Rabbi Simcha Bunem, a Hasidic master, used to say that he carried two slips of paper, one in each pocket. On one he wrote: “Bishvili nivra ha-olam—for my sake the world was created.” On the other he wrote: “V’anokhi afar v’efer—I am but dust and ashes.” Two truths in his pocket.
When I was a girl, just having moved from Evanston to Grand Rapids, that first summer at Girl Scout camp, someone wanted to look for my horns. Some of you have told me similar stories, right here in Elgin. Some of you may be asking, “Horns?” Yes, it is one of the long held beliefs and misunderstandings about Jews. We have horns. They are hidden under our hair. And it is not, as we all know, true. It is actually a mistranslation of the Hebrew about a verse the choir will sing shortly.
When Moses came back down the mountain with the second set of tablets, his face was glowing with rays of light. That word ray—keren—can also mean horn. A translation by Jerome, the patron saint of translators, whose saint day the Catholic world observes tomorrow, is why Michalangelo made his famous statue of Moses with horns. Here’s the problem—people use that image to argue that Jews are of the devil, since we all know that the devil has horns. Why do we know that? From Michaelango’s statue.
Translation is important. It can be nuanced. Every translation is a commentary. So this translation “error” was a huge commentary that has caused problems up until today.
But the very reason Moses’s face was beaming, glorified in another translation, is critical for this very night. Yom Kippur is the night that legend says Moses had just come back down the mountain, carrying the second set of tablets. He had just been in the presence of G-d and had just been taught the 13 Attributes of the Divine.
Sing it with me:
Adonai, Adonai, El Rachum v’chanun, erech apayim, v’rav chesed v’emet. Nosei chesed l’alaphim. Nosei avon v’fesha v’chata’ah v’nakeh.
The Lord, the Lord, God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and full of lovingkindness and truth, extending kindness to the 1000th generation, pardoning iniquity, transgression and sin.
Yet, each of those words can be translated slightly differently.
Our own machzor translates emet as faithfulness, not as truth—although they are related words in Hebrew. Emet means truth. Emunah means faith. The word Amen, so may it be true, comes from the same root. Emet, Aleph, the first letter, men the middle letter and tav, the last letter. Truth. Another name for G-d. G-d is Truth.
For several years I have been bothered by a concept—what is truth?
Earlier tonight we read a reading from Gates of Prayer that I find haunting. Once we learned one truth and it was cherished or discarded.
Long before there were discussions about “fake news” there have been discussions about bias in the media. And truth in advertising, I was a journalist long ago—a founding editor of the Tufts Daily, a sports reporter, and headline writer. This got me press passes to see opening day of my beloved Red Sox, but I digress. There are at least two organizations which I support, Honest Reporting and CAMERA that deal with bias in reporting on Israel.
Long ago it used to be that there was a hard and fast rule that opinion was for the op-ed page not for the front page. We have blended those lines as a society. And there is a danger in that. When I am out of the country, I enjoy the listening to the news and reading the local papers. It gives me a wider perspective and a different sense of priorities. Listening or reading more than one source of news is important. FOX and CNN, NPR and the Wall Street Journal. We should not just get our news from our Facebook feed.
Disagreement is fine—it is even encouraged in Judaism—we all know the joke about two Jews and three opinions. No doubt, some of you will even disagree with me about this sermon or something else. I welcome those discussions and arguments, as long as they are done respectfully and for the sake of heaven.
How we disagree is important. We are taught that we should be careful with the words we speak. Speech is the category of sin that is most repeated, most atoned for during these 25 hours of Yom Kippur. It is what causes us to need to seek reconciliation. And we fail with our words over and over again. It maybe why some of us are hear tonight.
The Buddhists have a rule about speech. You should think twice before you speak. Is it necessary? Is it kind? Is it true? All three. And it turns out the order isn’t so important, just that all three conditions are met.
Repeat it—is it true?, is it necessary, is it kind. All three!
Recently there has been much discussion about the American flag and the National Anthem. For some of you the protests of African American football players are disrespectful and unpatriotic. Maybe you served in the military defending the rights that are represented by that flag. For others of you, your truth includes the fact that there is systemic, institutional racism in this country and you applaud this method of peaceful protest. That represents your truth.
It is true that there is racism in this country. And rising anti-semitism. The FBI statistics on hate crimes, much like blood pressure numbers, don’t lie. There are 32 confirmed hate groups in Illinois according to the SPLC. 32. One of those is alleged to be a KKK group in Gurnee? The mayor and the police chief, after investigating, believe that someone used a fake name and a fake address signing up with the KKK. Should the whole village be shamed, asks the mayor? They have asked to be removed from the 32. The Southern Poverty Law Center is still investigating. I am not certain of the truth.
It is true that (almost) every child in our Hebrew School 4th grade and up reports being the target of some anti-semetic joke being told in public school. We have written to 11 superintendents to remind them about the Illinois law protecting students’ rights to observe the high holidays. This year we added a paragraph that we are willing to be a resource on bullying. Every parent got a copy of this letter.
It is true that there was a Nazi flag at the Kane County Flea market last summer and multiple Confederate Flags in South Elgin last year. It is true that I can’t find any today. It is opinion what those flags represented. Were they really about war memorabilia and “our southern heritage” as their owners have suggested?
It is true that after Charlottesville, many of us felt our fear levels increase. It is also true that we had already written a grant and received it from Jewish United Fund to supplement our security here at CKI.
It is also true that I don’t think we, as Jews, have a big problem here in Elgin. We have worked tirelessly to build relationships with other churches, with city officials, with the police and fire departments. Should there be a problem, and there could be, then unlike Charlottesville where the synagogue was inadequately protected by the Charlottesville police, I know that we would be. And I want to publicly thank our officer for being here tonight. I know that the churches and mosques that are apart of the Coalition of Elgin Religious Leaders (CERL) and the Elgin Human Relations Commission would once again step up, as they did after the Pulse Night Club shooting and after Charlottesville. And I know that I can count specifically on our partners—Holy Trinity, especially, to open their doors. Their pastor, Jeff Mikyska and his wife Gail are here tonight, just as I was at their Easter Sunday service. We welcome them as our neighbors and our friends. They asked the hard question all the way back in January, what would they do if something happened to the synagogue. Unanimously, their parish council voted to open their doors to us.. This is my truth. Our truth.
It is reassuring but it doesn’t mean our work is done. We still have work to do to right wrongs. To do teshuvah around this important topic. We still have work to do to combat fear that leads to racism, even here at CKI. We pride ourselves on embracing diversity as part of our vision and yet wonder if this one or that one truly belongs, or whether the neighborhood is safe. Pirke Avot teaches, “Ours is not to finish the task, neither are we free to ignore it.”
Here’s where the work still needs to be done. How many of you grew up with another truth—that the G-d of the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible was a zealous G-d and the G-d of the New Testament is the G-d of love.
That G-d is the same G-d, it turns out. There is only one G-d. It is dangerous when people cherry pick verses, when we prooftext. When we do that we take things out of context and only arrive at half-truths or partial truths. Our verse, the one the choir is about to sing, is clear that G-d is a loving G-d. It is simple, no? But these myths persist.
I hope that you noticed the signs when you walked in this evening. They are from the First Congregational Church down the street, an important partner in ministry. Under the leadership of the Rev. Paris Donohoo and Lois Bucher and some lay leaders like Judge John Dalton and Rich Jacobs, They are embarking on a three year campaign, Live Love, Stop the Hate. And they chose a verse from the New Testament, “Love never fails” from the book of Corinthians. There is much Judaism and Christianity has in common. Including this idea of love. You have heard me say it before. 36 times in the Torah it says to welcome the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the most marginalized amongst us. It is simple. Love G-d. Love your neighbor. Love the stranger.
These signs are part of their response to Charlottesville. But it runs deeper than that. They want to really understand their neighbor—their immigrant neighbor, their LGBTQ neighbor, their Muslim neighbor and yes, their Jewish neighbor. It is driven from the verse “Love Never Fails.” We will be joining their campaign with a slightly different graphic. Ours will say, “Love Your Neighbor”. Tonight, to start this, we have for each of you a pin that says, “No Place for Hate” from the ADL.
I am delighted that Stew was so moved by this important verse that he wrote his own four part choral arrangement of it. When he tells the story, he sat down at the keyboard and tinkered, and behold! There it was. I call that divine inspiration. Until this year, it has not been heard.
It emphasizes that G-d is the G-d of truth. Some might argue that it is not kosher because it rearranges the order of words. Nonsense. The rabbis of the Talmud had exactly that argument. Ilfi (or, as some report, Ilfa, they can’t even agree on that!) contrasted two texts: It is written, abundant in lovingkindness, and then it is written, and in truth. (Ex. 34:6) [How is this]? — At first, ‘truth’, and at the end ‘abundant in goodness’.
So which is it? G-d of Truth or G-d of Love? Two truths in our pockets. Both/and.
Stew’s interpretation is actually Talmudic. And OKed by me. It has my hechsher. My seal of approval.
Perhaps when you hear it, you will love it. Perhaps not. That will be your truth. Once an older congregant went to her cantor and said, “I wish you would sing the right Adon Olam.” He asked her which one she did like. She answered that she liked the traditional one. Usually that means the one you grew up with. There are really very few pieces of Jewish music that go all the way back to Sinai. The rabbis argue about that too. They are actually called tunes mi-Sinai, from Sinai. Maybe there are six. Maybe there are 10. That is shrouded in mystery, in midrash, in legend.. Adonai, Adonai that we usually sing isn’t one of them. It is only 200 years old roughly.
The choir tells me that this is a very difficult, complex piece with very tight harmonies. They have worked very hard on mastering it and perfecting it. I remind them, and our religious school students frequently, leading services is about being the messenger of the people to G-d, the shaliach tzibur, it is not a performance. This piece will carry our prayers to G-d on the whisper of wings.
Tonight is the only night of the year we wear a tallit. The midrash about our verse is that even G-d wears a tallit, we acknowledge this when we say before putting on our tallit, “Bless Adonai, my soul! Adonai my G-d, how great You are, clothed in majesty and glory, wrapped in light like a robe, like a tallit. You spread out the heavens like a tent.”
When G-d taught these very words to Moses, the Holy One drew his robe around him like the shalich tzibur, the leader of the congregation and showed Moses the order of prayer.
This became the central prayer of the High Holidays.
We started a journey on Rosh Hashanah which we are continuing all year. The rabbis ask how is it possible to walk with G-d. They circle back to this very verse. For me, this is the central truth of Torah—my Torah. To walk with G-d, is to walk in G-d’s ways, to be like G-d. These are the ways of the Holy One, “gracious and compassionate, patient, abounding in kindness and truth, assuring love for a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin and granting pardon (Exodus 34:6). Just as G-d is gracious, you too must be gracious. Just as G-d is compassionate, you too must be compassionate. Just as G-d clothed the naked, you should clothe the naked. Just as G-d visited the sick, you should visit the sick. Just as G-d fed the hungry, you should feed the hungry. Just as G-d buried the dead, you should bury the dead.”
And like G-d we must be forgiving. That is part of the journey too. The rabbis ask why does it repeat, Adonai, Adonai. And they answer their own question, because G-d forgives us before we sin and after we sin. G-d loves us before the sin and after the sin. We must learn to do this too. Forgive the person before they sin and after they sin. Love the person before they sin and after they sin—even if that person we must forgive is ourselves.
Two truths in our pockets. We are but ashes and dust. And for us the world was created. Two truths in our pocket. G-d is full of lovingkindness and truth. Two truths in our pocket. Love your neighbor and the stranger. Do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your G-d. May you find the truths you can carry in your pocket as we pause for the next 25 hours and reflect.