Rabbi Marc Berkson — Rosh Hashanah Eve — 5764

REQUIRED TO REJOICE
ROSH HASHANAH EVE–5764

For the past several years, at this point in the service, I have shared with you this poem by Rabbi Jules Harlow entitled “Yearnings:”

So much this past year has threatened
To break my spirit. Help me, O Eternal,
For I have been very low.
I stand here, weary,
Empty and dry.
In thirst and hunger I stand,
Seeking comfort, even joy.
Transform my sorrow, Eternal;
Help me to renew my faith, my hope,
As I raise my soul toward You….

Again, this year, I am weary, empty and dry, wearier and emptier and dryer than I remember in years. I surely am emptier than I was two years ago at the end of 5761, a year that began with peace about at hand and ended with the horrific attacks in New York and on the Pentagon and in a field in western Pennsylvania. And I surely am wearier than I was a year ago at the end of 5762, a year that brought the return of rabid antisemitism to Europe, the killing of Daniel Pearl, and the bombing at Hebrew University. Perhaps the anger is spent and exhaustion has set in. Yet this past year of 5763 has truly threatened to break my spirit.

Surely the death of my mother made this past year so much more difficult for me-and I thank you all again for your kindness and support and thoughtfulness during the months of her illness and then during shiva. But such is not what made 5763 so distinctly dismal. So perhaps it was in the numbers offered us by the United Jewish Communities’ 2000-2001 National Population Study and by the Jewish Agency’s Institute for Jewish People Policy Planning. For the numbers are depressing-5.2 million American Jews, a decrease of 300,000 since the last population study in 1990, and a world-wide Jewish population of 12.9 million Jews diminishing at the rate of some 150 a day, 50,000 a year. With our high intermarriage rate and our low birthrate, it seems clear that we Jews are disappearing.

And yet…and yet…it turns out that the infamously high intermarriage rate of 52% put forth by the 1990 study was wrong-by a full nine percentage points. Properly calculated, it would have been 43% with only in the last few years having risen to 47%. Furthermore, as the many problems with the current population study have become clearer, even the 5.2 million number may well be mistaken. Other recent studies have found the American Jewish population to be as high as 6.7 million. And, if one assumes that the figure offered by the current population study that 1/3 of all children in mixed married family households are being raised as Jews, it is quite possible that the American Jewish population will remain stable or even experience a slow growth.

But once again, the American Jewish community will be afflicted with what I call “dismal demographobia” as the disappearing Jew will appear on every Jewish community’s agenda. And the old article entitled “The Last American Jew” will once again make its appearance, as it has every time dismal demographobia afflicts us, the article which begins with these words:

My name? My name is not important. Who am I? I am the last American Jew. The year is 2124, the place is the Smithsonian Institution. I am in a cage on exhibit. People pass my way, staring, pointing and even sometimes laughing. On the walls are the remnants of a Jewish culture; a talis, Torah, books of the Talmud, etc. Each day as I sit here I wonder how 6 million people who existed as Jews a little over a century ago could have possibly vanished.

But such is not, in and of itself, what made 5763 so distinctly dismal. So perhaps it was in our handling of the war in Iraq. In words I offered before the beginning of the war back in March which surely have come to pass-”…a milhemet mitzvah, a war of self-defense, is a war which is required. While the [situation in Iraq is] not a milhemet mitzvah, a war…may be legitimate. Called a milhemet reshut, a permitted war, such a war may take place if, according to Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, ‘extra restrictions are placed on the government.’ These restrictions include an approval by a legislative body, the issuing of a wide range of exemptions to those who might have to serve, and tightly regulated military tactics. And a war with Iraq is a war of choice, a permitted war of choice that will not end with the war but must go on to the painful and difficult task of building a peace, of, yes, nation-building. And I yearn desperately to hear words which will inspire me, words which will unite me with other Americans, words which could move others around the world, words which will make support for this undertaking more appropriate. Instead, from our leadership, from our President, I hear mixed messages about the reasons for this war of choice while, at the same time, a clear unwillingness to ask us to bear the financial burdens which this war will impose upon us. Taxes can and should reflect what we as a nation are willing to do.” Only now, as 5763 has come to an end, do we begin to hear about the true costs and responsibilities of the war and the nation-building that now must be undertaken.

Still, in and of itself, such is not what made 5763 so distinctly dismal. So perhaps it was and has been and remains ha-matzav, the situation in Israel. 236 more Israelis dead-among the last two of the year, an emergency room doctor devoted to saving lives and his daughter due to get married, turning simcha into shiva on the day of the wedding. More than ever, it is clear that some form of land-for-peace arrangement with the concomitant creation of a Palestinian state remains the only truly viable option for both Israel and the Palestinians. And yet, more than ever, one has to wonder if the true intention of Palestinian leadership is the creation of a Palestinian state coexisting next door to Israel or the ultimate destruction of the Jewish state of Israel.

And 5763 contains so many other possible reasons for its despair. Perhaps it was the hope offered by Ilan Ramon, Rick Husband, Willie McCool, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, and Laurel Clark aboard the Columbia broken apart before our very eyes. Perhaps it was the promise contained in the words of recognition spoken by both Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas shattered in fragments and body parts in Jerusalem. Perhaps it was the antisemitic cartoon in The Chicago Tribune or the antisemitic implications of a neoconservative cabal plotting the war in Iraq for reasons that may not have to do with the United States; or perhaps it has been the growing apprehension and fear over an upcoming movie called The Passion which may well complicate relationships on which we have worked so hard for so long.

The list of “perhapses” could go on and on and on. Remember the story I told you last year at Yom Kippur of the poor man who lived in the one-room house with his wife, his many kids, and his mother-in-law. So overwhelmed by how crowded and noisy his tiny house was that he went running to the rabbi for advice. The rabbi considered the situation for only a short time before recommending the man bring his chickens, rooster, and goose into the house with him. The man could not understand this advice, but it did come from the rabbi! So he returned to his barn and brought the chickens, rooster, and goose into the house with him. Needless to say, the situation deteriorated further and the man again returned to the rabbi for advice. The rabbi’s advice this time-bring in the cow. And the story continues-with the house becoming increasingly crowded with every piece of rabbinic advice. Finally, at wit’s end, the man is relieved to hear the rabbi’s last suggestion: “Take out all the animals!” The story ends, of course, with the man living happily ever after with his wife, his many kids, and his mother-in-law in the one-room house.

While usually told to demonstrate that things could always be worse and that we should appreciate all that we have, it can also be understood in modern psychological terms. Upon this claustrophobic man the rabbi utilized a behavioral fear-reduction strategy known as flooding to eliminate the phobia. By exposing him to increasingly intensive forms of the phobia, the man turns numb. And just as flooding has significance in the world of the pathological and abnormal, so, too, does it have significance in the year now ended. For we have been so flooded that we are numb-paralyzed and exhausted-weary, empty and dry. And in my darkest moments, in despair, I wonder about our fading community, despised around the world in language that should have vanished with the Holocaust with the future of Israel in question.

But today is Rosh Hashanah, the birthday of the world, and my mind knows better. For I know I have been privileged to live at a time when I can share in the two greatest experiments in Jewish life and maybe even in world history-the birth and growth, after 2000 years of prayers, of the modern state of Israel and the opportunity to be a citizen in a land dedicated to the revolutionary notion that people of different religions and races can live together equally and in peace for we all children of God. How Jewish-and how American. And I know that I am privileged to live at a time that has seen the transformation of the role of women, the repeal of racial segregation, the defeat of Nazism, the fall of Communism, and, yes, the opportunity for all Jews to live, as Jews, in freedom.

But today is Rosh Hashanah, the birthday of the world, and my heart knows that is has to be here. My heart knows it has to be here, in synagogue, gathered with all the rest of us who have weathered 5763, gathered with this congregation, our congregation, to celebrate a birthday and embrace a new year. We come because we are Jewish; we come to become Jewish. We come to link hands with others across the generations and we come to link hands with each other. And we come, reaching out to each other, yearning to reach up to God.

Thus, on this day of Rosh Hashanah, this birthday of the world, my soul needs to pray, with all of you in our congregation, that his New Year be so very different from the one now ended. In a few minutes, we will rise for the Amidah, for the Tefillah, the central prayer of the worship service. And, since this is Rosh Hashanah, we insert a special benediction right in the middle of the prayer. Entitled u’v-chen, the first word of each of its three paragraphs meaning “and therefore,” the prayer is ascribed to Rabbi Yohanan ben Nuri who lived in the middle of the 2nd century of the Common Era. In it, we ask God to make things better in the new year. Go ahead, take a look at u’vechen, beginning on page 32 of your mahzors, of your prayerbooks. Reflecting our covenantal relationship with God wherein God created the world-remember this is the world’s birthday!–and selected us to redeem it, the first paragraph reflects its universal hope that all humankind will become a single family making this the world God so desires. But the second paragraph, in the words of our Scholar-in-Residence of a couple of years ago, Rabbi Larry Hoffman, “narrows the focus. As the chosen people endowed with a mission to strive for a realization of the vision expressed in the first paragraph,” we pray for honor and for happiness in the land and joy in Jerusalem. But that particularistic request is again subsumed to the universalistic hope when, in the words of the prayer itself, “the just shall see and exult, the upright be glad, and the faithful sing for joy. Violence shall rage no more, and evil shall vanish like smoke; the rule of tyranny shall pass away from the earth.”

May we rejoice-as this new year begins-in our congregation, Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun; in Milwaukee, in America, in Israel, throughout the world. Happy 5764-and may its days resound with the voices of laughter and singing and may God look down upon this, our congregation and this, our world, and rejoice with it, with us.

Rabbi Harlow ended with poem with the words:

Open your lips within us, Eternal One,
That we may speak your praise-

As we rise for the Amidah, p. 30.

AMEN

Rabbi Marc E. Berkson