In 2006 my Kol Nidre Sermon expressed my view of the current negotiations with Iran. I offer it for your consideration:
Kol Nidre 5766
Who Desires Life: Keep Far from Evil and Do Good, Seek
Peace and Pursue It
Rabbi Mark H. Levin, D.H.L.
Congregation Beth Torah
Do individuals or events change
history? Was it Moses who changed
Western civilization, or the Bible?
Did David Ben-Gurion or Zionism reconstruct and rebirth the Jewish
people?
Some choose the person; some
choose the event. Judaism says it’s both and neither. It’s both because unique personalities and overwhelming events are
dynamite charges redirecting the flowing river called history. It’s neither because underlying
history, channeling the direction and
destiny of all events, God’s will.
Saying that God directs history is a radical
statement for a liberal rabbi. I
do not believe that God directs all personal decisions. God certainly does not decide between
my purchasing Oreo cookies or chocolate chips. The divine mind does not descend to trivialities. But the interactions of nations and peoples determining the
destiny of humanity no doubt reflect God’s plan.
And friends, we are witnessing history change
drastically. Inexorable forces are
leading us to a global community. The
global community, creating ties beyond nations, beyond peoples or
religions, lies waiting just down the road of communications satellites and
fiber optic cables.
The most important choice
awaiting humanity is now emerging like a volcano from the sea: whether the future world responds to
aggression as the United States did against Afghanistan, with retaliation, or
whether it responds as the United States did with North Korea, with
negotiation. This global choice,
seemingly so removed from us, lies definitively in our hands. A new world is coming into being, and
we are privileged to be present at its birth pangs. What must we do to build
a world at peace?
God placed the Jewish people
here for a purpose. Our Yom Kippur
Torah portion commands, “Therefore choose life, that you and your people may
live.” As Margaret Mead wrote
famously, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,
concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed it’s the only thing that ever
has.”
First, as we birth this new world we must
heroically demand moral advancement.
As Abraham ushered in a new world of monotheism that took 1000 years to take hold; as Moses ushered in a
new world of commandments that took
1,000 years to take hold, so we are
witnessing the delivery of a new era.
But history that once unfolded at a tortoise pace now races like the
hare, and change is telescoped in time.
Like Abraham and Moses, the
prophets standing in the forefront will not have it easy. Advancement requires vision and
conviction. Witness the moral
development after the tragedy of World War II and the Holocaust. It is no small feat of moral growth
that the shadow of the mushroom cloud has prevented the repeat of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. Our shame is that the memory of Auschwitz did not prevent
Rwanda or Darfur; or that our acquiescence to our government’s second response
to 9/11, a war against Iraq, was quite simply fear coupled with vengeance: a
hateful cocktail! Old thinking
patterns must change with new realities.
Remember that “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” may have been
biblical law, but subsequent leaders reinterpreted its meaning. Since post-biblical times Jews have
exacted “the price of an eye and the price of a tooth,” substituting compensation for doing damage, turning
revenge into justice. Changing
circumstances open the opportunity for moral growth.
Consider the world’s dramatic
new direction in contrast with the last century. I believe that the 20th century will be subtitled
“the century of anonymous life and death.” Forty million people died in World War II alone, including
nearly 6 million Jews exterminated.
Some 110 million died in wars between 1900 and 1995. (Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict,
Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century by Robert S. McNamara, James G. Blight – 2001)
Meanwhile the industrial
society automated production and men and women became nameless cogs in a
corporate engine. Combined with
the breakdown of community and the family, despite more free time supposedly
heaped on us by instant meals, microwave ovens and countless time savers, we
find ourselves lonely and bored, searching
for recognition in intermittent, unsatisfactory loves that cannot produce the
meaning we search for in life.
We may as well have numbers tattooed on our arms for all the
individuality many felt we possessed.
Willie Loman was the icon of the age.
But in rushes the 21st century. Fed up
with anonymity in life and death, new technologies enable us to connect
interpersonally anytime and anyplace.
Butterfly collectors in China can bond instantly with butterfly
collectors in Maine and converse despite cultural barriers. Barriers of time and space are being
dismantled like the Berlin Wall, as people surge electronically beyond their
cubicles. Any nation seeking advancement
requires computers; and any individual with a computer and access to the internet
or a fax machine can trumpet his/her opinions.
Coupled with a surge toward giving a face to every
human , historic forces are moving the world toward unity. In
Europe we find the economic initiative to compete with the United States impels
cooperation. Europeans are
struggling to overcome ancient, nationalist enmities in favor or current
realities. Globalization of
corporations and economies constructs a new world map. Right now about 2/3 of the world’s
people have governments cooperating in the new globalization strategies. We don’t get into hot wars with
globalizing countries. The era of
hope dawns upon us with the possibility of moral progress.
It becomes the religious community’s challenge and responsibility to be
midwives to the birth of a new world of human
dignity and recognition to replace the 20th century of death and
anonymity. What does that
mean?
According to a 1999 Los
Angeles Times, one precision guided
bomb costs $60,000. (Los Angeles Times April 6, 1999) We
spend such huge amounts on individual weapons because our soldiers’ lives
matter to us. Each American combat
soldier receives a $1,500 ceramic bullet-proof vest; and Secretary Rumsfeld
very nearly lost his job over failing to provide adequate, factory-installed
armor on military vehicles. We
care infinitely about each American life.
Yet, we refer to the Iraqi
civilians killed by our $60,000 smart-bombs as collateral damage! They
don’t even have human names!
We regard them not as human beings but as damage statistics. But in reality they are fathers and
mothers, children and grandparents.
Their deaths have impacts for generations. To illustrate the point: just recently a member of our congregation who never knew
her father because he was killed in the Second World War even before she was
born spoke of the profound impact of his death on her life. That was her father whom she never
knew! Each life matters
infinitely, no matter what nationality or religion.
Yet, armies know they must
destroy any notion of the sanctity of the enemies’ lives. How could soldiers possibly destroy
people they imagine as real, as being just like their brothers and sisters,
fathers and mothers? That’s the
precise reason the Nazis finally developed the gas chambers. The Nazis began the process of
extermination by gassing people with carbon monoxide in the backs of vans and
shooting people in Eastern Europe.
But the up-close slaughter was too personal and sickened even Nazi
soldiers. They needed the less
personal gas chambers, with Jewish slaves to remove the bodies so the slaughter
didn’t sicken the Germans and make them question the murdering.
And we Americans prefer to
kill from the air so that we do not have to confront the human faces of those
blown to bits. To willfully take
life we must refuse to admit our enemy’s inherent human individuality and
dignity.
The world-wide-web is called
that for a reason: the human
family is becoming interconnected in a spider’s web of relationships. How could I send my son to slay the son
of the man I talk to weekly about our mutual love for a hobby? The 20th century was about
anonymous death and vapid life. The 21st century must be
about encounter: webs of individually established
relationships that truly matter:
with the coming technology, people have faces and names once again. Now, here is where you come in. It
must become our primary goal to restore the face of the individual person. We are created in God’s own image; and
the collective face of humanity approximates the face of God. On the subject of interfaith dialogue
Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, “What
unites us? … Our being
accountable to God, our being objects of God’s concern, precious in God’s
eyes.” The primary religious task must become purposefully encountering and recognizing
the face of the other, establishing peace as the assumption of all of our
actions. This is the religious
revolution of our age.
In the new era, our mindset for every decision must be
not for revenge, as with Iraq, not for retaliation, but for human dignity and
recognition, leading to peace. We are birthing a world in which
acknowledging God means acknowledging the primacy of the divine image stamped
into the face of humanity. Any
religion that does not establish that will become suspect in people’s minds; a
world in which religions work cooperatively to achieve world peace.
What happens in the United
States matters because we are the principle arms supplier to the world. To the extent the United States refuses
war and supplying armaments, the world becomes a much more peaceful place. In the new world the first commandment
becomes the psalmist’s proclamation:
Who desires life? Keep far from evil and do good, seek
peace and pursue it. (Ps.
34:15)
What did the psalmist mean,
“Seek peace and pursue it?” It’s
not enough to seek peace. Peace must become our mindset. In every instance, in every moment we are
commanded to ask ourselves, “Now how do I achieve peace out of this?”
Few people questioned
attacking Afghanistan and Iraq. We
presume war as the response to violence. But after spending over $300 billion dollars on the way to
$500 billion, after committing over 300,000 troops, after nearly 2,000 dead
American troops and 14,000 injured, we must ask if we could have bought peace
with all of those resources instead of war. Is war any longer the right tactic to achieve peace?
This year I learned, from a
back muscle problem, that when you are retraining muscles you begin with very
small movements. You use light
weights, and turn just a little. I
achieved healing change in small increments.
That’s the prescription for
our future. Begin with the
smallest of movements. Every
interaction in our personal lives – with children, family, friends – reflects
the desire for peace. Therefore we
must consciously encounter the other.
We have failed as religious people not because we
have not filled libraries with doctrinal statements of what God wants for every
ritual. We Jews have perfected the
intricacies of selecting an etrog, of when to stand and when to bow in
worship. But do we know the intricacies of
peace? We
have failed as religious people because we have failed to keep God in our
hearts at every moment, for were God a present reality how could we commit so
much money, so much of ourselves, to killing the image of God in the
world? We take the easy way out by
killing to establish peace.
There is a Hasidic story
of a rabbi on his way to a new town. He comes across a young boy whom he asks
for directions. The boy inquires,
“Would you like to take the long short way or the short long way?” The rabbi doesn’t entirely understand
the question, but the long short way sounds best. The boy directs the rabbi down a road, and the rabbi moves
happily along a lovely path, until he arrives at the outermost limits of the
town. There he finds a sheer, rocky ledge and the town surrounded by a
seemingly impenetrable war.
Recognizing that he could not possibly scale the cliff let alone
surmount the wall, the rabbi returns on the path he just traversed. Finding the same boy at the same spot
the rabbi said, “I asked you how to get to the town. Why did you deceive me?” The boy said, “I didn’t deceive you. You chose the long short way. You must have really wanted the short
long way.” Declaring war is the long short way to peace. It
won’t get us to our destination.
What does the psalmist mean,
“To seek peace AND pursue it?” Eleanor
Roosevelt wrote,
“It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it.
One must work at it.” Just as we
cannot achieve peace by means of war, so we cannot achieve peace between
nations without making peace ourselves with individuals.
This new century presents
a gift from God. The new era
depends upon personal connections, upon people speaking heart to heart and
standing shoulder to shoulder before they go eyeball to eyeball. The key is crossing former cultural,
religious and national barriers to encounter the other: heart and soul. The key is looking the next person in
the eye when you speak. The key is
hearing the tones behind your neighbor’s words, the human emotion imbedded in
the thoughts and postures. In the
new age, international and intercultural friendship becomes a real
possibility. The short long road to peace is in each individual developing webs of
personal relationships.
How did Cindy Sheehan,
the lady who camped out a Crawford, Texas, capture the attention of the
world? She was only a single
individual who lost a single son, one of 2,000 American soldiers already killed
in this conflict. Why did she
matter so that she has become the center of a movement? Because Cindy Sheehan personalized
death. She gave death a human
face. Heschel wrote that we live
in an age that depersonalizes the personal. (ibid. p. 295) The
Bush administration tried to prevent soldiers’ caskets returning from Iraq from
being photographed in order to depersonalize death, because they know that
giving death a face makes death and war unbearable. The god of war relies upon and sits astride the
depersonalization of death.
The transition to the
assumption of peace will likely be no easier than Abraham convincing the world
of a monotheistic universe, nor Moses’ convincing the world that not doing
mitzvot results in serious consequences.
So, too, impediments to peace are everywhere. Peace is not the natural human state. The Bible forbids grudges and vengeance
because humans are naturally vengeful.
We are self-centered and greedy.
We have to be trained to believe that what we want does not come first
in human priorities just because we want it. Naturally selfish people, we are willing to rationalize
killing to achieve national goals like securing our oil supply. I shudder to think that little children
died in bombings and parents cried so that we could avoid paying $4 a gallon
gasoline. We have such high regard
for our own children, and so little regard for the children of others.
After Hiroshima we
anguished that we might destroy the world with atomic weapons. Yet we produced thousands of atomic and
nuclear bombs. We work against our
own welfare. We refuse to cut our
fuel or wealth consumption in the United States to protect the world environment
and insure an adequate supply of oil by conservation. We are naturally self-centered and need little provocation
to move toward violence. We insist
that the long short way is best, right up until we arrive at the cliff and the
wall, and we fail to achieve our goal of peace. We literally pour trillions, not billions anymore, but trillions
of dollars down the unnecessary endless rat hole of war.
Yet, new historical
forces push the world toward the interconnectedness that will make peace
ultimately inevitable. Whether
people of faith will join the struggle early or late becomes a major issue in
terms of how fast we can move in the direction God intends: to live relatively peacefully
worldwide.
It now becomes necessary to
declare: the basis of peace will
be crossing the barriers that divide us as people. As intensive as this is, as unlikely as it seems, world peace can only be built one
encounter, one relationship at a time. With 6 billion people in the world it seems impossible. But this web will be built not by a
single spider, but by billions of human beings who create spider webs of
interconnections, taking a human interest in other people: one
at a time. You know what is so
intriguing about the new age? God
sent a new technological development that connects people, and that they have
become obsessed with desiring to do.
You don’t have to convince people to use the internet. Where 20th century anonymity
drove us apart, the web and globalization bring us together.
The role of religion thus
becomes radically new: to hear the other. We
now are principally commanded to know the soul of the stranger. The skill that will save us is the
ability to truly hear and respond to what the other is saying. The command, “Seek peace and pursue it”
cannot be accomplished without fulfilling the command to know the soul of the
stranger.
For instance, Christians
sincerely presume that their religious responsibility is to preach the gospel
to the non-Christians. It’s a
matter of lovingly extending salvation to those who are unsaved. When that is done to Jews, Jews
understand the sharing of the gospel as an attempt to destroy the Jewish
people. Jews take unanticipated
gospel preaching as a high-handed assault on Judaism from theological
boors.
Bridging the gap between
theological approaches requires listening intently to the heart-felt beliefs
coming from separate images of God.
Given the culture of religious chauvinism in the United States today,
this is not likely to be immediately successful, and certainly not easy. But the Talmud says all beginnings are
difficult, and a millennial change how much the more so. Jews, Christians and
Muslims, all religions, need to learn to hear one another and respond with
respect for the dignity of the other.
We needed the anonymous death
and destruction of the 20th century to bring us to this place. Historic forces have brought us
here. Why must war be our first
assumption upon being attacked? Do
we feel commanded to achieve vengeance, or peace? Does God live in our doctrinal books, or does God live in
our hearts and our relations with people?
Are we open to a new direction, to God calling us in real time, in our
own lives, to move toward the goal of history? The living God commands us to seek peace, to pursue peace,
to choose life. The forces that
lead away from annihilation in the twentieth century, from the killing fields
of Asia and Africa, and the gas chambers and ovens of Auschwitz, command a new
way.
The technology of the
internet establishes new cultural forces, the spark in kindling from which a
bonfire of peace can flame forth.
Do we have the vision and courage to fan the flame, beginning with our
own listening intently to each neighbor, to our spouses, to our children, to
our parents, to our friends, and then finally, to the other? More essentially, can we hear the voice
of God demanding that we not just appreciate peace, but pursue peace to the
ends of the earth, recognizing the dignity of every human being? Bayom hahu, yihyeh Adonai echad ushmo
echad: On that day God shall be
one, and God’s name shall be one – and one humanity will unite in God’s name.
