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"Who among us is so busy that he cannot spend 10 minutes a day in the study of a Jewish text? Just 10 minutes? Such a commitment would enable us to meet our Jewish obligation to make Jewish study a fixed occurrence. If we make time to answer our cell phones a dozen times a day and to check our email five times an hour, surely we can find 10 minutes to contemplate sacred words that nourish the soul." Click here for more information on ten minutes of Torah a day.

 

There's more than one way to be Jewish" is the slogan of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism. The Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism (IMPJ) is Israel's liberal Jewish religious movement, and a constituent member of the World Union of Progressive Judaism. Click here for more information on the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism.

Celebration

Yom Kippur 5766 Sermon by Rabbi Julie Schwartz

Are we having fun yet? Is your stomach growling? Does your head hurt? Have you sat long enough? What an amazing thing this holy day is: we get all dressed up so that we can sit very, very still, think about how bad we have been, and forbid ourselves to drink or eat. What a great way to have a party! Let’s celebrate!

But indeed this is a day for celebration – just not the type of wild time that we might choose for a birthday or an anniversary. We can use the term celebrate to define this day’s experience because we have such incredible assurances about our future:

We have sinned and we have confessed to God and we will continue to confess to God throughout the day and then, we can celebrate because we will be forgiven.
We will feel hunger and thirst and from that privation recognize the limitations of our bodies and souls and remember better the fragile gift of life that we have been given and then, we can celebrate because we know that we will eat at the end of the day.

We will focus upon the many, many ways that we have harmed our dear ones and then at the end of this day, we will hug them once again and know that this love is unconditional and limitless.

How much we have to celebrate. How wonderful is this day because of the gift of hope and perspective that it hands to us. How magnificent is our tradition that provides us this holiday to joyously recount all of the ways that we are blessed.

And this congregation is blessed as well. From last Yom Kippur to this Yom Kippur, we have shared and helped and given. We have demonstrated that we fully understand that all that we have and all that we are begins as a gift and must be used as a gift.

Let’s take an inventory of the ways that we have participated in continuing to give from God’s blessings to us:

If you participated in helping to establish this first season of Garden Isaiah, the garden we have planted to provide food for the Atlanta Food Bank and to provide us a place of beauty and active tzedakah, please stand and remain standing.

We celebrate your gifts!

If you have participated in this year’s tzedakah drive as asked by Eric Seidel last week and by Jane Schiff, please stand and remain standing.

We celebrate your gifts!

If you participated in our efforts to assist evacuees from Hurricane Katrina but serving on the emergency committee or bringing in linens or offering your home or making a donation, please stand and remain standing.

We celebrate your gifts!

If you serve on the caring committee and have called an ill or hurting congregant or delivered a meal or helped with a shiva, please stand and remain standing.

We celebrate your gifts!

If you have helped with the Cohen home or the Bremen home or the Zaban night shelter or helped with a blood drive or given blood, please stand and remain standing.

We celebrate your gifts!

If you have traveled to Israel this past year and contributed in person or by check to her spirit and her economy, please stand and remain standing. If you have helped with the Mary Hall Freedom House or the 3 Day Breast Cancer Walk or the MS Ride, please stand and remain standing.

We celebrate your gifts!

If you have brought in canned goods for Operation Isaiah or for any of the many collections that we have made throughout the year – from books to toys to cell phones – please stand and remain standing.

We celebrate your gifts!

If you have given of yourself to another in need in some other fashion that I have not been wise enough to include, please stand and remain standing.

We celebrate your gifts!

Look around, what good we have done in this past year! How much we have to bring us pride! Please be seated! I know that I have forgotten many, many important and good things that our congregants do and I have intentionally not named all of the volunteer committees that staff our congregation. Of course we all thank our volunteers but this morning I have named only those enterprises that directly give to those who are in need. Because while we are here, stuck here now, it is time for us to determine how we will use our time in this coming year to again be this generous and to move from the tremendous success of our giving spirits to new successes of our giving spirits.
Because unfortunately, when we walk out these doors, the hungry, the homeless, the abused – these needy people still await us. When we finish our break the fast meal, injustice, violence, and repression will still be all around us. Even after we have harvested our first crops from Garden Isaiah, there will be wrongs and needs calling for our attention. That is the challenge of our celebration today. The work is endless, it is tiresome, and it must be done. And we must celebrate the ongoing invitation to participate in it.

We are called upon, commanded to participate in acts of tzedakah not because it will make us feel good, not because it will earn us points, and not because it will obviously, completely fix a problem. We are motivated, inspired to fulfill this command from God because our lives are already so very good. We do tzedakah because we recognize that we are blessed and happy and always able to find something to celebrate. We have Shabbat each week – a gift from God to stop and smell the roses, a weekly party, a regular observance of the ways that we are blessed. And so the way that we end our week and the way that we begin the new week – the last act before we light Shabbat candles and the first act after the Havdallah candle is extinguished is meant to be an act of tzedakah, thus the presence of a tzedakah box by the Shabbat table and the Havdallah set. We reflect upon the gift of Shabbat in our lives and then we are moved to give to others. We realize, deeply, that there is more in our lives to celebrate than to curse.

Of course, continuing to work on the hard, ever-present needs in our world takes even more than the inspiration of the good in our lives. It requires that most difficult of all practice – it requires discipline.

Discipline. No-one likes that word. No matter how many times that we tell ourselves that it really means education, that is not the picture that it conjures up for most people. Instead we see punishment, the principal’s office, a strict diet, or knowing that we are not going to get what we want. How wonderful it is when we can recognize the gift that is held within a disciplined life. Not a life that is filled with hard mattresses and Spartan like rule but a life that has order and structure and consistency. A life that has rhythm and promise and movement – a life that recognizes that there is a way, a correct path – we call that in Judaism, halacha – a path of disciplined choices and actions. When we approach our lives with discipline and then we approach the world with discipline, we can create that feeling instead. With discipline, we choose the ways that we will commit to repairing the world. And with discipline we simply keep doing it. That commitment to tzedakah as a disciplined part of our lives will keep us from quitting once it gets boring or we feel like we have done enough or we want something new and sexy to do rather than the daily work of ensuring that the needs of the needy are met. My friends, if we act and we give from discipline, it will not mean that we don’t do the fun things or support the arts or that we cannot just have a day to ourselves sometime – no – if we act and give with discipline then it means that the tasks of our community, our world will be done with respect and value for others. We will not put malls and fish tanks ahead of hunger and homelessness.

Doing the right thing takes discipline – just like exercise or study or soccer – and we Jews have an entire structure of mitzvot in place to provide us the gift of discipline so that we will not have to wonder what to do first and what to drop off of the list. When we live lives that focus on meeting the needs of others because we realize that our needs are filled even before we ask – then we will always know what we should do next.

I celebrate in advance the fact that we will have a garden overflowing with bounty for the hungry. I celebrate in advance that we will continue to sponsor classes that support families struggling with mental illness. I celebrate in advance that we will help the homeless, care for the elderly, the ill, the lonely, the forgotten. I know that I am part of a congregation and a people that will never, never lose its focus on these critical acts.

But I want us to do more. And because our lives are so good, we can do more good. Because God has been so very good to us, we can be very good to all those around us.

We have already begun this year with the mitzvah of tzedakah and we can be very proud of the money that we have raised for the needs within our congregation and for those suffering in Darfur, in Indonesai, in the Gulf Coast. But I want us to remember that fulfilling the mitzvah of tzedakah is not just accomplished by giving money – it is accomplished by changing minds, habits, and the status quo. I want you to join me in the mitzvah of social action this year by focusing on three very critical issues and I hope that you will find at least one of these challenging– because if we do not stretch ourselves and our complacency, then we will never grow. Together let us steps toward progress concerning advocacy for Israel, for the environment, and on poverty.

The first, most obvious ingredient to such a sense of Jewish pride and joy is fulfilling our obligation to support Israel. I have asked you, begged you, by email and in person, to register to vote for the World Zionist Organization Congress and then to vote for ARZA, the Zionist representation of the Reform movement. We have the registration forms here in the building and we have the link to register by email on our website. Not only does the process require very little physical effort, it even requires very little money – seven dollars if you are not a student and five dollars if you are a full time student. We cannot all travel to Israel and we cannot all buy as many bonds as we wish that we could. However we can ensure that our beloved Israel have leadership and direction from the religious traditions that are our own. We can ensure that Israel have input concerning the social agenda and religious needs of the Progressive movement and we can stand up proudly and insist that our voices be heard. When you choose to register and to vote then you are officially going on record as being a disciplined, congruent, proud Reform American Zionist. As we often say – enough talk – do something! This type of advocacy takes the least amount of discipline at all. I am asking you to do very little – please be certain to meet this very low standard for action. You have until January 15, 2006.

The second issue that I want you to become involved with has to do with our commitment to care our precious planet. The earth has been reminding us for the past several months just how much care she truly deserves. Diminished oil supplies, shrinking ice caps, and vicious storms have only been the most recent shrieks of pain from our environment. We will need to make painful changes in the ways that we travel, we furnish and heat our homes, we deal with our refuse, and we share our produce. We need to make choices that are earth friendly and not suppose that the next generation’s ingenuity will simply save them from our bad decisions. We can no longer be the ugly houseguests that this planet has been barely able to tolerate. Our garden is one aspect of reconnecting with our mother earth. I also want us to consider becoming a “green congregation,” a syngogue that seriously considers the impact on the environment in our practices and choices. This will not come without a price tag yet I would expect that God does not have much patience with those of us claming that Judaism is earth loving from a building that harms that very earth. But now I ask you to do something more immediate which again involves little effort and even no actual money but it does require you to put yourself publicly in support of those who put the environment ahead of profits. I want you to join me on something a bit different, a virtual march on Washington by registering, again, online at Stopglobalwarming.org. This is an educational program in which people across the country are learning about the numerous environmental needs of our world.

The march will end – virtually –in Washington DC on earth day next spring and by then so many Americans will have registered and read and committed to a new way of understanding the environment that we will have changed as a nation. And before any of you begin to complain that this sounds like some liberal, bleeding heart movement which is designed to bring down big business, I want you to hear some of the bleeding hearts who are participating – including Senator John McCain, General Wesley Clark, and Governor Arnold Schwartzenager. When you go to the website, you will see a list of everyone who is virtually marching and you can read their statements of commitment and support – it will take this much personal energy and attention for all of us to begin to take the danger of global warming seriously. And you can even choose to register as one of my friends and then we will be able to count just how many of us have joined together in this effort. I want each of us individually and then as a congregation to go on record once again as activists for the environment, not those who would sit back and critique from these comfortable chairs.

Finally, I want you to join me in doing one other rather easy, again inexpensive but, I hope, life shaking activity. I want you to find a way to look poverty in the face. I want you to put food or money or clothing or some other item of need directly into the hand of the needy recipient. Now I know that the Maimoniden ladder of tzedakah does not consider this direct giving to be the most self-less form of giving but I think that we are missing a very significant lesson in our modern dealings with poverty. Because we rarely have to actually experience the poor in a personal fashion, because we give in such sanitized ways, we feel far too safe and far too far away from its reality. So let us go to the shelter or to the food pantry or even to the streets and be where the pain actually resides. When I taught at HUC, I participated with a pastoral care poverty program in the inner city of Cincinnati. Our rabbinic students actually went and lived with families below the poverty line for a weekend. These families were proud to host what they termed “minister students” and to share with them from their experiences and their very limited resources. In fact, it was especially hard to explain to the host families that they should not struggle to find the extra money to serve the students bacon for a very special guest breakfast! Of course, our students learned more about themselves and their own gut response to poverty than they may have learned about pastoral care. They walked in the streets and they heard the noisy sounds of bad housing. They realized that the prices are highest in a corner convenience store in the poorest section of town and they were amazed at the abundance of cheap junk food and the scarcity of healthy choices. Most importantly they began to see that no matter how much the comfortable claim that all you need to have is motivation and a willingness to work hard – they saw that the environment itself can take hope out of life. I know that there are many in our own congregation who work tirelessly with those in dire need. But I am certain that more of our members can help us get more personally involved in the struggles of our brothers and sisters. Unfortunately it is very easy to find the needy in our own back yards – there is a beggar at every ramp to the interstate. Take the first scary step and roll down your car window and give that person your spare change. Look him in the eye and place the money right in her hand. I know that some will use those few coins for things that we deem wrong but since the government’s essential closing down of our mental health system and the continued disappearance of the infrastructure that supported the working poor, I cannot be suspicious of anyone holding out a cup. Our Jewish tradition simply teaches that you do not close your hand to the needy. We have all watched as the hidden problems of New Orleans became front page news. We Atlantans have plenty of poverty that we cannot legislate out of existence nor gentrify away from our sight. Our rabbis tell the story that we never know where we will meet the messiah for whom the entire world waits. In fact the messiah could be hidden amongst those beggars and is simply waiting for one more act of kindness and tzedakah to be performed so that the time of our redemption may be at hand. It is our job to know that we can only work for that redemption by directly facing the need.

My dear friends, the day is already half over, nearly done. We know that the gates to repentance are closing in just a few short hours. We know that as those gates swing shut that we will be forgiven and our stomachs will once again be filled. And then we will celebrate and then in another week we will celebrate Sukkot and then we will celebrate Simchat Torah. Our lives are overflowing with celebration. But the gates of need will never close. The Shofar’s final call this afternoon is our call for action. We need fewer words and more deeds. We need more resolve and less politics. Each of us, from an abundance of blessings can celebrate this year – but we remember that we will have to return to this sanctuary next Yom Kippur. I pray that each of us will be able to return then in the spirit of celebration knowing that we have used our days to answer that Shofar’s call.