Shana Tova,

Friends, When I look back on 5765 it was not one of those years where there was one giant good or, one all consuming bad. It was a year filled with diverse stories vying for our attention: You can just look at an Anshe Sholom Bulletin for a taste of how sprawling it was, how taxing on our attention:

Take just one issue: Concern for Refugees or displaced people: Refugees from where? From Gush Katif and Israel's disengagement? From Kfar Darom, a Jewish community dating back to 1946, who have been forced out because they were Jews living amongst hostile Arab neighbors, who see us Jews as foreigners, not as a people returning home bringing economic and agricultural miracles to the desert.

Or refugees from Katrina and New Orleans? Jews and non-Jews, we have asked for money for all of them through the Jewish Federation. The Jewish Federation of New Orleans has fled to Houston, but during Hurricane Rita's Shabbat, my friend Rabbi Barry Gelman in Houston became a refugee himself who had to take his family to Rabbi Ari Perl's home in Dallas.

But what about refugees in Lakeview: those who are homeless right on our doorstep, who have a day-time shelter on Broadway and Belmont, and who congregate at Halstead and Belmont at night to get some food. We spent time with them earlier in the year, and we will continue to pay attention to them on Chol Hamoed Sukkot.

Or refugees being pushed out of their land, and killed in Darfur? Throughout the year we have tried through rallies and educational meetings to build momentum to make sure that the people of Dafur are not wiped out, by the hundreds of thousands, under our watch, and now in the bulletin, you can see we have taken on a Fast for Darfur while we fast to remember Gedaliah, an assassinated Jewish leader. And beyond Darfur, what about 3.6 million people - nearly million children -on the verge of starvation in Niger? Desperate parents are feeding poisonous leaves to their children out of desperation to feed them something!! And this is not even because of a civil war or some evil enemy: The cause was an infestation of locusts and a 13 month drought. Aid is coming but children are dying every day of malnutrition. Will there be the medicines needed to fight Malaria and other diseases?

Or maybe we need to turn closer to home: Our hospitality committee seeks to set up Jews, members and visiters of Anshe Sholom, who come to services but might not have any place to go to for Shabbat, or who might be alone for a meal on Sukkot. It is amazing that some of the most popular people - singles and couples - in shul, sometimes need help - not that they will starve, or be forgotten, but one Shabbat opportunity for "chevreshaft" might be lost.

And what about, all these kids running around shul: This year we have struggled to find them places, services, learning groups, tot Shabbat space, so that they will not just run around wild throughout the shul. How can a shul that struggles to find a home or schooling for someone from Africa, or even a refugee from Gush Katif, or New Orleans, how can we not find a place for a ten year old at Anshe Sholom on Shabbat??

And finally, our own families and our own lives: How do we take away precious time and money to invest in all these other refugees. Sometimes I feel that Shayna and Cara and even Judah together with their Ema, are refugees: whether I am at shul for minyan or a class or a board meeting, or at an AIPAC policy conference or at a Muslim Jewish Dialogue or a rally for Darfur. What about the loose items in our own lives that need our attention and don't always get it.

How do we decide what to spend time on, what to cry about, what to shout about, what to tell our friends to protest about?

Over the past year I have struggled with this issue. And we know from our Torah itself that the first Jew, Avraham Avinu struggled with this as well. He worried about Lot, Sedom, personal survival and the survival of his dreams of a nation. Today's Torah leining, the story of the binding of Isaac, gives us a sense of two models for deciding how to prioritize our time for causes, what to cry about and what to work on in this world, and when to let go.

We start off the leining, with the exclusivist model - God calls out to Avraham, Kach Na . . . In this view, the Jew has to forget about any other children - in Lakeview, in New Orleans in Darfur or in Niger (NEEGERE) - and only worry about "our own". Et Yechidcha - only your child. The midrash tells us how Avraham fights it off - "Et Yechidcha": "All my children are unique in this world - all are God's children", he argues. But no, the one you love, Hashem says. But I love them all! No, only Yitzchak!! The ultimate test will not involve anyone else. It is about the thing that is closest to you, that includes you, your beloved wife Sarah, all the promises of God and all your dreams of the future. In the directive to "take your son" God makes no excuses. Everything else is totally excluded. We know all too well that when it is Jews suffering, we are alone, we are excluded. When it is a genocide against the Jews in Europe, or a threatened Genocide in 1967 or 1973 in Israel, we Jews are alone. When it's terrorism in Tel Aviv, Tony Blaire and the Pope tell us we are excluded from their sympathy. So it is not surprising that when I asked on my rabbinic list serve, involving hundreds of rabbis from North America and beyond, should we fast for Darfur when we fast for Gedalia the day after Rosh HaShana, only a few rabbis called me or e-mailed me and said "Yes!" And then with the prodding of another rabbi, the exclusivist voices came out on the list serve: We have to worry about our own genocide, not about some other gentile nation being killed. Moreover, we cannot even get involved in their mess - gentiles will kill gentiles, non-Jews will suffer, be we have to worry about "Kach na et bincha . . ." - take your only son.

But the next day, after what must have been a harrowing night vision, Avraham wakes up and cannot follow God's exclusivist directive. The midrash tells us "Ahava mikalkelet et hashura" - love overturns the straight line. What love? The love that Avraham had for his son Yishmael and for his servant Eliezer who are both in the Torah story as "the lads", and come to life in the midrash. The love Avraham had for animals, for his donkey, and later for the ram in the thicket. In a sense, even though Avraham follows God's revealed directive of taking Yitzchak, of going on the journey to the mountain with him, he cannot do it alone, exclusively. And that is exactly what happened on my rabbinic list serve. Rabbis from the left and the right came out of the closet, as it were, and said, "Of course we must worry about other genocides! Of course we are concerned with the world, Jewish or non-Jewish." There may be logic or emotion in the exclusivist Jewish position, but as Jews we have always been children of Avraham: Our love for the world, for every living human being, even for animals and our environment, has driven us to veer from the "only Jews" road, to take in Yishmael and Eliezer.

And therefore, rather than apologizing that we at Anshe Sholom will host a group of Muslims in the Sukkah this year to break their Rammadan as we celebrate Sukkot and Simchat Beit HaShoeva, we need to realize that we are following Avraham as he picks up Yishmael even though God said "only Yitzchak". And rather than feeling guilty about momentarily lifting our eyes from our children and from our Jewish needs to worry about the homeless in Lakeview and the children of New Orleans and Darfur and Niger, we have to remember that Avraham took along the homeless servant Eliezer of Damascas. And when I make every effort to avoid eating veal because of the cruel way special-fed veal are treated, or when the government of Israel and its Supreme Court decides to ban force feeding geese for "foi gras", we are merely following Avraham in bringing along his trusted donkey and in looking up from Yitzchak on the mountain to see the ram caught in the thicket. When we are worried about our environment, whether it is how New Orleans is going to be rebuilt or about leaking pipelines in the pristine Alaskan tundra, we are merely being Avraham who looked up and saw the mountain "vayar et hamakom". Avraham looked around at his world, Avraham loved his world, Avraham cared for his world. And so should we.

At the end of this journey with Yishmael and Eliezer and Yitzchak and the donkey and the mountains, Avraham moves forward with Yitzchak alone. Yes, only Yitzchak, his exclusive heir. Yitzchak who carries with him the wood of future sacrifices to God, who will be the victim of the fire and the knife which Avraham carries in so many future generations. Yes, in the end we have to recognize that we walk up the final mountain with our fellow Jews. That we carry closest to our hearts and souls our families and friends and brothers and sisters in Israel. Yishmael and Eliezer and the donkey were a part of Avraham's journey, but he never forgets that Yitzchak alone - his beloved Sarah's son - will be with him and with God on the mountain. There are times when our focus must turn exclusively to help each other, to help the Jews, to help those closest to us. But to be true Children of Avraham that exclusivity must be in the context of loving and caring for Yishmael and Eliezer and the donkey and the mountains. It is that group that stands outside of the Torah and outside the destiny of the Jews that enables Avraham to get to the mountain with Yitzchak. Without them he would be just another religious fanatic caring only for his own vision of the world. With them all, he is Avraham Avinu, our father Avraham, and also Av Hamon Goyim, the father of many nations.

When we show God that we care for God's entire world, while not forgetting when and how to walk up that mountain with Isaac alone - with our own children and our own people - then God will give us the keys: Vehitbarchu becha kol mishpachot ha'adama. Then all nations of the world will be blessed through us.

So let us fast for Darfur; let us learn about the thousand homeless youth in Lakeview; let us help victims of Katrina and Niger's famine. Let us keep kosher while remembering the animals we are eating were Hashem's living creatures. Let us worry about toxic chemical levels in the air and water. And as we care for our world, Hashem's world, let us walk up that mountain with our beloved brothers and sisters who have to find new homes and new lives in our Holy Land, in Israel, who have to find safety from missiles and nuclear-armed regimes, who have to find a place to daven or eat on Shabbat or to play and learn at our shul. We walk up that mountain with our families and friends to find Hashem in our lives and to bring blessings to all those around us, to the Jewish people and to an entire world which so desperately needs us to take the complex journey of Avraham.

Shana tova. A year of shalom, aleinu ve'al kol Yisrael, for us and for all Israel, and in our merit, b'rachot, for "kol goyei ha'aretz" all the nations of the world.