Texts

erev Rosh Hashanah Sermon, 5764

September 26, 2003
Jim Levinson

Pride

I love good stories. Good stories like good music have the power to affect me deeply. I suspect it’s the same for most of you. We’re a people of stories, as the Irish are a people of ballads. We have as a people one great overarching story, the story of the Exodus, but we have countless others which nourish our souls.

I have to admit that many of my favorite stories are those stories which feed my nachas, which feed my Jewish pride. I have to admit, as we enter into these Days of Awe, these days when we are asked to bare our souls, that I am guilty of the sin of pride. I know from the Book of Proverbs that “pride cometh before a fall.” But I can’t help it. I’m proud. I’m proud to be a Jew.

I trust that our non-Jewish friends present here will understand. I don’t believe that any Jewish congregation places a higher premium on interfaith understanding than BAJC. But on this one day of the year, please allow me to succumb to temptation. Please allow me on this Erev Rosh Hashanah, as we all prepare to open our hearts and explore what lies therein, to kvell in nachas. Please allow me to break every rule I have constructed for myself about sermons. Next Sunday evening, for Kol Nidre, I promise you a sermon that will follow those rules. But this evening, let me just share with you stories, a story about a hero, stories illustrating the help we offer to others and the help others offer to us, and stories of our own time and place which also deserve to be told and retold.

Let me begin this kvelling by talking about a Jewish hero. I feel sadness when I discover that some of our younger people in the congregation don’t have heroes, other than movie stars and athletes.

One of my heroes is Clara Lemlich. Clara worked for the Triangle Shirt Factory on the Lower East Side of New York early in the last century, in an industry with a monstrous history of disregard for worker conditions, and an industry where 70% of these garment workers were Jewish women. Clara’s story resonates with me because I see such sweatshops again and again in Bangladesh and other developing countries. Each time seeing this breaks my heart. Each time I think of our ancestors.

The women workers of the Triangle Shirt Factory had been on strike for five weeks, and hunger and physical weakness are taking their toll. In desperation an emergency meeting of New York shirtwaist workers is called. Despite speeches by the likes of Samuel Gompers, the crowd is weary and about to disperse. And then it happens. Up to the podium walks nineteen year old Clara Lemlich, who begins speaking to the crowd in Yiddish, gradually working herself into a fury of denunciation, and appealing for united action against all the shirtwaist manufacturers. In response, 20,000 shirt waist workers, all women, rose as one, joined the Triangle strikers in a city-wide walkout. They were called the fabrente maydlakh, the fiery young women. The strike became “the Uprising of the 20,000” - and before long it achieved the hoped for agreement - including a reduction of the work week to 52 hours.

I feel particular pride when I see Jews standing up for others, Jews or non-Jews, standing up for what is right. And I feel pride when others stand up for us. Let me share with you some instances of each.

In Israel, one often sees posters on the street listing the victims of attacks on Jews. These posters print the names of those killed, the time and place of the funeral, and the location of the shivah. After that the posters usually have the initials, zion lamed, an abbreviation for zichronam livrachah, may their memories be a blessing. Lately, however, instead of zion lamed, one is beginning to see the letters hey, yud, daled, which stands for Hashem Yinkom Damam – may God avenge their blood.

So where is the good news about that? Where is the pride? The good news and the pride is that young people in Israel are protesting that “God avenging” kind of language. Young people are saying no. Despite all the horrors of the horrific and unforgivable suicide bombings, large numbers of young people still care about what is right, still care about what is honorable, still care about what being a Jew demands of them.

Let me add that for individuals among us who tend to be overly critical of Israel, we need to remember that Israel was the second country in modern times to elect a female leader, that it has absorbed more immigrants than any country on earth relative to its population, that it has a symphony orchestra that gives concerts at war sites, once even with gas masks on their music stands as scud missiles threatened Tel Aviv, and that it has two official languages, Hebrew and Arabic.

Let’s see if I can make it through this next story. Yoni Jesner was a 19 year old living in Glasgow Scotland whose two passions were a medical career and the land of Israel. Last year, before beginning medical school in London, he decided to live in Israel and volunteer his services. On a bus to Tel Aviv, Yoni was killed by a suicide bombing.

The doctors examining Yoni’s broken body knew that he had planned to become a doctor. When they broke the news to Yoni’s heartbroken family, they asked the family a most difficult question. There was a seven year old girl in East Jerusalem, Yasmin Rumeilah, who had been born with a failing kidney. Her parents had been carrying her bundled body through the checkpoints three times a week to an Israeli hospital where she was being treated by Israeli doctors.

The doctors told Yoni’s family about this young Palestinian girl who could go on living if she received Yoni’s kidney. The family agonized, but decided quickly. Yoni would have wanted to save the life of this child. Yoni’s brother’s spoke for the family: “We believe it is a real sanctification of God’s name to bring something positive out of this terrible conflict.”

And so Yoni Jesner’s kidney was transplanted into Yasmin Rumeilah. The little girl is doing well. Yoni Jesner will not live to become a doctor, but just as surely, he will be remembered as a healer. Yasmin’s father Abu, who runs a tea and coffee shop in East Jerusalem also had words to say: “They saved my daughter,” he said. “Part of their son is living in my daughter. We are now family together; we are now family together.”

We also cherish the stories of others coming to our rescue and our defense. One of my favorites is the story of Paul Robeson in Russia. Paul Robeson, the great African American actor and singer refused to be part of the American cold war mentality so prevalent in the 1930s and 40s and thereafter, and he traveled frequently to the Soviet Union to give concerts and to visit with his friends, almost all of whom were Jewish. In the late 1940s, unbeknownst to Robeson – who sometimes failed to see the darker side of Soviet history - there was yet another outbreak of state-sponsored anti-Semitism, and Robeson couldn’t find any of his friends.

“Where is Itzik Feffer?” Robeson asked. “Where is Sergei Eisenstein? Where is Solomon Mikhoels?” Robeson continued to ask and it was getting embarrassing for the Soviet authorities.

So they took Itzik Feffer out of prison, cleaned him up and brought him to Robeson. When the two were alone, Feffer indicated to Robeson that the room was surely bugged. So they communicated by sign language and written notes. Feffer told Robeson of his own imprisonment and of the imprisonment or executions of Robeson’s other friends. The meeting was a wrenching experience for Robeson.

That night, at the end of his concert in Tschaikovsky Hall, Robeson announced that he would sing only one encore. He then went on to speak of the Jews of the Soviet Union and the Jews of America who had done so much to make the world a better place, and had rallied around his people in their struggle for human rights and human dignity. And then, to a hushed hall, he dedicated the encore to Itzik Feffer, and sang in Yiddish the great hymn of Warsaw Ghetto resistance:

Sing Zog nit keyn mol…

When he finished the song, there was absolute silence in the hall. The silence continued. And then one person - like Nachshon stepping into the Sea of Reeds – one person began to clap, and then there were five, and then there were 50, and then the entire audience was on its feet wildly clapping and cheering. And the thunderous ovation, both from Great Russians and Jews in the audience, continued for more than five minutes. Some present called it the bravest act of resistance in that chapter of Soviet history.

Just a few years earlier a 14 year old Italian Jewish boy was trying desperately with his family to escape from the Nazis. Yet, even while fleeing for his life, his heart is going out to others. These are his words, translated from the Italian, after a bombing raid on the city of Bologna:

"I saw a firefighter covered with blood, being taken out of the cab of the vehicle. The nurse put a hand on his heart and shook her head. I knew he was dead. The driver of the vehicle was looking at his companion who had died seeking to rescue some wounded persons, and the driver was sobbing. I will not forget, for all of my life, that sobbing firefighter. If a soldier who kills many enemies is called a hero, how should we call one who saves the lives someone else is trying to destroy?”

The 14 year old boy was our own Leo Berman.

The story of Leo Berman reminded me that there are images and stories in our time and place which deserve to be recorded and told again and again through the generations. Sometimes we are better at telling the ancient stories than telling our own, but we must tell our own stories and record our own memorable images also, and we have them in abundance (If you’re not familiar with any of these, just ask the person sitting next to you). Here are some that have imprinted themselves on my heart:

The image of Moss Linder reading the Torah with his young daughter in his arms

Johnny Lee Lenhart’s Torah chanting debut

Our children, surrounded by their teachers and their parents, standing at attention and singing Hatikvah

The ever amazing Miriam Pofcher being everywhere at once as she volunteers with our teachers, who, of course are themselves essentially volunteers

Selma Schiffer reading Babi Yar and Dan Ross speaking about Auschwitz on Yom Hashoah

Jennifer Mazur with her mother

Sandy Brodsky talking about her father

Jerry Levin with his wife Fran

Judy Greenberg going with her family to the Dominican Republic to help children in need

Janet Hulnick and Felipe doing the same for orphans in Argentina

Abe and Faith, doing the zillion and one things that they do for this congregation, not for money, not for fame, but because their lives are so at one with their Judaism, and because they have such love for this congregation

And then, when Janice Colbert, our Education Director, takes the initiative to generate some funds so that we could provide a small gift to Abe and Faith for all that they do to facilitate the education of our children, eight year old Zoe Novak Miller reaches into her pocket and contributes her entire allowance

It filled me with pride and touched me deeply, when I learned that one of our BAJC members, facing unusual financial difficulties, devoted time every single day, sometimes several times a day, to express gratitude, in Hebrew “modim”, for what she did have: healthy children, a loving partner, food and shelter. It was, she told me, these prayers of gratitude that got her through the worst.

And so much more… welcoming and embracing the fearful Muslim community in this space, and then, at their own Muslim Eid celebrations, as the Homeland Security and Patriot Acts were going into effect, laying our hands on these frightened friends, surrounding them with a shield of love, and saying to them, “If they come for you, they’ll have to take us first.”

And imagine this if you will. Imagine a Christian who studies the Holocaust as a teenager, weeps over what happened in that time and that place, and decides to do the one thing he can do to be in solidarity with those who have perished. It’s a story that takes your breath away. You will hear that story tomorrow morning in this space.

These stories barely scratch the surface of the richness that we embody, the deep wells of goodness and kindness, the benevolence, the creativity, the uniqueness of our Jewish culture and our Jewish peoplehood, all of this radiating outward from the magnetic core of the historic Judaism that we cherish.

And, of course, these stories relate directly to our historic mission, the essence of our covenant with Adonai, much of which can be summarized in two words, Tikkun Olam, a responsibility to heal the world, to do so in any way we can - from the smallest Messianic moments we provide for one another, to the sacrifice of one’s life. We were chosen as a Chosen People to demonstrate ethical monotheism, but also to demonstrate Tikkun Olam. It is our calling. There can be none greater. And it fills me with ineffable pride when I see our people taking this covenant seriously.

And these stories represent a golden thread that we must continue to spin and then pass on to the generations which follow;

I can’t wait to hear the stories, the random acts of kindness we have created during the month of Ellul and which will be read aloud and sent heavenward tomorrow. I can’t wait to see what stories we will create during the coming year, based perhaps on our resolutions made during these Days of Awe. What is clear, however, is that what we seek through our prayers is not just another year, but a year of life emblazoned with the marks of our people – emblazoned with rachmones, our boundless compassion, emblazoned with tzedakah, our commitment to justice for all, and emblazoned with tikun olam, the healing of the world, whether through the giving of one’s very organs for a child, or the giving of one’s allowance for a worthy cause.

Amen