RABBI JONATHAN BLAKE

November 11, 2016 – Veterans Day

Standing before a divided country, Abraham Lincoln concluded his first inaugural address by appealing to “the better angels of our nature.”

The same Abraham Lincoln, haggard and weary, would, four years later, conclude his second inaugural, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”  Leave it to Abraham Lincoln to sound the chord that must ever be sounded in times of national discord.

From this Abraham we would turn to the first Abraham.   Even as Abraham the President sought our better angels, so too Abraham the Patriarch.

Tonight I want to isolate three incidents from Abraham’s story that may help us call forth the better angels of our nature.

The title of the parasha, Lech Lecha, comes from God’s instruction to Abraham in its opening verse.  Lech Lecha m’artzecha, u’mi-molad’tcha, u’mi-beit avicha, el ha-aretz asher areka.  “Go forth from your country, from the place of your birth, and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you.”

Whatever you think about the outcome of this election no one will deny that we are entering uncharted territory.  What does Lech Lecha teach us about how to set out on such journey?  The ancient Rabbis would have us read the instruction literally:  not Lech Lecha, “go forth,” but Lech, “go,” Lecha, “unto yourself.”  They tell us that what God really wanted Abraham to do was not go out and discover a new land, not discover a new religion, but to go out and discover… Abraham.  After self-discovery, everything else would follow.

So this is the first lesson of Lech Lecha:  Every journey into the unknown requires a journey within. 

If nothing else I hope and pray that this bruising and indecent election season will open up a period of introspection and critical reflection in America—a journey L’cha, unto and into ourselves.

We cannot journey forth until we commit to examine the deep divide in America, a rift that has left so many people feeling unrepresented by their government.  We need to understand the shifting forces of policy, culture, economics, technology and demography that have undermined their American dream and vaporized their hopes of prosperity.  We need to understand those who feel deflated by slow economic recovery, stagnant wage growth, skyrocketing health insurance costs.  We need to listen to people dismayed by the growing rift between Israel and the US, frightened by volatility and violence in Europe and the Middle East.  And we need to hear the voices desperate for change because they believe our politicians have failed us.

We also need to reflect honestly on how our national divide has widened during a campaign season that fueled division.  We need to probe the misgivings of so many Americans who recoil at speech that demeans immigrants, minorities, women, and people with disabilities, that traffics in insults.  We need to take seriously the anxieties of those who see bullies, xenophobes and anti-Semites emboldened in the new political landscape.  We need to be attentive to citizens who dread the curtailment of women’s reproductive choices; who are losing sleep over the threat of deportation; who are concerned about growing distrust between law enforcement and communities of color; and who believe that to deny climate change, to glorify torture, to allow unfettered access to guns, and to build walls—whether we fashion them of bricks and mortar or biases and mindsets—all represent backward steps for our country.

Lech Lecha tells us:  be introspective.  Be soul-searchers.  Do not let this moment for national self-reflection pass us by.  It may hurt—but it won’t kill us to learn more about our ingrained preferences and prejudices.  I pray that our elected officials and those who advise them will also take this journey of L’cha, of introspection, the wellspring of wisdom.

Lech Lecha:  Every journey into the unknown requires a journey within.

Later in the parasha, we read about Abraham’s evolving relationship with his nephew Lot.  Both have amassed much silver, gold, cattle, herds, flocks and tents.  So much material wealth, in fact, that one territory cannot accommodate both of them.  Their herdsmen begin to quarrel.  Abraham proposes that he and Lot go their separate ways.  He invites his nephew to have first pick:  “If you go to the north, I’ll go south; if you go south, I’ll go north.”  Lot sees the fertile Jordan plain and his eyes grow wide with tantalizing visions of prosperity and productivity.  Abraham stays in the land of Canaan with its rocky outposts and limited resources.

Lot, it turns out, has elected to live a life of luxury among the wicked denizens of Sodom and Gomorrah while Abraham has staked his claim on a piece of property that may represent a good spiritual investment, but which is definitely a dubious real estate investment.  Soon after, Abraham will tangle with Sodomites and even risk his life to rescue his nephew who, shortly after moving to Sodom, gets kidnapped by invaders.  From all of this we learn that Abraham cares about progeny more than property, about his nephew Lot more than his material lot.

Thus the second lesson of Lech Lecha:  put the greater good above what’s good only for you. 

Time and again Abraham demonstrates commitment to something bigger than himself.  He puts his own comfort and convenience, his fate and fortune at risk for the sake of family, community, tribe and people.  In Jewish tradition, Abraham serves as the exemplar for three of our most important mitzvot:  caring for the sick, redeeming the captive, and welcoming the stranger.

In the spirit of Abraham, the time has come to renew America’s great tradition of self-sacrifice and public service.  How poetically appropriate that we meet here on Veterans Day.  My grandfather, Harry “Acky” Garb, served in the First Marine Corps as a medic in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.  Only in my adulthood, decades after his untimely death at the age of 74 in a motor vehicle accident in 1989, have I come to appreciate the meaning of his service to his country.  He, on the other hand, would have rejected these accolades.  My Pop-Pop would have told you that the only real heroes were the corpsmen—his brothers-in-arms—who never came back from overseas, the ones who gave to their country, again to quote Abraham Lincoln, “the last full measure of devotion.”

Service in our armed forces is of course only one way to put country before self.  We need our Jewish traditions of tzedakah—righteous giving—gemilut chasadim—compassionate deeds—and tikkun olam—social justice—now more than ever.  We need to apply our Jewish values to advance policies that will do the greatest good for the greatest number above those that benefit chiefly the few and the privileged.

American democracy at its best has always aspired to such aims.  Our own Reform Jewish leaders wrote in a post-election statement this week:  “President-elect Trump has the opportunity to use his office to bring Americans together, and to move us toward a brighter future.  If he does so, we will be ready to work with him for the common good. If he does not, we also stand ready to be fierce advocates for the values that guide us:  inclusivity, justice and compassion.”  Those are Abraham’s values.

Lech Lecha:  Put the greater good above what’s good only for you.

By the time we get to the last part of this week’s reading, Abraham has become a real macher, a person of influence.  But even he defers to the higher officials.  Several times in our portion Abraham encounters a ruling executive authority—including the Pharaoh of Egypt, the king of Sodom, and King Melchizedek of Salem (probably Jerusalem).  In every case Abraham treats the sovereign with respect and charity.

Still, Abraham’s highest allegiance is always to God, with whom he shares an inviolable covenant.

So this is the third and final lesson from Lech Lecha:  Know before whom you stand.

It is important for us to remember that Jews have always subordinated ourselves to the office of the ruling power.  The famous axiom דִּינָא דְּמַלְכוּתָא דִּינָא, an Aramaic phrase meaning, “The law of the land is the law,” is repeated four times in the Babylonian Talmud and twenty-five times in the Shulchan Aruch, that great Medieval legal code.  We have been among history’s most loyal and patriotic citizens of countless foreign realms, none of which afforded us the kind of freedoms and opportunities that America has for nearly four hundred years.  Who among us has not had occasion to affirm the first line of The Godfather:  “I believe in America?”

We Jews have taken pride and comfort in the vision of our Founders, that leadership comes not by blood or birthright but by the will of the people.

And we Jews have always prayed for the welfare of the government under which we live.  We did so in the days of our Babylonian Exile in the 6^th Century BCE, throughout our long history in the Diaspora, and we do so today.  Our prayer book includes these words:

O Guardian of life and liberty,

may our nation always merit Your protection…

Grant our leaders wisdom and forbearance.

May they govern with justice and compassion.

Help us all to appreciate one another,

and to respect the many ways that we may serve You.

May our homes be safe from affliction and strife,

and our country be sound in body and spirit.

Still, like Abraham, we Jews also recognize that above all human authority resides an authority we name Divine.  Like Abraham, we honor our leaders but bow down only before God.  Like Abraham, we know that potentates and presidents do not decide ultimate right and wrong.  Even the Biblical king was required to keep a copy of the Torah by his side and study it all the days of his life.

Here in America, We The People hold our leaders accountable to the law of the land.

We The People exercise our freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly to demand godly behavior from our elected officials.

We The People take to the press, the pulpit, and the public square to make our voices heard.  We live with loyalty to government and love of country and fellow citizen.  But we also live in sacred covenant with the Most High, the spiritual power that summons us to the better angels of our nature.

Lech Lecha:  Know before whom you stand.

One last thought.  When we stand before God during the Tefillah—the central prayers of our service—it is customary to conclude, according to the Talmud (Yoma 53) by taking three steps back, then turning to the right, and finally turning to the left, as we offer a prayer for peace.

An Orthodox rabbi from Chicago, the late Menachem Ben-Zion Zaks, explains that we cannot pray for peace if we are not willing to step back a little and make room for others.  Achieving peace, he says, means acknowledging those on the right and those on the left—not just looking straight ahead.

Take a step back.  Look to the right.  Look to the left.  And pray for shalom. 

THE NEW LONELINESS

In 1978, Rabbi Jack Stern delivered a sermon from our bimah called “Loneliness.”  He said:  “The way we usually approach the subject of loneliness is the way we used to approach death and dying before it was almost forced into the public arena:  mostly by avoiding it, because we have all seen lonely people sitting next to other lonely people on lonely park benches, and they are the people that we would least like to be.  So we shy away from the subject altogether, because in our idealized, packaged version of healthy adjustment, there is no room for loneliness, not even a little bit” (Stern, Jack.  “Loneliness,” The Right Not to Remain Silent:  Living Morally in a Complex World.  New York:  iUniverse, 2006.  p. 79).

Rabbi Stern went on to quote Thomas Wolfe, who, a generation earlier, wrote in an essay also entitled “Loneliness,” “that far from being a rare and curious phenomenon,” loneliness “is the central and inevitable fact of human existence” (Ibid, citing Wolfe, Thomas.  “God’s Lonely Man,” The Thomas Wolfe Reader, ed. Holman.  New York:  Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962.  p. 676.  Essay originally appears in Wolfe, Thomas. The Hills Beyond.  New York:  Harper & Brothers, 1941).

So it was.  So it is.  So, perhaps, it ever shall be.

Still, the subject of loneliness seems more timely than ever.

How ironic that the the more crowded the world gets, the lonelier we feel.  How ironic that the more technologically advanced we become—the more sophisticated, fast, and far-reaching our tools of communication, transportation, and transaction—the more we experience disconnection, alienation, separation.  How ironic that here, with every seat filled, many of us feel isolated:  the sea of unfamiliar faces; the empty chair once occupied by a loved one; the longing for what once was and no more will be.

This is not solitude.  Solitude is coffee and a newspaper, a bath and a glass of wine.  Solitude is a walk in the morning breeze, a beach chair at sunset.  Solitude is alone with a meandering thought, a silent prayer, a daydream, a remembered melody.  Solitude is a stolen hour writing in a diary, practicing guitar, listening to Miles Davis.  Solitude is contentedly sitting on a couch, watching football, or so I’m told.

Solitude is alone by choice.  Lonely is alone not by choice.

Or is it?  Many of our choices now seem to favor loneliness.  We hide behind digital screens:  standing in line at the store, in the doctor’s waiting room, at intermission, the minute the plane lands, sitting across from each other in a dim restaurant, our faces illuminated by the light of an iPhone.

“How is this a life?” asks Jamie Varon, a thirty-something blogger.  “It’s not a life, actually.  We cannot spend our days hunched over a screen forging a sense of human interaction.  This is not what we were made for.  I can guarantee all your best memories live within the moments with others.”

“When you look back on your life,” she asks, “will you be happy by how much Netflix you’ve watched?  Will you be happy about the graveyard of plans you let fall by the wayside?  Will you be happy when you’re surrounded by no one because we’ve all pushed each other away?” (Varon, Jamie.  “This is the New Loneliness,” published on www.thoughtcatalog.com, April 8, 2015.  http://thoughtcatalog.com/jamie-varon/2015/04/this-is-the-new-loneliness/)

That’s an excerpt from her essay entitled “This is the New Loneliness.”  A New Loneliness has seized a new generation.  And maybe, when we go offline for a moment, when we stop the solitary scrolling and clicking, the ceaseless surfing and searching, the posting and the liking, we might wonder:  for what?  Does anyone get up from a laptop feeling more energized, valued, loved, or understood?  What’s this all about?

Even online dating—a seemingly endless array of eligible people all craving human connection—has, for some, only exacerbated the loneliness.

In a recent New York Times “Modern Love” column, Sarah Moses recounts a run of hapless first dates after which she reports, “While dating does make me feel crazy at times… I keep at it in hopes that one day the outcome will be different.

“At the same time, I also try hard to accept that it may never happen for me.  I tell myself that I don’t need a partner to lead a happy and fulfilling life.  Then one morning, I’m on the Q train, across from a cute couple.…

“He says something funny to her, and she laughs, then puts her head on his shoulder.  When they get up to leave, he holds her hand and they just look so stinking happy.

“I want to cry, feeling creepy for staring at these strangers and also envious that they seem to have what I want” (Moses, Sarah.  “Single Woman Seeking Manwich,” published on www.nytimes.com on May 13, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/fashion/modern-love-dating-single-okcupid.html).

In truth, the New Loneliness has been a long time in the making and has as much to do with the collapse of American civic engagement among Baby Boomers and Gen-X’ers as it does with round-the-clock internet use among Millennials.  In his landmark 2000 book Bowling Alone, sociologist Robert Putnam analogizes the decline in bowling leagues to the increasing alienation of Americans from their families and communities.  One crucial factor leading to social isolation is television.  Says Putnam, “People watch Friends on TV — they don’t have them” (Putnam, Robert.  Bowling Alone:  The Collapse and Revival of American Community.  New York:  Simon & Schuster, 2000.  p. 108).

But perhaps I have already lost some of you.  Those of you who remember Jack Stern’s “Loneliness” sermon belong to a generation less beguiled by the internet, more likely to have joined a bridge club or rotary club.  And some of you are probably thinking:  “But wait, Rabbi, I’m 85 and I’m lonely too!”

Okay.  So you can be 85 and lonely too.  There’s nothing new about that.  What’s new is that, increasingly, loneliness is being viewed as a public health issue “deserving of public funds and national attention,” as reported last month in the New York Times, noting that “[r]esearchers have found mounting evidence linking loneliness to physical illness and to functional and cognitive decline.  As a predictor of early death, loneliness eclipses obesity” (Hafner, Katie.  “Researchers Confront an Epidemic of Loneliness,” The New York Times, September 5th, 2016, as published at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/06/health/lonliness-aging-health-effects.html).

It’s universal, timeless.

Twice, and only twice, the Torah reports that something is Lo Tov, “not good,” and both have to do with loneliness.  The first refers to Adam in the Garden of Eden, of whom the Torah says, “Lo tov lihyot adam l’vado, It is not good for a human being to be alone” (Genesis 2:18), and so God creates Eve.  The second time, Moses’s father-in-law Jethro counsels him not to take on the burden of leadership alone.  Seeing Moses toil from dawn ’til dusk, ministering to every Israelite’s needs, he admonishes him:  “Lo tov ha-davar asher ata oseh:  The thing you are doing is not good” (Exodus 18:17).  It is not good to live alone and it is not good to lead alone.  Our ancient tradition really gets loneliness.

Robert Frost got it too.  He wrote:

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.  

(Frost, Robert.  “Acquainted with the Night,” West-Running Brook.  New York:  Henry Holt, 1928.  Poem cited in the e-book version at http://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/frostr-westrunningbrook/frostr-westrunningbrook-00-h-dir/frostr-westrunningbrook-00-h.html#night).

At one time or another, we all become acquainted with the night.

Every human story goes like this:  From the moment we emerge from the womb, we are learning to breathe alone.  By the time we breathe our last, we realize that we must also leave this world alone, unable to take anything—much less anyone—with us.

And yet, in our lifetime, we never stop craving human connection.  Is there any desire more primal, more persistent, than to feel loved, to feel protected, to feel understood by another?

I think that the Binding of Isaac may be the loneliest story of all, don’t you?  Twice today’s Scripture mentions that father and son walk together:  first, when Abraham and Isaac set out on their three days’ trek, and again, once they have outwalked the furthest city light and reached the mountain.  “Vayelchu shneihem yachdav,” it says.  “The two of them walked on together” (Genesis 22:6, 22:8).

But then comes a trauma, when the father, standing over his helpless boy, takes a knife to his throat.  It matters little that God intervenes and stops him from actually killing his son.  The damage is done.  When Abraham leaves the mountain, he walks alone.  At the end of the story, Isaac slips away without mention.  It is almost as if he has vanished from the scene.  But in the following chapters we discover that while alive and well, Isaac will never speak to his father again.

I was talking with Kelly about this story, about how sad I find it, about the abject loneliness I see in Abraham and Isaac—and Kelly said, “Of course they’re both lonely.  Both of them feel abandoned by their father.  Isaac by Abraham, and Abraham by God.  And not only that,” she added, “their experience lays bare the most profound kind of loneliness of all:  to feel that no one else could possibly understand what you’ve been through.”

It’s an ancient story about an ancient loneliness, but it could have been written yesterday about so many of us suffering a family estrangement, a rupture between parent and child or sibling and sibling, an old trauma whose pain does not heal but rather hardens with the passage of time.  An abandonment when we needed someone most.  A trust betrayed.  A promise broken.  A friendship sundered.

There is so much loneliness in our present-day Abrahams and Isaacs, to say nothing of the unmentioned Sarah, the Jewish mother biting her nails back in the tent as she frets over what has become of her son, not to mention her husband.

Which brings us to another kind of ancient loneliness:  “in some marriages a far-reaching loneliness of two people who once reached out to each other in love but no more,” as Rabbi Stern described it.  “Or there can be, as there is in most marriages, a little bit of loneliness with two people still in love, still reaching out to each other, but not always at exactly the same time” (Stern, 81).  Look no further than Abraham and Sarah, who together withstood famine, migration, kidnapping, war, infertility, and the heartbreaking episode of their foreign maidservant Hagar whom they use as a surrogate to give birth to a son, Ishmael, only to have Sarah turn on them in a fit of jealousy, consigning them to the desert, while Abraham watches, stone-faced.

Yes, Abraham and Sarah’s marriage had its long, lonely stretches.

By the time we finish the binding of Isaac, when Abraham and Isaac walk off, each one alone, we can understand why the next verse of the Torah reports that Sarah has died.

Oh, the singular loneliness of grief.  In the past year alone we have laid to rest 25 congregants and 87 members of our extended WRT family, including 5 members of WRT’s founding generation.  There’s a special loneliness known only to those who have buried relative and friend in steady succession for years on end.  I tend to bump into many of these same congregants at funeral after funeral, and our conversation has become a kind of shorthand for the unspoken language of mourners, exchanging little more than a hug and a knowing look and maybe one sentence like, “We have to stop meeting like this.”

What to do when what we want most in the world is to pick up the phone and talk about the kids’ soccer game or report card, the trip to Nantucket, the amazing dinner we just had—but now there’s no one on the other end?  The loneliness of grief is the loneliest of all.

Aren’t we all lonely, to one degree or another?

And yet if we leave this place and this moment resigned to remain this way forever—too afraid, too stubborn, or too disheartened to change—then the beautiful promise of Rosh Ha-Shanah will have passed us by.

For loneliness is not some sad city lane leading endlessly into the darkness.  It is, rather, for most of us, a temporary, if recurring, part of life, a street we pass along from time to time.

For those walking the lonely road of an injured relationship, Rosh Ha-Shanah and these ten Days of Awe have much to teach us about the power of teshuvah, the word that we translate “repentance” but which really means “return,” to return to the relationships that have been stressed and strained and even severed.

Teshuvah also asks us to examine ourselves honestly.  It asks:  how much loneliness have I brought upon myself?  To what extent is my loneliness a result of my obstinateness, my narcissism, my lack of self-awareness?  Was I abandoned, or did I withdraw?  Did I contribute to others’ loneliness?  Have I shunned others in my need to be right, to be recognized, to be strong or independent?  Our tradition teaches us to care for the widow, the stranger, the orphan.  Have I failed to show up for those in my family, my community, who bear the burden of a loneliness they never chose?

What healing power resides in simply showing up, in putting your arms around someone else, in setting aside your own loneliness for an hour by performing a mitzvah for someone else!  Anyone who spends an hour making a shiva call, serving guests at a homeless shelter, tutoring disadvantaged kids, volunteering at a hospital, reading for the blind, knows this.  When we reach out for another, the hand of God reaches out and takes away a little of our loneliness—at least for an hour.

A Hasidic parable related by the Israeli author S.Y. Agnon:

A man had been wandering about in a forest for several days, not knowing the way out.  Suddenly he saw a man approaching him in the distance. His heart was filled with joy.  “Now I shall certainly find out which is the right way,” he thought to himself.  When they neared each other, he asked the man, “Brother, I have been wandering about in this forest for days. Can you tell me which is the right way out?”

Said the other to him, “Brother, I do not know the way out either.  For I, too, have been wandering about in here for many days.  But… come, let us look for the way out together” (Agnon, S.Y.  Days of Awe.  New York:  Schocken Books, 1995.  p. 22.  Parable attributed to Rabbi Hayyim [Halberstam] of Zans (1793-1876)).

It’s easier to find our way if we’re willing to stop and ask for directions.  And whenever we take the hand of another, we find part of ourselves.

But first we need to see the person next to us.

On a sunny day this past June in New York City with an hour to kill, I parked myself on a bench at the Shakespeare Book Shop on the Upper East Side and started to write a sermon.  A lovely woman in her late 60s sat down next to me and asked for the WiFi password.  (It happens to be “Shakespeare.”)

We passed the hour in silence, absorbed in our work.  As I was getting up to leave my eye spotted a newsflash on my laptop about the presidential race and I must have either grunted or moaned or signaled indigestion, and the nice lady to my left said, “everything okay?”  I said, “Oh sure, just politics.”  She said, “Nu, what country are you moving to?”  And I said, “Oh, I couldn’t leave, but I guess if I had to, it’d have to be Israel.”  My impromptu companion replied, “Yes, I guess it’s good to go with our people,” and I said, “L’chayim to that.”

Then she asked, “So how come you couldn’t leave?”  and I said, “Well, I’m the rabbi of a big synagogue in Scarsdale.”

Long pause.

She pierced me with her gaze. “Is your father a doctor?” she asked.  I said, “Yes, he is.”  Then she said, “Is your mother Margie?”  I said, “Yes, and who, by the way, are you?”  The stranger replied, “I’m your cousin Flora.  Your great grandmother Chanah was my great-aunt.”

And for the next long while, this woman, whom I had never met, and to whom my mom had last spoken 35 years ago, when I was 7, proceeded to tell me how she and my mom grew up in New Jersey, spending every weekend together; how she had followed my life and career; how she knew from our cousin Bruce that I had a congregation in Scarsdale.

I inadvertently reached out for a stranger and found my family.  You can call that whatever you like.  I’m comfortable talking about the hand of God.

So.  There you go.

I wonder what would happen if we tried this here at WRT.  Most of us wouldn’t need to look farther than one aisle away to find a stranger who could use an outstretched hand.  We might even discover our family.

Will you try this, this new year?

Will you try it today, before you leave?

 

From time to time we are all Abraham and Isaac, walking together, falling apart.

From time to time we are all acquainted with the night.

From time to time we are all lost and lonely.

But, come—come, let us look for the way out together.

Well, it seems I’ve done it again.  I’ve shut down my blog on Svbtle and opened up a new blog here on WordPress.  Just click on over to http://www.rabbiblake.org to read musings, sermons, and whatever other random thoughts fly through the asteroid belt of my consciousness.

I am writing about inherited trauma for Yom Kippur this year.  If you believe that your story, or your family’s story, attests to the ability of a trauma to affect subsequent generations, I’d love to be in touch, or to have you comment here and share (anonymously is fine).

In two weeks it will be a Jewish new year.  Wishing everyone a peaceful and reflective remainder of Elul.

Bivrakha – with blessing,

(Rabbi) Jonathan (Blake)