L'Shanah Tovah. Today is the Birthday of the world. Today, an old year ends, and the world, in a sense, begins anew. And that's a good thing, because in so many ways this has been a very difficult year. And all of us can use a fresh start.
I want to talk to you this morning about Abraham, the first Jew. He is, after all, our model for new beginnings. I want to ask this morning, what made him different? What was so special about Abraham that God chose him to forge a new path in the world? For if we can answer that, then perhaps we will know how we can do the same, and make 5763 the new beginning for which we yearn.
A Rabbinic Midrash asks, of all the people in the world, why did God reveal himself to Abraham? "Abraham may be compared to a man travelling from place to place who saw a tower in flames. Said he, 'Is there no one in charge of this?' Whereupon the owner looked out and declared, 'I am the owner.' In the same way, continues the Midrash, when Abraham wondered, 'Can this world be without a guide?' the Holy One, Blessed be He, looked out upon him and declared, 'I am the Guide, the Sovereign of the universe.'"
I confess that until this year, I only partially understood that story. I always understood Abraham's question to be a philosophical one. If there is a tower, doesn't there have to be an architect somewhere? If the world is a purposeful and meaningful place, then doesn't there have to be a caring God who creates and sustains it? Its a classic philosophical argument for the existence of God. And so God spoke to Abraham.
But I failed to see, until this year, that Abraham's question was also a moral one. A crying out, actually. To Abraham, the world was like a tower on fire, its beauty, integrity, and holiness was threatened. "Is there really no one in charge here?," Abraham cries out. "Don't we have to do something to put out the raging fire?" And so God chose Abraham because God needs people who care as passionately about the world as God does.
So those are the first two lessons that we learn from Abraham. First, that there is a caring God who is the author of creation.. And second, that God can't quench the flames of hatred, of despair, of pain, without our help. God needs us to care, and to act, too.
Like Abraham, every generation has laid its eyes upon a tower consumed in flames, a world threatened by evil and chaos. For us, it came via television in an endless video loop of two towers burning and crumbling. As we approach the anniversary of 9\11, the TV reports and magazine stories have brought back the all too familiar pain. We thought we had put it behind us, but there it is again, right below the surface, never having really left us at all.
Just one year ago...It began with shock, as September 11 forever shattered our cherished American myth of security: our naive belief that war happened somewhere else; that American soil was somehow off limits to our enemies. The sense of violation soon gave way to grief, a sick, empty feeling of terrible loss, as rescue workers vainly searched for the incinerated remains of nearly 3,000 innocent souls. And our grief was both collective, and personal. Each one of us knows someone who was affected personally by the tragedy of that day.
As the grief subsided, it gave way to more uncertainty, and a new set of questions. What next? What kind of a world are we entering in 5763? A year later, it is still difficult to grasp the full meaning of what happened. How are we different? What have we lost?
According to a national poll last month, fifty six percent of Americans feel that the September eleventh had more impact on this country than President Kennedy's assassination, the fall of Communism, or even the Vietnam War.
A strong majority feel that what happened on that day can, and will, happen again.
One out of five Americans reported being so filled with fear that they avoid large gatherings, steer clear of national landmarks, or look with suspicion upon people of Arab descent.
A study done for the New York City Board of Education estimates that "200,000 public school children show signs of post traumatic stress, agoraphobia, or depression."
According to the New York Times, schoolgirls around the country suffered this year from a mysterious rash, which has been attributed to post 9/11 anxiety.
In the days following 9/11, my 10-year-old daughter had a dream, which seemed to have captured the range of our collective anxieties more succinctly than any media commentator. In Sara's dream, her school posted guards by the front door in order to provide security. The guards, as it happened, spoke Arabic, like the terrorists, but appeared friendly. They encouraged the children to come and shake their hands. But with each handshake, they planted a small time bomb under the children's skin... There you have it: the futility of our efforts to provide security; of not knowing whom you can trust; and our fear of a future filled with unknown dangers. All the themes that would dog us through the year were there, in a ten-year-old's dream.
Truly, this has been a year in which anxiety and fear have been the unwelcome guests who came to our door and refused to leave. From the trauma of the World Trade center attack to airborne anthrax, it was like a nightmare in which every time you closed the door on the bogeyman a new doorway blew open, and there he was again. Who would have seriously thought that we would think twice about opening up the morning mail, or that the words germ warfare and smallpox would force their way, uninvited, into our daily discourse?
As Jews, we had additional monsters to battle and our own existential fears to cope with. The "matzav", the terrorist war that has taken so many Israeli lives continues unabated. And the specter of Jew-hatred, which some had thought to be all but dead, came frighteningly back to life. It seemed as if we were plunging back to 1938 as synagogues around the globe were bombed, Jewish school children in Europe were attacked, and state sponsored Saudi and Egyptian newspapers, American allies, may I remind you, revived vile and disgusting medieval blood libels. This was a year in which the ground constantly shifted from under our feet, and our sense of safety and security seemed to dissolve in the face of every kind of evil. It threatens to paralyze us. It tires us out. We just want it all to go away. But it won't.
On September 11, which is when this year truly began, and in the days that followed, our children sat with us glued to the television set for hours, carefully taking in each bit of news as it was revealed. Then a TV reporter introduced an expert child psychologist, who offered her advice to parents on helping children cope with this disaster. "First of all," she admonished," keep the children as far away from the television as you can." Sara glance up at Fran with a smirk, and said, "well Mom, I guess you sure blew that one."
Or, perhaps not. Our history of tragedy has taught us to acknowledge evil- to look it straight in the eye. Because you can't put out the fire by pretending its not there. While many parents were focusing on shielding their children from the chaos, assuring them that everything was really all right, I suspect that many Jewish parents were, like my wife, pointing at the screen with their kids in hand, saying, "do you see that? There are evil people in the world who do terrible things, and you have to watch out for them."
Yet, what should we do? Fear is a formidable foe; we easily succumb to it rather than risk losing any more that we already have. That's human nature. And so people remain silent in the face of suffering, we build a protective wall to try to keep the world out, and we make our own peace as best we can.
The irony is that our lost precious sense of security may have been little more than an illusion to begin with. Let me share with you an excerpt from an essay, entitled, "Here in New York:"
"The subtlest change in New York is something people don't speak much about but that is in everyone's mind. The city, for the first time in its history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now: in the sound of jets overhead, the black headlines of the latest edition. All dwellers of cities must live with the stubborn fact of annihilation; in New York the fact is somewhat more concentrated because of the concentration of the city itself, and because, of all targets, New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer who might loose the lightening, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm." These words might have been written this year, in the wake of September 11. But they were not. E. B. White wrote them in 1949, over half a century ago.
Let me tell you a secret. Our sense of well-being is not synonymous with physical security. Like some of you here today, I went to Israel this year, four months after 9/11. I do not consider myself a brave person. Yet, in spite of State Department warnings and with the risk of suicide bombers, I never felt as secure as I did walking the streets of Jerusalem, kibbitzing with, smiling with and lending the simple support of my presence to the weary shopkeepers of that beleaguered city. Strange, isn't it? Our real sense of security has more to do with spirit than with physical safety.
Our real sense of security and well being today, and I hope I am not presumptuous in suggesting that that is what we share here, comes from knowing that we are welcoming in the New Year together as friends, as family and as a community in the presence of God; that our being here links us in spirit with past and future generations; and not because there is a security guard stationed by the door.
Let us go back to Abraham. When God finally settles upon Abraham, the first thing he says to him is "Lech L'cha: Go Forth. Leave your native land and your father's house, and go to a land that I will show you." Be prepared to take risks, to leave the comfort and the security that you thought you knew, because that kind of comfort and security was only an illusion anyway. "V'Heyei Bracha. And you shall be a blessing...And all the families of the earth shall be blessed through you." That's the very first thing God says to Abraham. In an age only ten generations removed from the catastrophe of the Flood, a generation still stalked by the memory of that annihilation, and yet having forgotten that behind creation there stands a loving creator, God's solution is to tell Abraham to be a blessing. Be a mensch. Bring blessing to others.
So that's the third thing that we learn from Abraham. Don't make the focus of your life the pursuit of comfort and security, because those things aren't really what's important, and besides, they can disappear in an instant. Let your life be about blessing, about finding God's image in the face of others, about the things that really count.
When we have suffered loss, when we are depressed, when we are plagued by the randomness with which evil can enter our lives, it is difficult to see life's blessings. Here too, we can learn from Abraham and Sarah, particularly from the verses that the Rabbis chose for this morning's reading, the first day of a New Year. First, let me remind you of the background. Sodom and Gomorrah have recently been destroyed in a holocaust of fire and ash. There is fear and sadness in the air. And what do Abraham and Sarah do? At the advanced ages of 120 and 100 respectively, they had, with God's help, a child. A child whom they name Yitzchak, which means laughter. For every birth is an affirmation of life...of faith in the future…of our partnership with God in bringing blessing to the world.
Six per cent of survey respondents said that 9/11 convinced them to buy a gun.
Five per cent of respondents said that 9/11 inspired them to have a child.
And that's the fourth thing that we can learn from Abraham: In spite of life's fragility, or perhaps even because of it, we affirm life's sweetness and goodness. That's what Rosh Hashanah, this new beginning, comes to teach us this year.
A few days after September 11, Rabbi Jeff Salkin, who is the Rabbi of a large congregation in New York City, was asked the following question from a congregant. "Rabbi," this woman said, "I live on the upper east side of Manhattan and my windows are covered with the grime that has drifted uptown since, 'you know what' happened. I need to clean my windows but I am afraid that there may be remains of the dead in the dust. If there are, then it doesn't seem right for me to just have the windows cleaned. What should I do?"
And this is how Rabbi Salkin answered her: " You're right. And so this is what you have to do. Take a paper towel and warm water, and carefully wipe the windows clean, as clean as you can. Then carefully put the towels into an envelope and take them to a Jewish funeral home and ask them to bury them the next time they have a funeral." The woman nodded, thanked him and that is precisely what she did.
How remarkable that in a time of unprecedented sadness and horror, this woman, who was not observant, and who did not know Jewish Law, wanted to know what Jewish law said and wanted to do what the Rabbi told her to do.
How remarkable as well that somehow she knew, by even asking the question, that Judaism views the physical body as holy, even after it has been reduced to ashes, that holiness can survive even a towering inferno.
Rabbi Salkin was reminded by this woman's question of a Chassidic teaching: If you want to find a spark, sift through the ashes. The enduring things, you see, will always survive the fire.
You received in the mail this week a blue yartzeit candle. On the eve of September 11, some 40,000 Jewish homes in greater Boston will light these candles, as part of a community effort called Project Zachor: Remember. The candle is our response to the raging fires of one year ago. We will remember the senseless murder of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, husbands and wives. Perhaps we will cry for the many babies born after September 11 whose fathers will never take their pictures on their first birthdays, and will never give them a piggy back ride. I know I still do. And we will remember, as we do with every Yartzeit candle that we light, that each soul is like a precious flame that yet burns from out of the ashes, as long as memory endures.
September 11 was a day on which hundreds of men and women strove, in their last minutes of life, to be like Abraham, to be a blessing. Trapped in the Trade Center, or on a flight bound for oblivion, they calmly called their loved ones on their cell phones to say such simple words as, "I love you." "I want you to live a good life." "I hope to see you again someday." Some of them in the Towers chose to walk up the steps, instead of down, in order to save a coworker, or to comfort a frightened companion. On flight 93, many of them responded to the call, "lets roll," and thwarted the efforts of hijackers, who intended to add yet another target to the day's terrible toll.
And that brings us to the final lesson of Abraham, the lesson that we learn from tomorrow morning's Torah reading, the Akedah: the Binding of Isaac. Who would have thought that the old man could offer his only son, could offer life itself, when brought to the test? For indeed, this was the ultimate test of Abraham's faith. It would have been far easier to take his own life than to offer up that of his beloved son.
As I said, I am not a brave person. I have often wondered: If, God forbid, I were confronted by an ultimate choice, would I have the courage to die in a way that would affirm the meaning of my life?
On September 11, average men and women, firemen, stockbrokers, mothers and sons, showed us that they could. May their strength and courage inspire us as we enter a New Year. And may we learn from the example of Abraham, the first Jew, who taught us the following lessons:
L'SHANNAH TOVAH TIKATEIVU V'TICHATEIMU: May we all be inscribed for a year of peace and of health, of blessing, and of commitment.