This is the sermon that I delivered at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island, on the morning of Yom Kippur 5782, September 16, 2021.

I want to introduce you to Rosie. It’s not her real name, but she is a real person, a Jewish woman who lives in Rhode Island. Like millions of other people of all religions, races and ethnicities across the United States, Rosie lost her job within the first month of the COVID-19 pandemic and needed help. Without her income, she was in danger of not being able to pay her utility bills, buying food, or even keeping her home. Fortunately for Rosie, she had some previous familiarity with Jewish Collaborative Services of Rhode Island and she sought their assistance.

Rosie spoke with Marcie, the coordinator of the Full Plate Kosher Food Pantry, and she received an emergency delivery of food, along with other household supplies and personal care products. (By the way, the Full Plate Food Pantry is the agency that we are supporting this year with our High Holy Day Virtual Food Drive.)

Rosie also connected with a case manager at JCS who was able to give her money from a designated COVID-19 relief fund to help her pay her utility bills and rent.

Rosie was so thankful for the help that she sent a note to the agency. She wrote, “Though I am certainly grateful to JCS for the financial support, food and supplies, I am most grateful for their caring and compassion. I turned to Shana from the Kesher program when I felt the worst. When I was fearful about my future, Shana listened and cared.”

Now, you might think that I am telling you Rosie’s story today to give the Jewish community a pat on the back for taking care of our own. Yes, Jewish Collaborative Services does an amazing job. Yes, I encourage you to support their work with generous donations. Yes, we at Temple Sinai are so lucky to have Shana Prohofsky, the woman Rosie praised in her letter, as our Temple’s Kesher Worker and I encourage you to seek her help whenever you are in need.

What may not be clear, though, is that this is not really such a happy story. Even though Rosie got help, there are many others who do not. Even for Rosie, this was a painful experience. It’s always hard to admit that you need help and to accept food and money. There is an aspect of the experience, even when it is most deeply needed – even when the people offering help are loving, kind and supportive – that causes people to feel humiliation and despair. Nobody likes feeling that way – nobody – and we should not be content with a society that forces anyone into that position.

The reason why I am telling you about Rosie today is because there are millions of Rosies out there – in Rhode Island and beyond – people who are struggling with poverty. And, the difficult truth is, if you have never experienced poverty, it’s difficult to imagine how hard it is – how poverty traps people over generations – how not having a job means you can’t get a job – how lenders, financial institutions and the legal system prey on poor people – how having to struggle to feed your children makes everything else in your life a thousand times more difficult – how falling into poverty eviscerates people’s self-esteem and how they are perceived by others.

Poverty is an issue that many of us are entirely blind to. But it is a problem – a huge problem – right here in our state and in our community. Rhode Island has the highest poverty rate in New England at 13.4%. One out of every seven and a half residents of Rhode Island lives in poverty – more than 136,000 people. And although poverty is a real and significant problem in the Jewish community, as you probably know, it is far worse in other segments of the population.

We may think that we are a state that doesn’t discriminate on the basis of race, gender and age, but poverty in Rhode Island definitely does discriminate. The poverty rate for Black people in Rhode Island is 24% – one in every four Black people in our state lives in poverty. For Hispanic people, the rate is nearly 29%. For women of all races in Rhode Island, the poverty rate is 2.5% higher than it is for men.

What age group do you imagine suffers the worst poverty in Rhode Island? If you guessed the elderly, you are looking at the wrong end of the spectrum. It’s children. The poverty rate for people under six years old in Rhode Island is 22%. Almost one in four infants, toddlers and preschoolers in Rhode Island is living in poverty. Right now.

Homelessness is at a particular crisis point in Rhode Island. Every year about 4,000 men, women and children experience homelessness in Rhode Island, largely because our state lacks enough affordable housing units, and that results in sky high rents. The situation is so bad that – listen carefully – there is not a single town in the state – not East Providence, not Woonsocket, not Central Falls – where the average family seeking to rent can afford the average priced two-bedroom apartment. Think about that.

No matter what image comes up in your mind when you hear the term homeless, it is almost certainly wrong because there is no one type of homeless person. Homeless people are single people and they are families with children. They are people who are out of work and they are people who have jobs. They are people living outdoors and in shelters, and they are people who move from one friend’s house to another or live in their cars. They are middle-age, elderly and, increasingly, they are children. Over the past six months, I have had no fewer than three people from this Jewish community approach me for help because they are homeless or are in imminent danger of becoming homeless.

I should not have to tell you that this is not the way a just society is supposed to be. This does not meet the standard of what Jewish tradition demands. In today’s haftarah, you heard the words of the prophet Isaiah who said that a fast on Yom Kippur that is only about begging God for forgiveness while, at the same time, allowing people to go hungry and homeless is no fast at all. Such a fast will not, in Isaiah’s words, “lift up your voice before heaven" (Isaiah 58:4).

So, what can we do? There actually is a lot.

Over the past several years, Temple Sinai has joined with the Rhode Island Interfaith Coalition to Reduce Poverty in support of legislation to combat homelessness, hunger and poverty. Many of you will remember the speakers we have had at our Friday night services talking about these issues and many of you have participated in writing letters, calling lawmakers, and testifying at the State House.

That work has paid off. This spring, our efforts resulted in a state law that now makes it illegal for landlords to discriminate against people who use federal housing vouchers to pay their rent. Such discrimination used to be so widespread in Rhode Island that classified ads said explicitly “No Section 8” – no federal housing vouchers. That will not happen any more.

This year, we also passed the Fair Pay Act to protect women and people of color from being paid less than men and white people doing the same work with the same qualifications. We passed the first increase in 30 years of RI Works benefits, which go to the poorest of the poor families in the state. We passed the Rhode Island Minimum Wage Bill that will increase the hourly wage of $11.50 to $15 an hour over the next four years.

These victories are enormous for struggling families and individuals in our state like Rosie. The 30% increase in the RI Works benefit alone will help thousands of children growing up in families without certainty about their next meal, adequate clothing, or even a roof over their heads.

But, of course, these victories are not enough. In order to answer Isaiah’s charge, we still need to make sure that Rhode Island is a state where our society’s wealth is not concentrated into the hands of a few wealthy people at the top with a multitude of poor people at the bottom. We need to make our state into a place where we recognize that our first obligation is to see that everyone’s basic needs are met with dignity, care and justice.

Over these High Holy Days, you have heard me talk about making this the year of “You shall not hate.” You’ve heard me say we have an obligation to care for each other by getting vaccinated to stop COVID -19. You have heard me talk about releasing ourselves from bitterness and toxic refusal to forgive. This morning, I need to ask you to go a step even further. I need to ask you to do something to end the pain and humiliation of poverty.

There are many ways of doing it and of making a difference. You can see it in the variety of ways that Temple Sinai members are changing lives. Susan Sklar, the Chair of our Social Action Committee and other Committee members made a difference this year by organizing a phone calling campaign to get Temple members to call lawmakers about legislation – now passed – that sets standards for care in our state’s nursing homes.

Our members Marc and Claire Perlman made a difference this year by raising millions in cash and products for the Ocean State Job Lot Charitable Foundation to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, assist military families in financial crisis, and help people in need due to COVID-19.

Our members Shelley Sigal, Tonya Latzman and many others made a difference this year by participating in the Temple’s “I Can Run Errands for You” program, doing grocery and pharmacy shopping for seniors in our community who are not able to get out of their homes during the pandemic.

So, what about this new year? And what about you? What difference will you make in Rhode Island and in the world? It does not need to be big and it does not need to take a lot of your time. Just believe me when I tell you that for someone like Rosie, or the more than one hundred thousand other people in Rhode Island living in poverty, it will be enormous.
​
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 of Yom Kippur 5782, September 15, 2021.

On June 11, 2021, Michael Packàrd was diving in the waters off of Provincetown, Massachusetts, doing his job as a commercial lobster diver. Packàrd had no idea that his second dive of the day, rather than resulting in another 100-pound haul of lobsters, would make global news.

When Packàrd was about 45 feet deep, near the bottom, he felt something huge push him and then surround him. He said It felt like “a truck hit me and everything just went dark.” At first, he thought that it was a shark attack. “I felt around,” he said, “and I realized there was no teeth, and I had felt, really, no great pain.… I realized, 'Oh my God, I'm in a whale’s mouth. I’m in a whale’s mouth, and he’s trying to swallow me.”

Fortunately for Packàrd, that humpback whale really did not have any interest in swallowing him. Despite their massive size, humpbacks can’t eat anything larger than fish the size of sardines. The whale shook its head a few times, rose to the surface, and spat Packàrd back out.

But in those moments Packàrd spent in the whale's mouth – which, by his own reckoning was only 30 or 40 seconds – he had all the thoughts you might image come in the face of death. "I’m like, ‘This is how you’re gonna go, Michael.” he thought to himself. “This is how you’re going to die. In the mouth of a whale.”

What does that sound like to you? Resignation? Acceptance of the inevitable? Regret? Willingness to let go of life? I’m not sure that even Packàrd himself could describe all the feelings he had in that moment.

I’m happy to report that Michael Packàrd was almost entirely unhurt in his adventure with the whale. He was taken to a local hospital, treated for bruises and a dislocated knee, and went home the same day. But maybe something within his mind and soul were changed by the experience. The encounter with the whale and with death may have taught him something about life.

By now, many of you probably have guessed why, on Yom Kippur, I’m talking about a man who was in the mouth of a whale. It sounds just like the story of Jonah, doesn’t it? It sounds like the book we will read tomorrow afternoon and, by tradition, on every Yom Kippur afternoon.

Tonight, I want to talk about Michael Packàrd. And about Jonah. And about all of us, too. There is something about the story of being swallowed up, ready to give up on life, even embracing death, that points to the hidden message of Yom Kippur – the day on which we pretend to die so we can learn how to live.

The biblical book of Jonah is, of course, the story of the reluctant prophet who tried to run away from God. Jonah boarded a ship heading in the direction opposite that which God had commanded him to go. God sent a storm to toss the ship and Jonah confessed to his shipmates that he was the cause. Jonah explained to the sailors that God was angry at him for his defiance. He told them to throw him overboard to save their lives. When they did, a “great fish” swallowed Jonah and he lived inside it for three days.

Now, that’s what most people remember about the book of Jonah. It’s a good yarn and the image of the man swallowed by a whale has kept the book popular through the ages. But, to understand why we read this fish story on Yom Kippur, we have to delve a bit deeper into the waters of the book of Jonah.

Tonight I would like to offer five lessons from this story – five lessons from the story of a man who thought he was going to die.

Lesson Number One. What did God want from Jonah, anyway? God commanded Jonah, “Go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to them, for their wickedness has arisen before Me.” Why Nineveh? Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire, the enemy of the Jews that had vanquished the Northern Kingdom of Israel and scattered the ten northern tribes. When God commanded the Jewish prophet to go to Nineveh, it was like asking a mouse to go to preach to the cats. Maybe that’s why Jonah didn’t want to go. Maybe that’s why he went aboard a ship heading in the opposite direction. God had put him on an impossible mission, and he was not too keen on it.

So, our first lesson from the book of Jonah is that doing the impossible is exactly what God wants from us. God wants us to face the things that we believe we cannot face – to face our deepest fears. God wants us to learn that the challenges we consider impossible are not as daunting as we imagine.

Lesson Number Two. What did Jonah do for the three days he was in the whale? About the last thing you would expect. Jonah sang out in praise of God. In fact, Jonah’s time in the whale appears to be his happiest moments in the entire story. Jonah recited a psalm to God, proclaiming his joy as he was cut off from the world, alone in his own private sanctuary in the belly of the whale.

This is our first big clue about what is wrong with Jonah. Jonah loved being in the whale. He loved being isolated in a dark place where he was rendered motionless and powerless like death. It’s what he wanted more than anything. And maybe that is why God made the whale spit him out.

Did you ever wonder why Judaism has no monks or monasteries? All the other monotheistic religions love the idea of people shutting themselves off from the world to contemplate God away from the cares of the everyday. Judaism detests this idea. The highest form of worship we offer God is in the way we live in the world. Judaism cannot exist on a lonely mountaintop, or in the belly of a whale.

Lesson Number Three. What did Jonah do after the whale spit him out? God again told Jonah to go to Nineveh, and this time, Jonah did as he was told. For three days Jonah walked from one end of Nineveh to the other declaring that God would wipe out the city.

This is what prophets in the Bible are supposed to do. They declare God’s will to the people and try to persuade them to change their ways. The thing is, though, of all the prophets in the Bible, Jonah is the only one who ever succeeded in convincing anyone to change. The Ninevites – the evil, sworn enemies of Israel – heard Jonah’s words. They declared a public fast and their king led them in pleading to God for forgiveness. Jonah is not just the most successful prophet in the Bible – he is the only successful prophet in the Bible. He is the only prophet who spoke the will of God … and people actually listened and changed because of it. And he did it by preaching – not to the Jews – but to the enemies of Israel.

The Ninevites pleaded for God’s forgiveness and God forgave them. God saw them turn from evil and renounced the punishment of destroying the city. The irony is overwhelming. It takes a prophet who does not want to preach, and it takes an audience that does not know God, in order for God’s will to be obeyed in this world.

Think about what that means in our day when the people who claim to speak for God often seem the most godless, and, often, the people who do God’s work of love and justice are the people who have the least interest in organized religion. It certainly makes you think, doesn't it?

Lesson Number Four. How did Jonah respond to God forgiving the Ninevites? How did he feel about his success as a prophet?

Well, he was furious.

Jonah cried out to God, “This is exactly what I knew you were going to do, God! This is why I didn’t want to come here! I knew that you would be compassionate to these people and forgive them!”

Why does God’s forgiveness make Jonah so upset? It’s possible that he was so partisan toward his own people that he was ashamed to see the enemies of Israel repent and receive God’s forgiveness – while the Israelites, God’s own people, refused to listen to God or change their ways.

But maybe it was something even deeper than that. Maybe Jonah just did not like the idea of forgiveness to begin with. After all, why should someone who does something wrong be forgiven just because they say, “I’m sorry.” Maybe Jonah thought – people who do what’s right should be rewarded and people who do what’s wrong should be punished. Just saying words shouldn’t change that.

I think all of us have thought that way at one time or another.

But this is where the book of Jonah, in my mind, has its greatest insight. Jonah is not just angry about God forgiving other people’s sins, his greatest anger is directed at himself – his own failings and sins, his disobedience toward God, his failure to embrace the role of prophet.

And, isn’t this true of us, too? I’ve noticed that when I get angry at someone, it’s usually because they’ve done something that reminds me of something I don’t like about myself. Don’t most of us reserve our greatest condemnation and our greatest anger for ourselves? That’s what Jonah did. He hated himself for his failings and he thought he deserved to die. He even told God he wants to die. He said, “Now, Adonai, take my life from me. My death is better than my life.”

Here is the book’s connection to Yom Kippur. The purpose of Yom Kippur is to convince us to live. We may not think that we yearn for death like Jonah did, but our actions say otherwise. Every day that we fritter our lives away in vanity and emptiness, we drain ourselves of purpose and fulfillment. Every moment we spend stewing in resentment, self-criticism and wallowing in guilt, we embrace death. Yom Kippur comes to us and says, “Your life is worth too much to be wasted like that. Embrace life. Change your ways and live.” So, what do we do? We spend 24 hours fasting and praying – just like Jonah in the whale – until we have had enough of death and are ready to live again.

That is the paradox of Yom Kippur. We need to go through a day of pretend death – pretending that we don’t need food, pretending that we should feel terrible about past mistakes, and pretending that our lives are dust and ashes – in order to reawaken to our true selves, to awaken to the self that God wants for us, the self that desires a life of meaning, joy, and living life with love and kindness toward others and ourselves.

Lesson Number Five. After the Ninevites repented for their sins, Jonah left Nineveh in disgust, and what did he do then? He set up a tent on the outskirts of the city to see what would happen. Would God forgive the Ninevites, or would God destroy the city as he had been told to prophesy?

While Jonah watched the city, God watched Jonah. God caused a kikayon plant to grow over Jonah’s head to give him shade from the hot sun. What is a kikayon? It is the vine of the castor bean plant. While castor oil has medicinal uses, the plant is also the source of ricin, often called the most powerful poison in nature. A few drops are enough to kill an adult human being.

So there was Jonah, sitting in the shade of a poisonous plant enjoying his poisonous thoughts about Nineveh, about God, and about himself. But, the next day, God brought a worm to destroy the kikayon, exposing Jonah to the sun, and Jonah again pleaded with God to let him die.

God’s response, and the enigmatic ending of the book of Jonah, is this:

God says, “You cared about the kikayon, that you did not work for, that you did not grow. It appeared overnight and was gone overnight. So, how can I not care about Nineveh, a great city of more than 120,000 people who don’t know their right hand from their left and all their animals?”

It is the book’s most important lesson and it is the lesson of Yom Kippur. After a day of rehearsing for death, we should learn how to love living the way that God loves us, all living things, and even the animals. God is patient. God would rather sustain the lives of people who are so amoral that they don’t know the first thing about right and wrong. And God is patient also with Jonah’s proud, bitter, and resentful yearning for death, but God also wants Jonah to know how toxic that bitterness is. God wants Jonah – and us – to live and to learn to love the world and humanity despite all the deep imperfections and flaws, despite the resentments we have accumulated from suffering life’s cruelties.

These are our lessons on Yom Kippur. Learn to try to do what seems impossible. Learn to live with other people, even when they seem impossible. Learn to seek and accept forgiveness. Learn to embrace life. Learn to let go of resentment and pain.

The clock has started, we have just under 24 hours now to meet the challenge. During this day, we will confess our shortcomings and errors and we will make promises to do better, but we will get nothing out of the exercise if our acts of atonement are nothing more than expressions of despair, self-abasement, isolation, and wallowing in guilt. We need to move from that darkness into the light of living with purpose, joy and kindness to others and ourselves.

Life is short and it is fragile, but Yom Kippur teaches us to live the time we have with honesty, integrity, and with effort always to do better. That is the task of this day – to face the inevitability of death and choose to embrace life. Each of us, figuratively, spends this day in the whale’s mouth. Like Michael Packàrd, we may go through a million different emotions along the way, but we can know ahead of time that we will do the impossible if we make the effort. We will live. We will live with release from our pain and confinement. We will live with joy.
​
G’mar chatimah tovah.
May you be sealed in the Book of Life for a good year.

This is the sermon I delivered at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island, on the first morning of Rosh Hashanah 5782, September 7, 2021.

In the collection of rabbinic sayings called Pirkei Avot, the most famous teaching is a quote by Hillel the Elder, the greatest sage of the first century BCE and, perhaps, the person who did more than anyone else to set the early direction of Rabbinic Judaism. Even if you didn’t know where it came from or who said it, you’ve probably heard this teaching before: Im ein ani li, mi li? Uchshe-ani l’atzmi, mah ani? v’im lo achshav, eimatai? “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?” (M. Avot 1:15).

I’ve been thinking about Hillel’s three rhetorical questions since the start of the pandemic and what they say to us about our responsibilities to ourselves and to others through this crisis. It’s not hard to see how the saying applies to our current situation as a society divided on the issues of masks and, even more so, on vaccinations.

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me.” It is up to each of us to make choices to keep ourselves and the members of our families safe. Everyone needs to decide for themselves what that means for them in the midst of the pandemic. Putting your head in the sand and pretending that there is nothing wrong is dangerous and foolhardy. Our first obligation is to take care of ourselves. If I am not for me, who will be?

But that is not enough. “If I am only for myself, what am I?” At the same time as we take care of ourselves, we must also think about others. We all live in a society. We are all members of the human race. We all have a moral obligation to think about how our choices affect others. If you were to decide that its okay for you not to wear a mask, when you could wear a mask, because everyone else’s masks protect you – or if you were to decide not to get vaccinated, when you could get vaccinated, because everyone else’s vaccinations will keep you safe if there are enough of them to provide herd immunity – you would not be factually wrong. You would be safe from the virus in such a situation. But, obviously, you would be ethically and morally wrong. No one is exempt from doing their share, what is possible for them, to help society as a whole.

And then we come to the last of Hillel’s three questions: “If not now, when?” Some obligations cannot be deferred. Every moment we delay in taking action to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is a moment in which we allow the harsh logic of exponential growth to overwhelm us. By taking action now, not just “sometime,” but “right now,” we make our world safer, bring the end of the pandemic sooner, and save more lives.

To further consider the choices each of us face in the pandemic, let’s consider the scenario known as the “Prisoner’s Dilemma.” You may have heard it as a story, but it is more than just a story. It’s one of the central models of game theory -- the mathematical study of strategic choices.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma goes like this:

Two partners in crime are arrested by the police. The police don’t have enough evidence to convict them of the serious crime they are suspected of committing, but they do have enough to convict the prisoners on lesser charges. The police place the prisoners in separate cells, giving them no way to communicate with each other. The police offer each of them a deal.

Each prisoner is told, “If you testify, we can convict the other prisoner on the more serious crime and we’ll see that you get a reduced sentence. But if the other prisoner testifies against you, well, then you will be the one to get the more serious sentence. What will it be? Will you testify or not?”

So imagine that you are one of these two prisoners. You know that if you and the other prisoner both betray each other by testifying, you will both end up serving two years in prison. But, If you betray the other prisoner and the other prisoner doesn’t betray you, then you will go free and the other prisoner will serve three years in prison. If both of you say nothing, you will both get off with just a one year sentence. But if you remain silent and the other prisoner betrays you, then you will get three years and the other prisoner will walk. What should you do?

A completely rational, mathematical analysis of this one-time event shows that the best choice for you is to betray the other prisoner. It’s easy to prove this. Let’s say the other prisoner is definitely going to betray you. If you stay silent, you will end up with three years; but if you also betray, you will only get two. Betrayal is better. Let’s say the other prisoner is definitely going to stay silent. If you stay silent, too, you will get one year; by if you betray, you will walk free with no time in prison. Betrayal is still better. Regardless of what the other person does, you will always get a better outcome if you betray. So why not do that every time?

Interestingly, when given this scenario, most people do the opposite of what logic dictates. This is well known by sociologists and game theorists. They’ve even given it a name. They say that most people have a “cooperative behavior bias.” People tend to optimistically believe that the other prisoner will not betray them and that they, consequently, should not betray the other prisoner. They decide not to betray, even though, rationally, betrayal is the better choice.

I hope that you, like me, are glad to hear that. It makes me feel a little bit better about being a human being knowing that my fellow human beings would rather be kind to me than cruel, even if cruelty is the choice that has the biggest immediate payoff.

Does this just prove that human beings are all simpletons who act with kindness when we should really just coldly and rationally do what is in our best personal interest without regard to the consequences for others? Maybe not. 

Betraying your partner may be the best choice for a player in the Prisoner’s Dilemma individually, but the best outcome for the two players combined is the opposite. By not betraying each other, the two partners each receive a one-year sentence for a total of two years between them. That is the lowest possible combined penalty if you look at the situation from the shared perspective of both prisoners.

What’s more, if two people play out the Prisoner’s Dilemma over and over again for an unspecified number of turns, the best outcomes for each of the players result from attempting to cooperate. In this situation, each prisoner can observe the behavior of the other and test whether the other person is cooperating with them. If they both see that cooperation is working, they will both end up doing better in the game, both from the group perspective and – importantly – from their own individual perspective, too.

This has been proven experimentally dozens of times. Players may feel tempted to play selfishly, and they may win on some turns by betraying the other person, but eventually the cycles of betrayal, distrust and retribution that come from playing “mean” end up being less successful than the long term outcome for players who develop the trust in each other to play “nice.”

The Prisoner’s Dilemma is not just an interesting thought experiment. It is used as a model to evaluate strategies and predict outcomes for many real world situations that weigh cooperative behavior against selfish behavior. We play the Prisoner’s Dilemma game, in a sense, every time we choose between doing the selfish thing or doing the cooperative thing.

Here are two examples. Let’s say you’re applying for a job and you realize that your friend, who is also in a job search, would be a great applicant for the position. Should you tell your friend about the job? If you don’t, you may end up getting the job and your friend won’t. But, if you do tell your friend about the job, your friend might get the job and then your friend might tell you about another opportunity that would be a good fit for you.

Let’s say you are going to a party where there will be a gift exchange. You can buy an expensive gift or a cheap gift. Should you buy the expensive gift and risk that you will lose out by getting a cheap gift in exchange, or should you buy a cheap gift so the worst you can do is break even?

In both scenarios, the logical choice for the best immediate payoff is to make the selfish choice – and sometimes, as we all know, that’s exactly what people do. But the instincts of most people are to make the kinder and more optimistic choice. Why? It’s not because we’re stupid. It’s because most of us have learned over time that cooperation works. It works if we develop trusting relationships in which people anticipate that we will choose kindness. It’s a game that we all have been playing since childhood.

And it seems clear that “the vaccination game” our society is now playing is, in fact, a large-scale version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. It is, perhaps, the largest human study ever conducted on how well people are willing to treat each other, how much they trust each other, and what the social costs are for playing the game “mean” or “nice.”

I should mention that when mathematicians study the Prisoner’s Dilemma, they assign values to the risks of cooperating or betraying, and it isn’t always the zero, one, two or three years in prison that I gave as an example. The “vaccination game” we are now in is one that, objectively speaking, has very high risks associated with not getting vaccinated. You greatly increase the risk of getting a serious case of COVID and possibly dying from it. That would definitely be a worse penalty than added time in prison. On the other hand, the risks of getting the vaccine are tiny. You might get a sore arm or fatigue for a few days. Some people worry about serious side effects associated with the vaccine, but with 40% of the world’s population having received at least one dose serving as data, there is ample evidence that such risk is extremely rare -- on the order of one in a million. On the other hand, getting vaccinated greatly reduces your risk of getting COVID and of having a serious case. Even if you decide to play “mean,” the odds in this game are overwhelmingly in favor of vaccination.

If nothing else, the pandemic has given us this lesson in the wisdom of Hillel’s teaching from more than 2,000 years ago. “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?” Judaism’s insight is that we are all really better off when we see ourselves not just as individuals, but as parts of a whole. Trusting in the goodness of others, being willing to act for the benefit of others (even when it’s not in our narrow, short-term interests), makes our lives better. Living with optimism about other people’s kindness, believing that we are responsible for each other, building relationships founded on trust and predictable benevolence – these values give us  a pathway for surviving as individuals, as a community, as a nation, and as a world. This is the way toward life – and as we have learned in this pandemic – the way that can keep us from death.

L’shanah tovah tikateivu v’techateimu.
May you be written and sealed for a good year.

This is the sermon I delivered at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island for the first night of Rosh Hashanah 5782 on September 6, 2021.

At the beginning of our service tonight, we made a blessing for the new Jewish year. We declared this evening to be the beginning of the year 5782. The assignment of numbers to years in the Hebrew calendar dates back to around the fourth century CE – not coincidentally, that’s about the same time that Christians started giving numbers to the years in their calendar, which is now also our secular calendar. So, even though 5782 minus 2021 equals 3,761, that is not how much older the Hebrew calendar is than the Christian calendar. In fact, they both started about the same time. They just each started with a different number.

For the Christian calendar, they guessed how many years it had been since the birth of Jesus. For the Jewish calendar, they guessed how many years it had been since the creation of the world.

Incidentally, both calendars got it wrong. It has not been 2,021 years since the birth of Jesus. Most scholars say the count is off by five or six years.

You won’t be surprised that the count of the Hebrew year is off by a bit more. It has not been 5,782 years since the creation of the world. Today’s astrophysicists say that the earth is actually about 4.5 billion years old and the universe as a whole is about three times older. So the Hebrew year is off by a bit less than 4.5 billion years. If you’re going to be off, you might as well be off big.

But, like so many other things in Judaism, the point of our tradition is not to teach us historical or scientific facts. Rather, it is to teach us truths about our lives and our ability to find meaning and purpose.

Since ancient times, Jews have used the number of the calendar year to find such meaning. All of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet have a numerical value, and there is a tradition at the beginning of each Jewish year to find a phrase in the Hebrew Bible in which the sum of all the letters adds up to the number of the year. Then that phrase can be used as a guiding instruction, a theme, an inspiration, or a challenge for the new year.

What’s a good biblical phrase that adds up to 5782? (Well, actually just 782. By convention, we leave off the thousands.) My friend and teacher, Dr. Daniel Matt, has found more than two dozen candidates for the biblical phrase that matches the number of this year. The one that I find most compelling comes from the book of Leviticus (19:17). In fact, it’s from a verse that we will read on Yom Kippur afternoon. In Hebrew, the phrase is lo tisna, and it means, “You shall not hate.”

How is that for a guiding instruction for 5782? I think it’s perfect. There is way too much hatred in the world today and lo tisna is the commandment we need to hear this year to confront it.

So often in this past year, I have heard people ask, “Why is there so much hatred against Jews today, not even 80 years since the Holocaust? Why is racism still a thing more than 150 years after the Civil War, after the civil rights movement, after Rodney King, after George Floyd and after the murders of Asian women in Atlanta spas last spring? Why does such hatred still persist?
Why must we still endure the pain of seeing people brutalized by police because of the color of their skin, women abused by men and the legal system with hateful disregard for their right to be secure in their bodies and persons? Why is there so much hate?” We want the new year of 5782 to be a year of lo tisna, a year of “you shall not hate.”

So let it begin now and let it begin with each of us. Lo tisna means that 5782 should be a year in which we resolve to embrace people for who they are instead of suspecting, distrusting, maligning or hating them for who they are. Let’s let Lo tisna mean that 5782 will be a year in which we let go of the idea that we should hate people who voted for the wrong party (whichever party you think is the wrong one).

Lo tisna means that we should release ourselves from the belief that our society is somehow defined by hatred – whether it was the hatred of four hundred years ago or the hatred of last week. Lo tisna means that we don’t justify violence and lies with the belief that our enemies – the people we hate – are even worse, so our cruelty and distortions of truth don’t matter.

Lo tisna means that we should relent from the instinct to hate people because they hate us, or because we think they hate us. Lo tisna means that hating will no longer be our response to people who anger, upset or frustrate us. Lo tisna means that, instead, we will deal with people who trouble us and make us feel uncomfortable with honest efforts to listen to them, to understand, and extend compassion to people who are different or who think differently than we do.

Lo tisna means that 5782 should be a year in which we intentionally and methodically develop habits toward kindness; it should be a year in which we intentionally and methodically forgive people who have wronged us. Lo tisna means that we give people second, third, and even fourth and fifth chances before jettisoning them from our lives and sticking labels of hatred onto their existence.

Lo tisna means that where we find hatred lurking in our minds, even hidden deep in the recesses of childhood memories and experiences, we will make the effort to confront it, to ask ourselves questions about where those feeling and prejudices come from, and teach our souls to transform that hatred into love, or, at least, into growth.
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Lo tisna, the commandment that says, “you shall not hate,” means that 5782 should be a year in which we stop hating ourselves. Lo tisna means that we should forgive ourselves for things we consider to be our failings, our faults, and our weaknesses. Lo tisna means that we should remember we are beings created in the image of God given the gift of wonder, love, and appreciation of beauty. Lo tisna means that we should remember that instead of being our own worst critics, we should be the champions of our lives, believing that we were put here on earth for a purpose that even we may not fully be aware of yet. Lo tisna means that we recognize that each of us is a miracle and that each of us is unfit to be hated, and each of us is unfit to hate. Lo tisna means that we are made for love.

I want to wish you – each of you individually, and this community collectively – a year of lo tisna, a year of “you shall not hate.” In the way you treat the members of your family and your close friends, I wish you a year of lo tisna. I wish you a year of lo tisna in the way that you greet strangers and meet new people,

Let me ask you right now to think of one specific thing that you resolve to do in the year of lo tisna. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. Let it be one small, specific thing that you could start immediately – that you could begin to do in the next ten days – that would help you shake off a bit of harshness and hard-heartedness and embrace love and acceptance of others. Choose it right now… Do you have it? Hold on to it. Let that one small resolution about something that you are going to start doing before Yom Kippur be your mantra to introduce yourself to the year of lo tisna.

May 5782 be for you a year in which you work hard to love people a little bit more deeply. May it be a year in which you forgive people a little bit more easily.

There is so much about this world to love, even when pandemics strike, even when anti-Semitism is on the rise, even when we feel baffled and dispirited by war and global warming, even in a year when the world is still not the way it is supposed to be.

Even then, there is so much to love about a world that is filled with the beauty of nature, the beauty of human creativity, the beauty of the human heart with its capacity to do unimaginably generous and courageous things. I want you to find those reasons to love and not to hate in this year of lo tisna.

May 5782 be the year for you – the year in which you do your part to remove some measure of the darkness of hatred from this world and radiate your special light of love to wipe it away. May it be in every breath you take and every kindness you share with others. May this be your year of lo tisna.

L’shanah tovah tikateivu v’techateimu.
​May you be written and sealed for a good year.