I would like to address another aspect of the process.  But I don’t mean only conversion in its most limited sense:  becoming a Jew.  I mean conversion in a broader sense, in that Judaism is supposed to lead to a conversion of the people who cling to it.  Maybe conversion is not quite the right term; perhaps transformation is a better term to use in this context.  But back to the premise of conversion to Judaism…

When people make their first enquiry about conversion they almost always approach the process as It’s All About Me.  This is absolutely natural and expected.  The journey into Judaism is motivated by personal needs.  And it is intensely personal.  But I try to convey from the outset that, if the process is going to actually lead to conversion, it has to ultimately become All About something else.  And that Something Else, is Community.

Community itself is a fuzzy word; it can mean different things to different people.  I hope I’ve been successful in communicating what it means for me.  Someone might personally define community differently from how I do.  But my definition will, for better or worse, be the yardstick by which I measure whether It’s All About Community has become a reality for this candidate…or not.

Some of you have surely heard of the religion called, Wicca.  Many people dismiss Wicca as being satanic worship.  Actually what it’s closer to, is an attempt by Western peoples to return to a pre-Christian worship of earth and nature.  For some disaffected Christians, it has turned into an ‘I Hate Christianity’ club.  Disaffected Jews seldom become Wiccans.  They become Buddhists.  But that’s another sermon, for another day…

There are two kinds of Wiccans.  Those who join with a group.  And Solitaries, who practice Wicca on their own and on their own terms.  As I understand it, it doesn’t matter which path one chooses.  If a person considers himself to be a Wiccan, nobody is going to question that assertion.

Judaism is somewhat different.  Those interested in becoming Jews, are usually looking for some kind of community imprimatur.  And I, as a Rabbi, am one of the ones who grants that imprimatur…or doesn’t.  Sometimes, someone comes to me and tells me that they want to become a Jew, without being involved in a community – mine or some other one.  One would think this counter-intuitive.  If they wanted to ‘become a Jew’ without being involved in a community – to be a Jewish Solitary, as it were – then why would they need the piece of paper – the conversion certificate – that I can give them?  The answer is:  usually, they want something specific from the community.  For example, assurance of Jewish burial down the road.  Sometimes, the possibility of living in Israel.  These are the two most frequent reasons cited, but there are others.  And they want this on their own terms, without needing to get involved in a community and all that implies.  In other words, they want it to be All About Me, without any need for a phase shift.

I’ll tell you why It’s All About Me is problematic, and why it has no place ultimately in religious life.  And why it has to become It’s All About Community.

It runs like the rain through our contemporary society.  We usually don’t see the attitude in ourselves, because we hide it behind little commitments and sacrifices we make along the way.  But it’s there nevertheless, looming large behind whatever edifice we’ve constructed to deny its presence. 

I’ll prove it.  Probably the most fundamental structure we’ll point to, to disprove that It’s All About Me, is the family.  But the family is in deep trouble today.  People see their marriages as disposable.  Many don’t even bother getting married before setting up household and making children, because they think it will be easier to walk away when the time comes that they want to.  I see very little commitment by grown children, to their parents’ welfare.  And I see so many relationships between grown siblings, where there is any relationship at all, as being dysfunctional.  Today, the family is very much in trouble.  It’s not because we don’t care.  It’s because It’s All About Me.

So what I’m asserting is that, for most of us, It’s All About Me is our operating principle.  But we’re all about denying it, because it doesn’t fit our self-image of being people who care about others.  And I’m not trying to say that we don’t care.  But still…It’s All About Me.

Where this becomes really problematic is in Jewish religious life.  If it’s All About Me, then it can’t be All About Torah.  There simply is no room for both.  But what exactly would this mean, to say that It’s All About Torah?  Am I talking about a picture of an inflexible, absolute reality, an orthodoxy if you will?  In a word, no.  It’s All About Torah, means that the Torah is not just a fancy scroll that we carry around in circuits and reach out to kiss it with the corner of our Tallit.  This, before it is read with great ceremony, in a fancy Hebrew and chanted according to a fixed melody.  Rather, it means that Torah is the accepted narrative of Jewish life.  That we endeavour to live our lives according to the values and dicta that it conveys.  This, as a community of Jews.  Not in isolation.  Because one thing the Torah conveys most clearly, is that it’s all about the People Israel.  Not about the individual Jew.  This is different from a number of our neighbours’ religions, which are clearly more about a personal relationship with G-d.

I cannot force you to be a functioning member of the community.  Nor would I want to have the role of enforcer.  I don’t believe in Judaism by coercion.  So if you’re here casually, and I will not see you until the next major festival, that’s regrettable.  I think you’re missing something important.  But the reality is that the thing I’m ‘selling’ so to speak – community – cannot be conveyed in a casual visit.  If you expect that from your visit today, forgive me if it disappoints you…but it was bound to be so.

But if you want something from me, which is predicated on your being functionally a part of the community, then I need to see that it’s so.  It may not be the case tomorrow.  I cannot foresee tomorrow.  And if I make this demand of you, and you object because you see others who are not fulfilling it, know that I cannot enforce my will unless someone wants something specific from me.

Sometimes, our commitment to a particular principle will require us to stand apart from a particular structure.  In the case of Jewish community, there is much within its structures that has nothing to do with Torah.  Here within Jewish Journeys, we are outside any of the larger structures of the Jewish community.  But we ae nonetheless not outside of Community in the greater sense.  We work hard, and I hope we achieve consistency, in conveying the value of connection to K’lal Yisrael – to the greater community of Israel.

So there you have it:  my agenda for this morning, for the minutes before we hear the sound of the shofar.  The Great Tekiyah will not punctuate my thoughts on the Iran Deal.  My apologies to my Commander in Chief.  Instead, when Paul thrills us all with his performance as Ba’al Tekiyah he will be punctuating my essential question to you this morning.  And that question is:  Are you still in the It’s All About Me place?  If so, are you willing to consider transcending it?  To move to that It’s All About Torah place?  It’s not something one does in a moment, in a snap of the fingers.  It’s a journey to move from one paradigm to the other.  The journey may be long and meandering.  But it is ultimately worthwhile.  I can attest to that, because I have travelled that road myself.  Nay, I am travelling it as we speak.  Join me on this very Jewish Journey.  Shana Tova.