Our Strength, Our Song (Kol Nidre 5777/2016)

The older I get, the more I follow the old rule of thumb for backpacking: Go light.  Lay out only the things you think you’ll really need—then put away half.  Thirty years ago, while trekking the southern half of the Appalachian Trail, I learned to lessen my load by cutting off the handle of my toothbrush and removing the tabs from my tea bags—because when you’re carrying all of your possessions on your back, for weeks on end, you realize, with every bone of your body, that every little bit counts.  This is one of the reasons we go to the wilderness: to get back to basics, to pare away everything non-essential.

Imagine, then, our Israelite ancestors, leaving Egypt under duress, in the middle of the night.  Setting out for who knows where, for God knows how long—what do they choose to take along, when limited to what they can carry?  The bare essentials: unleavened dough, water bladders, goatskin tents, a few pieces of clothing.  And, at least in the case of the women:  musical instruments!

We know this because as they pass through the Sea of Reeds, just a few days after their departure, Miriam and the women dance, sing and celebrate to the beat of. . . tambourines!  How extraordinary: we flee Egypt in such haste we don’t even have time to let our bread rise, yet the women have the strength and wherewithal to pack the percussion section!  Thus Torah instructs us: music is not a luxury; it is, instead, a staple—as indispensable, for many of us, to the life of the spirit as food, water, and shelter are to the body.  Today, many evolutionary neurobiologists argue that music preceded speech in human development and continues to play a central role in shaping who we are.  Although I’m no scientist, I believe that music is as essential to our humanity as language—and that we Jews are not only a People of the Book but also a People of the Song.

Consider the convoluted history of Kol Nidre, the Hebrew/Aramaic prayer that opens—and gives its name to—this Yom Kippur evening service.  No one can trace the origins of this quasi-legalistic formula for annulling vows—but we do know that, from its first appearance, in 8^th century Babylonia, most of the leading Sages opposed its inclusion in our liturgy.  In 879 CE, the editor of the very first siddur, Rav Amram Gaon, called it minhag shtus, a foolish custom.  Since then, many venerated rabbinic authorities have argued against Kol Nidre, dismissing it as a misguided practice that makes light of pledges and promises. 

And yet, despite centuries of vehement opposition from leading scholars, Kol Nidre endured—because the primal power of its melody trumped the rabbis’ reasoned resistance to its words.  The music is the message.  It opens with a fall, a descending minor tone, which continues for two full phrases—and then breaks way to a determined rise.  It acknowledges our pain and heartbreak, then lifts us with a heroic—even defiant—endurance, crescendoing into a hard-earned triumph.  As Rabbi Reuven Hammer teaches, “the emotional experience of Kol Nidre overwhelms any individual attempt to understand what is being said.”

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What is the nature of the melody’s uncanny power? How did music inspire our foremothers to pack the percussion on their wilderness journey—and enable Kol Nidre to survive centuries of rabbinic effort to edit it away?

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For starters, music is omnipresent.  While spoken language is limited to human beings, and perhaps a few of the higher mammals like chimps, whales and dolphins, music fills the natural world.  Creation’s song is an endless chorus of chirping insects, singing birds, rustling leaves, raging rivers, and so much more.  The great Hasidic Rebbe Nachman of Breslov would pray: “Master of the Universe, may it be my custom to go outdoors each day, where every tree and blade of grass chants to its Creator.”  And the Psalmist proclaimed in wonder: “The heavens sing of God’s glory.” While we humans fumble to give language to the world, the world offers up its gorgeous song with utmost and unceasing grace. So it has been, says Torah, since God chanted everything into existence, commencing with  “Va-yomer Elohim y’hi or, va-y’hi or—And God said, ‘Let there be light’—and there was light.”   From the beginning, forever and always, it’s wind and water, the rushing spirit of the Divine, singing us into being, humming through the vastness of the universe into our waiting heads and hearts.

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Given music’s ubiquity, we should not be surprised at its special capacity to bring us together. 

Language often divides us, as Torah teaches with the Tower of Babel.   In a world awash with dialects and tongues, most of humanity cannot converse with one another.  And even for those lucky enough to share a common language, words may create barriers as much as bridges.   Speech descends into the realm of judgment, unconstructive criticism, and rigid dogma.  We lapse into dichotomies of right and wrong, self and other, us and them.  Doctrinal debates splinter religious communities,  and politics sunder families—and nations.  Even the Jewish people, with our proud Talmudic history of respectful argument are not immune to such discord.  Listen to the acrimonious dispute over the state of Israel currently raging in our Jewish press, institutions, and households—the language isn’t pretty.  Rancorous discourse and petty accusations make it ever harder for us to talk—and pray—together.  For us, and for all humanity, words too often harden into walls that set us apart.

Music can help us overcome such obstacles.  It transcends the failings of language; people who cannot speak to one another can sing and play and dance in beautiful harmony.  As the great 20^th century folk troubadour Pete Seeger noted, “Music leaps over barriers of language, religion, and politics.”  Seeger spoke from deep experience.  He and his band, the Weavers, were blacklisted during the McCarthy era.  In 1957, he was indicted for contempt of Congress, and his music was banned from mainstream TV and radio for nearly a decade.  But this did not silence his song.  Pete Seeger continued to sing out for peace, justice, and environmental responsibility well into the next millennium.  When he died in 2014, at the age of 94, President Obama memorialized him, lauding his steadfast belief in the music’s power to promote community and social change.  Speaking for so many of us, Obama concluded: “He always invited us to sing along.”

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Daniel ben Yehuda Dayyan also invited us to sing along, over six hundred years ago. He wrote the hymn that concludes this evening’s service.  Like Kol Nidre, which opens it, Daniel ben Yehuda’s work illustrates music’s ability to take us where words cannot.

For centuries, the Rabbis tried to persuade the Jewish people to subscribe to a standard creed.  They imagined a universal profession of faith might unify us.  Their best candidate for that challenging task was Moses Maimonides’ Thirteen Articles of Faith.  Maimonides, also known as the Rambam, was the greatest Jewish scholar who ever lived—yet time after time, our Sages’ best efforts to canonize his words failed miserably.  The Jews in the pews simply refused to recite these principles; then, as now, we were just too strong-willed and opinionated to accept any fixed creed—even one penned by our most revered teacher.  Then, in 1404, the poet Daniel ben Yehudah had the brilliant idea to recast the Rambam’s principles in rhymed metric verse.  Soon thereafter, composers set it to music as Yigdal.   That hymn quickly secured the beloved place in the siddur that it had repeatedly failed to gain as prose.  The lesson is clear, and true to this day:  if you want people to profess words, even if they don’t necessarily believe them, arrange them to a catchy tune.  As both Daniel ben Yehuda and Pete Seeger taught: Creeds divide us, music invites us to sing along.

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But music doesn’t just connect us with one another; it also helps integrate different aspects of ourselves.  Dr. Daniel Levitan is a former rock musician and producer with a PhD in neuroscience; he shares his research in his terrific book, This is Your Brain on Music.  Working with functional MRI technology, he and his colleagues have demonstrated that while sight, smell, speech and other human sensory operations occur in specific areas of our brains, musical activities light up everything from the cerebral cortex to the amygdala. Scientifically speaking,  music defies compartmentalization.  Philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore summarizes these findings:

The aquamarine light of music floods through the brain, pooling in all the places where we feel, understand, remember, prefer, perceive, analyze, hope, and fear.  The part of the brain that reads music helps us read pain in a person’s face.  The place for perfect pitch is the same area the brain uses to understand language.  We remember a melody in the place we remember our children’s names.  The splashing edges of this great blue sea of music are the places where understanding can grow.

Many of us love music precisely because of its unique capacity to cross, confuse, and ultimately confound boundaries. I believe this is a large part of its eternal appeal for all kinds of religious communities.  For just as music blurs the regional borders that so often define our brains, so, too, does it transcend the artificial barriers  we draw between sacred and secular.  That’s why you can be deeply religious and still love secular show tunes, or avidly atheistic yet thrill to the passionate energy of a gospel choir.  Consider: when Ira Gershwin wrote the lyrics for “Our Love is Here to Stay” just one month after the death of its composer, his beloved brother George—what kind of love, exactly, did he have in mind?  Is the song a pledge offered by a romantic young man to his lover?  Does it represent Ira’s loving lament for George?  Or is it something else entirely?  The chorus declares: “In time the Rockies may tumble, Gibraltar may crumble, they’re only made of clay.  But our love is here to stay.”  Recently, a colleague reminded me that these words are remarkably similar to a passage from the book of Isaiah: “For the mountains may move, and the hills be shaken, but My love shall never depart from you.”  Was Ira Gershwin nodding to Scripture?  Did he unconsciously compose a sacred song?  Or is “Our Love is Here to Stay” all of the above, and more: romantic and fraternal, mournful and joyous, human and divine, all at the same time?

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Music’s miraculous, mysterious ability to transcend boundaries—to integrate us—infuses it with transformative holiness.  It can rescue us, body and soul.  During one of the darkest periods of my life, I found solace playing my harmonica at a Sunday night blues jam.  I took comfort in the Psalms, that holy poetry perhaps composed upon King David’s harp—and in the wisdom of my teacher and therapist, Bruce Springsteen.  When I was at my lowest, I would crank up The Boss singing “Lonesome Day”, with its elegiac verses echoing my own sadness, then overcome in the end by the irresistibly triumphant chorus: “It’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright.”  That music saved me from despair.

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 And I am not alone.  For some of us, salvation comes through John Coltrane’s haunting wails of “A Love Supreme.”  For others, it arrives via Bach or Beethoven.  The vessel can be the muezzin’s call, a Buddhist chant or Hindu raga, Ave Maria or “Amazing Grace.”  It is the coal miner’s daughter, Loretta Lynn, and Luciano Pavarotti, the gospel chorus and the Motown band, rock and rap and R&B, Don Giovanni and “Tangled Up in Blue.”  It is sacred or secular—no, it is sacred and secular—and it is a priceless gift to us all.

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The founder of Hasidism, Israel Baal Shem Tov, knew this.  He taught that music shatters the barricades of heaven.  He composed devekus niggunim, songs that transcend syllables and sound, and he shared them with his disciples, to help them lift their prayers into communion with the Holy One.  Nearly fifteen years ago, I experienced a taste of those songs and their transformative power, thanks to the writer, witness and teacher, Elie Wiesel, z”l, who died this past summer.  Mr. Wiesel grew up in the cradle of Hasidism, in a small town nestled in Romania’s Carpathian mountains.  His mother, Sarah, was the daughter of Dodye Feig, a prominent Vizhnitzer Hasid, sage, and storyteller.  

In his book, A Jew Today, Elie Wiesel paints an extraordinary portrait of his grandfather.  He describes the day, as a young boy, when he missed his zayde so much that he walked the seven kilometer journey to his farm, without his parents’ knowledge or permission, just to visit him.   Reb Dodye sent back a message with the next coachman to reassure the worried parents, then regaled Elie with tales of his great-grandfather, who took up the violin at the age of 70, and  entertained his family with klezmer and gypsy tunes.  And then they sang, Dodye Feig and Elie Wiesel, grandfather and grandson, together.

Fast forward almost seventy years.  Nobel-laureate Elie Wiesel comes to Boise to speak to a packed house at the Morrison Center shortly after 9/11.  His talk was exactly what one would expect.  He said what needed to be said, eloquently—as he had undoubtedly done on countless other occasions around the globe.  I don’t recall any of the specifics because the words, while instructive, simply weren’t that memorable. 

But during his short stay in our city, despite his jam-packed schedule, Mr. Wiesel somehow found the time to visit us here at CABI, to share an intimate half hour with the Jewish community.  Quite unlike the highly-polished speech he gave at Boise State, this talk was totally informal— just a wise old Jewish man lovingly shmoozing with his extended Jewish family.

Then time ran short and he prepared to head out for his next event.  But first he paused and asked us: “May I conclude with a niggun, a melody from my youth?” He took a deep breath, then shared a brief, beautiful story about a lullaby his mother sang to him when he was a boy. Then he sang, so softly at first, barely above a whisper. Who knew?—Elie Wiesel had the sweetest, most poignant singing voice!  You could hear the angels humming with him, and when he finished, there wasn’t a dry eye in the shul. It was one of the most moving Jewish moments of my life, and I remain forever thankful for it.

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From Kol Nidre to Yigdal, from the Baal Shem Tov to Elie Wiesel, music unites and integrates, because it speaks straight to the heart.

We know this here at CABI.  It’s why we applied for—and received—a prestigious grant from the Covenant Foundation to hire Nemmie Stieha as our music educator.  We’ve used Covenant money to bring in some of today’s most outstanding young Jewish musicians. Michelle Citron headlined at the Basque Center, and Nefesh Mountain joined us for last spring’s congregational retreat in McCall.  Josh Niehaus and Chava Mirel played at Feast of Torah and anchored our Idaho Jewish Festival.  And thanks to Nemmie’s leadership, this spring we will host a Purim visit from Pizmon, the fabulous co-ed, a cappella group from Columbia University, Barnard College and the Jewish Theological Seminary.  Meanwhile, week in and week out, we will do all we can to better infuse our Shabbat and holy day services—and other gatherings for study, socializing, and social justice—with vibrant Jewish music.  Because I believe that our spiritual growth and inspiration depend less on how much Hebrew—or which siddur—we use—and more on how enthusiastically and often we sing together. 

I want to encourage all of us here tonight—and those who are not here, too—to join with me and Nemmie and Elana Salzman and Oliver Thompson and Brad Wolf and the Moody Jews and all the rest of our CABI music lovers and music makers in the holy work of transforming and renewing our congregation with the amazing power of song.

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During the civil rights movement of the 1960s, African-American demonstrators risked their lives in the deep south, facing down brutal white supremacists with remarkable courage.  When asked about the source of such bravery, Bernice Johnson Reagon, daughter of a Baptist minister and founder of the ensemble “Sweet Honey in the Rock”, points to the music.  She maintains that by singing hymns from the black church, the protestors conjured up an extraordinary collective strength.  The music created a kind of protective barrier between the demonstrators and the police, allowing the marchers to move beyond their fear.  As Ms. Reagon describes it: “Those songs do something to the material that you’re made of.  The singing connects you with a force in the universe that makes you different.  You become part of a community.  And then they can’t get to you.”

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On Rosh Hashanah eve, I challenged us to go forth, into the wilderness together, to embrace a Jewish future articulated by diverse new voices that may strike us as strange and unfamiliar.  I acknowledged that this call is challenging—that it will take great faith to work through our fear, to embrace the unknown, and hold fast to our vision of a revitalized Jewish future. 

Tonight I reassure you that we can, indeed, muster that faith and courage—that we can find it, in no small part, through the gift of music.

Kathleen Dean Moore describes the unparalleled potential of that gift in her essay, “Another World Could Start Right Here”.  She writes:

A physicist will tell you what you already know.  That harmony has the power to shake the world.  Sing one clear note, and the same tone will hum in the window glass, in the electric wires, in the neighbor’s piano, in the pine needles—and the air will be changed forever.

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 Let us go, then, into that wilderness, singing, as Miriam and the women sang at the Sea of Reeds.  Why did they pack their tambourines?  Because, in their wisdom, our mothers knew the journey ahead would demand the kind of bravery best-mustered through the power of song.

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Imagine the scene on the shore of that distant sea: As the Egyptian army bore down upon them, our ancestors must have been seized by doubt and fear—until Miriam took up her timbrel, to dance and sing.  Then the rest of the women joined her, fortified by the courage of her song, and the music rose in a mighty crescendo, parting the waters and paving freedom’s way—even as it does, still, today.

And so, on this Yom Kippur eve, this sacred day of atonement—at-one-ment—let us, too, sing together:

Ozi v’zimrat Yah, va-y’hi li l’yeshua—                                                                                      

God, my strength, and my song, shall be my liberation.

Amen.

Tribes (Rosh Hashanah Morning 5777)

I have always disliked John Lennon’s utopian anthem “Imagine”; Sebastian Junger’s new book, Tribe, reminded me why. 

In case you’ve somehow forgotten the lyrics of this ubiquitous tune, Lennon sings:

                        Imagine there’s no countries

                        It isn’t hard to do

                        Nothing to kill or die for

                        And no religion, too. . .

                        You may say I’m a dreamer

                        But I’m not the only one        

                        I hope some day you’ll join us

                        And the world will live as one.

It’s the classic dream of the 60s, a world liberated from national boundaries, archaic creeds, and petty tribal loyalties.  So why am I so resistant?

Perhaps there’s an element of self-interest—when I imagine a world with no religion, I’m unemployed.  Yet I disliked this song long before I entered rabbinical school.   Junger’s book clarifies why. 

Tribe describes what often happens after soldiers return from battle and survivors of natural and manmade disasters resume ordinary life.   Why, Junger asks, do so many find that despite its horrors, war may feel strangely better than peace, and calamity creates community?  He argues that for all of its unprecedented material comforts, contemporary Western life can be terribly lonely.  Conflict and catastrophe, by contrast, remind us what it is like to be a member of a tribe, a tight clan pledged to care and sacrifice for one another. 

This culture, with its fierce devotion to kith and kin—is at odds with modern society’s drive toward economic—and moral—globalization.  As columnist David Brooks notes, there is a sharp divide between those for whom loyalty to blood and historic ties takes precedence and those who emphasize generic obligations to all of humankind. If the universalists’ hymn is “Imagine,” the tribal ethos is embodied by the chorus of Bruce Springsteen’s anthem, “We Take Care of Our Own.”

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I learned where my sympathies lay early in my rabbinate, at a series of interfaith gatherings, where I always found myself lumped in with the Catholics and Protestants.  As a rabbi, I was inevitably seated with priests and ministers, as part of that family of faiths labeled “Judeo-Christian.”  They were good people, and I did not take their company for granted; I was well aware that generations of American Jews had labored mightily to gain a place at that table, which meant acceptance into the social and religious mainstream.  And yet. . . it wasn’t where I wanted to be. 

Then—and even more so now, thirty years later—I identified with the outliers: the Buddhists and Muslims and Hindus, with the Native American shamans, the Wiccans and animists and pagans.  I connected best with those on the periphery—not the proper mainline clergy in their grey business suits and collars but the women and men in bright, bold colors, flowing robes, funky hats and headdresses, the folks whose celebrations included pungent smelling foods, drums and dance, and chants offered up in ancient, guttural languages—just like my own. 

I cast my lot with the tribes.

As a rabbi, to this day, I hear my calling to represent my tribe, the Jewish people.  I honor our storied history.  I revere the sacred tradition that fills my life with purpose, and insists, contra John Lennon, that there are, indeed, people and principles worth dying for.  If this seems dangerously naïve, let me offer an important caveat: I am well aware that taken to extremes, tribalism devolves into racism and bigotry.  This is a critical concern, and I will return to it soon enough.  But here, at the outset, I refuse to let tribalism’s potential dangers eclipse its many-fold blessings. 

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Rabbi Brad Hirschfield describes those blessings in his article, “Confessions of an Unrepentant Tribalist.”  He writes:

It all comes down to two words: unconditional love, or at the very least, unconditional belonging.  A tribe offers the experience of being loved and cared for not because of what you do, but simply because you are who you are.  Once you are in the tribe. . . you are in, no matter what.  It is that sense that no matter how wrong we may be, there is always a place for us..  Think of it as un-divorceable family on steroids, if you like.   We all need that, and the only question is where and how we are going to get it.

I’ll add: Not only do we all need this kind of unconditional love—right now, we need it more than ever, because modern American life so often leaves us isolated and alone.  Even when we are surrounded by people of good will, the emotional armor that we wear, both knowingly and unwittingly, insulates us from them.  Our culture instructs us not to intrude or ask too much, to shy away from strangers, to keep out of others’ business.  Living behind our closed doors and ubiquitous screens, we are frequently hyper-connected yet ultimately on our own.  Our vaunted networks of Facebook friends are pale imitations of true tribal bonds.  They have a real role to play, enabling us to share information across vast distances in time and space.  But they can’t make your shivah minyan or dance with you at your wedding or bring you soup when you are sick.  They won’t help you care for your new baby or your dying father and they definitely will not love you even when you are being a total jerk.  Only the real, flesh and blood tribe has the power to lift us when we fall and stay with us, through thick and thin, as we struggle to get back up.

This is the immeasurable benefit that tribes confer upon their members: they love you and care for you even when it’s inconvenient—because you will do the same for them.  That’s the nature of the brit—the sacred covenant—that binds you.  And this is where John Lennon’s “brotherhood of man” inevitably falls short, for it simply isn’t possible—or even desirable—to love the entire 7.5 billion member human family with that kind of unconditional passion.

Most of us who have been parents—or, for that matter, children—know this in our gut.  The mother or father who loves their own child neither more nor less than any other child of the universe is not a parent that you’d choose to raise you.  You want someone to love you fiercely, vehemently, uniquely.  And that’s the point.  It’s ok—in fact, it is essential—to disproportionately love and nurture those closest to us.  It’s no sin to take special care of our own family and own tribe.  Indeed, Jewish tradition considers this a central obligation.  From our roots in Abraham and Sarah’s ancestral clan to today’s diverse tribe—spanning the globe from Be’er Sheva to Brooklyn to Boise—our calling has always begun with Kol Yisrael areivin zeh ba-zeh—All of Israel, all the Jewish people, are responsible for one another. 

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Here at CABI, caring community is the soul of our mission: celebrating our simchahs, comforting our mourners, tending to our sick and lonely.  We must always strive, however imperfectly, to learn and laugh together, to love one another in sickness and in health, and to maintain a special place in our hearts for our extended family, the land and people of Israel. As Hillel put it over two thousand years ago: “Im ayn ani li, mi li—If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”

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But here’s the catch—the critical caveat to which I promised to return and which any responsible tribalist must address: we cannot not stop there.  For we know, all too well, what tribalism looks like when it runs amuck, when tribal pride degenerates into chauvinistic supremacy.  History and today’s world stage are rife with wars pitting clan against clan, sect against sect.  Countless conflicts rage, as arrogant bands spill endless blood over misbegotten power, privilege and honor.  If we wish to make the case for tribalism, we have a strong obligation to guard against these potentially lethal pitfalls.  Such precautions might begin with two guiding principles.

The first is easy in theory but surprisingly difficult in practice: Do not raise your side up by putting others down.  Root passionately for your tribe.  Sacrifice, serve, and advocate for them with all of your heart, soul, and might.  But do not let your zeal for your community lead you down the rat hole of thinking that it is superior to everyone else’s.  As Rabbi Brad Hirschfield writes: “When one is clearer about what’s wrong with the other tribes than they are about what is right with their own, they are almost certainly walking down the racist path.”

Arrogance is a mask we wear to hide our weakness; real power is humble.  Invidious comparisons are a sign of underlying insecurities.  Tribes that are truly strong and secure can afford to be magnanimous in measuring others.  This is an important lesson for us as twenty-first century Jews, for an honest appraisal of our sacred tradition acknowledges that a significant strain of Jewish thought declares our superiority over our non-Jewish neighbors. 

That’s the understandable legacy of centuries of oppression. When others put us down—often with horrific brutality—we maintained the self-respect we needed to survive by acclaiming ourselves God’s elect.  But the time and place for such boasting is now past.  The American Jewish community is surely secure enough to stand tall, to realize we no longer need to assert our unique sense of destiny at others’ expense.   In the words of two CABI members, who responded to a Facebook post I offered on this subject:

I have a hard time reading “chosen people” as “better people”. . .

It is not that others are better or worse, but that one is where they are and they cannot pretend to be otherwise. . . Like flowers, we all bloom at different times.  Can a sunflower that has kissed the sun pretend that it hasn’t?  Can a bud pry open its petals without being destroyed?  Both are beautiful, unique, and part of something perfect, miraculous and essential.

This is the balance that we, the Jewish community, walk in this new year 5777.  Let us learn to celebrate our chosenness, even as we recognize that others are also chosen, for their own unique missions.  May the pride we take in our community’s accomplishments help us better hail those of our neighbors.

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Which brings me to the second governing principle for successful tribes: Self-preservation is not enough.   Strong communities extend their vision outward, using their hard-earned wisdom to bring healing to the world at large.  After we take care of our own, we must also take care of the other.  I’ve mentioned Hillel’s defense of tribalism: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”  But of course that’s just half of the equation, as he famously adds: “U-ch’sh’ani l’atzmi, mah ani—If I am only for myself, what am I?”

In my childhood years, the Jewish community paid too little heed to this principle.  Our modus operandi was survival for its own sake.  The goad my parents’ and grandparents’ generation trusted most to keep us in the fold was good old-fashioned guilt: since Hitler tried to wipe us out, we were obligated to keep the faith, whether we liked it or not.

This didn’t work very well back then—and it certainly won’t play today—for it begs the Darwinian question: Why does our tribe deserve to survive?  If we want our children and grandchildren to be Jewish, we have to do better, to offer them inspiring answers to that query.  For unlike previous generations, they have a vast array of options—countless tribes that will eagerly and adeptly welcome them if we don’t.  They can find a new clan almost effortlessly, through soccer or politics or Meet Up or Crossfit or a thousand other possibilities.  They certainly won’t join a synagogue out of guilt or obligation.  Our young people—and lots of our older people, too—will vote with their feet unless we model a community that cares for them deeply and empowers them to work together with other tribes to repair our broken world.  As it turns out, taking care of our own includes infusing them with a powerful sense of purpose they can carry into the wider world.  Isaiah said it best, almost three thousand years ago:

It is too small a task for you to be My servant merely to preserve the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will make you a light to the nations, that my liberation may reach to the ends of the earth.

Now there’s a vision I can imagine—and, God willing, pass along.  It’s our mission here at CABI: to care for our own—visiting the sick, comforting the mourners, celebrating weddings and births and Bar and Bat Mitzvahs—while also working in the wider community, feeding the hungry, gardening with, tutoring, and advocating for refugees, and lobbying our legislature for justice.

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That far-reaching vision lies at the heart of this sacred day, which deftly balances unconditional tribal love with universal aspiration.  On Rosh Hashanah we revel in our uniqueness, with majestic melodies, sweet foods, and the shofar’s haunting call to community.  We focus on teshuvah, on turning—or returning—to the values that have sustained the Jewish people throughout our history.  But we don’t stop there, for Rosh Hashanah also celebrates Yom Harat Olam, the birthday of the world.  Today we remember that our little tribe is part of something so much bigger.  We stand in awe before the Holy One and the vast mystery of Her works.  And we add our uniquely Jewish voice—our small yet significant tribal song—to the magnificent, multi-vocal chorus of creation.

At the high point of this morning’s liturgy, the service for sounding the shofar, we sing: Aleynu l’shabayach l’adon ha-kol—Let us praise the Maker of all. . .

This is our tradition’s alternative to both “Imagine” and “We Take Care of Our Own”, living, like the Jewish people itself, in the creative tension between the two.  It is, simultaneously, unabashedly tribal and ambitiously universal.

As Aleynu opens, we declare our special destiny, our unique Jewish mission to serve the Creator, whose covenantal relationship commands our worship.   Then, in the second paragraph, the perspective turns, and we envision an age when all the nations of the earth will dwell in harmony, making real the vision of God’s—and humanity’s—oneness. 

It’s complicated and paradoxical and a little unresolved—which is to say, it’s very Jewish—and very human.

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And so, my friends, we journey together into another new year.  May 5777 bring blessing to us, to the people of Israel, and to all of humankind.  Let us embrace our little community—our tribe—with unconditional love—and may that love ripple out into a world that so dearly needs it.

If we are not for ourselves, who will be for us? 

If we are only for ourselves, what are we?

And if not now—when?

Nothing to Lose (Erev Rosh Hashanah 5777/2016)

It’s Erev Rosh Hashanah, the sacred eve of the new year.  Darkness settles over the crowded shul in the heart of the Old Country.  The air is heavy with anxiety as the community prepares to usher in the Yom HaDin, the great Day of Judgment.  Everyone watches with bated breath as the rabbi slowly approaches the Holy Ark.  He opens the curtain, bows low, then cries out: Ich bin a gornisht, Ich bin a gornisht—I am nothing, a no one!”  Then he steps back, exhausted, but also a little relieved.

The cantor and the president of the shul follow suit, then the officers, the machers, and after them, the rest of the congregation.  All file up, in turn, stand before the Torah and confess: Ich bin a gornisht—I am nothing!

Meanwhile, an itinerant beggar wanders in quietly and sits on a back bench.  Bewildered by the commotion, he figures this must be the required congregational custom, so he drags himself up to the ark, bows down and does his part: Ich bin a gornisht.

At which point the cantor turns to the rabbi and sneers: “Look who thinks he’s a nothing!”

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This old Yiddish joke still brings a smile because, like most Jewish humor, it contains a strong kernel of truth.  It gently mocks the arrogance that underlies false modesty.  The punch-line warns us to be wary of excessive humility, which may be just another expression of inflated ego.

And yet, time and again in our liturgy for the Days of Awe, we stand before the Holy One and proclaim our unworthiness: We are mere clay, dust and ashes, passing clouds, grass that withers overnight.   And we sing, repeatedly, the ancient refrain: Avinu Malkeinu, chanaynu v’anaynu, ki ayn banu ma’asim—God, have mercy on us and show us compassion, for all of our deeds amount to. . .  nothing.

That’s the song of this season, our constant plea—and it boils down to this:  All of our virtues, our charitable deeds, our life’s work. . .

Gornisht.  Nothing.

Each and every one of us, from the CEO to the homeless beggar, the pious sage to the brash atheist—all of us stand before the Holy One and say, “I am nothing.”

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So what can we make of this stark confession that runs throughout our davenning during these Days of Awe?  How might we find meaning in the seemingly harsh and humbling words?  One possibility is to read them as a bracing corrective to our narcissistic secular culture.  In self-absorbed twenty-first century America, Avinu Malkeinu can be a powerful, counter-cultural reminder that we are not the center of the world.  It’s the verbal equivalent of the Deep Field Image captured by the Hubble Space telescope, in which a random slice of sky, equivalent to the size of a tennis ball viewed from a hundred yards away, reveals the presence of over 3,000 galaxies.  I love looking at that picture, because, paradoxically, even as it points to our infinitesimal smallness, it makes me feel expansive—blessed to be a tiny part of our magnificent, ever-expanding universe.  I’ve enjoyed that same feeling while paddling through whitewater canyons, camping in the rainforest, and walking the flanks of Annapurna in the Himalayas.  Like those experiences, Avinu Malkeinu simultaneously humbles and exalts us.  As my colleague, Rev. Marci Glass commented to me, the words remind us that good deeds are our response to God’s grace, not a tally that we keep in the hope that God will somehow find us worthy. 

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A second reading of the prayer questions not just the impact of our actions but also their underlying motivation.  Perhaps our intentions are not as virtuous or sincere as we would like to believe, even when our deeds lead to positive results.   We are incredibly complicated creatures; the human brain, with its labyrinthine networks of over 100 billion neurons, is the most complex structure in the known universe.  We are, therefore, mostly unaware of the processes that drive our decisions and interactions.  Our true and full intent lies buried deep in our unconscious minds.  So when we say, “Ayn banu ma’asim—We have no good deeds,” we are essentially admitting that nothing we do can be considered a purely altruistic act.  Even our kindest and most charitable undertakings may contain a hidden streak of selfishness.  This realization should not stop us from striving for goodness, but it might make us a bit more humble about boasting of it.

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My third and final reading of Avinu Malkeinu is the one that has resonated most powerfully for me in the weeks leading up to this new year.  I learned it from the eighteenth century Hasidic master, Dov Baer of Mezhirech, by way of Bob Dylan. 

The Great Maggid, Dov Baer, offers a metaphor for the experience of Nothingness, which he considers the only path to becoming a new and better person.  He taught:

Nothing is able to change from one form to another—for example, an egg that would hatch into a chick, without first completely nullifying its present form, which is to say, the egg.  Only then will another form be able to come forth from it.  It is this way with everything in the world; it must attain the level of Nothingness.  Then it will be able to become something else.

In order to truly change, Dov Baer is telling us, we must first strip away everything we’ve known.  If his language seems a bit opaque, Bob Dylan’s version, from his masterpiece, “Like a Rolling Stone,” is much more succinct, as he sings, with a snarl:

When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.

Nothing to lose. That’s where Avinu Malkeinu takes us during these Days of Awe—to the place where, having no accrued merit, we’ve got nothing to lose.  To where we can’t afford to rest on our laurels or bask in our past accomplishments—for they may be exactly what’s holding us back.  Nothing to lose is a clarion call to keep it fresh, to start anew.  To grow.

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My friends, today’s progressive Jewish world dearly needs this perspective, for many of our established practices and organizations aren’t doing very well.  Recent demographic studies suggest that liberal Jewish institutions have become sclerotic and out of touch.  American Jews are voting with their feet, exiting en masse.  The 2013 Pew Center report, “A Portrait of Jewish Americans” shows us abandoning religion at an alarming rate; almost a quarter of us now claim virtually no connection whatsoever with communal Jewish life.  I suspect that in the West—including here in Boise—the percentages are even worse.  Across the board, the leading indicators such as synagogue attendance, giving to tzedakah, and identification with the land and people of Israel, have declined precipitously.  The vast majority of today’s American Jews are Jewishly illiterate and communally disengaged. 

So how has the Jewish establishment responded to this epidemic of attrition?  Mostly with business as usual, fiddling while Rome burns.  We make superficial changes—tweaking our curricula, funding two week Birthright trips, moderating our dues scale.  It’s the equivalent of applying band aids to gaping wounds—avoiding the systemic change that this crisis demands around education, access, content and membership. 

But there are other voices, calling in the wilderness—visionary leaders with the courage and creativity to break new ground, like Noa Kushner, the rabbi at The Kitchen, San Francisco’s innovative Jewish community without walls.  Speaking on the podcast “Judaism Unbound” she makes a powerful case for radical change, noting: “When you look at the sheer numbers of who is and who isn’t participating in Jewish communal life, if 90% are not connecting, drastic measures need to be taken and experiments need to be run.”

The good news is that history is on Rabbi Kushner’s side—and ours.  If the past is prelude—and I believe it is—then we need not despair.   We Jews have always rallied to renew ourselves in times of crisis. We have survived for over three thousand years because we’ve been willing and able to reinterpret Torah anew in every generation. 

When the Romans destroyed the Temple, the Rabbis re-defined the Jewish community as the People of the Book, thereby making our tradition portable—and possible—in exile. 

When our reading of that Book got out of balance, with too much head and not enough heart, the Baal Shem Tov and his Hasidim reimagined the tradition with ecstatic music and meditation, laughter and dance.

When Hasidism—and other Orthodoxies—rigidified, alienating young Jews, Reform and Conservative Judaism arose to offer a lively, contemporary alternative.  And when those movements, in turn, grew stagnant, Reconstructionism, Jewish Renewal, and a resurgent Modern Orthodoxy revitalized Jewish community.

And when centuries of stateless exile grew first tiresome and then lethal, Zionism enabled us to realize our people’s age-old dream to reestablish a nation of our own.

Jewish life endures because we have always harkened to the Darwinian imperative: adapt or perish.  That is why all the ancient empires, from Egypt to Rome to Babylon, have vanished from the earth, but we are still here.

We Jews have adapted when others have perished—we have endured—because we are committed to the Talmudic principle of ipcha mi-stabra—of questioning everything, thinking outside the box, never being content with the status quo.  We’ve survived because we’ve been willing to take chances, to try and fail, and try and fail again until we get it right, at least for a little while, blazing creative new paths.

We’re still here because we know, from Avinu Malkeinu and a whole lot of history, that in watershed moments, our past deeds amount to nothing if we do not use them to transform our present.  

Here, then, the question for us: What might the progressive Jewish community look like if we applied this wisdom to our current crisis?  How might we envision our Jewish future if, instead of clinging to hackneyed routines, we emulated our ancestors and acted boldly, as if we had nothing to lose?

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For starters, we would stop blaming those who opt out.  I suspect that many of you who are here tonight do not plan to be back very much in the coming year.  And many more—the large majority of Boise’s Jewish population—are not here now and never have been.  It is easy for rabbis and other Jewish leaders to dismiss those on margins.   Al cheyt—I’m guilty of this.  I have used this bimah to urge infrequent attendees to up your commitment of both time and money.

No more.  Instead of noodging or questioning those of you who rarely, if ever, come to shul, I want to interpret your disengagement as a tacit dissent to our business-as-usual approach.  I want to ask, respectfully: what can we do differently, to entice you to join us?  How might our failures push us to evolve into a more inclusive, spiritually-inspiring congregation?  Those of us on the inside must learn to listen to the unaffiliated and disengaged.  Let us hear their voices and harness their talents.

For oftentimes, the outliers teach us the most.  As Jewish writer and activist Anita Diamant teaches: a tallit is not a tallit without the fringes.  They are what make it holy.  Systemic change rarely begins with those most embedded in established institutions; it’s the folks on the fringes who are best positioned to drive innovation.

By way of example, look at Nobel Prize-winning scientists.  On average, they receive the award at fifty-five—but that is long after the fact; almost all make their breakthrough discoveries early in their careers, before they become too entrenched in the system to question its fundamental assumptions.  Younger people—and other outsiders—tend to be better at thinking outside the box, because that’s where they live.

So, too, in the Jewish world.  Veteran rabbis, educators and lay leaders—the regular synagogue-goers—are not necessarily the best candidates to push for radical change.  We’re too vested in the status quo.  It’s no coincidence that the Jewish story starts with Abraham, the original iconoclast, smashing his father’s idols.  Now, more than ever, we need to seek out and nurture his ideological heirs.  So if you are on the margins, dissatisfied with Jewish life as it now stands, we need you.

I need you. 

After nearly thirty years in the rabbinate, firmly planted in the Jewish mainstream, I need your outsiders’ eyes and ears, your hearts and minds.  In saying this, I hasten to add to the regulars, to those pillars of the congregation whose Jewish knowledge is deep and whose longstanding commitment is unwavering: such outreach does not come at your expense or diminish your standing. Your dedication and learning will always be at the heart of what we do.  It is, instead, to say that expanding the circle strengthens everyone.  We can all accomplish more when we complement our established wisdom with the pioneering spirit of Avinu Malkeinu, of striking out with nothing to lose. 

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A new generation of innovators is already paving the way, engaging those on the outskirts of Jewish life—listening to their concerns, incorporating their gifts, and putting forth bold, new approaches to Jewish study, service, and community-building.

I’ve mentioned Noa Kushner and The Kitchen.  Their mission statement lays out the task for twenty-first century liberal Jewish institutions:   

We believe that Jewish religious practices change lives, make meaning, and invest people in the world.  This transformation requires a flexible, living ecosystem of Jewish experiences. . . There are no insiders or outsiders, there are no others here.  We are all others. . . We insist that Jewish practice be relevant, a tool for greater investment in the world.  At the same time, we practice irreverent reverence—looking for places where the every-day draws attention to the divine.

This is holy work, a model for Jewish renewal in the spirit of nothing to lose.

And there are others, with so much to teach us.  You can hear many of them yourself on the podcast, “Judaism Unbound”.

Sarah Lefton grew up with a rudimentary Hebrew school education, then moved to a community of knowledgeable Jewish day school grads on New York’s Upper West Side, where she realized she wanted to learn more.  So she took the skills she’d acquired as a young, high-tech media entrepreneur and launched Godcast, a cutting-edge organization that creates animated videos to teach Torah and other sacred Jewish texts.

David Cygielman graduated from university determined to do something about the obvious gap that existed for transient, post-college Jews, too old for Hillel but too young to join synagogues. So he started Moishe House, a network of vibrant, home-based communities run by and for Jewish twenty-somethings.  There are now 93 houses in 21 countries—including one in Seattle where my daughter, Tanya is part of the team—and soon, under the leadership of our music educator and millennial outreach director Nemmie Stieha, here in Boise, too.

Aliza Kline is the daughter of a Reform rabbi.  She recently founded One Table, a Jewish start-up dedicated to helping young Jews find, enjoy, and share Shabbat dinners together, all across America.

And Rabbi Kerry Olitzky is the Executive Director of the Jewish Outreach Institute.  He’s also the author of Playlist Judaism: Making Choices for a Vital Future.  That book challenges the Jewish establishment with a series of iconoclastic guiding principles, including “There is no intrinsic value in membership” and “Options for participation must emerge from the interest of individuals rather than the needs of the synagogue so that individuals can freely create their own Playlist Judaism”.

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These innovators—and a host of others like them—recognize the need for radical change to renew progressive Jewish life.  They teach us to look forward, as if our past accomplishments amounted to nothing—as  if we had nothing to lose. 

And they know—and embrace—the shifting demographics of the American Jewish community that they—and we—inhabit and serve.  Our parents’ and grandparents’ Judaism of ethnicity and nostalgia, of Fiddler on the Roof and guilt and obligation is a relic of the past.  So, too, the binaries that once defined Jewish life: male or female, Ashkenazi or Sephardi, religious or secular, Jewish or Gentile.  Twenty-first century Jews want their communities less fixed and more fluid.  Gone are the days when you could recognize a Jew by her name or appearance.  We are now white and black and brown, Asian and Hispanic, gay and straight and bi and trans and gender-queer—and we are almost as likely to be named Harper Christensen and Arjun Patel as Rachel Goldberg and Max Cohen.  Today we’re all Jews by choice, even if both of our parents are Jewish, for we choose and make our own identities, mixing and matching as we see fit.  We’re Jewish atheists and agnostics, students and senior citizens, Jews with all sorts of abilities and disabilities.  We’re the interested partners of intermarried Jews and the secular folks who identify as Jew-ish.

For many of us, born and raised in the previous century, this prospect is new—and frightening.  The Jewish future articulated by such diverse voices may strike us as strange and even unrecognizable.  We naturally fear the unknown, the feel of the once-solid ground shifting beneath our feet. 

This holy day of Rosh Hashanah acknowledges that anxiety—and inspires us to take heart.  For those of us in the northern hemisphere, it arrives in the fall, when the natural world is changing all around us, when everything is dying back, anticipating winter’s dark and cold.  And yet we know this is the necessary prelude to spring’s rebirth, the pruning that allows for future growth.   We hear this seasonal song in the shofar’s call, which is both a lament for the old year’s passing and the new year’s first wail upon being born.  It implores us to muster the faith to work through our fear, to embrace the unknown, to acknowledge with the visionary Rabbi Benay Lappe that, “In one hundred years, Judaism will look radically different from how it looks to us—and that doesn’t scare me.” 

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And so we sing: Avinu Malkeinu, Show us compassion, for our deeds amount to nothing.

These words are, at the same time, hard and helpful, challenging and inspiring.  They are the creed of a people called to constantly re-enter the wilderness, to live in the land of nothing to lose.  It is an uneasy blessing.  But there is great solace in knowing that we do not travel this path alone.  We sing our song together, in sacred chorus, in community.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner describes our journey beautifully in his classic book, Honey from the Rock:

This is the setting out.

The leaving of everything behind.

Leaving the social milieu.  The preconceptions. 

The definitions.  The language.  The narrowed field of vision. The expectations.

No longer expecting relationships, memories, words, or letters to mean what they used to mean. 

To be, in a word: Open.

If you think you know what you will find,

Then you will find nothing.

If you expect nothing,

Then you will always be surprised.

And able to bless the One who creates the world anew each morning.

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Let us go, then, my friends, together, toward the Promised Land, even knowing we will never entirely arrive.  On this sacred day, let us set out, with courage and faith—with nothing to lose, a revitalized Jewish future to gain.

Let us go, with the Holy One’s abundant mercy and compassion—

loving, listening, and learning from each and every one of us.