“Atem nitzavim hayom kulchem. You stand here, all of you, today. Before the You’re your God. Your tribal heads, your elders, and your officials, all the men of Israel, your children, your wives, even the stranger within your camp, from the wood chopper to the water drawer.”

Let’s discuss, why the wood chopper and the water drawer? Perhaps it is examples of everyone—not just the heads of the communities, the doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs, but the “little people”, the day laborers, the ones who work at minimum wage jobs, the people at WalMart or at Hyatt, or at McDonalds. The migrant laborers who pick our fruits and vegetables. The ones who work at staffing agencies so that large corporations can scale up or scale back and don’t have to pay any benefits. These labors stand with us before God.

Rashi links the stranger with the wood chopper and the water drawer. We Jews have been strangers in a strange land—from Egypt through the Babylonian Exile to the present day. 36 times in the Torah it insists we treat the stranger with dignity and respect. The same dignity that we demand for ourselves. That is part of loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Yet there is still a problem. In classical exegesis, there are 13 rules that Rabbi Akiva derived. One of them is that there are no extra words in Torah. So if the strangers are already mentioned, why be this specific? Each word has to teach us something new. So again, why wood choppers and water drawers? We looked at whether the Hebrew itself contained a clue—like good poetic alliteration. It didn’t help. Is there something unique about those jobs? Is there a spectrum of action here?

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, the dean of the Ziegler School in Los Angeles, has a different idea. What if each of these, the wood choppers and the waterdrawers are different parts of ourselves as we stand together before the Holy One with our whole community as we enter these Holy Days. He taught in the name of Reb Shlomo Carlebach, who understood this term as a metaphor for the possible abuse in human relationships. He asks, how often do we see the person across from us or next to us as an object to cut down, prove wrong or shape in the image we think they ought to be? This can happen with our families, our friends, our business associates and workplaces or even, dare I say it, in our synagogue. It can happen with our relationship with God. And I think it can happen with ourselves. Sometimes, myself included, we are our own worst critics, judging ourselves too harshly.   We go too far, we cut too deep and it becomes hard to repair the relationships, with our friends and family, with our fellow workers, with ourselves or with God.

Waterdrawers, however can be a metaphor for how people are wells of inspiration, waiting for us to engage them, learn from them, and to be nourished and satisfied by them. It needs to be a two way street. We need to give and receive. However, I think we need a caution, a well can dry up, if it is not replenished.

So I think there is something more going on here. The image of the wood chopper is not positive. What does it mean when we have been exiled from the land? In this case I don’t just mean the land of Israel. What is our responsibility to the earth? Tomorrow there will be a march in New York for the climate. They are anticipating 200,000 people, the largest march since the famous Civil Rights March in Washington DC. There are 1500 organizations that are co-sponsors of this rally. They are expecting half of the participants to be Jews.

It makes sense. On Wednesday we celebrate the Jewish New Year. Rosh Hashanah. The head of the year. Hayom Harat Olam. The world’s birthday. We have an obligation as Jews to be partners with God in creation. We learn this in Genesis. We learn this again in Deuteronomy when we are told bal tashchit, do not destroy. In old Girl Scout terms, we need to leave this place better than we found it.

Part of the rally is a “ribbon tree” organized by members of the Academy for Jewish Religion. Our religious school students came up with their own dreams, wishes, blessings for the world that will then be put on the ribbon tree tomorrow. This next generation—the one that was standing with us at Sinai, standing with us today, said….

• I want the world to be perfect
• I wish for more recycling.
• I wish for cleaner air.
• I wish for less pollution and less greenhouse gasses.
• I wish we would stop launching toxic gases into the air to save polar bears.
• I wish we could tow an iceberg to South Africa to provide fresh drinking water.
• I wish for more crops to feed the hungry.
• I wish there were a cure for ebola.

These students get it. They will find ways to put their wishes into action. The path is not yet clear but this is a beginning.

I want to tell a story about a woodcarver—not a wood chopper—from a little book, the Active Life by Parker Palmer, a Quaker, telling a Zen Buddhist story, published by the Church of the Brethren, right here in Elgin, given to me by an Episcopal priest. It teaches us that we need a balance: between meditation and action, between chopping (or carving) and preserving.

The Woodcarver.

Khing, the master carver, made a bell stand
Of precious wood. When it was finished,
All who saw it were astounded. They said it must be
The work of spirits.
The Prince of Lu said to the master carver:

“What is your secret?”

Khling replied: “I am only a workman:
I have no secret. There is only this:
When I began to think about the work you commanded
I guarded my spirit, did not expend it
On trifles, that were no to the point.

I fasted in order to set
My heart at rest.
After three days fasting, I had forgotten gain and success.
After five days
I had forgotten criticism.
After seven days
I had forgotten my body
With all its limbs.

“By this time all thought of your Highness
And of the court had faded away.
All that might distract me from the work
Had vanished.

I was collected in the single thought

Of the bell stand.
“Then I went to the forest
To see the trees in their own natural state.
When the right tree appeared before my eyes,
The bell stand also appeared in it, clearly, beyond doubt.
All I had to do was to put forth my hand
And begin.

“If I had not met this particular tree
There would have been
No bell stand at all.

“What happened?
My own collected thought
Encountered the hidden potential in the wood;
From this live encounter came the work
Which you ascribe to the spirits.

The Active Life, pages 55-56

This reminds me of another story. From the Chassidc tradition:

When the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem-Tov saw misfortune threatening the Jews, it was his custom to go into a certain part of the forest to meditate. There he would light a fire, say a special prayer, and the miracle would be accomplished and the misfortune averted.

Later, when his disciple, the celebrated Magid of Mezritch, had occasion, for the same reason, to intercede with heaven, he would go to the same place in the forest and say: ‘‘Master of the Universe, listen! I do not know how to light the fire, but I am still able to say the prayer,’’ and again the miracle would be accomplished.

Still later, Rabbi Moshe-Lieb of Sasov, in order to save his people once more, would go into the forest and say: ‘‘I do not know how to light the fire, I do not know the prayer, but I know the place and this must be sufficient.’’ It was sufficient and the miracle was accomplished.

Then it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn to overcome misfortune. Sitting in his armchair, his head in his hands, he spoke to God: ‘‘I am unable to light the fire and I do not know the prayer; I cannot even find the place in the forest. All I can do is ask You to redeem us, and this must be sufficient.’’ And it was sufficient.

So if we all stand together—our tribal heads, doctors, lawyers, men, women, children, water drawers, wood choppers and wood carvers, we will get somewhere. We will be able to find the beauty in the world and make art. We will find balance. We can create peace. If we don’t know the place any more, or how to light the fire, if we don’t remember the words, all we need to do is begin. Together. Our children already have.