Rabbi David Levinsky's High Holy Days Sermons

Open Judaism

Rosh HaShanah Eve

September 18, 2009

Rabbi David Levinsky

Good evening and L’Shana Tovah—a happy new year to everyone. I’m Rabbi David Levinsky, the new rabbi at Chicago Sinai Congregation, and I am still learning about the customs and traditions of the Temple. From what I understand, this service is recommended for parents with older children, and that usually the rabbi gives a shorter sermon in this early time spot. As I look out at the overflow crowd, I can’t help but wondering whether that’s the real reason why so many of you chose to hear me this evening rather than the other options available.

Don’t worry. I won’t hold it against you. We should also remember that when God spoke to Moses at Mt. Sinai, he only said ten sentences. Now that’s a short sermon.

Tonight I want to speak to you about something close to my heart—the belief that Judaism holds certain eternal values that are available to everyone. Whether you are Jewish or not Jewish, the Jewish religion speaks cogently to you about the most vital questions that lie before us, offers you comfort when you suffer from the tragedies of life, and offers you a myriad of ways to celebrate life’s joys.

To be clear, I am not trying proselytize to you. At Sinai, we want everyone to find an open environment to explore Judaism and whether they become Jewish is not our concern. We simply want to share the beauty of Jewish life with as many kinds of people as possible.

Yet, in my calling as a rabbi and in my life as a Jew I often run into people that hold beliefs that keep them from embracing a Judaism that opens up its doors to all, an Open Judaism. Tonight, I want to talk about these impediments, suggest a few ways to overcome them, and offer you a vision of Judaism for the future that is open to everybody.

But first, I want to tell a story. My son and I are playing in a swimming pool in California, as my wife sits at the edge of it talking to someone she just met an hour before. It’s a beautiful day and I can see the cloudless blue sky through the ring of cypress trees that surround my cousin’s yard. We are a having a family gathering, eating good food and having a swim on Memorial Day weekend. The woman chatting with my wife is a Jewish woman who recently moved to California. I can hear that she is asking my wife some of the usual questions that people ask when they find out that she is married to a rabbi.

“Phillippo, that doesn’t sound like a Jewish name,” the woman says to my wife.

“It’s not. I wasn’t born Jewish”

“What were you before?”

“Methodist.”

At this point the woman gets even more direct.

“Do you celebrate Christmas?”

“No. But we plan to bring our son to Christmas at my parent’s house. He’s five now, and he’s old enough to understand that we are Jewish and that Grammy and Grampy are Christian.”

“I hate Christmas.”

There’s a long pause as my wife tries to figure out how to respond to this statement. I think to myself, why would someone hate Christmas, I mean, you wouldn’t say that you hate Arbor Day. Before my wife can respond, once again, the woman asks a question.

“Do you know why Jews hate Christmas?”

I can see my wife searching for a polite answer. Finally, she says, “Maybe it’s because Christmas just dominates our culture in December. It’s everywhere. You can’t get away from it. Maybe that’s why some Jews don’t like it.”

“No, that’s not it,” the woman answers, “It’s because all of those Christian holidays just used to be an excuse to attack the Jews and start pogroms.”

My wife finds a polite way to change the subject of the conversation.

What I want to suggest to you today is that some of the Jewish community is so tied to the past—in particular to the fact that we have suffered in the past—that often they are not able to make rational assessments of the present. The last time I checked, there was no worry of there being a pogrom in San Jose, but the woman harbored an irrational dislike of Christmas based upon events in Europe long ago.

More important than the inability to make rational assessments about the present, this near obsession with past suffering also holds us back from moving Judaism into the future. Liberal Reform Judaism has always prided itself on creating new variations on Judaism for every generation and for every age. In order to not slip back into nostalgia for the Jewish the past, we need to chart a course directed towards the future.

Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur are a traditionally a time for internal reflection. As individuals, we look inside of ourselves and try to fix those things that need a little bit of work. Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur can also be time for communal reflection, as we take a hard look at the state of the Jewish people. In order to move forward and create a vibrant Judaism ready for the challenges of the 21st century, we need to take a moment and reflect upon the things that hold us back from accomplishing this vital task.

Fear of non-Jews … fear of anti-Semitism … hatred of our neighbor’s religious practices … these are all things that hold us back.

I am not saying that we should forget about Jewish suffering in the past. I am not saying that we should forget about the Holocaust. Rather I am suggesting that in order to move forward and develop forms of Judaism that speak to us today, we need to remember this tragic past in a way that does not trap us into irrationality and obsession.

So, what are some ways that we can avoid getting trapped in the past, wallowing in the suffering of the Jews? One way is to look to the ancient rabbis for guidance. They too recognized the potential pitfall of overemphasizing suffering as the main component of the Jewish experience.

Nearly two thousands years ago, one of the great tragedies of the Jewish people happened in Jerusalem—the second temple was destroyed by the Romans. Even if today we have no use for the sacrifices that occurred on that compound, we can still feel profound emotions at the physical and economic suffering that the Jewish people suffered at the hands of the Roman invaders. Just as important, this was the destruction of the spiritual center of Judaism. The Jews of that time saw the Temple as the primary location for human communication with the divine. This was the place where Jew and non-Jew alike could talk to God and make their desires known to God. The loss of the Temple was a profound tragedy rife with physical and spiritual suffering.

What did the ancient rabbis decide to do to mark this tragedy? Of course, there was a difference of opinion. One group of rabbis decided to “give up the ghost,” so to speak. As a rabbinic text tells us (Tosefta Sotah 15:10), these rabbis wanted to memorialize the Temple by not eating meat, not drinking wine, and not marrying and having children. In effect, they were writing the death certificate of the Jewish people. The horrors of the past were too strong. They were unwilling to live in the present. They were unwilling to build the future.

Fortunately, other rabbis did not accept this gloomy proclamation and it did not win the day. These rabbis decided that we need to remember our tragedies, but we need to do it in a way that does not damage us or lead us to an obsession with our own pain. These rabbis developed the holy day of Tisha B’Av which marks the destruction of both of the Temples. Instead of spending every day of their lives mourning, the rabbis demarcated one day for intense grieving. On the other days, we try our best to move forward, even though this can be one of the most difficult tasks of a human being.

Another way is to avoid obsessing about the past suffering of the Jewish people is to realize and acknowledge that the Jews are not the only people who suffer at the hands of other people. Many Jews resist this idea because it takes away from the uniqueness of Jewish suffering, the uniqueness of the Holocaust. Even many Jews offended by the suggestion that the Jews are the chosen people, that the Jews are somehow unique, hang on to the uniqueness of the Holocaust. The reality is that the Jewish genocide was only one of a myriad of genocides in the 20th century and acknowledging this fact in no way denigrates the experience of the millions of Jews who died in the death camps of Eastern Europe during World War II.

Rather than seeing the Holocaust as unique, as something the Nazis did to the Jews, we can see it as something people did to people. People are capable of incredible evil. In this case, Nazis and their European sympathizers contributed to the murder of Jews, Roma, Communists, and Homosexuals. When we free ourselves of the specificity of the Holocaust, then this tragic event in Jewish history becomes a call to make sure that people do not ever do this to people again. The cry of “never again” becomes a universal cry to stop genocide in all of its forms.

In this way, we can turn the pain of the past into the redemption of the present and the future. In the end, this is the herald that calls out to each and every one of us. We each have a responsibility not only to participate in the Judaism of the present and the future, but also to help create the Judaism of the present and the future.

So what does the Judaism of the future look like?

Recently there has been a lot of talk in Jewish circles about post-denominational Judaism or non-denominational Judaism. Supposedly, this is the future of Judaism. The people who support this say that they are just Jewish—not Reform, Conservative or Orthodox. Instead, they may very well embrace elements of any or all of the denominations.

This is the new rebellion of those who grew up in Reform and Conservative synagogues and found the experience vacuous and materialistic. They respond by rejecting the movements that form an umbrella over those same synagogues and creating their own independent prayer and study groups that emphasize do-it-yourself forms of community and spirituality. These young Jews do deserve credit. They do not respond to their suburban upbringing with a complete rejection of religion, instead they stay actively engaged with the Jewish tradition and work to create new forms of Jewish life.

At the same time, this post-denominational perspective ignores a number of important things. The fact of the matter is that many Jews who are committed to a denomination also study the teachings of other denominations and integrate them into their own life. I am one of these people. I am a committed liberal Reform Jew who embraces our belief in social justice and openness to non-Jews. Simultaneously, the writings of Mordecai Kaplan, the reluctant founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, and the teachings of Rabbi Isaac Luria, an Orthodox Jewish mystic have had a profound effect upon how I live my life. Others can influence us as we remain ourselves.

Ultimately, that is the essence of the question. Knowing who you are is a healthy part of being a person and knowing who you are requires a commitment to something. Of course, that something can change at different moments in one’s life, but our commitments, whether to the people we love or to the highest ideals, provide us with a necessary compass guiding us through life.

What are we committed to at Chicago Sinai Congregation? We are committed to what I would like to call Open Judaism. Over the doors of the grand entrance to the synagogue at Delaware and State, we have engraved the words of the prophet Isaiah “My house shall be a house of prayer for all people (Isaiah 56:7).” In doing so, we embrace the sublime idea put forth by the biblical prophet that not only Jews, but all people, can benefit from the core ethical teachings of Judaism.

The core teachings of Judaism include care of the poor. As the Book of Leviticus reads, “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest … you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger (Leviticus 19:9-10).”

The core teachings of Judaism include striving for world peace. The prophet Isaiah tells us, “They shall beat their swords in to ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they know war anymore (Isaiah 2:4).”

The core teachings of Judaism include embracing all people. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, “As for the foreigners who attach themselves to the Lord, to minister to Him, and to love the name of the Lord … I will bring them to My sacred mount (Isaiah 56:6-7).”

We are not proselytizers. We do not try to turn non-Jews into Jews. We understand that there is a beauty in all faith traditions and that we are no better than our neighbors. For that reason, we reach out to people of other faiths and welcome them into our spiritual home, so that they can learn from us and so that we can learn from them. We firmly believe that all people will benefit from encountering these core teachings of Judaism, and more than that, putting them into practice in a way that fits into their own understanding of the divine.

We are not here to judge you. We are not here to tell you what to do. We are here to show you by our words and by our example the way that Judaism can profoundly change our lives and the world around us. These core teachings of Judaism are open to everyone. We only need to open our hearts and let them do their work.

This is the future of Judaism we are trying to create at Chicago Sinai Congregation—Open Judaism. Open Judaism does not need the fear that drove the women in my opening story to say that she hated Christmas. Instead, we welcome and embrace those around us who are not Jewish. Open Judaism does not need the fear of anti-Semitism. We have the strength to face the future with confidence. Open Judaism does not need the fear of our neighbors. We trust that our neighbors can learn from us and that we can learn from them.

Open Judaism believes that the interaction of Jew and non-Jew will create something new and beautiful in the Jewish world. Open Judaism believes that Jew learning with non-Jew will strengthen the Jewish people, as we gain from their wisdom and share our wisdom. Open Judaism trusts that Judaism is beautiful enough not only to survive interacting with other faiths, but that it will thrive by interacting with other faiths.

In these days of reflection, as we approach Yom Kippur, may we have the strength to create together new principles that guide Open Judaism. May we reject the fear and hatred that drive us to build walls instead of bridges. Instead, may we open our hearts to our neighbors and welcome them in our spiritual home. Then, we can work together to improve ourselves. Then, we can work together to repair this broken world. May God give us the strength to pursue this most important task.

L’shana Tovah. A Happy New Year to everyone.

Open Judaism

Rosh HaShanah Eve

September 18, 2009

Rabbi David Levinsky

Don’t worry. I won’t hold it against you. We should also remember that when God spoke to Moses at Mt. Sinai, he only said ten sentences. Now that’s a short sermon.

“Phillippo, that doesn’t sound like a Jewish name,” the woman says to my wife.

“It’s not. I wasn’t born Jewish”

“What were you before?”

“Methodist.”

At this point the woman gets even more direct.

“Do you celebrate Christmas?”

“No. But we plan to bring our son to Christmas at my parent’s house. He’s five now, and he’s old enough to understand that we are Jewish and that Grammy and Grampy are Christian.”

“I hate Christmas.”

“Do you know why Jews hate Christmas?”

“No, that’s not it,” the woman answers, “It’s because all of those Christian holidays just used to be an excuse to attack the Jews and start pogroms.”

My wife finds a polite way to change the subject of the conversation.

Fear of non-Jews … fear of anti-Semitism … hatred of our neighbor’s religious practices … these are all things that hold us back.

So what does the Judaism of the future look like?

L’shana Tovah. A Happy New Year to everyone.

Crossing the Jordan (Again)

Rosh HaShanah Morning

September 19, 2009

Rabbi David Levinsky

Good afternoon everyone and shana tovah. I wish a good year to you and to all of your loved ones. I’m Rabbi David Levinsky, the new rabbi at Chicago Sinai Congregation. For those of you who already spend time with us at Sinai, I can take a few moments to thank you for the warm welcome I have received from the congregation. You have been gracious and giving to me and my family and for those things I thank you. I also hope that I can exemplify that same grace towards those new to our community by welcoming you this afternoon. Welcome and I hope that you also come to share my growing love for Sinai and its members.

Our congregation is not only a warm and welcoming place, but also a Temple rich with the tradition of Liberal Reform Judaism. Many of the rabbis that served Sinai’s congregants for nearly the past one hundred and fifty years were among the leaders of Reform Judaism. Dr. Rabbi Kaufman Kohler went on to serve as the president of Hebrew Union College, which trains and ordains all Reform rabbis, after his time at Sinai. Dr. Rabbi Emil Hirsch was a promoter of social justice in Chicago and beyond, a scholar and professor at the University of Chicago, and a brilliant orator who packed Sinai sanctuary every Sunday with more than a thousand Jews and non-Jews eager to hear his sermons. At Sinai, we are proud of our heritage and proud that we continue to chart the future of Liberal Reform Judaism in America.

Before all of these accomplishments and acclaim, on September 5, 1880, Dr. Rabbi Emil Hirsch took the pulpit at Sinai Congregation on Rosh Hashanah for the first time and gave a Sermon entitled “Crossing the Jordan.” In that sermon, Rabbi Hirsch spoke of the dramatic changes facing America in his day. The late nineteenth century was much like today, as changes in the economy produced a number of deep recessions. Fortunes ran like sand through peoples fingers. Many among the successful were hurt or even ruined. The poor were driven from just getting by to outright destitution. It was in this climate that Dr. Hirsch stepped to the pulpit to deliver his first sermon.

In this talk, he spoke about the Talmudic parable of the Book of Life and the Book of Death, where during the ten days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur God opens these two books and inscribes our names in one or the other. According to Dr. Hirsch, these two books can be a potent metaphor for our contemporary life. As the world changes around us, certain worldviews are inscribed in the Book of Death and forgotten, while other worldviews are inscribed in the Book of Life to lead us into the future.

So too with Judaism, where the worldviews that support outmoded practices and superstitions must be written in the Book and Death and be left behind, while the worldviews that support the impulses of contemporary religious life must be written in the Book of Life and walk proudly into the future. As Rabbi Hirsch put it, “one world is sinking and another is rising,” and the great question that lies before us as Reform Jews is “How are we, a Reform Congregation, to build up this our new world?”

As we sit here today facing a similar, if not worse, economic crisis, Rabbi Hirsch’s question still rings true. How can Liberal Reform Judaism help us with the dire problems that face our world? How can Liberal Reform Judaism enrich our spiritual lives? As we near Yom Kippur, how can we make sure that Liberal Reform Judaism inscribes us on the pages of the Book of Life and not the Book of Death? “How are we, a Reform Congregation, to build up this our new world?”

This evening I will talk about three ways that we at Chicago Sinai Congregation can further the prophetic call made by Dr. Hirsch 129 years ago. Three ways that we can be sure that Judaism continues to be written in the Book of Life. Three ways that we can, to reuse the image used so potently by Rabbi Hirsch in his inaugural sermon, cross the Jordon and enter into the Promised Land.

The first way metaphorically to enter the Book of Life is a teaching that goes back to the earliest Reformers of Judaism. Until their time, Judaism had been a religion of deed before creed. In other words, it did not matter whether a Jewish practice matched ones values or whether it brought one personal meaning, one simply had to do it. One did not avoid eating pork because of environmental concerns or because it made one feel Jewish, rather because it was commanded by God. The early reformers inverted this teaching and instead insisted that deed follow creed. Our Jewish practices should follow our Jewish values. Our Jewish practices should bring meaning in our lives.

When I was a student at Stanford, I bumped into a Jewish professor on campus during Passover. He is a world-renowned scholar, a kingmaker in his field. We had met each other another time at a reception, and he had been interested in the fact that I was a rabbi who had decided to continue his studies. There we were standing in a sandwich shop during Passover, where he held what looked to be a turkey on rye bread with sun-dried tomatoes. I said hello and he nervously tried to cover the offending sandwich, which clearly broke the Jewish law to avoid eating leavening during that holiday. Sensing his discomfort, I tried to make him relax by saying, “In my house during Passover, my Mom would always be sure to put the ham sandwiches on matzah.” Here was a man at the top of the world, who nonetheless crumbled before a rabbi much his junior over a sandwich. Even if we don’t adhere to the strictures of Jewish law, we may very well feel some sort of sentimental or nostalgic connection to them, which can drive us to baldly illogical behavior.

Liberal Reform Judaism teaches us otherwise. Liberal Reform Judaism teaches us that we only have a responsibility to the deed when it follows the creed. What does this mean? It means that the rituals of Judaism have no power over us in and of themselves. It means that we do not perform Jewish rituals because they are divine commandments nor because of a sentimental or nostalgic attachment to a Jewish past. We perform the rituals of Judaism because they reinforce deep held beliefs and values about the world and how to improve it. We are only obliged to perform deeds when they are supported by ethical creeds.

To return to my professor at Stanford, he should not have been worried about getting caught by the rabbi with a sandwich on Passover--not only because I have no interest in judging people based upon their religious practice. If he had abandoned the traditional practice of Passover because he felt that it did not match his beliefs and values, then so be it. More important than the ritual itself are the values that support the ritual and the meaning generated by the ritual.

For example, if one holds the value trying to eliminate hunger in the world, and roots it in the social justice message of the prophets Amos and Isaiah, then one could fast on Yom Kippur in solidarity with those who are hungry every day. More than that, one can donate the money they would have spent on food to a food bank or bring that amount of food to our food drive at Sinai. Rather than a ritual performed out of a feeling obligation or nostalgia, fasting becomes an action supported by an important value. When this is the case, the ritual generates meaning and improves the world in a small way.

Yet, as we make sure that our deeds are commensurate with our creed, we run the risk of doing nothing at all. We can always find a way to understand the rituals of Judaism as mere symbols, simply the outer forms of the ethical center of liberal Reform Judaism. Since they are mere symbols, we can abandon them. But what replaces the traditional rituals of Judaism for the liberal Reform Jew? Is doing nothing really doing enough?

These questions bring us to our second way of choosing life. For the liberal Reform Jew and for those who follow the wisdom of liberal Reform Judaism, the social justice message of the biblical prophets demands action from us. This is not the traditional actions of the 613 commandments as determined by the ancient and medieval rabbis. We live in a time where personal choice allows us to reinterpret or leave behind those rituals that do not meet our creed as liberal Reform Jews.

At the same time, we still have the responsibility to try our best to make the world a better place. The prophet Isaiah calls for world peace when he says that “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall there be war anymore (Isaiah 2:4).” The prophet Amos demands that “Justice well up like water, righteousness like a mighty stream (Amos 5:24).” It is our responsibility as liberal Reform Jews to put the social justice message of the prophets into action.

Recently, I had a conversation with a congregant at Sinai who was frozen in their inability to act upon their ideals. The person was committed to helping other people in need, but felt that their actions had little effect upon the real world. When I help somebody for an hour and then they go back to their terrible life, does it really make a difference? Do the small things that I do to try to help people really add up to anything significant when there is so much pain in the world?

No doubt, these are important questions to ask when trying to heal the damage people do to each other in the world. They bring a needed realism to the social problems that we face together, that we try to help overcome together. Yet, we cannot let these questions stop us activating the call of the biblical prophets and ancient rabbis to do our best to repair the world. No, we cannot know what effect our actions have upon those we try to help out of dire circumstances, but this does not free us from the responsibility of action.

As the rabbis stated in their wisdom, “It is not incumbent upon you to finish the task, but neither are you free to absolve yourself from it (Pirkei Avot 2:16).” With these words, the rabbis acknowledge the limits of human action. We cannot expect to do everything ourselves. At the same time, they embrace human responsibility. We still are responsible to try our best.

My third and final call to ensure that we are written in the Book of Life I spoke about yesterday evening at the 5 o’clock service. In that sermon, I called for an Open Judaism. By this I mean a form of Judaism that welcomes Jew and non-Jew alike, a form of Judaism that is brave and strong enough to realize that we gain by welcoming people of other faiths.

Last month a couple made an appointment with me. They both wanted to convert to Judaism. During a Jewish service, the two of them both realized that they wanted to be Jews. To draw an analogy from another religious tradition, they had a reverse Paul on the road to Damascus moment.

Now, it’s fairly common for couples to want to talk to a rabbi at Sinai because one is Jewish and one is not Jewish and they are trying to figure out what that means for themselves and for their family. Sinai opens its doors to these couples. Our website announces to the world that they are welcome. We will not judge them or try to make their decisions for them. Our job at Sinai is to create an open environment where they can discover what role liberal Reform Judaism can play in their lives.

This couple was different; in as much as neither of them were born Jews, yet both of them felt strongly drawn to Judaism. Why did they come to Sinai as opposed to any other synagogue in Chicago? After an exhaustive internet search, this couple felt that Sinai’s open approach to Judaism, which welcomes every one of all faiths to experience Liberal Reform Judaism, most closely matched their own ideals about religious faith in our contemporary world.

The one question they asked me at the end of our conversation was whether their conversion would be an ethnic conversion or a religious conversion. They wondered whether they would always be second class citizens as Jews because they were not born Jews. They would never be part of the family because their parents were not Jewish. To use the German phrase, they would never have the “blut,” the Jewish blood.

I explained to them that at Sinai we do not participate in this type of Jewish particularism. For us, Judaism is a religion, a collection of values and ideals drawn from the Bible, the rabbibic tradition, and other Jewish literary sources that guide the way we lead our lives. I told them that I cannot give them the blood but I can introduce them to the eternal values of the Jewish tradition.

This is the Judaism that we espouse at Sinai—a Judaism open to all. This is the Judaism that will enable us to inscribe ourselves in the Book of Life. This is the Judaism that will enable us to cross the Jordan.

Once again, like the Israelites at the end of the Torah, we stand facing the Jordan River. We stand facing a turning point in our lives, as we repent for the times when we missed the mark over the past year. We stand facing a turning point in our society, as Judaism radically changes before our eyes and Jews and Jewish institutions desperately try to come up with the magic bullet to solve these so-called problems.

We stand facing all of the complex problems of contemporary society. The economy remains in a downturn, even with a few encouraging signs, and many people continue to suffer from the joblessness and hunger that accompanies this great recession. Reform Judaism also faces many financial challenges, threatening the health of our movement and most importantly the seminary that produces our rabbis—Hebrew Union College. While we at Sinai remain strong, we must remember that we are one of the few fortunate institutions in the Jewish world.

These three ideas that I have spoken about today are one way across the Jordan, one way we make sure that a rejuvenated Liberal Reform Judaism and our rejuvenated selves are written into the Book of Life. How do we do this? We place them into action in a way that meets the real human needs of our community.

As people in our community suffer from a spiritual malaise, we can help them by our example, by living rich spiritual lives where deed follows creed. As people in our community suffer from the very real problem of economic struggles, we can help them by putting the biblical prophet’s call of social justice into action. As people feel alone in their efforts to find a synagogue that will welcome them as they are, rather than as the synagogue wants them to be, we can help them by creating a form of Judaism open to all.

Once again, like Rabbi Hirsch and the congregants of Sinai of his day, we stand waiting to cross the Jordan. Like Moses and the Israelites about to enter into self governance in the Land of Israel, we also embark upon a journey that takes us face to face with our own decisions about the future. To return to the metaphor used by Rabbi Hirsch, do we embrace a Judaism based upon a sentimental attachment to the past—the Book of Death—or do we embrace a Judaism that boldly asks questions about the Jewish future—the Book of Life?

On this Rosh Hashanah day may we all be inscribed in the Book of Life. May the eternal values of the Jewish tradition continue to speak to us and guide us as we move bravely into the future. May our actions be guided by these values as together we build a rejuvenated Liberal Reform Judaism ready for the 21st Century. May those same values guide our actions as together we build a Judaism open to all. Once again we stand ready to cross the Jordan. I hope that as we cross the river we enter the Promised Land together.

Lshana Tovah—A Happy New Year to Everyone

Creating a Caring Community

Yom Kippur

September 27, 2009

Rabbi David Levinsky

Good evening and welcome to Chicago Sinai Congregation. I’m Rabbi David Levinsky, the new rabbi at Sinai. For those of you who are members at Sinai, I want to take a moment to thank you for the welcome you have given me and my family over the past few months. You are truly a part of a caring community and I have been a beneficiary of your graciousness. For that, I thank you. I am fortunate enough already to have taken part in many of your lives. I hope that as time moves forward I have a chance to get to know you better, to console you in hard times and to celebrate with you in good times. For those of you who are joining us here at Sinai as guests, I hope that I too can exemplify the graciousness of my congregants by welcoming you to our High Holiday services. Sinai is a special place and I hope that you will love your time here with us.

Tonight, I want to talk about what may very well be the most important part of my service as a rabbi and our responsibility as a congregation—helping people who are suffering by creating a caring community. As we on Yom Kippur try our best to return to God, to look for a way back from the mistakes we have made over the year, we cannot help but look towards ourselves and ask that important question—am I hurting? We cannot help but look to our neighbor and ask ourselves that important question--are they hurting?

I feel confident that there are people among us today who are suffering. Maybe this economic crisis has had a profound effect on your family and you are wondering how you are going to tell your children that you need to break the promises that you made to them. You can no longer send them to Europe; you can no longer send them to the college of their choice. Maybe you are in an unsatisfying relationship and the person you once loved has become a ghost to you, distant, haunting your life with fear and sadness. Maybe as you passed a homeless person walking into the Church today you wondered where is God in all of this mess? Maybe the person next to you when they say hello is having the only conversation they will have this week.

We are living in hard times. People are hurting from the economic woes of the great recession. People are feeling emotional pain, the loss of loved ones, the darkness of depression, the empty feeling of loneliness. People are suffering spiritually, feeling alienated from a God who would allow this kind of pain in the world. What can we do to make ourselves feel better? What can we do for those who so need our help? Is healing possible? Yes, I believe that it is possible.

While I do not have the definitive answer to these problems, tonight I will talk about three things that can inspire us to create a caring community, to create a place where we help those among us who are suffering emotionally, spiritually, physically, and economically. The first step comes in the form of a simple truth: in order to take care of others, we need to take care of ourselves. This is the wisdom of modern psychology and it has revolutionized the way we look at healing the soul. Second, we can cultivate and nurture those deep relationships that sustain us in life, our family and our close friends. These are the roots that hold us up, and the inspiration to reach beyond ourselves. Third, we can work hard to create a caring community within our synagogue, where we look out for each other and care for each other. These three steps can produce a caring community where we notice those around us who need our help and where we reach out to them to the best of our ability.

Of course, we do not have the power to solve all of the world’s problems, but that does not mean that we do not have the power to make a difference. The rabbis had a saying, “It is not your job to finish the task, yet you are not free to desist from it (Pirke Avot 2:16).” We cannot expect to perfect the world, yet we still have a responsibility to try to improve it. This is what I hope to accomplish this evening: to inspire you with three ways we can improve the world and help those who are close to us. We cannot end intolerance, but we can help somebody who lives in our neighborhood who suffers from the intolerance of others. We cannot end poverty, but we can feed somebody in our neighborhood that is hungry. We cannot stop the tragedies of life, but we can comfort those who experience them. These are the ways we can create a caring community.

We already do quite a lot that makes a difference in our community. This year we continue our tutoring program at a new school—Jenner school. In doing so, we reach out to students in our neighborhood who need a little extra attention and help with their studies. We have a number of programs where we work cooperatively with Fourth Presbyterian Church, in which we sit this evening, including feeding the homeless one Sunday a month. We also have an annual trip to New Orleans where members of our congregation help with the continuing efforts to rebuild the ninth ward so devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

We deserve credit for our hard work improving our community, and I am not here today to suggest or advocate for additional programs, causes, or ideas that would expand the already significant work in social justice that occurs at Sinai. Rather, I am here to offer a model for building a type of community that will be able to recognize and respond to human need at the moment we encounter it. As we go through our lives, I feel sure that everyday we come in contact with some one who needs our help. I hope that these three steps that I will talk about tonight will help us recognize people in need and make us more able to open our hearts to them.

If there is one thing that this time of year, these days of awe, this Day of Atonement tells us, it is that the work of improving the world begins with ourselves. This is our first step—taking care of ourselves. Moses Maimonides emphasizes in his writings that turning inward is the first step towards repentance. He writes, “Those of you who forget the truth because of empty things, indulging throughout the year in useless things that cannot raise you or save you, look into your souls and improve your ways and deeds (Mishneh Torah Hilchot Tshuvah 3:4).” With these words, Maimonides reminds us that improving the world begins with improving ourselves. He reminds us that we have the ability to engage in activities that elevate our souls, and only after taking care of ourselves can we turn to the larger world.

Yet, if I may be so bold, there may be one part of Maimonides’ teaching that is problematic. While Maimonides has a marvelous message, he also takes a scolding tone. We do not need any rabbi, including myself, looking down on us and scolding us to become better people. Most importantly, we do not need to scold ourselves. Blaming ourselves for our mistakes, feeling ashamed because we missed the mark, feeling guilty because we are not perfect does not help us improve ourselves or the world. These feelings only tie us in knots, freeze us in negative feelings, and stop us from reflecting our best selves outward onto the world.

Instead of hating ourselves for our mistakes, we need to love ourselves for our potential to do better.

Yet, this focus upon the self does have its risks. So much of our society rewards us for a kind of individualism that causes damage to ourselves and damage to our world. Are we taking care of ourselves only so we can get ahead in the world? Are we taking care of ourselves at the expense of others? Are we judging ourselves only based upon material gain and ignoring emotional, intellectual, sensual, and spiritual improvement? (Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman) If we do not develop whole selves, if we do not become people who love and feel and search, then we are only shadows of human potential. Yom Kippur comes to remind us that there is more to life than vigorous and one-dimensional self interest.

All we have to do to remember this fact is look to our left or our right, or look into our memories. Everyone here has someone who we love deeply, whether we are fortunate enough to have them by our side or whether we remember them tonight with a mixture of love and sadness. These deep feelings of love bring us to our second step for creating an environment where we notice people in need and help people in need. We need to take the time to cultivate deep personal relationships.

Let me tell you a story, which comes from a sociology professor, about a man who I will call Brent who lives in California. Brent came to the Silicon Valley, the peninsula south of San Francisco where people dream up most of gadgets you have in your pockets and purses, in his early twenties. He met a woman almost immediately upon his arrival and they got married and started a family. He quickly had three children—all boys. With the added financial pressures of his new family Brent was working two different full-time jobs in the tech industry. He worked seven days a week often from early in the morning until late at night. One of the two companies became successful and Brent was able to quit his other job. Instead of taking more time for his family, he took on more and more responsibility. He worked at least six days a week sometimes for ten or twelve hours a day.

One day Brent came home from work to find his wife standing out on the front lawn next to a For Sale sign with a Contract Pending sign affixed to the top. Brent just got another promotion and decided to move the family into a bigger house in a better neighborhood. His wife announced to him that he would be moving into the house with the three boys, but without her. She was tired of a marriage where she never saw her husband. She was tired of being a single parent. She was moving away, divorcing Brent, and she wasn’t taking the boys with her.

Relationships take time and effort. In this story, Brent learned this the hard way. He also decided to not make the same mistake twice. Now, as he found himself a single parent, he dedicated himself to his children’s life. He left work at five and went home to do the household activities with his sons—cooking dinner, eating dinner, cleaning the house, doing the laundry. He found an exhausting and satisfying life. With time, Brent met another single parent with four kids of her own and they blended their families. Brent didn’t stop spending time with his kids. He continued to make his new relationships a central part of his life.

Family is probably the most common way that people learn empathy, where they learn to put others before themselves. The love we feel for a partner or a child can teach us to think of them first. Of course, family is not the only way to develop empathy. Any deep relationship can teach us this important life skill. Yet, how do we take these lessons about empathy and learn to apply them in a wider world than our families and deep relationships? Sure, putting our children, our partner, or a loved one before us is an important lesson, but can we feel the same thing for someone outside of our close relationships? Where do we learn how to build a community beyond our loved ones?

This brings me to the third step towards noticing and helping those in need in our midst—building a caring community. This is where Chicago Sinai Congregation enters into the picture. At Sinai, we offer you a community that goes beyond bloodlines, that goes beyond generations, that goes beyond the limits of the self and the limits of family. Our Temple offers you a potent way to connect with other people who share your values, who share your view of how to act upon those same values.

I can give you an example of this kind of commitment that comes from the same sociology professor. In the story, a woman named Marilyn is an active member of a Presbyterian congregation. She is committed to her church and she shows that commitment by offering her time and money to it. Most important to her, she cares for her community. She visits sick and housebound members of her church. She tries to act as a loving person towards everyone that walks through its doors. What Marilyn likes about church is the community and she shows it by giving that community her love.

This is the third step towards noticing and helping people in need. A faith community offers us a small-scale model of what can happen when a group of people get together and care for each other regardless of age, regardless of position in society, even regardless of merit. More than that, a faith community roots these caring deeds in a moral core that mediates between the self, society, the natural world, and an ultimate reality. We are not simply being good to each other because it’s a nice thing. We are being good to each other because it connects us to the moral core found in the Bible and the rabbinic tradition. We are being good to each other because we believe that it heals a broken world. We are being good to each other because it connects us to that which is most real, that which is divine.

It is when we have accomplished this goal, when we care for people simply because they too are our partners in the ultimate reality that we call life on earth, that we can truly reach out and help those in our community in need. How do we do this? We do it with the small actions of everyday life. We take care of ourselves. We go to the gym. We read a book. We do yoga. We take care of our families. We set aside a time every week where family is our only concern. We read to our children. We visit our parents. We take care of our community. We volunteer for a cause that touches our heart. We buy that homeless guy lunch. We help each other.

This is one vision of a caring community, where step-by-step we improve the world. This is one vision of atonement, where we focus on doing better, rather than beating ourselves up for our mistakes. This is one vision of Judaism, where its ethical core inspires us to small acts of lovingkindness.

May we find the strength to build a caring community at Sinai congregation where we recognize the pain felt by our neighbors and try our best to offer them solace. May those of us who are hurting find comfort in that caring community as we reach out to each other with a helping hand. May we work together to spread that caring community into the wider world, into our neighborhood, into our city, into our nation and throughout the world.

Then it will truly be a Gut Yontif, a Yom Tov, a good day— I wish a Gut Yontif to everyone in our caring community.