Rosh Hashana Day 5780 / 2019
/America is Not Lost, She is Changed: “God sets bounds (“ketz” קץ) for the darkness”
(Job 28:3, Midrash Tanhuma Buber to 41:1 / #2 / Miketz)
*Draft version, footnotes forthcoming
1. “Missing Woman Mystery Solved”
The following story was reported in a local paper in Iceland:
‘A group of tourists spent hours on Saturday night looking for a missing woman near an Icelandic canyon, only to find her among the search party.
The group was traveling through Iceland on a tour bus and stopped near a volcanic canyon. Soon there was word of a missing passenger. The woman, who had changed clothes, didn’t recognize the description of herself, and joined in the search.
But the search was called off at about 3 A.M., when it became clear the missing woman, was, in fact, accounted for and searching for herself.’
I’ve never heard high holidays described so well or so succinctly. We can go home now.
Actually, seriously, often we are not so much lost as changed.
Maybe, even our country, our America, which seems so broken
is not so much lost as changing, changed.
Maybe, if we want to fix our current trajectory as a nation
We’ll have to stop the search party long enough to make sure we’re looking for the right things.
2. Status Quo (Powers that be, the problems of our day) feed off of our fatigue
Remember Joseph?
Beautiful, talented, Joseph who liked to tattle on his brothers
Joseph who was his father’s favorite – remember how his father gave him that special coat of many colors?
Joseph was born dreaming, and he would have these repeated dreams where all his brothers and parents were bowing down to him as if he were the king and they were his adoring subjects
And he knew what those dreams meant
And still he repeatedly shared renditions of those dreams with his brothers
Until they hated him
I mean they really hated him. Like, for example, they threw him in a dark pit while they decided whether or not to kill him
More or less opting in the end to “just” sell him into slavery and tell their father he was dead.
And there is a lot to say about this
But if you are feeling inadequate this time of year about relationships with members of your family, your siblings
Perhaps looking at this families in Torah can offer us some perspective
As bad as it is, surely its not that bad.
But what I want to focus on
is that throughout this entire sequence of events
And Torah doesn’t spare any words in describing the hatred of Joseph’s brothers
Or the despair and grief of their father
Throughout this sequence
Joseph doesn’t seem to have a single reaction, not a single emotion
Not when his father favors him
Not when he’s describing his king dreams
Not when he’s thrown in the pit
Not when he’s sold away into slavery
Not one reaction on his beautiful face. Nada.
Even a few chapters later, when, as a servant he is falsely accused by his master and thrown away into another kind of pit, a prison
Torah does not record any sadness, frustration, anger.
In fact, years later, the rabbis say ten years,
when Joseph explains to a cell mate how he got in the prison,
he speaks in the passive, as if he had nothing to do with anything
They kidnapped me, “V’gam po, lo asiti m’euma.”
“And also, here,”
lo asiti m’euma / “I haven’t done anything that they should put me in this prison”
lo asiti m’euma / “I haven’t done anything.” (Genesis 40:15)
All this innocence is enough to make us want to ask:
“Nothing? Nothing Joseph?
Not saying you deserved to end up in an Egyptian jail
But you did tell your brothers those obnoxious dreams over and over
You know you vogue-d around in that coat Joseph,
clueless about the suffering your arrogance caused again and again
If you’re so blameless, Joseph, how come there’s no one come and pay bail? How come no one seems to know you’re gone?
Could it be, is it possible that your need to be blameless is part of the problem?”
And Joseph is not the only one who wants to pretend he’s blameless.
4. Fake problems / Blameless / “The age of spectacle” (Morrison, p. 97-8)
I don’t even want to talk about fake news but there are surely fake problems today.
By that I mean contrived issues fabricated, knowingly or unknowingly
Orchestrated to inflame divisions between us
What were once called “Wedge issues,”
now thrown onto the fiery grill of social media
And with a fake problem there’s always only two sides, the “good” one and the “bad” one.
Why does this matter?
It matters because this is a time of a great many real and complicated problems in our world:
Environmental crises, entrenched racism, questions around immigration, wealth inequality, rampant gun violence, to name a few
And if we put our energies towards taking sides on the latest fake flare up
We can start to get confused and think these provocations are the real thing
For example we can get confused and think the supposed threat of BDS / Boycott and Divestment Movement of Israel --
What Israeli columnist Anshel Pfeffer calls a “Phantom menace”
“A harmless nuisance manufactured by a few Western keyboard warriors”
A boycott that has not changed Israel’s GDP nor its standing in the world
But still takes up main stage, and a disproportionate amount of attention in US Jewish conversations –
With all the attention given
We can get confused between the anxiety around BDS and solving for the Occupation,
Or finding a lasting chapter or relationship that would further the security and dignity of Israelis and Palestinians.
We can get so worked up at making sure someone is anti-BDS that we don’t put our energy into seriously discussing what Zionism is and could be.
And with everyone on the defensive
The number of phantoms growing in size and number
It is no wonder we fell compelled to weigh in, take a side
We don’t ask if the choices offered are good ones or even the right ones
We just put on armor that doesn’t fit, simply because everyone else seems to have a sword.
But if we start investing in fake problems
Our heartbeats racing at every provocation
A second danger is that we start to get confused and think the defeat of the other side, the other, no matter how infuriating or provocative their position
We can start to think that the humiliation of the other is the prize.
Listen, especially with things being as bad as they are,
with all the attention a good put-down receives, I get it!
Hating “the man” offers such an immediate rush!
But I don’t need to tell you that this is not the prize
Not only will it not help us redefine our lost America
Not only will it not draw us closer to trying solutions or to learning from each other
Humiliation of the other is not a prize at all, it is the cost of being in a disorganized mob,
A host to a virus
It is beneath us
Not to mention
When we accept this kind of public humiliation as commonplace
The importance of staying with our “team,” and our “side” starts to override any other considerations, or doubts we might have
Perhaps without meaning to
We create restrictive brands for ourselves, brands that allow us to be blameless and consistent and indignant
but that prohibit us from forming a larger coalition with someone who has some views we might find problematic
Or listening to such a person
Or changing our minds, god forbid, in public.
But we know from Torah
That we’re forbidden to make static idols of ourselves or each other
We can’t make idols of the people we love the most, and not of those who we barely know
We know from Torah: We are each infinite, we are not brands
And the opportunity to change, t’shuvah, is one of the most powerful tools we’ve been given
No, the prize cannot be choosing to be on the right side of the faux problem, even the real problem (!) in these times, this is not enough
The problems of the world are too serious for us to prioritize our being blameless and consistent
The solutions we need now may require to change our minds, to expose our failings, to get off our pedestals in service of a greater good, a greater whole.
5. Well-Heeled Rooms / Blameless / Faux Solutions
And yet, simply resisting the mob or if you prefer, the bubble, also cannot be our prize nor our goal
In fact, as tempting as it can be to join the mob
It can be just as seductive to be someone who
“Stays away from the fray”
Who “rises above,”
Whose stand seems to be postponing taking a stand
Or embracing all the stands
There sure are a lot of calls for civility and listening these days
But if the result of that listening seems to more or less keeping things as they are
If the prize is peace and order and dignity for all, as long as you got your invitation into the room
Invitation only dignity
If it feels like a club
If it is a well funded opportunity to hear the same things that have been said and heard millions of times
We must ask ourselves,
Who gets to extend the invitations? And at what communal cost? (Morrison, p. 163, who gets to determine what is in the canon and how can that be separated from political motivations? + why are some view points “political” and others “normal”? p. 169)
We need to ask ourselves: With all the fires burning outside, with all the serious problems that require our response, is this really the prize? Is this the best we can do?
See in these are times when democracy is in jeopardy, when racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, sexism have all come roaring back, all seemingly intertwined
If a proposed solution or cohort, if it is real, then we must demand that it articulate a piece of a dream or prod the world along in some way,
because if no one is risking or sacrificing or admitting anything or changing at all
If it is the usual suspects saying the same vague things on yet another day while the world stays the same
As well intentioned as it all might be
– it is hard for me to imagine this is anything more than a kind of denial, an opportunity to kick the can down status road, a faux solution.
And the world is just too broken for us to participate in faux solutions, this too, cannot be our prize.
6. Joseph Risks / Joseph Dreams Pharaoh’s Dream
I imagine Joseph in the prison.
I imagine he has said, “Lo asiti me’uma” / “I didn’t do anything” over and over for years.
He said it to anyone who would listen. He has said it to himself.
But I imagine that even during the days when Joseph was telling whoever would listen that he didn’t do anything
Every night, I imagine Joseph had the same nightmare about his brothers:
Every night they threw him in that pit and every night he tried to explain in vain that they were wrong, only to be thrown in again the next night.
And I wonder
How dark and lonely and monotonous and quiet did it have to get
How many nights of the same dream
before Joseph considered his role in his own life?
Maybe, slowly, slowly he began to reconsider:
“Lo asiti me’uma” / “I didn’t do anything”
“I didn’t do… anything?!”
“They were all so angry and I didn’t do anything? I never tried to talk with them. I kept fanning the flames.”
And at last Joseph understands that maybe he is not blameless.
Chasidic teacher / Mei Hashiloach offers
Joseph was in prison for two extra years because God was waiting for Joseph to have the capacity to hold a greater prize, to hold a greater redemption (aleph to Gen. 41:1)
See, God wanted more for Joseph than blamelessness, than being right or being secure
God wanted Joseph to see that a greater redemption
A redemption for the many,
A redemption in which you might admittedly probably make wrong moves at times
In which your flaws would be exposed,
but you could be part of something greater --
This is the only prize worth having
And God knew, in order for Joseph to reach this stage
Joseph would have to see
the prize was neither in his innocence nor his guilt
but in taking everything that had happened to him in his life and still making something with it.
And the Mei Hashiloach says that
When Joseph finally reached this understanding
Joseph, still in his prison, cried a great and tremendous cry.
One of what would be many breakdowns, seven times he cries after this, all recorded in Torah, as if making up for lost time
And it was right when he cried, says our teacher, at that exact moment
the King Pharaoh dreamed a dream he needed to understand
and the King Pharaoh was beyond himself, he needed to know what it meant
and immediately he found out there was a dream interpreter in the prison and right away Joseph was called up into the light and brought into the palace to help.
And you know the rabbis say the very day that Joseph was released from prison, it was today, it was Rosh Hashana (B. RH 30b., others). A day when we consider what has happened to us and what we might yet do with all of it.
OR, says the Tur, it is also possible that after years in prison
Finally, one night
One night Joseph the dreamer dreamed someone else’s dream,
he dreamed King Pharaoh’s dream,
and it didn’t matter that it wasn’t even a good dream,
It didn’t matter that it was a dream representing the oncoming famine –
And it didn’t matter that it was King Pharoah, hardly a likely ally
Because as soon as Joseph dreamed the Pharaoh’s dream and he knew what it meant
Cause Joseph always knew what the dreams meant
Then he knew that the dreaming and interpreting that had shaped his whole life
was not just a strange quirk, it was not only a source of confusion and pain
It was something that he could now try to use for good. He could try to stop the reach of the famine with all these dreams and interpretations.
(commenting on Gen. 41:1).
“Vayehi miketz” / And after two years, it all came to an end and Joseph was released from prison / or maybe he released himself
Or maybe God helped to release him
As it says in Job:
“God sets bounds (“ketz” קץ) even for darkness.”
(Job 28:3, Midrash Tanhuma Buber to 41:1 / #2 / Miketz)
7. The reason we cannot find America is not because she is lost
The reason we cannot find America is not because she is lost. It is because we’re searching for an America that’s now changed.
It would be like looking for Joseph back in the prison,
he’s no longer there.
We might not have the words yet and we might not have the symbols or the new offices but make no mistake, America is not lost, she has changed.
8. With all the fires, both literal and metaphoric, the suffocating cycles of crisis after crisis, not to mention the naked self-interest that ruled the news this year,
We should remember this was also a time of rumblings and protests, There were journalists and activists and voices heard like shots around the world.
Those who did not accept faux problems and who risked to offer real solutions in earnest, no matter the outcomes
Christine Blasey-Ford is but one example.
a person who took on enormous risk, unrelenting pressure at great personal cost
Fighting shame, retaliation, public humiliation
Threats to her family, her job security, her safety
In her testimony, one year old this week, she said,
“I am here today not because I want to be. I am terrified.”
“…I had a sense of urgency to relay the information (of my attack) to the Senate and the President as soon as possible before a nominee was selected. …I stated (anonymously) that Mr. Kavanaugh had assaulted me in the 1980s in Maryland.
This was an extremely hard thing for me to do,
but I felt I couldn’t NOT do it.
I felt I couldn’t NOT do it.
She couldn’t NOT do it
Because the idea of a world where truths of that magnitude
would remain under wraps, rendered useless or off limits
the idea of that world was worse than whatever consequences she would surely suffer.
I couldn’t NOT do it. I couldn’t NOT talk about it.
She said “…I agonized daily with this decision,” for months but she concluded,
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/26/christine-blasey-ford-opening-statement-senate-845080
My responsibility is to tell the truth.
And just like that
Building on the courage of Anita Hill, of course the #MeToo movement, the moral courage of so many
Blasey-Ford described the layers of a chilling oppression, and by giving that abuse its name
By putting words to what happened so long ago
Memories she could have just continued to stomach
By saying the words out loud
Blasey-Ford placed that once taboo oppression right on our country’s doorstep, she made us look, she helped us understand
She helped us to see she represented tens of thousands of people,
Americans harassed, assaulted, attacked, humiliated, exposed
Blasey-Ford’s sacrifice and the #MeToo stories of so many have helped to disassemble systemic oppression in arenas of philanthropy, Jewish life, business, academia, government, entertainment, religion, science, too many more to name
Oppressive systems that were once allowed to stand unchallenged,
a given, an unfortunate side effect of power,
now collapsing under the pressure of so many testimonies, their corruption plain for all to see.
Just one of many ways America is changing, unrecognizable from who she once was.
Now Blasey-Ford and Joseph don’t seem to have too much in common.
For starters, as I said, Joseph carries some of the responsibility in the disastrous relationship with his brothers
Blasey-Ford, was innocent, a victim.
Joseph was powerless, nothing to lose when he risked it all
Blasey-Ford a respected academic with much to lose
But, in one way, they make the same significant choice, the same move
Blasey-Ford came to understand, after much deliberation, that this unwieldy and painful thing that happened
This chapter she had wrestled with for so long
Even this could be used to stop oppression.
She came to understand that her act of coming forward would go beyond whether she was believed or dismissed,
perceived as innocent or guilty,
it would be about reaching for a greater redemption, a true prize.
Like Joseph anticipating the famine, she imagined people she had never met
People who had
yet to convene
Yet to know their story was related to hers --
and she still felt a responsibility to them, to us.
As it says in Isaiah
V’haya terem yikra’u / v’ani eh-eh-neh.
“Before they can even call out, I will answer;
9. Where is America?
America will never be found or recreated or renamed so long as we think of ourselves as separate focus groups or population segments, demographics or generations
But where you find freedom, there you will find America.
Where is America?
She is among us but she has changed. She is in the acts of Blasey-Ford, Jamal Khashoggi, the 52 journalists killed in the last year alone, she is in Brooklyn where our ultra orthodox brothers and sisters, trying to serve god in their daily lives are physically attacked with astonishing regularity for the way they look and live, she is in Megan Rapinoe’s demand for equal pay, she is in the conscience of the whistleblower, and in the hearts of the many new government representatives of all stripes, lawyers at the Equal Justice Initiative who are walking into Alabama courtrooms demanding justice, pulling innocent black men off of death row, she is in the bent knee of Kapernick, she is among those risking arrest behalf of immigrants in detention camps on our borders, and she is in the thousands upon thousands of others who have refused to submit to oppression in its many forms, who have risked for a greater freedom.
Who understand we are each far more than a brand
Who insist, not on being blameless or tearing town the enemy but rather on being implicated, encumbered, and responsible to the many
Who, when invited in status-y rooms where nothing happens, politely excuse ourselves
Who understand that our past, no matter how mottled or confusing, can sometimes make up the basis, not only for personal redemption, but also for a greater redemption, a worthwhile prize
Who listen in the silences for the voices not yet able to speak,
Who dream one another’s dreams, even the bad ones
And who dare to try to limit the darkness.
This is where our America is found. She is not lost, she is right here, among us, in us, changed and ready and waiting for the time when each of us will play our necessary part in the raising up of freedom, in her ongoing redemption.
My teacher Avivah Zornberg tells the story of
Reb. Arye Levine who was once asked,
“Are you one of the thirty-six righteous people, the ones hidden in every generation?”
He looked around and answered,
“From time to time.”
(Zornberg, Bewilderments, p. 30).