ROSH HASHANAH SERMON
B'TZELEM ELOHIM: NO EXCEPTIONS
|
|
Friends, we need to talk this morning about a grave challenge facing our nation… a force of breathtaking wickedness and depravity. A scourge which plagues communities both here in San Diego, and across the country.
You probably know what I’m referring to. I mean, of course, the deeply detestable and fundamentally awful New York Yankees, and their enervating and insufferable fans.
Now, of course, at Dor Hadash we celebrate diversity. I am a Mets fan, and you are Padres fans. But we stand united in solidarity against the dreaded Yankees and their — did I mention? — repugnant supporters, whose mere existence shocks the conscience of any moral American.
We can show no sympathy, extend no compassion, to this sniveling band of degenerates, completely and utterly devoid of common decency.
OK OK, I’m kidding. Mostly.And anyway… it’s not like people would actually treat each other differently based on something as superficial as their allegiance to a sports team.
Right?
Well…A few years ago, two professors from Cal State San Marcos, Vassilis Dalakas and Ben Cherry, conducted a study.[1] San Marcos is about a 40-minute drive from here, depending on traffic on the 15. For the experiment, Professor Cherry posed for two days as a panhandler here in San Diego. While asking for help, he changed his shirt every hour — first wearing a shirt with a San Diego Chargers logo, then with a logo from their football rival, the Raiders, and then finally into a shirt that was blank. Folks were friendly when he wore a Chargers shirt. But when he asked for help in a Raiders shirt? “I would have people yell things at me,” said Cherry. “Raiders suck!” Or even, “That’s what you get for being a Raiders fan.” After two days on the street, the team tallied the results. Cherry had collected $17.11 while wearing a blank shirt, and $17.81 while wearing a Chargers shirt. And when wearing a Raiders shirt? $4.57.
Human beings make their debut in the very first chapter of Genesis, the first book of the Torah. Not Jews, not Israelites, not Arabs, not Americans, not Charger fans, not even Padres fans. Just humans. Immediately, Genesis teaches an essential truth about these humans. They’re all created b’tzelem Elohim. “In the image of God.”[2] They all possess divinity and value, the infinite value that comes with being human.
There’s a thing about a Torah scroll. It only has consonants. No vowels, no punctuation. Which means that the phrase b’tzelem Elohim has no asterisk. Because there are no exceptions.
In Talmud, in tractate Sanhedrin, the question is asked: why does all humanity come from one person, from Adam? Why not create, say, a group of people all at once? Like a baseball team? And the answer is given: So that nobody can say abba gadol mei’avicha — “my father, my people are better than yours.”[3]
You might think — hey, good point! Like, love everyone, man. Very chill, very Cali, right? Just one problem. It can feel really good to hate the people we don’t like. Maybe to even wish something terrible on them. And, when they fall prey to that terrible thing, to take pleasure in their suffering. “That’s what you get for being a Raiders fan!”
The Germans have a word for this. You might know it: schadenfreude — a compound of schaden, "damage” or “harm," and freude, "joy" — meaning to take pleasure in another person’s suffering.
There’s a website you could look up right now, called areyousorryyet.com. The tagline is “a collection of regretful Trump voters.” The website header depicts a close-up photo of a crying baby. It features pairs of tweets, the first of each pair expressing support for the president, and then a second, later tweet from the same person, venting disappointment or outrage.
In one pair, for instance, a woman named Tammy tweets out, “You have my vote! Make America great again” — only to say in the second tweet, two years later, “You lied about pre-existing conditions. You’re a horrible man.” Below Tammy’s tweets is the webmaster’s commentary: “You got what you voted for, chump!” If you agree, you may feel a thrill in seeing Tammy called a “chump.” But after the thrill — then what?
If we really believe that all people are entitled to basic healthcare, that means all people — even people who don’t support it. If we believe that all people deserve fair pay, that means all people — even low-wage workers who vote against minimum wage increases. If we believe people have a right to good schools and safe workplaces, to housing and healthcare, that means all people — even people whose views are anathema to ours.
All souls are divine — even people I find objectional.
No matter what I think.
So if, say, I see a Black neighbor here in San Diego and assume they’re up to no good, if I see a Guatemalan migrant and assume they’re an “invading” gang member, if I see a person with a handicapped plate and wonder if they’re lying to “get a good spot,” if I’m undone by the reality or even the idea of a trans person, the issue is with me, because they are all reflections of the divine. It’s our task to look into the faces of each of those people, and see the fullness of God.
And, just as assuredly, if I estimate a white Baptist in Santee by definition to be worthy of ridicule, if I dismiss the dignity of an out-of-work Fox News viewer, if I snicker at the suffering of a person I think voted wrong, I need to do some serious soul-searching, because those people too are reflections of the divine. It's our task to look into the faces of each of those people, and see the fullness of God.
And wow, all of this is so much harder than I’m making it sound. After all, some of the folks in the second group support policies that have, and do, hurt folks in the first group. Some may have called the cops on their Black neighbors. Or voted for a senator who demonizes our trans kids. Or clicked “like” on a video of white supremacists chanting “Jews will not replace us.” Simply put, some of them wish the worst for us and the people we love.
We’re under no illusions about hatred. We don’t pretend that bigotry represents a mere “difference of opinion.” But if the High Holidays teach us anything, it’s that even a person’s most hurtful behavior does not erase their divinity. As Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, reminds us, “each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done.”
God forbid we ignore the opportunity to defeat the hate in this world, and let the hate defeat us. Because the world desperately needs the Jewish insistence that human life reflects the divine.
All around us, we see a degradation of that life. In this country, increasing numbers of unhoused folks, harassed by law enforcement. Torment of immigrants and refugee families. Massive cuts to healthcare, to food and nutrition assistance. Inmates dying in jails, right here in San Diego. Slashing of aid to developing countries, defunding of AIDS treatment, women and pregnant folks left without safe access to abortion care, the normalization of gun deaths, children’s deaths.
And in Israel/Palestine, the massacre of the innocent on October 7th and deaths of hostages in Hamas captivity, followed by staggering numbers of Gazan civilians killed in the last two years, unprecedented killings of aid-workers, journalists. Settler violence against West Bank Palestinians with no legal consequence. Calls to rid the world of Israel, calls to rid Israel of Arabs.
And, in each case, the suggestion that this barbarism is somehow noble, or principled. To believe that humans are created in God’s image means rejecting the repulsive rhetoric of hate, the corruption of justice, the sophistry that recasts empathy as weakness. We are right to feel indignation at the one-two punch of the normalization of bigotry, and the insistence that we accept it as a legitimate viewpoint.
But to believe that humans are created in God’s image also means rejecting the idea that we can’t feel compassion for a soul, even as we are repulsed by their words and actions.
Especially since, sometimes, the souls in question are us.
The unetaneh tokef prayer asks the question — Who merits life? Who deserves death?The idea of a book of life, wherein God inscribes the good people for another year of sustenance, might seem silly — a fanciful rabbinic creation. But even if so, it serves an important purpose. Putting the determination of who shall live in the hands of a God takes it out of our hands — lest we the savor the death and misery of others. Reveling in the suffering of fellow human beings is not only morally incompatible with Jewish values. It also lets us off the hook for our own responsibility for the mess we’re in. After all, if it’s the other guy’s fault, I can be assured it’s not mine.
We’d be appalled by the suggestion that victims of police violence, blue-collar workers killed on unsafe job sites, those unable to afford healthcare, victims of back-alley abortions somehow deserve their fate. And how about the perpetrators of those injustices? Do they deserve to suffer? Maybe. If so — how about us? We know about the racism in our land, the gruesome attacks on the poor, the second-class status of women, the third-class status of trans folks and refugees.
Some of us in this room benefit from wealth built in an economy stacked in favor of folks of our skin color or gender, grew up knowing our schools would have the newest textbooks, don’t have to worry about what we’d do if we had an unwanted pregnancy. If, like me, you’re in one or more of those categories, ask yourself: are you and I doing enough to combat those injustices? Surely not. Do we deserve punishment? We pray to God to spare us.
The High Holidays remind us that we have all done things which resulted in pain for others. In my life, I’ve held opinions that now embarrass me, that contributed to the suffering of others. At one time or another, we’ve all harbored ideas, we’ve all made choices, which have left our neighbors poorer, sicker, and more vulnerable — and, sometimes, helped inscribe their names in a real Book of Death.
Choneinu v’aneinu, “be gracious and answer us,” we plead on these days. Ki ein banu ma’asim. “We have so few deeds” to commend us.
This morning, we acknowledge our own role in cruelty and avarice and inequity, the part we play in all the systems that make the world unfair.
Some times are harder than others to stay true to those ideals. In the course of my High Holiday prep, I received an email. Oh, I thought, maybe a prospective congregant!
“Jews are truly the most cancerous species on Earth,” it read, “vile and contemptible, uglier than the ugliest form of ugliness.” It was signed by “White Male Rebel.” I’ll be honest. My first thought about my new penpal was not, “wow, that guy is created in the Divine image!”
But we’re not the first generation to struggle with these questions. The Talmud tells of a band of hoodlums who repeatedly harassed Rabbi Meir. Perhaps they were Roman thugs. The Talmud doesn’t say. But, in exasperation, Rabbi Meir prayed that they should die. Meir’s wife, Beruria, — herself a scholar — was shocked. “What are you thinking? We’re taught in Psalms: ‘Let sins cease from the land.’ Sins, not sinners!”[4] Rather than pray for their deaths, Beruria demanded, “pray that they should repent!”[5] He did. And they did.
To come here today is to seek redemption for ourselves. To be a Jew is to hold out hope for redemption for everyone.
For a people who have suffered much worse than hateful emails, this may sound impossibly naïve or — worse — self-destructive. Yes, self-defense can be a mitzvah. But even in a world gone mad, steeped in hate and brutality, we insist on affirming the image of the divine in every soul. Call it Beruria consciousness.
I learned about Beruria consciousness from Hillel Zeitlin, a Yiddish thinker and poet. Zeitlin wrote, from the midst of Nazi-occupied Warsaw, that to be a Jew “is to demand tzedakah umishpat [justice and right] not only for [Jews], but for all peoples… [to] stand always on the side of the oppressed against their overlords… to free the enslaved (To let the oppressed go free).” Zeitlin is quoting Isaiah, the very haftarah we’ll read on Yom Kippur. From the flames of the Nazi furnace, Zeitlin asks his fellow Jews, “have we fulfilled this mission in our world?"[6]
I learned about Beruria consciousness from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who wrote in a 1944 essay, even as World War II raged around him, “let Fascism not serve as an alibi for our conscience.”[7] Heschel continued, “we have failed to fight for right, for justice, for goodness; as a result, we must [now] fight against wrong, against injustice, against evil. We have failed to offer sacrifices on the altar of peace,” he concluded. “Now we must offer sacrifices on the altar of war.” Heschel’s mother and sisters, by that time, had already been murdered by the Nazis.
And I learned about Beruria consciousness from Shira Banki, ztz”l. In 2015, Shira was stabbed at the Jerusalem Pride Parade by an ultra-Orthodox Jew, a man released from prison after serving a 10-year sentence for an almost identical assault at the same Pride Parade in 2005. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Shira’s father Uri recalled that, a few months before the murder, the family was about to embark on a trip. Before they left home, someone said: ‘Pray that it won’t rain today.’” The secular Uri responded, in his words “sarcastically and cynically, ‘In our family, no one prays.’” Shira interrupted him: “Abba, that’s not very nice. Some people believe in God, and we need to show respect for them.”
Uri’s worldview changed in that moment. “It’s not okay to define my personal identity by putting someone else down,” he said: “Mocking religious Jews does not make me … more secular. Just like mocking homosexuals doesn’t make me any more heterosexual.”
In Shira’s memory, Uri and Shira’s mother Mika created Shira Banki’s Way, a nonprofit established, according to the website, “to dismantle the barriers of ignorance, suspicion, hate, and fear.”
This past June was the 10th anniversary of Shira’s killing. The Bankis returned to Pride, queer activists mixing with families of hostage outraged that their own government abandoned them. Uri reminded the marchers “Shira wasn’t killed by a foreign enemy. She was murdered by an Israeli citizen, as a direct result of incitement in Israel.” Uri and Mika insist on a government — and a world — in which all are respected and all are honored. And so they keep marching.
This is what’s been stolen from us, little by little. The ability to stay true to our voices, to hold true to our values, to speak clearly for justice, without falling prey to rage. The way I spoke about Yankee fans, in jest (mostly), is the way we’ve been conditioned to speak, in seriousness, about our neighbors.
We commit to doing better. We commit to cultivating our own divinity, recognizing that we too are created in God’s image. We commit to defining ourselves not by who we hate. But by how we love. We commit to living with a loving heart, even when it’s broken.
Some days it feels like none of it matters. That voice of cynicism will only prevail if we let it. We come from people of endurance, Jews who got up every day knowing they weren’t the strongest. And who went and did anyway.
I’ll tell you a few small ways that I’ve tried to affirm the tzelem Elohim, the image of God reflected in the folks around us. I invite you to try them.
Oh, before we finish, one last word about sports. If you’ve been paying attention at all to the circus that is the NFL, you know that the Chargers-Raiders rivalry has “evolved.” Our Chargers, on whose behalf San Diego fans zealously refused to aid a hungry neighbor They abandoned the city. Moved to LA. The rival Oakland Raiders did likewise. Today they are the Las Vegas Raiders. Sports franchises come and go. If you, or someone you love, were once a Brooklyn Dodger fan, you already knew that. What doesn’t change is the divinity, the vulnerability, of being human.
In a moment that challenges our most deeply cherished values, we insist that we are all due dignity and respect. Not because of who we root for. Not because of who we vote for. But simply because we are human. Because that’s enough.
L’shanah tovah tikateivu. May we all be written into the book of goodness and justice, of principle and compassion.
Yes – even Yankee fans.
***
Footnotes:
[1] Gary Warth, “Would you give spare change to a Raiders fan?” San Diego Union-Tribune, August 24, 2016
[2] Genesis 1:27
[3] Sanhedrin 37a
[4] Psalm 104:35
[5] BT, Brachot 10a
[6] Hasidic Spirituality for a New Era: The Religious Writings of Hillel Zeitlin
[7] Abraham Joshua Heschel, “The Meaning of This War,” 1944
You probably know what I’m referring to. I mean, of course, the deeply detestable and fundamentally awful New York Yankees, and their enervating and insufferable fans.
Now, of course, at Dor Hadash we celebrate diversity. I am a Mets fan, and you are Padres fans. But we stand united in solidarity against the dreaded Yankees and their — did I mention? — repugnant supporters, whose mere existence shocks the conscience of any moral American.
We can show no sympathy, extend no compassion, to this sniveling band of degenerates, completely and utterly devoid of common decency.
OK OK, I’m kidding. Mostly.And anyway… it’s not like people would actually treat each other differently based on something as superficial as their allegiance to a sports team.
Right?
Well…A few years ago, two professors from Cal State San Marcos, Vassilis Dalakas and Ben Cherry, conducted a study.[1] San Marcos is about a 40-minute drive from here, depending on traffic on the 15. For the experiment, Professor Cherry posed for two days as a panhandler here in San Diego. While asking for help, he changed his shirt every hour — first wearing a shirt with a San Diego Chargers logo, then with a logo from their football rival, the Raiders, and then finally into a shirt that was blank. Folks were friendly when he wore a Chargers shirt. But when he asked for help in a Raiders shirt? “I would have people yell things at me,” said Cherry. “Raiders suck!” Or even, “That’s what you get for being a Raiders fan.” After two days on the street, the team tallied the results. Cherry had collected $17.11 while wearing a blank shirt, and $17.81 while wearing a Chargers shirt. And when wearing a Raiders shirt? $4.57.
Human beings make their debut in the very first chapter of Genesis, the first book of the Torah. Not Jews, not Israelites, not Arabs, not Americans, not Charger fans, not even Padres fans. Just humans. Immediately, Genesis teaches an essential truth about these humans. They’re all created b’tzelem Elohim. “In the image of God.”[2] They all possess divinity and value, the infinite value that comes with being human.
There’s a thing about a Torah scroll. It only has consonants. No vowels, no punctuation. Which means that the phrase b’tzelem Elohim has no asterisk. Because there are no exceptions.
In Talmud, in tractate Sanhedrin, the question is asked: why does all humanity come from one person, from Adam? Why not create, say, a group of people all at once? Like a baseball team? And the answer is given: So that nobody can say abba gadol mei’avicha — “my father, my people are better than yours.”[3]
You might think — hey, good point! Like, love everyone, man. Very chill, very Cali, right? Just one problem. It can feel really good to hate the people we don’t like. Maybe to even wish something terrible on them. And, when they fall prey to that terrible thing, to take pleasure in their suffering. “That’s what you get for being a Raiders fan!”
The Germans have a word for this. You might know it: schadenfreude — a compound of schaden, "damage” or “harm," and freude, "joy" — meaning to take pleasure in another person’s suffering.
There’s a website you could look up right now, called areyousorryyet.com. The tagline is “a collection of regretful Trump voters.” The website header depicts a close-up photo of a crying baby. It features pairs of tweets, the first of each pair expressing support for the president, and then a second, later tweet from the same person, venting disappointment or outrage.
In one pair, for instance, a woman named Tammy tweets out, “You have my vote! Make America great again” — only to say in the second tweet, two years later, “You lied about pre-existing conditions. You’re a horrible man.” Below Tammy’s tweets is the webmaster’s commentary: “You got what you voted for, chump!” If you agree, you may feel a thrill in seeing Tammy called a “chump.” But after the thrill — then what?
If we really believe that all people are entitled to basic healthcare, that means all people — even people who don’t support it. If we believe that all people deserve fair pay, that means all people — even low-wage workers who vote against minimum wage increases. If we believe people have a right to good schools and safe workplaces, to housing and healthcare, that means all people — even people whose views are anathema to ours.
All souls are divine — even people I find objectional.
No matter what I think.
So if, say, I see a Black neighbor here in San Diego and assume they’re up to no good, if I see a Guatemalan migrant and assume they’re an “invading” gang member, if I see a person with a handicapped plate and wonder if they’re lying to “get a good spot,” if I’m undone by the reality or even the idea of a trans person, the issue is with me, because they are all reflections of the divine. It’s our task to look into the faces of each of those people, and see the fullness of God.
And, just as assuredly, if I estimate a white Baptist in Santee by definition to be worthy of ridicule, if I dismiss the dignity of an out-of-work Fox News viewer, if I snicker at the suffering of a person I think voted wrong, I need to do some serious soul-searching, because those people too are reflections of the divine. It's our task to look into the faces of each of those people, and see the fullness of God.
And wow, all of this is so much harder than I’m making it sound. After all, some of the folks in the second group support policies that have, and do, hurt folks in the first group. Some may have called the cops on their Black neighbors. Or voted for a senator who demonizes our trans kids. Or clicked “like” on a video of white supremacists chanting “Jews will not replace us.” Simply put, some of them wish the worst for us and the people we love.
We’re under no illusions about hatred. We don’t pretend that bigotry represents a mere “difference of opinion.” But if the High Holidays teach us anything, it’s that even a person’s most hurtful behavior does not erase their divinity. As Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, reminds us, “each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done.”
God forbid we ignore the opportunity to defeat the hate in this world, and let the hate defeat us. Because the world desperately needs the Jewish insistence that human life reflects the divine.
All around us, we see a degradation of that life. In this country, increasing numbers of unhoused folks, harassed by law enforcement. Torment of immigrants and refugee families. Massive cuts to healthcare, to food and nutrition assistance. Inmates dying in jails, right here in San Diego. Slashing of aid to developing countries, defunding of AIDS treatment, women and pregnant folks left without safe access to abortion care, the normalization of gun deaths, children’s deaths.
And in Israel/Palestine, the massacre of the innocent on October 7th and deaths of hostages in Hamas captivity, followed by staggering numbers of Gazan civilians killed in the last two years, unprecedented killings of aid-workers, journalists. Settler violence against West Bank Palestinians with no legal consequence. Calls to rid the world of Israel, calls to rid Israel of Arabs.
And, in each case, the suggestion that this barbarism is somehow noble, or principled. To believe that humans are created in God’s image means rejecting the repulsive rhetoric of hate, the corruption of justice, the sophistry that recasts empathy as weakness. We are right to feel indignation at the one-two punch of the normalization of bigotry, and the insistence that we accept it as a legitimate viewpoint.
But to believe that humans are created in God’s image also means rejecting the idea that we can’t feel compassion for a soul, even as we are repulsed by their words and actions.
Especially since, sometimes, the souls in question are us.
The unetaneh tokef prayer asks the question — Who merits life? Who deserves death?The idea of a book of life, wherein God inscribes the good people for another year of sustenance, might seem silly — a fanciful rabbinic creation. But even if so, it serves an important purpose. Putting the determination of who shall live in the hands of a God takes it out of our hands — lest we the savor the death and misery of others. Reveling in the suffering of fellow human beings is not only morally incompatible with Jewish values. It also lets us off the hook for our own responsibility for the mess we’re in. After all, if it’s the other guy’s fault, I can be assured it’s not mine.
We’d be appalled by the suggestion that victims of police violence, blue-collar workers killed on unsafe job sites, those unable to afford healthcare, victims of back-alley abortions somehow deserve their fate. And how about the perpetrators of those injustices? Do they deserve to suffer? Maybe. If so — how about us? We know about the racism in our land, the gruesome attacks on the poor, the second-class status of women, the third-class status of trans folks and refugees.
Some of us in this room benefit from wealth built in an economy stacked in favor of folks of our skin color or gender, grew up knowing our schools would have the newest textbooks, don’t have to worry about what we’d do if we had an unwanted pregnancy. If, like me, you’re in one or more of those categories, ask yourself: are you and I doing enough to combat those injustices? Surely not. Do we deserve punishment? We pray to God to spare us.
The High Holidays remind us that we have all done things which resulted in pain for others. In my life, I’ve held opinions that now embarrass me, that contributed to the suffering of others. At one time or another, we’ve all harbored ideas, we’ve all made choices, which have left our neighbors poorer, sicker, and more vulnerable — and, sometimes, helped inscribe their names in a real Book of Death.
Choneinu v’aneinu, “be gracious and answer us,” we plead on these days. Ki ein banu ma’asim. “We have so few deeds” to commend us.
This morning, we acknowledge our own role in cruelty and avarice and inequity, the part we play in all the systems that make the world unfair.
Some times are harder than others to stay true to those ideals. In the course of my High Holiday prep, I received an email. Oh, I thought, maybe a prospective congregant!
“Jews are truly the most cancerous species on Earth,” it read, “vile and contemptible, uglier than the ugliest form of ugliness.” It was signed by “White Male Rebel.” I’ll be honest. My first thought about my new penpal was not, “wow, that guy is created in the Divine image!”
But we’re not the first generation to struggle with these questions. The Talmud tells of a band of hoodlums who repeatedly harassed Rabbi Meir. Perhaps they were Roman thugs. The Talmud doesn’t say. But, in exasperation, Rabbi Meir prayed that they should die. Meir’s wife, Beruria, — herself a scholar — was shocked. “What are you thinking? We’re taught in Psalms: ‘Let sins cease from the land.’ Sins, not sinners!”[4] Rather than pray for their deaths, Beruria demanded, “pray that they should repent!”[5] He did. And they did.
To come here today is to seek redemption for ourselves. To be a Jew is to hold out hope for redemption for everyone.
For a people who have suffered much worse than hateful emails, this may sound impossibly naïve or — worse — self-destructive. Yes, self-defense can be a mitzvah. But even in a world gone mad, steeped in hate and brutality, we insist on affirming the image of the divine in every soul. Call it Beruria consciousness.
I learned about Beruria consciousness from Hillel Zeitlin, a Yiddish thinker and poet. Zeitlin wrote, from the midst of Nazi-occupied Warsaw, that to be a Jew “is to demand tzedakah umishpat [justice and right] not only for [Jews], but for all peoples… [to] stand always on the side of the oppressed against their overlords… to free the enslaved (To let the oppressed go free).” Zeitlin is quoting Isaiah, the very haftarah we’ll read on Yom Kippur. From the flames of the Nazi furnace, Zeitlin asks his fellow Jews, “have we fulfilled this mission in our world?"[6]
I learned about Beruria consciousness from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who wrote in a 1944 essay, even as World War II raged around him, “let Fascism not serve as an alibi for our conscience.”[7] Heschel continued, “we have failed to fight for right, for justice, for goodness; as a result, we must [now] fight against wrong, against injustice, against evil. We have failed to offer sacrifices on the altar of peace,” he concluded. “Now we must offer sacrifices on the altar of war.” Heschel’s mother and sisters, by that time, had already been murdered by the Nazis.
And I learned about Beruria consciousness from Shira Banki, ztz”l. In 2015, Shira was stabbed at the Jerusalem Pride Parade by an ultra-Orthodox Jew, a man released from prison after serving a 10-year sentence for an almost identical assault at the same Pride Parade in 2005. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Shira’s father Uri recalled that, a few months before the murder, the family was about to embark on a trip. Before they left home, someone said: ‘Pray that it won’t rain today.’” The secular Uri responded, in his words “sarcastically and cynically, ‘In our family, no one prays.’” Shira interrupted him: “Abba, that’s not very nice. Some people believe in God, and we need to show respect for them.”
Uri’s worldview changed in that moment. “It’s not okay to define my personal identity by putting someone else down,” he said: “Mocking religious Jews does not make me … more secular. Just like mocking homosexuals doesn’t make me any more heterosexual.”
In Shira’s memory, Uri and Shira’s mother Mika created Shira Banki’s Way, a nonprofit established, according to the website, “to dismantle the barriers of ignorance, suspicion, hate, and fear.”
This past June was the 10th anniversary of Shira’s killing. The Bankis returned to Pride, queer activists mixing with families of hostage outraged that their own government abandoned them. Uri reminded the marchers “Shira wasn’t killed by a foreign enemy. She was murdered by an Israeli citizen, as a direct result of incitement in Israel.” Uri and Mika insist on a government — and a world — in which all are respected and all are honored. And so they keep marching.
This is what’s been stolen from us, little by little. The ability to stay true to our voices, to hold true to our values, to speak clearly for justice, without falling prey to rage. The way I spoke about Yankee fans, in jest (mostly), is the way we’ve been conditioned to speak, in seriousness, about our neighbors.
We commit to doing better. We commit to cultivating our own divinity, recognizing that we too are created in God’s image. We commit to defining ourselves not by who we hate. But by how we love. We commit to living with a loving heart, even when it’s broken.
Some days it feels like none of it matters. That voice of cynicism will only prevail if we let it. We come from people of endurance, Jews who got up every day knowing they weren’t the strongest. And who went and did anyway.
I’ll tell you a few small ways that I’ve tried to affirm the tzelem Elohim, the image of God reflected in the folks around us. I invite you to try them.
- Be part of my singles group! No, not that kind of singles group. When I remember, I stash singles in the visor of my car. If I’m stopped at one of the many traffic lights in San Diego, it means I’m ready when someone asks for help — no matter what shirt they’re wearing. Even when I don’t have any money, I smile at the person who needs help. I say “God bless.” Nine times out of ten, they appreciate the recognition of their humanity.
- Defy hate even when it’s scary. Unless you’re in an unsafe situation, push back on words that deny the dignity of the people around you. Whether it’s immigrants or trans folks or people of color, Palestinians or Muslims or Israelis, or people who voted different from you — calmly tell folks who share hate about them that those people too possess the spark of the divine. Or however you would say it.
- Join us at our justice discussion, tomorrow at 9:30. Like Zeitlin said, to be a Jew is to demand justice and right for all peoples. Rather than pray this same service again, tomorrow we’ll meet to discuss the passions and skills we can bring to the work of affirming the sanctity of all people. I hope you’ll join us.
Oh, before we finish, one last word about sports. If you’ve been paying attention at all to the circus that is the NFL, you know that the Chargers-Raiders rivalry has “evolved.” Our Chargers, on whose behalf San Diego fans zealously refused to aid a hungry neighbor They abandoned the city. Moved to LA. The rival Oakland Raiders did likewise. Today they are the Las Vegas Raiders. Sports franchises come and go. If you, or someone you love, were once a Brooklyn Dodger fan, you already knew that. What doesn’t change is the divinity, the vulnerability, of being human.
In a moment that challenges our most deeply cherished values, we insist that we are all due dignity and respect. Not because of who we root for. Not because of who we vote for. But simply because we are human. Because that’s enough.
L’shanah tovah tikateivu. May we all be written into the book of goodness and justice, of principle and compassion.
Yes – even Yankee fans.
***
Footnotes:
[1] Gary Warth, “Would you give spare change to a Raiders fan?” San Diego Union-Tribune, August 24, 2016
[2] Genesis 1:27
[3] Sanhedrin 37a
[4] Psalm 104:35
[5] BT, Brachot 10a
[6] Hasidic Spirituality for a New Era: The Religious Writings of Hillel Zeitlin
[7] Abraham Joshua Heschel, “The Meaning of This War,” 1944