Sermons

EREV ROSH HASHANAH, September 29, 2008

"At that the voice suddenly stopped and an otherworldly silence descended and froze the scene '''"

"Then the thick slightly hoarse voice came back, shaking the air as it summed up with a rough dryness brimming with excitement' 'Thirty three for. Thirteen against. Ten abstentions and one counting absent from the vote. The resolution is approved.'"

"And the next moment the scream of horror was replaced by roars of joy --- and somebody trying to sing Hatikvah"

"And very late I crawled under my blanket in the dark --- and my father lay beside me'''"

"I reached out sleepily to touch his face, and all of a sudden instead of his glasses my fingers met tears. Never in my life, before or after that night, not even when my mother died did I see my father cry. And in fact I didn't see him cry that night either, it was too dark. Only my left hand saw." These are the words of the Israeli author Amos Oz, writing about the night Israel was born. 60 years ago. Over the span of the High Holy days I will comment on Israel at 60. But tonight I am reminded not only of 60. This year also marks the 75th anniversary of the coming to power of Hitler. 75 and 60. Those numbers represent a microcosm of Jewish history. 75 and 60. Hitler and Israel. Death and rebirth. Desolation and renewal. That is the continuum of Judaism. Since the beginning."

Have you ever wondered how we have survived? Why we did not perish many years ago. In the words of the theologian Paul Tillich, we should have become a fossil. Yet we fall only to rise, we know despair only to awaken to the joy of daylight --- and within the answer to what some call the miracle of survival we may gain insight not only on Israel and the Jewish experience but on each one of us and our ability to persevere when, like today, times are difficult. My reflections begin with a story. It was August 1959. Graduating from Brown University, I embarked on a year's study in Jerusalem, in preparation for the Rabbinate. I had never really ventured far from Albany and I set off with an El Al ticket neatly tucked in one pocket and in my other pocket, invisible but of inestimable weight, I carried the fear of leaving home."

My first morning in Jerusalem I left the dormitory at the Hebrew University and descended into the Valley of the Cross, where, according to legend, the wood for the crucifixion of Jesus had been hewn. Soon I found myself accompanied by a swarthy middle aged Israeli man."

"Mind if I walk with you?" he asked."

"No""

"I don't mean to pry but could you tell me where you are going at 6:00 a.m." I don't know why I blurted out the truth to this stranger but without hesitation I said:"

"Well, I arrived in Jerusalem last night and I'm homesick. I was given the name of someone who owns a bookstore in town. Friends of my family in Albany. I am planning to visit.""

My hiking acquaintance smiled. "Don't you think 6:00 a.m. is a trifle early? The stores open at 8:00.""

Then, becoming serious, he motioned me over to a rock. We sat down and he pulled a tattered leather bible out of his briefcase. Not that he was religious. The bible was simply the literature of his country."

Thumbing through the pages he read me tales of the Kings of ancient Israel. Saul, David and Solomon. Then, as if it were perfectly obvious, he turned to me and asked. "How can you be homesick in Israel? You are walking where the kings walked. They are your family, your tradition. My friend they are your past. You are home.""

So here I was, a student in Jerusalem. Not only that, I was descended from a Kingly family. Not a bad inheritance! My face brightened for the first time since I had arrived in Israel."

Then my new friend added a postscript: "But don't stay in the past. Move forward. Always move forward. That is the secret of survival." And so it has been. For Israel. For the Jew. For each one of us. We go on. To remember the past, to live in the present but, most importantly to trust in the future ---- as challenging as that might be at present."

Several days after this encounter I rode on a bus into the Galilee. My seat companion on the long ride was a man with numbers tattooed on his arm. He noticed I was staring."

"Buchenwald," he said. "Buchenwald.""

Over the next hours he related that he had lost his entire family in the concentration camps, had come to Israel, remarried. "I have twins, the sweetest girls, Dafna and Yael. We live in the north, on a Kibbutz where I planted apple trees. Once only saplings, now they are the finest apples by the shore of the Sea of Kinnereth." His face was aglow and the numbers of Buchenwald seemed to have faded. So we go on. So we move forward."

Again the words of Amos Oz:"

Then there was dancing and weeping on Amos Street, in the whole of Kerem Avraham and in all the Jewish neighborhoods; flags appeared, and slogans written on strips of cloth, car horns blared, and people sang. Shofar blasts sounded from all the synagogues, and Torah scrolls were taken out of the holy arks and were caught up in the dancing. "

At present the number one book on the New York Times best seller list is entitled "The Last Lesson" by Professor Randy Pausch. A graduate of Brown University he became a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. His future seemed boundless until, at the age of 47, he heard two words in a doctor's office. Pancreatic Cancer. He was given 3 to 6 months. "

Undaunted he persevered, in spirit if not in body and announced that upon his death he had arranged for flowers to be sent to his wife Jai, a beautiful woman who loved flowers. The flowers would arrive every week for 52 weeks after his death and, on the 52nd week, a note would accompany the delivery. "This is the last bouquet. Now its time to get a new guy.""

Pausch watched death spreading its veil but Pausch would not permit others to cease their lives - to die around him. "Now its time to get a new guy." Start over. That is how Pausch believed we should live."

e.e. cummings wrote: "Worlds are made of hello and goodbye --- Hello and goodbye. And that is correct. But there is always another hello --- we say goodbye only to say hello one more time."

Over the years I have met with many people who have experienced tragedy. Not necessarily death. Tragedy takes many forms. Some go forward. Some stagnate unable or unwilling to proceed. "

A while ago I spoke with a congregant who had participated in an adult Outward Bound course. He mastered the obstacles Outward Bound presented. With one exception."

"Dan, on the final day I stood on the edge of a cliff holding on to a rope. The goal was to swing over the abyss and, in the middle to grab on to a second rope dangling from above. That second rope would take me to the far side. "There was not a safety factor. I was tethered to a cable above and beneath was a net but when I swung out I could not let go of the rope and grab on to the rope waiting for me. I could not cross over.""

I understood. How did Israel have confidence in a future that night 60 years ago when those assembled in Jerusalem sang Hatikvah and the Arab armies massed on the border. What inspires us to cross over? Faith? The inner will? The realization that sometimes we do not have any other choice or a combination of all these factors? Answer for yourself."

Amos Oz."

But my father said to me as we wandered there, on the night of November 29, 1947, me riding on his shoulders, "Just you look, my boy, take a very good look, son, take it all in, because you won't forget this night to your dying day and you'll tell your children, your grandchildren, and your great-grandchildren about this night when we're long gone."

Move on. Realize your dreams. And do it now."

I recommend a book, a poignant love story, A Pigeon and the Boy that spans the time in Israel's history from the War of Independence, 60 years ago, to the present. The protagonist, Yair, asks advice from a delightful elderly man, Meshullam. First, he apologizes for taking Meshullam's time."

Meshullam responds, "don't worry about the time. I got enough of that. Meshullam Fried isn't as rich in money as people think, but he's awful rich in time!" He smiled. "I got so much time I'll probably die before I use it all up.""

But we don't have so much time. At least, never enough to fulfill our dreams. Randy Pausch was only 47. Move forward and, in the words of Hillel, "If not now when.""

Through the years I have often spoken of my father. Although I was quite young when he died he remains a living and important presence in my life. Recently, I came across his passport picture, probably dating to the 1920's. Across the bottom of the picture was the distinctive signature "Samuel Wolk" written with his broad tip Parker Big Red pen. The picture was tucked into an envelope addressed to my father's brother, my Uncle Dave. For some moments I stared at the picture - not because there was anything remarkable. It was a typical passport picture that distorts all features. The kind of photograph you only want a customs official to see. But the picture of my father, juxtaposed with the letter sent to Uncle Dave told a tale of two brothers and how they chose to live their lives. Or maybe they didn't choose."

Both Dave and my father, Sam, were products of the Eastern European immigrant experience. Their father died when they were 7 and 5 respectively. Their mother, my grandmother, could not feed the boys and sent her sons to be raised at the Baltimore Hebrew Home, an orphanage. It was not out of lack of love. Hardly. She did not have an alternative."

Dad adapted to his life in the home and, when he was 16 a Reform Rabbi in Baltimore, William Rosenau, offered my father a chance to leave the home, leave Baltimore and acquire an education, first at the University of Cincinnati, then at Hebrew Union College where he became a Rabbi. Dad seized the opportunity to venture into the world. Upon graduation he obtained the passport picture, traveled to Europe, flying in an early model airplane, I believe it was the same year Charles Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic, and that began years of travel, from Rabbinical pulpit to Rabbinical pulpit, from country to country: Germany, Syria, Palestine, Boston, Wilkes-Barre, Albany. While I held the black and white photo I realized it marked a passport for my father that opened his life. He was given nothing but an opportunity. That was sufficient. "

And what of Dave? My Uncle Dave. And the letter written to him, the letter containing the passport photo? Well, he never adjusted to the Baltimore Hebrew Home. At night, in tears he would wander into my father's room, climb into bed and curl up in Dad's arms. A wonderful, gentle man, Dave never received the education, never married or had a family of his own. He never took that leap of faith into the future. Instead he remained in Baltimore and worked in the family business, Wolk Printing, always waiting for another letter from his brother Sam, who had a passport to the world...."

I retain an indelible image of Uncle Dave. Whenever I visited Baltimore, especially when I saw him at Wolk Printing, he was wearing a hat. A black fedora --- even when inside. For me that hat symbolized that he was about to go somewhere. About to go. But he never did."

A passport photo and a hat. Two ways to live a life. One fulfilled. The other longing. A passport photo and a hat. Carefully I returned my father's photograph to the folds of the letter sent to his brother and promised myself that for as many years as are granted to me I will not relinquish the passport time permits me to travel into the future."

A final excerpt from Amos Oz: "

Wine passed from hand to hand and from mouth to mouth, strangers hugged each other in the streets and kissed each other with tears, and waved the flag of the state that had not been established yet, but tonight, over there in Lake Success, it had been decided that it had the right to be established. And it would be established 167 days and nights later, on Friday, May 14, 1948. "

Approximately ten years after the birth of Israel, long before I began to ponder the mystery of survival, I sat on a stone amidst thistles in the Valley of the Cross and listened to the legends of Saul, David and Solomon. And from there I went forward.