Shabbat Shalom, G’mar Tov, Shana Tova!

Thank God as we have been getting closer to the High Holidays and as rabbis have gotten more and more nervous – What to talk about?? – there are institutions and rabbis out there eager to tell us exactly what we should share with our congregants.
And to be honest –I did go to a modern Orthodox conference designed to give material and ideas for sermons. In fact, I was one of the people featured at the conference who was supposed to tell other rabbis what to speak about.
The tone which predominated the conference was that the only thing we could really talk about was Israel. The conference occurred only weeks after the end of the Lebanon war; the one million displaced Israelis were just finding their way back home, the families of dead soldiers – among them the great author David Grossman who lost his son Uri – were still in shock and deep mourning; all of us were still shivering at the thought that Nasrallah and his terrorist thugs had won a battle against the Israeli Defense Forces. How could a rabbi talk about anything else? How could a Jew THINK about anything else. I remember when we heard these discussions at the conference; we could scarcely get up from our seats. Of course that would be what I would talk about. Of course when the war was going on in our beloved Israel, we were glued to our TVs, read letters sent by rabbis or soldiers from Israel, and we listened to our members who were there – who were refugees, who had to drive on those roads near Haifa where people were killed by Katyushas. “Lema’an tzion lo echesha” – Isaiah says we cannot ever be silent when it comes to Zion and our People. We commit ourselves to Israel, we grieve with Israel. On Yom Kippur at Anshe Sholom, the children of our community will read out loud every single name of the victims of this sad battle against terrorism.

But my friends, how can I not talk to you about Darfur. I have seen estimates from 200,000 to 450,000 people have died. That’s not displaced people – that’s dead people, killed by genocidal troops, supported by the government of Sudan. Rabbi Avi Weiss made a great point that rabbis should have all gone to Israel this summer – what were they doing being anywhere else? Luckily, I did go – but it was before the war in the north started, so I probably don’t get full credit. But if rabbis should have been in Israel – and I think we should have been – then maybe rabbis should be at more Darfur protests as well! I know Oprah should be there, and more African American leaders, and Muslim leaders should all be there – but we are experiencing in an eerie way, what thing must have been like in the ‘30’s and early ‘40’s, when the world sat by as European Jewry was set for destruction. There was some talk, hand wringing, but no action. Perhaps we should be writing to PepsiCo to stop allowing their formula to be sold and bottled in Sudan? Maybe that campaign will be high profile enough to move the Sudanese to take the world a little more seriously and allow a UN peace keeping force to be brought in. Maybe we need to pressure President Bush more? In this genocide, those dying in Darfur are not Jews – they are Muslims, in fact: But on Rosh Hashanah we say that “kol ba’ei olam ovrim l’fanav” – our own Mishna, our Jewish oral Torah, tells us that on this day we have to think of the whole world – all of humanity is being judged for how all of humanity is being treated.

But these big issues, Israel, Darfur, Hizbollah, terrorism – in some ways they were pushed aside by issues that effect individuals in the congregation on a day to day basis. And I cannot avoid talking about one of those, and that is the strange miracle of conversion – and how it is being threatened by layers and layers of politics.

We all are aware of the dangers of assimilation, and statistic after statistic warns us of how this is wreaking havoc on our numbers and the very future of American Jewry. But on the other side of assimilation, some of the most committed and wonderful Jews I know have come into Judaism by converting: Some of them before and some after they were married to Jews. Some are still amazing singles, and people that profoundly influence this community. Some of the most inspired weddings I have been to have involved at least one spouse who came to our religion through their own volition, rather than through birth. Some people have grown up as Jews, only to discover that they needed to convert in order to be accepted, halachically, by all communities. I am proud to say that Anshe Sholom has been exemplary in welcoming people who sincerely want to convert, in supporting and guiding them and – most importantly – integrating them into the community and into the homes of its members.

However, in the past year insidious political forces have taken advantage of the vulnerability of people seeking to convert, and have exploited the situation. The rabbinate in Israel, both to assert its power and reflecting the incursion of non-Zionist forces which have taken it over, has begun to question the way Orthodox conversions are done in America. New organizations are forming with well-connected rabbis which might be working to usurp the localized system of Orthodox conversion that has existed for almost a century in America. And the two Modern Orthodox organizations that I belong to, the Rabbinical Council of America, and the Chicago Rabbinical Council are nervous, and are discovering their own vulnerabilities and are not always taking the strong stands they need to take in order to confront the religious bullies of our times – in Chicago, in New York and in Israel. Rabbis at the CRC and in the RCA are trying: Just in the past two weeks, at the height of our rabbinic busy season, I had an eight hour meeting with 8 rabbis in the CRC to think through these issues, and then a long conference call with a dozen rabbis of the RCA to discuss how to confront the Israeli rabbinate, and, frankly, how to confront forces of reactionary conservatism which do not prioritize the individual and the vulnerable. How can I not speak out for a Judaism that is embracing of committed, sincere people who want to become Torah Jews, who want to adopt children and have them grow up Jewish. Yes, we are locked in a battle of how to enable parents who want to convert their kids, who want their kids to be the best Jews possible – and that battle, like the war against terrorism in some ways, is far from over.

This upheaval will not affect anyone who has already been converted – but it has already deeply affected people who are in the process of converting: be they singles, couples, boy friends or girlfriends.

So here I am facing you, my friends, with three different issues that I need to focus on: If we are silent about Israel, we reject who we are as Jews; if we are silent about Darfur, we are denying “hayom Harat olam: today the entire world was created.” And if we are silent about how the big rabbis, and big religious politics affect the individual, the Jewishly committed family that can’t get their adopted child a universally accepted conversion, or the couple that is committed to having a kosher, shomer Shabbat home, but can’t have a Jewish wedding because some politico – far from Chicago or even America - thinks they will score by not letting the conversion through – if we are silent for the individual, then we are denying that God sees into the hearts and minds of everyone – that God sees the tears and hears the cries of the meekest, weekest person on earth.

So what do we do? Do we talk about everything, or choose? We always need to look to the Torah for guidance and inspiration and we look to the Patriarchs and Matriarchs for guidance – what to do, and what not to do. And my friends, we find it in today’s parsha, today’s Torah reading.
Since today is Shabbat and Rosh Hashanah, we divided the leining into seven aliyot. We know the story from listening to our beautiful Torah reading today. But the set up of the p’sukim and parshiyot – paragraphs – contains an important message of its own. Shabbat Rosh Hashanah crafts the leining in a way that answers our question:

We start out by focusing on Yitzchak. Our priority is the Jewish people. No doubt about it: the bris of Yitzchak, the celebration for Yitzchak, we all know that the survival of the Jewish people – and of the world as God created it – depends on Yitzchak continuing Avraham’s tradition. Even Fundamentalist Muslims – such as Sayyid Mawdudi -recognize that Yitzchak is Avraham’s heir in his mission. So we spend our first two aliyot all about Yitzchak – the Jewish people come first. But then, something troubling happens: In the third aliya Sarah wants an exclusive: She wants to transform the centrality of Yitzchak into the total nullification of Ishmael. She wants Avraham – the model Jew – to “Get rid of that woman – Hagar – and her son – Yishmael.” Garesh Ha’ama Hazot ve’et b’nah! For Sarah, they don’t even have names. Sarah, our beloved matriarch, feels that all she can deal with is Yitzchak, the future of the Jewish people – there isn’t anything else to discuss.

But the Torah – and the way we read it today – does not agree with Sarah. Yes we did start out talking about the Jews – Avraham and Sarah and Yitzchak and the covenant. But the moment Sarah says that our love for Israel and our people pushes away any discussion of anything else, is when the Torah steps in to say no! No, Sarah. You tried to push Ishmael out of the picture – out of even being a minor character in the great drama of the Jewish people – so I, God, the author of the Torah need to show Jews for all time not to ignore Yishmael, or his mother, or his needs. “Rachamav al kol ma’asav” –God’s mercy is upon all of God’s creatures, King David says in Tehillim. So what does the Torah do – it moves the camera totally off of Yitzchak and spends two entire aliyot totally focused on the ones Sarah had tried to erase from the scene, to write out of the book: Yishmael and Hagar. Two aliyot not mentioning any Jews, or our destiny. No – the Torah wants to tell us in stark terms: As profoundly as we feel about our brothers and sisters in Israel, however much it occupies the central place in our hearts, we cannot shift everyone else out of the picture. God has placed them in our sights – and Sarah was wrong to try to chase them away.

And then, after our two aliyot for Yitzchak and the Jews, two aliyot for Yishmael and Darfur, come two more aliyot which address the smaller issues, issues that get lost somewhere between the giants Yitzchak and Yishma’el, but issues which also demand a voice – and the Torah gives them that voice. The last two aliyot are about day to day existence: far from the drama of the birth of the Partriarch Isaac or the destiny of Ishmael, we find the detailed negotiations of Avraham and the Philistines, Avimelech and Phicol. They discuss water rights, honoring promises, seven sheep and in the end Avraham plants a tree. Avraham could have said: You guys are kidding! You guys are mitzachek! I have no time to take away from my mission declaring God’s name to spend time negotiating with you! But Avraham has learnt his lesson from the Hagar story: he needs to pay attention. We need sermons on people’s day to day lives; on the things that allow them to live in peace, in happiness, with the people they love. It might seem like a lot of time for eight rabbis to discuss how to enable a Jewish couple to convert their adopted child, but we have to spend that time – and we have to make Judaism – Orthodox, halachik Judaism – work in people’s day to day lives.

And so we come to foie gras. Last year I mentioned in my sermon for second day Rosh Hashanah how proud I was of the State of Israel and its Supreme Court for banning the production of foie gras in Israel. Israel is one of 14 countries to do so, and should be: For a while, foie gras was an important source of income for Jews both in Europe and Israel. But now, we as Jews have to lead the way in morality and kindness. As sad as it is to see the geese that suffer horribly by being force-fed to produce this extremely unhealthy appetizer, I admit they are not as important as our brothers and sisters who were killed by Hizbollah this summer, or the half a million who have been murdered by the Arab Janjaween forces in Darfur, or the fate of our soldiers in Iraq, or the hundreds of potential wonderful new Jews who might not make it because of the politics of conversion. But still, the geese are there on the scene – we’ve seen the pictures - along with Yitzchak and Yishmael and Sarah and Avimelech the Philistine king. So I am proud of the Chicago City Council for banning its sale in our city: finally we are standing for something moral and ethical, even though it’s just one small area on the giant screen of responsibilities incumbent upon us as Jews and human beings.

Sarah thinks Yishma’el is a jokester, is “mitzachek”, and doesn’t belong with her son. He lacks the gravitas of Yitzchak. And unfortunately Mayor Daley and some aldermen have been worried that being concerned about tortured geese is too silly an issue for the city council. But when someone is acting in a cruel way, or supporting that cruelty, whether it is bullying in school, whether it is Hezbollah using civilians for cover or targeting our brothers and sisters, or whether it is a product that is exclusively made by torturing animals, we have to speak up. It is in God’s picture, and it has to be part of our picture.

Who knows what would have happened had Sarah allowed Yishmael to remain in the picture? And who knows how bad things would have been if Avraham would have said to Avimelech and Fichol – forget it, I just don’t have time to “dray a cup” with your issues – especially since your promises probably mean very little anyway. It’s all in the picture, they all need our attention. We have to prioritize, we have to know which causes we put hours into and which we put only minutes into. But all these issues must be in our picture; we cannot reject any as too unimportant for at least a bit of our attention. We are the children of Abraham who is Am Hamon Goyim: the father of all the nations – of everyone, every issue. There needs to be somewhere in our minds a sermon about every one of them.

And as we look forward to the words of Hinni (sing them)– Look God, here I am! – we have to set the model for God. Look at us God: We may not be front and center on your screen, but for our lives, and the lives of those we love, we need your attention. We need a Godly minute. And God will see us, and will be with us, and in return we will be with God’s creatures. We will be there for all of those who were created for the great moment: Hayom Harat Olam: Today the moral, ethical human being was created, who would one day receive the Torah, and would understand human responsibility to see the entire picture, Kol Ha’olam Kulo – the entire world.
Shana tova
A great New Year, and a great New World filled with peace for all beings, and especially for our beloved Israel, Shalom al Yisrael.