Shanah tovah, g’mar chatimah tovah, may a very good year ahead be yours and your loved ones’.  My name is Bruce E. Kahn.  This is the start of my 46th year as a rabbi of Temple Shalom, my 52nd year since ordination and in 38 days, God willing,  I will become an octogenarian… a youngster in Rachel Robinson’s view. 

I share my experience and age with you because I have never, but never, in all my life, faced a more troubling Yom Kippur than now in 5786: not during the Korean War, the Red Scare and the McCarthy era; not during the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the assassinations of John, Martin and Bobby; not during Vietnam, Cambodia, Kent State and all the other extreme turbulence during the 1960s into 1970;  not during the Yom Kippur War, not in relation to 9/11, the pandemic, or any other earthshaking troubles during my lifetime.  For me, never has there been a more challenging, troubling Yom Kippur than this one and that was before considering the wretched impact of a possibly prolonged government shutdown.  Perhaps this is a difficult Yom Kippur for you too.

To have a useful, worthy Yom Kippur takes conscience, matspun in Hebrew from the word for compass, mats’pein, that points true north tsa’fon. To engage in cheshbon hanefesh, an accounting of the soul, so fundamental to the process of atonement, requires an awareness of the right direction,  honest introspection regarding our fidelity to that direction,  a belief in constructive values conforming to the mitzvot of justice, fairness, compassion, truth and healing.  But a rejection of conscience, a betrayal of conscience, a dismissal of conscience disables cheshbon hanefesh, an accounting of the soul.  Then there can be no admissible vidui, no honest confession, and no possibility of teshuvah — a return to right behavior — and no kippur or kaparah, no genuine atonement.  These Yom Kippur requirements all start with true, sincere conscience.  

On this Yom Kippur there is a dearth of such conscience in too many sectors of America and Israel, most especially in the White House and among the majority in Congress, and seeping more and more into the judiciary.  There is too much praying at the altar of trump.   Like a virus, this spread emanates mostly from a reelected president who, let us not forget, left his first term in office by fomenting a violent insurrection unleashed to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.   And when it comes to the ruling coalition in Israel, it and its supporters have stripped much of what is holy from the holy land, manifesting a state of unworthiness against which Torah warns us repeatedly. 

For Yom Kippur to matter conscience is needed.  For any accounting of the soul to occur  conscience is needed.  And on this Yom Kippur — even as we witness the emphatic depletion of conscience in Washington DC, the place in the world where conscience is least in supply — and never, but never did I ever imagine I would say such words —  the place in the world where conscience is least in supply is Jerusalem.

And let me say that bibi’s twisted willingness to support trump’s massively vague peace plan does not change Jerusalem’s culpability.   Some of you know the Yiddish expression “Shver Tsu Zayn A’ Yid.”  It is the title of a 1914 play by Solomon Rabinovich, whose pen name was Sholom Aleichem.  Not everyone here is familiar with him, but everyone here is familiar with at least one of his characters from a book of short stories he also completed in 1914.  That book was titled: “Tevye, The Dairyman” which decades later inspired the creation of the most beloved musical “Fiddler on the Roof.”  So… Shalom Aleichem’s Tevye has become part of all of us and today, on this Yom Kippur eve, the title of Sholom Aleichem’s play “Shver Tsu Zayn A’ Yid” is also very much a part of us.  For this title gets right to the point of how I and likely you are feeling on these High Holy Days.  Because the title “Shver Tsu Zayn A’ Yid” translates: it’s hard to be a Jew.  It feels harder  to be a Jew on this Kol Nidrei than ever before in my life!  Perhaps it also feels harder for you.  The world seems to be experiencing a dearth of conscience far more severe than most of us have ever before witnessed, a dearth of conscience that in this part of the country leaves us fearing an assault on essential freedoms that history tells us is a type of assault that is never good news for Jews.  And tonight, in Israel, an even more severe depletion of conscience makes a bone chilling, appalling mockery of  Yom Kippur. 

 What has happened to our America?  What has happened to Israel?  Where will it all lead?  When will conscience take its rightful place again, and when it does what vast distances in time and space will the teshuvah, the return have to navigate for the kaparah the atonement to suffice? 

Israel has no constitution, but we do.  This night what do we see becoming of our constitutional democratic republic and its Bill of Rights?  How certain are we Jews in America of our security now and going forward?  Who here, either half in jest or in all earnestness, has already engaged in a conversation with family or friends about whether you are certain to remain in this country?  Where else might we go?  We once would have included Israel as an option.  Not tonight, and not for some years to come.  For Israel is not at present a choice we could likely make in good conscience.  

We are so confused and traumatized by the overwhelming number of twisted, crazy, evil assertions and actions of our US government: from its vicious treatment of the stranger (a wrong that Torah opposes with frequent intensity); to the massive whitewashing of the sins in American history; to using the DoJ to prosecute political opponents just for being political opponents; to generating daily an Orwellian Big Brother climate in regard to journalism, law, science, medicine, culture, voting and education.  We add to this list the shame of canceling  grants from the Agency for International Development — a decision that may result in 14 million unnecessary deaths including millions of children under the age of 5.  And let us add the evils of cutting support in the US for health care and rural hospitals also family farms, telling pregnant women not to use Tylenol, and trying to eliminate the availability of mifepristone; even telling HUD to oppose significant enforcement of nearly 60 years of fair housing protections and misusing the military.  It is a government leadership that celebrates firing without cause or due process thousands upon thousands of dedicated public servants on whom the rest of us rely.  And the president and his acolytes seek persistently to make a virtue of opposing with full force the fairness inherent in diversity, equity, and inclusion, such as  gender equality.  Daily our government acts increasingly without conscience, in favor of deceit, hate and harm.  That creates on this Yom Kippur the reality of shver tsu zayn a’ Yid.   It is hard to be an American Jew in such a time.   

Even more so are we confused and traumatized by the crazy and evil actions of the Israeli government and so many fellow Jews in our Jewish homeland.   How shattering it is to face the truth about the obliteration of Gaza, the degree and methods of devastation imposed on the civilian population there: literally crushing them, visiting upon them years of suffocating suffering often exacted with enthusiasm against nearly two million non-combatants! — terrorizing them, starving them, wounding them, massively murdering them,  and still openly calling for them to be erased along with their brothers and sisters under vile assault in the West Bank.  Erased is the word being used to this very second, despite an unsigned peace plan with more holes in it than a golf course.  

Ladies and gentlemen, chevre of Temple Shalom, where is Israel’s conscience, its mats’pun?  In what direction does its mats’pein, its compass point?  How egregious is the carnage? On this kol nidrei night, it is not 100% certain whether the Israeli leadership and its supporters and willing executioners are guilty of countless acts of crimes against humanity or guilty of genocide.  It is one or the other — nothing less — and, at this point,  there is only a razor thin difference between the two choices.  

We Jews know suffering — two thousand and more years of it.  We are familiar, all too familiar, with being on the receiving end of it.  Security is required here and in Israel, but without deleting our conscience.  As Hillel taught in the Talmud, Shabbat p. 31a: “Da’a’lach s’nei l’chav’rach la ta’ah’veid.”  “What is hateful to you do not do to another.  “That is  the whole of Torah”, Hillel affirmed,  He added “all the rest is interpretation.  Go and learn it.”  THAT is conscience.   We Jews know this….We do.  It is the High Holy Days….  We uplift our commitment to conscience and as we do so we  pray “zochrinu l’chayim.”  “Remember us for life, Sovereign  God, who treasures life” not only Jewish life.  

My congregational family since 1980: shver tsu zayn a’ Yid!  It is hard, so very hard, to be a Jew on this Kol Nidrei night. 

In both Washington and Jerusalem, as conscience within government rushes over the cliff and into the abyss, I call out to you to be — and you may not be expecting this — to be confident — all of us here and those not here this day.  Be confident that the good in us shall win at long last.  Massive corruption, self aggrandizement, the evil of double speak,  autocracy driven administrations make it hard — shver tsu zayn a’ Yid.  My God, my dear God, in 5786 how hard it is to be a Jew.

But we have discovered something about ourselves over these millennia, something without which we would have vanished from the scene long ago.  What did we discover?  We do hard.  We don’t seek it.  We don’t like it.  But neither do we crumble and fall into the sea because of it.  It’s hard to be a Jew.  But, we do hard.  

America is our country.  From its start we would not yield to tyrants. On the contrary, from day one we held “these truths to be self-evident that we are all created as equals, endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are [you all finish it] life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” 

Israel is our Jewish homeland.  From its beginning it also would not yield to tyrants.  It enshrined in its declaration of independence that Israel will be developed  “for the benefit of all its inhabitants, it will be based on precepts of liberty, taught by the Hebrew prophets; will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens without distinction of race, creed or sex, will guarantee full freedom of conscience, worship, education and culture….and will dedicate itself to the principles of the charter of the United Nations.”  UNQUOTE. 

Let us hold fast now and build in common with all Americans and Israelis of conscience a  time that uplifts the least among us along with the most powerful, and all those in between, reconsecrating two lands and peoples that humbly, and efficaciously make of each moment and every endeavor progress towards that ancient pledge in Leviticus 19: v’ahav’ta l’rei’a’cha kamocha, to love the other as oneself, with honest and honorable intentions, refraining from vile harm, and choosing to heal one another, however complex, however long; even as we must act to heal the land, the water, and the air before it is too late.    

We have a conscience deficit in America and Israel on this Yom Kippur.  End it.  That is our charge.  End it.  Take one crisis of conscience from here and one from Israel and then connect with and give of your time, talent and funds to an already established clued in group in each country and let conscience win!  Let us not take a pass.  The stakes are way too high.  Let us turn around this dearth of conscience. “If we will it, it is no dream.”  With one another and God’s help, next Yom Kippur may it be easier to be a Jew.           

Kein Y’hi Ra’tson.  So may it be.  Amen.

משפחה— Mishpacha
Comments at 60th Anniversary Shabbat Service
Temple Shalom
April 24, 2020

משפחה — that is the title of my brief presentation to you this Shabbat night and it is the only point I wish to make. It is who we were from the start of Shalom, 61 years ago this coming July 2nd. It is what energized us and enables us to grow so fast that within two months we were large enough to engage the services of our first full time rabbi and have enough children enrolled for a complete religious school, start a Sisterhood and Brotherhood, begin a host of other ambitious programs and fell confident about what lay before us.

This משפחה held together when, at several points along the way, enormous stresses and strains, both long and short term, assailed us.

משפחה was the most dominant characteristic of this congregation that I noticed when, in May, 1980, I was selected to become the fourth rabbi to serve Shalom in its then twenty-one year history. Toby and I could not possibly have known at the time that I would remain a rabbi here for the next forty years.

And at Shalom משפחה is what is seeing all of us through the challenges, frightening realities and confounding unknowns confronting us so potently in these days. None of us has ever been through a similar experience: personally, as a congregation, as a society.

משפחה is what our Founders talk about in my video interviews with them, filmed by Alan Lewish and my wife Toby, and so expertly edited by Abby Landesman. You will see the finished product only moments from now.

משפחה is what the clergy, staff, and board — leg by Senior Rabbi Ackerman and President Mike Rubin — nurture so wisely and well each day. It is what we feel, welcome, savor about our ties here. It is what each of us brings to the soul of Shalom. It is what so beautifully preserves and intensifies the joy, the love, the sense of belonging that now for 60 and almost 61 years defines who and what we are more than any other word might reveal.

משפחה — congregational familyhood, congregational clan, congregational household united through sacrifice and celebration.
From day one of Shalom’s existence and onward through the easiest of times and the most difficult times, this congregation drew together and embraced one another as family. Past, present and indeed going forward the gift of Shalom is that we know at every stage and circumstance reached along the way we are משפחה.

This day as we pause to give thought to the great goodness of our Shalom story over these sixty years and almost ten months, a story in which we all share and have helped shape for however long or short a time, let us be moved this day to say together with the Psalmist: זה היום עשה יי נגילאה ונשמחה בו. “This is the day that God has made, let us rejoice and be glad on it!” (118:24)

Mazal tov! Amen! Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Bruce E. Kahn, D.D.
Rabbi Emeritus, Temple Shalom

Yom Kippur Afternoon 5782 (2021)

When the Light At The End Of The Tunnel 

Is From An Oncoming Train!

Greeting and then start the discussion.

The New England poet Robert Lowell, who passed away in 1977, had a deeply felt sense that his world was increasingly threatened and threatening.  As one thing after another came at him he wrote in dismay: "The light at the end of the tunnel is just  the light of an oncoming train." When Rabbi Jack Luxemburg recently brought this line to my attention, my instant reaction was: "That's it.  That is how it feels.  Every time we make some progress against one crisis, that crisis deepens and additional crises pile on.  The lights are from oncoming trains!  Is that what you see too? 

Covid 19, Delta, Kappa and more variants in the offing; anti-vaxxing and anti-masking; climate change, wars military and political, voting rights attacked, free and fair elections disbelieved by 60 million voters, women's health attacked, choice abolished in Texas, insurrection called for and then excused by a then sitting president and his treacherous, treasonous, seditious allies.  All of these calamities hitting all of us before we even start to take into account the  personal challenges weighing on and draining us.  I nearly died this past year and other loved ones did die.  Lord have mercy!  What are we to do?  

Covid: 664,000 fatalities -- just here in America!  One in every 500 of us killed!  You and I know that most of the deaths could have been prevented.  And 41.4 million infections, one among every eight of us.  Most of the infections...unnecessary.  We sustained 50% more deaths in 18 months than we sustained in combat during all of World War II.  Victimized not by some foreign enemy slaughtering us at will. No.  We were infected and killed by a disease advanced upon us by a heartless, mentally ill, evil president and his allies.  Leaders in elected office did it to us.  They permitted us to be sickened and killed and those same folks are not engaged in teshuvah, in repentance, in atonement, seeking forgiveness and correcting their transgressions.  No manner of conscience existed or exists within these politicians that would lead them to  protect the people, the country, the Constitution they are sworn to serve.  How much trust have they dissolved and deleted?

We have been there before in America...worse than now.  The disease and slaughter visited upon Native Americans,  genocide to be sure.  Slavery and the Black Holocaust.  But nothing such as what government did to us with Covid has happened in our lifetimes.  This is new for us.  And when the vaccine's light appeared to signal we were nearing the tunnel's end, we exhaled.  Then we faced the oncoming trains of Delta and Kappa. And along with them came the millions of anti-patriots and their political leaders who scream you can't force us to wear a mask and get vaccinated.  They believe they have to be free such that we are neither free nor safe.  They believe they have to be free to make us sick and kill us as well as themselves.  That is the warped reality of the anti-patriots' and their political leadership.

Side by side with Covid have come over the top storms and floods.  Over the top draughts and fires.  An existential threat.  Studies are done.  Pledges are made.  But is it enough?  And if not, what then?  More lights appearing more rapidly, as the disastrous trains of climate change pick up speed. 

These are but two of the inescapable disasters surrounding us, penetrating our defenses, threatening the survival of our life, liberties, and pursuit of happiness.  When have the untaneh tokef's questions about our coming fate in the year ahead seemed so frightening? 

Do we back out of the fight?  Run for it?  Hide?  Take a pass?  Are the lights shining at us from the end of the tunnel only oncoming trains...  It is time to hear from you.  What is your take on where we are with these crises and where we are going? Covid, climate change, terrorism, wars and the threat of wars, women's health and choice, the political divide, social media's assault on truth, voting rights weakened, insurrection and sedition abound....  

Do you see lights at the end of the tunnel?  Are they from oncoming trains?  When we seem to be catching a break do circumstances then worsen?  What are we to do? 

Or are there other lights out there meeting our gaze, illuminating next steps that we are capable of taking to find our way forward even in the face of what is going so terribly wrong?  What are these lights? From where do they come?  Will sources, both Jewish and not, guide us through the tunnel's end?  

What do you wish to say about where we are and where we are going?  It is time to hear from you. 

Passages to introduce into the discussion:

Rabbi Jack Luxemburg:  One of the deans of my rabbinical school, said something very important to returning students recently.   Her words struck a chord that I think we all need to hear, to resonate with, and consider sounding ourselves. “I can’t welcome you back”, she said, “I can only welcome you forward”.

Quote from Chris Bosh upon his induction this past Saturday Sept 11.  His hall of fame career was suddenly cut short by blood clots that stopped his career at the age of 31, in his prime.  

"I like to think that all of those tears---were not endings.  They were beginnings.  They weren't moments that made me want to stop working.  They were moments that made me want to work even harder.  They were more than tears.  They were the water that made it possible for the seeds of greatness inside me to grow."

George Bush at Shanksville on 9/11/2001

We saw that Americans were vulnerable, but not fragile – that they possess a core of strength that survives the worst that life can bring. We learned that bravery is more common than we imagined, emerging with sudden splendor in the face of death. We vividly felt how every hour with our loved ones is a temporary and holy gift. And we found that even the longest days end.

There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home. But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit. And it is our continuing duty to confront them.

1. 235 Mishkan T'filah

When justice burns within us like a flaming fire, when love evokes willing sacrifice from us, when, to the last full measure of selfless devotion, we demonstrate our belief in the ultimate triumph of truth and righteousness -- then Your goodness enters our lives and we can begin to change the world.  And then You live in our hearts, and we, through righteousness, behold Your presence.

1. 241:  The good in us will win, over all the wickedness, over all the wrongs we have done.

2. 575 Gates of Prayer: An adaptation: 

Although we long for harmony, we cannot close our ears to the noise of war, the rasp of hate....The intelligent heart does not deny reality.  We must not forget the grief of yesterday, nor ignore the pain of today....If there is goodness at the heart of life, then its power, like the power of evil, is real.  Which shall prevail?  Moment by moment we choose between them.  If we choose rightly, and often enough, we can restore the broken fragments of our world to wholeness.

Pirkei Avot 2:16

It is not for you to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.

Pirke Avot 1:14

If I am not for myself who will be for me.  If I am only for myself what am I?  If not now, when?

"The good in us will win."  Let's do it in alliance with other likeminded souls.  Let that be our Yom Kippur vow.  We can choose to avert the evil decree, we can make the oncoming trains disappear before it is too late.  We can restore the broken fragments to wholeness in the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.  

Kein y'hi ratson -- so may it be!  Shanah tovah!  G'mar chatimah tovah!

REMEMBER

Each of us has our 9/11 story.  On this 20th anniversary of that horribly transformative day the Torah's command to REMEMBER compels recollections that remain so clearly visible in our mind's eye.  

The morning of 9/11 I was supposed to be interviewed by a reporter from Channel 8.  He called to cancel and yelled at me to turn on the television.  That was when I learned about the two planes hitting the World Trade Center at 8:46 and 9:03.  That day, over and over, we watched the never to be forgotten traumas unfold.  The devastation pummeled us again and again.  When American Airlines Flight 77 was crashed into the western side of the Pentagon at 9:37, I went to GQ, general quarters!  As a Navy Captain in the Ready Reserve Force, I got into my khaki uniform and called the chaplain's department at NNMC Bethesda (Bethesda Naval Hospital) to tell them I would be right over.  They said not to report.  No casualties were yet on the way.  Most of those at the point of attack would not require hospitalization.  As we learned later, they did not survive the impact. 

As night fell on 9/11, the call came from the Office of the Navy Chief of Chaplains.  I was ordered to active duty.  Immediately!  "Get over to the Navy Annex -- now!"  It was on the hill overlooking the Pentagon."  As I approached I saw the Pentagon still on fire.  I pulled over to the side of the road and cried.  I remember shouting in horror, pain and disbelief: "My Pentagon!  My Pentagon!"

Security was way beyond tight.  Somehow I got through.  Casualty Assistance Calls Officer (CACO) teams were being assembled and assigned to families of personnel unaccounted for.  Each team of three consisted of a chaplain, a representative of the missing person's command, and an advisor on how Navy rules and procedures might be of help.  I was the only rabbi among all the chaplains, but that really did not matter.  In the military each chaplain is prepared to provide ministry to everyone. 

My CACO team was briefed and sent to the home of Lieutenant Commander Robert Elseth, a Methodist, a reservist serving one week on active duty in the Navy Command Center, right where Flight 77 struck the building and exploded.  He was married and had a six year old daughter named Faith.  That December, Faith was one of two children selected to light the National Christmas Tree.  

For days the CACO team practically lived at the Elseth home.  One member of the team was an aviator who pulled out his cell phone and called his buddies to arrange for Bob's mother to be flown on a military cargo plane from Berlin, Germany to Andrews Air Force Base and then escorted to the family's home.  She arrived before top level government officials were able to return to Washington from overseas.  You may recall that commercial air traffic was banned in the days following 9/11.  The time came when the Navy most reluctantly changed LCDR Elseth's status from missing to killed.  His DNA had been found and identified.  I made the notification, as I did to the families of three other sailors who perished at the Pentagon on 9/11, one such call being made on Rosh Hashanah -- not the first time that had happened in my career.  

In addition to providing ministry to 9/11 families, I was tasked with providing chaplain assistance to responders, and to Pentagon commands, and to individual survivors who lost shipmates that day.  One such command, Naval Computer and Telecommunications Command, had a number of offices in different locations around the Pentagon and D. C.  In one of those Pentagon offices seven sailors died and seven survived.  One of the survivors had gone outside to smoke a cigarette.  Another had decided to use a bathroom down the passageway from a lavatory much nearer to his office spaces which were obliterated that morning.  The survivors needed to answer why they lived when their shipmates -- with whom some of them worked and roomed and socialized -- did not.  

Early in October, 2001 the Navy Chief of Chaplains, Rear Admiral Barry Black, the current Chaplain of the US Senate, asked me to represent the Jewish community in a memorial service that would take place one month to the day after 9/11.  (See photo below)  On a balcony overlooking the sprawling grounds of the Pentagon, where a congregation of 27,000 had gathered, I sat directly behind President Bush and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Richard Myers.  During the service President Bush was visibly shaken and, when the names of those who died were read, his tears fell.

For most of the remainder of 2001 and for much of 2002 I was heavily involved in military chaplain duties.  For example, in December I received orders to fly to Camp Pendleton, CA and provide chaplain support to the personnel of MAG39, Marine Aircraft Group 39, as they prepared to deploy to Afghanistan.  The group of nine squadrons normally had four full time chaplains assigned.  But when I reached the base I discovered quickly that two of those chaplains had deployed in advance of the group, one was getting ready to deploy, and the fourth chaplain billet was unfilled.  Before I arrived I had already studied the names,  photos and bios of the leaders of MAG 39, as well as the history of the group, and the layout of their part of Pendleton.  So I was able to hit the ground running.  

After having served for 28 years as a Navy chaplain -- active duty and reserve -- I retired in June, 2002, piped over the side from the Constellation in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.  The speaker was a warrior, Rear Admiral Mimi Drew.  We had worked together often through the years, but never so dearly and crucially as during the weeks in the aftermath of 9/11.  

And then, in the fall of 2003, the Navy called me back from retirement to send me to the Iraqi theatre during the High Holy Days and Sukkot.  I was  attached to United States Naval Forces Central Command in Bahrain and then to Expeditionary Strike Group One deployed on the amphibious assault ship PELELIU, within swimming distance of the Iraqi southern pipelines near Basra.  At that time there just were not enough active duty Jewish chaplains to meet the need.  So two years after 9/11, with Jewish personnel in harm's way and wanting a rabbi with them at this very time of year in a part of the world that our ancestors knew as Babylonia, I accepted non-pay orders, gathered my uniforms, and headed out -- of course with Toby's permission.