Library of Sermons

Imagine, if you can, trying to define your life as succinctly as possible. I tried this thought exercise recently, and here’s what I discovered. The essence of who I am, of everything I have been passionate about throughout my life, can be reduced to three days. So here, my life, 58 years, in three days.

First day – Yom Kippur, 1973. My lifespan technically extends before the 1967 Six Day War, but I am simply too young to have any memories of it. And in many ways, the Yom Kippur War stands as a bookend to the Six Day War. The former was a stunning victory, the latter a humbling near defeat. If those days seem long ago – as they indeed are – think about the songs which emerged from each of those conflicts. Six Day War – Yerushalayim Shel Zahav, extolling the return to our holy places and, especially, to the reunification of Jerusalem. Consider this line: “Shofar koreh b’har ha-bayit b’ir ha-atikah.” “The sounding of the shofar is heard from the Temple mount in the Old City”, a reference to Jerusalem’s reunification. Yom Kippur War – “Lu Yehi”. If it sounds like the Beatles “Let It Be”, that’s by design; both the sound and sense echo the Fab Four’s original. But it’s also a heartbreaking song. Here’s a telling line: “Im ham’vaser omed ba-delet, sim na davar tov b’fiv.” “If the military envoy stands in the door, put good news in his mouth.” Of course, the presence of such a person is rarely good news; in fact, it more often than not signifies that a loved one has been killed. This line was so

painful for the many Israeli families who suffered losses that, in the earlier years, many performers actually omitted that line. How great were the losses? Roughly the equivalent to the number of American lives lost on 9/11, even though Israel has a population of just over two percent of the United States.

Though Israel miraculously recovered, many contemplated the specter of a world without Israel. And that’s a scary world. If you watched Ken Burns’ recent documentary on the US and the Holocaust, there is only one avenue that could possibly have led to large scale rescue – a state of Israel. A world without a state of Israel is a world of Jewish vulnerability, of needing to depend upon the good graces of a modern world which has failed us before. And I submit that whatever differences one may have with specific policies of the state of Israel, to return to that world is terrifying. Agreeing with Israel is a choice, but supporting Israel, in my view, is not. That’s one day.

The next day I would choose would be February 14, 1986. Having graduated from Penn, I went to Israel to learn full-time in preparation for rabbinical school the following September. I was part of a group of thousands of young people, most but not all Americans, who crowded into the Jerusalem Theater to hear Sharansky. Nearly every audience member present had lobbied for Sharansky’s release from the gulag, and now here he was in front of us. To understand the situation fully, I tell people the following: I have no recollection

whatsoever of what Sharansky talked about, or even whether he spoke in English or Hebrew. The electricity in the room is all I can recall.

When we fight for social justice, it can often seem overwhelmingly hopeless. Sometimes it seems that no matter how vigorously we advocate, nothing changes. But Sharansky proved for people of my generation that this isn’t true. Many times – most times – we’ll be disappointed at the meager results we get from our fight. But just as my father marched with Dr. King in August 1963, and saw civil rights instituted as a result, so too my involvement with the Soviet Jewry movement paid an apparent dividend. This has inspired me to be an advocate for those causes closest to me, with the hope that I be privileged to see a positive result once more.

The final day will be familiar to many of you. Sunday, November 17, 1991 – Edwin Edwards defeated David Duke in the race for governor. You remember the bumper stickers – “vote for the crook, it’s important.” But Duke’s candidacy was not a joke, despite being a former KKK grand wizard and one of the world’s most vociferous Holocaust deniers. The previous year, Duke had actually turned in a stronger performance against J. Bennett Johnston for the US Senate, garnering 44% of the overall vote and a majority of the white vote. Contemplate the following counter-history – with enough obstacles to voting, and suppression of black votes, David Duke would have been elected to the US Senate. Once in office, he would have been extremely difficult to defeat, and had he been in office

in 2017, one of the organizers of the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally would have been the senior senator from the state of Louisiana. And yes, there are several senators today whose services predates 1991.

I often say that the trauma of that day lasted about thirty minutes, but the post-trauma is now at 30 years. It’s a terrifying testimony to the power of racism and anti-Semitism. We’re shocked, but not surprised, when nine worshipers are killed at a church in South Carolina or eleven Jews are killed in Tree of Life Synagogue. The most enduring images of January 6, 2021, were the man in the “Camp Auschwitz” t-shirt and the man carrying the Confederate flag, quintessential symbols of anti-Semitism and racism. And we can, in more recent years, add more names to the list of victims, from homophobia to transphobia to heaven knows what other phobias. I wasn’t aware that the pledge of allegiance’s declaration of liberty and justice for all required a footnote.

Three days. Three values. Three guideposts for life. But these values did not appear as the result of serendipity or chance. They are who I am because they are the legacy of those who went before me. They are the values communicated to me in ways large and small that make these ideas as natural to me as the air I breathe.

As we pause now to remember those we have lost, we should ask ourselves if we have lived up to that legacy. It was handed down by those no longer here, but we owe to them to keep its flame alive.

More important, that is what we owe to ourselves. G’mar tov.