Speak Out, Act Out - Exerting Influence

A message for the New Year, delivered during the High Holy Days at Temple Israel of Great Neck

There’s a story told about a famous rabbi who became head of a yeshiva and author of several books.  His full name was Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin and he lived in Poland during the 19^th century.  He was known as the Netziv. 

But, of course, he wasn’t always famous.

In fact, when he was younger, he wasn’t a particularly good student.  The story told is that one evening, a year after his bar mitzvah, he overheard his parents talking in the kitchen and saying that because he wasn’t such a good student, maybe he should stop studying Torah so intensively and become a tailor.  The young man was confused. 

He went to sleep that night and had a dream.  In the dream, he saw himself at the end of his life, and then he passed on into the next world and he got to the front desk and he was asked a simple question.

Where are your books?

Excuse me?  He said.

You had the ability to write books about Jewish tradition and philosophy that would influence generations.

Where are they?

I don’t understand, he said.

Look, said the man behind the desk.  You were a decent tailor, and that’s fine.  Nothing at all to be ashamed of.  But you would have been an exceptional rabbi. 

Why didn’t you write the books?

The young man woke up and the next day and he started to apply himself to his studies.  The rest, as they say, is Jewish history.

The young man had a dream that prevented something from happening that would have been unfortunate.

He would have lived his life without achieving his potential, without exerting the influence that he could have.

On the beginning of the New Year, I want to talk to each of us about how we can reach our potential and how we can exert appropriate influence.  In short, how we can use our finite time on this earth to make a difference – internationally, locally, and personally.

In general, we are not a quiet or passive people.  After I got to college, first week or so, my freshman roommate and I talked about our families.  He grew up in a Protestant Christian home in Minneapolis.  He said, dinnertime was a very quiet time.  My mom served the meal, we chewed, every now and then my father made a comment, but that was it.

And he asked me, “Is that what dinner was like for you growing up?”

I remember saying to him, “The only time dinner was quiet in my family was when we all had laryngitis.”  Dinner was a boisterous affair.  I was the youngest and I didn’t get to talk so much, which is possibly one reason I became a rabbi.  But we all talked.  We talked about politics, Israeli and American, we talked about the shul, we tried to figure out how to improve the shul or some aspect of the community and occasionally we gossiped about the neighbors so we’d have something to apologize for on Yom Kippur.

By and large, Jews are talkers.  And that’s often been a source of our influence.

A month ago, I was sitting in the back of a jeep with some awesome teens from Temple Israel, touring the Golan Heights as part of a phenomenal Temple Israel trip to Israel.

The tour-guide related the following story, well known to many of us, I’m sure.  In 1967, the Israeli Army needed extra time to seize control of the Golan Heights. Abba Eban, the famous Israeli diplomat who spoke the Queens English, spoke for hours to the Security Council of the United Nations.  During that time, Israel completed the necessary military operation.  But the speech wasn’t just a time-saver.  Abba Eban emphasized the necessity of Israel’s defense and her ultimate desire for peace.

Since our inception, we have tried as a people to exert positive influence in the world, not just to defend ourselves, but to improve the circumstances of others.  We exert influence through talk and action and it goes way back.

Abraham was told by God, “through you, all of the families of the earth will be blessed.” 

Centuries later, Isaiah told the people, “keep speaking out Ad yetze khanoga tzidkah until Israel’s righteousness bursts forth like a flaming torch!”

Centuries after that, Esther was told by Mordecai, “umi yodea – who knows - maybe you became queen so that you could step in right about now.”

And in our own time, Golda Meir said, pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never afford.

From the time of Abraham to the initial entry into the land of Canaan, through long periods of exile, and right up through and beyond the establishment of the modern state of Israel, we’ve spoken out and acted out in order to influence the course of history for ourselves and others.

I’m afraid we’re getting too quiet, and I don’t know if that’s because we’re complacent or afraid or both. 

I could give many examples, but one area in which we are too quiet, which I’d like to address, pertains to the treatment of women.

Perhaps you saw this recent article in the Times.  In Egypt, a Professor of Botany led a premarital class sponsored by Muslim Brotherhood and he turned to the women in a mixed gender class and asked, “Can you, as a woman, make a decision and handle the consequences of your decision?”

At that point, apparently, a number of women shook their heads no, even before he provided his answer, and then he said to the women, “No you can’t make a decision and handle the consequences. But men can. And God created us this way because a ship cannot have more than one captain.”   The overall message of the class was that women should submit to the authority of their husbands.

What can we do to influence that conversation which is potentially damaging for women and men?  Perhaps it’s hard to influence a conversation in Egypt directly.  But at least we should understand that a rising political group in Egypt is capitalizing on conservative values in ways that are potentially harmful to the nation and to the region. 

Closer to our realm, we have more potential influence.

In Israel, a group of women gather monthly to pray at the Western Wall, the Kotel, as they have been since 1988.  They are routinely arrested for reading from the Torah, based on a decision rendered by the Israeli Supreme Court. 

In this instance, we have more potential influence.  We can and should protest this travesty by visiting the Women of the Wall website and showing our support.

Which brings me even closer.  Here we are in a community where numerous religious perspectives are competing for the attention and loyalty of our children and grandchildren, and it seems that we’re too tentative about our support for our approach, which features the full and equal participation of women in religious life such as it takes place here at Temple Israel. 

Will we find the courage to say, to our friends and neighbors and aunts and uncles and cousins who may feel differently, “Our approach, which gives equal legitimacy to the voices of men and women, where women and men bring the words of the Torah to life through study and through beautiful traditional chanting such as we heard this morning – our approach is authentic and true and just what we should be doing.” 

In the Torah, Rebecca had no less of a voice than Isaac – to the contrary.  And the Mishnah itself records how women were called to the Torah.  And even if all that weren’t the case, which it is, we believe that God wants us to keep Torah alive and just in each generation.  

So what we are doing is authentic and true – the way we include women and, moreover, the intellectually open way in which we embrace Torah are authentic and true.

We should say that out loud.

We’re not supposed to be quiet.

Here’s something else the group discovered during our trip to Israel, when we were visiting Caesaria, the city the Romans on the coast. 

2000 years ago, rabbis told Jews living under Roman authority, go watch the gladiators fighting in the arenas of Caesaria and Tiberias.  Put down your shovels, your tools and your books for a few hours and go watch the gladiators.  The Jews asked why?  And their rabbis said, so that at the end of the match, when one gladiator defeats the other, and the official asks whether to put the defeated gladiator to death or spare him, thumbs up or thumbs down, you can vote thumbs up.  And maybe yours will be the deciding vote and you will have saved a life. 

Our ancestors understood, and so should we, that if we stay home, literally or metaphorically, we don’t get a vote.  We need to make sure the right sparks are lifted up, that we write the books we are meant to write, that we say what we are meant to say and do what we are meant to do.

To live quietly is not the Jewish way.  It never was, and it still isn’t. 

I spent four days this summer in St. Petersburg, Russia, with a group of rabbis from New York. This is a place that tried to silence Jews for centuries.  And they didn’t succeed.  Natan Scharansky, who spoke to us about Jewish identity, was arrested because he dared to say that as a Jew, he wanted to leave Russia and move to Israel. 

They put him in prison, but that didn’t silence his cause.  And decades later, there he was, head of the Jewish Agency, sitting in a hotel in St. Petersburg and talking about Jewish identity in Israel, Russia and the US.

And Jewish children in Russia in 2012 are learning Jewish culture in summer camp programs funded by UJA.  I saw a group of Russian children singing Israeli songs. 

Some of us here are too young to remember the demonstrations on behalf of Soviet Jewry back in the 70’s and early 80’s. 

But for those who were around then, who would have imagined that one day Russian Jewish children would be singing Israeli songs, and welcoming Shabbat, in Russia? 

To live quietly is not the Jewish way.  If Anatole Scharansky, brilliant mathematician, whose parents told him, “you’re a Jew.  That means, be the best you can be!”  If Scharansky could speak out and act out in the USSR of the 1970’s, what’s our excuse? 

Truth is, we don’t have to be Scharansky or the Netziv or Abba Eban to exert influence.  We can all do it.

A week ago, I got a call from my Aunt Judy, my mother’s sister, who lives in Cincinnati.  Her voice reminds me of my mother’s, which is one of many reasons I like to speak with her.  She taught psychology at the University of Cincinnati for decades.  Her husband, my Uncle Bob, died a few years ago and it hasn’t been easy for her.

She called to wish me shana tova and said, “Howie, do I have a story for you!”  And she told me she’s been volunteering at a nearby soup kitchen.  She serves meals, and she also leads a support group for people who have a host of economic and emotional issues.

It seems she was using the conference room at the soup kitchen for the support group.  One day, one of the supervisors said to her, you can’t use the conference room any more.  Why not?  She asked.  So she was told, some of the participants are making too much of a mess (it seems that one of the women has a nervous habit of tearing up tissues into lots of little pieces) and we need that room to be in a proper state so we can have appropriate lunches for our donors.

My aunt, who celebrated her 80^th birthday a few years ago, said, I’ll clean up when we’re done. 

The supervisor said, “the thing is, you’re treating these people a little too special.” 

Well, that did it.  You don’t say that to one of the Topelberg sisters from Brighton Beach and get away with it.  My aunt said to the supervisor, “but they are special.  And the fancy donors you’re giving lunch to – why are they donating to a soup kitchen if not to help precisely these people?”

So there you have it, my 83 year old aunt channeling my bubbe and zaide who would be proud that she did not quietly cave in to exiling the supposed beneficiaries of a soup kitchen from a nice, respectable room.

She said, Howie, I’m nervous.  I’m going to spend the holidays with your cousin Lois and when I get back, they’re not going to let me back in.  I said too much, they’re going to kick me out of that place.  And I said, Aunt Judy, I’ve known you all my life and I’m pretty sure the supervisor doesn’t stand a chance against you.

So here’s the thing.  Since we actually believe, as Jews, that all human beings are created in the image of God, then even a woman who tears tissues into little bits and leaves them on the table gets to have a nice meal once a week.

We know what happens when the world distinguishes between people who deserve and people who don’t deserve.  We know very well what happens because we’ve been on the receiving end.  It starts when we allow ourselves to believe that some people are more special than others.

We can influence these kinds of conversations.  My Aunt Judy is a special lady, but we’re all special.  We can all speak up and act up wherever we are, and we should. 

If we are involved in a medical practice, we can advocate, despite economic pressure to the contrary, for careful, compassionate care for each patient. 

If we are teachers, we can be the voice for individuated learning despite pressure to standardize.

Whatever our role in running a business, let ours be the voices on behalf of honest practice and fair treatment of employees. 

If we are a student in elementary or middle or high school, we can summon up the courage to say, when we see someone being ostracized or bullied, “That’s not right.  It’s just not OK.” 

If we volunteer, we can make sure that even the people who tear tissues are treated special. 

And finally, we can’t be afraid to exert influence within our own families.

I know full well that there is a lot of pressure on us to give children and grandchildren their space and not to impose.  Space is nice – who doesn’t want space?  This is America, after all.  But children and grandchildren don’t just need their space, they also need our influence. 

What are we afraid of?  That our loved ones won’t like us?  That they’ll run away?   And suppose they say, directly or indirectly, get out of my face, does that mean we should withdraw immediately and permanently? 

I don’t think so.  It runs counter to Jewish tradition – the Hebrew word for parents, Horim, is related to the word for teachers, Morim.  A parent should offer guidance and not just be a casual friend and grandparents offer an even grander perspective that should not be withheld.

We should not be afraid to let our children and grandchildren know, through words and actions, what we value in terms of behavior, ethics, dating and child-raising.  And if they move in different directions, we need to continue to embrace them and to keep listening and talking.  Sometimes we need to navigate creatively. 

We don’t want to become pests to the next generation, but neither should we withdraw completely.  And I don’t think they want us to withdraw.  My own limited experience as the father of emerging adults reinforces that.  We can find the right approach, the right tone, so that we exert positive influence.

And by the way, children can influence their parents and grandparents, too.  Respectfully, in the right context.  I’ve seen it happen.  And spouses, and siblings – with common sense and respect and finding the right balance – can appropriately influence one another, as well. 

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, brings the following teaching:

There are those who see the world as it is and accept it. That is the stoic

way.

There are those who see the world as it is and flee from it. That is the mystic, monastic way.

But there are those who see the world as it is and change it. That is

the Jewish way.

The Netziv, the rabbi about whom I began my comments this morning, had a dream that allowed him to understand how much influence he could have, if only he applied himself.

We don’t need to literally go to sleep and have a dream in order to understand how pressing it is for us to exert influence. 

As we read on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur life itself is k’chalom ya’uf.  Like a fleeting dream.  It passes quickly.  It seems like last week we were all together.  Who can believe an entire year has gone by. 

While the spirit is still coursing through us, let’s speak, let’s act, if we have a book in us, let’s write it, if we have a song in us, let’s sing it; let’s assert positive influence any way we can.  The Netziv figured it out.  Scharansky and Abba Eban and Queen Esther and Golda Meir and my Aunt Judy figured it out.  And so can we.

My friends, we are a nation of talkers and doers, the proud children of Abraham and Sarah.  Through our words and our actions, let all the families of the earth be blessed.