Take the Long Waze©
Rosh Hashanah (Day 2) 5778/2017
Rabbi David Baum, Congregation Shaarei Kodesh
For those who left South Florida before Hurricane Irma, who used the app Waze? Waze is an amazing traffic app that was created by an Israeli company and bought by Google for around 1.3 billion dollars – Waze changes in real time – it will give you the absolute fastest way to your destination, and they added a gas feature so you can see in real time which stations have fuel before and after a hurricane.
Well, today, I want to tell you about a new traffic app that I developed – it’s called Long Waze. Rather than giving you the shortest way to the destination, it's only going to give you the longest possible way to a destination.
I imagine that I will not receive a billion dollars from Google, so don’t worry, I’ll likely be here for the foreseeable future. This app won’t be for directions on a street map though; it will be for the paths that we take our lives.
The Talmud (Eruvin 53b) teaches us that there are certain paths that we take that are short and long, and certain paths that are long and short. In other words, so often, we are tempted to take the short route in life, but it never really leads us to where we need to go; and conversely, we are scared to take the long route, because the path is daunting, and long paths are scary.
When I realized that I would be in rabbinical school for six years, I had a panic attack – what was I getting myself into?!? Raise your hand if you haven't had a panic attack before making a lifetime commitment? Better yet, don't raise your hands, I don't want anyone sleeping on the couch tonight.
We are living in a world where more and more we can have our cake and eat it too, but there are some times when we are offered clear choices – A or B, the red pill, or the blue pill – and God asks us to choose.In the Torah, as Bnai Israel is ending their 40-year journey in the wilderness, Moses famously says to them:
טו רְאֵה נָתַתִּי לְפָנֶיךָ הַיּוֹם, אֶת-הַחַיִּים וְאֶת-הַטּוֹב, וְאֶת-הַמָּוֶת, וְאֶת-הָרָע... יט הַעִדֹתִי בָכֶם הַיּוֹם, אֶת-הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֶת-הָאָרֶץ--הַחַיִּים וְהַמָּוֶת נָתַתִּי לְפָנֶיךָ, הַבְּרָכָה וְהַקְּלָלָה;
See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil … I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse
Life and creation are good, death and destruction are evil. Life and creation is a blessing, death and destruction is a curse.
Today we need to remind the world of this. So, how then do you defeat death and destruction? Moshe tells us at the end of the verse -וּבָחַרְתָּ, בַּחַיִּים--לְמַעַן תִּחְיֶה, אַתָּה וְזַרְעֶךָ - "therefore choose life, that you and your children may live." (Deut. 30: 15, 19)
The idea of two paths is something that Robert Frost famously wrote about it in his poem The Road Not Taken. I want to share the last stanza:
So I thought about the roads that we often take – the ones that seem short but are really actually long because we never get to the right place, and the roads that seem long, but are short in the sense that it actually leads us to a destination and purpose. The problem is, what if you take the wrong road?
In my eyes, there are two major directions we can go in: the path of creation, the long way that actually brings us to a right place, or the short way is the path of destruction. Destruction is the easy, quick, and weirdly gratifying. Creation is the difficult, slow, and ultimately the thing that makes us feel the best in the long run.
There is no middle ground – you’ve got to choose one direction, as Frost says, you cannot travel both. And he's right – creation and destruction are opposites - two diverging paths.
It is now – this time of year, when we make these decisions – when we plot out our roads for the year, the paths we take for how we will live our lives for the year.
Creation and Destruction might be opposites, but today, I want to propose an alternative idea - perhaps the road to destruction and hatred can actually lead us to the road to creation and love.
I say this because this has been a difficult year for many of us and our relationships to our friends and family. Many of us have been caught up in the storm of politics – whom you voted for, whom you didn't vote for, what policies you support. We are seeing these battles take place on social media, but even worse, some of us stopped talking to family and friends that we've known and loved for many years because of the stances we've publicly taken.
What ultimately causes destruction? Our rabbis thought about this question deeply, and the greatest model of destruction in our tradition is the destruction of the second Temple. Our rabbis knew that there were many reasons why the Temple was destroyed – an overpowering Roman Empire, the politics of the day, and more, but to them, it all came down to unbound hatred between Jews, between brothers and sisters.
But Rosh Hashanah is an opportunity for us to press the reset button. Rosh Hashanah has many names, Yom Harat HaOlam, the Day the world was created, and Yom Truah, the day of the blasting of the shofar.
Rosh Hashanah offers us an opportunity to switch paths, to return, to do tesuvah, to go from destruction to creation.
Today, I want to show you this path in a couple of ways:
1. To see how our ancestors in the Torah had broken relationships that ultimately led to renewed creation, from hatred to love.
2. How you can help repair damage done – and get on a different path.
3. How we have seen destruction in our time leads to new creation, and a fresh start.
In today's Torah reading, we read about the Akeidah, when Abraham takes his son Isaac and binds him on the altar to be sacrificed.
These 22 lines of Torah are amongst the most powerful and challenging words. But I wanted to focus on just one line.
וַיֹּ֡אמֶר קַח־נָ֠א אֶת־בִּנְךָ֨ אֶת־יְחִֽידְךָ֤ אֲשֶׁר־אָהַ֙בְתָּ֙ אֶת־יִצְחָ֔ק וְלֶךְ־לְךָ֔ אֶל־אֶ֖רֶץ הַמֹּרִיָּ֑ה וְהַעֲלֵ֤הוּ שָׁם֙ לְעֹלָ֔ה עַ֚ל אַחַ֣ד הֶֽהָרִ֔ים אֲשֶׁ֖ר אֹמַ֥ר אֵלֶֽיךָ׃
And He said, “Take your son, your ONLY one, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the heights that I will point out to you.” (Genesis 22:2)Why does God describe Isaac as his only son, the ones he loves? The rabbis of the Midrash imagined a conversation between God and Abraham – Abraham challenges God, my ONLY son? !? But Ishmael is my son too! And God answers, the one you love? And Abraham challenges again, but I love them both! Throughout these stories we focus on the challenging relationship between fathers and their brothers.
Creation and destruction of familial relationships is a theme that continues on to the next generations in Genesis, and no where is it more apparent than in the relationship between Abraham's great grandsons, Joseph and his brothers.
The Torah tells us that Jacob loved Joseph more than all of his children, and when the brothers see this, it leads them to hate Joseph, so much so that they cannot say a word of Shalom, a word of peace, to him. In just eight versus, the Torah tells us that the brothers hated Joseph three times, and for a text that says a lot with few words, that's a lot of hate.
The brothers hate turns into an attempt to kill Joseph, but at the last minute, they decide to throw him in a pit and he is taken to Egypt where he eventually becomes the Viceroy of the country. The brothers come down to Egypt, and a drama plays out. In the end, the brothers come together and truly love each other. But, could this all have been avoided?
Let's return to the beginning of the story:
וַיִּרְא֣וּ אֶחָ֗יו כִּֽי־אֹת֞וֹ אָהַ֤ב אֲבִיהֶם֙ מִכָּל־אֶחָ֔יו וַֽיִּשְׂנְא֖וּ אֹת֑וֹ וְלֹ֥א יָכְל֖וּ דַּבְּר֥וֹ לְשָׁלֹֽם׃
And when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of his brothers, they hated him so that they could not speak a friendly word to him. (Genesis 37:4)Can you imagine not speaking to your brother? In fact, I know many people who don't speak to their siblings, and to me it is one of the greatest tragedies a family can endure.
Seforno, an Italian Medieval commentator, claimed that the brothers did actually speak. They were business partners after all, so they stuck to business, but they did not speak to him concerning any private matters and brotherly concerns.1 Isn't that how our relationships begin to break? We stop talking about the things we actually care about?
Later on in the Torah, we read about the mitzvoth of our relationships to our brothers. Leviticus 19:17 famously states,
לֹֽא־תִשְׂנָ֥א אֶת־אָחִ֖יךָ בִּלְבָבֶ֑ךָ הוֹכֵ֤חַ תּוֹכִ֙יחַ֙ אֶת־עֲמִיתֶ֔ךָ
וְלֹא־תִשָּׂ֥א עָלָ֖יו חֵֽטְא׃
“You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall criticize your fellow, so you shall not bear sin over him.”I actually think this line was not only meant for us, but for Joseph and his brothers. Imagine if the brothers didn't let the hatred fester – imagine if they actually verbally shared their frustrations with their brother. Could all of the heart break and pain of their years apart have been avoided?
Our tradition demands that we seek each other out and have difficult conversations with the people whom we love. In the book of Proverbs we read, “One who conceals hatred has lying lips, and one who utters slander is a fool.” (Proverbs 10)
The long way that is short is to confront the person. It is the long way because that journey to pick up the phone to confront these people is perhaps the toughest. The short way that is long is the easy way – how many of us tell everyone else but the person we are hating at the time.
So what is the solution?
It's not just speaking, but listening.
This year, all of us saw hatred unbound in Charlottesville. On Friday night, when we sat at our Shabbat tables, men with torches marched through the streets of this city. A chant, began, you will not replace us, but it quickly morphed into an all too familiar chant – Jews will not replace us. They marched with the swastika – a flag that hundreds of thousands of Americans fought to destroy in World War II, a flag that represented an ideology that destroyed 1/3 of the Jewish people. What scared me about this scene wasn't just the numbers of men, but their age. Most of them were young – this means that something happened in a short amount of time that led them to hate.
I started researching the American Neo-Nazi movement, and I learned about a young man named Christian Picciolini. As a teen, Christian, says he was lost and lonely, and then, he became connected to a White Nationalist group because they made him feel good, strangely enough, when hatred is packaged in right way can do that. He rose to the ranks as a leader in the movement. He even opened a record store and sold white nationalist albums. Now, Christian Picciolini is the co-founder of a group called Life After Hate, an organization that works with individuals who wish to leave a life of hate and violence and they help community organizations grapple with the causes of intolerance and racism. They proudly say that Life After Hate works to counter the seeds of hate we once planted.
I wondered - why were the men who were marching full of hate so young? Christian says it is because of the Internet. Now, he says, we now have this propaganda machine that is flooding the Internet with conspiracy theory propaganda from the far right — disinformation — and when a young person who feels disenchanted, or disaffected, goes online, where most of them live, they're able to find that identity online.
Christian went on to say, “I think ultimately people become extremists not necessarily because of the ideology. I think that the ideology is simply a vehicle to be violent. I believe that people become radicalized, or extremist, because they're searching for three very fundamental human needs: identity, community and a sense of purpose.”
You might wonder, how did a Neo-Nazi who owned a white supremacist record store become the head of an anti-hate organization. The beginning was quite simple: he realized he had a problem with his business, he wasn't successful. Go figure, a white nationalist record store kind of limited his market! So he had to change his business model and he started selling records to different types of people. And at the same time, he had his first child – a new creation, a pure soul. As he held his won, he couldn't reconcile hating anymore. And then, everything changed. When you work at a record store, you have to listen to your customers, it's a big part of the business. And so he listened – he got to know blacks, gays, lesbians, and yes, even Jews. He said that they drew conversation out of him, they listened to him, and he says he received compassion and empathy from the people he least deserved it from. His solution to countering hatred is the following: “The only way to show them that there is nothing to hate is to show them that there is something to love.”
Today is not only the anniversary of creation, Yom Harat HaOlam, but it is Yom Teruah, the day of the blasting of the shofar. The mitzvah of this day is not to blow the shofar, but to listen to it.
But first, a note on listening. There's a story of a man who realized he needed to purchase a hearing aid, but he felt unwilling to spend much money. “How much do they run?” he asked the clerk. “That depends,” said the salesman. “They run from $3.00 to $3,000.” “Let’s see the $3.00 model,” he said. The clerk put the device around the man’s neck. “You just stick this button in your ear and run this little string down to your pocket,” he instructed. The customer asked, “Well, How does it work?” The clerk answered, “For $3.00 – it doesn’t work, But when people see it on you, they’ll TALK LOUDER.”
All year, we talk and talk and post and post. And when we feel frustrated, we talk even louder because we feel no one is listening. But rather than talk louder we need to start listening louder.
In the Torah we read that we are to observe a sacred occasion that "shall be a day of shofar-sounding for you" (Numbers 29:1). We all know the momentous stirring that somehow, in a wordless way, opens something deep inside us as soon as we hear the sound of the shofar. We know that we are called to some great personal self-reflection in the midst of community. And we all know that we are called to a self-reflection that hopes for change.
The shofar is a reminder – stop talking, and start listening.
So will you do something for me during these 10 days of Tesuvah? Will you call someone, a sibling, a cousin, a friend, someone who you've been ignoring but following closely on social media, will you call them, and will you tell them why you are hurt, and then, will you listen to them? Will you give them a chance to create a relationship again? You might be on the road of hatred, but you can turn around whenever you want – all it takes is taking that first really difficult step, the long way that is ultimately short, the road that is all too often not taken.
As Jews, we have identity, we have community, and we have a purpose – creation, Creation is the greatest Jewish purpose – and we create the most beautiful things after destruction.
I learned this lesson from my grandfather. My grandfather Abe z'l, whom I named my oldest son after, was a survivor of Auschwitz. He was in the camp from the very beginning of the camp's existence, and was liberated in 1945. We knew very little about his experience during the war; he didn't really talk that much about it, and we knew almost nothing about his childhood. It was almost as if he was born after he was liberated. But he was in his 30's when he was liberated, so he had a life before the war – just one we didn't know about. It was only years later, 29 years ago, when we learned a little about his pre-war life.
29 years ago, my aunt, his daughter, had a son, and during those 8 days from birth to the brit milah, she received a call from her father.
He said to her, “Mary, it is very important for me that you name your son Betzalel. Would you please do me this favor?” Now, we’ve all been there. Our parents ‘suggest’ names for their grandkids, and then, when you don’t listen to them, they let you know how they feel. But she told me that this situation was different, and she pried a little. “Why? What's so special about that name?” And then, he shared a family secret with her, breaking a silence that lasted close to 50 years: “I want you to name him Betzalel after my first son who was killed in Auschwitz.” It was also the last time he spoke about his first born son, Betzalel. I heard about this story after his death, and as great as I thought he was before, he was even greater after. Can you imagine having a family, a wife and a child, and then starting completely over? Can you imagine rebuilding a family after they are taken away?
If Joseph and his brothers, his brothers who tried to kill him, could make up and love each other, than you can repair a relationship with one of your family members.
If a Neo-Nazi, a man who was so filled with hate it literally became his profession, started listening to blacks, gays and lesbians, and Jews, and actually learned to love them, then you can also start listening to someone whom you have gotten into a fight with this year.
If my grandparents, and hundreds of thousands of Shoah survivors could create life again, then we can too.
May this year be a year where we are honest to our friends and family, a year when we talk less, and listen more, and a year of new beginnings, when we stop hating, and start loving, when we stop destroying, and start creating again. Kein Yehi Ratzon – may it be God's will.
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