Erev Rosh Hashanah 5767

Tomorrow morning when we begin our service, we will be reading in the Machzor, our High Holy Day prayer book, about the different needs that some of us will be feeling on this Rosh Hashanah. We will mention

“Those who hearts ache with sorrow,” who seek the support of their community and their faith, and “Those whose hearts are full of gratitude and joy” who are eager to share what they have received with those less fortunate than they.

And also “those whose hearts are embittered,” perhaps even angered by the fact that our society and the world have experienced so much senseless devastation and cruelty – these are the ones who have “sought answers in vain,” as the prayer we will read says – maybe that’s you?

This devastation, the persistence of genocide, the use and abuse of civilian populations as shields and as targets, the cruel, degrading, and inhuman treatment of human beings already in custody, the willful disregard of scientific evidence that the spaceship earth, which, for some unknown reason God has chosen for our home, is endangered by our arrogant failure to protect our own ecosphere, all of these contemporary plagues, should and must lead us to seek answers in this New Year. May our seeking not be in vain, God willing.

The Machzor itself summarizes this task, not with “political questions,” but with three personal, spiritual questions, Mah Anachnu,Meh Chayeinu, Meh Chasdeinu? Who are we, or better, what are we? What is our life? And what chesed do we have – what acts of kindness are in our capacity to perform?

I don’t mean to trivialize these deeply challenging phrases, but their use reminds me of a repeating feature on the Late Show when Johnny Carson was the host. I think it was called Karnak the Magnificent. Karnak was, of course, Johnny Carson, dressed as an oriental sage or fortuneteller who was able to intuit the precise question when provided the answer (which the announcer Ed McMahon would hand him in a sealed envelope).

Imagine you are Karnak, the Machzor is the envelope, Ed McMahon takes out the envelope, and he reads the answers: Atah, you, Chayecha, your life, Chasdecha, your chesed – those are the answers. What is the question to which you and your life are the answer?

“Who do you think you are?” This question is usually asked sarcastically as a put-down, but not on the High Holy Days. The comedian Lily Tomlin had a wonderful line in a one-woman play she did years ago, called In Search of Intelligent Life in the Universe. “I always wanted to be somebody,” she said. “But now I realize I should have been more specific.”

The High Holy Days guard against the realization of that joke in our lives. They demand of us to determine who – exactly, and what – exactly, we think we are.

In my remarks tonight and next week on Yom Kippur, I want to reflect on this spiritual challenge from two directions. Given the devastation that we see all around us and what many of us feel is not just a physical, but also a moral threat to our society and way of life in America (and equally so with our brothers and sisters in Israel), what is our role and our community’s role in bringing meaning to our lives? And second, how might what we do here within our synagogue community reflect the values we wish would resonate and reverberate in the larger society.

In this context I have another, more specific question, which reflects some of my memories as an American Jew growing up in the South in the 40’s and 50’s. The question relates to a social problem that has engendered a broad debate and emerged as an electoral issue, in some areas even the prime issue, in the upcoming elections.

What is this issue? When I grew up there were a few traditions that were part of the Jewish liturgy and customs that were also at one and the same time part of the American tradition. Certain verses of American patriotic hymns seemed to fit both parts of our lives, for example, the verses of the song “America,” especially the verse beginning , “Our Father’s God to Thee, Author of Liberty, Of Thee I Sing.” This sentiment seemed equally fitting in public school and the Reform Movement’s Haggadah.

But, there was also a portion of a poem, written by a Jewish woman over 120 years ago that we proudly memorized and sang in both Sunday school and public school. (Don’t worry I’m not going to sing it.) I believe many of you above a certain age could recite it with me in your sleep:

Give me your tired and your poor
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free
The wretched refuse of your teeming shores…
Send these, the tempest-tossed to me

So wrote Emma Lazarus, an established American poet, friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson, in 1883. They were lines written for a benefit auction to raise money to fund the pedestal on which the Statue of Liberty would sit. They were lines that made us proud to be Americans and Jews – and they were lines that reflected the experience of our parents, grandparents, or great grandparents.

Now some generations later – what ever happened to the sentiment behind those verses, the pride of America being a refuge for huddled masses? And is this societal concern a theme that should occupy us as part of the question on these Holy Days, to which are lives are the answer?

The last part of the question is the easiest, since our Rabbinic sages prescribed Torah readings on Rosh Hashanah that focus on the lives of our Biblical ancestors, Abraham and Sarah, who were emigrants fleeing persecution from a Middle Eastern neighborhood rich in natural resources but hostile to their beliefs, an area we call Iraq today. They also sought asylum in another land, Egypt, as immigrants seeking economic well-being. The experience of subsequent Israelite generations, indeed the founding story of our birth as a nation was a result of our seeking economic opportunity as strangers in a strange land.

And for most of our history the Jewish people has sadly needed to repeat this pattern of seeking refuge from religious persecution or seeking economic opportunity, the latter being the main reason why the parents, grandparents, and great grandparents of almost all of us sitting here tonight came to this country.

Abraham and Sarah prospered greatly in their adopted country, (as, of course, have many of the descendants of those Eastern European immigrants who came to American shores). But what was their spiritual response to that success – what quality and what mitzvah is most identified with Abraham – Chesed (loving-kindness) and – hachnasat orchim – hospitality to wayfarers.

But, it is not just the stories of our patriarchs and matriarchs and a sense of gratitude to the country that lifted up a lamp to our grandparents that would suggest that this concern ought to be near the center of our concerns this Rosh Hashanah. The Jewish tradition is explicit about the need to treat strangers with compassion and justice. The relevant Hebrew term for the immigrant in our midst is gerim, sojourners, non-native, non-citizens. Given our experience as gerim in Egypt, Jewish texts remind us to treat others who find themselves in that position with the generosity with which we would have wanted to be treated.

For example, we are commanded in several places in the torah to insure the basic economic viability of the immigrant, together with the other vulnerable members of our own community, the poor, the widow and the orphan: “When you reap the harvest in your field and overlook a sheaf; do not turn back to get it; it shall go to the ger, the fatherless and the widow – in order that the Eternal your God may bless you in all your undertakings…always remember that your were a ger in the land of Egypt; therefore do I command you to observe this commandment.” (Deut. 24)

And this is clear without regard to the legal status of the ger, for we learn “You shall not turn over to the master a slave who seeks refuge with you from that master (his legal owner). Such individuals shall live with you in any place they may choose among the settlements in your midst, wherever they please; you must not ill-treat them.” (Deut. 23)

And the Rabbinic tradition supplies further elaboration: You shall not wrong or oppress the stranger: You shall not wrong – with words, and you shall not oppress– financially.” (Mechilta, Mishpatim)

There is an emotive side to our tradition that is important to remember as well. And,  here I think is precisely the place where what we can do within our Temple Shalom community ought to reflect what our torah values teach. For we have with us at every service and every large gathering within our congregation, gerim of one sort or another, those who are visitors and those who may be part of Jewish families but are not literally part of our people. And with respect to the gerim among us, the sojourners whether for an evening or a lifetime, just as for immigrants in our country we would do well to remember the words of Leviticus, which we read on Yom Kippur morning from the Torah, “When gerim reside with you they shall be to you as your citizens, you shall love each one as yourself, for you had their experience in Egypt.” And according to the Talmud: “Welcoming a guest takes priority over welcoming the Shechinah, the presence of God.” (Shabbat 127a)

With such a tradition as a background, with all of the experience we have had over millennia in the role of gerim it is not surprising that the Jewish community has with virtual unanimity agreed to support a generous policy of comprehensive immigration reform. The spearhead of this effort is HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which for decades has led our community around the world on this issue. There are copies of their eloquent statement of “A Jewish Vision for the Future of American Immigration and Refugee Policy” (PDF) outside and for those of you who want to delve more deeply into these questions, Rabbi Scott Sperling, our Temple member and a national leader and spokesperson on this subject for our movement, will lead a program here next week on Yom Kippur afternoon.

Let me just summarize what would be the features of a policy that accords with Jewish values in what is usually called “comprehensive immigration reform.” First and foremost, as in the case of cruel and inhuman treatment of prisoners, we need to get beyond the idea that people are “illegal.” People are not illegal. They may have overstayed the legal limit on their visas, they may have risked life and limb to enter this country often dependent on criminal hustlers taking advantage of their need and a broken system, but once they are here, they are people.

There are by all estimates somewhere between 10-12 million undocumented immigrants –  a comprehensive answer would do the following eight things among others:

• Provide a reasonable and fair path for legal status for undocumented immigrants, as well as a path for citizenship for all immigrants within a reasonable period of time;
• Allow children of undocumented immigrants who meet certain requirements to be able to study at state-funded colleges and universities at the same level of tuition as children of legal residents;
• Provide for more efficient family reunification;
• Create legal avenues for entry and employment of foreign workers and their families;
• Insist that labor laws apply equally to documented and undocumented workers;
• Allow refugees and asylum seekers full due process without fear of deportation while their cases are pending or on appeal.
• Create policies that would seal our borders against undocumented migration to the United States, contingent on a fairer, freer immigration policy.
• Address the root cause of maldistribution of income and resources in our world, the persistence of searing and cruel poverty in so many areas, especially in the lands of the Southern hemisphere.

Let me conclude by pointing out that there are some grounds for hope with this issue. Some of you may remember that last year we spoke about another set of urgent concerns that reflected on who we are as Jews and human beings, and even more so, on who we are as Americans, a campaign to honor the image of God and abolish torture. And in the year that has passed a social consensus has emerged, reflected in the Senate, decisions of the judiciary branch, the military, the religious community, and finally, public figures like former Secretaries of State, Colin Powell and George Schulz. We must continue to articulate that America does not believe in the cruel and degrading treatment of detainees, who, whether guilty or innocent, remain human reflections of the Divine image. There is still work to do in confirming our success and I hope you will pick up one of these cards on the tables in the foyer during the holidays.

When John McCain, the key Senate sponsor of legislation to ban cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners and to uphold the Geneva conventions, met last year just before Rosh Hashanah with our Rabbis for Human Rights delegation offering support for his work, he told us that in addition to being ineffective and illegal, torture simply was not “us”– it wasn’t America. And he told us one other thing – that if we really were concerned with human rights then as religious people the next issue on our agenda should be our treatment of immigrants, (this being the first time a Senator has ever suggested what I should speak about on the Holy Days).

Now, thank God, on this question we start with an administration that has proposed and supports comprehensive immigration reform. Yet for some reason there are politicians, a majority of the House of Representatives in fact, and too many of our fellow Americans, who seem to feel that both the words of Emma Lazarus and the Biblical heritage shared by at least the three Abrahamic religions, ought to be repudiated. That is simply not us as a religious community and it is not us as America.

To respond to these voices, let us do everything in our power in the next year, as a Jewish community united from all sectors, all the religious movements, as well as secular organizations, to say in a language that our brothers and sisters can understand, as the Workmen’s Circle puts it in their support for more humane policies: “Mir Zaynen alle Imigranten” – we are all immigrants.

If we succeed, then in this way we will find the answers to the questions, Mah Anachnu, Meh Hayeinu, Meh Chasdeinu, as Jews and Americans – our pursuit of justice will be the answer.

Tizku L’Shanim Rabot

May you merit many years, and may they be years of goodness and blessing.

Shanah tovah U’mvorechet!