Challenging Our Assumptions

Delivered on Kol Nidre Night 5773 at Temple Israel of Great Neck


I’ll start with a joke that many have heard, which I hope to use for a new purpose.  Robby tells the rabbi that he has a problem.  The World Series game is the same night as Kol Nidre.  The rabbi tells Robby he can TIVO it.  Robby says “Rabbi, you’re the best!  I didn’t know you can TIVO Kol Nidre.”

Tonight I want to talk about assumptions and how we need to challenge them.

First, a fact about an unfortunate recent event.  Christopher Hitchens died on December 15, 2011.  This was within the past Jewish year, 5772, a fact which may or may not have been of interest to him, given that he spent much of his recent career arguing against the existence of God and denouncing religion for all of its negative contributions to the world.

Hitchens was an intelligent man with strong convictions.  He gave people of all religious backgrounds and perspectives a lot to think about.

Two years after he published God is Not Great:  How Religion Poisons Everything, Karen Armstrong wrote The Case for God. 

In The Case for God, Armstrong argued that the religion that Hitchens was attacking is fundamentalist religion.  Hitchens’ critique that religion claims a monopoly on truth is a critique of fundamentalist religion, as is his critique that religion is a source of bloodshed.

According to Karen Armstrong, Hitchens' attacks on religion assumed a fundamentalist approach to religion, and I tend to agree.  He set religion up as a straw man. 

Tonight, I’m going to ask us to do something that is entirely in keeping with the spirit of Yom Kippur as I understand it.  Yom Kippur is the day of reflection and purification. 

If ever there is a time for us to try to be honest with ourselves, to try to clean out the attic, intellectually and emotionally speaking, Yom Kippur is it. 

Tonight, I’m going to ask us to question our assumptions.  About God.  About one another.  And about ourselves. 

Let’s start with God.  Last year, in the course of a month, I had three parents come to me, telling me that they want to talk to me because their children claim they don’t believe in God. 

The three children were 22 years old, 16 years old, and 5 years old, respectively.  I must admit, I was particularly impressed by the self-professed kindergarten atheist. 

The parents’ attitudes ranged from amused to concerned to horrified

I spoke to each parent and offered to speak to each child, one of whom took me up on it.

I encouraged the parents to ask their children what they mean when they say they don’t believe in God.

Here are some of the things they came back to me with. 

My child doesn’t believe that God is completely good. 

My child doesn’t believe that God can do everything. 

My child doesn’t believe that God wrote the Torah. 

My child doesn’t believe that God cares whether we come to services or not.  My child doesn’t believe God hears our prayers. 

My child doesn’t believe that God wants us to observe Shabbat or the holidays in a certain way. 

The list goes on.

I’ve given this some thought and here’s what occurs to me.  Because of school, family, synagogue and whatever else, children (like adults) have internalized a set of assumptions about God such that when they have trouble with the assumptions, they sometimes conclude that they don’t believe in God.

Many theologians have questioned God’s authorship of the Torah; the modern denominations of Judaism present a range of beliefs regarding how God wants us to observe Shabbat, holidays and other things; Rabbi Harold Kushner critiqued the assumption that God is all-powerful.  And this list goes on.

It may well be that even after acknowledging the diversity of opinions that Jews and others have had about God over the years, we and our loved ones will still say, “I don’t believe in God.  In any form.  With any set of assumptions.  Full stop.”

But it seems to me that we want to encourage a healthy debate about assumptions regarding God – first, because there’s always been debate and so it’s authentic and second, because it encourages the cultivation of a truer religious sensibility.

When my own Rosh Hashanah table featured a discussion that began, “why did you choose to have the congregation read the passages that start, ‘everyone believes that God this and God that,’” I knew we were in for a fun meal. 

If we don’t allow these conversations, and if we are not open ourselves to reconsidering our assumptions, then we will watch helplessly as the next generation checks out, intellectually and spiritually, just as we can sometimes check out ourselves. 

It doesn’t have to be that way.  Yom Kippur is the day to reflect, refract and purify.

On Yom Kippur morning, in the haftarah, we read the words attributed to the prophet Isaiah.  I’ll quote an essential part:

Is this the fast I desire,

                     A day for men to starve their bodies?

                     Is it bowing the head like a bulrush

                     And lying in sackcloth and ashes?

                     Do you call that a fast,

                     A day when the LORD is favorable?

58:6.               No, this is the fast I desire:

                     To unlock the fetters of wickedness,

                     And untie the cords of the yoke

                     To let the oppressed go free;

                     To break off every yoke.

58:7.               It is to share your bread with the hungry,

                     And to take the wretched poor into your home;

                     When you see the naked, to clothe him,

                     And not to ignore your own kin.

58:8.               Then shall your light burst through like the dawn

Isaiah questioned the assumption that ritual is an end in itself, that God is more interested in how accurately we present the ritual than how well we treat one another.

Do we want those who question assumptions to leave our ranks or do we want them, one day, to write awesome, inspirational poetry like Isaiah that focuses the light in all the right places?

In some respects, God was the easy part of this sermon.  Let’s move on to the assumptions we bring to each other.

I hereby share some assumptions we have regarding one another, in no particular order:

We assume that good-looking people have their acts together but may well be arrogant.

We assume that people who don’t dress stylishly have less to bring to a conversation than people who do.

We assume that people from certain cultural backgrounds are going to hold certain political views.

We assume that older people are likely to be set in their ways.

We assume that younger people value fulfillment over responsibility.

We assume that women will respond emotionally to a situation whereas men will respond rationally, that women are interested in the emotional aspects of a relationship and men are just interested in, well, you know.

Our assumptions about other people are the product of nature and nurture, hard-wired and acquired.

But they are often untrue.  As a camp counselor I saw boys emotionally devastated after romantic breakups.  I see it with men who have tension in their relationships, or whose relationships come to an end.  Boys and men may have a hard time admitting their emotional vulnerability, in part due to assumptions about how men act or should act, but the pain is real and so the assumptions can be harmful.

And by the way, anyone who assumes that relationships for women are exclusively about emotion should talk to an elevator operator in a women’s dorm at a college.  There probably aren’t elevator operators anymore, but years ago, an elevator operator at Barnard told me about the many conversations he overheard between women about relationships, conversations that were detailed in ways that would make, well, an elevator-operator blush.

When I speak to people in our congregation about God, Torah, children, marriage, politics, sexuality, I am often surprised to hear perspectives that defy some of my assumptions about age, gender and background.

You don’t know until you ask.  And we shouldn’t be afraid to ask.

Again and again on the holidays, we say that God is בוחן לבבות or בוחן כליות bochen l’vavot or bochen kl’ayot, that God understands our innermost thoughts. 

A classic Biblical passage contrasts human insight with divine insight.  כי האדם יראה לעינים והאלוהים יראה ללבב Ki ha’adam yir’eh la’eynayim v’ha’elohim yir’eh lalevav.  Human beings see what’s apparent to the eyes; God sees through to the heart.

How worthwhile, and how illuminating, it would be for us to train ourselves to see beneath the surface, beyond the assumptions, to see one another the way we believe God sees us.

We could shlep along as a congregation, saying shana tova and “how are the kids?” and that’s ok.  But we have engaged, and we should continue, to engage each other much more deeply.  It starts with challenging, and sometimes suspending, our innate and learned assumptions.

And now, we’re ready for Act III, maybe the toughest of all.

What about the assumptions we each have about ourselves?

Sometimes we don’t see our own flaws as readily as we see other people’s.  I like to imagine the dining room scene where Comrade Stalin accused his wife of being a little overbearing.

Sometimes we underestimate our capacity to change.  We just assume that the way we are is, more or less, the way we’ll always be.

I’m going to expose myself a bit here, hopefully to encourage all of us to push up against our assumptions about ourselves.

Over the first bunch of decades of my life, I came to recognize about myself that I don’t handle conflict very comfortably, in personal and professional settings. 

Now I understand that there are various shades and gradations of conflict, ranging from polite disagreement to military combat.  But I grew to assume about myself that I would always be the sort of person who would steer clear of a wide range of conflicts.

Until it became clearer and clearer to me that conflict is a necessary part of personal, professional and communal growth. 

And so I said to myself, figure this out.  Try to figure out, as a father, brother, friend, rabbi, how to engage conflict effectively.  I decided at the time to practice my new skills on my mother.  (Just kidding.  I was self-reflective, not crazy.)

Perhaps this sounds simple to you, especially if it’s not your issue, but it took time for me to discover that conflict need not be explosive.  That I can present myself politely but firmly, hear other perspectives, refine my views if necessary and guide the conflict to a place of increased understanding, if not consensus.

My assumption that I would always be conflict-averse proved false.  My increased dedication to managing conflict has become, increasingly, an important part of my personal and professional life.

Perhaps there is something that you’ve assumed would always be true about yourself – something you might not be so happy about.  I suggest that you take a minute to question the assumption that the way you are, in this regard, is the way you will always be.

Yesterday, I asked the children in our preschool if they think Yom Kippur is a sad day or a happy day.  One boy yelled out “happy!” and I said, “I agree.  Because on Yom Kippur, we are given another chance.”

And I will add that Yom Kippur is a happy day because the prayers, the dress and the drama all confirm that we are meant to react, reflect and grow.

We say to God חדש עלינו שנה טובה chadesh aleinu shana tova.  Renew us for a good year.  It may be that God does part of the work, but we need to do our share as well.  As we challenge assumptions about God, each other and ourselves, we reclaim religion and we reclaim ourselves.   

I am confident that as we challenge these assumptions, the “new” of renew will burst forth like the dawn and the world will be better for it, just like Isaiah promised.