Rabbi Janet Marder
Erev Yom Kippur 5769
October 8, 2008

The Golden Train of Tradition

Let me set the scene for you. It’s a few days before Yom Kippur and I have reached the last of the famous five stages of sermon writing. Having moved through denial, anger, bargaining and depression, I have finally arrived at acceptance, and am sitting at the computer, which happens to rest on our breakfast bar, conveniently close to the refrigerator.

To my right, spread out over the floor in 20 or 30 piles, are stacks of obituaries from the New York Times – Shelly’s annual Rosh Hashana gift to me, so that we might remember together those who have passed from the world in the year just concluded. So here they are, once again: the famous, the infamous, and the merely bizarre.

Gone from the world of sports are daredevil motorcyclist Evel Knievel; chess prodigy Bobby Fischer; Johnny Podres, who pitched the Brooklyn Dodgers to their only World Series championship; Karl Ehrhardt, a Mets fan known as the “sign man of Shea Stadium,” who, every time Jose Cardenal struck out, would hold up a sign saying “Jose, can you see?” Bobby Murcer, who succeeded Mickey Mantle in the Yankee centerfield died, fittingly, just before the last All-Stars game was played at Yankee Stadium.

The sciences lost Michael DeBakey, who pioneered cardiovascular surgery, practiced for more than 70 years and died at the age of 99.

The art world lost painter and sculptor Robert Rauschenberg; fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, who introduced the woman’s pants suit; and Herbert Muschamp, one of the most influential architecture critics of his generation.

 Gone from the religious world are Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, spiritual guru to the Beatles; and Ruth Stafford Peale, 101 year old wife of the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, who said that after her husband’s book, “The Power of Positive Thinking,” was rejected by publisher after publisher, he grew discouraged and threw the manuscript into the trash. It was Ruth who fished it out and insisted that he try just one more time. The book went on to sell more than 20 million copies.

The political realm lost some giants: Howard Metzenbaum, Jewish senator from Ohio known as “the last angry liberal”; and on the other side of the aisle, Senator Jesse Helms, who championed right-wing causes in a career spanning 52 years. We lost Representative Tom Lantos of California , the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress and a passionate champion of human rights. Benazir Bhutto, first female leader of a Muslim country, was assassinated at the age of 54. Indonesian dictator Suharto died, and so did Ian Smith, a defiant symbol of Rhodesian apartheid, who promised that white rule in Africa would endure for 1000 years.   

Israel and the Jewish world lost Yossi Harel, commander of the ship called “Exodus,” who delivered thousands of refugees to Palestine after World War II, defying the British blockade; Dan Shomron, who commanded the 1976 rescue at Entebbe; Abie Nathan, Israeli pilot and one-man peace movement; and Rabbi Stanley Dreyfus, HUC professor, editor of the Reform siddur, “Gates of Prayer.”

Some great musical figures have passed from the scene: singer/guitarist Bo Diddley, who helped invent rock and roll; jazz piano virtuoso Oscar Peterson; Jo Stafford, nicknamed “G.I. Jo,” whose beautiful voice made her a favorite of American servicemen during the Second World War; gorgeous baritone Robert Goulet, who played Lancelot in Camelot, lyric rock singer Dan Fogelberg, and musician Ike Turner, who discovered a teenager singer from Nutbush, Tennessee named Anna Mae Bullock, re-named her Tina Turner, and watched her become a mega-star while he spiraled down into drug abuse and prison.

Gone also are composers Earle Hagen, who wrote the themes for the Andy Griffith Show and the Dick Van Dyke show; soul singer Isaac Hayes, who wrote the theme for “Shaft”; Alexander Courage, who wrote the theme of “Star Trek”; and Thomas Dawes, who wrote “Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz, Oh what a relief it is.” And let’s not forget Margaret Truman Daniel, only child of president Harry S Truman, who, at the age of 25, sang at Constitution Hall in Washington , DC and received a bad review from the music critic of the Washington Post. Her father dispatched an angry letter to the critic, declaring: “I have never met you, but if I ever do, you’ll need a new nose.”

Journalism lost Tim Russert, who moderated “Meet the Press” for 17 years; Tony Snow, press secretary to President Bush, dead of colon cancer at 53; photojournalist Dith Pran, survivor of the Cambodian “killing fields”; and William F. Buckley, Jr., conservative writer and thinker famous for his sharp tongue and high-falutin’ vocabulary, who hosted “Firing Line” for 33 years, founded the magazine “National Review”; and ran for mayor of New York City in 1965. Asked what he’d do if he won, he replied, “Demand a recount.”

Gone are comedians George Carlin, Joey Bishop (born Joseph Abraham Gottlieb), and Harvey Korman of the Carol Burnett show; Estelle Getty of “The Golden Girls”; Dick Martin, half of the Rowan and Martin team from “Laugh-In,” who coined the phrase “You bet your sweet bippy”; and Dick Wilson, who, in a commercial that ran for 21 years, begged grocery store customers, ”Please don’t squeeze the Charmin.”

Marcel Marceau, the most famous mime in the world, is dead; so is the beautiful Cyd Charisse, a favorite dancing partner of Astaire and Kelly; and so is  renowned choreographer Michael Kidd, born Michael Greenwald in Brooklyn . Gone are Suzanne Pleshette, Bob Newhart’s TV wife, and Deborah Kerr, who starred with Cary Grant in “An Affair to Remember” and lay on the beach kissing Burt Lancaster in “From Here to Eternity.” Gone is Sidney Pollack, who directed “Tootsie” and “The Way We Were,” and Anthony Minghella, who directed “The English Patient.”

Gone are talk show host Les Crane; actors Roy Scheider of “Jaws” and “All That Jazz”; Paul Scofield of “A Man for All Seasons”; Charlton Heston, who played Moses, Ben-Hur and Michelangelo; Heath Ledger, talented star of “Brokeback Mountain,” dead at the age of 28; and the unforgettable Paul Newman, born in Shaker Heights to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, who identified himself as a Jew, saying “it’s more of a challenge.” A supremely ethical man, Newman once said, when asked about his faithfulness to his longtime wife, Joanne Woodward, “Why go out for hamburger when you have steak at home?”

Actor Richard Widmark of “Judgment at Nuremberg ” is dead. The day after he died we lost the film’s screenwriter, Abby Mann, born Abraham Goodman, who, when his play originally aired in 1959, as an episode on “Playhouse 90,” was forced by the show’s sponsor, the American Gas Company, to remove two words from the script: “gas chamber.”

The literary world lost giant Norman Mailer, born Nachem Malek Mailer, grandson of a rabbi; Ira Levin, who wrote “Rosemary’s Baby,” “The Stepford Wives,” and “The Boys from Brazil”; Russian Nobel Laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn; Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, who advocated a two-state solution; science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote “2001: A Space Odyssey”; and the brilliant David Foster Wallace, who took his own life at the age of 46.

There are always a few notables who don’t fit easily into any category. Gone is Sir Edmund Hillary, who with Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay, was the first to climb Mt. Everest; and fugitive financier Robert Vesco, who swindled investors out of hundreds of millions, then fled the country in 1972 and died in Cuba .

Gone also is Mildred Loving, a black woman who in 1958 married a white man in Washington, D.C. Five weeks later the couple was asleep at their home in Virginia early one morning when a sheriff and two deputies burst into their bedroom and arrested them for violating the “Racial Integrity Law” forbidding marriage between races – for such was the law in Virginia and 15 other states. The judge at the Lovings’ trial stated that if God had meant for whites and blacks to mix, He would not have placed them on different continents.

We lost the man who invented Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat. We lost the man who invented the circular Pringles potato chip container and whose ashes – yes, that’s right – were interred in one of those cans.

We lost J.R. Simplot, who developed the first frozen French fries; Herb Peterson, inventor of the Egg McMuffin; and Carl Karcher, who dropped out of school after the 8^th grade and turned a single hot-dog stand into an enormous chain of restaurants bearing his name, Carl’s Jr.

Gone is J. Robert Cade, a nephrologist who in 1965 was asked by a football coach why his players didn’t urinate after their games. Dr. Cade created a drink designed to re-hydrate athletes that, in early tests, proved to taste remarkably like bodily waste. His wife suggested adding lemon juice, which helped a lot. Today 12 million bottles of the concoction, called Gatorade, are consumed every day.

We lost a woman dear to my heart: Peg Bracken, author of “The I Hate to Cook Book,” one of whose recipes concluded as follows: “Stir and let it cook five minutes while you light a cigarette and stare sullenly at the sink.”

And finally, we mourn the passing of “the two greatest nonhuman linguists of our day”: Washoe, a chimpanzee who learned 135 different signs in American Sign Language and passed along much of what she learned to her son, and Alex, an African gray parrot whose cognitive abilities were assessed at the level of a 4 or 5 year old child. He spoke fluently, regularly ordered his human researchers around and purposely answered their questions wrong when he was bored. When Dr. Irene Pepperberg, his teacher, put him back in his cage on the night he died, Alex signed off with these words: “You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you.”

Each time I read the Yom Kippur obituary list I think of a verse from Ecclesiastes: “Dor holech v’dor ba… One generation passes away, another generation comes to be” [1:4]. 

The passing of generations is a central theme of these High Holy Days, powerfully conveyed in the rituals of this season. As the holy days approach, Jews practice the tradition of kever avot, visiting the graves of our parents and grandparents. On Rosh Hashana afternoon we bless all the new babies born to us in the past year. On the Shabbat  between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, we dedicate the plaques on our memorial wall at Beth Am. On the night of Yom Kippur we light yahrzeit candles for our loved ones who have passed away, and on Yom Kippur afternoon we say Yizkor for them.

“The old order changeth,” wrote Tennyson, “yielding place to new.” Our liturgy calls us to remember the tidal flow of generations – one wave constantly receding as another one arrives. “How many shall pass away, how many shall come to be?” we ask in the Unetaneh Tokef prayer.

Our Torah reading for Yom Kippur morning places us right in the midst of this generational sweep of time. On the last day of his life, Moses addresses the whole community of Israel as they stand ready to cross the Jordan and enter a new land without him. “You stand this day, all of you, before Adonai your God,” he says. Everyone is there – men and women, tribal leaders and humble woodchoppers, elders and infants – a vast assembly, all gathered in one place to enter a covenant with their God.

“I make this covenant….not with you alone,” says Moses, “but with those who are standing here with us this day….and with those who are not with us here this day” [Deut.29:9-14]. Who are they, the ones who “are not with us here this day?” Rashi says that Moses meant the souls of all the Jewish children yet to be born. They, too, were present at the making of the covenant.

It’s an extraordinary moment. Moses, the old man about to leave this world, looks ahead one hundred generations to all the children who will someday inherit his words.

Every Jew, even now, is always in-between. We are taught, always, to remember the ones before us and imagine the ones to come. To be a Jew is to feel yourself part of di goldene keyt, the golden chain of tradition that stretches across the generations.

We began our evening with memory. It’s time now for imagination. Tonight, three stories about children; three stories about the future of the Jews.

Story number one:  Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezritch, a Hasid of the 18^th century, spent his days instructing his students, old and young. At night he would sit up late, alone in his study, immersing himself in his books. Sometimes, when he grew weary, he would get up and bring his candle into the next room, where some of his disciples slept. He would stand there in silence and look at their sleeping faces. Once, it is said, he bent down to the low bench on which young Shneur Zalman of Liadi lay under a threadbare blanket. He looked a long time at the boy, and then he whispered: “Miracle of miracles, that so great a God lives in so frail a dwelling!”

What does the story say? That children are beautiful and amazing, that sometimes when we look at them we can catch a glimpse of the Divine – especially when they’re sleeping peacefully in their beds and not making any noise. That they give us hope when we’re feeling tired and worn down.The story says to me that Jewish children are a particular kind of miracle, for something grand and extraordinary dwells in a vessel that is fragile and small.

Dov Baer of Mezritch saw the miracle in the face of his poor, undernourished young student. I see the miracle at Beth Am, almost every week of the year. There in our sanctuary, on most Shabbat mornings, a chain of generations stands on the bima in front of the open ark. Grandparents pass the Torah to parents, and then it is handed to a 13 year old boy or girl. They stand there, teetering slightly if they’re girls in high heels, bracing themselves under the weight of that heavy scroll. They hold onto the Torah, they sing out the ancient words and everyone repeats the words after them, and then the 13 year olds set out, leading the procession, and they carry the Torah through the congregation.

We are all aware, in those moments, that we’re witnessing a symbolic act of high significance. What matters is not that a heavy object covered in colorful fabric is handed from person to person.  We’re watching a demonstration of what it means to be a Jewish parent. It is to receive something from those who preceded you; to carry it honorably and faithfully during the span of your life; and then to transmit it, carefully and lovingly, to the next in your line.

Passing the Torah to our daughter or son, we say, in effect, that we now entrust this 13 year old to carry this legacy as well as he or she can. We place a heritage in their arms; we lay the Jewish future on their shoulders. It’s no wonder that they tremble a bit under the weight.

Because our sons and our daughters, on the day they become B’nai Mitzvah, are vessels that are fragile and small. Even if they look tall and sophisticated and all grown up on that special day, I am staggered, over and over again, by the risk we take in handing our future over to them. These are boys and girls who like to play soccer and tennis and video games. They listen to their ipod, their rooms are a mess; they scribble notes on their hands and paint their fingernails strange colors; they wander the halls of middle school, navigating its complicated and perilous social machinery, all the while lugging around their terrifying overstuffed backpacks. And everything, everything rides on them – whether the Jews will continue, whether our tradition will endure and thrive or peter out into obscurity; the future of our faith – even, one might say, the future of our God. How risky and precarious this whole enterprise is, and how beautiful and poignant, as well.

Story number two about children. It’s a story I heard years ago about a man who goes into a pet store and buys a bird that’s guaranteed to talk. He comes back to the store the very next day to complain: “He just won’t talk. All he does is sit there.” The manager says, “That’s strange. Tell me, does he peck on the little bell?” “What do you mean, bell?” “Oh, you need a bell. I’m sorry, that was my oversight. You get up by a bell every morning, don’t you? The bell goes off, you get started. The bird pecks on the bell, hears it, gets his day started.” “How much is a bell?” “$8.95.” “Give me a bell.”

Comes back the next day and says, “I don’t understand about my bird. He doesn’t sing and he won’t talk.” Manager says, “Does he climb his little ladder?”  “I don’t have a ladder.”  “Oh, you’ve got to have a ladder. Don’t you get exercise every morning? Bird needs exercise too. That’s the way he gets started. He pecks on his bell; he climbs up and down that little ladder. Blood circulates; he feels good. He’s got something to sing and talk about.”  “How much is a ladder?” “They’re $16.50.”  “Well, give me a ladder.”

Comes back the next day and says, “I’m disgusted. That bird won’t sing and he won’t talk.” The store manager says, “Does he look in his little mirror?” The man says, “What do you mean, mirror?”  “You look in a mirror, don’t you? You feel good about yourself. That bird looks in the mirror, thinks he looks terrific, and sings and talks.”  “I’ve got to have a mirror, huh? How much?”  “They’re $21.95.”

He comes to the store the next day and says, “I’ve had it with that bird.” The manager says, “Does he swing on his little swing?” The man says, “Give me a swing.”

The following day he comes back with a sad look on his face. He shouts, “My bird is dead!”  “What do you mean, he’s dead?”  “He’s dead; I know a dead bird when I see one. He turned his little feet up and he’s just lying there as dead as he can be.”  The manager says, “Tell me, did he ever sing? Did he ever talk?” “Yes. Just before he died he looked me right in the eye and asked, ‘Don’t you have any bird seed?’ “

I think a lot about our kids, and how hungry they are. So much of the time we give our children the bells and ladders and mirrors, but we fail to give them what they really need: moral sustenance, spiritual nourishment, food for the heart and soul.

Our teenagers were young children when they saw the Twin Towers fall  -- the same images, broadcast again and again, telling them that their world was unsound and unstable, that tall buildings could collapse in an instant and thousands of lives be destroyed. They’re the first American kids in 60 years to see our country attacked, and all their lives they’re heard the words “war” and “terror,” and they know that millions of people hate us and want us to die.

They’ve grown up seeing marriages fail all around them, and families come apart. Some have seen their older brothers and sisters lost to drugs. They see celebrities fall into disgrace on a regular basis; mighty politicians and corporate executives tumble into scandal and shame. They hear grownups talking about the polar ice caps melting away and the devastation of our planet. Now they’re living among grownups who are anxious about plunging markets, economic ruin and a worldwide recession. Venerable institutions are crumbling before their eyes.

This turmoil is disturbing to all of us. But it’s different when you experience it when you’re young and just starting out. Nothing stands firm in the world these children see. Everything is in flux. Everything that looks rock-solid can dissolve, leaving you nothing to hold on to and no fixed place to stand. So I understand why they want to play soccer and listen to their ipods and have as much fun as they can.

Each generation has its challenges to face, and each is in need of strength and consolation. What do we have to give these children, who are hungry for something that’s beautiful, and that lasts?

When Moses spoke to the Israelites in the days before he passed away, he pointed them towards the Promised Land with words that have echoed down the ages. “You shall teach these things to your children, speaking of them when you are at home or on the way, when you lie down and when you rise up.” He asked a small and wounded people to become a nation of teachers, carriers of a great tradition. Moses told them their future depended on passing the gift of Torah to their children and their children’s children. Just before he spoke those words he asked something else of his people, as well. He said: “V’ahavta et Adonai elohecha…You shall love Adonai with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” [Deut.6:5-7]

Moses Alshekh, a sage of the 16^th century, saw these two verses as linked. We can only pass on to our children what we ourselves love, he said. We can only place in their hearts what comes from our own heart and soul.

Writes Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: “We cannot order our children to be Jews. We cannot deprive them of their choice, nor can we turn them into our clones. All we can do is show them what we believe, and let them see the beauty of how we live” [A Letter in the Scroll, p.7].

This week, interviewed in the New York Times Magazine, billionaire Jewish philanthropist Charles Bronfman explains why he wants nothing to do with the synagogue. Asked if he practiced Judaism when he was growing up in the 30s and 40s, he said, “No. When I was supposed to go to synagogue on Saturdays, my father went to the office. What made him think I was going to go to synagogue if he went to the office? The hell with that” [October 5, 2008, interview with Deborah Solomon].

Our kids will see through a mixed message right away. They know who we are. They see what we do. We can only teach them the things that we know and love. We can only show them the deeds that we practice and perform.

Jewish identity doesn’t come from cramming for one special day on the bima – especially if that day also marks an exit from Jewish education. Sending our kids to religious school doesn’t help, either, if the things they learn there never happen in their homes.

Jewish identity comes when hungry children are given the sustenance they need. They learn that the world’s problems summon us to act, and God is the voice that calls us to do good. They learn, from an early age, to see themselves as part of a story – a story that began in slavery but rises towards freedom and human dignity and a world at peace. They learn that the story isn’t finished yet – that it can’t be finished in a single generation, but depends on each one of us to bring it forward and to write the next chapter of our time. 

Kids learn if they’re taught with integrity and patience and sincerity and love. They learn from what they see around them, from the people they hold close to their heart.

Jewish identity grows when our children encounter a distinctive way of life that is beautiful and nourishing and strong; a life of mitzvot that lift them up to something higher and better; a path that points them towards goodness and purpose and joy and hope. If they experience Judaism that way, they will want to embrace it, and carry it with them, and pass it on to the next in their line.

Where will they see that way of life? It’s up to us to embody it. Only we can show the next generation what we believe; only we can show them the way that we live. Only we can show them what matters to us, and whether the Judaism we profess is worth our children’s love and care. You see, the truth is that everything doesn’t ride on the shoulders of those 13 year olds wobbling under the weight of the Torah. Everything rides on us, the ones who give them the gift of that Torah.

Maybe you don’t think you know enough to teach. Maybe your own beliefs aren’t that solid or secure. Maybe your kids are resistant, and you don’t have a clue where to start. Notice that I didn’t say it’s all up to you. You can’t create a way of life all by yourself. You can’t create a culture that is intellectually rich, morally robust, spiritually deep and compelling, all by yourself.

We do it together. We do it in our synagogue. We do it at Congregation Beth Am. All of us, whether or not we have brought children into the world, share the task of bringing Judaism to life – through our learning, through our prayer and celebration, through the sacred deeds that we do together. We do it by showing up, and by living Jewishly as beautifully and fully as we can. All of us share responsibility for the next generation. If we do our work well enough, the ones who grow up in our midst will want to continue the task.

Story number three:  It comes from the Chasidic tradition. An old man took his little granddaughter into the synagogue one day. They walked down its grand center aisle hand in hand. They climbed up the steps of the Bima, and stood together in front of the Holy Ark. The grandfather opened the doors of the Ark , to show her the Scrolls of the Torah, clad in their rich velvet mantles. The little girl looked at them raptly, and then cried out, “I want to go up higher!”

The grandfather bent down and kissed her, and as he lifted her up he said, “May you always want to go higher.”   [From Chaim Stern, Day by Day, p.69]

Please ask yourself, tonight, if you care about the future of the Jews. Ask yourself if you hold precious certain teachings, certain values and commitments that must not perish from the earth.  Ask yourself if you want to be a link in a golden chain and the carrier of a noble story and the bearer of a great tradition. Ask yourself if you believe in a place that inspires all of us to go higher, that lifts us up in a way that we could not do by ourselves.

In our synagogue little children make cards for the sick, and teenagers gather food for the hungry, and adults knit blankets and cook meals for those who are in need, and they visit the elderly and frail, and they build bookshelves and tutor and do their best to bring light into dark corners of the world.

Congregation Beth Am: as your rabbi I have sometimes called on you for help. I have asked you to stand up for Israel , and to give to her in every way that you could. I have asked you to stand up for those who suffer in Darfur and New Orleans and the FSU, for needy people around the world and here in our local community. Always, always when I have asked, you have responded with generosity and goodness.

Tonight I am doing something I have never done before. I’m asking you to stand up for our own synagogue, because our synagogue needs our help. I am asking you to make a gift to the next generation, to give to Congregation Beth Am, where the Jewish future is being born, every single day.

I’m asking because I love this place and I believe in what we are doing here together. I have worked with you to build a community that nourishes Jewish minds, hearts and souls; that teaches a Judaism that is joyful and creative and alive; that treats all people with kindness and respect. Our congregation is a delivery system for compassion and care – a place where people of all ages join forces to transform the world that is into the world that should be.

For 53 years Beth Am has gotten by on income from dues and fees, struggling every year to meet our expenses, raising our fees when we had to, sending out emergency appeals, cutting days from the school year to save money, eliminating positions like youth advisor and program director and gardener to balance the budget. It’s time for us to find a better way.

A great congregation, like any great educational or cultural institution, needs a secure financial foundation for the future. That’s why we are building a four million dollar endowment, our Fund for the Future. We are almost all the way there – we have just over $400,000 to go.

If all of us help we can do it.

I have taken an unusual step in talking about money on the holiest night of the year. I believe, and Judaism teaches, that there’s nothing wrong or shameful about money. Money, like anything else, can be used in a holy way. If you’re blessed with financial resources, you have a wonderful opportunity to do good.

I know this is a difficult time to be asking you to give. To all of you who have had a rough year, I extend my sincere prayers for strength. May the new year be a better one for all of us. But an endowment commitment is a long-range one that may extend over several years, beyond the present turmoil in the markets.  Any gift, of any size, makes a difference and helps us reach our goal.

To all of you who have already given, I say thank you from the bottom of my heart. To all who are able to give: may you find joy in knowing the great good you have done for us and all of our children.

Dor holech v’dor ba. One generation passes away; another comes to be, and all of life is change. But some things stand firm and constant amid the ceaseless flow of time. Your bank may close its doors and your book club may disband and your neighbors may move away. But the Jewish story will go on, and Congregation Beth Am will endure for generations in this place. Strong and beautiful and majestic she will grow, like a great tree deeply rooted in the past, stretching upwards far into a future we will never see. Sequoia sempervirens – ever-green, ever-living, ever-blessed. She is a tree of life to all who hold fast to her, and all of us who love her are happy.