David Singleton's Diary

Today at the Vicarage The

It is several weeks since I have posted a sermon. I felt the events of September 11th were best left alone. This email, however, which is apparently a transcript of a true sermon, enriched my Sunday - and gave me a sense of someone else's holy place. My thanks to Richard Crook.

ROSH HASHANA 5762 FIRST DAY
Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, New York City
Rabbi Roderick Young

Jewish legend says that Abraham was given ten trials or tests by God. The final trial was the Akeda, the binding of Isaac, which we will read about tomorrow. The second trial was that of Kivshan HaAish - the fiery furnace into which he was thrown.

A week ago I looked down the length of our island and I thought that Kivshan HaAish had come to Manhattan. faced with that terrible sight, my numbed mind eventually remembered the words of Psalm 13. Like the writer of Psalm 13 we have all been lost and we are scared:

For the leader. A Psalm of David

How long, Adonai; will you ignore me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long will I have cares on my mind,
Grief in my heart all day?
How long will my enemy have the upper hand?

Today, the first day of Rosh Hashana, we commemorate the creation of the world. God created the world in six days and on the seventh day God rested. The Talmud says that whoever destroys a single soul of a human being is charged as if he or she had destroyed a whole world. Exactly seven days ago evil destroyed over 6000 worlds and there has been no rest since then.

We have lived through an act of Anti-Creation, There is before last Tuesday - and there is after and they are different places. But we have been here before and we have survived.

When the Jews wept over the destruction of Jerusalem two thousand five hundred years ago their grief and terror was recorded in the Book of Lamentations. There it describes the inhabitants of Jerusalem wandering the streets , their faces dark with dust - now we have seen that picture with our own eyes and some of us have lived it. Every Tisha B'Av1 we read Lamentations and next year it will resonate for many of us as it never has before. It says: "Your ruin is as vast as the sea: Who can heal you?" The pictures of the World Trade Centre look daunting beyond belief. But our ancestors rebuilt their ruin as vast as the sea and so will we. It says: "Prostrate in the street lie young and old." Our ancestors remembered those they had lost, told stories of their heroism and passed those stories down the generations to this very day. And we will do the same.

In the second to last verse of lamentations the author says: "Take us back, God, to Yourself, / And let us come back; Renew our days as of old." The author knows that this vast outpouring of grief and anger must be written and sung before that renewal can begin. And likewise this past week we have been telling our stories, telling each other where we were when it happened, where we were when we heard about it, describing those we know who lived and those whom we know who did not. Describing our joy for loved lives that were saved and our anguish for loved lives that were lost. In our newspapers, on the walls of our streets, on the fences of our parks, in our emails and in the daily round of talk we are composing our own Book of Lamentations, as we must do before we can begin renewing our days.

Today is Yom HaZikaron, The day of remembrance, when we remember God and God remembers us - little did we think that we would have to remember this.

Like the writer of Psalm 13 we are angry:

Look at me, answer me, Adonai, my God!
Restore the lustre to my eyes,
Lest I sleep the sleep of death;
Lest my enemy say, "I have overcome him,"
My foes exult when I stumble.

Our tradition is amazing! Anger towards God is right there, embedded in the Tanakh, our Bible. Our tradition says: there is a time for anger and we have the right to express it towards God. That's exactly what Hannah does in the haftarah2 portion that we have just heard. She approaches God in the temple and prays out her bitterness silently in her heart, swaying and muttering to herself, so that to the High Priest she looks like a drunkard. And when the High priest questions her she says: "I have been speaking from the depths of my anguish and anger." Then she leaves the temple and is downcast no longer. Hannah reminds us of the need to talk out our anger and our fear: to God, if that works for you, to friends, to a partner, to a counsellor, to a rabbi. Hannah reminds us to weep bitterly when we need to.

Like the writer of Psalm 13 we are in search of peace:

But I trust in your faithfulness,
My heart will exult in your deliverance.
I will sing to Adonai,
For God has been good to me.

But how do we reach the nehemta, the peaceful place, at the end of the Psalm? We can't remain at the start of Psalm in a permanent state of fear, for that will ruin our lives; we can't remain in the middle of the Psalm consumed by an anger that will eat away at our joy and our ability to judge rationally; our task is to work towards the end of the Psalm, towards a peace of mind that allows us to enjoy this extraordinary gift of life that is ours. Of course the path is not a one way ride from the beginning of the Psalm to the end; at different times in our lives we will fluctuate between fear, anger and peace; but Psalm 13 is a map, a suggestion, of a path that we might want to tread, through fear and anger to the moment when we can say "Thank you" for this gift of life that I will try to use wisely.

If we as individuals and as a nation, stay in that state of rage that is characterised by the line that sits deliberately at the centre of the Psalm: "Look at me, answer me Adonai, my God!" then we will rush to act in ways that we may later egret. If military action is to ensue, let it come from minds that have thought the consequences through to the very end, so that the minimum number of innocent lives will be lost.

Let us not make war on Islam, because that is not the culprit. Yes, if individual Muslim leaders and imams fail to condemn unequivocally last weeks attack then they must be held accountable before the world and before God. But attacks on Mosques, threats against children, the murder of American Muslims - these come not from the righteous anger that we feel towards last weeks destruction. Rather they are acts born out of the same hatred and intolerance that motivated the terrorists. And we must root such racism from our society just as surely as we will pursue terrorism.

In the Torah portion for this first day of Rosh Hashanah we meet two brothers, Ishmael and Isaac. When Abraham's wife, Sarah, found she couldn't have a child she suggested to her husband using a surrogate. "Have sex with my maid," she says, "And perhaps I may be built up with sons through her." This maid was an Egyptian named Hagar. She becomes pregnant and gives birth to Ishmael. Not long afterwards God promises Abraham that Sarah will have a child, and it with the birth of her son Isaac that our Torah reading today began. We heard how Sarah forced Abraham to drive Ishmael and Hagar out of the family home. Sarah is a tigress determined to protect her son and his inheritance. But we heard too, how Ishmael survives and dwells in the desert with an Egyptian wife.

As Jews we believe ourselves to be descendants of Isaac. Jewish tradition says that the Arabs are descendants of Ishmael. And Muslims look back to Ishmael as a spiritual founder of their faith, just as we look to Isaac. If we read only the Torah portion for today we might think that Isaac and Ishmael remained forever strangers. But further on in genesis we read: "Abraham died at a good ripe age, old and abundant in days and was gathered to his kinspeople. Isaac and Ishmael his sons buried him." The two brothers stand side by side to bury their father. To do this they must surely have buried their enmity.

We Jews must stand by American Muslims who are persecuted, just as Isaac stood by Ishmael. We know what it is to be singled out because of what we wear, what we look like, how we pray. We must raise our voices loudly in protest against rhetoric and actions that attack Islam and Arab-Americans. How can we dare to approach God during the Ten Days of Repentance3 if we, who know what it is to be the scapegoat, allow a whole culture to be scapegoats for the crimes of a few.

In times of great anxiety, and in time of war, people are tested and the happy truth is that people often discover a great and noble side of their own character that can go unobserved in easier times. We have seen this generosity of spirit in the way people reacted to this tragedy. Now we must ensure that this same generosity extends to our treatment of Arab-Americans in the difficult months to come.

After the towers fell a neighbour turned to me and said: "Now do you know there is no God?" God certainly was not present in the act of murder. God was not in the wind, God was not in the earthquake and god was not in the fire, last Tuesday, as the towers fell. But god was surely in the voices of those who telephoned friends and family in their final moments to say: "I love you"; God was in the voices and hands of the millions across the city who have come together to pray, to help to heal.

God was present in the generosity of spirit that rose up in the face of disaster. God was present when new Yorkers, amongst them many members of this congregation, volunteered their time, their strength, their expertise in order to give aid to the physically and emotionally wounded. God was present in the incredible acts of heroism from fire fighters and the police.

The Talmud says that whoever rescues a single soul of a human being is treated as if he or she had saved a whole world.

It seems that it is not in the nature of God to swoop down like Superman and foil the bad guys. If God truly parted the Sea of reeds for the Israelites then how come God doesn't intervene at moments of great crisis? It's a question with no answer, a dead end. That's the god whom my neighbour was talking about. But God who works in unexpected ways, that God we don't always recognise.

After Abraham has sent Hagar and Ishmael into the desert we read how their water runs out. Si Hagar puts Ishmael in the shadow of a bush and sits far aways, as she cannot bear to see him die. But a messenger from God tells her that Ishmael will become a great nation and the Torah says: And God opened up her eyes - suddenly she saw a well of water and was able to save her son. Sometimes our eyes need to be opened before we can see the sustenance in front of us. Perhaps the generosity of spirit, that in the past week has been so overwhelming, was thee all the time but we couldn't see it, or we forgot it was there. God was in the opening of our eyes. The challenge now will be to keep our eyes open, so that it doesn't only take disaster for us to extend a hand to strangers.

When the messenger of God talks to Hegar the messenger says: "What's wrong with you , Hagar? Don't be afraid. For God has heard the child's voice from where the child is." This is a powerful message. It suggests that we should cry out to God . In other words if you are at the start of Psalm 13, in anger, cry out, and if you are at the nehemta, the place of peace, cry out too, so that God can share your joy. If you are in the place of anger or fear then reach out to someone and ask for help. Will God answer? Perhaps - in the guise of a friend, a professional , a family member. And we won't realise it was God until our eyes are opened. And if you are in the place of peace, then reach out to someone and offer help and let God work through you.

In the week of a vast act of Anti-Creation it turns out that many individuals were profoundly creative in the way that they responded to the tragedy. Life and hope were not ground down.

At Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, weeks ago, we had arranged that the conversion of a gorgeous three month old boy, adopted by one of our members, should take place at 9.30am on September 11th at the Mikveh4 on the Upper West Side. By the time the ceremony began some of us had seen the burning towers. It seemed that this conversion would be an impossible task. But we went ahead with it and as tragedy unfolded outside we welcomed this little life into the Jewish people. He was sweet and smiling - and his new and shining life became for all involved a bright beacon of hope in a dark day.

This little boy opened our eyes and showed us that his immersion into the water was a symbol that the chain of tradition is passed on, no matter what happens; that the human desire to celebrate goodness will never be submerged by evil. He begins his life at a time of danger and uncertainty - may he grow up and stand with those through whom God works to mend this broken world.

In just a moment we will hear the notes of the Shofar, that we are commanded to sound at Rosh Hashana. The Shofar, the ram's horn, was sounded by the Israelites before battle. As we listen to its notes today we fear the reality of battle. Tradition tells us that Sarah died of grief thinking that her son Isaac had been sacrificed and that her cries of grief sounded like a Shofar. As we listen to its notes today we hear the sounds of grief that fill New York.

We sound the Shofar on Rosh Hashan to remind God that we are here; to remind ourselves that we must begin the serious work of teshuvah [repentance] that culminates in Yom Kippur. We sound the Shofar to hasten the messianic time - the time when Ishmael and Isaac will stand permanently side by side, in peace, with all the peoples of the world standing with them. Our cries for peace must be as loud as the blasts of the Shofar. If each one of us works, in whatever way we can, hand in hand with God, to ensure that justice prevails upon the earth for all its people, then perhaps we will finally live in the world envisioned by the prophet Micah, a world in which "Nation shall not take up sword against nation; they shall never know war; but every person shall sit under the grapevine or fig tree with none to disturb them."