In The Beginning… (Rosh Hashanah 5775 Morning Service, September 25, 2014)

September 26, 2014

“In the beginning…” Isn’t that where everything starts?  – our Torah, our history, our lives, and our stories?  “Once upon a time…” enables us to begin a narrative, often fictional, any place we want.  We can start with a young princess, without knowing much about her parents’ beginnings, or her kingdom.  The words, “In the beginning…” establish a clear starting point for a narrative, history, sacred myth, or life story that will unfold in a particular way, with a particular trajectory, just based upon where you begin.  And that beginning, can often determine the end, as well.

“In the beginning…”  is the start of our Jewish sacred story that we just read from the Torah, Genesis 1:1.  Reform Jews offer this up as an alternative reading to the traditional Genesis 22, the binding of Isaac.  Rosh Hashanah has many names, including the Birthday of the World. That sense of ‘cosmic beginning’ made Genesis 1 the right choice for me to make this year.

As our sacred text, the Torah actually has a series of beginnings.  In the beginning, God promised Abraham that he would father a nation.  And God promised that nation a land to call home.  And in the mind of our biblical ancestors, our God would also call that land home.  Because God promised this land to the Jewish people, it is called the Holy Land.  Others have made it holy, but only the Jewish people were given the land of Israel by God, exclusively, according to the Bible, which is the basis for the three major western religions.  It is not just any land. It is the land of Israel for the people of Israel;  an inheritance for all time.

In the beginning… there was hunger.  That is the only reason Jacob left the land of his fathers.  He had to go to Egypt, because his family was starving.  The land was not able to sustain him and his loved ones.  But, that hunger that sent us to Egypt and led us to be enslaved, also birthed the Exodus and our redemption from slavery, and ultimately the Revelation of Torah at Sinai, where our peoplehood was truly born.  The Book of Exodus is chapter two of the saga of the Israelites, as it records a people who transition from slavery to freedom, with the soul purpose of returning to the ‘promised land,’ in order to live a life guided by the Torah.

In the beginning, we were Israel, a holy people in a holy land. On that promised land, twelve tribes settled on both sidesof the Jordan River – 9 ½ tribes on the East Bank and 2 ½ tribes on the West Bank.

To unite the southern kingdom of Judah with the northern kingdom of  Israel, King David established his capital, Jerusalem, in the Judean mountains between them.  His son, Solomon, built the first Temple there in the mid-10^th century B.C.E., a time when we were the only monotheists in the world, and there was no other people or religion in existence to call that city home.

The Babylonians destroyed Solomon’s Temple in 586 B.C.E., and the inhabitants of Israel left in chains, exiled from the land of their forefathers.  Our people returned to our land fifty years later, and rebuilt the Second Temple twenty-one years after the return.  In Herod’s time, he built an even grander Temple, until it, too, was taken from us, and burned to the ground by the Romans in 70 C.E.  That is all fact, not fiction or myth.  There is no greater historical claim.

As a people, we have no Rome, no Mecca or Medina, no other place on this planet for our capital, and no spiritual homeland other than that ever-so-small piece of real estate no bigger than New Jersey that before our efforts was just dust, swampland, and poverty.

In the beginning… we were exiled and then exiled again.  We NEVER left the land willingly.  We were forced out, and most of us who remained were killed. In the beginning, we were conquered and exiled, and massacred.

For many modern Jews, our sacred history begins with extermination and annihilation of our people beyond Israel’s borders, after the pogroms and displacements from so many lands and nations, from England to Russia.  In the beginning, six million died and many more were victims of the greatest hatred the world has never known.

In the beginning, an entire planet was silent as one people planned the complete extermination of another, systematic and scientific, calculated and massive beyond anyone’s imagination. And the world must be held accountable today, and every day for that.

In the beginning is culpability… for the exiles, and holy wars, for the anti-Semitism that poisoned religions, generations, and cultures.

In the beginning, God gave the Jewish people the  land of Israel, all of it, and leaving God out of the equation, in my mind, reduces the land of Israel to a state like all other states, not a Jewish homeland, a Holy Land, for all eternity.  But, even if you leave God out of it, the world needs to remember that we bought most of the land before 1948, and won most of the rest in wars fairly fought and won.  With few tragic exceptions, we have legitimate claim to the land on so many different levels.

This summer, I finally had a chance to read Ari Shavit’s book, My Promised Land.  In many ways, this sermon was born out of the ideas the book triggered in me, even more than the book itself, which I found was truly worthwhile reading.  It is interesting to me what different people focus on as they talk about the book, as Shavit is anything but one-sided in his account, which is why he subtitles the book, “The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel.”   More than anything, I couldn’t get away from the fact that absolutely everything connected to the story of the State of Israel, past and present, is completely determined by where you start the story.

Shavit does not try to solve the conflict in the Middle East.  His value-added is the fact that he has a gift for sharing narratives.  I started the book during this summer’s war, which forced Israel to defend her cities and her children when rockets were indiscriminately launched across her border by terrorists.  Reading connected me to my beloved Israel under attack.

Shavit forced me to recognize that individual narratives and sacred stories underlie all that transpires in Israel, and until we address the conflicting narratives, we will be unable to solve the conflict.

Shavit begins his story of modern Israel in 1897 with the first aliyah to Palestine and continues with the second in 1921.  His is a Zionist’s beginning, and to his credit, he includes many non-Zionist narratives.

Where we begin determines how we will end, or at the very least the demands we make for an ending.  I might start my narrative of this summer’s war with “in the beginning” there was concrete, and one nation built shelters for its people to protect them from attack, while another built tunnels for the purpose of kidnapping and attacking civilians.  It is too bad that the Washington Post didn’t begin its stories the same way.

Or, we might begin with the history of Jerusalem.  According to one source, during its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times.[i]: No matter where you start: the Byzantine massacres, to the Muslim conquest, to the Crusaders, who killed us from Rhineland to Homeland in the name of faith, to the bloody battles to take the city in recent times, we have endured conflict, struggle, continual conquest, and destruction, in order to call Jerusalem our capital once again.

In the beginning, our Temple Mount, which lay in ruins, was taken by Muslim conquerors, who built the mosque of Omar, currently called the Dome of the Rock, to make a statement that Islam was to supplant Judaism on God’s sacred soil, the story of our Abraham appropriated by others as theirs. It is on this spot, Mount Moriah, that Abraham is believed to have sacrificed Isaac, which is why Solomon built the first Temple there.

We were more than willing, and still are, to shareour sacred story with Christians and Muslims and the world, but for most of history that has not been enough.  Out of our weakness, we have had to give up our rights and claims to that which our people hold sacred.

Due to the constant repression and extermination of our people, we are now few in number.  But, thanks to our perseverance and determination, our voice continues to be heard in Zion and around the globe, despite our miniscule numbers as a people and a religious minority.

In the beginning, we inherited the conscience of the prophets of Israel, and received our destiny to seek and do social justice, not just on our land, but everywhere.  So, even in the face of all this conquest and adversity, we are still the descendants of our prophets, conceding to reality that which we cannot change, in the name of peace, harmony, justice, and compromise.

We will never be able to rebuild the Temple on our Temple Mount, nor would I want to return to that kind of Judaism.  But the world must someday recognize that it is ours by right and God, nonetheless.  For millennia, not centuries, we have prayed three times a day for a return of our people to Zion.  We accept the need for a two state solution, knowing in our hearts that Jerusalem can never leave Jewish hands.  Never.  Only in Jewish hands have all faiths been able to truly worship in freedom, despite ancient tensions.

If you are a non-religious Zionist, you might say, “ In the beginning, ‘we’ created Israel… no God, no historical claim.  Today’s Israel is a result of the blood, sweat, tears, and sacrifice of people who came to a wasteland and turned it into a Promised Land.

For European survivors, especially the young ones who were the early fighters in Israel, who made their share of mistakes,“in the beginning…” was the Holocaust, not Israel.  And the world owed them something, including those in the Middle East who had sided with the Nazis.  In the beginning, there were orphans and survivors who had been ripped from their homes and their lives and who needed to make a life with the NOTHING God had given them on the only soil they had left to call home.  They replaced the centuries old yellow star of shame with a blue star of pride.

In the beginning, 2600 years ago, the Jews of the East lived between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, Abraham’s birthplace, peacefully as masters not slaves, with civic and economic rights in a land later to be called Iraq.  There they wrote our Talmud and birthed rabbinic Judaism as we know it today.  Their sacred history is too often left out of our narrative.

In the 1930’s, Mein Kampf came to Iraq, and by 1941 almost 3000 years of Jewish life came to an end, because of the Nazi poison that spread to the Middle East.  In the 1950’s, the poison spread to Iran.  In the beginning, the Mizrahi Jews, the Jews of the East, lived well and had good lives, until the world they lived in woke up and joined the hatred of the Jews that had infected Christian Europe for hundreds of years.  And no one talks of their right to return or offers restitution, and those Jews have never recovered their status and the kind of life they and their ancestors once lived, even in Israel today.

And now there is a new Israeli narrative, which is a direct result of all of the history where we were victims in the end. Now, from beginning to end, we defend ourselves, and our people, and our children, and nothing and no one can stop us from protecting our land and our people.

In the words of survivor Erik Brik, son of Leah and Zvi, who grew up to become Aharon Barak, chief justice of Israel’s Supreme Court, “This is the final beginning.”  As Shavit says after the 1957 war, “When you can’t overcome your horrific past, … launch a radiant future.” (p. 173)

But, some do not see the story in the same light.  Take one of the Palestinian narratives in Shavit’s book: Mohammed Dahla, an Israeli Palestinian is quoted as saying, “At the outset, the Jews had no legal, historical or religious right to the land.”  To him and those like him, I respond, “Are you kidding?  Legal from the international community, legal by legitimate purchases, religious from God, and historical since before there was a Christianity or Islam, that has tried time and again to supplant us.

That version of the Palestinian, Iranian, and Jihadist narrative of today totally negates our Jewish narrative, and fuels a hatred of Jews based on Israel’s very existence.  When people are weaned on hatred and lies, conflicts seem unsolvable.

And yet, I know full well that the conflicting narratives of the region are as compelling to those who hold them dear as our narrative is to us.  But, to quote Shavit, (p. 48) “…only the end will properly put the beginning into perspective.”  So, you and I know that the only acceptable end will be a negotiated peace for all people, despite our conflicting histories and narratives.  Co-existence is the only modern alternative and any future narrative that does not see peace for all in the region is destined to fail.

History is a chronology of events told through the selective lens of the storyteller.  The Torah recounts our people’s Genesis, and that beginning, has determined our sacred narrative for 5775 years.  Ultimately, it will be up to us to write the end of Israel’s story with our brothers and sisters in the land of Israel, our neighbors, and our enemies, as well. Sadly, there is no alternative.

It is also crucial for us that we have a Reform Jewish presence in a land that views religion as the purview of the ultra-Orthodox.  That is why your vote in the world Zionist elections will matter so much, as funding for religion in Israel will depend on it.  There is more than one war being fought on the soil of our Holy Land, and fighting for the Jewish soul of that land is almost as important as securing her borders.

This is a sermon about narratives, historic, Jewish, and personal.  Now, to make this more personal:

In the beginning …  is the start of your personal story and your individual life journey.

Where you start often determines how you live.

Where you start can often determine where you end.

Where we start determines EVERYTHING: Faith, happiness, life trajectory, and worldview.

Depending on where you start your story, will determine your outlook and point of view. Take for example, two selections from our sacred story:

In the beginning, Cain killed his brother Abel…

In the beginning, the Flood destroyed humanity version #1…

From those examples you might surmise that people have been bad from the beginning.  If you are negative, then you will focus on the negatives.  If you begin with evil and embrace the inclination for selfishness, then your world is destined to be to be negative, miserable, depressing, and disappointing.

Take marriage, as an example.  Do you tell the story of a marriage as the fulfillment of its beginnings or do you write its ending, by rewriting the narrative to justify its demise? In another beginning, Adam gave his rib for Eve’s creation.  If your life partner is a sacred part of you, then the covenanted relationship and bond is destined for blessing, as long as you remember the beginning, and nurture new beginnings, and build upon them.  When you lose your way in a relationship, it is much easier to rewrite the story and demonize the other, easier to do and say things that irreparably destroy the possibility of a new beginning or an amicable end.

All relationships must renew themselves each and every day to survive and thrive, unless they don’t.  Relationships are sacred partnerships predicated on trust or riddled with the undoing of trust.  You either follow a marriage, partnership, family relationship, or friendship through ups and downs that lead to ‘forever,’ or you subject it to a prolonged, agonizing, or abrupt continuum that too often leads to a sad, recriminating, and miserable end.

From politics to faith, employment to success or failure, where you start the story, so often determines how your world and how your life will play out and where it will end.  How often people come into my office needing to tell their story, and where they begin speaks volumes to me as to how the story will end.

Addiction, illness, trauma are beginnings of a personal narrative that shape lifetimes of pain and suffering, or can offer hope and change, for you or someone else.

The willingness to start over can determine happiness, success, and the ability to change.  “In the beginning…” is chapter one of five biblical chapters.  For some, the key to happiness is the ability to start that next chapter and leave the previous one behind.  And for many, new beginnings require a willingness to change course.

It is up to every individual to determine when you mark your beginning and to follow the unbroken chain of its consequences to the end that will inevitably result from your choices.  Will your beginning lead to fulfillment and belonging, a life that gives you hope and healing?  Does your beginning offer you the life of meaning and connection you so desperately seek?

For a Jew on High Holy days, “in the beginning…” is my Judaism… the feel and pull and call of peoplehood or faith, history or destiny, family or childhood… and I know I must begin the year with my people again.  In the beginning… is High Holy days, a reminder that this is who we are, and our Temple is where we are supposed to be, — even if playoff games are scheduled on our holiday!

And, at the end of life, since we don’t die in America without our religion, all the things people think are important personally or financially… seem to be far less important.  For in the end, none of those things go with us. In the end, there is our end, and that end is religious, whether you have been or not.  In the end, is a service, a eulogy, a Kaddish, a Yizkor, a memorial.  And that end can be a natural part of our spiritual lives, or tacked on to a life that strayed from one’s beginnings.

For some of you here today, your story starts:  “In the beginning I agreed to raise my children as Jews.”  And there are no words to express the gratitude I personally feel for your amazing choice.  For some of you that was only a beginning and I want you to know that the door is open to your exploration of where that initial promise ends.

For some of you, your story starts: “In the beginning I joined for my kids…” and I beg you when the kids are gone to stay.  And to all of you, I pray you do everything you can and then more, to make sure that our generation and those who follow us stay actively Jewish.  It is why we fight so hard to keep every child in religious school through twelfth grade.  The Jewish future depends on  future Jews.  It’s as simple as that.

Let this not be the generation that ends the Jewish narrative and by choice, writes the epitaph to our sacred history.  If we fail to maintain and grow our American Jewish community, then the majority of Jews that remain in any measureable way will be in Israel, as demographers are predicting by 2025.  In the beginning, Jews knew that to be Jewish you had to support, belong, and live Jewishly. And in the end, our survival will depend on the continuation of those sacred Jewish values.

In the beginning . . . there is today, the first day of 5775.  It is up to each one of us to determine our beginning and to follow the unbroken chain of events and consequences that will lead to our end. Ultimately, “in the beginning” is your choice—

What history claims your heart?

And what values inform your choices?

Where does your story begin?

And where will your sacred destiny end?

May your choice of beginning determine an end that brings blessing for you, for the Jewish people, and for all of humanity.  Shanah Tovah.