What Haunts Me

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Kol Nidre - Sunday, October 1, 2006

Maimonides tells us that we only know that we have fully repented when we are in the same situation and do not repeat the same misstep. Therefore when we realize that we have erred, an important part of our repentance is to go back, figure out exactly how it happened, and what we might do differently in the future.

It sounds so simple but we know in real life it rarely is. They say only madmen expect that doing the same thing they have done in the past will lead to a different result in the future, but I know that in my personal life I constantly fight the battle of repeating past errors while expecting things to turn out better. It takes incredible focus not to respond to familiar triggers in familiar ways.

Someone was joking with me on the day after Rosh Hashanah. We were talking about the great rabbis of the Musar movement, who on Yom Kippur could remember in detail all of their failings and misdeeds of the past year. He said that, having lots of wrongdoings and not such a good memory, he was fortunate that all he had to remember was same couple of sins, repeated over and over. How many times do we say the same ineffective words to our kids, and end up in the same deadlocked situation? How many times to we respond the same way to a familiar utz from our parents or siblings? How many of our quarrels with our spouse, are the same quarrel we had two weeks or two months or twenty years ago? To paraphrase the rabbis: it takes strength greater than it took to defeat Goliath, not to fall into the familiar traps that we have fallen into so many times before. To make a real change in the way that we relate to others, is as difficult as the parting of the sea.

In addition to it being hard not to repeat old mistakes, it is very easy to justify to ourselves why we missed the mark in the first place. Everything we do is for a reason, for every action there is a cause, and so often in our own minds, our missteps fall into the category of inevitable evils. The problem then is, if there are so many good reasons for our having done wrong in the past, what hope is there that we will do better in the future?

In addition to our various failures to miss the mark in our personal lives, there is also the issue of our communal lives. As we close the books on the past year, we think beyond our own families and friends to what we have done that has had an impact on the broader world around us, what we have contributed to the community, where we have acted and where we failed to act.

One of my shortcomings that haunts me this year is my own reticent to speak about the war in Iraq. In general I have tried to put the war out of my mind. Perhaps you have too. Talking about Iraq can lead to uncomfortable moments with people I like and respect, and since I enjoy getting along with people, I avoid it. You may have topics that you similarly try to avoid with family and friends.

I have rationalized to myself that this one was someone else’s problem. I had other battles to fight that were clearer and closer to home, which were more intrinsically related to the religious work in which I am involved, where my participation as a rabbi would be more welcome, and which would be politically less dangerous for me.

But as I witness the growing losses to our own troops, to date close to 3,000, which we in America accept so nonchalantly (while in Israel the loss of 115 soldiers has called forth a high commission of inquiry), ( as I witness) the continuing and intensifying suffering of the Iraqis, whose death toll, both from our war and from the inter-group violence it has unleashed, is at least twenty times our loses and who remain in large measure without reliable electricity, gasoline, or civil order, (when I see) the damage to our American good name in the abuses that have been revealed in Iraq and the deterioration in our relationships with the world community as a result of our lone ranger approach, and of great long term significance, the shortcuts taken with our own laws and civil liberties diminishing all that America stands for, as I think of all this, I cringe in remembering Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s famous words, included as part of service 8 in our blue Gates of Prayer Book, “ in a free society, some are guilty but all are responsible.”

I realize that I am not alone in hesitating to speak on this issue, and that there are lots of “good” reasons for standing back as I did, but without really looking into the matter, I worry that this is an error that I will repeat again in the coming year and on other important issues as well.

As a young rabbi I was very critical of the American Jewish leadership of the 30’s and 40’s. Why were they so cautious? Why didn’t they mobilize the community more actively? It was not until reading Philip Roth’s Plot Against America, that I really considered the effects of the rampant anti-Semitism of the times, of the Henry Ford and Father Coughlin speeches, on the psyche of American Jews. I wonder what it is beneath the surface of our times that inhibits us from speaking up in various ways.

In the months leading up to the invasion in Iraq, polls showed the American Jewish community pretty firmly against moving forward with unilateral action- between 70-80% of American Jews opposed such a war. Yet important voices in the American Jewish community, including our own Reform voice, were not speaking publicly and forcefully.

I remember just a few weeks before the war, Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center, in Washington DC, came and spoke to our regional biennial here in San Jose. Some of you were there. He gave a great talk on the philosophical issues of just war and the situation before us. He invited our input and stimulated an animated discussion, but he did not put forward forcefully a position of his own as he has often done and continues to do on many issues.

Of course, before the war began there were many reasons for being reluctant to speak out.

First, there was the fear that if weapons of mass destruction were found, then Iraq could truly be considered a rodef, a pursuer, whom one does have the permission, even the obligation, in Jewish law and other systems of morality, to stop even by the most violent of means if no other alternative exists.

Secondly, there was a sense that we had done wrong by abandoning democratic elements in Iraq in 1991 and that we shouldn’t leave them in the lurch again. In this, as with regard to the weapons of mass destruction, the information we have now is much different than what we were told then about the actual situation on the ground.

Third, there was a contingent that held that this war would be good for Israel. Though Israel had always been much more focused on dangers from Iran than Iraq, there were the positive outcomes of Gulf War I which lead to the signing of the 1993 peace accords on the White House lawn. There was the sense by some that President George W Bush had stood by Israel during the second intifada and that if this was what he wanted, we should support him. However this war has not made Israel safer. It has not brought moderate Arab states together, nor has it isolated and weakened the more radical groups as did the first Gulf War.

Fourth and somewhat related, there were some prominent figures who were Jewish who were actively endorsing this war. In the organized Jewish community these were not inconsiderable people and their voices were taken seriously. When the Reform movement, a year after the war started, came out with a resolution , supporting the troops but raising some questions about the way the war was being conducted, this was roundly condemned in some circles as being inappropriate, unpatriotic and not an area in which a Jewish religious organization should get involved. But many of those Jews, who initially supported the war, like the political commentator Tom Friedman, have since changed their minds due to the way this war has been carried out and prominent Israelis, including former Israeli representative to the United Nations Dore Gold, have spoken about dangers to Israel, because of this war.

Finally, there was the very serious problem that those who were most vocally criticizing the war, were not centrist realists looking for an international coalition to reign in Iraq, but were extremists and conspiracy theory delusionists, who were often anti-Israel to the point of being anti-Semitic. I remember in the period leading up to the war, I was not opposed to sanctions, I was not arguing for a moral equivalency between President Bush and Saddam Hussein, I was not convinced that there were no danger from Iraq, and so I felt there was no place for me among those who opposed the direction we were headed.

All these reasons for not speaking up seemed convincing to me at the time, but today I believe each and every one has been invalidated. There is no consensus on how to proceed from here, but this issue which has such profound implications for the future of our country and the world, needs to be honestly and openly discussed.

Centuries ago the rabbis noticed that Yom Kippur which in Hebrew we call Yom HaKippurim means literally “the day like Purim”. Thus on Yom Kippur we talk about masks and the way we must remove all our masks on Yom Kippur and be totally honest with ourselves. This year the connection comes to me also in another way. The pivotal moment in the Purim story is when Mordechai confronts Esther with the news that all the Jews of Shushan are scheduled to be put to death on the 14th of Adar. Esther has the option of considering this as a concern for others but not for herself. After all, she lives in the palace and is not identified as a Jew. Yet she accepts her special status as an opportunity and responsibility as Mordechai suggests to her: “who knows but that you didn’t come to royal estate for such a time as this?”

The Jewish community in America, like Esther in Shushan, has attained a status that precludes our deciding to sit things out. We are as individuals and as a group too well educated, too professionally accomplished, too influential not to weigh in on the significant issues of our day.

I believe that we have to become involved as a community in the public discussion about the war in Iraq. I believe that by pursuing the war along its current course, we are making the world a more dangerous place and losing friends for America (and for Israel). We are strengthening Iran and weakening moderate Islam. We are squandering resources of human manpower and military force, attention and prestige, that may be needed to deal with other threats, and it remains very much on open question whether or not we have in any sense helped the Iraqi people. As a community, we must overcome our uncertainty, distance ourselves from the crazies, and speak out now about making the world a safer place for our children. Because the Jewish community has greater familiarity with the problems of the Middle East, and is aware of the real dangers that exist, we are uniquely equipped to advocate a sensible middle road, between “stay the course”, and seeing this as just another Vietnam.

There are other issues too where we need to repent of having been satisfied with a seat on the sidelines. 63 years before the Star Spangled Banner was translated into Spanish, with the resulting accusations of anti-American behavior, it was translated into Yiddish by the Jewish Educational Alliance for the benefit of Eastern European Jewish immigrants. Actually the translation was done by a dentist who as a hobby had translated all of Shakespeare into Yiddish. He did a good job with our national anthem, better than the one professional translators did a few years later, and a generation of Eastern European immigrants, our grandparents and great grandparents sang his translation of the Star Spangled Banner into Yiddish with the utmost respect, devotion and love for America. A century before people wrote about the new immigrants of today being unwilling to assimilate and permeated with a criminal element, we Jews were described in those exact words. We were clannish and stuck together too much, we could not be assimilated and would never become real Americans. The Bubbes and Zeyde’s who we remember with such affection were viewed by others as troublemakers and unwelcome aliens. New York’s police commissioner Theodore Bringham, not a lover of Jews, publicly estimated at the height of the great wave of immigration, that 50% of the criminals locked up in New York were Jews. In reality, Jews were 10% of the population in Sing Sing at that time, but in the juvenile department, the statistics were somewhat different. In New York state Reform school, at a time when 25% of New York City’s population was Jewish, 58% of juvenile delinquents were Jews. Why were the numbers so high? For the same reasons the number of today’s immigrants incarcerated are high: because of lack of opportunity, because of the impact of immigration on family structure, and because a rich white suburban kid is given the benefit of the doubt and released to his family, while an immigrant kid from the city is taken into custody.

As Jews we often talk about having been political refugees but we were also economic migrants. Like the immigrants from Mexico today, a vanguard came first, followed by a larger wave once the first immigrants had gained a toe hold. For them today as for us in the past, borders can mean life or death.

America faces some very important issues on immigration reform, issues that will probably come to the fore after this fall’s election, and we the Jewish community cannot sit this one out. Shall we allow the criminalization of acts of gemilut chasadim, feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless? As a people who have been transient, we have faced these issues before. In the middle ages, one significant issue in the Jewish community was the problem of individual communities being overrun with needy newcomers, as nearby Jewish communities were destroyed and their residents made refugees. We have a highly nuanced legal code which balances benefits received from the community with responsibilities accepted. Our tradition rejected the approach of the Sodomites, who lived in the lush valley and refused to share their wealth and accept immigrants from the harsh desert around them, but our tradition has also understood the realistic concerns of communities that could not handle the influx of the needy. Those who were passing through the shtetl received more limited help than those who resided there permanently, and there was a formal process of getting permission to live in a particular community. In a similar fashion, your responsibilities towards the community increased as you went from being a newcomer to a temporary and then permanent resident.

We have to be involved in the current debate on immigrant reform for moral reasons, because we “know the heart of the stranger”, and for practical political reasons. As we learned from Dr. Steven Windmuller who spoke to us last year as our Levine lecturer, the Hispanic community is the largest growing segment of our US population, and this matters deeply to them. You don’t have a friend unless you are a friend.

Finally, I believe that we as a Jewish community cannot stand aside and say that the reform of Health Care is not a Jewish issue. Our tradition sees the provision of health care as a communal obligation. From centuries of viewing medicine as a holy calling, we have depths of expertise in this area that can offer so much. We capitalized on that experience a little bit at our health fair this past spring, and saw with our own eyes, literally thousands of people, for whom the current health care system is not working. Even if you don’t work in health care, come and join us on this project next April. And it is not just on the east side of town: the health care system is not working for our kids in their 20’s who are uninsured, it is not working for our parents and grandparents who discover that they don’t have the coverage they thought they had, or who find that they really need a family member by their side 24/7 during their hospitalization because their hospital is so short staffed.

I know that there are those who come to Kol Nidre services looking for a more personal sermon (and fortunately this holiday provides us with multiple opportunities to speak). But this year, these issues seemed too vital to put them aside for another time.

War is a moral as well as a political issue. The way we treat the stranger has long been the test of our reverence for God. The mitzvah of “You shall surely heal” is incumbent on all of us and not just on physicians. Yom Kippur is a deeply meaningful time for personal reflection. But it is also Yom HaKippurim, the day we look at ourselves as being like Queen Esther and accept the responsibilities that come with the privileges and freedoms we enjoy. As citizens of this great country we enjoy many benefits and accept certain duties, including difficult conversations. May we rise to our responsibilities in the year to come.