Kol Nidre 9 Tishrei 5768 / September 21, 2007

Shortly before we left for our New Mexican vacation, I received a copy of Preservation, the magazine of the National Trust for Historical Preservation. It featured a story on a Native American community in New Mexico: on Acoma, which claimed to be the oldest inhabited community in North America. (Later on in our travels, we would discover that the Taos Pueblo makes a similar assertion.) And so we added Acoma to our list of places to visit with our rental car. It is about 60 miles west of Albuquerque. To get there you have to go the visitor center and pay for an admission, plus a camera fee. (These fees to visit these historic pueblos, plus the casinos that are to found on nearly every reservation in New Mexico, represent the revenge of the Native Americans against the White Man.) To get to the pueblo you have to wait for a mini-bus to drive you up to the village, situated on a mesa, where you take a guided tour.

Our guide Alexander was verbrent, to use a Yiddish term. He was impassioned; committed to his heritage. We were intrigued by the fact that the Pueblo had strict rules: no electricity, no running water up on the mesa. (Which meant that very few members of the tribe lived there all year round; though most returned for festivals and religious observances and made do with porta-potties and propane burners for cooking.) And we were fascinated by the fact that there, at least, Catholicism had blended with the Native American religious traditions: there was clear syncretism in the symbolism within the church, which had been built on the site of an ancient kiva, a religious ceremonial gathering place.

After the tour we walked around a bit and did a little shopping. Hey, what is a trip without coming home with some souvenirs? The previous day we had done some scouting in Albuquerque and were intrigued by some of the Native American pottery and in particular by the story tellers, clay pieces shaped usually a woman with a bunch of children all over her, sort of like the old woman in the shoe. The artistry comes through how this concept is expressed. We found a piece and when the vendor said she’d ship it for only a few dollars more: terrific; one less fragile object to shlep home. It was, however, nearly a month before it finally got shipped and we had begun to wonder if we would ever see it, but here it is: it arrived last weekend.

Since Native Americans did not develop a written tradition, they depended upon story tellers to convey their past to the present. And therefore it is no wonder that other than their attractiveness as tchochkes for us tourists, ceramic storytellers are an important reminder of how traditions were conveyed in that culture. As we discovered at a wonderful museum in Santa Fe—the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture--, Native Americans have wonderful stories to tell: they have their own cosmogonies--a fancy term for origins of the universe--, as well as other tales of their tribes.

Do we Jews have stories to convey? As I was reminded the other day by a commercial for Ellis Island restoration, most of us have family members who came through there. The immigrant generation surely had stories to tell of the difficulties of uprooting themselves and of re-establishing themselves in this country. But these and our own tales are personal stories. They are important for who we are, including who we are as Jews. But do we have a collective narrative to share? Do we have stories to tell?

Certainly, six months from now, we will: that is to say the Haggadah represents a very rabbinic form of narration of the wonders of the Exodus experience and its enduring meaning for us. The volume you hold in your hands, the Mahzor, is also a statement, albeit a poetic expression of theology and it contains within mini-narrations, most notably the Avodah service, the recollection of the ancient Yom Kippur ritual, and the martyrology. (Stick around tomorrow afternoon and you’ll get to hear them.) And if you think about it, the Torah is our primal story, but far from the complete story.

Do you remember the story of Abraham smashing the idols in his father’s shop? He smashes the idols as a symbol of his newly discovered monotheism and places the offending ax in the hands one of the idols. When his father sees this and that his business is literally in pieces, Abraham cops a plea: “They got into a fight.” “Nonsense,” was his father’s response: “they can’t move.” “Let your ears hear what your mouth speaks,” is Abraham’s acerbic response. Great story. But guess what? It isn’t in the Torah. It is part of what began as an oral tradition: it is from the midrash and along with a host of other stories many of us learned as children are part of our story telling culture, except unlike the Native Americans, many of our tales were ultimately written down.

There are other stories of more recent vintage that we know in full or in part: the story of the Shoah, the Holocaust, including the heroism of those in the Warsaw Ghetto and the commitment of some to Tradition even at death’s edge; the miracles of the battles for Israel in 1948 and again in 1967 and 1973. These collective stories certainly shape who we are. Though as we move further and further away in time from these events, younger generations who didn’t live through them, for whom all this is ancient history, have an ever more distant connection with the Jewish past and therefore with the Jewish present, in the sense of a diminished connection with Israel and with Jews around the world.

All well and good for the Jewish narrative. It is important. It links us across time and space to fellow Jews. It is why hundreds of thousands turned out over the years for Soviet Jewry rallies and rallies in support of Israel. We accepted the concept of Kol Yisrael Aravim Zu BaZu, all of Israel is responsible one for another. And I should note this linkage is the hardest one to teach Jews by Choice, for Christianity doesn’t have that sense of connectedness—otherwise there would have been a vast uproar in this country about the slaughter of Christians in Darfur by Muslims--. (The rallies for Darfur have had a disproportionate # of Jews there, which speaks about other Jewish sensibilities, but that is a story for another time.)

But at the heart of the Jewish enterprise is not narrative but law. Let’s use the Hebrew word: mitzvah.

If God forbid one of the Torah holders for Kol Nidre had let slip the Torah and it dropped to the floor would we be obligated to fast—all of us—from now until November? I bet that some of you would have responded that it’s a mitzvah to fast for 40 days in such a case. And by the way this is not an idle question, as one of my colleagues wrote that something similar happened on Rosh HaShanah in his shule. The Torah apparently slipped out of the Torah stand and fell to the bima. How do we know the answer to that question?

We ask the rabbi. Well, that was easy enough. And if he/she doesn’t know he asks someone else and so it goes and eventually sources and texts are cited and examined for guidance. But behind this voluminous literature stands the concept of mitzvah. Not mitzvah in the sense of “Oh, young man, you performed a mitzvah, you helped an old lady with her packages;” but rather in the sense of commandment, Jewish life as an expression of our understanding of God’s will. Just in case you wonder about the fasting: the tradition is quite late—it is not in the Torah nor the Talmud nor in the Shulchan Aruch and is first mentioned in the second half of the 17^th century--; and the 40 day fast is not universally proposed for the one who dropped the Torah, let alone for on-lookers; there are other more moderate acts of penance suggested. And so Rabbi David Golinkin, who researched the issue, seems to conclude that a new Torah mantle and some Torah study would be appropriate acts of penitence for the fallen Torah.

Why do we do what we do as Jews? My bet is that most of us practice Judaism in a-halachic, non-legal fashion; that is to say, we have fashioned for ourselves a Judaism based on what feels good and right for us, perhaps based on what we learned in our homes and what we have absorbed over the years. We have a salad bar approach to Jewish life: some of us load up on more goodies; others opt for a lighter diet. The new chancellor of the Seminary, Arnold Eisen, speaks of the sovereign self as directing our choices. And frankly, he is right: most of us may be sitting here because we like the nature of the service or because our friends and/or family like the more traditional service than down the street at Judea, but at heart, it is our sovereign selves who determine our religious practices more than our denominational affiliation.

For better or for worse, and personally I still think for the better, despite calls to abandon the phrase, for ½ a century now, since my father edited the anthology on Conservative Judaism called Tradition and Change, that phrase has encapsulated what we think of Conservative Judaism: more bound to the tradition than Reform and more open to change than Orthodoxy. But note that ideologically and theologically, Conservative Judaism does not endorse the sovereign self as the determinant for Jewish praxis. There remain standards: there is still the realm of mitzvah.

Rabbi Elliot Dorff, the new chair of our Law Committee, has written: “Even those who believe in God are often not happy with the tradition’s insistence that God demands obedience, for that takes away one’s right to decide what to do…The tradition’s claim that Jewish law is commanded by God, in other words, eliminates one’s autonomy, one’s right and ability to make one’s own decisions.”

Recently, my father-in-law attended the Young Israel in Plainview to say kaddish for a yahrzeit. He was impressed by how many came out—nearly 30 were present for Minchah-Maariv on a weekday—and the shule has about 150 families. I, too, am impressed. These Jews take seriously the obligation, the mitzvah of daily prayer. We, too, as Conservative Jews have that obligation, but take it far less seriously as I can attest from all those nights that we’ve either barely scrounged up a minyan or failed in our efforts. Members of that congregation have a sense of Mitzvah, of being commanded.

How does one reach a state of commandedness? Is there a leap of faith required? How do we get there?

The story is told that prior to the First World War, Franz Rosenzweig, a young German Jewish student of philosophy was seriously contemplating conversion to Christianity, following in the footsteps of his cousin. But he decided that he should enter Christianity from Judaism and so he decided he should give Judaism a final goodbye: he would attend synagogue on Yom Kippur. His parents, though quite acculturated, were less than pleased with his planned actions and so he found himself alone, attending an Orthodox congregation in Berlin. He emerged at the end of Yom Kippur as a reborn Jew. In time he would go on to be one of the most prominent Jewish thinkers of the 20^th century. Though he was asked by disciples what happened, he never told anyone or wrote of it. And so we are left to wonder, because if we knew, perhaps we could replicate it here. Was it the liturgy, the special melodies, the sermons, perhaps the Devekut, the piety of his fellow worshippers in that German shule? We can but wonder. By the way, Rosenzweig, despite his conversionary experience did not become instantly nouveau frum. In fact, he wrestled with traditional praxis for the remainder of his disease shortened life.

So we are left with our own struggles with the concept of Mitzvah, unsure of the commanding voice of a Mitzaveh, of one who commands. The tradition teaches Metoch Lo Lishmah, Bah Lishmah, that since the deed is ultimately pre-eminent, do the deed, and then perhaps you will yet perform it with the right intent, as a command. In the absence of that sense of commandedness, what do we have? The Tradition speaks of Ta’amay HaMitzvot, the reasons for the mitzvot. And so we can perceive the commandments as providing guidance and structure, a sense of organic community. We perform the mitzvot out of a sense that they represent the core of Jewish culture: this is what Jews have done and continue to do. I could define the last approach as Kaplanian, but to label it as such does little to define the solution and more to obscure it for most of you.

It is true that our sense of what mitzvah and of the larger construct Halachah evolves. In this regard Conservative Judaism is absolutely correct. We’ve wrestled with what life and death means in the age of heart-lung machines and transplants and offered guidance in the new field of bio-ethics. We’ve struggled with expanding roles for women and now more recently for gays and lesbians. We do so out of a desire to discern God’s commanding voice, as filtered through the ages. And so to agree to perform mitzvot doesn’t mean one has to buy into a closed system where tradition becomes ossified.

Sunday evening minyan is my favorite evening minyan, though I admit it sometimes an inconvenience, as it often necessitates my racing back from Manhattan. The regulars usually come a few minutes early and we shmooze: at this time of year, about the Yankees. They come for various reasons. One comes because he is repaying a debt: we helped him get a minyan during the year he was saying kaddish, and now he comes out on Sunday evenings. Another comes because his father told him that he should start out the week by doing something good. Others come because they have a sense of duty to support our evening minyan. Where is the mitzvah, where is God in all of this? I would assert that God is indeed present, regardless of the motivations of those who attend. As for mitzvah, those who come, particularly on an evening that someone is saying kaddish are indeed performing a mitzvah in both the traditional and colloquial sense of the term. As the text says, Lo hamidrash haikar eleh ha Ma’aseh , not study, but doing the mitzvoth is the essence of virtue. (Avot 1:17). What ultimately counts is the deed.

Our guide in Acoma, Alexander said that the philosophy of the Native Americans is not what he learned on his track team, that is push yourself and run faster, rather it is “deliver the message.” For delivery of the message is the ultimate goal. And that is true for Judaism, as well. What message are we delivering? What story are we re-telling? To transmit the tradition we have to be knowledgeable (consider this a plug for adult ed) and to be its practioneers. The challenge for the year ahead is to make sense of mitzvah and its place in our lives. The stories we tell unfold in the mitzvot we perform.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah.