As Dzhokhar Tsarnaev recovers
in a Boston Hospital, he has confessed to the planting of the bombs that killed
3 and injured hundreds during the recent Boston marathon. The suffering of those injured is
extraordinary and ongoing. The
pain of the families whose loved ones were killed is unimaginable. We also now know that the brothers were
planning a trip to New York City, to detonate bombs in Time Square.
More and more is being
revealed about the way Dzhokhar’s older brother, Tamerlan, was introduced,
starting in 2008, to a form of radical, anti-American Islam back in the family’s
native Chechniya and recent investigations suggest that there may have been
local influences as well.
Muslim leaders in various
Boston mosques were asked whether they would hold a funeral for Tamerlan. An imam from the Islamic Institute of
Boston said, “I would not be willing to do a funeral for him. This is a person
who deliberately killed people. There is no room for him as a Muslim.”
(Huffington Post, picked up by US News, April 24, 2013)
Often in the Jewish
community, we see a reaction of great embarrassment when people suspected and
convicted of crimes are discovered to be Jewish. There was widespread disgust when Bernie Madoff was
convicted of Ponzi scheme fraud and when Baruch Goldstein was found to have
shot 29 worshippers at a Mosque in Hebron.
The Boston bombing is tragic
and devastating. While life in
Boston will go on, the attacks have irrevocably altered the lives of the
families of the victims and the dynamics of the community as a whole.
I’m heartened that Muslim
leaders are expressing disgust at the crimes to which Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is
confessing. Ideally this should
spark continued cheshbon hanefesh,
soul-searching, on the part of the Muslim community.
We should not generalize
about the Muslim community any more than we would want people to generalize
about the Jewish community based on the actions of Bernie Madoff, Baruch
Goldstein and others.
But I do expect my Muslim
colleagues to say something like, “This behavior does not represent us. It does not represent our view of
Islam!” I hope that institutions such as the Islamic Center in Boston will make
explicit that terrorism has no place in Islam.
Because the stakes are really
high. Future human lives are at
stake. To the extent that the
appropriation of Islam to justify brutal terror goes unchecked, we will see
more and more victims killed and struggling to piece their bodies and their
lives back together.
I believe the future of
religion is at stake, as well, and this has profound implications for the
future of human life.
Will the 21st
century see, once and for all, the demise of religion as a force for good in
the world? Will the religion of
conquest emerge victorious?
I think about that, and we
should all think about that. Will
today’s bar mitzvah, and his sisters and his friends, think that religion is
basically about defeating the enemy in God’s name – I conquer and kill in the
name of my God – because those who are practicing religion in this way are so
loud and so relentless?
Our task is no less than to
demonstrate, within these walls and beyond, that religion can be a force for
good. That it can cultivate a
sense of wonder, a sense of humility, and a sense of responsibility.
That religion should
ultimately be about love and not conquest.
There are, to be sure,
elements of each of the Western religions that emphasize conquest. Forced conversion and hostile takeovers
are part of Jewish, Christian and Muslim tradition.
And anyone looking at the
history of Buddhism and Hinduism knows that the West has no monopoly on killing
in God’s name.
But unless we want to prove
Christopher Hitchins right when he said that religion does more harm than good,
we have work to do.
We read in Parashat Emor:
ולא תחללו את שם קדשי ונקדשתי בתוך בני ישראל אני ה
V’lo
t’chalelu et shem kodshi v’nikdash’ti b’toch b’nei yisrael – ani adonai.
God tells Moses to tell the
Israelites, You shall not profane My name. I will be made holy among the children of Israel. I am the Lord. (Leviticus 22:32)
As rabbinic Judaism emerged
on the scene, centuries later than the events described in the Torah, this
verse gave rise to two expressions that describe how our behavior reflects on
God:
When someone identified as a
Jew behaves shamefully, we say he is guilty of Chilul hashem, profaning God’s name. When someone identified as a Jew behaves honorably, we say
he has demonstrated “Kiddush hashem,”
the sanctification of God’s name.
I want to speak for a few minutes
about a particular individual who in my view is a model for Kiddush hashem, for how religion can
sanctify God and what religion ideally should accomplish.
His name is Rabbi Akiva and
he lived nearly 2000 years ago. He
came to the study of Judaism relatively late in his life. I thought about him now for a few
reasons – first, I recently taught a passage in the Talmud about him, which
I’ll get to. And second, tonight
is Lag B’Omer, a day which marked a high point in an otherwise depressing time
for Rabbi Akiva and his students.
We know Rabbi Akiva through
the stories that are told about him.
And the stories, while divergent in their subjects and themes,
nonetheless present a consistent, integrated portrait.
Here are three stories about
Rabbi Akiva:
The Talmud tells a story
about four Jewish scholars who entered the Pardes, the orchard. One way this is understood is that the
four scholars engaged in a kind of philosophical speculation. One lost his sanity, one
abandoned Judaism, one died of the shock.
The only one who emerged OK was Rabbi Akiva. The Talmud says נכנס בשלום ויצא בשלום nichnas
b’shalom v’yatza b’shalom. He
entered in peace and left in peace.
Why do we need to be told that
he entered in peace? Perhaps it
teaches us that Rabbi Akiva’s ability to integrate his experience into his
Jewish sensibility came from qualities that he already possessed. Because he entered with a certain
stability and openness, he emerged OK.
Contrast Rabbi Akiva’s
ability to engage new experiences without undermining his commitment to Judaism
– perhaps the new experiences even strengthened his understanding of Judaism –
with the rigidity of so many religious practitioners who maintain, and seek to
impose, a myopic view.
The Talmud tells a story
about one rabbi who disagrees with the majority and is excommunicated by his
colleagues. The story is
about authority and who makes decisions and how. But when Rabbi Akiva steps forward in the story, another
theme is introduced.
Rabbi Akiva says “I must go
inform our colleague that he was excommunicated. If someone does it in the wrong way, it will result in
destruction.”
To Rabbi Akiva, who is right
and who is wrong is only part of the picture. What matters to Rabbi Akiva at least as much as victory over
his colleague is his colleague’s dignity. Ignoring that can have destructive consequences.
Lastly, the Talmud records a
debate about whether the Song of Songs, shir hashirim, should be included in
the Bible. Shir hashirim is
a series of love songs, sensual poetry about a man and a woman pursuing each
other. Early on, it was also read
as an allegory about the love that God and Israel have for one another.
Rabbi Akiva took a strong stand. He said, the rest of the books are
Kodesh – holy. Shir hashirim is
קדש הקדשים kodesh hakodashim – the holy of holies. Why? He
doesn’t say, but I imagine it’s because the Song of Songs is all about love and
what’s more important, what’s more holy, than love?
So there’s consistency of
personality and vision in Rabbi Akiva.
He values exploration over isolation, compassion at least as much as
conquest, and love as the animating force behind everything.
We can choose to follow his
vision. Or we can choose to follow
the vision of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, who spent years isolated in a cave
because he couldn’t stand the world that never measured up to his expectations
and when he walked out of the cave, he glared so angrily at the world he
detested and whole fields went up in flames. And God said to him, “l’hahriv
et olami yatzata?” Did you
leave the cave to destroy my world?
Whose vision will it be,
Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai’s or Rabbi Akiva’s? Anger or love?
Isolation or integration?
And since every religion has its Shimon bar Yochai and its Akiva, every adherent to every religion has to
make the choice.
Fortunately, I don’t have to
worry so much about what today’s bar mitzvah boy will think about Judaism
specifically, and religion in general. Because his parents practice Judaism with energy and love, and
because his mother is a leader of the Chesed Connection, a group of Temple
Israel volunteers who bring food, clothing and company to some of the most
vulnerable people on Long Island.
So he knows that Judaism can
be a source of light and love. He
sees the legacy of Rabbi Akiva at work in his own family.
Each time that happens, we
tip the scale in favor of religion and in favor of humanity.
For each Josh and Chris and
Ahmed who sees his parents practice a religion of love, rather than a religion
of conquest, we tip the scale.
For every Rabbi, minister and
imam who says yes to compassion and no to violence, we tip the scale.
For every citizen who brings
a measure of relief to a victim, like the marathon runners in Boston who ran
straight past the finish line to donate blood to the victims of the bombings,
we tip the scale.
Rabbi Akiva’s life did not
end well. He was tortured by the
Romans and, according to tradition, he recited sh’ma yisra’el at the end.
Many have said that he died al kiddush hashem, in sanctification of
God’s name.
I say, true enough. But that doesn’t tell the whole
story. As one who embraced the
world, appreciated human dignity, and understood the centrality of love, Rabbi
Akiva lived in sanctification of
God’s name. No less important,
maybe moreso.
I’ve said it before and I’ll
say it again. We human beings are
the wild card of creation. Our
impulse to destroy is strong, but hopefully our impulse to love is
stronger.
Keeping the human experiment
on the right side of the road for the next decades, centuries, millennia –
that’s the real marathon.
We take Rabbi Akiva’s example
to the streets and we can really make a difference.
Religion ought to be about
love, not conquest. The stakes are
too high. And our love is too
great.
Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck on April 27, 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment