We are at the Shabbat between Yom HaShoah and Yom Ha”atzma’ut. Between Holocaust Memorial Day and Israel Independence Day. It has been a difficult week with more updates daily on safety and security. We take threats to the Jewish people very seriously and we cannot thank the Elgin Police Department enough for their proactive service, their professionalism and their compassion.
But what the injured rabbi, Rabbi Israel Goldstein has demanded is that we bring more light. That’s exactly what we did when lit candles last night and we were joined by 15 guests, friends of the community, who joined with us for our usual Kabbalat Shabbat service. They were people who showed up. Who wanted our community to know that they stand (and sit) with us. And we thank them too.
“When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons.”
or
“Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”
Both quotes attributed to Golda Meir and quoted in A Land of Our Own : An Oral Autobiography (1973) edited by Marie Syrkin, p. 242, we can’t fully source the quotes but they stand nonetheless.
Today I want to talk about forgiveness and reconciliation.
Next week we will read the Holiness Code, Kedoshim. It demands that we be holy because the Lord our G-d is holy. We know this. We quote it often. We should not stand idly by while our neighbor bleeds. We should welcome the stranger, the widow, the orphan. We should leave the corners of our field, and the central part, from the central portion of the central book of the Torah, quoted by Hillel and Jesus, Love your neighbor as yourself. As Hillel said, the rest is commentary, go and study.
Apparently, the world has a lot of studying left to do. Maybe that is why we say this verse every week as part of our Shabbat morning service.
That was the portion that was open last week as we welcomed 50 people to CKI as part of OpenElgin, a self-guided architectural tour sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce. The Torah, our most prized possession, was open to that very portion, because it is Abigail’s Bat Mitzvah portion and we had been practicing it together.
We practice Love Your Neighbor as Yourself when we leave the corners of our field, when we serve food to the hungry, when we partner with the Community Crisis Center, when we join together for Unity on Division Street, when we open our doors.
Every guest that made their way to the bimah last week, I read that verse from the Torah. With many I talked about our concerns about safety and security and the challenge of being warm and welcoming, open. I talked about the love we feel knowing how neighbors have supported us.
Today’s portion is a little different. It tells us that we should heap our sins on a goat and send it out. That is the origin of the concept of scapegoat. There has been a lot written this week again about ant-semitism. Anti-semitism is real. On the left and the right. As Rabbi Lord Sacks says in his book, Not in God’s Name, it is the canary in the coal mine. It is the leading indicator that society is in trouble. Real trouble. It is often the first way people scapegoat. The numbers coming out of the FBI and the ADL are clear. In Illinois there were 15 reported anti-semetic hate crimes in 2015. In 2018 there were 59. Those are the ones that were reported. https://www.adl.org/audit2018
This week I had the opportunity to speak to many people about all of this. Whether it was a Torah School parent, our own safety and security team, someone thinking about conversion, fellow clergy, friends in the wider community, the congressman’s office, every conversation involved some part of safety and security. Every. Single. One.
One person I spoke with was Tony Sanders, CEO of u-46, headquartered on Chicago Street. I can see Tony’s office from mine and I consider him a friend. I called him because every single one of our students or their parents have expressed that they have experienced some kind of anti-semitic incident—a joke, teasing, bullying, taunting, a push, a shove on the playground,. Every Single One.
This isn’t new. It is just more brazen. Tony assured me that he would check with John Heiderscheidt, the Director of Safety and Culture at U-046. I explained to him that many of these incidents are not reported, never reported. Most. But I would be waiting for that report.
We agreed that we would continue to work together—and he ended the call by saying “I love you.” Really.
Next week, every single one of the superintendents will get a letter from me expressing our concerns. I will provide that letter to our Torah School families as well.
It is not limited to our Torah School families. I was at a party on Sunday afternoon. As often happens I was introduced as Rabbi and then someone proceeded tell a joke that was not appropriate. How do we handle such moments?
To be clear, an anti-semitic joke is not the same as walking into a synagogue with an automatic weapon with the intent of committing mass murder. Yet we teach our children, based on the Facing History and Ourselves curriculum to be Upstanders, not to be Bystanders.
Back to Rabbi Goldstein. He is an Upstander. His response to darkness, to terror is to say that he will be more brazenly Jewish.
“From here on in I am going to be more brazen. I am going to be even more proud about walking down the street wearing my tzitzit and kippah, acknowledging God’s presence. And I’m going to use my voice until I am hoarse to urge my fellow Jews to do Jewish. To light candles before Shabbat. To put up mezuzas on their doorposts. To do acts of kindness. And to show up in synagogue — especially this coming Shabbat.” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/opinion/rabbi-chabad-poway-antisemitism.html
So we will do Jewish too. Just as we always have. Just as you’ve done by showing up today. Just as I do as I sit in a meeting at a coffee shop wearing a kippah.
But what about the forgiveness piece? A little bit of midrash:
It once happened that Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai was leaving Jerusalem with Rabbi Joshua, and they witnessed the destruction of the Temple. Rabbi Joshua said, “Woe to us, for the place where the sins of Israel were atoned for has been destroyed.” Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai said, “Do not be bitter, my son, for we have another form of atonement which is as great, and this is gemilut hasadim; as the verse states, “for it is kindness I desire and not burnt offerings” [Hos. 6:6]. Avot DeRabbi Natan, chapter 4
After the destruction of the Temple the rabbis taught that it was destroyed because of sinat chiman, baseless hatred. Rav Kook the first chief rabbi of Israel said the answer to sinat chinam is ahavat chinam, baseless love.
The answer to weeks like this is exactly what Rav Kook and Rabbi Goldstein teach. Love your neighbor as yourself. Perform acts of love and kindness. Practice ahavat chinam.
That’s what we will continue to do here at CKI. May this be a Shabbat of love and peace.