Rabbi Charles Briskin
Rosh Hashana 5764
September 27, 2003

A simple villager visited the big city for the first time, taking a room at the local inn. In the middle of the night, the loud beating of drums interrupted his sleep. He inquired sleepily, “What’s all this about?” He was told that a fire had broken out and that the drum beating was the city’s fire alarm. He returned to his room and went to sleep.

On his return home, he reported to the leaders of the village: “They have a wonderful system in the big city; when a fire breaks out, the people beat their drums and before long the fire is out.” The leaders were very excited. They ordered a supply of drums and distributed them to the residents.

Several weeks later a fire broke out. The explosion of drums beating was deafening. While the people waited for the flames to subside, a number of homes burned to the ground.

A sophisticated visitor who was passing through the village was told the reason for the ear-splitting din. He was appalled: “Idiots! Do you think that beating drums can put out a fire? They only sound an alarm so people will wake up and put out the fire.”

On this Rosh Hashanah, listen to the beating of the drums, the sounding of alarms. We hear the drum beats of war coming from Iraq where our troops are dying every day. We hear drum beats of terror around the world and our own hearts beat fast as we worry about an attack here at home. We hear the drum beats of despair as our federal, state, county and municipal budgets plunge into a sea of red ink and essential social services are cut. We hear the sounds of urgent alarms every time we open up the newspaper. And the din grows louder, sometimes becoming overwhelming. Sometimes we just want to turn away. But our sages teach us that today—on Rosh Hashanah—we are obligated to listen.

The drums are beating in Silicon Valley as well. But we’ve heard them and have responded. I am proud of our members who have reached out so powerfully this year to our local community. We have fed the hungry at shelters in Menlo Park and San Jose. Some have collected books for the San Miguel Elementary School in Sunnyvale. Others have taught children how to read. We’ve stocked the shelves of the Second Harvest Food Bank and we’ve cooked and delivered meals to people with AIDS. We’ve advocated for increased access to health care on the Peninsula. We’ve done so much. How could we possibly ask more of ourselves as a congregation than we have already? But we must ask more of ourselves; as Jews we always ask more of ourselves.

The Talmud, teaches, “Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh—All Israel is responsible for one another.” (B.T. Shavuot 39a,) What does this really mean? It means that not only do we share responsibility to respond to the suffering of all humankind, but we also have a special obligation to care for our Jewish brethren throughout the world, when they are suffering, threatened, or in need. Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh: For fifteen hundred years we have believed that all Jews are responsible for one another.

In the year 5764, these words resonate, especially for American Jews. For, despite our faltering economy, we remain the strongest, best organized, and wealthiest Jewish community in the world. But remember this: We weren’t always the wealthiest and most influential; our brothers and sisters cared for us when we were in need.

When the first Jewish refugees arrived in America 350 years ago, fleeing Portuguese persecution in Brazil, they were almost barred by Governor Stuyvesant from entering New Amsterdam. It took the intervention of influential Jewish investors of the Dutch West India Company, who overruled Stuyvesant, and permitted the refugees to settle. When our American Jewish ancestors were in peril, the wealthy Jews of Amsterdam remembered: Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh—all Israel is responsible for one another.

As American Jewry gained strength and felt more secure in this country, we continued to answer the call of Kol Yisrael. In 1840 when thirteen Syrian Jews in Damascus were falsely accused of the ritual murder of a Catholic Priest, reviving the anti-Semitic Medieval Blood Libel, American Jews and European Jews intervened, using diplomacy to secure the release of their Syrian brothers.

More than one hundred and twenty five years later, when Israel was a fledgling democracy—not even twenty years old yet—and her Arab neighbors, led by Egypt, stood poised to destroy her, American Jews came to her aid. It is astonishing to read about what American Jews did in 1967. We raised tens of millions of dollars for Israel. Families that had been saving money to buy their first home donated their savings to Israel instead. Synagogues suspended their capital campaigns and sent their money to Israel. Thousands boarded planes and went to Israel to offer their support.

That was then. Nowadays things are different. Social scientists like Stephen Cohen and Arnold Eisen have discovered analytically something that many leaders in Jewish communities have suspected for a long time: American Jews today are less concerned about and feel less connected to other Jews than we did a generation ago.

Cohen and Eisen asked a large sampling of moderately affiliated Jews—those who belong to a Jewish organization but are not among the leadership—if they felt a special responsibility to take care of Jews in need around the world. Fewer than fifty percent answered yes. Thirty or forty years ago, the same question would probably have garnered a nearly universal affirmation. But my generation views the world differently than our parents did. We’ve suffered less and are therefore more at ease in America. But this sense of security in America has, as by product, caused many of us to view the concerns of Jews worldwide as less important. We are less parochial. We are less worried about anti-Semitism, less conscious of our differences. Tribalism—the belief that Jews are bound together by history and destiny and must take care of one another—has almost disappeared.

We are a prosperous and successful Jewish community today and none of us would wish to return to the Jewish insecurities that marked our living here in America several generations ago. Nevertheless, when we’re more comfortable, we tend to forget about the needs of others. It would be tragic if we became so comfortable that we forget the rest of the Jewish world. Our Jewish brothers and sisters still need us. Listen to the beating of the drums.

They are beating with excitement in the Former Soviet Union (FSU) where Jewish life is experiencing an astonishing rebirth. Despite the huge emigration since 1991, almost half a million Jews still remain in Russia and the Ukraine. And they don’t want to leave; instead, they yearn to develop Jewish identities and Jewish souls.

Last month, three members of our congregation, Steve and Ina Bauman and Cherie Half, participated in a Reform movement mission to the Former Soviet Union. It was sponsored by ARZA [www.arza.org] and the World Union of Progressive Judaism [www.wupj.org] the organizations that support Reform Jewish institutions in Israel and throughout the world. Steve, Ina, and Cherie did not observe a Judaism that was frightened or covert. There were no refusniks to visit. There were not secret police to fear. Instead, they visited several of the 70 plus Reform congregations that have been established over the past thirteen years to bring liberal, egalitarian and modern Jewish practice to the Former Soviet Union.

These fledgling congregations function in the midst of an impoverished economy. They have scant financial resources of their own. They cannot afford to buy books, train teachers or build buildings. They depend on us. Our sister congregation, Beth Am of Poltava, Ukraine, somehow manages to function on the few thousand dollars that we, here in Los Altos Hills, are able to raise on her behalf each year. They rent a small multi-purpose space to use for worship, classes, and community building. Alla Magus—a dynamic seventeen-year-old woman whose passion for learning and transmitting Judaism is contagious—is the leader of the congregation. Throughout the FSU our emissaries bore witness and heard testimonies by throngs of elderly men and women who are trying to replant Jewish roots dug up decades ago. Even more inspiring were the thousands of young people, working diligently, creating vibrant and exciting modern Jewish lives for themselves and for the future.

The drumbeat of vibrant Jewish life beats loudly in Kiev, Moscow, and St. Petersburg and dozens of other communities throughout the FSU. Can the beat be sustained without our help? Last year, Chabad-Lubavitch spent thirty one million dollars to promote its brand of Ultra-Orthodox Judaism in the Former Soviet Union. Our movement spent less than one million. Our movement is grossly understaffed. Our friend, Rabbi Alex Duchovny, one of the six ordained Reform rabbis serving communities in the FSU, serves as the rabbi for forty-seven synagogues. The FSU needs resources to train lay and professional leadership, and funds to support their institutions. We have a special obligation to care for our brothers and sisters in the FSU. We can help them build Reform synagogues staffed by trained teachers and ordained Reform rabbis who are able to answer the questions of inquisitive children and adults. Leaders who are able to provide a center of Reform Jewish life in the FSU for those who yearn to reconnect to their Jewish roots. Yes, the needs are great, and we ask a lot. But we must do a better job at responding to our sacred mandate: Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh—all Israel is responsible for one another.

Here are a two suggestions. You can join me in helping sponsor a student for the Machon program—a two-year Para-rabbinic training program for lay leaders sponsored by the World Union for Progressive Judaism. Two thousand dollars will provide an energetic lay-leader with the basic skills needed to serve Jewish communities that lack professional resources. You can earmark a contribution to the World Union [www.wupj.org] to Machon or you can send a check to my discretionary fund marked “Machon.” Either way, the funds will get to the people who need them and will train leaders for these congregations.

We can help support our sister congregation in Poltava. Join us for our annual concert and auction fundraiser on Sunday, December 7th where a portion of the proceeds will be sent to our friends at Beth Am of Poltava so that they can pay for books, teachers, supplies, rent and anything else they need to sustain themselves.

Thank God, Jewish life has come back where it was almost extinguished. We have an historic opportunity to stoke the flames of a Jewish renaissance in the FSU. Ours is the generation that must respond.

This past summer, three young people from Beth Am visited Argentina, another part of the Jewish world where the drums are beating an alarm. Elliott Brenner and Anna Spier,

high school seniors, went with the Diller Teen Fellows leadership program, and Ali Fernbach, a sophomore at Emory University, joined a delegation of twenty-two students on a program sponsored by Kesher—the Reform movement’s college student program. They went to respond to the needs of a devastated Jewish community. With the collapse of the economy, the once stable Jewish middle class has been wiped out.

Once prosperous Jews are now indigent, living on hand outs of food, clothing, and medical supplies. Many men and women stand in line waiting for assistance, wearing designer clothing—a tell tale sign that once they had much but now have little.

Ali Fernbach speaks eloquently not only of the despair that the ongoing financial crisis has created, but also, more poignantly of the loving, joyous, and warm welcome she received from her hosts, despite the difficult situation. She writes of a gift she and all the members of her group received from the Reform Youth group in Buenos Aires. It was a t-shirt with a picture of the world and the caption “Am Echad v’Lev Echad—One People, One Heart.” Ali writes, “That is what we had become, a close family, all realizing how quickly friends can be made and how strangers can feel like family after only a few days.” Do we consider Jews around the world to be part of our extended family?

The South American Jewish community has a big heart, a very strong will and tremendous pride, despite the fact that they have little money. Of course we have our own economic problems here in Silicon Valley. But some of us are still in a position to help. In partnership with the World Union of Progressive Judaism, congregations in North America are working to sustain the Argentinean Jewish community. Let me share one program that Reform congregations are supporting.

Every Friday night the social hall of the only Reform synagogue in Buenos Aires fills up with 250 people who are hungry and poor. It is a soup kitchen, but it is also something much more. My colleague, Rabbi Sergio Bergman, leads the community in Shabbat songs and table prayers. He creates a Shabbes tisch—a Shabbat table for poor and hungry Jews, and gentiles as well, nourishing their bodies with a decent meal, and nourishing their souls with a large helping of dignity, mentshlekheit and yiddishkeit.

It costs $1400 to feed 250 people each week. I’d love it if over the course of the year Congregation Beth Am could sponsor one, two, or three Shabbat meals for our Argentinean brothers and sisters. If you’d like to take part in this effort, please send a check to my discretionary fund earmarked for feeding the hungry of Buenos Aires, and I will make sure that Rabbi Bergman receives it. When we consider feeding the hungry, we may not immediately think of our brethren in South America. Nevertheless, the rabbis compel us to remember that Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh—All Israel is responsible for one another. Just as we would not allow our parents or children to go hungry, we cannot allow our Argentinean brothers and sisters to go hungry either. They are in need, and it is our obligation to respond.

For three years we have heard the distress calls in Israel, and it is hard for us to open the paper day after day reading more bad news. It’s hard for us, even harder for Israelis. Many of us feel closely attached to the suffering of our brothers and sisters half a world away and respond often, every time we are asked. Others feel confused or helpless. We can’t make sense of the news, we don’t know who or what to believe. We are deluged by constant solicitations and we don’t know how to respond. The whole situation paralyzes us. A terrible consequence of these years of violence has been an increasing disconnection to Israel felt by American Jews, especially the young.

We all know that the best way to build an affinity with Israel is simply by hopping on a plane and visiting. But three consecutive years of terror and fear have eradicated the tourism industry. Three consecutive years of violence has decimated summer teen trips.

In the summer of 2000, fourteen hundred Jewish teens from across North America participated in a Reform movement sponsored Israel trip. In the summer of 2003, just thirty-three participated. A generation of Jewish teens will graduate from high school having missed out on a seminal Jewish experience.

And will they go to Israel as adults? Studies predict that only a minority of them may go in the future. Cohen and Eisen have discovered that almost two thirds of the American Jewish community has never visited Israel. Two thirds has never meandered through the cobblestone streets of Jerusalem’s Old City, or bargained with a shopkeeper at the shuk, or retraced steps taken by our ancestors thousands of years ago. And even worse, as Cohen and Eisen point out, just a quarter of American Jews feel very emotionally attached to Israel.

Israel does not resonate strongly with the majority of us, and that does not bode well for our future because for the past fifty-five years, the American Jewish community has remained bolstered by a strong connection to Israel. Too many are not connected. But I know in my heart that any person who visits Israel returns invigorated, renewed, inspired, and passionate about Eretz HaKodesh—The Holy Land.

I can even share one recent conversation I had earlier this month. Heather Hoffman is an eleventh grader who is, to my knowledge, the only Beth Am teen who traveled to Israel this past summer. When I asked her how her trip was, she used words like incredible, amazing, life changing, intense. These are typical responses from teens and adults alike following their first visit. Heather went to Israel this summer and she can’t wait to go back.

This year, the Reform movement and ARZA are joining with the Israel Government Tourism Office in a national campaign called Project Go Israel. We’re asking American Jews to make a pledge to visit Israel this year. [www.goisrael.com]. I know many of us are afraid, and that’s okay. But for those of us who feel that they can go, I can share three opportunities in the year ahead.

If you are an eleventh or twelfth grader or a college freshman, we invite you to join Rabbi Lippe on a ten-day tour during winter break, December 21 through 31. We’ll join other young people from congregations in Miami Beach, and Chicago for an incredible experience. For adults, join Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, the executive director of ARZA, and Reform Jews from across the country for a solidarity mission January 25 through February 1. And Beth Am families, you’re invited to join Rabbi Zweiback for a Beth Am family trip to Israel next July.

As much as I would like to see everyone in this sanctuary visit Israel next year, I know that is impossible. But that doesn’t preclude us from supporting Israel and developing connections with her from here. Our Israel Action Committee has been instrumental in sharing information about how we can buy Israeli products—in local shops or on-line. [http://www.arza.org/display.cfm?rid=145] We can continue to respond to appeals for assistance, either to help victims of terror, [Magen David Adom—the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross--http://www.armdi.org--is one organization that can help. So is Selah—Israel Crisis Management Center. E-mail icmc@inter.net.il for more information about Selah] or to help many of the social service agencies whose budgets have been slashed due to Israel’s ongoing economic crisis. [The New Israel Fund grants funds to many worthwhile agencies in Israel—www.nif.org] Or starting a correspondence with a fellow Reform Jew in Israel is another way to respond.

When I was in Israel last October, Rabbi Dan Prath, the spiritual leader of Haifa’s Reform congregation Ohel Avraham, and several members of his congregation hosted me for a meal. That served as the beginning of a nice relationship. When I met with Rabbi Prath this summer at Beth Am he asked us to do something very simple to help increase familial bonds between his congregation and ours: send Rosh Hashanah greetings to members of his congregation. Show that you are thinking of them and that they matter to you. It won’t cost a dime, but the sentiment is priceless. Tonight, log on to the Beth Am website homepage [www.betham.org] and click to the link: “Send New Year’s Greetings” Your New Year’s message will go directly to our friends in Haifa. They, too, will be sending us greetings. Our kindergarten students have already created and sent cards to Haifa. Making the personal connection and deepening the relationship ensures that Israel will remain central and relevant.

Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh—All Jews are responsible for one another. It means that we belong to one another. It means that we care for one another. It means that we are one people with one heart. It means that we are family. In a powerful book about the Rwandan genocide, Philip Gourevitch describes a tense evening he spent stranded on a mountain ridge. Suddenly he heard the wild and terrible sound of a screaming woman coming from the valley below. He writes, “Silence followed for as long as it takes to fill lungs with air, and the ululating alarm rang out again, higher now, faster, more frantic. This time, before the woman’s breath broke, other voices joined in.” He asked his guide what was going on. The guide told him that the screaming woman was being assaulted by a man who wanted to rape her. “The [screaming] we’d heard,” said the guide, “was a conventional distress signal and it carried an obligation.” He said, “You hear it, you do it too, and you come running. . . .No choice, if you ignored this crying, you would have questions to answer. This is how Rwandans live in the hills. . . .There is responsibility. I cry, you cry. You cry, I cry. We all come running, and the one that stays quiet, the one that stays home must explain. . . .This is simple. This is normal. This is community.”

Our rabbis taught Kol Yisrael—all Jews are responsible for one another. Kol Yisrael: these words can also mean the voice of the people Israel. I cry, you cry, they cry, we cry, we all come running. It is a lot to ask of ourselves, but it is what we have always asked of ourselves. This is simple, this is normal, this is community.

Amen