This is the sermon that I delivered at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island, on Yom Kippur morning.

​This has been a great baseball season, especially if you are a fan of the Boston Red Sox, the New York Yankees, or the Houston Astros. With just eleven or twelve games left to play, all three of these American league teams have either reached or have a good shot at reaching one hundred wins or more. If they can keep it up, this might be the first time in Major League history that three teams from the same league all finish above the century mark.

But, of course, that is not all that is happening in baseball. Every season is filled with thousands of stories – some big and some small – that all tell us something about the game, about life, and about our world. This morning, I want to tell you one very small story that you may not have heard about. It’s a story from the other league, the National League, and it is a story that teaches us about more than baseball.

In a game between the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals on July 22 at Wrigley Field, the Cards led 2-0 in the bottom of the fourth inning. Cubs center fielder Ian Happ came up against Cardinals pitcher Miles Mikolas with one out and a runner on second. Happ tapped a pitch softly foul down the first base line. The Cubs’ first base coach Will Venable picked up the ball and, as coaches often do, he tossed it gently to a young fan, about ten years old, sitting in the first row. Nice, right?

The boy, however, missed the toss from Venable and the ball fell to the ground under the seats. An adult man sitting in the row right behind the boy quickly reached down and picked up the ball that the coach had intended for the youngster. He immediately held the ball up in triumph and in laughter. He then presented the ball to the woman sitting next to him. Neither the man nor the woman even looked at the boy. The woman just took out her cell phone to take a picture of her prize.

Now, this entire sequence of events was, of course, caught by a television camera and broadcast across the country. Not only that, but someone captured the video and Tweeted it out to the world with the caption, “When going to a baseball game, DON'T be this guy.”

You can imagine what followed. The Tweet-storm that followed was filled with indignation over the grown man who stole a ball from a kid and laughed. Here are just a few of my favorite responses: “This guy shouldn’t be allowed back to the ballpark,” “Who is this guy? I bet he steals his kids’ Halloween candy,” “That was mean, just mean,” and, my favorite, “I hope this man and woman are booed wherever they go for the rest of their lives.”

The Cubs organization, realizing that they had a situation on their hands, sent a stadium worker to the boy to make amends. The boy was given a baseball signed by Cubs All-Star second baseman Javier Baez, and the Cubs official Twitter account sent out the message, “A [Javy Baez] signed ball should take care of it.”

A photo of the kid was included in the Cubs tweet showing the youngster proudly holding up two baseballs. Yay. The villains were publicly humiliated and, due to the quick thinking of the Cubs organization, the boy went home happy with, not one, but two baseballs, one signed by his hero. God’s in His heaven and all is right in the world.

Here are a few of the news headlines that came out that day: “Cubs intervene after fan steals ball from child.” “Cubs Give Young Fan 2 Baseballs After Middle-Aged Man Steals Foul Ball.” And “Terrible Cubs fan savagely steals foul ball away from young child.”

And, by the way, later in his at-bat, Happ hit a double down the first-base line to knock in the Cubs’ first run of the day. The Cubbies went on to win the game, 7-2.

But this is not the end of the story.

A few hours after the game ended, some new details emerged. It started when a fan who had been sitting next to the laughing man during the game sent out his own Tweet. He wrote, “He had already helped that kid get a ball. He gave two more [balls] away to kids also. He was a great guy. TV got this all wrong.” Uh-oh.

Then another fan wrote, “I was sitting next to the boy and the same fan helped him snag a ball a few innings before this.”

So, remember that the Cubs organization had given the boy a ball signed by Javy Baez, but, in the photo, the boy had two balls. Well, you guessed it. The second ball was one that the laughing man had given the boy a few innings before the incident caught on the video.

The Cubs organization confirmed this. One of the Cubs’ on-air hosts sent out a message saying, “The man who grabbed the ball on the widely seen video had actually already helped the little boy get a ball earlier. The young man has a game used ball and a Javy Baez ball. All is well. Guy is A-OK so let it go people.” Oops.

And, here is the last detail that came out. It seems that the woman that the laughing man gave the ball to – that was his wife. After she snapped the photo, she handed the ball to yet another child, a stranger to her, who had not yet gotten a ball that day. Double oops.

So, what do we learn from this? What Yom Kippur lessons are there for us to gather from this story of a baseball, the internet, and misdirected blame? Well, let’s notice a few things about this story.

We get outraged so easily, don’t we? It doesn’t take more than a headline to get our blood boiling. In these days when Twitter, Facebook, and a host of partisan news sites scramble post sensational headlines as quickly as possible, it is O-so-easy for us to react impulsively.

But before I get too self-righteous about modern technology, let’s also notice that this is a human problem, not just an internet problem. Our autonomic nervous system wants to respond with outrage much more than our conscious mind wants to investigate and digest complex information. We human beings are prone to overreacting when we feel a situation is unfair and unjust, or if we believe that someone vulnerable, like a child, is being taken advantage of. It’s part of how our brains work.

It’s actually even worse than that, because, as we have seen, there are always people who, for their own purposes, are willing to take advantage of our over-reactive nervous systems by intentionally creating outrage. It has reached the point now where we are exposed constantly to images, news stories, and provocative statements that are designed to trigger our impulse to indignation. We are being manipulated. Our proclivity towards outrage is being used to drive our society apart.

Outrage like this tends to provoke equal and opposite reactions until everyone is angry, pointing fingers at each other, casting blame. We are all so busy being infuriated that no one actually tries to solve the underlying problems.

The examples are obvious:

The recent outrage over the separation of children from their undocumented immigrant parents provoked an opposing outrage from people who believe that immigrant families are taking advantage of our society and draining our resources. As a result, everyone is angry, and very few people are actually promoting bipartisan solutions to our country’s broken immigration policies.

Gun safety advocates say their opponents are responsible for the violent deaths of children. Gun rights advocates say their opponents are conspiring to strip the civil rights of law-abiding citizens. Compromise solutions are muted by attention-grabbing headlines.

Abortion opponents say their political rivals seek the murder of innocent children. Reproductive rights advocates accuse their rivals of causing the death of women who must resort to back-alley, clothes-hanger abortions. Emotions and beliefs on both sides are so extreme that our society has become incapable of having any true dialogue on these issues.

How can a society not tear itself apart when it is divided by such intense vitriol, accusation, anger, and demonization? It has led us into an age of bloodless civil war. (Which, by the way, is exactly how all actual bloody civil wars get started).

Now, believe me, I am not saying that neither side is right in these debates. I have been a partisan myself on all of these issues. I, too, have used strong language in speaking out against those who oppose my point of view. Yet, we have to recognize that believing that we are right on an issue does not require us to be so outraged by those who disagree with us that we must declare them to be unfit for the human race. Remember how easily people were provoked into saying that the laughing man at the ballpark should be banned from baseball for life? Remember how foolish such claims looked after we took the time to suspend our immediate, instinctually anger and considered all the facts from a wider perspective?

Yom Kippur is a day to consider how, sometimes, the best part of us leads us to our worst behaviors. We have all had moments when we have been overwhelmed by our self-righteous certainty. We have all had times when we thought that we, surely, were on the side of the angels and that those who disagreed with us were the very devil incarnate. Yom Kippur reminds us to follow the words of our Sages who taught, “Make your Torah study a permanent fixture of your life. Say little and do much. And receive each person with a pleasant demeanor” (M. Avot 1:15). Our tradition teaches us not to be sucked so easily into the outrage machine. Rather, we are asked to take the time to learn, to see things from a broad perspective. Our tradition teaches us to be more concerned with finding resolution to address the world’s ills than with words of accusation and denunciation. It teaches us to cultivate an instinct toward kindness, pleasantness, making peace, and seeing the best in other people.

It is not always an easy thing to do, especially when we live in a world that has so much to arouse our anger and outrage – especially when so many are intentionally trying to keep us in a state of perpetual outrage. In the end, though, the path of compassion and kindness is the path that leads to real solutions, real understanding, and real healing for a world that is as battered and bruised as it is.

This Yom Kippur, make yourself a person who takes the time to reflect, consider, and to know the facts. Don’t be the one who launches the angry tweet without thinking. Be the one who says little, does much, and brings healing to the world.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah. May you be sealed for a good year.

This is the sermon that I delivered at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island, on Kol Nidre night.

​Did you ever see a bad baby? I mean, outside of a horror movie, did you ever see a newborn that just seemed evil? An infant with the look of malice in her eyes?

We have all seen or heard about babies who are difficult, temperamental, or emotionally volatile, but have you ever seen a baby that was truly and intentionally hurtful? I don’t think so. Despite the things people sometimes say about people who were “born to be bad” or “wicked from the womb,” I think that we have an intuitive understanding that nobody really is born bad.

The qualities we associate with human evil – thoughtless anger, vindictiveness, willed hostility, hatred, resentment, and jealousy – these are all learned behaviors. The forces that make people engage in bad behavior are a complex mixture of experience, environment, and temperament, but, for the most part, bad behavior is product of hurtful experiences and hurtful circumstances. People learn to be bad when they are forced into difficult situations, when they are treated badly, or, when they don’t have their basic needs met. That is what makes people bad.

And though it might be tempting to think that human beings are neutral from birth – neither good nor bad – there is actual scientific evidence to suggest that people are naturally good. In 2007, researchers at Yale University set out to discover if infants had a preference for good over evil. They showed six- to ten-month-old babies a simple puppet play. One of the characters in the play started at the bottom of a hill. The babies watched this character struggle to climb up the hill over and over again.

Then, two other characters were introduced. One character helped the first one go up the hill by pushing up from behind. The other new character tried to hinder the first character by pushing down from above. The babies watched these scenes repeatedly with enough time for them to recognize the different characters, to process what each character was trying to do, and to decide what they thought about it.

Then, the researchers presented each baby, one at a time, with a choice to reach to touch either the helping character or the hurting character to see which one the baby preferred. The babies overwhelmingly chose the helper. Fourteen out of sixteen ten-month-olds, and twelve out of twelve six-month-olds, chose the helper character and not the hurter. (“Social Evaluation by Preverbal Infants,” Nature. Vol. 450, 22 November 2007).

Even more compelling to me is the evidence from studies that look at the way we respond to seeing other people in pain. Did you ever watch someone get injured and flinch as if the same thing were happening to you? MRI brain scans show that when we see another person in pain, it stimulates the same parts of our own brains that are stimulated when we are injured ourselves. We all have specific cells in our brains, called mirror neurons, that help us feel what other people feel. Some scientists see this as evidence that our brains are hard-wired for empathy.

When the Torah instructs us to love other people as we love ourselves, it is a reflection of a neurological reality. Caring for other people, feeling their hurt as if it were our own, is part of how our brains are supposed to work.

Is that the same thing as goodness? You might argue that our preference from infancy for pro-social behavior and our neurological programming for empathy are just examples of how evolution has made us social animals who care about others for our own benefit. You could argue that it’s not really pure altruism – pure goodness – because each individual benefits from being part of a group in which everyone cares for each other. But, isn’t that what goodness really is? Acting for the benefit of others – no matter what the motivation – is also a choice against selfish behavior that benefits only ourselves. We have a choice between good and bad behaviors. From an early age, and in ways that are intrinsic to our physical construction, we have an inborn preference to choose to be good.

This scientific understanding of our natural tendency toward benevolence is parallel to the dominant beliefs of Jewish tradition. Judaism generally teaches that people have both an inclination to do what is good – yetzer ha-tov – and an inclination to do what is wrong – yetzer ha-ra – but that in the interaction between these opposing forces, we always have the capacity and the innate preference to overcome our bad inclination with the good.

The traditional blessing that Jews recite upon waking in the morning says, Elohai neshamah shenatata bi, tehorah hee, “My God, the soul that You have placed within me is pure.” We may develop bad and hurtful behaviors in our lives – and we all do, to one extent or another – but this prayer, and rabbinic Judaism, says that our deepest essence, the person we are at our core, is fundamentally pure. We are born to be good.

I should note that this is an idea that is a contrast to the beliefs held by some Christians, especially evangelical Protestants. The belief in original sin, the idea that every human being has a fundamentally sinful nature from birth, derives from idea that Adam and Eve sinned in eating the forbidden fruit and that all human beings inherited that sin from them. Judaism rejects this interpretation of the Garden of Eden story. While some Christians believe that humanity needs to be saved from a sinful nature, Judaism believes that humanity needs to save itself by embracing and expressing a nature that is intrinsically good. The Torah teaches that the goodness of the world, which God declared in the creation of the world, still stands. It is still part of who we are.

But Judaism also has this additional observation about the nature of our goodness: Our tendency to be good may be innate, but it is not necessarily permanent. Every time we engage in good behavior, we strengthen our natural tendency to do what is good and right. But every time we engage in bad behavior, we weaken that tendency and we actually train ourselves to misbehave. Or, to put it another way, being good is a habit. The more we do it, the more we want to do it. The less we do it, the more we wean ourselves away from goodness.

The preeminent example of this in Jewish tradition is Pharaoh. Several times in the book of Exodus, we read that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart against Moses and the Israelites, making him more and more determined not to free the slaves every time Moses said, “Let my people go.” The rabbis are troubled by this. They wonder, did God deny Pharaoh free will by hardening his heart? If so, by what right did God punish Pharaoh for doing something that he was not free to choose?

In the midrash, Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish answers the question by saying, “When God warns a person once, twice, and even a third time, and the person still does not repent of bad behavior, then God’s heart narrows against that person’s ability to change his or her behavior” (Sh'mot Rabbah 13:3).

I think that we can understand the theological explanation in the ancient midrash with the language of psychology we use today. The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart was an ailment that Pharaoh chose for himself. Every time Pharaoh said “No” to Moses, Pharaoh became more deeply inured to his own cruel behavior. After he had made evil choices so many times, he rendered himself incapable of behaving any other way. It is not that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart in order to change his behavior. Rather, God’s compassion was exiled from Pharaoh’s heart by the choices Pharaoh made himself.

There is a lesson in this for us. Be careful about the choices you make. Choosing behavior that goes against your own awareness of what is right makes it harder for you to make good choices in the future. If you behave in ways that are morally compromised, lacking in integrity, cruel or hurtful, you may make yourself incapable of making any other choice. Good or bad, sinners or saints, we are the choices we make. Being good is not about the lofty hopes or wishes we think about but don’t act upon. Being good is only about what we actually do. We are only as good as our actions.

To turn this observation around and put it in positive terms, we should all remember that we are – deep to our core – really good. None of us was born bad, not a single one of us. It is within us to be good and to make ourselves better through good actions. Each one of us has the capacity within us to be as righteous as Moses. We were made to be good.

On Yom Kippur, when we are called upon to atone for our bad behavior and to engage in repentance, we can know that we are truly returning back to our natural state. That is why we call repentance t’shuvah. The word in Hebrew literally means “returning.” In making atonement, none of us has to go to a place we have never been before. Turning toward God is returning to the place we all came from. Turning to God is going back to the person we were before we were derailed by life’s difficult circumstances, by the suffering we have endured, and by our unmet needs. Making atonement is an act of repairing the damage of our past. When we atone, we are really healing ourselves, loving ourselves, coming to terms with our remembered pain, and becoming more than the just the product of our past suffering.

Know this, my friends. You are good. You were born to be good. Even more, you were born to help make the world good, just the way God intended the world to be from the very beginning. You already have it within you to repair the mistakes you have made, the hurt you have done, and the hurt you have experienced. You have everything you need. It is what you are here for. It is why you are on earth. This Yom Kippur, make it real. Return to who you really are.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah. May you be sealed for goodness.

This is the sermon I delivered at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island, on the first morning of Rosh Hashanah 5779.

You probably have had this conversation before. Probably more than once. You are talking with a person – a person whom, for the moment, we will call “a curious non-Jew.” In the conversation, the curious non-Jews asks you about the fact that you’re Jewish. The curious non-Jew summons up the courage (because it takes courage to ask questions that you fear might cause offense) and asks, “So, what exactly do Jews believe in?”

There is an awkward pause. At first you thought that this might be a good chance to demonstrate how great it is to be Jewish, but after a moment you realize that you’re not sure how to answer. What do Jews believe in? It’s a hard question.

The curious non-Jew tries to fill the silence by adding, “I mean, do you believe in the Bible? Do you believe in heaven and hell? Do you believe in life after death? Do you believe in Jesus? Do you celebrate Christmas?”

If the follow-up questions were meant to make it easier for you to answer, they actually make it harder. You consider taking on the questions one at a time, but you’re not sure that you even know all the answers, and, really, you don’t want to get into a heavy conversation about religion in the office break room, or while you’re watching your kids at the playground, or during your weekly bridge game. You now wish that the curious non-Jew had never asked the question in the first place.

So does the curious non-Jew.

If you are brave, though – and I know you want to be brave – you go back to the original question – “What do Jews believe?” – and try to take it from there. You might say, “Jews believe in one God who is loving and just. Jews believe that the purpose of human beings is to try to make the world a better place. We are supposed to do mitzvot, the good things that God wants us to do – treating people with dignity and respect, loving our neighbors, taking care of the earth, standing up for justice, celebrating Shabbat and the holidays with our families and our community, learning about the Torah and our tradition, and just basically being a good person.”

“Oh, and we don’t believe in Jesus or celebrate Christmas, but my kids go over to my sister-in-law’s house every year to see their tree because it’s so pretty.”

If you managed to say something like that, congratulations. You did great. You affirmed a basic truth: Judaism does stand for something. Judaism does ask us to believe in something. That may not sound like a radical statement, but it is. If you look at the way Jews and Judaism are portrayed in the press and other media, you will see that Jews are often shown, first and foremost, as a people who are interested in themselves – their own history and culture, the state of Israel, the Holocaust, and defending themselves from anti-Semitism.

You have to respect the curious non-Jew who asked the question about what Jews believe in, because, for the most part, Jews are portrayed in popular culture as not believing in anything other than what’s good for the Jews. So, I’m glad you asked your question, my curious non-Jewish friend. Yes, Jews do believe in something more than just themselves.

Now, mind you, I am not saying that Jews should not be interested in Jewish culture, Jewish history, in the Holocaust, in combating anti-Semitism, and in the state of Israel. Those things should all be important to us. But, remember Hillel’s famous teaching: “If I am not for myself, who is for me? But when I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” (Pirke Avot 1:14). We do need to care about ourselves as a people, but we cannot be concerned only with ourselves. The core of Judaism is a call to courageous action to repair the world. It is a system based on core beliefs.

Judaism believes in justice. The Hebrew word for justice is tzedakah, and it means so much more than charity. Tzedakah means that no matter the circumstances of your birth – whether you are black, brown or white; whatever nation you are from; whether you are rich or poor; whatever religion you adhere to; no matter whom you love; whether you are male or female, transgender, or non-binary – you are a human being created B’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), and your life matters.

That means that you do not have to accept harassment or lower wages because you are a woman. It means that you do not have to tolerate being stopped or scrutinized by police because of the color of your skin. It means you should not be branded as a criminal because you are from another country. It means that you should not be denied the essentials of living – food, housing, healthcare, education and a living wage for hard work – just because you are poor. Judaism stands for justice.

Judaism believes in and stands for love. Judaism stands for the idea that the world can only be repaired when human beings truly and deeply care for each other, know each other, and seek peace with one another. V’ahavta l’rei’acha kamocha – “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). Our tradition teaches us to be more interested in allowing different people to live with each other in kindness and acceptance than in keeping them apart out of fear. Judaism stands for a society grounded in awareness that we are all our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers – every one of them. Judaism stands for love.

Judaism stands for reverence – a sense of awe before our Creator, and the awareness that we are not the center of the universe. V’yareita mei’Elohecha, ani Adonai, “You shall revere your God, I Adonai” (Leviticus 19:14). Judaism teaches that we have an obligation to the greater good and not to think only of self-interest. That requires humility – the humility to recognize that we don’t have all the answers and that we need to listen to each other with open hearts.

Our tradition teaches us that when we disagree with other people, it is not an invitation to insult and hate them. It is an invitation to engage in sincere inquiry, discussion, mutual respect, and genuine connection. Judaism stands for reverence.

I know. These are pretty thoughts and ideas. However, they don’t mean anything if we don’t live them. That is why Judaism is also about action. How do we turn our ideals into an action plan?

Step number one, always, is to live our values in our personal lives. Be the person who embodies the world as it should be. Think of every person – those you interact with in your daily life, and those you hear about in the news – as another human being, like you, created in the image of God. Command yourself to treat the suffering of others as if it were your own suffering. Bring compassion and caring to people in need. Make your life an example of forgiveness, acceptance, generosity, respect, and awareness of your limitations and limited experience. Rejoice in the variety of humanity and in the lives of people whose circumstances are wholly different from your own.

But the action plan for living Judaism requires more than just a personal attitude adjustment. Judaism teaches that each of us is more than an isolated individual. We belong to each other and we are at our best when we act together as a community to make our world a better place. Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh, “All Jews are responsible for one another” (B. Shevuot 39a). Judaism stands for something, and we make it real when we do it together.

This summer, a group of Temple Sinai members organized our Outreach Group, which we are calling Bikur Cholim, the Hebrew phrase that means “Visiting the Sick.” People like Phyllis Solod, Ellen Gourse, Sheila Land, and Abby McLean have volunteered to visit elderly people and people living with disabilities in our community who are in need of lovingkindness, care and support. Bikur Cholim is a way to make our Judaism real through the simple act of being with people who need love and attention. I’m asking you today to consider being a part of Bikur Cholim. Help us organize our community to do something for the people who need us.

Bob Haiken and Elaine Land are two of the leaders of our Sandwiches at Sinai group that meets once a month on Sunday mornings to make simple meals, including peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We deliver the meals to “Be the Change,” an organization that serves dinners for the needy at the West Warwick Senior Center. I’m asking you today to consider joining Sandwiches at Sinai on Sunday mornings and helping to feed people who are hungry.

This winter, I am organizing a day for our community to go to the State House to talk with lawmakers about the values of justice that Judaism stands for. I ask you to consider being a part of that experience, too. We will tell our representatives and senators that justice demands that we address Rhode Island’s affordable housing crisis so poor people can find a home they can afford. We will tell our legislators that justice demands that we give immigrants a chance to be successful in America, and that they be treated with fairness and respect. We will tell lawmakers that justice demands that women receive equal pay for equal work.

How will we do that? We will do it in the way that our tradition asks us: We will do it in a spirit of holiness. We will listen. We will be respectful. We will hear what others have to say. We will do our best to serve justice kindly, lovingly, and with humility, and we will do it with determination.

If Judaism means enough to us to come together to pray on Rosh Hashanah, it should mean enough to us to do something about our broken world. If Judaism means more to us than just celebrating being Jewish, then we have to show it with our actions. We have to live in a way that acknowledges that Judaism calls us to moral action on our ancient principles.

We need to be able to tell that courageous and curious non-Jew – the one who asked what we believe in – that our Judaism stands for something. We need to show that we are willing to be courageous, too. Because, you know, you do need to be brave to be a Jew. You need to have the courage to live for something, to stand for something, and to stick with it even when it would be easier not to. You have to be brave to be a Jew. You have to be willing to take risks. That’s what our ancestors did to make sure that Judaism would be handed down to us, and it is what we have to do to make Judaism relevant to the lives of our children and grandchildren. There is no easy way to be a Jew.

And know this, too: It’s not just that one curious and courageous non-Jew who wants to know what Judaism stands for. It is the whole world. For thousands of years, our people have seen ourselves as the conscience of humanity – Or goyim, "a light to the nations" (Isaiah 49:6). The whole world needs to know what Jews are willing to do for the sake of justice, love, and true reverence. The whole world, whether it knows it or not, is waiting for Jews to live up to the values that our prophets proclaimed in the Bible. The whole world depends on Jews being Jews. If not now, when?

Be brave. Be courageous. Be a Jew who stands for something. Make waves. Make a difference. Help to heal the world.

Shanah tovah um’tukah. May you have a good and sweet new year.