We Rise Up Together: A Message for the New Year

I’m thinking of a place where African Americans are elevator operators and speak only when spoken to.

Where gays are so deep in the closet they can barely see the light of day.

Where women take dictation and sometimes harassment from their male bosses and continue to smile and bring them coffee.

Where Jews are the objects of anti-Semitic slurs.

What place have I just described? 

Many places, I suppose.

But specifically I was thinking of the office of a particular advertising agency, Sterling Cooper, in the early 1960’s.  Sterling Cooper, you may know, is a fictional ad agency depicted in the award-winning TV Show, "Madmen." 

We’ve made some progress since the early 1960’s.  Some progress.  The reason we’ve made progress at all is only because each underprivileged group I mentioned made some noise and advocated for themselves.

The 60’s were a turning point for each group I mentioned including Jews.  And slowly, painfully, to differing degrees and in different ways, over the next decades and up to the present, each group gained more equal footing in this country. 

A human being can only take so much when marginalized or put down.  There comes a time when we grow so fed up with the way we are being treated, fed up with the status quo, that we demand a change.

We say, “this time will be different.”  And then, if we are courageous and persistent, we take the steps necessary to ensure that things will be different for us.  That we will be treated decently, equally.

I’m going to reflect on that but I won’t stop there.  It’s not right to stop there and our tradition demands that I go on.  I will go on to urge us to consider that the sense of justice which demands “this time will be different for me” also cries out for “this time will be different for you.” 

Thank God, as Jews, we have grown increasingly comfortable demanding our rights, ensuring our security, protecting our freedoms.  But to be Jewish is also to ask, “what about everyone else?” 

So join me on a New Year’s journey to explore the importance of two related resolutions that have the power to change the world for good:  This time will be different for me.  And this time will be different for you.

As Jews we have come a long way when it comes to advocating for ourselves.

To illustrate my point, let me paint the following comparison.  Deanna and I recently toured the Roosevelt home museum in Hyde Park, NY.

I paid careful attention to the parts of the museum that dealt with World War II and particularly careful attention to the exhibits about the response of President Roosevelt to the murder of Jews in Europe.

Multiple documents preserved from this period demonstrate that the president was informed that Jews were being murdered in Europe.  On January 16, 1944, Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau told the president that he and others in his department discovered evidence that the members of the State Department were not only inefficient in rescuing Jews, but were taking deliberate actions to prevent the rescue of Jews. 

The president urged that these charges be looked into and suggested possible avenues of escape for Europe’s Jews from that time on.  Of course, by 1944, it was too late for far too many who had already been killed.

Historians by and large have not judged Roosevelt favorably regarding his response, or lack thereof, to the atrocities of the Shoah.

But I want to focus on the Secretary of the Treasurer, Henry Morgenthau, a Jew. I imagine that he thought long and hard about what to say to the president.  I imagine him saying to himself, “generations of Jews who came before me were afraid to approach their leader.  This time it will be different.  This time I’ll say what I feel needs to be said.”

Henry Morgenthau, Jr., U.S. Secretary of the Treasury 1934-1945

His approach, however, was behind closed doors, noted in a confidential memo but not revealed to the outside world until decades later when the memo was declassified.

Consider, by contrast, the response of the Jewish community nowadays to situations that impact the Jewish people and the State of Israel. 

It is loud and relentless and unapologetic.

70 years after Henry Morgenthau delicately offered a critique behind closed doors to President Roosevelt, we as a people are not afraid to criticize loudly and publicly. 

Over time we said, first to ourselves and then to the rest of the world, this time will be different.

This time we will cry out when Jews are the targets of violence, wherever that may be.

This time we will criticize loudly when we disagree with public policies that impact Israel and the Jewish people.

We’ve heard again and again that Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are about making changes. 

How can a rabbi give a sermon about change without telling the story about the Buddhist and the hotdog vender? If you know it, please let me get to the end. 

A Buddhist walks up to a hotdog vendor and says, “Make me one with everything.”

The hotdog vendor says to himself, “This guy thinks he’s real cute” but he makes the hot dog, with everything, mustard, sauerkraut, relish.  The Buddhist hands him a $20 bill.  The vendor sticks the money in his pocket and goes onto the next customer.

The Buddhist asks, “What about my change?”

And the vendor says to him, “Sorry sir.  Change comes from within.”

I think that the biggest motivation to change is when we ourselves are suffering.  We decide that we are not going to stand for things the way they are because we’ve had it with the way we’re being treated. 

If we think we are being persecuted, or dismissed, because of our religion.  Or our color.  Or our size.  Or our gender.  Or our sexual orientation.  Or our ethnicity.  Or our economic status.  We can only take so much.  There comes a point that we say, “Enough!” 

First, we say it to ourselves.  That may be the hardest part, believe it or not.  We say to ourselves that we don’t deserve to be put down or cast aside.  I think that’s the most important step actually, the real “turning of the corner.”

Then we are likely to say it to those who are in the same situation.  We gather support from our peers.

Then we may say it to those who can help us.  We gather support from potential allies, often those who are privileged whose influence can benefit our cause.

And finally we say it to our tormentors, to those who are putting us down – this time, starting now, will be different for us. 

Sometimes we’re the ones being tormented and we need to find the strength to say “Enough.”

Sometimes we’re the ones doing the tormenting and we need to own that when it gets pointed out.  

And sometimes we’re the potential allies.  Others reach out to us and in some fashion ask for our support.

With the help of social media, people the world over are now focused on the Syrian refugee crisis.

The picture of a little boy’s body washed up at shore went viral.  People the world over have seen the picture of 3 year old Aylan Kurdi and leaders the world over are being asked by their own people, what do we plan to do?

The Gulf Kingdoms?  Qatar?  United Arab Emirates?  Not so interested in absorbing refugees. Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan have already taken in many refugees.  Europe is divided, some countries willing, others not willing. 

How should a Jew respond? 

When people were being killed in the Darfur region of Africa in 2003, a survivor of Auschwitz got up at a Darfur rally and said, “If people around the world had cared enough to speak up about us 60 years ago, things might have turned out differently.  We can’t just sit quietly today.”

It’s clear that this current crisis is complicated by political factors that cannot be ignored or easily resolved.  We are obligated to help but not at the expense of our own safety.  I don’t pretend to have easy solutions.  But we can’t ignore the crisis.

I’ll tell you how Jews are already responding to the current refugee crisis.

The Jewish Coalition for Disaster Relief – sponsored by groups that include the ADL, Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Chabad leadership – have a special campaign devoted to the Syrian Refugee crisis.  In the recent past, this coalition has provided disaster relief for victims of natural disasters in Nepal and the Philippines.  And now there is a separate initiative devoted to the Syrian Refugees, specifically those that have found a home in Jordan.

“This time will be different for us” is an authentic Jewish response.  If we feel that Jews are in danger we’re supposed to advocate for change and that has to start from within. 

But we can’t forget the next step: “This time will also be different for you."  

This is not a new concept for us.  We left slavery in Egypt where, for hundreds of years, we were on the bottom of the heap.  Again and again, Moses told us to remember that we were slaves (v'zacharta ki eved hayita be'eretz mitzrayim) and that our memory of slavery needs to sensitize us to the needs of others when they find themselves at the bottom of the heap.

If we weren’t enslaved personally, the memory became part of our spiritual DNA, passed on from generation to generation.

So we can’t look the other way at refugees because we were once refugees, from Egypt thousands of years ago and more recently from many other places.

And if we are specific in saying that Jewish blood isn’t cheap, which we should be, because much Jewish blood has been spilled over the centuries, then why would we question the specificity of Black Lives Matter?  We ought to recognize, and support, the specific claims of other groups that experience marginalization and discrimination.

And then there are all the small ways that we look down on each other – men toward women, straights toward gays, thin people toward not so thin people, one Jew toward another due to observance or background or how recently the other person’s family came to the United States as compared with your own.

We’re constantly sizing each other up and sometimes we give ourselves license to put down other people for whatever reason.  It may be human nature but Judaism urges us to fight our human nature in this regard as it often does.  By looking within, at our own past, at our own soul.

The lead character in Madmen, the show I started with, is actually a Jew.  Ok – he isn’t really but he sort of is, so hear me out.

He’s one of the top executives at Sterling Cooper.  A real alpha male named Don Draper.  White, charismatic, successful.  Top of the heap.  Everyone around him wants to be him or be with him or both. 

He’s far from perfect.  Far from perfect.  Much of what he does, you shouldn’t do.  But when it comes to treating people who are less privileged in the hierarchy, he’s kind of a mensch.  He doesn’t ridicule people the way that some of his peers do.  He helps the talented female secretary become an executive.  And he does other helpful things from time to time for those who are less privileged. 

Why does he bother?  (I haven’t lost it completely, I know he’s just a TV character!  But allow me some speculation.)

I believe he bothers because his own past is not so rosy.  Because his childhood and young adult life were hardly privileged; in fact, he suffered terribly during his youth.  Because he knows what it feels like to be on the bottom of the heap. 

Don Draper is “Jewish” because he started out in Egypt.  And over time he achieved a great deal due to his own initiative, the help of others and just plain luck.

But he never forgot that he started out in Egypt. 

And neither should we.  There’s a piece of us that started out in Egypt or is still there.  A piece of us that cried out for a change.  A piece of us that said, “This time will be different” for us.  As Jews.  As individuals.  For whatever reason. 

And that piece that demanded that things be different for us, that piece - according to our tradition – also demands that we return the favor. 

Who among us isn’t feeling uncertainty and despair at the growing violence abroad and in our own country?

I believe that the journey that I have described, the journey toward different for me AND different for you, is our best hope in our highly troubled world.

I’m going to conclude with a story that was told to me by someone I met in Israel.  His name is Naftali Avraham.  He is a Jew.  He was born in Ethiopia.  He is about 5 foot 8 and dark-skinned.  He works with an organization called Olim b’yahad, which means "making Aliya together", and its mission is to provide professional and personal support to Ethiopian immigrants to Israel to help them achieve full integration into Israeli society.  The words olim b’yahad also have a deeper meaning that I’ll get to very shortly.

Naftali Avraham addressing a group of rabbis in Israel, July 6, 2015

Naftali Avraham spoke to a group of rabbis I was with this past summer.  He told us that as a teenager, he left his family behind in Ethiopia, hoping they would eventually join him and most of his family eventually did.

He walked across the desert in Sudan like many Ethiopian Jewish refugees.  Despite not having his parents with him during his teen years, he was very successful academically at the boarding school he attended.

During his senior year of high school he applied to college.

He showed up for an interview at a small local technical college.  The professor conducting the interview took a look at him when he walked into his office, looked down at his file, and back up at him and said, “Where is Naftali Avraham?”

And he said, I am Naftali Avraham.  And the professor said, “No really, where is Naftali Avraham?”

A week later, Naftali Avraham found out that he wasn’t admitted.

Fortunately that’s not the only place he applied to.  He also applied to the Technion, Israel’s premier, internationally known Institute of Technology.

And he got in. 

He did very well first semester.  And when he got his transcript, the first person he sent it to was…the professor at the local college that rejected him.

He did even better second semester.  And sent the transcript to…you guessed it.

Finally, he discovered he was graduating with honors and who do you think received an invitation to the graduation?

He asked us, why do you think I sent the professor all those things?

And someone said, “You wanted to get back at him.”

And he laughed.  But he said, “That’s not the real reason.”

And someone else said, “You wanted to make sure the same thing didn’t happen to someone else.”

And he said, “Precisely.  I wanted to make sure that the next time the professor interviews someone who looks like me, he’ll act differently.”

That’s teshuva, by the way – repentance, which is the cornerstone of this time of year.  The definition of repentance is that we find ourselves in a similar situation where we once messed up…and this time we get it right.

Back to the name of the organization Naftali Avraham is involved with – olim beyahad.  It means making Aliya together, but the words convey something much deeper.  It’s a deliberate play on words I suspect.

Olim b’yahad also means, “We rise up together.”

What a shame when we view the world as a zero sum game.  If I help you, there may be less for me.  If I address your under privilege it threatens my privilege. 

We don’t have to look at the world that way.  Judaism urges us to look at the world differently. 

I cry out and you hear me.  You cry out and I hear you. 

Imagine if all human beings of good will would rise up together – God knows, we need everyone’s help, we can’t afford to be picky – to combat and confront those who seek to oppress and destroy through violent words and actions.

Imagine people of good will from all races and ethnicities, all genders and orientations, all religions and those of no religion joining together to fight the violence and barbarity that comes from intolerance run amok.

What a remarkable response that would be in a world that grows crazier by the minute.

Imagine if we as Jews, at the beginning of this New Year, would take more and more seriously our mission to deliver the following message to the world:

From now on things will be different for me AND for you.

So that all of us can rise up together. 

Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck on Rosh Hashanah 5776