ME, and “All of You” (Yom Kippur 5774)
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I’m Italian!!! From north of Tuscany, originally. According to my genetic testing, I am 99.2% European, .1% East Asian-Native American and .7% unassigned. I am 92.5% Ashkenazic Jew, which explains all of my Russian, Polish and Ukrainian genes, as well. But, when I look at the map of my earliest DNA origins, I am Italian, and that makes me so happy, and explains why I love eggplant parmesan and bread! We know the earliest migration of Jews from ancient Israel to Europe came via the Mediterranean. I am a recessive carrier for Mediterranean Fever, an autoimmune disorder. Oh, we Italians!
Those early Italian Jews are known to be the red-headed Jews, some with blue eyes. I have blue spots in my eyes, and Jacob had pure red hair when he was born, I just have red highlights. More than you need to know, I know. My most famous genetic American ancestor is Jesse James. Crazy! Maybe, that is how I am .1% Native American?! And I am 3.3% Neanderthal, which might explain my shortness and lack of career in professional basketball, because genetically, I am average height…go figure! My top relative surname is Cohen, followed by Berman, Stern, Levine and Katz, which means I may actually be a descendent of Moses. How cool is that… me and Mo!
I was up all night when I finally opened up my genetic test results from 23andMe this summer. 23andMe is a California BioTech company that provides rapid genetic testing. The company is named for the 23 pairs of chromosomes in a normal human cell. The personal genome kit, which analyzes a sample of your saliva, was named “Invention of the Year” by Time magazine in 2008. I am not a BRACA 1 or 2 carrier, and I don’t have the Alzheimer’s Gene, and I am not a carrier for a host of other really awful things. Although I would have dealt with knowing, I am truly relieved to find out that genetically, I am really in good shape. Thank you, God. It just means that I can’t blame my parents for all of the things that are wrong with me.
I don’t know that I would have had my genes tested, if not for the very generous offer that was made at the CCAR (rabbinic) convention in Long Beach, CA this past year. The head of the company 23andME, Anne Wojcicki (Woh-JIT-skee), offered 100 free kits to every rabbi present for ourselves and our families, and congregation, when she spoke to us. I didn’t want to offer the kits to you before I tried it myself. I need to think through the implications of getting bad news, and I wanted to see how I would be affected by the results. I will be holding a lottery for my remaining free kits for adult members of TBS only, if you put your name and email in the plastic container outside of the sanctuary today. When all the 100 kits are used, my account is closed. Everyone else can be tested by 23andMe for $99, or by the other groups testing Ashkenazic Jews in particular. Information is out in the hallway about some of those programs , or you can be tested by a genetic counselor. There are amazing groups, doing phenomenal research, to help Jews have knowledge about those genes and conditions that could potentially take or destroy life as we know it. If you can, have the courage to find out. But, think through all the implications of what having all this information, good or bad, might mean for you personally, and sort through your views from critiques that screening might someday lead to genetic profiling.
Let me give you an example of how this research can save lives. Ashkenazic Jews have a 1 in 40 chance of carrying the BRCA gene mutation, for instance. This is a ten times greater probability than the general population. Women who carry this gene have an 80% rick of developing breast cancer and up to a 45% risk of developing ovarian cancer. As the Basser Research Center for BRCA advertises, “Knowledge is Power.” Whatever your results, there are wonderful professionals who can help guide you through the process of what to do with this important information. And your genes can be added to the growing body of scientific research to eradicate cancer.
You see, Ashkenazi Jews are the primary study group for scientists trying to unlock the clues to diseases like cancer and diabetes. Because we have been inbreeding for thousands of years, and because we are a larger population sample than an isolated island, for instance, our genes offer a unique opportunity for study by geneticists seeking to eradicate some of the worst diseases known to man. It may very well be that the cure for cancer, or at least certain cancers, and many gastrointestinal disorders will come from Jews sharing our DNA information.
According to an August 18th article in the Forward newspaper,
“It’s not that Ashkenazi Jews have more defective DNA or suffer such diseases at appreciably higher rates than other ethnic groups – they do not. Rather, because only a small number of ancestors from Central and Eastern Europe gave rise to the millions of Ashkenazim alive today, scientists like those involved in the nascent Ashkenazic Genome Project can compare healthy and sick Jews and, through statistical techniques, more easily pick out which genetic alterations might explain the medical discrepancies.” I found it amazing to learn that “the 11 million Ashkenazic Jews alive today descend largely from only around 400 individuals who lived in the Middle Ages.”
By now you are saying, “Nice rabbi, but what does this have to do with Yom Kippur?” And my answer is “Everything.” You see, I realized months ago that the sequencing of my DNA would be the perfect metaphor for Yom Kippur morning, no matter what the results.
Our DNA, is like a fingerprint, which is why it is so effective in criminal investigations. Our DNA is what is completely unique about each one of us. Other than identical twins, we are all complete individuals down to the last chromosomes of our genetic sequence. And yet, what I have realized in a profound way as I have spent time reading and analyzing my personal results is how interconnected we are to others who share genetic material with us. In a world where people are fixated on being “me,” with no need to connect to or belong to groups of others, including organized religion, our very cells are linked to others in a way that unites us with all humanity, especially our fellow Jews. I am part of you and you are part of me.
Which brings us to this morning’s Torah portion from the end of the Torah, Deuteronomy 29:1-14:
“You (plural [atem]) stand here this day, all of you, before the Lord your God – the heads of your tribes, your elders and officers, every one in Israel, men, women, and children, and the strangers in your camp, from the one who chops your wood to the one who draws your water – to enter into the sworn covenant which the Lord your God makes with you this day, in order to establish you from now on as the people whose only God is the Lord, as you had been promised, and as God has sworn to your father, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And it is not with you alone that I make this sworn covenant: I make it with those who are standing here with us today before the Lord our God, and EQUALLY with all who are not here with us today.”
In spite of all the common DNA results I have talked about, we Jews are not a race. All throughout history, our ancestors welcomed anyone who wanted to join with us. We are a unique blend of those who stood at Sinai with Moses and all who have sought to stand with us throughout the ages. They, too, are part of our Jewish DNA and history. All of you who have joined yourselves to the Jewish people, and all who are thinking about doing so – Judaism teaches that every Jew, by birth or choice, and those who stand with us in history who we would welcome with open arms, stood with Moses at that moment. The power of the unity of “all of us” is even greater than the revelations of a simple mouth swab revealing one’s DNA. And let me explain why.
We humans have spent eternity struggling between the power of the “I,” verses the power of the “WE.” The ME generation is not the first to have members reject belonging and joining. From the moment a child learns how to say “No” and assert his independence, we are on a lifelong quest to determine our own life and destiny.
The idealists want to believe that all “I’s” are the same, which we know is just not the case. We are all part of the human race, but DNA, nationality, religion, upbringing and values have a great deal to do with how we live and die in our world. If our DNA teaches us anything, it is that particularity cannot be denied. I can fight for all people to be free, but freedom is translated as a host of different things depending on culture and community. Trying to deny differences has gotten the western world into a great deal of trouble. Denying what it means to be a Jew and to stand with the Jewish people has killed a host of Jewish futures throughout our history, and to this very day. To use our Torah portion, from the point of Jewish survival, you stand with us today, or you stand against us.
Yom Kippur is that moment in time when we affirm the power of our collective identity as Torah-true Jews, and those who stand with Jews in love. We all stood that day with Moses in our portion. As I tell my students, you don’t get to choose to go to work, or school, or on vacation on High Holy days, or to stay home from temple because you choose not to affiliate, without acknowledging that that very choice hurts me, hurts the Jewish people, and is absolutely not a Jewish choice.
We live as a minority, in a community that doesn’t really understand us. We cannot tell the schools that Jews not only can’t go to school, but can’t do homework from sundown to sundown, if some of our members show up at those schools, denying our faith, our rules, our obligations, and our communal responsibility, because their “ME” is so much more important than we are.
We either stand together for something greater than ourselves, or we do not. And that choice to stand together is not free, although people have been calling the temple for weeks wanting it to be. We keep the lights on. We keep the Torahs safe. We keep the tradition alive. If we don’t, no one will, and then our only Jewish future, will be in laboratories where our DNA will be studied, not in our synagogues which will have closed down because Jews stopped giving, caring, belonging, and gathering. I work and pray every single day so that never happens. I refuse to give Hitler a posthumous victory. We need to preserve Jewish life, much more than we need to preserve Jewish genes. And I thank God this Yom Kippur, and every day, that you and I are in this together.
In their wonderful essay, JewsandWords, published by Yale University Press last year as a book, Amos Oz and his daughter Fania Oz-Salzberger, professors and self-proclaimed secular Israeli Jews, begin with their unique take on Jewish continuity.
“Jewish continuity has always hinged on uttered and written words, on an expanding maze of interpretations, debates, and disagreements, and on a unique human rapport. In synagogue, at school, and most of all in the home, it has always involved two or three generations deep in conversation.
Ours is not a bloodline, but a textline. There is a tangible sense in which Abraham and Sarah, Rabban Yohanan, Glikl of Hameln, and the present authors all belong to the same family tree… We are not about stones, clans, or chromosomes. You don’t have to be an archaeologist, an anthropologist, or a geneticist to trace and substantiate the Jewish continuum. You don’t have to be an observant Jew. You don’t have to be a Jew. Or, for that matter, an anti-Semite. All you have to do is be a reader.
… The “historical,” ethnic, genetic Jewish nationhood is a tale of rift and calamity. It is a landscape of geological disaster. Can we claim a biological pedigree dating, say, to Roman-era Galilean Jews? We doubt it. So much blood of both converts and enemies, of emblematic Khazars and Cossacks, might be flowing in our veins. On the other hand, geneticists today seem to tell us that some of our genes have been on the ride with us for a while. This is interesting. But totally beside our point. There is lineage. Our annals can be gauged, our history told. But our “scale of a different measurement” is made of words.” (p. 1 & 2)
Father and daughter make the case that we have “[a] lineage of literacy.” (p. 15) From the traditional family table to the modern seder table, from ancient stone tablet to modern personal tablet, from sacred scroll to computer screen scroll, our Jewish survival has been dependent on learning and discussing, engaging with all the generations that have come before us in a dialogue of wisdom born of disagreement and skepticism, which births new concepts and reforms Judaism and Jews so that we can survive, l’dor vador. And the Jewish family, in addition to passing on genetic material, has historically been the transmitter of our identity, history, memory and tradition. The Torah, the haggadah, the megillah, the prayerbook and our high holy day machzor/the special prayerbook for these most sacred days, are written words that we pass from parent to child, from one generation to the next, as we are obligated to educate not only our own children and grandchildren, but those of others, and ourselves, as well. Words, not genes, according to these two professors have preserved us for 5774 years. As long as we Jews remain literate, we will survive.
There are those, even in our own Reform Jewish community, who want to sell Judaism to the unaffiliated and disaffected by reducing the richness of our heritage to its least common denominators. They want to make Bar and Bat Mitzvah less about Hebrew and learning, and more about convenience and the mitzvah that appeals to the “me,” rather than the mitzvah that sustains the “we.” I do not join with them, applaud them, or feel that their efforts will realize the desired effect. These minimalist attempts to retain Jews will further exacerbate the sad phenomena of revolving door Judaism and fee for service Jews. These efforts will also place such a divide between liberal Jews and traditional Jews that we will end up with two such diverse traditions that all that will be left will be the genes that we share in some scientist’s laboratory. In a world where Israel has helped to revive Hebrew, we need more Hebrew in Jewish life, not less. And mitzvah is truly about the “me” serving the “we,” rather than the opposite, which is really what is being extolled on the pages of Jewish and non-Jewish media reporting on the “so-called Bar Mitzvah transformation.” Our TBS religious school has integrity and our membership has standards worth being proud of and supporting. You can’t put a price tag on Confirmation or caring community, but it doesn’t come for free either.
I’m Italian. I’m Ashkenazic. I’m a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a rabbi, a teacher, a friend. I am a Jew, even with the genes that aren’t Jewish in origin. The words of our tradition, and the lessons guide my life and are the most important legacy I can impart to those who come after me. My life, and health, and well-being are not only determined by my genes, but by my values and by the Judaism that helps me make my choices, and by my God, who offers me atonement for my mistakes.
Jews don’t repent alone. We don’t exist alone. We share genes and words, Mi Shebeirachs and Mitzvahs, foods and family and faith. We share the call of the shofar, and a history that binds us in ways that transcend our understanding. I am a part of you, just as you are a part of me. We share a sacred connection, bound by commandment, and a commitment to something greater than ourselves.
We stood at Sinai together and received the Torah, Jew and all those who were not Jewish but stood and received the Torah, too. We stood with Moses as he spoke to us from Mount Nebo and reminded us that everyone of us has a promise and a covenant from God. We stand together today, Shabbat Yom Kippur, ME and “all of you,” asking for life and health, prosperity and peace. We are so much more than the some total of 23 pairs of chromosomes. We are the people of the word and the book, the Torah and the synagogue. May we celebrate and cherish that which unites us, and vow to sustain all that this sacred day stands for, every day of our lives.