D’var Torah for Yom Kippur Morning

Netzavim

Shanah tovah. It’s good to see all of you here this morning.
 
Rabbi Roberts told us her favorite verse in the Torah. As a matter of fact, she’s basing her sermons for all of High Holy Days on that one verse. I don’t have a single favorite verse, but I do have several favorites. Some of them appear in this morning’s Torah reading. Last week, Barbara Carr talked about the Torah’s “greatest hits;” I’m not sure my favorite verses appear on that hypothetical list, but I sure wish they did. We’ll look at those verses in just a minute and you’ll know why they’re among my all time favorites.

I’m a visual learner. If you are too, you might want to open your machzor and turn to page 531, the beginning of this morning’s Torah reading.

Several times in the Torah, we’re told that Moses talks to the people; usually, it says, b’nai yisrael, the children of Israel or the sons of Israel;sometimes it even says, kol adat yisrael, the whole community of Israel. But this time we get a full listing of every category of who’s assembled. Moses is addressing all the people: the leaders, the tribes, the elders, the officials, every person of the people Israel, the children, the spouses, the non-Jews who journeyed with the children of Israel, the wood cutters and the water carriers; everyone, and he says everyone is prepared to enter into the covenant with God. Some scholars remind us that cutting wood and carrying water were not among the highly respected jobs. Wood is needed to cook food as well as build a dwelling; what would it be like in your house if you walked into the kitchen, turned on the stove, and it didn’t produce any heat? Or you turned on the faucet and no water came out? It seems to me that without wood cutters and water carriers, a society couldn’t function. So Moses isn’t addressing only the leadership; what’s to follow is not aimed at the rabbi, or the rabbi and the cantor, or the rabbi and the cantor and the education director, or even the rabbi, the cantor, the education director and the chair of the Ritual Committee. Moses is addressing EVERYONE. And that’s not all: look a few lines later, in the middle of the second aliyah, where Moses tells the people that the covenant and oath God is about to conclude is not made only with the people standing before God that day, but with (the last line on the page) “all those who are not here with us today.” What Moses is about to say is supposed to apply to all the Jews, even those who had not yet been born; in other words, including all of us, here, in this room, today.

Later, in the fifth aliyah (bottom half of page 539), we are warned not to try to get out of performing the mitzvot, the commandments, we are warned not to try to avoid doing what we’re supposed to do. And here it comes, one of my favorite sections in the entire Torah. It says, “it is not too puzzling for you, nor too remote. It is not something high up in the heavens, so that you might say, ‘Who shall go up to the sky for us, and bring it to us and make it understandable to us? -- then we might do it!’ It is not beyond the ocean, so that you might say: ‘Who shall cross the ocean for us, and bring it to us, and enable us to hear it -- then we might do it!’ But rather it is very close to you, upon your mouth and in your heart -- it can be done!’”

What are we to make of this?

First, all of us in this room are being addressed by the words of the Torah, even if it was written a very long time ago. All of us. It is our responsibility. It’s not okay for us to use the Yiddish word Mark Newman keeps teaching me, yenem, (where are the Yiddish speakers? translation? Luzn aff yenem?) “the other guy? let the other guy...?” It’s my responsibility; it’s your responsibility; it’s our responsibility.

We are called the people of the book. This is the book -- the Torah. We are called the children of Israel; the word Yisrael itself means "one who struggles / wrestles with God." How many of us actually take that to heart; how many of us actually struggle or wrestle with God or with Judaism.

One of the commandments is to take care of the orphan and the widow. Orphans and widows, without a father, without a husband; in the old days, it was the men’s job to take care of the children and the wives. Widows and orphans, therefore, were disenfranchised, and the commandment made it the responsibility of each member of the community to take care of them.

In my own life, I’ve always supported the modern equivalent of supporting the “widows and orphans,” those members of society who are at a disadvantage. For example, during the 1960s, I was active in the Civil Rights movement, picketing in front of stores that refused to serve African Americans at their lunch counters. To paraphrase Hillel, if not me, then who(m)?
 
We are taught, we are commanded, to heal, to repair the world, tikkun olam. Ros Goldstein and the Tikkun Olam Committee offer us numerous opportunities during the year to take part in tikkun olam activities. Everyone I’ve spoken with who has joined in any of the tikkun olam activities says their personal rewards far outweigh the effort they had to exert.

When I was a child, I learned not to mix milk products with meat products when I was at my grandmother’s house. I never questioned it; it was one of her rules. It was only later, as a grown-up, when I read the Torah’s words about not boiling a kid in its mother’s milk, that I started questioning why chicken stroganoff was not kosher; after all, there’s no way to boil a chicken in its mother’s milk. If the interpretation of the prohibition had been not to make chicken salad by adding hard boiled eggs, or not to make egg salad by adding pieces of cooked chicken, I’d have had no problem. But: dairy with chicken? What’s with that? For several years, I complained about this anomaly to friends who kept kosher. And I used it as one really good excuse for not following the dietary laws in the Torah about keeping kosher.

After I found out that in the old days, it was difficult to tell from across a room whether someone was eating the meat of a two-legged animal or a four-legged animal, I understood the reason behind the interpretation of not mixing poultry with dairy. I envisioned a scene from a Robin Hood movie, a scene at an inn, with people eating dinner at long tables, like picnic tables, and someone at one side of the room looking at someone eating at another table, and I “got it.” As it turns out, even earlier than that, most people who could afford to buy meat would buy only a little and they ate it in stews, and in a stew, it would be pretty close to impossible even today to tell by looking across the room whether someone was eating a chicken stew or a beef stew, wouldn’t it? I stopped eating those chicken sandwiches that come with melted cheese, like at Jack in the Box.

I wrestled with one of the laws of kashrut, the dietary laws of keeping kosher. Why did I choose this law to grapple with? I didn’t; it chose me. It wasn’t a very important law, at least not in my life. I just kept seeing dairy served with poultry all around me.

I work in a somewhat remote part of agricultural North (Inland) San Diego County. There aren't any places close by to go for lunch. For years, I had been hearing about a burger place-- lots of different people kept telling me about a burger place -- at the 76 exit off the 15. I haven't eaten beef or pork or lamb for close to 30 years, so I had no interest in a burger place. One time, though, I responded to someone that I didn't eat meat. He told me he didn't either, that he ordered turkey burgers and that the turkey burgers were great and that I should really try it some time. Interesting. One day I drove there. Everything on the menu was $3.95 (now everything is $4.25 or $4.35). I ordered a turkey burger to go. It came with cheese, ketchup, mustard, pickle, onion, tomato and lettuce. I drove back to my office. All those people had been right: it was a great burger! It was enormous! I cut pieces for the other two people in my office to taste, and still couldn’t finish it. Now, sometimes my assistant and I split one; we get it with all the cheese on one half, her half. Obviously, if I really kept kosher, not only would I not eat that turkey, but I wouldn’t eat something cooked on the same grill where cheeseburgers were grilled, right? I’m not a fanatic, but it’s something I choose to do: I try to observe the mitzvah, the commandment of not mixing milk products with meat products, and I include poultry in the definition of meat.

Am I exhorting you to keep kosher? No; I’m suggesting that you choose a commandment from the Torah that you’re not following in your life and that you grapple with it. I teach the Reconstructionist version of an Introduction to Judaism class called Jewish, Alive and American. In class, when we study the laws of Shabbat, I request that my adult students try for one entire Shabbat to “keep” the Shabbat according to the laws of Shabbat that we read about that week in class. So let me suggest to you to choose one commandment you’re not currently following, and consider following that commandment for one whole day, or one whole week, and see what it feels like. Decide what it might mean to you, and then go for it.

The challenge before us is to have the courage to become who we are, to become Jews. Open a book; do a mitzvah.

The words of Torah are not up in the sky, that we need someone to go up there to bring them back to explain them to us. The words of Torah are not beyond the ocean that we have to send someone across to get them for us so we can hear them. No. They’re here (Torah), and they’re here (mouth), and they’re here (heart) for us to do them. It can be done.
 
Shanah tovah. May your fast be an easy one.

Holly Gail Baumann
© 2003