What's Your T'rumah? - 5775

(To hear an audio recording of this sermon as delivered at Shabbat Unplugged with JeTSeT at Temple Shaaray Tefila in New York City, please click here.)

Rigging the Game - Bo 5775

(To hear this sermon as it was delivered at Shabbat Unplugged with JeTSeT at Temple Shaaray Tefila of New York City, please click here.)

I like sports. Most of you know that about me by now, to be sure. I like sports because, once the matchups are set, the competitors in place, nothing is scripted. Nothing is predetermined. The game is the same, the rules are the same for all involved, the competitors literally and figuratively stand on a level playing field. There may be a favorite, there may be an underdog, but none of that matters once the game begins. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, the team or athlete who performs the best, whose efforts merit the greatest results within the framework, rules, and score-keeping of the game, will win. That’s why we love sports. Sports comprise perhaps the only arena of life in which success is based entirely on performance. Not your background or the neighborhood you grew up in. Not where you went to school or who your daddy is or who you know in all the right places. Victory is based on performance. Period, paragraph. And in that regard, the world of sports, in its ideal sense, is a world in which justice is consistently served; blind, as she is famously depicted, to the competitors, weighing only their deeds and misdeeds on an unknowing scale.

And that is why I get so upset, so angry, when people cheat. I know – believe me, I do – that sports are for entertainment. I know that sports are not a matter of life and death; that sports don’t feed the hungry, or build homes for the homeless, or cure cancer. I know how so many of us dismiss sports as a frivolous waste of time and energy and money, and perhaps, at the end of the day, there’s a point to that. Even some athletes themselves see a sliver of that perspective, like running back Arian Foster, who tweets about there being so much more to life than just football, and quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who this week proclaimed publicly that he highly doubts God cares at all about football games and their outcomes. But for millions, if not billions, of people worldwide, sports are sacred—a necessary, if only momentary, escape from a world where judgments, evaluations, and performance assessments are not always so balanced and unbiased.

That world was tainted once again this week, with allegations against Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, star quarterback and coach of the New England Patriots, respectively, of deliberately under-inflating footballs used for last Sunday’s AFC Championship game in Foxboro, Massachusetts, where nothing less than a trip to the Super Bowl was on the line. That may sound silly, especially to those of you who already find sports in general to be so; it may sound funny, as it becomes another opportunity for self-applauding journalists to name another scandal with “-gate” as the suffix, even though it makes zero sense to do so, and displays even less creativity. It may not even have had the desired impact, as stat-heads will point out that Tom Brady, the Patriots quarterback, actually did better in the second half, once the footballs were re-inflated to the correct pressure. But let me tell you why I don’t find this funny or silly in the slightest.

Little girls and boys whose worlds stop on Sundays to don their heroes’ jerseys, the hearts within them rising and falling with each moment of triumph or disappointment, defending their idols to their friends at school during the week. Their fathers and mothers who grew up doing the same, still wearing jerseys as grown adults, sharing precious hours of emotional bonding that somehow transcend time and space and the age difference between them. The women and men who spend hundreds, sometimes thousands, of their hard-earned dollars to experience the thrill and excitement of actually being there, attending a live sporting event, to be amidst and a part of the roars and groans of the crowd, not merely witnesses from the comfort of their couch. The vendors and maintenance staff and ticket-takers and stadium officials, all for whom their livelihood is entirely dependent upon the product on the field being what it purports to be, that is to say, authentic and professional, in every sense of the word.

When athletes cheat, when coaches and managers flagrantly trample upon the rules and regulations, whose very purpose is the fairness and equality so sorely lacking in virtually every other venue of life, these are the people who really get cheated. These are the folks who are robbed, both literally and figuratively, while the wool is pulled over their eyes. These are the men and women, boys and girls, whose hearts are broken by the very people they look up to, heroes they strive to be like on their best days and who give them hope on their worst. The cheater messes with people’s lives, either because he’s so self-consumed as to be oblivious to the needs of others, or egomaniacal and narcissistic to the point of simply not giving a damn for anyone else.

Because choosing to cheat, deciding which rules are beneath you, which ones you’re exempt from because you’re somehow special, different from everyone else, you are playing God. And no one gets to play God but God. And even when God plays God, sometimes, for many of us, even that can be too much.

What happens in Bo, this week’s parasha, is exactly that. For me, this is one of the most intriguing and difficult passages in all of Torah. It picks up in the middle of the epic theological throwdown between God and Pharaoh, beginning with the famous episode of Moses’ staff becoming a serpent, and that even when the Egyptian magicians are able to do the same, the serpent of Moses’ staff swallows that of the Egyptians’. There, and for each of the first five plagues upon Egypt—turning the Nile to blood, the frogs, lice, insects, and pestilence—we read that no sooner had each marvel dissipated than Pharaoh’s “heart hardened” or he “became stubborn” and he went back on his word.

But something fascinating happens with the sixth plague, that of inflammation and boils. Here, for the first time, we read Vay’chazek Adonai et lev par’oh, that “God hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he would not heed [Moses and Aaron].” Not Pharaoh “hardening his own heart.” Not Pharaoh “becoming stubborn.” God hardens Pharaoh’s heart. God makes it so that Pharaoh will not accede to the demands placed before him. A small difference; yet, all the difference in the world. And perhaps before we’ve even noticed it, and the next plague of hail has come and gone, the language reverts, and once again, Pharaoh’s heart hardens on its own.

But lest we think this is some error in the text, grammatical or otherwise, lest we desire so deeply to give God the benefit of the doubt here, the very first words of Parashat Bo make God’s intentions crystal clear. “Then the Eternal One said to Moses,” we read, “Go to Pharaoh. For I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his courtiers, in order that I may display these My signs among them, and that you may recount in the hearing of your children and of your children’s children how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and how I displayed My signs among them—in order that you may know that I am the Eternal.””

So there it is. God is rigging the game. God is saying, in essence, “I’m the One making all of this happen. I’m the One pulling all the strings here, so that I will win, and I will win big.” And then, as we all know well, that’s exactly what God does. The locusts come, the locusts go, and God again hardens Pharaoh’s heart. The darkness comes, the darkness goes, and God again hardens Pharaoh’s heart. Moses issues the imminent threat of the death of the first-born sons of Egypt and God says to him, “Pharaoh will not heed you, in order that My marvels may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.” When his and every Egyptian first-born son lies dead at the feet of their fathers, then and only then does Pharaoh finally give in. Why? Why all this and the detailed instructions for the Passover celebration? Because “with a mighty hand the Eternal freed us from Egypt.” Because God is the champion. God is the winner of the Super Bowl of Super Bowls. And God’s making sure that you never, ever forget it.

God gets to play God. And we can like it, dislike it, struggle with it, be squeamish about it. But that’s God. And that’s the God of our ancestors, the way they wanted us to know and remember Him. But we don’t. We don’t get to play God, and we should never do so. Because when we do, when we decide that we’re above it all and we rig the game—in sports, in school, in work, in politics or our personal lives—it betrays some of the ugliest, most harmful, and most destructive elements within the human character. And that, my friends, is not what God intended us to be.

Let us strive to find the best within ourselves, every single day of our lives. Let us be inspired by figures in our lives for their accomplishments, for their work ethic, for their passions and charisma, for the dedication they demonstrate in their respective fields, and the determination to follow through. Let us be moved and empowered to accentuate those same qualities within ourselves, to actualize and maximize them, with integrity, dignity, and respect—for ourselves and each other. Because, at the end of the day, that is, I believe, what God ultimately wants from us. And, at our best, I pray, that is what we want, and expect, from ourselves.

AMEN.

These Are the Names - Sh'mot 5775

(To watch this sermon as it was delivered at Temple Shaaray Tefila of Manhattan, please click here and find the service for Kabbalat Shabbat 1/9. Sermon begins just after the 1:03:00 mark.)

Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah; Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin; Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. “These are the names of the children of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each coming with his household.”

Thus begins the second book of Torah, the book we call in English “Exodus,” the book we call in Hebrew Sh’mot. But Sh’mot doesn’t mean Exodus. It doesn’t mean “going out” or “going down” or “leaving.” Sh’mot means “names.”

Amelia Boynton, Andrew Young, James Bevel, and John Lewis; Bayard Rustin, Annie Lee Cooper, and James Orange; Reverends Ralph Abernathy, Hosea Williams, and Frederick Reese; and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King.

These are the names of the children of Israel who marched through their own Mitzrayim, their own Egypt, risking their lives and the lives of their families, to fight for their very freedom, to demand their rights as citizens of this country of ours, rights famously deemed “inalienable” by the framers of our Constitution. Nothing more, nothing less.

And on that fateful day, 50 years ago this March, a little girl, just 11 years old, found her place in the lines in Selma, on the north side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for a Confederate brigadier general, and in doing so, took her place in American history. Her name is Joanne Bland. Some of you here tonight have had the extraordinary pleasure of meeting Ms. Bland, on one of our Civil Rights Trips to Selma, Montgomery, and Birmingham. I had long known of Joanne—how inspirational she is, of her tireless work in educating a new generation on the Civil Rights Movement, of her dedication to the work we still need to do together. This past Monday evening, thanks to Hope Chernak, our Director of Informal Education, Shaaray Tefila had the privilege of a private screening of the powerful new film, Selma, and Joanne was our special guest.

Though she had had the opportunity to see the movie earlier, she had chosen to experience it for the first time with us, with a community that she has fallen in love with, and who most certainly has fallen in love with her. And though she and I were only meeting for the first time on Monday night, our connection was instant, deep, and so wonderfully familiar, as though we had known each other our entire lives. We both just knew that this was only the beginning of a meaningful and spiritual connection, one that transcends whatever differences she and I may have on the surface. And when the images and sounds of Bloody Sunday filled our eyes and ears, it was still so real, so vivid, so raw for Joanne 50 years later that she was sobbing and shaking uncontrollably, even having to step out of the theater for a few minutes to let it out and try to regain some semblance of composure.

As she returned to her seat in front of Hope and me, I took her hand and held it strong, saying everything I needed to say without saying a word, and knowing just by feeling it that she understood every sentiment. I have to tell you: seeing this film through my own eyes and almost literally through Joanne’s as well was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. And when the lights came up, fresh tears still flowing down so many of our cheeks, I knew that it was going to be just too hard in that moment for Joanne to stand in front of the nearly 200 people there and answer questions. She and I came together in a moment of embrace that I know I will feel and carry with me for the rest of my life. As the credits rolled, and John Legend’s beautiful voice sang the words, “One day when the glory comes, it will be ours, it will be ours,” I was overcome with emotion that coursed through me and pouring from me like a divine spring, touched as I was by the myriad ways our faith, our heritage call upon us today to continue that same march begun by so many brave souls 50 years ago.

Our tradition is clear: in Genesis, in the creation of humanity, we are told unequivocally, even twice in the same verse vayivra Elohim et ha-adam b’tzalmo, “And God created the human in God’s image,” b’tzelem Elohim bara oto, “in the image of God were they created.” Certainly we are proud of what we as Jews are uniquely able to offer the world that no other people can, but we are missing the point entirely when our only focus is on ourselves. And in Leviticus we read, “Lo ta’amod al dam rei’echa,” commonly translated, “You shall not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.” If every single person is created in the image of God, and every single person has a spark of the divine within him or her, then the dam rei’echa, the blood of our neighbors being spilled, figuratively or literally, as we saw in the film and have seen in recent months in our country, that is a cry that cannot fall on deaf ears, certainly not in the Jewish community. This is not an African-American issue; this is not a white issue; it’s not a Jewish, Christian, or Muslim issue; it is a human issue, because civil rights are human rights, and that concerns all of us. And if it doesn’t, then it should. At least 36 times the Torah warns us, commands us not to oppress the stranger, and why? Because you yourselves were strangers in the land of Egypt. You – yes YOU – know what it’s like to be a stranger, an outcast, the other, treated as less than, and you are forbidden from doing that to any other person on God’s earth. In another rare instance of repeated words, Deuteronomy tells us, Tzedek tzedek tirdof, “Justice, justice shall you pursue,” that injustice anywhere, against anyone, is an injustice right here, right in front of our faces, against all of us; that wherever there is a man or woman being judged by the color of their skin, the God to whom they pray, the culture with which they identify, rather than by the content of their character, that which God endowed them with, that is a crime against every single one of us.

My friends, we have come so far since those volatile days five decades ago. And yet, well we know, as we look around us in America, when we watch the nightly news, we know there is still so much work to be done. Though the courageous marchers from Selma to Birmingham busted down barriers to make the path more accessible, how well we are aware that we have miles and miles to go before we sleep. Mi Chamocha, the prayer we traditionally recite every day, is not just a song of praise, words of thanks to God for freeing our people from the slavery, the indignity we endured for hundreds of years. They are undoubtedly that, and yet they are so much more. Mi Chamocha is a reminder, a wake-up call confronting us head-on with the fact we so often choose to ignore: that there is still racism, injustice, hatred that plagues our world. And we cannot, we must not, abide that. We cannot stand on the sidelines and allow these things to happen to our brothers and our sisters, wherever they may be. And though the pursuit of justice and dignity towards all humankind may not be complete in our own day, though we may not get to see such true equality with our own eyes, Pirke Avot says it doesn’t matter. Lo alecha ham’la’cha ligmor, the famous text tells us, it’s not necessarily upon you to finish the work, v’lo atah ben-chorin l’hibateil mimenah, but you are never, and will never be, free to desist from it, to throw in the towel and say, “It’s too much. I give up.”

As we enter a new book of Torah, the book of Sh’mot, of names; as we stand at the dawn of a new secular year, and as we are just one week from honoring the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, a legacy so bound up with all that we cherish as Jews and as Americans, let us be inspired by him, by Joanne Bland, by the men and women of all ages and races and faiths who put their lives on the line so that no one will be treated as the stranger, as the other, and oppressed as such. Let us re-commit ourselves to tikkun olam, to repairing a still-broken world, by honoring the tzelem Elohim, the image of God in every single human being on earth. And let us do so today. Not “one day.” Not someday soon. Today.

“The arc of the universe is long,” Dr. King said, “but it bends towards justice.”

Let us bend that arc, again and again, until there is truly liberty and justice for all.

AMEN.

The Doorman - Erev Yom Kippur 5775

(To hear this sermon as it was delivered at Temple Shaaray Tefila of New York City, please click here for the first part, and then here for the continuation.)

When Tali, Jonah and I “moved on up to the East Side” from Brooklyn a little over a year ago, there were some fairly major changes in our lives, changes that took some getting used to. Most of them were great. One was the reduction of my 45-minute commute down to, literally, a minute and a half. Another was the blessing of having Jonah here in our wonderful Nursery School, the ability to drop him off every day in the Tzahov Room and then take the stairs two flights down to work. And then there were the services, the conveniences all around us: a Duane Reade on every corner, the myriad delivery options accessible at all hours of the day and night through our new best friend, Seamless. Yes, we quickly realized that Manhattan was indeed a brave new world.

But perhaps the most dramatic, the most foreign of these changes, was the existence and omnipresence of The Doorman. June, Juan, Joseph, and Anthony, and sometimes Murat and Skander—they are our doormen. And they take terrific care of us. When our mail arrives, they hand it to us; when our dry cleaning comes in, they bring it right to our door. We put our garbage in the bins in the stairwell, they collect it all and take it out. We go away or come back home from being out of town, they help us bring all of our endless baby stuff to and from the car. We order through Seamless for the millionth time, they accompany the delivery guy to our door and escort him out. A person could get spoiled very, very easily.

There is, however, another side to all of the creature comforts and convenience of having doormen. What I soon came to realize, for better and for worse, is that these guys know everything. Everything. About me, about us, about the Stroms in 4F.

They don’t just know our favorite takeout places or where I get my shirts and tallitot cleaned. They don’t just know when the ConEd and Verizon bills come, or how often entire shipments of oversized boxes from diapers.com arrive. They know when drop-off is for Jonah’s class, when I take him out to John Jay to play baseball, or up on the roof to play hockey; they know how competitive he is because June has daily races with him to our door! They see me laughing with him; they see me disciplining him. They know Tali went into labor with Gabriel on December 18^th, that we drove down to Beth Israel, that we were sent home, and then came back that night in a taxi. They know our caregiver Glory’s schedule probably better than we do, know when Gabriel naps, know if they’re at home before I do. They see me when I’m dressed in a suit, heading out for services, a wedding, or a funeral. They see me contemplative or energized, exhausted or relieved, at the end of a long day. They see me soaked through with sweat when I come back from the gym, when I’ve been out watching football at the bar with friends, when I put Gabriel in the bjorn and take him out for a late-night walk with hopes of getting him to sleep. They may not see me when I’m sleeping, but they pretty much know when I’m awake. I’m not sure if they know if I’ve been bad or good. But they might. And that gives me pause. Sometimes I wonder if they know more about me than I know about myself.

And perhaps what Manhattanites consider part of the fabric of our lives is what the rest of the country and the world has only recently begun to figure out:

Someone is watching. Someone is always watching.

It might be your doorman or neighbor; another parent from your kid’s school or a member of the congregation; a friend of a friend of a friend who posts a picture of your t-shirt on Facebook because he thought it was funny or offensive or both; or some random girl you’ve never met taking a video on her smartphone of nothing to do with you and catches you in the background doing something you’d rather no one saw. Whoever it may be, someone is always watching.

It’s true, isn’t it?

Donald Sterling knows it. Until last spring Sterling was the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team. He is indeed now, thankfully, their former owner, resulting from his ugly, bigoted remarks instructing his then-girlfriend to remove all black people from her Instagram account because, in his own unintentionally ironic words, “we don’t have to broadcast everything.”

Ray Rice knows it. The former star running back for the Baltimore Ravens punched his then-fiancee Janay in the face, knocking her out cold in the elevator of an Atlantic City casino last February, stepped over her unconscious body and dragged her out of the elevator like she was a piece of luggage. At that moment, it’s clear that Rice either thought this was a private fight, or didn’t care at all that it wasn’t.

Jennifer Lawrence, Kirsten Dunst, Rihanna, Lea Michele, Hayden Panetierre, Gabrielle Union—they all know it. They, along with several others were victims of the hacking of the iCloud, Mac’s famous cloud storage and computing service that has over 320 million users. Suddenly the most intimate details of these women’s lives were splashed all over the internet.

But it’s not just celebrities, those who make their living in the limelight, who need to be on guard. It’s all of us. In a May op-ed piece in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman spoke of four words he feels are “becoming obsolete and destined to be dropped from our vocabulary.” The first is ‘privacy.’ He wrote, “…in a world where everyone with a cellphone camera is paparazzi, everyone with access to Twitter and a cellphone voice recorder is a reporter and everyone who can upload video on YouTube is a filmmaker, everyone else is a public figure — and fair game.” He goes on to quote HBO’s Bill Maher, who warned, “Now that Americans are getting wise to the dangers of being spied on by the government, they have to start getting more alarmed about spying on each other.”

Scary, isn’t it. What we do behind closed doors, what we think is out of sight, away from the arena of public consumption, can so quickly and so easily be shared with the world. The boundaries we thought were there, that we thought were clearly marked, are now blurry at best, if they even exist at all. Every moment, every deed, every uttered word— intimate or shared, official or unguarded, on or off the record—can go public, even viral, in seconds, with the tap of a phone, with the click of a mouse. And that is certainly a terrifying prospect.

But this is nothing new. It's something we Jews have always known: someone is watching, noting, recording and judging everything we do. Take away the technology of modern times, the hyper-accessibility of the information super-highway, the fear that our deeds are being recorded and may someday soon come back to haunt us, has always been there. And in our tradition, this fear is warranted; we’re exactly right to be afraid, because it is very real. The second chapter of Pirke Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers, states very plainly, “Know what is above you: a seeing eye, a listening ear, and all your deeds are written in a book.” In the Un’taneh Tokef prayer we heard sung with such gorgeous power on Rosh HaShanah and will again tomorrow morning, we read the words: “Here is the truth of this day: You are judge and plaintiff, counselor and witness. You inscribe and seal. You record and recount. You remember all that we have forgotten. And when You open the Book of Memories, it speaks for itself—for every human hand leaves its mark, an imprint like no other.”

And it is not just on these High Holy Days that we should be aware that we are being watched, that our actions are being recorded.

The Talmud relates the story of the great Yochanan ben Zakkai who, as he lay on his deathbed, was asked by his gathered disciples for a final blessing. What did he tell them? What was his final benediction, his golden nugget of sage wisdom for his devoted followers to carry forward? “May your fear of Heaven be as strong as your fear of human beings.” Stunned beyond description, they asked him, “Is that all?” To which he responded, “Yes, would that it were so. For you should know that when a person does something wrong, he says, ‘I hope no one sees me.’”

And the story is told of the Chofetz Chayim, the influential 19^th and 20^th century rabbi, who hitches a ride home with a cart-driver. Riding along a beautiful orchard, the driver stops the cart, telling the rabbi he’ll be back with a few of those apples, only asking that the rabbi keep a lookout and let him know if someone can see. Just as the driver is about to take a delicious red apple, the rabbi yells out, “Someone can see! Someone can see!” Scurrying back to his cart, finally catching his breath, the driver says to the rabbi, “What do you mean, someone can see? I have looked in every direction and there is not a soul for miles. Why do you tell me this when certainly there is no one who can see?” With a finger pointed to the sky, the rabbi says to him, “My friend, you are mistaken. God sees. God always sees. Even when people cannot see what we do, God sees, and God knows. And so do we in our hearts.”             

Speaking to the disciples, the driver of the cart, and to us, Yochanan ben Zakkai, the Chofetz Chayim and the words of our liturgy tell us clearly: ‘You’ve got it all wrong. It’s not other people you have to worry about seeing what you do. It’s God. And God sees everything.’ Perhaps what our tradition is implying, if not stating outright, is that God, after all, is the Ultimate Doorman.

But even if we don’t believe in a God who works like that, or any God at all, there is that spark of the divine in each of us, that voice that knows, that sees. What we've done, what we've said, what we hope in our heart of hearts no human being could possibly bear witness to: we are the ones who know the truth. Perhaps the Book of Memories, the Book of Deeds our liturgy speaks of is the iCloud of our lives. And whether or not there is a God managing the mainframe, we have access to it, and we are the ones who know what is stored there.

     

But maybe our awareness of God the Watcher, with the eyes of the world as His messengers, can help us to be better people. Just as the 24-hour surveillance cameras of our buildings, our workplaces, our places of leisure are there to protect and keep us safe from harm, perhaps knowing the iCloud of our lives exists can protect us from the yetzer hara, the evil inclination within each of us, when temptations confronts us. Maybe a fear of regret, of having to live the rest of our lives knowing what we have done—even if no other soul does—maybe that can stop us in our tracks when we contemplate cheating on our spouses, falsifying our tax forms, exaggerating our billable hours. Maybe it keeps us from sneaking out for a cigarette or a drink when we’ve told our family and friends that we’ve quit. More than just keeping us from the bad, maybe it can even propel us to do more g’milut chasadim, more acts of loving-kindness. Maybe knowing that we’re being watched leads us to hold the door for the mom with the stroller, to ask the bus driver to wait an extra few seconds for the elderly man to catch the crosstown, to help the blind woman cross the street. Maybe, just maybe, it can make us more thoughtful, more intentional, more trustworthy, more likable and lovable, both to others and ourselves. Because, as Rabbi Amy Scheinerman wrote, “The measure of integrity and morality is not what we do when the blaring spotlight illuminates our every move. The measure of integrity and morality is what we do in the dark, when no one knows.”

On this Yom Kippur, this Day of Atonement, this day when even the hosts of heaven are judged, may we judge ourselves fairly and truly. May we look back upon the past year with honesty and integrity, praising ourselves for things done well and right, confronting ourselves with where we went too far or fell short. May we know in every moment that there is a seeing eye and a listening ear above us, and that all our deeds are recorded, whether by God, other people, or ourselves. Rather than fearing that our innermost thoughts and desires will be exposed as impure or evil, let us change what is there, in our heart of hearts, so that there is nothing within for us to hide or be ashamed of. And may this new year of 5775 find each of us written and sealed in the Book of Life: the most caring, decent, kind, and loving human being we can possibly be.

AMEN.  

Standing By and Standing Up - Rosh HaShanah 5775

(To hear this sermon as it was delivered at Temple Shaaray Tefila of New York City, please click here.)

The boy was just 11 years old. Just two weeks earlier he had marked his graduation from elementary school and his 11^th birthday. The eternity of the school year, the countdown to the summer, were both finally over, as he made his way up to his favorite place, his home away from home—summer camp. He had requested to be in the same cabin as his two closest friends from the previous summers, and his wish had been granted. The anxiety of switching from second session to first, an almost entirely new group of kids, eased enough for the excitement of camp to reach its annual feverish pitch. Now he had every confidence that his fourth summer at sleep-away camp would be his best.

But the boy was sadly mistaken. Shortly after his parents helped him unpack, shortly after the long hugs and kisses goodbye, he discovered that all of the other boys, including the buddies he had requested, were actually about a year older than he. And, as most of us know from experience, if there is any year in a child’s development where the changes are the most dramatic, it is almost certainly that year between the ages of 11 and 12. Instantly, he felt intensely out of place, a feeling that grew to overwhelm him, dashing his hopes and dreams for another magical 4 weeks in the Pocono Mountains. While the daytime was challenging enough for the boy—with all the cliquish-ness and exclusion, the artificial caste system of “cool,” the taunts of “nerd” and “geek” and, perhaps the harshest of all, “loser”—the nights were far worse. Now, when the counselors were out for the evening, when the only protective adults were two staff members stationed somewhere equidistant from the 4 or 5 cabins they supervised on night duty, only accessible if a boy dared call out to them, the bunk became the playground of the bullies.

Under cover of darkness, they could let their true ugliness shine through. Pummeling the boy with taunts too cruel even for daytime use, too sickening and obscene to share in a sermon, the other boys, including one of the two he had requested, a boy he thought was his friend, celebrated with gleeful laughter the boy’s torment, the tears that wouldn't stop streaming down his face, the words he could barely get out: "I just want to go home." What could he do? Call out to shmirah, to the two counselors who would rather have been anywhere else in the world than bound to those uncomfortable lawn chairs while their friends were all out enjoying themselves? No way. That would have only made things worse, once idle threats had been unleashed and they left, the brief illusion of security disappearing with their exit. Burying himself under the covers, clinging to his stuffed animal, the only remnant of the safety of a home that seemed impossibly far away, all that was left for the boy to do was pray with all his heart for sleep to take him away, even as he feared what they might do to him once that happened. Four weeks of such cruel punishment would be more than enough for anyone. But for an 11-year-old boy, it seemed an endless nightmare.

That 11-year-old, that little boy, was me. And it was the worst summer of my life.

But I was one of the lucky ones. While the emotional and psychological scars still run deep, still surface when people treat me like those boys did, I was fortunate that the physical scars were few and faded fast. I was lucky, too, that I had a loving and supportive family to come home to. The teachers and principals of the middle school I would enter that fall were attuned to the dangers of bullying, the incredible peer pressure of being a 6th grader. I had my synagogue community, families we had known from before I was born, friends from the junior youth group who loved me and accepted me for who I was. I was lucky, you see, because after that terrible summer I never felt alone, because even at the age of 11, I knew there would be something beyond that moment. Not every victim of despair has that awareness.

I wonder if Avraham Avinu, Abraham our patriarch, felt the same way. I fear, however, that he didn’t.

Moments ago, we heard chanted the heart- and gut-wrenching story of just how close Abraham came to sacrificing his son Isaac. Earlier in Vayera, the very same parasha from which this difficult story comes, is another famous biblical scene, where God reveals to Abraham God’s plan to destroy the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. You remember how brazenly he stands up to God, with words of defiance, “Will you indeed sweep away the innocent along with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty innocent in the city—will You indeed sweep away the place, and not spare it for the sake of the fifty innocent who are in its midst? Far be it from You to do such a thing, killing innocent and wicked alike, that they should suffer the same fate. Far be it from you! Must not the Judge of all the earth do justly?” And God says, “If I find fifty innocent people in Sodom, I will pardon the whole place for their sake.” You remember how even this isn’t enough to satisfy Abraham’s sense of justice, how he bargains with God down to 45, 40, 30, 20, and finally 10 good souls that, if found, will redeem the evil cities from being destroyed.  

But in the end, it is to no avail. God rains fire and brimstone upon the cities, destroying them and all their inhabitants entirely. What is left is as desolate a scene as in any post-apocalyptic novel; the text reads: “Abraham rose early in the morning and went to the place where he had previously stood before the Eternal. As he gazed down upon Sodom and Gomorrah and upon the whole face of the plain, lo—fumes were rising from the earth like fumes from a furnace.”

In literally the very same place where he had stood and confronted God, he now stood looking down upon rubble, upon smoke and ashes, all that remained of a people whose lives he had pleaded for before the Eternal. And he must have been crushed.

I used to read this parasha with anger, disappointment and judgment. How is it, I would ask, that Abraham would be so bold as to argue with the Eternal God, the Master and Creator of the Universe, who blessed him with fortune and fame and a son by his 90-year-old wife; how is it that the same man who challenged God on behalf of people he didn’t know and never met, when commanded to sacrifice his beloved son, says nothing? Nothing. Not one word. Instead of railing – or even bargaining on his son’s behalf as he had done for the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah, he just wakes up in the morning, saddles his donkey, and sets out on his way, to the place God will show him, where he will slash the throat of his son as an offering to God.

But now I see it differently. Now I wonder: what if Abraham was bullied? What if God was his bully? What if Abraham felt beaten down by all of God’s constant tests and trials and simply couldn’t take anymore? What if looking down upon the decimation of Sodom and Gomorrah from that horrible vantage point was what finally defeated him? What if his silence wasn’t obedience to the Eternal but rather an expression of the unspeakable despair only felt by the relentlessly bullied?       

In the eternal gratitude I still feel to this very day—for the foundation of love and support that empowered me to survive my torment—I am haunted by, devastated for those who weren't so fortunate, who, overcome by total despair, threw their hands up, and gave up everything. Everything.

There was Megan Meier, a 13-year-old Missouri girl dumped online by a fictitious boy, created in part by the parents of a girl Megan had been friends with, had even gone on family vacations with, before they had a falling out. Having struggled with depression and with weight loss, but feeling a positive change brought about by the interest of this fictitious young man, Megan was devastated when their online relationship suddenly ended. She hanged herself in her closet, dying just three weeks before her 14th birthday. The last message she received from the boy who never existed was: "Everybody in O'Fallon knows how you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. The world would be a better place without you."

Then there is the story of Rebecca Ann Sedwick. Just 12 years old, the Lakeland, Florida girl ganged up on by as many as 15 other girls over a "boyfriend issue," told by cowards hiding behind a computer screen that, "You should die" and "Why don't you just go kill yourself." And so she did just that. She climbed a tower at an abandoned concrete plant, and leapt to her death.

There is the ongoing story that began just a few weeks ago in Bay Village, Ohio, where a 15-year-old autistic boy was convinced by other boys to take the Ice Bucket Challenge. But instead of ice cold water, the boy, standing in a driveway in nothing but his underwear, had a bucket full of urine, feces, cigarette butts and spit dumped upon him, recorded, of course, on cell phone video and posted on YouTube, for all the world to see.

And still, four years later, I am absolutely devastated when I think of Tyler Clementi, the Ridgewood, New Jersey native who attended Rutgers University, whose roommate Dharun Ravi used a webcam to spy on Clementi's private moments with another man. Ravi invited his friends and Twitter followers to a viewing party for the next encounter, with instructions on how to access the feed remotely, with a tweet that said, “Yes, it's happening again." Though Clementi caught on to the presence of the webcam, unplugging Ravi's power strip, he too was overcome by shame, pain, and despair. The next evening—four years ago this very week—Tyler Clementi said goodbye to the cruel world he knew, and jumped off the George Washington Bridge.

Tragedies, all of them. Worse: they are tragedies of our own making, tragedies visited upon one human being by another. Worse still: these are just some of the many horrible tales of bullying and cruelty. And lest we think that bullying only goes on in our schools and our camps, that it is something only children do, we need only look around us to know that bullying is just as prevalent, if in different ways, in our lives as well.

We see it in our economy, where large corporations—the Walmarts and Starbucks and Amazons of the world—continue to squeeze out the smaller, home-based, mom-and-pop operations, would-be entrepreneurs lacking the enormous resources needed to compete in today’s marketplace.

We see it in the world of sports, where former Miami Dolphins lineman Richie Incognito was himself exposed as a bully in his relentless tormenting of teammate Jonathan Martin. An investigation uncovered Incognito’s threats to hurt and even kill Martin, racial slurs, obscenities toward his family, even forcing him to pay thousands of dollars to finance a Las Vegas trip for a group of teammates, all stemming allegedly from their coaches’ ordering Incognito to “toughen Martin up.”

We see it in the workforce, in the treatment of women, not only in salaries that pay them, on average, 81 cents for every dollar earned by men in equivalent positions, but at the same time being forced to endure the gender stereotyping, objectification, and sexual harassment that often prevents them from rising to such positions in the first place.    

But we don’t need the Nightly News or the Wall Street Journal to alert us to the bullying of our world. Chances are we see it and hear it every single day—in our places of business, around meeting tables and board rooms, in the cafés and restaurants we frequent on our lunch breaks, with the supers and doormen and elevator attendants in our buildings. You know what I’m talking about. The angry, aggressive tone; the finger-pointing and shaking; the constant interruption, the talking right over and through each other; it all adds up to a blatant disregard for, and utter denial of, the humanity of the being on the other end of the exchange. He or she is not even a person anymore; he or she is a thing, an object obstructing the bully’s path towards whatever it is he believes he is entitled to; an obstacle to be removed or destroyed or simply flattened by any means necessary.       

On the one hand, we can understand where it comes from. For some it’s a sense of taking control, of seizing power, in an unpredictable and frightening world. For many it is a learned behavior, a pattern passed on from generation to generation, the sins of the parents visited upon the children, the freshman shoved into a locker becomes the senior taking kids’ lunch money. For all of them, it seems that bullying is an attempt to fill the holes within, where something is profoundly lacking, the voids where unconditional love and support should be.

On the other hand, try as we might to understand it, bullying must never be tolerated. Ever. So how do we do that? How do we put such strong words into even stronger action?

Studies have shown that the people who have the greatest potential to stop bullying are those who witness it. The Department of Health and Human Services reports that 70 percent of teens have seen bullying in their schools. And yet, they also report that instances of bullying stop within 10 seconds 57 percent of the time when a bystander intervenes. These statistics together tell us that the best way to stop bullying is to get off the sidelines when we see it taking place. Stop being a bystander, and be an “up-stander” instead.

That’s what all of the anti-bullying campaigns say: the Tyler Clementi Foundation, the Megan Meier Foundation, a non-profit known as Everything Starts With One. They all speak of “choosing to build people up rather than tear them down;” of “voices not falling silent until a difference is made;” of “empowering our society to create a safer and kinder world.”

And our tradition very clearly agrees. The Holiness Code in Leviticus, which we’ll read on Yom Kippur afternoon, famously says, Lo ta’amod al dam re’echa, “Do not stand by the blood of your neighbor,” adjuring us to stand up for him or her instead, just as we are commanded to do for any of the vulnerable in our midst. In Deuteronomy we read that when ill befalls our fellow man, lo toochal l’hit’alem, we cannot—we must not—remain indifferent or turn a blind eye. The creation of the world in Genesis says that each and every human being that has ever lived and will ever come to be is fashioned b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God. The Talmud reminds us that all of humanity descended from our shared ancestor—Adam—so that no person could ever assert his superiority over any other. And the same passage concludes with the words known to so many of us, that “One who saves a single life, it is as if he has saved the entire world.”    

On this Rosh HaShanah, as we celebrate the creation of the world and everything in it, may we come to a deeper understanding of and greater appreciation for all of God’s creatures. May we raise ourselves and each other to a higher standard of existence, to stand up to the ugliness of bullying—whenever, wherever, however it may occur—rather than merely standing by it. And may we—each of us, all of us—come to respect and treat each other as beings created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God, with a spark of the divine within each of us. In this way, God willing, we will leave our children and their children a better world than the one we found.

AMEN. 

The Longest Night - Erev Rosh HaShanah 5775

(Video of this sermon as it was delivered at Temple Shaaray Tefila of New York City can be seen by clicking here, scrolling to the second-to-last video available, entitled "High Holy Days 2014 8:30." The sermon begins just after the 1:00:00 mark of the service. Or to hear it as an audio file, please click here.)

It was the longest night of his life. Even for a man who’d been on the run for 20 years—years of sleepless nights teeming with fear and dread—this was, by far, the most difficult. Having fled for his life from enemies both known and unknown, with the entirety of his family and every possession he’d ever amassed, longing for just a glimpse of clarity, some semblance of resolution in his life, he escorted them all to momentary safety on the other side of the river. Back on his side, he was left alone, where he lay down, and tried to sleep.

Tried, I say, because the pursuit of sleep was futile, and even he knew it. The frenzied tempest of terror swirling in his head was one he was all too familiar with; it whipped up anew each evening as the sun descended in its course. But this night would make every night before it seem as a restful luxury.

Jacob, a man tormented by the deceitful deeds of his past, by wrongs committed against both his brother and his father, was all alone. And yet, our text tells us in the very same breath, a man came upon him and wrestled with him until the rise of dawn. In their epic steel cage match, the back-and-forth of a fight straight from the action movies, the man wrenches Jacob’s hip socket, leaving him with a limp for the rest of his life. But Jacob is the victor, refusing to let the man go until he blesses Jacob, which he does. His blessing comes in the form of a new name—Yisrael—because, as the ish says, “You have struggled with God and with human beings, and you have prevailed.”

Who was this ish, this man? For many, this man is an angel of God, deduced from the explanation of his new name, as one who has struggled with God. For others, this man is none other than his twin brother Esau, whom Jacob had swindled out of his birthright for a bowl of stew, whose identity he later assumed so he could steal their father’s innermost blessing meant for the oldest son; whose dignity and self-worth Jacob had trampled upon with utter disregard; the very same man whose threats had sent him running all this time; the man he would confront the following day, for the first time in 20 tumultuous years. Still another interpretation is that of a bat mitzvah student of ours a few years ago, who opined that the man might have been Isaac, their father; that in Jacob’s enduring guilt at from having stolen the benediction, he sought to right this wrong, demanding a legitimate blessing before letting him go.

Fascinating. Perhaps true. But the text is clear. Jacob was l’vado, left alone, to himself. And it seems to me, as it does to many of our sages, that Jacob was wrestling with none other than himself. It seems to me that Jacob was grappling violently, with every fiber of his being, at the crossroads of his life, in a dark night of the soul, struggling to deal with all that he had been, all that he had done, all that he had experienced. Jacob, I believe, was engaging in cheshbon hanefesh, the accounting of the soul we are charged with doing at this time of year—taking stock of who he was, who he wanted to be, and how he would begin to narrow the gap between them.

My friends, especially this year, we are all Jacob. As individuals, as Jews, as Americans, as citizens of the world. And let us be frank: 5774 was a very, very long night. It was restless and fitful, traumatic and fraught, disturbing, disquieting and very deeply upsetting. And all of us—each and every one of us—carried that with us, bearing that weight upon our shoulders, as we entered through shaaray tefila, the gates of prayer, this Erev Rosh HaShanah. And so I feel we owe it to ourselves to emulate Jacob, to wrestle with and explore the year together, to begin our own collective cheshbon hanefesh, so that, like our flawed, imperfect forefather, we too can prevail in this new year of 5775.

So where have we been? 5774 found us glued to our TV sets, perhaps as never before, the bad news seeming to come in endless waves, filling us with outrage and anger, sadness and disbelief, frustration, desperation, and, perhaps worst of all, numbness. We watched as the least productive government in our nation’s history, worse by leaps and bounds than the infamous “Do-Nothing Congress” of the 1940’s, grew somehow even more polarized, more obstructionist, more dysfunctional, when we wondered how that could ever be possible. We endured the bickering: over security and spying, immigration, gun control, and increasing the minimum wage, while the abyss between the haves and have-nots continued to widen.  

We zoomed out from domestic concerns to see that things were even worse overseas than here at home. We heard the hemming and hawing of world leaders as tens of thousands were killed under Bashir al-Assad’s oppressive regime. In Africa. we saw one militant group attack an upscale Nairobi mall, while another kidnapped 280 girls from a Nigerian school, intending to make them sex slaves, their education seen as blasphemous, while in their warped view of faith sex trafficking is condoned.

And yet, somehow it all feels like a distant memory, from far longer ago than just a handful of months. It all seemed to dissolve quickly in the rearview mirror, as school let out, the kids went off to camp, and spring gave way to the Summer of Our Discontent.

It began on June 12^th, when Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaar, and Eyal Yifrach—3 Israeli teenagers—were kidnapped by terrorists as they attempted to hitchhike home. Hopes for their safety, for their possible return to their families, were dashed when their bodies were discovered in a field northwest of Hebron on June 30^th. Retaliation followed swiftly, and the cycle of violence continued to escalate, as Israeli air strikes on Hamas targets in Gaza commenced and the rockets fired from Gaza multiplied. And just as Naftali, Gilad, and Eyal were laid to rest, a Palestinian teenager, Mohammed Abu Khdeir, also just 16 years old, was kidnapped in East Jerusalem, and then beaten and burnt to death. Perhaps most shocking, most upsetting of all was that the murders of these four children were greeted with a sickening display of glee: Palestinians and, yes, Israelis alike celebrated the pain inflicted upon the other, with politicians and leaders and clergy on both sides not only having incited these heinous acts, but even going so far as to claim responsibility for doing so, and with pride. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” seemed to be the cry from everyone, forgetting the prophetic warning of Doc from West Side Story that such a rationale would only leave the whole world blind and toothless. And before we knew it, it was Groundhog Day all over again. Hamas’s rockets kept coming, fired strategically from amidst the homes, schools, hospitals, and shelters of the innocent and unarmed, turning all the citizens of Gaza—especially their children—into literal human shields for those who seek to kill as many of Israel’s citizens as possible, ultimately to wipe her completely off the map. The air strikes gave way to a ground operation, increasing the death toll on both sides. In response, anti-Semitism once again reared its ugly head all over the world, most especially, though unsurprisingly, in Europe, in acts ranging from the thinly-veiled to the shockingly overt. Perhaps the most terrifying discovery of this latest chapter was that of an intricate network of underground tunnels connecting Gaza to various sites inside Israel’s border; tunnels constructed from cement and electricity supplied by Israel herself, in the name of improving living conditions in Gaza, when it was under no obligation whatsoever to do so. These tunnels, Israeli intelligence would soon learn, were to be used in a massive Hamas operation of mass murder and kidnapping planned for today - Rosh HaShanah 5775. Thank God above, and the Israel Defense Forces here, that these tunnels have been destroyed. And yet, as the summer’s clashes finally came to a halt, for however long that halt will last, we are left to wonder if an actual end will ever be in sight.

Then the focus of the world shifted abruptly, as Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was shot right out of the Ukraine sky, killing all 298 passengers and crew members on board. As international inspectors fought through red tape and obstruction to try to make sense of it all, we heard the stories of families ripped apart, of brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, fathers and mothers who kissed loved ones goodbye, never to see them again, reminding some of us of what happened here in our beloved city just over 13 years ago.

We looked up through those empathetic tears to see the rise of ISIS, the so-called “Islamic State,” targeting the Yazidi people in their ruthless efforts to “purify” Iraq and her neighbors of non-Islamic influences. And then we saw the devastating grief of our own American families, those of James Wright Foley, a freelance war correspondent during the Syrian Civil War, and Steven Sotloff, a Jewish journalist from Miami, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, both beheaded on video, for all the world to see. And once again, the specter of another armed conflict, of more American servicemen and –women risking their lives on the ground in Iraq, is very real and very scary, yet another thing that keeps us up at night.   

And when our focus circled back around to our own backyard, we watched the powder-keg of racial tension ignited by the police shooting of yet another unarmed black teenager, this time in Ferguson, Missouri, when Officer Darrell Wilson shot and killed18-year-old Michael Brown. In the days and weeks that followed, we saw the non-stop coverage of the protests and rioting, the police brutality and teargas, the deployment of the National Guard by the governor. And we were confronted with the sobering truth that when it comes to race relations in our fair republic, we still have miles to go before we sleep.                

And just when we had had enough of all the bad news coming from every corner of the globe, just when we couldn’t possibly take any more of it, then came word of Robin Williams, one of the most beloved actors and personalities in our history, taking his own life, giving in to the engulfing darkness of depression. As a nation shattered by his death recalled their favorite and most meaningful Robin Williams moments, we prayed that perhaps some good could come from his passing, slowly beginning to peel away the stigma and shame associated with the disease of depression. In these ways, and many others, may his memory be for a blessing.

The 18^th century rabbi Simcha Bunim of Peshishka is credited with a simple, yet wonderful teaching. He taught that everyone must have two pockets, with a note in each pocket, so that he or she can reach into the one or the other, depending on the need. When feeling lowly and saddened, discouraged or disconsolate, one should reach into the right pocket, and, there, find the words: "For my sake was the world created." But when feeling high and mighty one should reach into the left pocket, and find the words: "I am but dust and ashes."

My friends, in so many ways, 5774 was a long and excruciating night of the soul. And so, it seems to me, what we all need is a nechemta. A nechemta is a consolation, a source of comfort to conclude a difficult or upsetting passage, a warm blanket for just such a cold and sleepless night as this past year. We need it, don’t we. We’ve been forced to reach repeatedly into the pocket that tells us we are but dust and ashes. We’ve been beaten down emotionally by an onslaught of negativity, an endless reel of hopelessness playing again and over again in our minds, asking if there is any hope for tomorrow, yet fearful of receiving an answer; leaving us both desperate for the release of sleep, and yet terrified of what dreams, or nightmares, may come. For our hearts, for our souls, for our general well-being, we need to know that the sun will rise tomorrow, that its rays will gradually banish the darkness, if only for a while, that it will be a new day for each and every one of us. We need to know, if only for a moment or two, that the world was indeed created for us. And when we turn off the news and look around us, we can see that there is plenty of hope to comfort us and light our way after all.

There’s the story of Peter Frates, former captain of the Boston College baseball team in 2007, diagnosed at the age of 27 with ALS. But rather than let his condition define him, he girded his inner strength and set out to conquer his disease, saying in a recent interview, “For me, it was, ‘Okay. Here’s what we’re dealing with. Let’s go to work.’” He earned an audience with the Food and Drug Administration in Washington in March of 2013, where he said to them, “I ask of you: let’s speed up the process, let’s work together, and let’s make this disease a thing of the past.” Two months later, he married Julie, whom he’d met 8 months before his diagnosis, walking her down the aisle despite normally being almost entirely confined to a wheelchair. Over the summer, a friend of Pete’s introduced something called the Ice Bucket Challenge, to raise awareness of ALS and funds to find a cure. Suddenly, athletes all over Boston, then all over the country, then celebrities and everyone everywhere, even former Presidents, began to take part. The result? As of September 17^th, the Ice Bucket Challenge had raised over $114 million towards eradicating this terrible affliction. And, by the way, Pete and Julie welcomed a baby girl, Lucy Fitzgerald Frates, into the world on September 1^st. Pete’s father John said that her birth was “the perfect ending to the miracle month of August.”

There’s the story of Austin Hatch, the 19-year-old college freshman from Indiana. At the age of 8, Austin survived the crash of a plane piloted by his father, in which his mother and two siblings were killed. Eight years later, he was once again the lone survivor of another plane crash which took the life of his father and stepmother, leaving Austin in a medically-induced coma. This brave young man, a 6’6” high school basketball star, suffered such a traumatic brain injury that he literally had to re-learn how to walk and talk. Keeping his parents close to his heart all throughout the long and difficult recovery process, he said, “I can hear their voices in my head when I face a difficult situation. My dad and mom raised me to be an uncommon man. The uncommon man gets up at five in the morning to go work out, to get stronger, when no one else is. It takes an uncommon man to do that when no one is looking.” Asked by Maria Shriver what answer he had come up with to the question, “Why me?,” he told her, “The time that you could spend wondering and thinking why me?,’ that’s time that you could've spent working your tail off to get better.” Securing a full scholarship to the University of Michigan, his late mother’s alma mater, he was able to fulfill his lifelong dream of playing basketball for the Wolverines just a few weeks ago. On July 25^th, he tweeted, “"Y do bad things happen 2 good ppl?" has no answer. What we should ask is "what do good ppl do when something bad happens 2 them?”     

And then there’s the story of you. Of each of us, of all of us together. Chances are, you have come through something difficult, something challenging, something deeply trying at some point in your life. In the past month or year or decade, every single one of us here tonight and everyone we know, has endured, has made it through something, whether it’s an exhausting bout with cancer, the mending of a broken friendship, or the conquering a personal fear. I can’t tell you how often I’ve sat with many of you in my study and found myself saying, “You are so much stronger than you think you are.” And that’s the truth. Certainly stories like those of Peter Frates and Austin Hatch can inspire and motivate us to reach our highest potential. But let us not forget that we too–each and every one of us–have tremendous strength within ourselves to nourish our souls and others’ as well.      

In the morning, Jacob is blessed. The mysterious ish gives him the new name of Yisrael, because he has struggled with God and with humanity, and he has prevailed. Having found the strength within to make peace with himself, he comes face-to-face with his brother Esau, falling into a tearful embrace that is probably my favorite part of the entire Torah. Following this beautiful reunion, we read, Vayavo Ya’akov shalem ir Sh’chem, “Jacob arrived at the city of Sh’chem shalem, whole, complete, at peace.” For all he has been through, all that has haunted his dreams and his waking life, every troubling thought that kept him up at night, and even the wrenched hip socket he now hobbles upon, Jacob has arrived on the other side of the river shalem, whole, at peace, with a renewed hold on life, and a hopeful outlook on whatever the future may bring.

On this Rosh HaShanah, may we be as Jacob our patriarch. May we be honest with ourselves about where we have been, as individuals and as a community, even as we struggle to make meaning of it all. When we feel much more like dust and ashes, may we remember that, for each of us, for all of us, was the world created. May we know in our heart of hearts, in our most difficult hours, that hope is always there, that hope never dies, that the darkest hour is just before the dawn. And may each of us, all of us, enter through the gates of this new year like Jacob, like Yisrael, shalem—whole, complete, and at peace, with ourselves and each other.

For, like Jacob, we will prevail.

Now let’s go to work.

AMEN.  

Robin Williams & the Darkness of Depression - Ekev 5774

I don’t know about you. But I hate watching the news. It’s something I know I have to do, but it’s really become a chore, hasn’t it. There’s the ongoing situations in Israel, Iraq, the aftermath of Malaysian Air attack. There was another shooting of another unarmed black teenager, this time in the St. Louis suburbs, this time an 18-year-old named Michael Brown, and the horrible situation that has resulted, with riots and teargas and police brutality and even a military presence. The imprints of the damage we’ve done to our world continues to emerge, as extreme weather wreaks havoc, here in the Northeast with historic flooding, all while there’s seemingly no water to be found on the West Coast, and what water there is has been forcefully shut off for tens of thousands in Detroit.  

Then came the news of Robin Williams taking his own life this past Monday. And a world already steeled and hardened by an onslaught of miserable news and images and sentiments from all over the world, including our own American backyard, when many of us thought and wondered how it could get much worse than this: unfortunately this was our answer.

I am heartbroken. I am devastated. I am crushed. For his family, who couldn’t have loved him any more than they did, who knew all he struggled with, did everything humanly possible to keep him here with them and in the end, all of it wasn’t enough to prevent him from doing this. For us: we who loved him in our own way, got to know him as best we could through his talents and diversity, in roles covering the entirety of the acting spectrum; making us laugh, making us cry, sometimes interchangeably, sometimes even in the same moment; in the iconic moments of mania and hysteria in James Lipton interviews on the Actors’ Studio; in his tireless charitable efforts to combat poverty and homelessness and cancer, just to name a few.

I remember someone at camp when we were 12 years old having a Robin Williams stand-up comedy cassette tape and how hilarious it was to us, though we knew our parents probably wouldn’t want us to be hearing that kind of stuff.

I remember how hard I laughed when I saw Aladdin in the movie theater, thinking Disney could never top that and, in my opinion, they still haven’t; I still remember so many of the fantastic lines he uttered as Genie, and the words to the songs; I even had that entire soundtrack on tape as well, not something too many 12-year-old boys would publicly admit. “10,000 years will give you such a crick in the neck!”

I remember cracking up with my brother when we went to see Mrs. Doubtfire, all the while marveling at his acting ability; that the role is incredibly complicated and deep and challenging and there was no one else who could have done it like he did.

I remember when I was finally old enough to see Good Morning Vietnam, and to this day, my brother and I will still say, “And if you doooo…and if you doooo…!”

I remember crying my eyes out when I first saw Dead Poets Society, at the beauty of life he taught them, to carpe diem, seize the day and answer his channeling of Whitman, “What will your verse be?”

And I remember knowing, even as I watched it, that his role as therapist Sean Maguire in Good Will Hunting was one that would change my life and stay with me forever.

Mostly I am heartbroken for him; how all of the love and support and treatment and medical attention in the world couldn’t overcome the demon, the disease that is depression. And make no mistake, that’s what it is: a disease, a sickness. It is not a flaw of character, a shortcoming, a funk someone can just “snap out of.” It is a disease, an illness that overwhelms the body and mind, sometimes ravaging both, whittling them down until there is nothing left.

And I was struck by a verse near the beginning of this week’s portion, Parashat Eikev, where God reiterates the promises that will be fulfilled upon adhering to the mitzvot, including these words:

“The Eternal will ward off from you all sickness; God will not bring upon you any of the dreadful diseases of Egypt.”

Well we know that one of the most dreadful, the most physically and mentally paralyzing of those diseases was the plague of darkness upon the Egyptians. Depression is both that palpable darkness, and the ongoing struggle and battle to not let it consume you totally.

While there can be little consolation, if any, upon the loss of Robin Williams, it is that, God willing, we can lift the taboo and erase the stigma associated with depression. His passing already has created conversation around the topic, already brought people out of hiding, out of suffering in silence, to share their struggles and know that they don’t have to go it alone any longer.

The World Health Organization estimates that some 350 million people worldwide suffer from some form of depression. If you are one of them, if you know someone who is, what you need to hear is this:

You are not alone. You don’t need to suffer in silence. There is no shame or embarrassment, no shortcomings or flaws. There are ways to treat it, ways to combat it, and you don’t have to go it alone. You are not alone. Don’t bear the burden yourself. Reach out to your family, your friends, your rabbis and cantors. Allow us to share it with you. Please. You are not alone.

Perhaps then we may lighten the load, even just a little bit, and shine a ray of light into the terrifying darkness.

Then perhaps, in this way, as in so many others, will his memory be a blessing to us all.        

AMEN.