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.

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 on Yom Kippur morning 5777.

In my years as a rabbi delivering sermons on the High Holy Days, there is at least one thing I have learned: Nobody ever changed his or her mind about how to vote in an election based on what the rabbi said. Nobody. This year, maybe more than ever before, I don’t see the point of trying to tell anyone how to vote on November 8th. With the election now 27 days away, with presidential candidates who are so far apart on the issues, qualifications, and temperament, if you have not yet decided for whom to vote, don’t expect me to help you make up your mind.

This has been an election like none other in our lifetimes. It might be like no other election in our nation’s history. But I am not going to talk today about what will happen between now and Election Day. Rather, I would like to talk about what will happen after the election, regardless of the outcome, when we try to pick up the pieces of our democracy.

No sane person could have wanted this election to go the way it has. Even before the election lost its “PG rating” on Friday, no one could have wanted the ugliness of this election and the deepening divisions in America. This election has lowered us into some dark places in our national character. The lies, the personal smears, the name-calling, the media ambushes, the sleaziness of this election have left us numb. No sane person could have wanted this. 

To be clear, I am not drawing a false equivalency between the candidates. Both major party presidential candidates are unpopular, for sure. Both have said divisive things. One candidate, however – Donald Trump – has repeatedly said that, for him, ignoring past standards of civility, even at the risk of offending people based on their gender, race, ability, religion, or national origin, is a necessary corrective to our society’s problem with “political correctness.” Mr. Trump has reached heights of divisiveness never before seen in an American presidential campaign – even going so far as to call his opponent “the devil” and brag that he will throw her in jail if he is elected.

It seems that many Americans like the way that Mr. Trump “shoots from the lip” regarding Mexicans and Muslims, and they like the way that he ridicules his opponents. So, even Trump’s supporters will agree that this election has broken new ground in the way politicians can denigrate religious and racial groups and insult and threaten their opponents. They will agree that this election has been different from previous elections in the way that the integrity of the media has been attacked, and in which charges have been made that the very apparatus of our democracy is “rigged.” 

Last Sunday’s debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was the first American presidential debate ever broadcast on Iranian state television – no doubt because the Iranian government wanted to show its people just how crass and insane American democracy has become. Regardless of how you feel about each of the candidates, it is important to think about where our democracy is heading. It’s important to think about the long-term effects of such vitriol and anger on our society after the ballots have all been counted. How will our society be changed after the new president has been sworn in, in a country where politics has become a full contact sport?

As it stands today, the United States is divided by a widespread belief that “the other side” is hopelessly corrupt and malevolent beyond redemption. If nobody declares a halt to the divisiveness and anger even after the election is over, will the victor of this election – with just a few percentage points more votes than his or her rival – march triumphantly up Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day and ignore the way our country has been so painfully divided? Will the losers stew in their resentment, declare the results illegitimate, and allow their pain to boil over? 

We have seen over the last decade how bad the hyper-partisanship in American politics has gotten. We have seen the federal government shut down for weeks because of partisan bickering. We have seen the Senate refuse to hold hearings on a Supreme Court nominee for seven months and counting. Who doubts, if this trend continues, that the next President will face even worse: Government shutdowns that last, not for weeks, but for months … Senators who threaten to never approve any Supreme Court nominee from a president they don’t like … articles of impeachment delivered on Inauguration Day? That seems to be the way we are heading, and it is a recipe for national disaster.

Or, we will find another way. Because, you know, there is another way. We can learn about it from our nation’s history.

Near the end of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln spoke in his Second Inaugural Address about the divided nation. He did not preach domination over the vanquished Confederacy, as many in the North wanted him to do. Instead, he said, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right – as God gives us to see the right – let us strive on to finish the work we are in: to bind up the nation’s wounds,… to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” Lincoln’s vision for the end of the war was for the country to awaken from its divisions and to start healing itself. 

How long after Election 2016 will it take for us to listen to this other way? The time to start healing our nation is right now. The opportunity is now to say that during the term of our next President – whomever that may be – we need to set higher standards for civility and for a government that actually governs. The time is now to say that after all the name-calling, bullying and breaches in standards of civil conduct, we must be one people, one nation.

Think about what the benefits of such a national shift after the election could be. If political adversaries were able to engage in honest dialogue, we could begin to address issues that have been back-burnered by this era of hyper-partisanship. Our economy would benefit from real compromise on the federal budget and on debt-reduction. Democracy would benefit from an honest meeting of the minds to make elections more fair with sensible  and transparent campaign funding rules, secure voting systems, fair ballot access, and an end to the gerrymandered districts that make the outcome of most legislative and congressional races a foregone conclusion. The world’s stability, and the future of Israel, would benefit greatly from a clear bi-partisan strategy on America’s military and diplomacy in the Middle East. We have so much to gain by working together.

Moreover, imagine how much our country would benefit if we would could agree to restore civility and thoughtful, respectful dialogue. Imagine what a better nation we could be if both the winners and losers of the November election realize how much they have to gain if the integrity and ethics of our political process are raised – not lowered.

We can also learn about this “other way” to face hurt and resentment over the past from our own Jewish tradition. We have a concept in Judaism that corresponds to Lincoln’s call for binding up our wounds with forgiveness and humility where there has been hurt and resentment. We call it t’shuvah. It is the word that we often translate as “repentance,” but the word actually comes from the Hebrew root that means “turning.” 

It is the call to turn away from the broken and turn toward the whole. It is the call to relent from arrogance and to give way to humility. It is the call to forgive and to allow ourselves to be forgiven. It is the call to let go of the need to be right and to embrace the need to be kind. It is the minute shift in our soul that takes us from unappeasable self-righteousness, and to turn instead to yielding and open-hearted peace. It takes us from a place where we see other people as enemies, and begin, instead, to see them as fellow, flawed human beings.

Last night, I talked about how an individual can take on the difficult task of healing his or herself through t’shuvah. This morning – on Yom Kippur, the day that is entirely devoted to t’shuvah – I offer the same prescription for our society to turn away from the fear and anger that have become the dominant, driving emotions of our society. This is a prescription for us to turn instead toward working together to build a better society and a better world. 

Here are three suggestions:

• Step One: Admit mistakes. The first step of t’shuvah for individual healing is to look honestly at the ways that we have caused hurt to others and to ourselves. We apologize where apologies are due. We ask for forgiveness. 

We need to do the same on a national level. Part of what has made so many Americans so disgusted by this election season has been the constant and repeated denial of past mistakes. There is plenty of room for Americans on both the left and the right to admit the ways in which we have mistrusted and mistreated each other. We can admit that we have put winning ahead of the best long-term interests of our nation. We can admit that not all of the policies and solutions we have sought in the past have worked to our satisfaction. Whether it is war or healthcare, deregulating Wall Street or confronting terrorism, we won’t be able to move to better solutions until we admit that some of the solutions we have tried have not worked as well as we believed they would.

• Step Two: Relent in your hard feelings about the past. Last night, I talked about how we, as individuals, all have pain and scars from our past and how we can examine them and release them from controlling our future. On a national level, we need to do the same. 

This election has shown just how much anger and resentment has built up within the American people. We can allow those feelings to fester after the election as a dark and destructive force, or we can choose to allow those strong feelings to fuel our determination to make our country better. Step two will be for our nation to release itself from the instinct to hold this election over the heads of our political adversaries forever. I don’t know about you, but the idea of re-hashing the insults and anger of this election for the next decade absolutely sickens me. No matter who wins, we are going to need to let it go.

• Step Three: Connect with other people. Just as self-healing depends upon our ability to connect to something larger than ourselves, national healing depends upon our willingness to reach out to one another. Our country has been damaged by rhetoric that treats political opponents as if they were demons and monsters. 

No doubt, the internet and social media have added to a climate in which people hear only the voices of those with whom they already agree. We sit at our computers and stare at our screens not to learn about issues, but to find confirmation of what we already think. We have to re-learn the habit of having respectful and constructive conversations with people who disagree with us. We have to re-engage with people and be willing to be part of meaningful and diverse communities.

I am enough of an optimist – or perhaps just naïve enough – to believe that our national habits can change. I believe that if individual Americans become more honest with themselves, more thoughtful, more forgiving, and more connected to each other, we can become a society in which people are able to listen to each other, to disagree with civility, and to see each other as real and true human beings.

If you think I am being unrealistic, let me remind you that it was not that long ago that our politics was much less polarized than it is now. There used to be socially liberal Republicans. There used to be fiscally conservative Democrats. It used to be that not every vote in Congress could be predicted along red and blue lines. In 1947, Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg declared that “We must stop partisan politics at the water’s edge,” and the principle of a bipartisan foreign policy held for more than half a century. We used to have thoughtful conversations about difficult issues. I believe it can be true again. 

It better be, because the stakes have gotten too high for failure. Let’s each decide right now that we will strengthen and not undermine the basic premise of democracy – that people of different opinions can live together with shared responsibility, that they can connect with those who see the world differently, that they can compromise. Let us choose to be a civilization that values civility. Our nation can make t’shuvah by softening our hard hearts and finding forgiveness.

On November 8th, I beg of you, please vote in our local, state and national elections and make a choice. And the next day, I ask you, elect to become a part of the change that will heal ourselves, our society, and our world.

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

I delivered this sermon on the evening of Yom Kippur 5777.

This is a story about Emily, although “Emily” is not her real name. In truth, though, this really is a story about all of us.

Long ago, when Emily was ten years old, she had a terrible problem with bullies in her school. In the first week of fourth grade, one of the girls in her class decided that Emily’s frizzy hair was ugly – and she told her so. She also told all the other girls in the class, “Emily is the ugliest girl I have ever seen. Her hair looks like it is made of straw and it won’t stay straight no matter how much she combs and brushes it. Maybe someday she will find a man who is just as ugly as she is to marry her. Maybe she won’t find anyone.”

Emily went home that day and cried. She told her mother about what the other girl had said about her. Her mother wanted to help, so she offered advice, “Ignore them. Show them that their words can’t hurt you. If they tease you, just tease them right back. Don’t be a victim.” She gave Emily the message that she could stop the bullying by changing her behavior, but Emily heard the advice as confirmation that she was the problem, not the bullies. She was being victimized because she was allowing herself to be a victim.

Bullying was not a thing, in those days. There were no helpful articles about it psychology magazines; there was no good advice about it in parenting books. There weren’t academic studies on bullying, its effect on young people, or how to stop it. The popular stereotype in that era was that children were bullied because of their own insecurities and annoying behaviors. Emily’s mother responded to her daughter being bullied in the same way that most parents of that time would respond: She told her to smile more, make friends, fit in, and not to be so sensitive to other children’s taunts.

Emily wanted to follow her mother’s advice, but the bullying just got worse. When she tried to ignore the bullies, they just saw it as a challenge to make her crack. When she tried to return their name-calling by calling them names, the bullies howled with laughter and thought of worse names to call her. 

Emily came home from school every day, threw herself on her bed, and sobbed into her pillow. She prayed to God that the bullying would stop. She started pulling on her hair until it became a constant nervous habit, as if she were trying to yank the frizzy hair out by the roots. Her parents took her to a doctor when her scalp was red and bleeding. The doctor told her, “If you keep doing that, you’ll make yourself so ugly nobody will ever want you.” She believed him. She believed the girls in her class who told her that she was already the ugliest girl in the world. She believed her parents when they said that the words of bullies couldn’t hurt her, so she believed that she, and not the bullies, was the real problem.

Fourth grade was the worst year of Emily’s life. Things got better in the decade that followed. By the time Emily was in college in the early 1970s, frizzy hair was considered “cool” and she stopped hearing about how ugly her hair was. Instead, she heard people tell her how much they envied her thick and wild hair. Women and men told her that she was beautiful, and she tried to believe them. But, even if the memories of being bullied had faded from her, she had not lost the feeling in her bones that there was something wrong with her. 

All of those hurtful words – from her classmates, from her parents, from her doctor – left their mark. Today, Emily is 64 years old. She doesn’t think about the fourth grade much anymore, but the scars are still there.

Today, when a co-worker dismisses her good ideas, when one of her clients cancels an appointment at the last minute, or when the plumber take three days to fix her water heater, part of Emily becomes that little girl again and she believes what she was told as a ten-year-old. She thinks, “It must be my fault. There must be something wrong with me. I am not lovable. I am not worthy of love. It is my own fault that I am a victim.” Even when she realizes the harm she is doing to herself by believing those things, she blames herself for not being stronger in confronting people who treat her badly. And, so, the cycle continues.

The faded memories from childhood, and the feelings those memories have drilled into her mind, have become like a pebble that Emily has carried in her pocket for the last half century. The pebble keeps slapping up against her thigh as she walks in her blue jeans. She has gotten so used to it that she hardly notices it anymore. But, it’s always there. Often, it hurts. Despite Emily’s success in life by most conventional standards, that pebble can still make her feel worthless.

I tell Emily that she should take this pebble out of her pocket sometimes and look at it. I ask her to think about whether the stories the pebble tells about her are true. I say to her, look at the pebble and ask yourself if it’s true that you are ugly. Is it true that you are unlovable? Was it your fault that you were bullied? When people treat you badly, is it because you let yourself be a victim? Thinking back on her memories with intention and purpose – really looking at the pebble carefully – Emily begins to answer the questions, and the pebble begins to lose its power.

“No,” she says. “It was a very painful experience to go through as a helpless child, but it’s over now. I am not a child anymore. I am not helpless. I can still cry and feel sorry for the pain that that I went through back then, but I am not that little girl anymore. At 64 years old, I don’t have to be controlled by what some nasty ten-year old girls said to me fifty years ago.”

In a way, Emily has taken the pebble out of her pocket, inspected it, stared at it, even tasted it – and she has decided that it’s just a pebble. She can keep it, or she can throw it into a pond, but she doesn’t have to let it hurt her anymore.

We all have pebbles from our past that we carry around with us. They are the memories of the hurts, and the failures, and the disappointments, and the losses we have suffered in life. 

Some of us have pockets that are so full of pebbles that they weigh us down. Some of us have pebbles that chaff against our skin and cause us pain without us even remembering what they are. Some of us walk through life with resentment and anger about the pebbles that fill our pockets. But, for the most part, we don’t often take them out to look at them – to see what they really are. We don’t ask them questions. We don’t wonder how much more suffering we need to endure because of all those pebbles.

And one of the true things about these pebbles is that – if we never actually look at them, question them – in our minds, they can turn into boulders. Emily says that she thinks that’s what happened to her when she was in her forties. Her marriage was in trouble. Her daughter was going through a painful “I hate my mother” period of teenage rebellion. Her career was in a stalling pattern. And she just hated herself. All of those messages she had heard as a child about how awful and unlovable she was, they turned into a full-sized boulders standing between her and any possibility of happiness.

We usually think of Yom Kippur as a day for apologies and forgiveness. We apologize to God for the things we have done that we regret and we ask for God’s forgiveness. We apologize to the people we have hurt in our lives and we forgive the people who have hurt us. But there is one person to whom we usually forget to apologize, one person we forget to forgive – ourselves. There is enough pain in life without us continuing to hurt ourselves with the pebbles we carry around that makes us feel ugly, or unloved, or abandoned, or angry, or unhappy. 

Yom Kippur is not only a day for unpacking our sins. It is also a day to notice our pebbles and to look at them carefully. It’s a day to decide how much you need that pebble – a day to decide if you want to keep carrying it around with you in your pocket.

Right now, I would like to ask you to pick one pebble that you are carrying with you today – a memory from your life, or a story you tell yourself, or an image you have of yourself that causes you suffering. Take a moment to choose one. Maybe it’s not “the big one.” Maybe it’s just a small one that you only notice sometimes. 

In your mind, take that pebble out of your pocket. With your mind’s eye, look at it. Ask questions about it. “What is the negative story about myself that this pebble keeps telling me?” Ask yourself, “Do I believe that story? Does it control me? Do I want to keep it?” Take your time. There are many hours left in Yom Kippur (and in your life) to decide what you want to do with that pebble.

There is a word in the Jewish mystical tradition that can be applied to those pebbles we carry around with us. They are called “k’lipot,” which literally means “husks.” They are the barriers that prevent us from noticing and celebrating the holiness of the world and of ourselves. In Jewish mysticism, every act of holiness, every mitzvah we perform, is a step toward removing a k’lipah. When we treat others with kindness and dignity, we learn how to be kind to ourselves. When we engage in holy action, we shatter the pebbles and discover that they are only the hard, outer layers of the holiness that fills all of creation.

Today, Emily has seen her own daughter grow up to have children of her own. She is close with her daughter and her grandchildren. She tells me, though, about how, when her daughter was a little girl, she had the same frizzy hair that Emily had as a ten-year-old. She still remembers combing through her daughter’s hair every night as she helped her get ready for bed. She remembers her daughter’s tears, crying, “It hurts!” when the comb would get caught in the knots and snarls. 

And Emily remembers how she said to her daughter, “I know it hurts. I’m so sorry. But you have luscious, beautiful, wonderful hair. It reminds me of the hair I had when I was a little girl. I did not know it then, but this thick, wavy, wild and woolly hair is a gift. It is God’s way of reminding you what a wild and wonderful person you are. It will always be here, right on the top of your head, to remind you of how much I love you, and how I want you always to love yourself and to know how beautiful you are – inside and out.”

When Emily thinks about that memory, she recognizes that the pebble  – the one that keeps slapping up against her thigh as she walks in her blue jeans – has been transformed. Instead of seeing the pebble only as a memory of pain and self-loathing, she has turned it, in part, into a pathway toward love, compassion, and self-forgiveness. Day by day, she is shattering the pebble and discovering that, within it, there is holiness.

Our pebbles remind us about the pain we have experienced in life. But they also can remind us of how we can turned some of that pain into love. They remind us that our past does not have to rule our future. They remind us to be kind to ourselves, to forgive ourselves, and to know that we are beautiful and holy.

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

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

Dear Alice,

I am writing to apologize about our date last month. I guess the fact that I have not heard from you and you have not returned my phone calls means that you are angry at me for what happened.

Let me explain.

I asked you out after my mother – who has been friends with your mother for many years – suggested that I call you. My mother told me that you were feeling down because you had just been dumped by your old boyfriend. I thought I was being kind and gentlemanly by asking you out to dinner, but I guess that was a mistake on my part. My bad.

While we were at dinner, I wanted you to get to know me better, so I told you about my childhood in Chicago and about my ex-stepfather who used to try to be “buddies” with me by taking me to basketball and football games, even though I hate sports. I also told you about the girls I dated in high school and college and how I have been unlucky in love. Sad, but true.

When you told me about your interest in American history – you see, I do remember that – it reminded me of a girl from my high school. I told you the story about how she had a crush on our history teacher and how she accidentally gave him a picture she drew of him surrounded by hearts and kisses instead of giving him her homework. So funny!! 

I’m sorry you didn’t like that story and, I guess, I’m sorry that the other stuff I told you about myself wasn’t so interesting to you, either. My mother told me that your mother said that you complained that I wasn’t very nice to you. I don’t understand why you think that, but I guess you have your reasons. I just think it was all a  misunderstanding. Maybe no one has ever taken enough interest in you before to tell you about themselves. 

I guess the thing you disliked most was when I asked you to pay for your half of the meal. It only seemed fair to me, but I’m sorry if you don’t see it that way. I am agonized by the thought that you think I’m cheap or something! I’m sorry that I swore at you when you got up and left the table. That wasn’t very nice of me, but I don’t think your behavior was so nice, either. After you left, people in the restaurant were just staring at me and whispering to each other about me. That made me feel pretty small. So, you see, I was pretty hurt, too, by our evening together.

I’m writing this letter to you because my mother told me that I should apologize. I hope you’ll forgive me and, maybe, go out with me again some time. Next time, I’ll pay without you even asking.

Sincerely,
Fred

Sometimes, apologies aren’t really apologies. Sometimes, words like “I’m sorry” and “I apologize,” are really just there to convince ourselves that we’re being nice when, actually, we’re denying, deflecting and blaming the other person. I’m sure you have received an apology that didn’t really apologize for anything. I know that I have offered what I thought at the time were apologies that actually just made a situation worse. 

Offering a good apology is not just good etiquette. From the perspective of Judaism, apologizing is a commandment and an obligation. It could even be seen as a spiritual act – a sacred act. Learning to apologize well is learning to to be a mensch – a decent human being and a person of integrity.

Yom Kippur is a day when we focus on apologies because we are told that today is our deadline to make our apologies to the people we have hurt and to apologize to God. Jewish tradition teaches that, if we do this with sincerity, we will be forgiven.

When I talk about the need to apologize during this time of year, people often ask questions about the experience of being on the receiving end of an apology. They ask, “How can I accept an apology from someone who has hurt me so badly?” “Why should I forgive someone just because they say, ‘I’m sorry’?” “If I say, ‘I forgive you,’ aren’t I just setting myself up to get hurt again?” Those are all good questions and, there is no doubt, it is sometimes hard to accept an apology.

However, I notice that people want to focus on the apologies that other people owe them and they don’t often want to talk about the difficulties of being the person who needs to  make the apology. That’s what I want to talk about tonight. I want to talk about what it means to make a good apology. I want to talk about how to say, “I’m sorry.”

So, let’s first think about what makes bad apologies bad. You know you’re about to hear a bad apology when someone says: “I’m sorry, but…” For example, “I’m sorry that you were hurt when my car ran over your dog, but you sure take these things personally.” That is not – in any way, shape or form – an actual apology.

“I’m sorry but” is just another way of saying, “I know that I should say something in the form of an apology, but I really think that I did nothing wrong.” Sometimes it’s worse than that. Sometimes, “I’m sorry but,” really means, “I know I have to apologize under these circumstances, but, really, I think you need to apologize to me first.” That’s not an apology. That is blaming – the opposite of apologizing.

Another way to make a bad apology comes in the form of “I’m sorry, but only vaguely.” This is when someone says, “I’m sorry about what happened” or “I apologize for anything that may have hurt you.” If you know that you did something wrong, and you want to be forgiven for it, then name it. Say what it is that you did. “I’m sorry that I embarrassed you in front of all your friends when I called you an idiot,” is a lot more likely to be accepted than, “I’m sorry for what happened back there.” Right?

Maybe the most common bad apology is “I’m sorry if.” You hear this all the time in pseudo-apologies like, “I’m sorry if your feelings were hurt when I made other plans for the night I said I would come see your debut at Carnegie Hall.” It’s not hard to see that “I’m sorry if” is just a way for the speaker to suggest that he or she is not the person really at fault. “I’m sorry if” implies that the real blame lies in the way the other person failed to perceive the situation correctly. It’s a way of saying, “I wouldn’t have to apologize if you weren’t so easily offended.” Again, not a real apology. 

I would venture to say that we have all, at one time or another, offered a bad apology like one of these. We even do it when we know how much it hurts to receive such a non-apology. Why do we do it, then? We make bad apologies because making good apologies is really very hard. How hard? 

The great Jewish medieval philosopher and legal scholar, Rabbi Moses ben Maimon – who is better known to the world as Maimonides or, in Jewish circles, as the Rambam – wrote that the repentance of Yom Kippur is really a series of good apologies to the people we have hurt and making a good apology to God. He said that a good apology consists of four steps.

The first step, according to the Rambam, is to admit in clear words what you did wrong. He said that you have to confess your wrong verbally and ask for forgiveness. The second step, he said is to express remorse, to say that you recognize the damage you have done and your determination not to make the same mistake again. The third step of the Rambam is to make amends. You must commit to righting your wrongs and repairing the damage you have done. Finally, the Rambam says that repentance is not complete until you face the same situation again and make better choices. No apology can mean anything unless it means that you have changed because you recognize the wrong you have committed.

Putting the Rambam’s principles into practical rules for saying you’re sorry, we could say that a good apology needs to take responsibility for actions and acknowledge their hurt. It needs to express sincere remorse and provide reasonable assurance that it won’t happen again. It needs to offer to make up for the harm done.

For example, here is what Fred might have said to apologize to Alice: “The way that I spoke to you in the restaurant was hurtful and inconsiderate of your feelings. I should have listened to you in a way that made you feel appreciated and heard instead of dominating the conversation with trivial stories about myself. I should have treated you with respect and courtesy instead of insulting you, especially after you let me know how hurt you felt. I understand that my behavior made you feel belittled and ignored. I feel terrible that my behavior hurt you so much that you felt that you needed to leave so quickly. I promise that I will do whatever I can to make sure that I never treat anyone like that again. Please let me know what I can do to make this up to you.” That is what an apology should sound like.

Is making an apology like that easy? Of course not. Even after working hard at apologizing, people find it difficult to make this kind of good apology every time that an apology is called for. But making good apologies has tremendous benefits for us – benefits that should motivate us to try to make more good apologies.

Good apologies can transform our relationships. We often shy away from making a real apology because we think that an apology will make us look weak, unkind or imperfect. Somehow, we fail to realize that apologizing does just the opposite. When we sincerely apologize for something we’ve done wrong, it actually causes others to see us as self-confident, compassionate and humble – all good qualities.

There is an example of a good apology that you may know about in recent Rhode Island history. The actor James Woods had a brother named Michael who died in 2006 at age 49 when he had a heart attack in the emergency department at Kent Hospital in Warwick. He had gone to the hospital complaining of a sore throat and vomiting. It later came out that Michael Woods’ death was directly related to the fact that a medical order that was written by the attending physician was not carried out by the Emergency Department staff.

James Woods sued the hospital and the case dragged out in lawyers’ offices for years. When the case eventually went to trial, the CEO of the hospital, Sandra Coletta, went to the courthouse and found out that the hospital had made mistakes in treating Michael Woods. She asked for a meeting with the famous actor who was suing her hospital, and in that meeting she listened to the pain that James Woods, the person, had endured in the loss of his younger brother. Coletta then did something unexpected. She apologized. She admitted the mistakes that the hospital had made and she said she was sorry. 

She also did more than that. Coletta offered to establish an institute at the hospital, named in honor of Michael Woods, to prevent such errors from happening again in the future. She acknowledged that the words “I’m sorry” are meaningless if they are not joined to action to repair what has been broken. They are pointless if they are not backed up with real change.

That was the breakthrough that was needed to settle the case. As a result, the hospital was able to get past a lawsuit that was a public relations disaster for them. James Woods and his family got the acknowledgement they needed that the hospital recognized their fault in his brother’s death. Because of the work of the Michael J. Woods Institute to Improve Medical Care, our community now has a hospital with shorter waiting times in the emergency department, which, in turn, can help save lives. 

Of course, most apologies do not attract the media attention that this apology did. Most apologies do not result in better medical care for thousands of people and the prevention of unnecessary deaths. But apologies do bring together people who have been kept apart by resentment and bitterness. Apologies do help to heal damaged families and save them from estrangement and brokenness. Apologies do help people transform old animosities and inner turmoil into forgiveness and self-forgiveness. Good apologies can do all of that. They can transform us into better and happier people.

On this Yom Kippur, I want to ask you to do something real. I want you to think about the apologies that are missing from your life. You can consider the apologies that are owed to you, if you like, but, chances are, you can’t do too much to make those happen. You can, however, control the apologies that you owe to others. 

I want to ask you to notice what has kept you from offering those apologies. Maybe you think that too much time has gone by. In reality, it is never too late to say, “I’m sorry.” Maybe you think that apologizing would just stir up old pain. The truth is, you will never know what pain another person is still feeling and will continue to feel until you apologize. Maybe you think that you shouldn’t apologize because the other person won’t apologize back. Of course, if you both feel that way, you could both be suffering as you wait for the other person to apologize first.

Don’t do that to yourself. Take the risk. Find the strength. Heal the wounds. Say, “I’m sorry.” And make your apology, not just a good apology, but a great one.

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

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

Two weeks ago, I got a bit of a thrill when two people I know from different places were mentioned in the same story in the New York Times. However, as I read the story a little chill went down my spine. And I imagine that the same chill was felt by many other congregational rabbis who saw the story.

The article described how my colleague Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, the senior rabbi of a Reform congregation in New York City, offered a prayer from the bimah this summer that included the names of Israeli soldiers and Palestinian children killed in the Gaza War. According to the Times, that prayer led to the angry resignation from the congregation of a board member who disapproved of the inclusion of the Palestinian children in the prayer. He did not go quietly, either. He posted his resignation letter on Facebook and accused Rabbi Kleinbaum of spreading propaganda for Hamas. A few other members joined him in resigning.

If that is not sobering enough, the Times article went on to describe an opposite situation – the one faced by my friend, Rabbi Ron Aigen, the Reconstructionist rabbi of a congregation in Montreal. He gave a sermon this summer in which he described the high ethical standards used by the Israeli Defense Forces during the Gaza War to protect innocent civilians. As a result of this sermon, a member of Rabbi Aigen’s congregation – one who had not even attended the service at which Rabbi Aigen gave the sermon – resigned her membership and said that the synagogue was no longer a place where criticism of Israel could be voiced.

You can understand why I and other rabbis are a bit nervous talking about Israel to their congregations, let alone on Yom Kippur. I know both of these rabbis. Rabbi Kleinbaum is not naive about Hamas and Rabbi Aigen is no hawk. I might have offered exactly the same prayer as Rabbi Kleinbaum and the same sermon as Rabbi Aigen. I agree with them both. We should remember all of the victims of war, including Palestinian children. We should praise Israel’s efforts to protect lives and to thwart Hamas’ efforts to use civilians as human shields. 

But, to talk about Israel at all these days, rabbis risk angering one end or the other of the political spectrum of North American Jews, or both ends at the same time. A rabbi who is just starting with a new congregation – just starting to form relationships with its members – would have to be crazy not to know that you cannot talk about Israel from the pulpit on Yom Kippur.

Well, here goes, anyway.

I cannot not talk about Israel during the High Holy Days this year. Israel is too important to us, the Gaza War this summer was too painful, and the ongoing conflicts that threaten Israel’s future will have a profound effect on our future. We have to try to come to terms with what Israel means to us now.

I know that I am likely to say a few things today about Israel that might rub some of you the wrong way. I don’t see any way around that. Even calling Israel a “Jewish State” has become controversial in some Jewish quarters. All I can ask is that you listen. Agree if you will – disagree if you will – but please give me a chance. We have to be willing to take some risks or we will never have an honest conversation about Israel … and we desperately need to have honest conversations about Israel.

Let me tell you about what I experienced this summer. 

The Gaza War was deeply challenging and upsetting for me. The kidnapping of three Israeli boys, Naftali Fraenkel (16 years old), Gilad Shaer (16 years old), and Eyal Yifrah (19 years old) shook me deeply. I imagined the terror faced by their parents and the anguish of an entire nation. 

The nearly two weeks of Operation Brothers Keeper that followed the kidnapping also troubled me. The stated purpose of the operation was to search for the boys, but it seemed that the sweep through Palestinian communities, neighborhoods, and homes, was also meant to intimidate the Palestinian population. It also seemed to serve as an excuse for Israel to re-arrest the leaders of Hamas in the West Bank who had been released just a few months earlier as part of the negotiations with the Palestinians. To Palestinians, I thought, the operation would be seen as evidence of Israel’s insincerity and untrustworthiness in any negotiation.

When the announcement was made that the bodies of the three boys had been found, I experienced too many emotions to name – grief for the boys, anger against the murderers, sorrow for the parents, despair that the conflict would never end, resentment against those who cheered the news, fear for Israel’s future, and heartbreak over how often history seems to repeat itself.

Then, just two days later, a new horror. Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a 16-year-old Palestinian boy, was kidnapped by three Israelis, taken to a forest, beaten and burned alive. Now, I would have to add shame to the list – shame that a Jew could do such a thing. How could my people lower themselves to such acts of terror?

The events that followed could have been written in a script even before they unfolded. Prime Minister Netanyahu denounced the Israeli murderers as terrorists – but a few far-right-wing Israelis expressed support for the revenge killing. Palestinians rioted. Israel took military action against Hamas, whom it blamed for the original kidnappings. The already intolerable rocket attacks against Israel from Gaza intensified. Israel began an air campaign to take out the rocket launch-sites and the militants who commanded them. But Hamas continued their rockets, fired from neighborhoods where Palestinian civilians would serve as human shields, and aimed at Israeli civilians – a double violation of international law. 

There was a frightening and growing death toll of Palestinians, among them a heartbreaking number of Palestinian children. Many thought Israel's military response was excessive and heavy-handed. Meanwhile, the battle in the air and on the ground was paralleled by another battle in the media, in which each side tried to convince the world that it was the true innocent victim. 

The only unexpected wrinkle in this latest round of warfare was the discovery of a network of tunnels constructed by Hamas from Gaza into Israeli territory, with the clear intention to be used to attack Israeli towns and to kill and kidnap more Israelis. 

The final outcome? The stakes have been raised once again. We can count on more long-range rockets from Gaza in the future that will reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The attack tunnels surely will be rebuilt. The Israeli and Palestinian public are more convinced than ever that the other side does not really want peace and never can be trusted. 

Truly, this summer has tested us. The emotions have been intense. No matter what your political views of the Middle East, if you have followed events closely, you have known red-hot anger and bone-chilling fear. 

How does Jewish tradition and Jewish values inform the way that we respond to such an emotional roller-coaster? It begins with three simple words: Hope, Compassion and Justice.

Our tradition commands us to hope, even in the midst of a grim and dire reality. This is what Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav taught when he said, “Never despair! Never! It is forbidden to give up hope!" (Likutei Moharan II:78). 

We are obliged to defy darkness. We must rail against the fatalism that says that there is nothing that we can do. We must dedicate ourselves to declaring that the world can be – must be – better.

I know how easy it is to think and to say, “The Arabs will never accept Israel,” and, “There can never be peace in the Middle East,” I recognize the very real history and present reality that makes hoping for a peaceful future seem difficult, even painful. But I also believe that we are not permitted to give up hope. We must still strive for peace, and that means that we must contemplate what we are willing to give up to reach a negotiated settlement. I hope for the day when both Israeli and Palestinian leaders will be willing to do so, too.

Our tradition teaches compassion, both for others and for ourselves. Last night, I talked about fear. We know that if we allow our fears alone to rule us, we will make bad choices. We will have no compassion and we will see only enemies and threats all around us. We will perpetuate our own suffering, even when there are opportunities to get out of the ongoing cycle of attack and counter-attack.

If we truly and compassionately believe that all human beings are created in the image of God, then we will listen for the voices of the Palestinians who are compassionate to our suffering (they do exist), and we will be willing to consider their overtures and opportunities for de-escalating the conflict. If we believe that we are created in God’s image, we will exercise self-compassion and forgive ourselves for the hormone-driven instinct to assume the worst about our enemies.

Our tradition teaches us to work for justice. The Torah commands, “Tzedek, tzedek tirdof,” “Justice, justice you shall pursue” (Deuteronomy 16:20). If that commandment means anything, it must mean justice for everyone – Israel and the Palestinians both. 

Justice for Israel means the right to live without the constant fear of rocket fire overhead and terror tunnels below. Justice for Israelis means the right for their nation to exist just like any other nation of the earth. If the French have the right to live in France and the Japanese have the right to live in Japan, the Jews should have the unquestioned right to live in the land that the Romans named “Iudaea.” That’s where our name comes from, and that is where we come from.

And there also must be justice for the Palestinians. They, too, have a long history of living in the land we call Israel. That must be respected, too. Palestinians have a right to freedom of movement and freedom to build their own homes without intimidation. They have a right to live peaceful lives if they are willing to live peacefully with their neighbors.

In the end, I believe that supporting justice for the Palestinians is the best way to secure peace and security for Israel. With a just and  mutually agreed upon settlement to the conflict, the Palestinians would become the masters of their own fate and would become responsible for governing themselves peacefully and competently. For Israel, a separate Palestinian state would mean an end to the moral impossibility of occupying and subjecting another people. It would mean clear and established borders. It would mean that Israel could remain a true democracy without giving up its identity as a Jewish state. It cannot happen unless both sides are willing, but pursuing that vision is the pursuit of justice.

Am I being too idealistic in the way I image that the conflict can be resolved? Am I being a hopeless dreamer? Maybe I am. But my idealism and hope are informed by the fact that Israel itself is an improbable dream that came to reality only because of people’s vision and idealism. If there can be such a thing as a return to our homeland after 2,000 years of exile, if the world’s most endangered people can survive and thrive in the world’s most dangerous place, then I think there is still room for another miracle – the miracle of peace.

So often, I hear congregants ask me what they can do to help Israel. They want to know how they can put their Jewish values to work for Israel. They want to know, also, how they can heal the tumult of emotions that pull us in different directions when we think about Israel. I want to suggest three things: 

1) Keep engaged with Israel in your life. Be willing to talk with friends and family, Jews and non-Jews, about Israel and how you feel about it. Be willing to learn about the issues and conflicts in Israeli society, and don’t be satisfied with the caricature of Israel you see on the nightly news. If you have kids in our Religious School, know that we have made Israel a major focus of our curriculum this year. Ask your children about what they are learning about Israel. Put a map of Israel up in your home and let your kids show you the location of the cities they are studying. Give Israel a place and a presence in your life.

2) Make a commitment to vote in the World Zionist Congress elections in 2015. The Congress meets every four or five years and is the highest decision-making body of world Jewry. The outcome of the elections will determine how funding and resources from around the world are used to support Israel. Delegates to the Congress will make important decisions regarding gender and religious equality in Israel and the efforts for lasting peace and security in the region. When you came into the Sanctuary today, you received a card to pledge to vote for ARZA, the Zionist organization of Reform Judaism, in the election. Please fill it out and leave it here today so we can mail your card together with everyone else’s.

3) Go to Israel. There is nothing that will feed your Jewish soul, nothing that will teach your children what it means to be a Jew, and nothing that will support Israel more than a trip to Israel. Whether it is your first time or your twentieth, your trip to Israel will deepen your perspective, open your heart, and change your life. There is nothing that would make me happier than to lead a trip of Temple Sinai members to Israel. If you will it, it is no dream.

Am I taking a risk today by talking about Israel and all the controversy that surrounds it? I think so. You can prove me wrong, though, and I would thank you for it. You can prove me wrong by responding with thoughtful dialogue instead of angry accusations. You can prove me wrong by continuing the conversation about Israel in our community and in your family. Please, prove me wrong by remembering Israel as our people’s homeland – even when we are frightened, angered or confused by what goes on there. 

There is nothing easy about the world we live in, and there is nothing easy about being a Jew and a lover of Israel. On this Yom Kippur, we try to face the challenge of engaging with Israel and bringing our highest values to our relationship with her.

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

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

A little while ago in our service, we read a translation of one of the traditional prayers of Yom Kippur. You may have noticed a mark on the translation on page 262, a little circle, that indicates that the translation is not literal.

Here is a little of what the Hebrew on that page means more literally:

“Place Your fear, Adonai our God, upon all of Your works, and Your dread upon all that You have created. Let all Your handiwork fear You, and let them bow down before You…”

Fear of God. Even, the dread of God. This is not an image that most of us find very comforting or desirable on Yom Kippur. I have to admit, I flinch a bit whenever I see the expression, “Fear of God,” but it is a phrase that appears often in Jewish prayer, especially during the High Holy Days. Of all things, why would a loving, nurturing God want me to be afraid? What does it even mean to fear God?

The phrase, I believe, is particularly confounding to us because of all the negative associations with have the with emotion of fear. Psychology teaches us that fear is the painful, cringing instinct at the root of neurosis. It is our irrational fears that keep us from experiencing life to the fullest. Fear is the enemy that makes some people quick to overreact to perceived slights, quick to become defensive, quick to feeling guilty, quick to run away from a challenge, quick to assume the worst about others, quick to fall back into bad habits, or quick to deny reality. 

So, we have to ask: Is that what God wants? Does God really want us to do God’s will because we are afraid? Does God want to condition us to avoid impulsively some dreadful punishment that God might otherwise inflict upon us?

Part of our problem in understanding, “the fear of God,” I believe, is that we tend to focus on just one kind of fear when we see that phrase. “Fear,” both in Hebrew and in English, can refer to a wide range of experiences.

When a person stands on the edge of the immensity of the Grand Canyon, or looks out over the vastness of the ocean, it is hard not to think about how small and fragile we really are. We realize that we could easily be swallowed up and consumed by that immenseness, both figuratively and literally. That feeling may well be described as fear. It is that slightly disorienting awareness that there are things in the universe that are not only beyond our scope and scale, they are beyond our understanding. That sort of “fear” is what we are talking about when we use the phrase “fear of God.” It’s not about cowering or cringing. It is about the experience of awe and reverence. 

And here is how it applies to Yom Kippur: When you find yourself thinking about doing something that you know is wrong, that trembling feeling in your gut is also a kind of fear. Maybe we fear we will damage a valued relationship. Maybe we fear our actions will turn us into the kind of person we don’t want to be. Maybe we just fear getting caught. Maybe it is a little of each of these. It is the quaking, shuddering, skin crawling dread that you feel when you know you are in danger of doing something that might, in the end, consume you. That is also the fear we mean when we talk about “the fear of God.”

This fear/dread/reverence/awe occurs in the moment that we recognize ourselves to be in the presence of a great power – not necessarily a power that threatens our bodies, but one that overwhelms our soul. It is not like the fear of an abusive parent’s striking you across the face. It is more like the fear of seeing a beloved parent’s look of disappointment in your actions. It is the the uncomfortable, unnerving and uncommon feeling you get when you realize that there is something more important than you.

This is a kind of fear that we actually can feel good about having. Nobody wants to be the child who can feel no regret in the disappointment of his or her parents. Certainly, no parents want their children to have an ethical and emotional blindness that makes them insensitive to chastisement. We understand that the ability to be aware of the feeling of fearful awe is at the foundation of morality and of having a conscience. It is the primitive, emotional response that makes “right” and “wrong” not just intellectual ideas, but emotion-laden realities that we feel in our kishkes.

It is important to know that this quaking, awesome, reverent fear, is not the only emotion that Jewish tradition wants us to feel about God. Not just on Yom Kippur, but on every day of the year, we recite the passage from Deuteronomy that asks us to “love Adonai our God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our might.” In Jewish tradition, the “love of God” is usually mentioned in parallel with the “fear of God” as the balancing quality for a complete relationship. Just as children should regard their parents both with love and respect, so it is with a person’s relationship with God.

During most of the year, we recite prayers that talk about God’s eternal love for us and about our love for God. Some of those prayers are present in the liturgy for the High Holy Days, but the balance shifts at this time of year toward the side of “fearing God” rather than “loving God.” The ten days from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur are known in Hebrew as Yamim HaNora’im, the “Days of Fearful Awe.” It is during this time of year that we do not talk so much about God as companion and lover. The High Holy Days’ liturgy is filled instead with images of God as ruler, master and judge.

Why does the tradition emphasize these fearful images of God so much at this time of year? To use a metaphor, it is because we are now in “finals week” of the Jewish spiritual calendar and the big exam is less than twenty-four hours away. Now is the time when we most want to hear the stern voice of God as the clock ticks down to the deadline for atonement. Now is not the time for hearing the loving voice that says that we can always get an extension. This is the time of year when we most want to use images of God that motivate us to action. There are other times of year to imagine God as loving partner; this is the time to imagine God as ruler and judge.

Unfortunately, if you are only in the synagogue during these Days of Fearful Awe, you only hear the stern voice. By way of comparison, it is as if you were to hear only your spouse’s criticism of you and never hear his or her words of love and devotion. That’s not good in a marriage and it’s not great for a relationship with God. But it would not be good, either, to hear only the sweet words and never hear the “tough love” that makes us squirm a bit.

Fear, you see, is not always a bad thing to feel. From a religious point of view, the shuddering fear of awe motivates us to make our best choices in life and to keep ourselves far from temptations that lead us to bad choices. From a scientific perspective, too, fear is not some kind of evolutionary mistake in the way our brains are constructed – far from it. Fear is part of the necessary mechanism for survival. 

Fear is the thing that triggers a “fight or flight” response when an animal is confronted by a predator or a life threatening situation. Fear can save us by filling our bodies with the hormones we need to run away as fast as we can, or to defend ourselves with all of our might. Fear is a good thing … if it is triggered by a real threat.

The problem is that many of the things that scare us are not worth the endorphin rush we get when we are frightened. Our brains are wired to experience fear exactly the same way whether the fear is real or imagined.

And the human mind has a remarkable capacity to imagine all sorts of things … and to fear them. Imagination is the ability that allows us to design and build cities, to transform a desert into a vineyard, and to create art. It is one of our most unique traits as a species, one of our greatest tool for achievement, but it can also be a great obstacle.

Think about how easily we turn our imaginings into fear. Think about the way a movie can scare you out of your wits. Think about the way you can lie awake in bed at night worrying about worst-case scenarios that exist only in your mind. Think, also, of how easily our minds fall prey to fear-based prejudices when we believe that we are threatened by people who are different from us, even if we have never experienced any harm from them outside of our imagination. If a person imagines a threat, and becomes preoccupied with the thought of that threat, he or she can be driven to distraction and, ironically, suffer real harm from nothing more than his or her own fear.

Knowing this, explains a lot about the fearful times in which we live. We turn on the television and hear news about ISIS’s beheadings, war in the Middle East, anti-semitism in Europe, and even local news broadcasts driven by the dubious principle, “if it bleeds, it leads.” The advertising industry has long tried to make us afraid of everything from body odor to wearing last year’s fashions. 

It has become common for politicians and cable news channels to scare us with stories of about how their opponents will raise our taxes, cut our pensions, allow the borders to be overrun by foreigners, or allow the country to be taken over by rapacious corporations. Our politics have become like the set of a cheap horror film with everyone terrified of what lies behind the next closed door. It would almost be comical, if the consequences weren’t so hurtful for our society.

We have to know that this kind of constant fear is really very bad for us. A person who is constantly frightened by imagined dangers can get stressed out. The constant flood of “fight or flight” hormones poisons our bodies with the chemicals that nature meant to be used only in emergencies. We make ourselves sick and we make bad choices motivated by our least generous, least kind, and most fearful thoughts. That only leads to more fear, more stress, and greater unhappiness.

The great American orthodox rabbi, Joseph Soloveitchik, had a good way of explaining how the fear of God, paradoxically, is the antidote to living our modern life of fear. He was once asked by a Jewish psychologist why Jewish tradition talked so much about fearing God, considering how much harm irrational fears can cause. In response, Soloveitchik said, “I would rather have one big fear than a thousand little ones.”

Soloveitchik understood the problem of fear, and he expressed it in the language of God-talk, but it makes sense no matter what language you use. We, as human beings, can make conscious choices about what we shall fear. Shall we live in dread of not impressing our peers with our wealth, or shall we fear not living up to our values? Shall we fear that the government or corporations will come take away our liberties, or shall we fear that we have not done enough to create a just and peaceful world? Shall we fear every perceived slight or blow to our ego, or shall we fear that we have not treated others with dignity and kindness?

Fearing God is a metaphor for setting our priorities in life so that we direct our energies toward what is best within us, not toward our angriest, neediest and most selfish selves. Fearing God does not mean cowering to defend ourselves from divine blows. The fear of God means taking possession of our fears, using the energy to heighten our self-awareness of the choices we make in life and try to do better.

And here is how another rabbi expressed this thought: Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav famously taught, “כל העולם כולו גשר צר מאוד והעיקר לא לפחד כלל,” “All the world, all of it, is a very narrow bridge, but the essence of it all is not to fear at all.” Nachman wants to remind us that life is filled with distractions and diversions that can lead us dangerously astray, but we should not fear these things at all. Rather, we should know that there is a path – a bridge, as it were – that can lead us where we are intended to go. Do not fear life’s turmoil, he says, just keep your eyes on the prize and know the path you are on.

That is what we do when we stay close to our values and our highest goals in life. That is what we do when we let go of some of our fears and anxieties and allow our attention to stay focussed on the one big thing that we should stay focused upon – doing what is right, making our world a better place, upholding our values, living with reverence and awe for for that which is beyond. 

Is what I am suggesting easy? Not at all. Some find that prayer helps, meditation can help, just taking a little time each day to reflect calmly on the path ahead can help, too. It takes patience to quiet our frantic minds enough to even notice our fears and how they affect our behavior. It takes discipline to make changes in the way we respond to our fears. It requires us to change some of our priorities so we have time to reflect. It also takes a lot of self-forgiveness for the times when we don’t get it right. Even then, we can spend an entire lifetime working to master our fears and still fall short.

However, the effort we expend toward transforming our fears is richly rewarded. The reward is our own happiness (and who doesn’t want to be happier?). By turning away from the thousand fears that send us flying and fighting in a million directions, we give ourselves the opportunity to live the lives that we actually want, not the lives that we are scared into.

I don’t regret that our prayerbook does not translate literally the blessing that asks us to “fear of God.” It would rub me the wrong way to read that on Yom Kippur, or on any day. But I also do not regret that the traditional Hebrew words of the blessing are still there. They are a gentle reminder on Yom Kippur that the trembling, disorienting feeling that we might call fear is something that helps us become the people we want to be. When channeled and directed, it is a force that helps us make wiser choices.

To me, fearing God means taking control of fear. It means distinguishing threats that are real from those that are imagined. It means a release from the pressure always to be better than, richer than, more popular than, or more powerful than somebody else. Most of all, it means noticing that we are not the center of the universe. It reminds us that, in turning our fears over to a power greater than ourselves, we choose our own happiness.

G’mar chatimah tovah. May you be sealed in the Book of Life for a good year.

If you are at all familiar with Jewish worship, you will have heard the prayer called the Aleinu. It occurs near the end of most services. It serves as a sort of anthem that sums up the service's message of praising God.

When I was a child, the prayerbook used in the Reform Movement called it "The Adoration," and the prayer expressed how we "adore the everliving God and render praise unto God." It was only with the adoption of a new Reform prayerbook in the 1970s that the original form of the traditional prayer began to emerge. The Aleinu is not just a prayer about adoring God; it is a prayer of submitting oneself to God in recognition of God's complete sovereignty over our lives and all creation. 

The opening word, "aleinu," says it all. The word literally means "on us," but just as the English preposition "on" can mean obligation or responsibility (as in, "the onus is on you"), the Hebrew also denotes a requirement. We start the prayer by saying, "It is our obligation to praise the Master of all, to declare the greatness of the Shaper of all creation." 

Another curious thing about the Aleinu is the prayer's climactic moment. We declare: va'anachnu korim, umishtachavim, umodim lifnei melech mal'chei hamlachim, HaKadosh Baruch Hu. The phrase, literally translated, means: "We bow, and prostrate, and give thanks before the King of kings of kings, the Holy One, blessed is He." There is a tradition of bowing on these words, but you don't usually see people prostrating all the way to the floor when they recite the Aleinu. 

Originally, however, that is exactly what happened. 

The Aleinu was not written to be an anthem at the end of the service. It was composed for one very significant moment in the Jewish annual holiday cycle — at the beginning of the shofar service on Rosh Hashanah. 

The most important soundings of the shofar are during Musaf (the additional service) on Rosh Hashanah. Those soundings are delivered during three blessings: Malchuyot (Kingship), Zichronot (Remembrances), and Shofarot (Ram's Horns). The Aleinu originally was the introduction to the Malchuyot blessing to declare God's kingship over all reality. When recited during a traditional service on Rosh Hashanah, the prayer leader literally follows the instructions embedded in the prayer. The prayer leader falls to knees on the words "We bow," puts hands on the floor on the word "and prostrate," and touches forehead to the ground on the word "and give thanks." It is one of the most dramatic moments in all of Jewish liturgy.

The Aleinu prayer was so popular among Jews in the Medieval era that it spread to other parts of the liturgy. It is recited again in Musaf on Yom Kippur with the full prostration. It also came to be adopted as the anthem at the end of most services, but with only a bow in place of the prostration.

I find the prostration to be a beautiful practice. When I lead services for the High Holy Days, I invite members of the congregation to find a place in the sanctuary where they will have a small piece of floor in front of them so they can prostrate along with me to the prayer. Even when only a few people do the prostration, it signals a moment of tremendous power for the whole community. 

Think of it this way. Yom Kippur is the day when we make ourselves completely vulnerable before God and (more importantly) before ourselves. This is the day when we own up to all the things about ourselves that are difficult to admit. It is not only hard to admit our sins and mistakes; it is also hard to face the very nature of our existence. 

On Yom Kippur, we look into the abyss and admit that our lives are temporary, fleeting, and largely futile. There is no better day of the year to lay yourself flat on the floor and give up all your pretenses and conceits. This is our day to be spiritually naked and admit that the things we usually think are so important — our accomplishments, prestige, learning and wisdom — are just a facade we use to convince ourselves that we are something big and important. The truth that Yom Kippur comes to teach us is that we only matter to the extent that we live our lives in service to something greater than ourselves. We have an obligation to do that. Everything else is window dressing.

In just a few hours, Yom Kippur will begin again. The day is long and it grinds us down. It is meant to. This is our day to accept upon ourselves the obligation to see ourselves as we really are, to lay down our egos, fall flat on the ground, and awaken to the highest within ourselves. 

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


Other Posts on This Topic:
Steve Jobs and Yom Kippur
Bo: Hitting Rock Bottom