Sermons

Erev Rosh Hashanah September 18, 2009

During these High Holy Days I would like to reminisce about events that occurred over my four decades as Rabbi of Congregation Emanu-El of Westchester. Some may be familiar to you, others will enter the annals of our history. But each remembrance has special meaning for me and will, I hope, convey a message to you.

Tonight's thoughts involve two very different individuals; two men brought together by a Torah, which, as you will see, created a very curious connection. The first person you might know. He was a bald New York City police detective and his name was Kojak. He was a fictional character, played by the actor Telly Savalas, and featured on a popular 1970's television series. The second personage was an elderly Czechoslovakian Jew who I will refer to as Joseph. I doubt you know him but he played an important role in a poignant chapter of our Temple.

I met Joseph more than 20 years ago when he entered my study. He was almost 90 at the time and in his arms he carried a Torah. With a distinct European accent, he introduced himself.

"I am Joseph and in less than a month my great grandson will celebrate his Bar Mitzvah, here, in your sanctuary. I wish to present your congregation with a gift. It is this Torah from which I would like my great grandson to read his portion. I have waited a long time for this day."

Joseph paused, waiting for my response.

"We are honored," I replied "although we have three Torahs."

Joseph smiled, a somewhat melancholy smile.

"Yes, you have torahs. I know that. But not like my Torah. No, not like my Torah.:

Joseph hesitated, his voice only a whisper at first. Then it rose in intensity, the words surging as waters flow when a dam opens, and a poignant story broke forth. Permit me to relate Joseph's tale, as I recall it from many years ago. "When Hitler marched into Czechoslovakia he boarded his troops in synagogues, stabled his horses in our sanctuaries. Our hallowed torahs were desecrated; some became smoldering ashes, others were trampled by horses hooves, others torn and left in pieces. For many years I have been involved with the Czech Jewish community to redeem the remnants of these Czech Torahs. Although no longer kosher, these scrolls have been lent to Reform Jewish congregations on a 99 year loan."

Joseph breathed deeply before continuing.

"I searched for a particular Torah. Searched and searched and finally discovered what I was seeking. It was a Torah from the town of Tabor, my wife's hometown. Her great great grandparents had commissioned the writing of that Torah in 1860 and now it is here, in my arms, for my great grandson to read at his Bar Mitzvah. Can you imagine, when the youngster begins to read he will join 8 generations of our family who read from this Torah. Imagine. From my wife's ancestors until today. 8 generations. Imagine." And at that moment I realized we were being presented with a symbol of a people who may have been trampled on by history but always rose – in spite of everything. We had received one more link in the miraculous continuity that is Judaism.

We possess that Torah. It is the largest Torah standing in regal splendor, in the middle of our Ark, embroidered with the Hebrew letters. "Zachor." Which means "Remember." What was. What is. What will be. 8 generations of one family. 8 generations of Judaism.

This was Joseph's gift.

And then it happened. One day it happened. The Holocaust Torah, Joseph's heritage, was stolen. Taken from our midst two weeks before his great grandson's Bar Mitzvah. I spied the empty space in the ark following a Saturday morning service ---. Remember. But there was nothing to remember. Only an empty space. Nothing to remember.

I immediately called the Harrison Police Department and soon a stocky detective sat with me in my study listening to my lament.

"Don't worry, Rabbi. Don't worry. We'll find the Torah." A reassuring smile spread over the detective's broad features.

"Officer," I said, I appreciate your confidence but ---but how?"

He interrupted. "Ever watch Kojak on television?" he asked. "Telly Savalas? The detective. A great TV program." I nodded although in truth I had never heard of Kojak.

"Well, Rabbi," the Lieutenant's voice resounded, last week I was watching Kojak and the show was about a missing Torah. It had been stolen; fenced through a black market to South America. Israel. A Torah brings a lot of money. But Kojak tracked down the Torah and so will I!" With that, my Kojak wanna be left my study.

What could I make of this? Well, over the years the Harrison Police Dept. has been very attentive to our Temple but I had to admit that following in the footsteps of Kojak, did not really inspire trust. Sherlock Holmes? Maybe. Miss Marple, definitely, but the Harrison Police Dept. with the role model of Telly Savalas – something of a reach.

After informing Joseph's daughter of the stolen Torah, the family heirloom, she was deeply distraught but pleaded with me to wait before telling Joseph, the family patriarch. "He will be destroyed. Wait."

So I waited – until two days before the Bar Mitzvah. Until we could wait no longer. Joseph's daughter met me. Fearful of Joseph's response we prepared to inform this sage, a survivor of a decimated Eastern European Jewish community. And suddenly the phone rang, a shrill ring but I remember only a beautiful lilting sound. It was the Harrison Police Department. They had found the Torah. Cast aside in a park on Lincoln Avenue. An informer encountered in a bar had led them to the site. The thief had taken the Torah but did not know how to proceed; how to sell the Torah. It's not that easy to fence a Torah!

I still do not believe in miracles but from that day on I believed in Kojak, the Harrison Police Department and most importantly my faith in the continuity of our people, our ability to go on in spite of everything. For I knew then, as I know now, that the Torah, symbolizing our rich heritage, can never be stolen from us. It can only disappear through our own neglect, our own apathy. It will vanish only when we take our special legacy for granted, when we cease to educate ourselves, when we no longer teach our precepts faithfully to our children --- when we no longer treasure the inheritance that makes us unique among all people – not better than others, but unique among others.

So Joseph's family celebrated the Bar Mitzvah. I blessed the child before the ark. The Torah, with the word Zachor, stood erect above us as a protective shield and I realized that, for the Jew, that Torah represents permanence, endurance, a quality that is fragile, always on the verge of being severed. Permanence, in contrast to our contemporary world where the only constant is change.

A personal example – of change. On the wall of our sanctuary, next to the front door, a plaque was affixed some years ago acknowledging my 25th anniversary at our congregation. Shortly after the anniversary celebration a guest at a Bar Mitzvah approached me. "Rabbi, are you the one who has been here 25 years?"

Somewhat embarrassed I replied, "Yes."

He shook his head. "Amazing! Simply amazing! In my congregation our personal best is two years. After that time the Rabbi leaves us or we leave the Rabbi!"

And he laughed. But was he really off the mark? We do live in a world where everything is in flux. The old verities slip away as quicksand. It even affects our institutions. Loyalty to the temple, our country, sometimes even our families often rests on a tenuous foothold. 2 years Rabbi! 2 years! Our personal best.

When I view the Torah with the embroidered letters "Zachor," I remember Joseph and recall his words, "Imagine, 8 generations of one family." And for Joseph I realized the Torah represented more than a bond with Judaism. Transcending his religion was an even more precious tie – the unbroken epoch of his family - and what family signifies … love, compassion, a secure foothold when all else threatens to slip away, when life threatens to cast us adrift.

And at that Bar Mitzvah, as I watched a young child, barely tall enough to see over the pulpit, read from his family Torah I remembered my own childhood and a very special Torah. Not the scroll from my Bar Mitzvah. No, a tiny paper torah, not a kosher torah, a child's replica given to me when I was 8 years old by my father, Rabbi in Albany, New York.

One afternoon with the impishness of youth I embarked on a Jewish experience of discovery and unrolled the entire Torah in my back yard. Maybe that is why, on Simchat Torah, I delight in unrolling our Torah in the back of our sanctuary. My paper Torah stretched around the apple tree where I played baseball with my father, the pear tree that had given up bearing fruit decades before, then it circled behind the rose bush grown from a clipping my father took from his childhood in Baltimore and finally the little Torah reached across the driveway, completing the circle.

Incidentally, this is not an experiment I would recommend for children --- especially if your father is a Rabbi and happens to drive in at that moment. For those of you who may be uncertain about Dad's reaction as his brown Plymouth swerved around the Torah I can tell you, he was not happy. As a precocious child I was ready with an explanation. "Dad, I was only measuring how long our tradition extends" -- or words to that effect. But today, after years as an observer of life, I might have added, "Dad, when I unrolled the Torah I enclosed all the disparate, all the separate objects in our backyard; family mementoes, a microcosm of who we were. I made each a part of the whole" --- as Joseph's Torah enclosed all the generations of his family. And do you know, I believe my father would have appreciated those words for, as the first generation of the immigrant experience, where many were indigent, he was raised in an orphanage, the Baltimore Hebrew Home – deprived of family. Yes, I believe he might even have smiled at my act of embracing that which was set apart. The lone rose bush, the pear tree, the apple tree or, am I only rationalizing. Unfortunately, as with so many other unanswered questions, I will never know.

Some years ago I spent a week in the Sinai Desert. At night my travelling companion, an expert on the Bedouins, taught me the various constellations. Scorpius. Taurus. Leo. I have forgotten many of their identities but one image I will never forget --- In the depths of night a star, a meteor, broke away from its anchor in space. A solitary shape, off on its own, hurtling into nothingness. And on that night I mused on what it would be like to be alone in space, whether in the heavens above or the earth below. What it would be like, in the words of Samuel Becket, "to live in a world without arms" --- with no one to hold us, a meteor cast asunder -- and I was saddened, deeply saddened.

John Donne wrote "No man is an island, entire of itself. I am involved in mankind." If there is a hell it may well be attempting to survive as an island, entire of itself. To be cut off from others, to be cut off from one's self, that is a human tragedy for then the scroll of life will perish. Recently one of our congregants sent me an article from the New York Times which I now excerpt.

"At his lecture course at Dartmouth last summer, "Astronomy 3: Exploring the Universe," Prof. Yorke Brown asked. "Any questions?" There was just one. Johanna Evans, an English major, wanted to know: "How do you keep from despairing at the immensity of space and the smallness of us?" Dr. Brown replied: "Johanna, you are most certainly an infinitesimal in the cold vastness of the cosmos, and yes, you are only one of billions of humans and other creatures who have come before and will come after, and your life is barely a mathematical instant in the span of time. Yet you are also, just as certainly, a miracle: you are a creature capable of recognizing that you are not the center of the Universe. But you are capable of love, and so need not despair of insignificance."

We are not the center of the universe but when we love we are not alone, whether this love is for our heritage, for those closest to us. We are not alone.

Erev Rosh Hashanah 5770. For a final moment fix your gaze on the Torah. And Zachor. Remember. Remember Joseph. Remember the unbroken generations of our people. Remember the generations of your family. Remember your friends, treasure those who are with you now. Treasure them with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might. Remember how, time and time again, we were reborn out of despair because of our undying beliefs, and our love for one another.