With apologies to Tevye and Fiddler on the Roof.
To life, to life l;chaim. L’chaim, li’chaim to life.
Life has a way of confusing us,
Blessing and bruising us.
Drink, l’chaim, to life!
What a perfect set of lyrics about a time gone by for the world we find ourselves in today. We are still blessed and maybe a little bruised. Our portion today is about blessings and curses.
This morning’s sermon is a tough one on a difficult topic. If you need to take a break and take care of yourself, that’s fine. Get up, stretch, walk out of the room if you need to. Call me later if that will help.
This portion has one of the best verses in all of the Torah. You stand here, all of you, before the Lord your G-d. That we addressed last night. The Hebrew is Atem nitzvaim. You stand before G-d, with G-d, for G-d. You stand at attention. You stand for something. Last night we brainstromed a list of what we stand for.
We stand for peace, love, happiness, courage, the arts. We stand for diversity and inclusion. We stand for community.
As Deborah said, as Americans, we stand for freedom. Simon then read a reading from Gates of Freedom that we use every year in our own haggadah that Simon compiled. We see as blessings:
Freedom from bondage and freedom from oppression,
freedom from hunger and freedom from want,
freedom from hatred and freedom from fear,
freedom to think and freedom to speak
freedom to teach and freedom to learn,
freedom to love and freedom to share,
freedom to hope and freedom to rejoice,
soon, in our days,
amen
That’s a good list of freedoms and blessings. Ones we have worked to protect. As Americans and as Jews we stand up for the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment, that enshrines our most basic rights. You learned this in high school, right? “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”
But what happens if your understanding of freedom differs from mine? What if your courts start to infringe my freedom of religion? Then I have an obligation to stand up, speak up, and be counted.
When we were driving through Michigan, or maybe Indiana, there were a series of billboards. One said, “Choose Life”. This week’s Torah portion contains the very verse from that billboard. Let’s look at in context. The Israelites are standing, ready to enter the land of Israel. In the sweeping, majestic language that is so characteristic of Deuteronomy, G-d or maybe it’s Moses, reminds the Israelites, and all of us since the midrash teaches that we were all standing there…even those not yet born, that if we return, a key word for Rosh Hashanah, that G-d will take us back in love. Reassuring words that we read every year on the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah, as we re-enact these very words. Then G-d continues, “I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life—if you and your offspring would live.”
Powerful. Choose life that you may live. Some say it is the best verse in the Torah. Choose life. As Rabbi Joshua Lesser said “Choose Enlivenment.” Choose to be fully present.
This week, however, we need to have a difficult discussion—and perhaps some of you will not agree. That’s OK—we are Jews. The recent law affirmed in Texas is against my Jewish religion. Full stop. Rabbi Danny Horowitz, a Conservative Rabbi in Houston, said it very clearly in an op ed piece that
“Texas’ abortion ban is against my religion. As a rabbi, I will defy it if necessary.” He will stand up. Religion News Service picked up.
I know Danny. He is a graduate of the Academy for Jewish Religion, before I was there. But he is a mensch, and because he is in Houston, he reached out to me when Simon was first diagnosed with bladder cancer and made himself and his home and his community available if we needed to go to Andersen Medical Center a pre-eminent medical facility. It was about choosing life. We declined, and we are happy to report that Simon got a great report in Ann Arbor this week, but the gesture on Danny’s part was more than a gesture. It was the embodiment of life choosing. When Houston was ravaged by Hurricane Harvey in 2017, Danny’s synagogue sustained damage and Danny lost his library. YOu may not know this, but we at CKI and I from my personal library sent books. It was about choosing life. Books are enlivement too.
So what does Rabbi Danny say now.
“Judaism teaches that potential life is sacred. Nevertheless, our religion also teaches that potential life is not the same as actual life, that a fetus is not a human being. This is directly derived from Scripture. Therefore, even during labor, the pregnant woman’s life has precedence over the life of the fetus. And if we have reason to believe a pregnancy will be a serious threat to the woman’s well-being, whether that be mentally, physically or otherwise, then she will be counseled to abort the fetus, and to do so in a way that maximally protects her own health.”
I could stand here today and source this. But it is important to understand that there is a fundamental difference between how Jews see the beginning of life and how especially Catholics do. Catholics view life as beginning at conception. Jews view it as being halfway out the birth canal. Until then it is a potential life.
Rabbi Danny then describes the time that he counseled a woman to get an abortion. He reminds us that “Each case is unique, but the principles remain the same. We would never celebrate the termination of potential life, but neither would we regard it as automatically forbidden.” As his doctoral adviser, Rabbi Byron Sherwin, put it, “Judaism is neither pro-life or pro-choice. It depends on the life and it depends on the choice.”
Thus, when this woman came to him for direction, he told her not that she could have an abortion, but that she must have an abortion, that the God of his understanding would want her to do it.
And he told everyone, “My action would likely be considered a violation of SB 8, the new Texas law making it illegal to assist someone in pursuing an abortion. Thus, this law is a restriction on the practice of my religion. And it would likewise impose a religious standard upon anyone from any religion who believes abortion is not always the evil our state officials believe it to be.”
I have faced similar situations. I have sat with women who have had to make painful decisions. When I did my CPE, Clinical Pastoral Education, I worked with a young woman, a Protestant, in a Catholic hospital, who had had a botched abortion. She was an incest survivor at the hands of her step-father. She was bleeding out. It was an ectopic pregnancy and it would not have made it to full term. She wanted to know from me if she was going to Hell. That was a difficult conversation for this rabbi to be and I often wonder what happened to her. Her step-father had checked her out of the hospital the next day, against medical advice. That abortion that the Catholic Hospital performed was medically necessary to save the life of the mother. It would not have been allowed under this new law. I have sat with women who have been raped and impregnated. Some chose to have abortions. Others did not. Those abortions were necessary to save the life of the mother and would not be allowed under the new law. In each of these cases, I have helped people choose life.
None of these choices are easy. No one wants to have to choose abortion. Sometimes women who have had abortions feel guilty or shame. If you are a woman that made that difficult decision, I hear you, I see you, I stand with you. At this season where we just read that G-d will take us back in love, I add: G-d sees you; G-d hears you; G-d loves you.
This is not a new topic for me, sadly. One of the first sermons I did here at CKI covered very similar topic. https://www.theenergizerrabbi.org/2012/08/27/pursuing-justice-and-speaking-up-shabbat-shoftim/
I am proud to be part of the National Council of Jewish Women’s Rabbis for Reproduction, a group 1000 rabbis strong. So like Danny, I stand with those 1000 other members of the clergy. I will use my voice and stand up and be counted to protect every woman’s right to choose life. Her life.
God would like us to be joyful,
Even when our hearts lie panting on the floor.
But how much more can we be joyful
When there’s really something to be joyful for?
To life, to life, l’chaim.
That is the message, this week, of Choose Life. L’chaim!
Leave it to Rabbi Klein to address this week’s terrible, middle of the night Supreme Court decision regarding a woman’s right to choose. Her message was just what I needed to hear. Her personal stories of women she has counseled were especially impactful.
I appreciate the fact that as Jews, we’re able to see that life is not always black or white but muted shades of gray.