As it turned out, the short hike was not. It lasted over an hour in the heat, up a steep mountainside rising out of a valley that was itself high up on Mount Parnassus. It was a hot evening; my lungs strained against the thin air and my t-shirt filled with sweat. The only sound accompanying us were bells worn by goats in the valley below us, goats that suddenly and mysteriously appeared on and around our path, watching us, like Pan’s personal guard.
Read moreB'Chukotai: What Did You Just Say?
And I have to say, with a deep sigh, that this is the kind of thing that gives Judaism a bad rep. This is the kind of thing that drove a lot of people in this room out of Hebrew school and out of shul. A theology that on the surface says, "If bad stuff happens to you it is your fault." But I am still in love with Torah, and don't feel a need for divorce just because of some bad words between us.
Read moreThe Eyes of a Goat
But Goat Number Two absorbs our myriad sins. It is the perfect choice of animal for this task. As any of us who lives in the country knows, goats can digest anything, no matter how sharp the thorns, no matter how poisonous the leaves. And so, burdened by our misdeeds, this goat is sent out to a rocky wilderness. But here's the odd part about the ritual, a predicament. All this trouble to rid us of our sins. But somewhere out there, our sins are still wandering around, eating scrub. But maybe that's not a predicament. Maybe that's the point.
Read moreAll of it: Gevurah
I was honored to offer the invocation for the Sonoma County Yom Hashoah Commemoration on April 19:
Good afternoon. Shalom aleykhem.
Good afternoon. Shalom aleykhem.
We meet here today, as we do every year, to remember, to reflect.
To honor those we’ve lost and those we are blessed to have among us. To crack
open our hearts to all who were subjected to the ordeal of the Shoah and all
who have lived in its wake, trying to repair the irreparable.
This year we have been asked to give special attention to the
quality of gevurah, the strength, the
heroism, of our people and others who shared their fate. We will honor
resistance, whether large or small, whether organized or impulsive. We will honor
the non-Jews who could, perhaps, have tiptoed through, but instead risked their
lives to help. All of these acts: gevurah.
But in Judaim the concept of gevurah
is even broader than those descriptions. We use the word to mean strength, but it
is not always an obvious kind of strength. In our mystical tradition, certain
qualities are associated with particular biblical figures. And you might expect
gevurah to be represented by Moses or
Joshua or Deborah or even Judah Maccabee. But no. The poster child for gevurah is Isaac. Isaac, whose big
moment in Torah is not the tumbling of walls or the parting of waters. It is
being bound to a rock while someone more powerful raises a hand to kill him.
This story from Torah is etched into our psyches. But it is short
on detail. We don’t know if Isaac struggled. If he bargained. If he strained
against the fetters or quietly tried to untie them. We don’t know if Isaac
prayed or planned or just made peace. Or if he simply didn’t know what to do. Still,
our tradition chooses him to represent this quality that we call gevurah.
And he is a good choice for it. Because sometimes your heroism lies
in strength of arms. And sometimes your hands are tied. Sometimes your endurance,
your presence, is all you have to offer.
As a people we call ourselves Israel
– Jacob. But in the Shoah we were, so often, Isaac. Our hands were tied. We were bound, staring up at the
knife or closing our eyes against it. Our world of options shrank to tiny
choices, all of which had unspeakably grave consequences. Turn left or right.
Leave by yourself now or with loved ones next week. Step to the front of the
line, or hang back. Speak up for another, or play it safe today in the hope of
making a difference tomorrow. In an impossible situation, every choice, every
action, including just holding tight: gevurah.
At Chanukah time we sing Mi
y’mallel g’vurot Yisrael. Who can count the g’vurot, the heroic deeds of our people? If we look deeply to the
impossible world of the Shoah, a world of action and restraint and endurance, then
our people’s acts of gevurah would number
millions upon millions upon millions.
So today let us honor our acts and our limitations. Our strength
and our fragility. Let us honor those who rebelled and those who resisted. Those
who hid and those who hid them. Those who escaped and those who could not. Let
us honor those whose strength was in the fight. And those whose strength was in
enduring. And those whose strength was taken from them. All of them. All of it.
Gevurah.
Fire, and the Prairie
We drove ten blocks south to the old Oak Woods Cemetery. We looked at its burial mound of Confederate prisoners upon which someone had scornfully (I presume) placed an empty bottle of Southern Comfort. And then we looked for graves of trailblazers who rest there. Ida B. Wells, the radical turn-of-the-century African-American journalist; Jesse Owens, the African-American runner whose prowess shamed Hitler at the 1936 Olympics; and Hyde Park's own Harold Washington, Chicago's first black and first progressive mayor, whose ethos made possible gay rights in that city, and whose election so rocked the world that while I was on a 1983 visit to Eastern Bloc Czechoslovakia, the mere mention that I came from Chicago, which would have once produced an Al Capone pantomime, now elicited the amused observation, Ah, Chicago. Negri Burgermeister.
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