This is the sermon I gave on Yom Kippur morning at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island, October 9, 2019.

Wafaa Bilal is a performance artist. He creates works of art – called installations – in which he himself is part of the exhibit. 

Bilal’s most famous performance art installation was called, “Domestic Tension.” In May of 2007, Bilal locked himself into a studio in Chicago that was equipped with a bed, a desk, a chair, a lamp, a webcam, and a loaded paintball gun connected to the internet. He committed to staying in the room for a month. The main gist of the performance was this: viewers could go onto Bilal’s website, see what he was doing on livestream video at any hour of the day, and, if they wanted, they could aim the paintball gun at anything in the room, including at Bilal himself, and fire it. 

Over the course of the month, Bilal was fired at 70,000 times. The website received 80 million hits from 128 countries. The paintball gun was fired all through the day and night by people from all over the world. They were all perfect strangers to Bilal. They didn’t know him personally, but they could see what their actions did to him and to his surroundings.

The white walls of the room, and all its furnishings were covered with yellow paint by the end of the month. The lamp was destroyed. Online, viewers could see how Bilal reacted to the nearly constant attacks he faced. He kept his demeanor, but he was visibly shaken. He was sleep deprived and anxiety-ridden by the barrage.

Now, those results are not surprising when you consider the ordeal that Bilal chose to put himself through. The internet loves this sort of thing, doesn’t it? A webcam, a gun, and the chance to do something destructive with complete anonymity – it’s an internet recipe for mayhem.

But 70,000 shots in 31 days? More than 2,000 hits per day? More than 90 shots fired on the man per hour, seven days a week, day and night, twenty-four hours a day? That’s an awful lot of shooting at poor Bilal, especially when you consider that his assailants could see with their own eyes the effect that their shooting had on him.

Well, there is one important detail that I have not told you. Wafaa Bilal is Iraqi. He is an Arab. He came to the United States in the early 90s, but he still had a lot of family living in Iraq in 2004 during the height of the Iraq War. That was the year that his brother Haji was killed in Iraq by an American airstrike.

After losing his brother, Bilal was gripped by the way that American soldiers sitting in dark rooms in the United States could direct drones to fire missiles thousands of miles away in Iraq. After three years of reflecting on his loss, he came up with the idea for “Domestic Tension,” a performance art installation that would give people the chance to sit at their own home computers and fire a gun to shoot an Iraqi. Only, in Bilal’s version, the “shooters” could see how their shots affected a real human being on a much more personal level than is possible for a military drone pilot. Also, the people shooting at Bilal in his installation, would not be soldiers following orders. They would be ordinary civilians shooting at him because – they wanted to, they wanted to “shoot an Arab,” a person they might see as their enemy.

This afternoon, as on every Yom Kippur, we will read the book of Jonah, the Bible’s most reluctant prophet. We will hear again the story of God commanding Jonah to travel to Nineveh to prophesy to the Ninevites, the enemy of ancient Israel. Jonah’s assignment was to tell the Ninevites about God’s decree that God would destroy them if they did not repent from their evil ways. 

In the story, Jonah responded to God’s command by getting on a ship heading in the opposite direction – as far away from Nineveh as he could go. Jonah desperately wanted to get out of God’s assignment. He did not want to prophesy to the Ninevites. He did not want them to repent. He did not want God to forgive them.

In the end, though, God found a way to convince Jonah to do what he had been told. It involved putting him in the belly of a whale for three days. (Maybe you’ve heard the story). In the end, Jonah did walk through the city of Nineveh and proclaimed as God had told him, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” 

The people of Nineveh heard Jonah. They declared a public fast day. They put on sackcloth. They repented of all their sins. God heard the people of Nineveh and the city was spared by God’s forgiveness. 

And Jonah, how did he feel after he became the Bible’s most successful prophet – the prophet who convinced an entire city to repent? He was miserable. 

Jonah complained to God, “You see! This is exactly what I knew You would do!” he said, “This is why I fled when You told me to come here. I knew that You would be compassionate and gracious and that You would forgive them.”

What, exactly, was the meaning of Jonah’s refusal to do what God had told him to do? Why was Jonah so angry with God after God forgave the Ninevites?

Rabbi David Kimhi, a great scholar of the 13th century, wrote that Jonah demanded the honor of Israel, but that he did not demand the honor of Heaven (Radak on Jonah 1:1, quoting Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael 12:1). He wanted what he felt was right for his own people even more than he wanted what God felt was right for the world and for humanity. Jonah was angry because it was more important to him that the enemies of Israel be destroyed than that they cease their evil and become good. 

The book of Jonah ends with God subtly and kindly rebuking Jonah for his longing to see Nineveh punished. God says to the prophet, “Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who do not yet know their right hand from their left?” God reminds Jonah, and us, that we need to see even people we think of as enemies – flawed and imperfect as they may be – as human beings. We cannot allow enmity to cloud our vision or lead us to acts of hatred. 

Oh, and here is another detail that I have not yet told you. Ancient Nineveh, the great and powerful city that was Israel’s enemy, the city that Jonah refused to save even when God commanded him to do so, was located just outside of the present-day city of Mosul in northern Iraq. The Ninevites in the book of Jonah, like Wafaa Bilal, were Iraqis.

Hatred of Arabs and Muslims has reached such a peak in the United States today that the FBI reports that hate crimes against Muslims increased by more than 150% in the decade from 2008 to 2017. Muslims in America are far more likely to be the victims of crimes than they are to be criminals. And the pain of hatred that Muslim Americans have to endure does not always come in the form of crimes. Often, it is in small, everyday acts of cruelty. 

My friend, Aisha Manzoor, a Muslim woman who lives in Cumberland, told me about a recent incident in which she was confronted by a man while waiting in a store’s check-out line. They were both buying back-to-school supplies for their kids, who were both there. Their kids were even playing with each other in the check-out line. Yet, with no more provocation than seeing Aisha’s hijab, and the olive-toned skin on her face, the man repeatedly called to her loudly. He aggressively told her who he thought she should vote for, for president. The man then turned to his wife and talked about Aisha, as if he thought Aisha could not understand him. Using obscene language, he said that she must be an “illegal.” 

To Aisha’s credit, she did not lash out or say anything hurtful. She just said that, when the time came, she would vote for the proper candidate. She then called her child and told him it was time to go.

That’s the kind of experience that many American Muslims have endured. Knowing that, it’s a bit easier to understand why Wafaa Bilal would subject himself to being fired at with paintballs 70,000 times to express himself in his art. It was his reflection of the experience of being an Arab Muslim in America.

The number of hate crimes against Muslims in the United States is high – higher than it is for Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs. In fact, according to statistics kept by the FBI, there is only one religious group in the United States that suffers more hate crimes than Muslims – and everyone in this room knows who I am talking about.

More religious hate crimes are perpetrated against Jews for being Jews in the U.S. each year than are perpetrated against members of all other religions combined. When we talk about the need to overcome hatred against perceived enemies, we are really talking about ourselves. When we talk about the damage that hatred does to the psyche of those who are hated, we are also talking about the damage we suffer as Jews.

Anti-Semitism is on the rise in our country from all directions. We hear it in the words of politicians on the left who say that Israel has “mesmerized the world.” We hear it in the words of politicians on the right who talk about Jewish billionaires corrupting our democracy with their wicked money. We feel it viscerally in our bodies when we hear about synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh and Poway, California.

It is understandable that Jews today are angry and scared by the way anti-semitism has percolated back into mainstream society. This rise in hatred should not be. After the whole world has seen what anti-Semitism can lead to, it should not be. But, we also know that anger and fear are not solutions that will bring it to an end. Our tradition itself teaches the lesson of Jonah – that hating our enemies is not what God wants. So, how are we supposed to confront anti-Semitism? How do we stop senseless hatred? 

I believe that the best way to end hatred is through building relationships. When people come together to know and understand each other, it is much harder for them to hate one another. I know that there is no amount of relationship-building that will stop hardened, ideological anti-Semites – nothing will stop hatred that already has run amok. But the power of relationships will keep the virus of hatred from spreading.

That is why I spend so much of my time as a rabbi building relationships with people from other faith communities. That’s why I bring dozens of children from parochial and non-Jewish private schools into this Sanctuary every year to give them a taste of what Judaism really is. 

It is also part of the reason why the Jewish community shows up in large numbers when other religious groups are targeted for hatred – like the outpouring of Jewish support for the Muslim community last March after the horrifying mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand. We reach out to others in sincere friendship because it is the right thing to do. We also do it because we want them to feel sincere friendship toward us.

Another thing we can do to address hatred is not to be silent when it appears. I want to ask you today to do something I know is hard. When you hear people speaking hateful words, don’t ignore them. When you hear people speaking hatefully about Muslims, about Latinos, about African-Americans, about immigrants, about women, about gays and lesbians, about transgender people, or about any group targeted for hatred – say something. 

Say words like this, “When I was a kid, I used to say things like that, too. As grown-ups, I think we should learn to respect one another.” Say, “I value our friendship, but those words you’re saying are putting distance between us.” Say, “Are those really the values that you stand for? Those are not my values.” 

I know that what I am asking is hard. I know that it’s hard to confront hatred and bullying. I know that it is especially hard to speak up when the person you are confronting is a friend, or a relative, or even a parent. It’s hard. But we have to say something.

Why should you risk speaking up when you hear words of hate? Let me put it this way: What do you hope your non-Jewish friends and relatives say when they hear people talking about how cheap Jews are? What do you hope your friend will do when she hears her sister-in-law say that Jews control the media? How do you hope your friend will respond when he hears his father talk about how Hitler had the right idea? I guarantee you, all your non-Jewish friends and relatives have been in situations like that, and many of them have stood up for us and spoken against hatred. I am asking you, too, to be a model of standing against hatred by speaking up.

Wafaa Bilal locked himself in a room with a webcam and a paint gun because he wanted to show us something. The experience gave him an up-close view of hatred. But, it also gave him something else. Among those who saw his website, a few people decided to do something positive. When they saw that things were getting really ugly, a few people took control of the paint gun and started firing it repeatedly away from Bilal to give him a break – to momentarily stop the barrage against him. They did it anonymously, without seeking or expecting any thanks. 

One person went even further. One man in Chicago saw how the viewers of the website were using the paint gun to shoot up the lamp that Bilal had placed in the room. He saw the distress in Bilal’s eyes when the lamp was shattered and destroyed. So, he went to a store and bought a new lamp and delivered it in person to Bilal’s studio as a simple act of kindness, a simple act of solidarity as a human being.

We need more of that in the world. We need to hear the lesson of the book of Jonah and see human beings, not as Jonah saw them, as enemies fit for destruction, but as God sees them, as people, pure and simple. We can see them as flawed and imperfect, certainly, but always as people. It is only by teaching ourselves to demand the honor of heaven in this way – to see others as human beings – that we can hope to be seen as we truly are ourselves.

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

This is the sermon I delivered on Kol Nidre night at Temple Sinai in Cranston Rhode Island on October 8, 2019.

A friend of mine is a respected professor of Jewish history at a prominent university. She recently told this story about herself. She’s in her early 70s and she says she thinks the story is a sign that she is “losing it.” I think that it is really a story about her discovering herself – and in a way that could even be life-saving.

My friend recently asked a librarian at her university to recall a book that she needed for a research project. The book had been checked out by another library user, so the librarian did a quick search on the computer system. The librarian told her, “I’ll try to do the recall, but the book seems to have been checked out by a faculty member. They are often slow to respond to recall notices.” 

My friend said to the librarian with a sigh, “Well, give it a try.” 

About half an hour later, my friend noticed that she had received an email from the library. “Oh, good,” she thought, “maybe they got the book back.” But when she opened the email, she saw that it was actually a notice asking her to return a book she had checked out that another library user wanted. Yes, it was the same book she had just requested to have recalled. Yes, she was the one who had checked the book out in the first place.

If that story sounds funny, it might be because it’s familiar to you. Most of us have had an experience of discovering that we have been – so to speak – chasing our own tails. I remember an experience I had, back when cell phones were still a new thing, of trying to program my new phone to accept calls forwarded from my old phone number. I kept trying to set up the system, but every time I tested it, I was interrupted by my cell phone ringing. With some exasperation, I would interrupt my work to answer the call, but I kept being frustrated because when I accepted the call there was no one there. I did this three times before I realized that the phone calls were actually coming from me. I was the one calling myself, of course, as I was testing to see if the calls were being forwarded. I had been the dog chasing its own tail.

Experiences like that can be unnerving, and a bit embarrassing, but I want to argue that they can also serve a very useful purpose. Sometimes, being caught in a feedback loop like this can bring a moment of insight. It can be a moment when we discover the need to change a fault in ourselves that we have overlooked or ignored until the moment we find ourselves chasing our own tail. 

My friend the professor discovered that her habit of piling up library books on her desk until she didn’t even know which books she had – could be a real nuisance to other people. She didn’t notice it until she became her own victim. I discovered that I am too easily frustrated and feel aggrieved when I think someone is interrupting me. I didn’t notice it until I put myself in the unusual position of interrupting myself.

Here’s another story like this – a less happy story. Bob (not his real name, not a member of this congregation) was a young, ambitious attorney in a medium-sized law firm. He was married with two young children, but he spent up to 60 hours a week working, often late into the night. He did this because he was determined to make a good impression on his bosses with the goal of making partner within a few years. 

Most weeks, Bob only saw his kids on weekends because they were usually in bed by the time he got home from work. His wife complained that they never had time to relax together, or even to make plans, because of his work schedule. In Bob’s mind, though, it was all worth it because, once he made partner, he would have a lot more time to spend with his wife and kids. 

Bob got passed over for promotion time and again. He never made partner. After five years, he left in frustration and started on his own as a sole practitioner. He actually found that he was happier practicing law that way because he had no one to impress but himself and he was kinder to himself and his family in the way he spent his time with them.

It was not until Bob had been working on his own for a few years that he heard a second-hand story at a dinner party about a young lawyer who had been passed over for promotion at his old firm – because nobody liked him. The person Bob met at the party told him a story she had heard about a lawyer who was always seen as ambitious and hard-working, but who didn’t take the time to cultivate friendships, give other people credit for their work, or let his coworkers get to know him as a person. He never talked about his wife and kids. It seemed like he barely knew them.

On hearing this story, Bob unmistakably recognized that the story was about himself. He was the one who had cut himself off from his own success by cutting himself off from the things in his life that made him a happy, likable person. It took the experience of – so to speak –unexpectedly bumping into himself at a dinner party that made him realize what he had done wrong.

I find it interesting that there are a few stories like this in the Hebrew Bible, too – stories of people who don’t realize what they are doing wrong until they see that they are dogs chasing their own tails. There is such a story in Genesis about Judah, one of Jacob’s sons. He almost sentenced a widowed pregnant woman to death for harlotry, until he realized that the child was legally begotten – and that he was the father.

However, the most famous story of this type is about King David – the greatest king in the history of Israel, the king who was the ancestor of all the other great kings of Israel, the king who, according to Jewish tradition, will some day be the direct-line ancestor of the Messiah. That King David. 

One day, King David’s advisor, the prophet Nathan, appeared before him and told him a story. “There were two men who lived in the same town,” Nathan began. “One of them was rich and one was poor. The rich man had very large flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, but the poor man only had one little lamb. The poor man kept the lamb as a pet. He fed her from his hand and let her drink from his cup. The poor man would hold the lamb in his lap at night and let her sleep with her head on his chest. The lamb grew up with the man’s family and she was like another daughter for him.”

Nathan continued with his story. “One day, a traveler came to the town and he went to the home of the rich man. Custom demanded that the rich man must provide a meal for his guest, but he did not want to slaughter one of his own sheep for the meal, so he took the poor man’s lamb, slaughtered it, and served it to the traveler.”

Hearing this, King David was incensed. He raised his voice and cast a kingly sentence against the man in the story, “As God lives, the man who did this deserves to die! His behavior is disgraceful! What a horrendous, pitiless thing for that man to do!”

It was just the reaction that Nathan had hoped to provoke. He said to the king, “That man – is you.”

What had David done to deserve this rebuke? King David had six wives. Two of them were daughters of kings. Yet, David lusted over another woman – a married woman – so much that he had her husband killed so he could have her as his own. The woman, Bathsheba, became David’s seventh wife, his favorite wife, after the death of her first husband, Uriah.

The story about the man who loved the lamb was Nathan’s parable for the way that David – the wealthiest man in the kingdom – had, on a greedy whim, stolen the beloved wife of a much poorer man. What did David do when he heard this story? Well, he might have called Nathan a liar and put him to death for treason. No one would have stopped him if he had. But he did not. Instead, he recognized himself in Nathan’s story. He said only two Hebrew words in reply, “Chatati l’Adonai,” “I have sinned before God.”

David, according to the story, was partially forgiven by God for his sin. Without realizing it, David had declared a death sentence upon himself when he said to Nathan and to God, “The man who did this deserves to die.” When Nathan revealed the full story to him, David probably did believe that, yes, he deserved to die for what he had done to Uriah and to Bathsheba, and he expected God to punish him with death. Yet, God allowed him to live because of his confession –  because he acknowledged his wrongdoing, when he could have just denied it.

None of us – I hope! – has connived to have another person killed for our own advantage. But we all have had moments in life when we have had the awkward experience of realizing that we have hurt others – moments when we have seen that we ourselves are the people whose thoughtless habits have caused harm, moments when we have seen how prone we can be to annoyance and frustration, moments when we have seen that we are the ones who have been so caught up in ourselves that we have neglected people who are dear to us, moments when we have seen that it is we who have treated others cruelly while pursuing our whims. Such realizations can leave us feeling ashamed and mortified. Sometimes, we don’t figure it out until we feel ourselves biting on our own tails.

I want to say tonight, that we should be grateful for such moments. It is hard for us human beings to see ourselves as we really are. Our egos and our self-deceptions get in our way. Our brains are designed to justify our every behavior, so it’s easy for us to create elaborate stories in our heads that explain why we “have” to do the things we do. Sometimes, it takes a moment of not recognizing the reflection in the mirror to discover how other people see us – and how we need to be able to see ourselves.

Yom Kippur is a day for honest self-appraisal. All the confessing, praying, fasting, and asking for forgiveness that we do on Yom Kippur is designed to break down our egos so we can see ourselves as we really are. We do that because, it is only when we know ourselves better – including our faults and flaws – that we will have the motivation and the will to change. And that is the ultimate goal of this day.

Why do we need to change? In order to avert the death sentence that we call down upon ourselves. Maybe not a literal death-sentence – like David saying, “the man who did this deserves to die” – but a figurative death sentence. Every time we allow ourselves to be thoughtless, selfish or cruel, as we all do at times, we experience a kind of spiritual death. We feel a sense of loss of self – we die a little – every time we realize we have caused pain.

So, let me ask you today to notice who you are when you are not justifying yourself, when you are not putting on the blinders to your own behavior. Catch your image in the mirror and see the person there before you notice that it’s you. Chase after your own tail like a dog at play, and recognize the truths about yourself that you would usually prefer to ignore. 

What you find may not be a big revelation. You’re not likely to discover that you have committed terrible crimes. No, the point of Yom Kippur is not to tell us that we are bad people. The point is for each of us to recognize that we can be better, and that we have work to do to get there.
But don’t ignore the little things you find, either – the small habits that you’re not so proud of – the way you don’t greet people kindly when you’re in a rush, the way you allow your attention to be distracted when others need you to focus on them, the way you get defensive when you feel criticized. Whatever it is for you, notice it, see it, recognize yourself, and resolve to do better.

Go ahead and chase your own tail. When you catch it, take comfort that what you have found, after all, is yourself. You may not like everything about the person you find, but it is who you are. Remember that catching an unexpected glimpse of yourself gives you an opportunity to make yourself better – and, perhaps, even to save your life.

G’mar chatimah tovah.
May you be sealed for a good year.