[The following is my sermon for Yom Kippur Morning at Temple Beth Am, Monessen, PA. The views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the community I am honored to serve this year.]
On Rosh HaShana, two days before the anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, my neighbor waited for the subway train to arrive on the platform. Suddenly, five New York City police officers assembled near her in a semi-circle, “staring quietly” straight ahead. What did they surround? A Muslim man who had rolled out a prayer rug to kneel and recite his evening prayers.
The Shabbat between Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur is called Shabbat Shuva, the Shabbat of turning—turning toward God in repentance, as the new year moves from the Day of Remembrance into the Day of Atonement. This year, Shabbat Shuva coincided with September 11th, a day of remembrance for those souls killed in the terrorist attacks of 2001. A day of remembrance. A day when all was turned upside town, a day on which we turn to one another for support. A call to us on this Day of Atonement.
Usually a somber day of solidarity and mourning, this September 11 brought different sentiments and slogans to ground zero, including one picture of an innocent victim of the World Trade Center attacks with words beneath: “‘We love you!! Islam mosque right next to ground zero??? We should stop this!!’” (Anne Barnard and Manny Fernandez, “On Aniversary of Sept. 11, Rifts Amid Mourning,” NY Times, 12 September 2010).
By now all of you have heard about the controversies surrounding the building of an Islamic cultural center in downtown Manhattan—inaccurately referred to as the “Ground Zero Mosque”—and a Florida Christian minister’s plans—eventually cancelled after pressure from the Obama administration—to burn copies of the Quran on September 11. At one conservative protest held near the proposed site of the Islamic cultural center, a few blocks from ground zero, a crowd gathered to support the organization “Freedom Defense Initiative and Stop Islamization of America”; some shouted, about Muslims, “‘Kill them all!’” (Ibid. )… We love you… Kill them all.
Indiscriminate, bigoted, and violent, this call to kill all Muslims came not only on a day of national and, for far too many, personal mourning—September 11. It came not only on a day of remembrance and renewal for Jews—Rosh HaShana. It came on a day of celebration for Muslims—Eid, the festival marking the end of the fast of Ramadan, a time of year when Muslims, like Jews during the Days of Awe, look for the forgiveness of their sins and make amends. With recently reported incidents of violent assaults against Muslim cab drivers, shots fired into a mosque in upstate New York on September 4th, and calls for the burning of Islam’s holy book, many American Muslims, according to several newspapers, planned to have a low-key celebration this year, fearing that marking Eid would be misinterpreted as an act of hatred or disrespect.
A day for remembrance. A day for turning. A day for atonement.
September 11, 2010, was for many a day of alienation, a day of suspicion, a day of being labeled an outsider, a stranger.
This afternoon, on our Day of Atonement, we will read from the Holiness Code in Leviticus, a series of laws following the declaration, “You shall be holy, for I, the Eternal your God, am holy” (19:2). We learn what acts will help us to be holy, and we read: k’ezrach mikem y’hyeh lachem ha’ger ha’gar itchem, v’ahavta lo kamochah, ki geirim hayitem b’eretz mitzrayim, “The stranger who lives among you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (19:34).
The ger, the stranger, is not an enemy, nor a brother nor a kinsman. He is not a Jew, yet he lives, “either temporarily or long-term,” notes the Women’s Torah Commentary, in the Land, alongside the biblical Israelites (see Kaminowski, WTC 710). The ger is a “stranger,” not a citizen but treated like a citizen, a political and kin-group outsider. Often bundled together with the orphan, the widow, and the Levite (the tribe dedicated to Temple service and thus unable to participate in the normal political and economic life of the ancient Israelites), the ger is one who must be supported, treated kindly, incorporated into the system of justice. Throughout the Torah, we are repeatedly enjoined not to oppress the stranger, not to make the stranger into an enemy: “There shall be one law for you and the stranger who resides among you […] You and the stranger shall be alike before the Eternal” (Numbers 15:15), “Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:19), “You shall not oppress the stranger, for you know the soul of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exocus 23:9).
The rabbis later adapted the word ger and applied it to a different kind of outsider: the convert. So, in Hebrew, the ger is twofold: the stranger who never “belongs” to the kinship group but whom one is obligated to treat with justice, and the convert who mystically, theologically, and legally “becomes” kin. One blogger called the Talmudic ger “someone who feels strange, but wishes to belong” (VirtualJewishLibrary).
Who are these strangers among us, those clamoring to belong, those who feel strange?
In the United States, not all Muslims are gerim, if ger is distinct from “citizen.” Many Muslims, of all shades and sects, are patriotic American citizens who, at least in name, according to the letter of the law, “belong” here. And yet so many Muslims are speaking out about feeling strange, alien. I think the analogy is worth exploring, this year, on the heels of a September 11th that turned from a day of remembrance to a day of bigotry and ignorance, confusion and exclusion.
On Yom Kippur, we are enjoined, “You shall love [the stranger] as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34). How do we love the stranger, and precisely what does it mean to love the stranger “as yourself”?
The Hebrew verb ahav, love, appears as a command only three times in the Torah (WTC). It appears in the V’ahavta, in Deuteronomy: V’ahavta et Adonai elohecha, “And you shall love the Eternal your God” (6:5). And it appears twice in parashat Kedoshim, the section from Leviticus that we read on Yom Kippur afternoon: v’ahavta re’echa kamocha, “and you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) and k’ezrach mikem y’hyeh lachem ha’ger ha’gar itchem, v’ahavta lo kamochah, ki geirim hayitem b’eretz mitzrayim, “The stranger who lives among you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love [the stranger] as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (19:34). Scholar Tamara Cohn Eskenazi sees these three commandments about love as “three dimensions of a single, deep connection: to love God is to love others, those like us and those who are not” (“Another View on K’doshim,” WTC 716). Though we tend to link kedoshim, holiness, with separation, Eskenazi points out that the Holiness Code in Leviticus emphasizes connection, not separation. We learn that “holiness comes from cultivating relationships […]:the connection to parents whom one must honor, to the poor and disadvantaged whom one must protect, to the neighbor and stranger whom one must love, and of course to God” (Ibid. ). Holiness is about relationships; we are holy—or not—in how we treat one another.
On Yom Kippur, we remind ourselves that the Gates of Heaven are open to hear our pleas, that we will be forgiven, by the end of the day, for sins committed bein adam lamakom, between human beings and God. But sins committed bein adam lachaveiro, between one human being and another, are forgiven only when we approach those we have wronged to make amends. It is this same spirit that infuses the laws in the Holiness Code: laws that remind us that the Jewish covenant calls us to act with love not only toward God but toward one another—to our neighbors and to the strangers among us (cf. WTC 703).
How does one “love the stranger as yourself”? Suan Retik and Patti Quigley turned from their immeasurable grief to love, and love of the stranger, in the wake of the deaths of their husbands in the 9/11 attacks. As reported in the New York Times, these two women turned to strangers whose emotions they could perhaps understand: Afghani widows. As the US government responded to the terrorist attacks with a war, these widows founded an organization, Beyond the 11th, that provides education and economic assistance, designed to battle the conditions that made so many Afghanis easy targets for fundamentalist Taliban recruiters (Nicholas D. Kristof, “The Healers of 9/11,” New York Times, 8 September 2010). This is how we might love the stranger as ourselves, by reaching out, across ignorance and fear, to build a better world.
Reaching across ignorance and fear is precisely what Feisal Abdul Rauf, chairman of the Cordoba Initiative and imam of a Lower Manhattan mosque, intended in proposing the Park51 Islamic cultural center. Modeled after the YMCA and the Jewish Community Center, the space was designed as a shared community space for performances, social events, education, and recreation, with a swimming pool, classrooms, and multifaith prayer spaces (as well as individual prayer spaces for Muslims, Christians, and Jews) (Feisal Abdul Rauf, “Building on Faith,” New York Times, 7 September 2010). Indeed, he calls two commandments the institution’s cornerstones: “to love the Lord our creator with all of our hearts, minds, souls and strength; and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves” (Ibid. ). Rauf intended not to avoid the tough issues of the day, not to ignore the radicalism and fundamentalism that have become most associated with Islam in the popular media, but rather to confront the difficult issues head on, to provide a space for real dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims and to provide for a broader understanding of the variations in Islam (Ibid. ).
The word ger already carries ambiguity in Hebrew: the stranger, the convert; the one who does not quite belong but whom we love, the one who once stood outside and now is embraced as one of am Yisrael, the Jewish people. Things get even more muddled in our contemporary example; when those who flew the planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon lay claim to Islam, it is difficult to distinguish between the enemy and the stranger we are called to love. But making that distinction is crucial if we are to live the values and the ethics God calls us to live today, the Day of Atonement.
We need not pretend naively that enemies do not exist, that dangers do not threaten our freedoms, or that terrorists did not claim the lives of thousands of innocents on September 11th. But we can ill afford—neither as Jews nor as Americans—to lump all strangers into the category of enemies. President Obama crucially noted in his September 11 commemoration remarks at the Pentagon, “‘It was not a religion that attacked us that September day; it was Al Qaeda, a sorry band of men which perverts religion. And just as we condemn intolerance and extremism abroad, so we will stay true to our traditions here at home as a diverse and tolerant nation’” (Quoted in Barnard and Fernandez).
The polarized rhetoric that erupted this year on 9/11, Shabbat Shuva, a day of turning from the joy of the renewal of the new year to the process of making amends, reminds me so much of religious conflicts in Israel, where “Judaism” and “Jewish” are words that have been unfairly monopolized by a version of Orthodoxy that excludes and silences women, marginalizes and punishes gays and lesbians, and discounts Reform converts and rabbis. In fact, the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, a Reform organization based in Jerusalem, launched an ad campaign to combat this monopoly, with the slogan, Yeish yoteir mi derech achat lihiyot yehudi, “There’s more than one way to be Jewish.”
Indeed, our Torah portion this afternoon, Kedoshim, is a reminder that there is more than one way to live our lives according to our own Jewish tradition. In Reform synagogues, we read an abbreviated version of the list of commandments that will, the Torah says, help to make us holy. We leave out the troubling section about a man who “lies with another man,” the verse that uses the word “abomination” and has led to so much violence (including self-inflicted violence) against gays and lesbians. I had to remind myself of that stark fact as I read website after website of vitriolic anti-Muslim sentiment that equated Islam with sexism and homophobia.
Don’t get me wrong: I know that certain individuals and governments who claim to follow Islam—do promote sexism and homophobia. I have read the reports of stoning for adultery, stoning for homosexuality, honor killings against women believed to be “unchaste.” But there’s more than one way to be Muslim, too, although people on both sides of the frantic debate about burning the Quran and building the Islamic cultural center often forget variation and subtlety. They forget the ambiguity inherent in the word ger; they forget the challenge to distinguish between enemy and stranger; they forget the commandment to “love the stranger as yourself.” We can remember, not forget, by openly discussing and debating, right on that dangerous line between enemy and stranger. We can confront the fundamentalist and extremist versions of any religion—Islam or Judaism, Christianity or any other faith. We can call moderate and liberal Muslims and Jews to speak out against the extremists who lay claim to their respective religious traditions. And we can love the stranger as ourselves—love the imperfect, love knowing there are faults and failings, love with compassion and with principle. K’ezrach mikem y’hyeh lachem ha’ger ha’gar itchem, v’ahavta lo kamochah, ki geirim hayitem b’eretz mitzrayim, “The stranger who lives among you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34).
We are called to love the stranger in the same way in which we love ourselves.
Well, sometimes loving ourselves is a complicated endeavor, particularly on this Day of Atonement, when we stand in awareness of all our faults and failings, our shortcomings and our sins. We wonder whether our deeds of chesed outweigh the times we have missed the mark. We cling to the memory of Rosh HaShana, the Day of Remembrance, the day when God remembers not every misdeed we have committed but remembers the covenant between God and the Jewish people, remembers the acts of g’milut chasadim of all our ancestors. We remind ourselves that God loves us, because God loves the Jewish people, and we try to love ourselves. This love is a struggle.
In our struggle to love ourselves, to love God with all our hearts and souls and beings, to love our neighbor, and to love the stranger as ourselves, we can think about Jacob, the man who was renamed Israel, the one who struggled with the Divine.
Our forefather Jacob famously wrestled with a stranger, in the middle of the night. Though the Torah does not call this mysterious figure a ger, a stranger, the story tells us nothing of substance about him. He is ish, a man, an individual. He might be an angel, a Messenger of God. We read only that “a man struggled with [Jacob] until the break of dawn” (Genesis 32:25). Though Jacob pleads with the man to reveal his name, he refuses; Jacob injures his thigh, physically altered by this ambiguous encounter (is it hostile or friendly?). The man gives Jacob the blessing he requests, and because Jacob has “prevailed” in his struggle with both “divine beings and men,” the nameless man gives Jacob a new name: Israel. Left alone, injured, Jacob immediately changes the name of the place where the encounter happened, marking it as special. He calls it “Peniel,” a composite of the Hebrew words for “face” and “God,” as in “I have seen a divine being face to face” (Genesis 32:25-33).
Jacob struggled with the strange, the unfamiliar, and in that struggle was forever changed… was blessed.
We have turned our attention to change and blessing; we have turned from our past misdeeds; we have turned toward an effort to live the new year in peace and in blessing, with acts of kindness and with good deeds.
When violence and terror plague us, let us turn to one another in comfort and in healing. When extremists claim their religion as justification for murder and oppression, let us voice our opposition, let us lay claim to our own definition of religious living. When our neighbor rolls out his prayer rug, let us surround him in open and honest dialogue, and not in suspicion. When our neighbors build their house of worship, let us enter its doors in hope.
This Yom Kippur, may we turn our own struggles to love the stranger into a source not of strife but of blessing.
[This post was inspired by the prayer “For Unexpected Intimacy” in Siddur Sha’ar Zahav.]
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