At the end of the Amidah, which is part of our daily prayer, we each say the words:
פתח לבי P’tah libi.
Dear God – Open my heart.
Why do we have to pray for
this?
Why don’t we just do
it?
A 6 year old boy named Alex
who lives in Westchester sent a letter to the president of the United
States. He had seen the picture of
a 5-year old boy sitting in an ambulance in Aleppo, wiping blood off of his face,
a picture many of us have seen.
Alex wrote to the president that he wants the boy to come live with his
family. Alex wrote that he is
prepared to share his toys with the boy.
He ended the letter by saying, “We will give him a family and he will be
our brother.”
It’s very inspiring to hear
about the pure open-heartedness of a 6-year old boy. A boy who is ready to open his home, his toy box, and his
heart to someone roughly his age.
But our view of things gets
more complicated as we grow into adolescence and adulthood. We experience fear again and
again. We experience
disappointment again and again.
We understand how
complicated situations are socially and politically.
Our expectations lie
unfulfilled. Our hearts get
broken.
And little by little, in
different situations, over time, our hearts harden – they close up.
So maybe that’s why we each
pray to God ptah libi – open my heart – because we wish our hearts could
remain open despite all of the internal and external forces that can keep our
hearts rigid and closed. And
because it’s not so easy to keep our hearts open.
It is truly understandable
for us to harden our hearts in so many situations. We are often perfectly justified in being suspicious, or
wary, or fed up.
At the beginning of this New
Year, I want to explore some of the political and personal reasons why we
harden our hearts. And I also want
to explore why and how and in what situations we should strive to keep our
hearts open. Long past the
relative innocence of childhood, can we face the world as it is, can we face
life as it is, with hearts that remain appropriately open? I hope so.
First the political, then
the personal. We know that many
Jews the world over are experiencing anti-Semitism in one form or another.
We're becoming increasingly aware of the challenges that many Jewish students face on college campuses across the country. The Washington Post recently featured an article, excerpted from The Tower, about students who are experiencing anti-Semitism on campus.
Arielle Mokhtarzadeh, a
Jewish undergraduate at UCLA, described to the reporter how she experienced anti-Semitism
at UCLA. This included
walking into the cafeteria freshman year and seeing “Hitler did nothing wrong” etched into the cafeteria table. It included watching a friend initially
denied a position of student government leadership based on her Jewish
identity.
Arielle recently went to UC
Berkeley to participate in a Students of Color conference to find out more
about the experiences of students of color in this setting and also to share
her own experiences. She told the
reporter that as an Iranian Jew, she believed her identity as both a religious
and ethnic minority granted her a place to belong and thrive at this
conference.
She was quite upset by what
occurred there. Throughout the
conference, as she reported, “Statements
were made justifying the ruthless murder of innocent Israeli civilians,
blatantly denying Jewish indigeneity in the land, and denying the Holocaust in
which six million Jews were murdered.”
Arielle felt that
every identity at this conference was welcomed except for hers.
One can certainly
understand why students like Arielle might retreat altogether, thinking, “who
needs any of this?”
But that’s not at
all what she has done. She hasn’t
given up. She said the following:
“We
are made to feel that our Jewish identities somehow disqualify us from
inclusion in progressive spaces—despite the fact that for many of us, it is our
Jewish values that drive us to join these spaces, in spite of the negative
experiences we have in them. We have become numb to the hateful rhetoric, we’ve
built up a tolerance for the defamations of our character...and we’ve endured
in silence. Now we are here to
break the silence.”
Arielle decided
she will not shy away from defending Judaism and Israel, but she also has not
shied away from protecting others who suffer discrimination. She has strengthened her effort to
speak out on behalf of Israel and Judaism and also to speak out against racial,
economic and ethnic injustice for all people.
In the context of
my message this morning, Arielle is protecting her heart but also keeping it open.
P’tah libi – open
my heart – doesn’t mean you can step on me. It doesn’t mean I will continue to fight for you as you
disrespect me. It doesn’t mean
naïveté. It means, I am worthy and
you are worthy. You count and so do I.
The exemplary
leadership of this young woman teaches us that we can be appropriately
suspicious, appropriately self-protecting and self-defending, and also be
responsive to the legitimate aspirations for justice of those who are suffering
discrimination of any kind.
On US campuses and
in multiple settings in Europe, Jews are experiencing anti-Semitism from the
left and the right. Arielle
Mokhtarzadeh, and her friends and colleagues at UCLA and elsewhere across the
country, provide an admirable model of why and how we can protect ourselves and
keep our hearts open.
So do two giants
who recently left this earth – Holocuast survivor Elie Wiesel and Israeli
statesman Shimon Peres.
Elie Wiesel fought
against anti-Semitism, he fought against Holocaust denial, and he also kept his
heart open – despite, or more accurately, because of his own personal
experience – to every group, every individual, regardless of religion, race and
ethnicity, who was experiencing discrimination and persecution of any kind.
Shimon Peres – founder
and leader of the State of Israel – was a fierce defender of the Jewish
people. And his mind and his heart
were always open to the possibility of reconciliation and peace with Palestinians and with Israel's neighbors.
Shortly after his
90th birthday, then President Peres addressed the Rabbinical
Assembly in the President’s home when we held our convention in Israel. His said in his talk – I will never
forget – You judge the success of a nation by how they treat their most
vulnerable.
P’tah libeinu – keep
our hearts open - means do not let our frustration, our anger, our bitterness,
our FEAR – encourage us to walk away from those who need us, or to build a wall
around ourselves, or to generalize about entire groups of people, or to give up
on our obligations to help other people, or to abandon the fight for justice
and even peace. Pt’ah libi means we
protect ourselves AND reach out to others. I am worthy and you are worthy.
You don’t open
your heart to people who burn others in cages or throw people off of buildings
– you steel yourself up and fight them until you defeat them.
But you don't allow that fight to close your heart to all of those who need and deserve basic justice and dignity. I'm afraid we are becoming too hardened to one another in situations where open-heartedness is called for.
Recently a 90 year old man was arrested in Fort Lauderdale
for the second time. What was the
crime of Arnold Abbott, founder of Love Thy Neighbor charity? He was caught serving food to the
homeless in an area of the city following the passage of a law that restricts
such activities. The law came
to concretize a statement that restricted camping, panhandling, food sharing and
other “life sustaining activities.”
Apparently people in Fort Lauderdale are to be restricted
from life sustaining activities.
Just think about that. George
Orwell couldn’t have put it better.
What does that say about a city?
A society? Following his
arrest Arnold Abbott said about the new law, “As long as there is breath in my
body I will fight it.”
American Jews,
living in this great multi-racial, multi-cultural, economically diverse nation,
need to follow the examples of Elie Wiesel, and Shimon Peres and Arnold Abott
and Arielle Mokhtarzadeh and many others.
Even as we protect ourselves, our hearts must remain open and in some
instances they must be re-opened.
Jewish tradition
demands it, the great American experiment requires it, and our souls cry out
for it.
Which brings me to
the personal.
Perhaps some of us
have been in romantic relationships that have not been so loving.
Perhaps some of us
grew up in homes where we did not feel fully embraced and supported to one
degree or another.
Perhaps some of us
were on the receiving end of nasty comments or behavior as children or as
adults – we were made fun of, tormented even – for whatever reason.
There may be some
people here who have never been mistreated, never been made fun of, never been
in a problematic relationship.
But I doubt it.
The hurt. The
bitterness. The resentment. The fear that we experience. These
feelings don’t go away.
Maybe we put up
with things because we had to.
Maybe we walked away when we could. Maybe we pushed back, or even fought back.
There is a casualty in all of this which I believe is nearly
universal – our own hearts are the casualty. Our hearts toughen up – how can they not?
What’s really sad is when our toughening up in one situation
prevents us from opening up in other situations.
Let's ask ourselves the following question: Have I protected myself so well from
feeling pain that I’ve also protected myself from feeling love?
We know couples
that grow apart but also grow back together. Their hearts turn away from one another for whatever reasons,
but somehow – usually through honesty and effort – they manage to open their
hearts to one another once again.
We know people who
have left a problematic relationship, possibly hardening themselves at various
points in the process – and then managed to keep their hearts open enough to
forge a new relationship that is more loving.
We know people
whose childhoods were not nurturing, in some cases, people whose parents neglected
them or mistreated them, and these same people keep their hearts open enough to
become supportive, loving parents to their own children.
So we pray p'tah libi, p'tah libeinu - inspire us, strengthen us, so that despite the pain, the hurt, the fear - we leave our hearts appropriately open.
Suzanne Vega, awesome songwriter and performer, one of the
many highly talented graduates of Barnard College, wrote a song about a queen
and a soldier called, appropriately, “The Queen and the Soldier.”
The soldier comes knocking on the door of the queen's palace
– he says, I am not fighting for you anymore. He wants to know why the fighting goes on. She is withdrawn, mysterious. Reluctantly she reveals that she
carries deep personal pain that “cuts her inside.”
There is a brief possibility that she will open her heart to
the soldier more fully. She tells
him to wait for her for a moment but she never gets back to him. And the soldier leaves the palace and
is killed in battle.
The closed heart
brings pain that is personal and
political. The closed heart
affects not just individuals but societies and nations.
While we wallow in
our fear and anger and resentment, people are suffering – we’re suffering, and
so are they.
The open heart brings love that is personal and political. The open heart affects individuals but also
societies and nations.
And the open heart is the essence of a strong synagogue
community. You will be hearing
more about our plans to strengthen this great community of ours – but for now,
I want to share with you a vision statement that is emerging more and more
clearly for our community:
Temple Israel
strives to be a place where everyone feels welcome to discover the power of
Judaism to bring blessing to our lives and to our world.
When I met with a
group of mothers and fathers of school-age children last spring, I asked, what
do you most want your children to learn?
A father of two boys, after listening to a few of the insightful
comments that were made, said, “I want my sons to learn how to love.”
At the beginning
of a New Year, and every day – we each say to God – p’tah libi. Open my heart. Help me keep my heart open to love even
though I have experienced rejection and pain. Help me keep my heart open to those who need me and love me even
as I protect myself from those who want to do me and others harm. Help me keep my heart open to my
potential and my responsibility.
The prophet
Ezekiel envisioned God saying to the people והסרותי את לב האבן מבשרכם ונתתי לכם לב בשר V’Hasiroti et lev ha’even mib’sarchem
v’natati lachem lev basar. “I will remove
the heart of stone from within you and I will replace it with a heart of flesh.” Appropriately we read this verse several times during this season. The world needs our hearts of
flesh. The world needs us to keep
our hearts open.
P’tah libi. P’tah libeinu. Open my heart. Open our hearts. Amen.
Delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck on Rosh Hashanah 5777
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