What follows is more or less a transcript of the service I ministered over the weekend for the Jewish holiday known as Rosh Hashanah…
ROSH HASHANAH 2020/5781
A service for religious, ethnic, & secular Jews
+Gentiles
+Non-Human Species
Ministered by Rabbi* Jakob Free M.F.A.**
* Self-ordained. Not sanctioned by any official Rabbinate, nor any unofficial Rabbinates.
** Degree not yet completed.
OPENING SONG
Ma Tovu, Kolot haLev Community Choir
OPENING REMARKS
How lovely are Your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling-places, O Israel!
Hello and happy new year. Thank you for coming to Rosh Hashanah: the COVID-19 Edition.
As you may notice, your usual Rosh Hashanah surroundings have been replaced by something strange and otherworldly. We are not in a temple. This is actually my mom’s backyard. In case you’re nervous about whether or not this is a holy site, know that I have given Violet and Penny (these are dogs) the supreme honor of sanctifying these grounds over the last few weeks. My only advice is that you watch your step.
This year’s service is going to be a bit different than what you might’ve encountered over the last 20 years or so. For one thing, there’s a new sheriff in town. Me. And as the Rabbi, Cantor, Choir, Sound Guy, Creative Director, and perhaps most importantly, the self-appointed Representative of the God of Abraham, I am going to be taking many liberties with the conventional Rosh Hashanah set-up.
For starters, this is going to be a service that cuts right to the point. The only direction I’ve received from the dues-paying members of Temple Beth Fox Lane (working title) are that we do a few standard prayers, have a few standard songs, read the required Torah passage, and then it’s on to the sermon, and then lunch.
While this is obviously a time for uniquely Jewish celebration, it is also an opportunity to step outside of the standard way of things, to approach tradition from a different angle, and perhaps more importantly, to open our doors to new members of our temple, whether they be Jew, gentile, or canine. We won’t be doing this just to be welcoming—and to be fair, welcoming people in is a very Jewish thing— but we’ll also be doing it to take a more humanistic approach to Judaism. Everyone chooses to live their Judaism differently and even folks who aren’t Jewish stand to gain something from hearing what we have to say, so I am going to be making a concerted effort to speak in terms everyone can understand. Hopefully this will reaffirm our good views, challenge our bad ones, and give everybody something to complain about on the ride home.
Before we get into it, a few notes on procedure:
The vast majority of today’s service will be in English. That being said, I will be inviting some of you to read passages from the prayer book, and if you so choose, you may read those passages in Hebrew.
The prayer book we will be using is Gates of Repentance. The version of the Torah we will be reading from is The Torah for Family Reading.
Cell phones should be turned off and brains should be set to ON and OPEN-MINDED.
Folks can choose to stand when they read from the prayer book, but other than that, you may remain seated for the entire duration of the service.
This service should run for anywhere from 45-60 minutes, with a small musical intermission in the middle, brought to you by Barbara Streisand. During this time you will have approximately 4 minutes to reflect deeply, use the facilities, hydrate, or a combination of all three.
Where God is concerned, I know for a fact that we have several non-believers among us, and where his/her/their name is mentioned, you may substitute a non-metaphysical concept in its place. For example, instead of saying “Blessed is our Eternal God,” you might say something like “Blessed is our Eternal mom’s backyard” or “Blessed is our Eternal Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.”
Speaking of Blessing Mom’s backyard, let’s turn to Page 87 in our prayer books.
[READ]
Since it is the New Year, it’s a good time to get our priorities straight. And in order to do that, we’ll turn to Page 90 and read from the prayer book.
[READ]
There are those who take the words of the Torah, our prayer books, and various other religious texts literally and there are those who find opportunity to examine the meaning of these texts metaphorically. In the case of the following prayer and for those who may be uncomfortable with the concept of a supreme power, I invite you to think of the god within the human heart, the personal god of the self. With that, we’ll turn to Page 107.
[READ]
Turn to Page 108 for our final prayer before the reading of the Torah.
[READ]
IN MEMORIAM
Open the floor in order for congregants to pay respects to our honored dead.
TORAH READING
The Binding of Isaac
INTERMISSION
Avinu Malkinu, Barbara Streisand
SERMON
In the Torah portion we read today, Abraham is tested by God in a way that is most likely offensive to our 21st century western morality, but then again, so much of what we read in the Torah is not meant to be held to the standards of the modern day.
In any case, in the text, we read God’s command to Abraham—that he should take his son up onto a mountain and kill him—and then are immediately taken to the events of the next day, when Abraham gets up in the morning, gets his stuff together, and heads off to the mountains with his son for a little ritual murder.
The interesting thing here is the total lack of conflict, interior or otherwise, on Abraham’s part. There is no paragraph, no sentence even, where Abraham agonizes over the terrible thing he must do. The command is received and the command is carried out. From those who make it their business to study the Torah, to random commentators on chabad.org and to everybody in between, people have come down on different sides of a debate as to whether or not Abraham comported himself properly in this first part of his test.
As a servant of God, there can be no argument that Abraham performed admirably. The big man upstairs sent a magic fax to one of his underlings and that underling went and did the big man’s bidding. The prayer books you hold in front of you now, the Torah I’ve read from today, and hundreds of other texts not just from the Hebrew tradition but from dozens of religious traditions put forth the paramount principal that god or the equivalent metaphysical force is to be held in the highest regard, to be followed if not blind then fervently. And in many cases the word of God is a thing unto law itself.
But as a father? How can it be said that Abraham is being a good dad? Again, we have to consider how people felt about their kids in the days of people like Abraham. This is a time that predates helicopter parenting, the PTA, and those little leashes you put on your kid to make sure they don’t run out in front of the ice cream truck. Despite the fact that back then that parents were spitting out kids left and right to help milk the cows, we must consider that Isaac was sort of a miracle love baby.
As a matter of fact, Isaac’s conception and ensuing birth was not only a miracle but the fulfillment of a promise made by god directly to Sarah. And this promise is not just a promise but the engine that powers the forward motion of the Hebrew people. Sarah is the mother of nations. She has the near cosmic task of creation, much like god himself. Killing Isaac isn’t just a bad dad move, it’s also like waiting out 50 Chanukahs to get a Nintendo from your parents and then basically immediately throwing the Nintendo off the Empire State Building because your parents asked you to pledge allegiance to them.
The truth of the matter is, that if we apply the slightest amount of logic to what’s going on in this story, we see that things don’t really make sense here. We can throw out the bad parenting argument and still be left with the problem of the miracle baby getting axed after its warranty is up. There are no returns here. This would be a final act and one taken without the slightest amount of scrutiny or curiosity.
Now, we all know why Abraham does what he does. You don’t say “no” to God, especially not a god as jealous, capricious, and violent as the god of the Old Testament.
But would it truly be unreasonable to ask God just a few follow up questions in this moment? Would it be wrong—morally wrong—to question God’s will? If God gave us free will and does not expect us to exercise it, in dealings with him or otherwise, what really is the point of having free will? It sounds, in that case, that free will is like a fancy option on your car, that you never wind up using, like “Sport Mode” or a refrigerator in your glove compartment.
Maybe Abraham doesn’t like confrontation. Maybe Abraham doesn’t want to incite the wrath of a god whose gamertag on Xbox Live would be something like WrathMaster6000. And that’s all well and good. But where Abraham is bound by the rigid nature of being a character in a story that we read year after year, where beginning, middle, and end is always the same, we Jews and Jew-affiliates can permit ourselves to suffer every Jewish New Year with questions about the HOWs and WHYs of this ordeal.
And we can even apply those questions to other things…to modern things. We can ask these questions of each other, of our communities, of our nation, and even the entire planet.
Kevin M. Kruse, a professor of history at Princeton University, said recently “History that exalts a nation’s strengths without ever examining its shortcomings, that prefers feeling good rather than thinking hard, that seeks simplistic celebration over a full understanding — well, that’s not history; that’s propaganda.
I say this with all due respect, as a Jew, as a human—the Old Testament, these prayer books, many of the texts we read on this day and others—these are works of propaganda. I do not mean this in a derogatory way. I say this as a matter of fact. Actually, the Torah sort of has to be propaganda, since for a very a long time it was looked upon as an immaculate document from god meant to provide the ultimate moral instruction to the Hebrew people. The torah is in all likelihood a singular work in this regard. And if you do not agree with me when I say that it may be the prime example of religious propaganda, then hopefully you’ll concede that it cracks the Top 5. It could slide right between the L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics and Joseph Smith’s The Ten Commandments Part 2: Jesus Strikes Again.
But one of the unique strengths of the Jewish people is that after years of being hunted for sport, we have finely tuned bullshit detectors. Asking questions and scrutinizing and trying to figure out the weak points in arguments is part of our litany of super powers as the chosen people.
It is the Jew who exalts his nation’s strength or the strength of his god without ever examining its shortcomings that does his nation and his god a disservice. It is the Jew who prefers to feel good simply about being a chosen one rather than thinking hard about what it means to be a chosen one in the first place, that does his people a disservice. It is the Jew who seeks simplistic celebration about the story of a man who goes onto a mountain to kill his son over a full understanding of what this story means, that does himself a disservice.
You see, in the time of Abraham, child sacrifices did not cause the pearl clutching that it might today. Child sacrifices were a fashionable practice back then and UNICEF was not riding into Beersheeba to stop the Abrahams of the world. But that was a then and this is now. We pride ourselves, as civilized people in a civilized nation on a rapidly civilizing planet, that our children are safe and sound from the hands of those who might take them up onto a mountain to kill them.
I ask you then, what do we call what is happening on the southern border of the United States of America? Between 2018 and 2019, it was reported that at least 7 migrant children died while in ICE detention after a decade when no such deaths were reported. What service, if any, are ICE agents providing the people sitting in this backyard, the people in this community, the people in this country? We are often told that police officers and CIA agents and the hardworking folks at the TSA and the proud and noble members of the armed forces are making sacrifices for our freedoms, to keep us safe, to protect the constitution of the United States of America. The death of children whether intentional or through negligence—is this a sacrifice being made on my behalf? On yours?
What would Abraham have to say about this? What would God have to say about it? Would they admonish those responsible for these deaths? After examining the story we read today, it’s hard for me to imagine a moral argument made by either of these characters. The guy who is going to kill his son and the guy who told him to do it? Yeah right!
God, in this instance, is essentially putting out a hit on a child. In a court of law, the hitman—in this case, Abraham—is not solely responsible for the murder he commits. It is also the person who orchestrates the hit that bears some responsibility.
What power does ICE answer to? Is it the president? The Department of Homeland Security? Surely some of the men and women who work in ICE are believers in a supreme power. Surely, some of them believe that they are doing the work of god.
“How many deaths of children at the hands of the state are acceptable?” What is the moral answer to this question? What is the Jewish answer to this question?
And what of Sarah? On the first day of Rosh Hashanah we learn of her barrenness and the promise god makes to her, that one day she will be the mother of nations. For decades, Sarah is unable to conceive a child until suddenly she is granted the ability to do so by an all powerful god.
Just this week, a whistleblower complaint was filed by a nurse who works at an immigrant detention center in Georgia—the complaint alleges that migrant women underwent forced hysterectomies while detained at this facility. If what this nurse has alleged is true, this means that forced sterilizations are occurring on US soil with taxpayer money. Sarah was given a chance after decades of barrenness. The US might very well be doing the reverse. Again, I ask what is the Jewish answer to this problem?
“Never again.” It has been a common refrain in the years following the Holocaust. Never again will we allow what happened to us to happen again. But who is “us?” Does this declaration apply only to the descendants of Abraham? Does it extend to all American citizens? What of illegal immigrants? What of citizens of other countries? The truth is that we know what the Jewish answer to this problem is. We do not need the Torah to instruct us. We do not need the Binding of Isaac to instruct us. We already know the answer.
If this moralizing I’m engaging in here seems sanctimonious or self-aggrandizing, then I hope you’ll forgive me. I mean only to encourage us all to ask questions, to think critically about the stories we tell ourselves about great peoples and great nations.
The myth of a noble and just America is exactly that: a myth. Just as the myth of the righteous Hebrew is no more than a myth. The American experiment is still underway and there is still a long road in front of us. If we are to live our so-called American values, our so-called Jewish values, we must not fall prey to the myth of the noble America or the righteous follower of god. We must not blindly accept the will of a god who asks us to kill our children. When we accept without scrutiny the exploits of Washingtons and Columbuses and Abrahams and Ginsburgs and Moseses and gods and prophets, what we do is close our minds to the possibility that men and women are fallible—they are not all good or all bad. What we do is lose sight of the truth: which is that god is the beginning of wisdom, but not the end. What we do is worship at the feet of false idols. What we do is forgo a fundamental aspect of Judaism, that is, asking what Rabbi Gelman calls the “too-tough” questions.
When God comes to us in a dream or in the form of a burning bush and tasks us with the impossible, it is the duty of good Jews to think about what is being asked of us. When the nations of men task their citizens with standing by while evil in the truest sense of the word is committed in their name, it is the duty of good citizens to think about what is being asked of them. If we are a noble people, then let us do the noble thing. If we are just people, then let us bring about justice, not only when Jews are the target of persecution, but when black people and latin people and queer people and indigenous people are the targets. To quote the honorable prophet Steve Rogers, “when the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree by the river of truth, and tell the whole world 'No, You Move.”
So as we look towards the year of 5781 or 2021 let us think about what it means to be a Jew. What it means to be a New Yorker and an American and member of the human race.
"To quote from Whitman, 'O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?' Answer. That you are here — that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?” (This is actually not me quoting Whitman, but rather me quoting Robin Williams quoting himself in Dead Poet’s Society for an iPad commercial.)
L’Shanah tovah.
FINAL BENEDICTION
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. (This is from Dune!)
OUTGOING SONG